"Spirituality: Charting the Waters"
Dedicated to those who will make it to the end
Foreword
For the last twenty years or so—I am now in my early forties—I have been immersed in spirituality. This has also had a practical dimension on top of reading, listening, and watching what others have got to say about the matter. For about a decade, I have been documenting my discoveries—both first-hand and otherwise—with varying degrees of insight, craftsmanship, and stylistic preferences. I started off with a keen sense of urgency and, perhaps, too much bombast rooted in idealism. Now, being more worldly-wise, I am in no haste. Though my idealistic self lingers as ever—as does the gravity of my concerns—I now seem to cast a soberer look both inward and outward.
Just to give readers a taste of my intellectual landscape, I have engaged deeply with Daniel Andreev's The Rose of the World, Jacob Needleman's Why Can't We Be Good?, select works of Carl Jung, and Metamodern Era and lectures by Nirmala Shrivastava, better known as Shri Mataji. The influence of C.S. Lewis, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Grigory Pomerantz, Viktor Frankl, Shri Ramana Maharshi and some others, has proved enlightening, too. My acquaintance with major holy scriptures is a given.
If I were to capture what has driven my search all along, it has been the quest for a common denominator among different—oftentimes conflicting—spiritual, philosophical, and psychological teachings; one that wouldn't feel contrived but, instead, could be relied upon as a legitimate and hands-on roadmap. It has been both a humble and venturesome probe into what may be the most uncharted—or mischarted—of all territories: the spiritual realm. Hence Spirituality: Charting the Waters.
Structure-wise, this work is a tapestry of book passages, summaries, essays, and poems—my own or others'—with quotations and visuals popping up here and there, all woven together by a unifying narrative. Messy though it is, the resulting text divides into the following chapters: "The Basics", "Cosmology", "Interfaith Studies", "Gnoseology", "Methodology", and "My Gnoseology". There will be room for the afterword as well.
Regarding the book passages, Charting the Waters has absorbed, for instance, certain parts from Jacob Needleman's Why Can't We Be Good? worthy of about three chapters. Some may consider this a breach of copyright, though I share these passages strictly in a noncommercial, educational context. Besides, everyone is free to access the full version of Why Can't We Be Good? in exchange for the listed price.
Despite my near-native English proficiency, I seldom write in or translate my texts into English. Understandably, I prefer Russian—my mother tongue—which allows me to play with words however I like. That is to say, most of my pieces here were originally written in Russian and later translated into English, either by me or AI under my careful supervision. Though this may dilute the work's linguistic merit for some, its core message endures.
I hope this foreword has intrigued my English-speaking readers enough to venture further. From my end, I have only one but crucial requirement for them: thoughtfulness.
The Basics
This section is primarily devoted to passages from A Book of Concern, an earlier major attempt to articulate my insights. Readers will be offered a penetrating glimpse into the makeup and dynamics of selfhood—the psychological wholeness of the individual—along with preliminary, tentative notions of the Divine. It promises to be one of the shortest chapters—there can't be too many basics after all.
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...In a branch of Sufism, the esoteric 'undercurrent' of Islam, the gravest sin is... to take offense. This might sound unconventional with those accustomed to commandments like "Thou shalt not kill", "Thou shalt not commit adultery", and so on. The Sufi perspective does offer a workaround approach.
Some say: God is truth. They add: God cannot be mocked. Piecing these together: truth cannot be mocked. By extension, those grounded in truth cannot be mocked either. In this light, offending someone becomes nothing more than a test of their spiritual 'waters'. To remain genuinely unshaken when provoked suggests a profound alignment with truth. Put more 'secularly': The dog barks, but the caravan moves on.
Yet calmness doesn't preclude 'oscillations.' Waves, for instance, have no trouble coexisting with the serenity of the ocean's depths. In the same vein, the prohibition of blasphemy, say, aligns with God's general indifference to it. If Divine wrath does become provoked, it is the transgressor who suffers—no ripple seems to disturb the tranquil core of the Divine.
At the human level, every need, desire, craving, or intellectual interest—collectively termed drive—can be seen as oscillations of sorts disrupting equilibrium. Fulfilling a drive promises restoration of peace, potentially paving the way for yet deeper tranquility. This, in turn, allows a higher, more sublime drive to come into play. And thus, the cycle continues: losing and regaining peace in the short term, while gradually ascending toward grace or falling from it. Broadly speaking, this outlines the blueprint of human existence.
If absolute peace, God, and truth are one—the ultimate aim of life—then the highest drive finds satisfaction in the knowledge of truth, or in partaking of Divine peace. This particular peace is also imbued with joy. Consider the Hindu conception of God as sat-chit-ananda—existence-consciousness-bliss. Meanwhile, happiness at lower levels arises only through the interplay of complementary opposites—essentially the masculine and feminine principles.
The journey from 'imitation' peace to genuine peace makes what is called "the middle way," "the straight path," or simply "the Way." Along this path, opposites transform into companions, eventually merging into unity. Across traditions, these polarities bear different names: yang and yin, rajas and tamas, the sun and the moon, etc. Analogous to the Way are concepts like Tao, sattva, or Great Doing. For clarity, I will adopt the sun, the moon, and the Way moving forward.
The Way might be visualized as a central axis, around which two spirals—solar and lunar—intertwine and ascend, resembling an inverted Rod of Asclepius. A three-dimensional rendering could resemble a tiered conical structure, akin to a minaret or Buddhist stupa. If either spiral deviates, the entire structure comes to wobble, risking collapse—a metaphor evoking the image of a pendulum.
Abstractly, the sun is associated with light, order, heat, hardness, lightness, and transcendence. The moon balances these with darkness, chaos, cold, softness, heaviness, and 'viscosity.'
In the human psyche, the sun will manifest as dynamism, consciousness, discernment, and self-transcendence. The moon, in contrast, governs sensory experience, emotion, feeling, and memory.
One might say the sun's 'beams' construct individuality or 'ego', while the moon furnishes its tangible, felt counterparts. Together, they weave into a dynamic selfhood.
Over time, this selfhood ascends or descends along the Way, with corresponding states of happiness and peace, or the lack thereof. Some individuals seem to catch an upward momentum, aligning so deeply with truth—or God, or innermost peace—that they become virtually unshakable. Among other things, this renders them impervious to insult.
It becomes clearer now why some Sufis regard taking offense as the gravest sin...
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...Now that the overall dynamics of selfhood has been outlined, its composite parts, each seen as the interplay between the sun and the moon, merit more scrutiny. For this purpose, I shall differentiate across numerous selves.
The self-preservation instinct becomes the most basic and, perhaps, basest starting point. Here, the sense of vulnerability and fear coming from the moon meet the solar "fight or flight" reaction. The animal self.
The drive to reproduce forms the next rung up the ladder, where masculine and feminine—or in other words, active solar and more passive, receptive lunar types of sexuality—make up the gender self. On this level, lunar sensuality intertwines with the solar purpose of procreation.
Submissiveness or obedience in its most general form represents another face of the moon, with its external object or internal counterpart being the authoritative sun. The dual servant/master self.
Creative inspiration appears as yet another lunar manifestation, flashed out by the sun into concrete forms, meanings, and deeds. The creator self.
Next emerges the lunar drive for accumulation and possession, represented symbolically by the sun through wealth, power, status or any combination of these. Thus the owner self springs into existence.
Love, a more subtle moonlight, shines still above. First, it radiates toward immediate family—parents and siblings—later extending to spouse and children. Its corresponding solar counterpart—the recognition of one's role and responsibilities within the family. The family self.
In the social self, loved ones are found beyond immediate family: one projects parental, filial or fraternal sentiments onto beings not bonded by blood. That is to say, the sun illuminates new horizons, eliciting from the moon a more sublime sense of belonging. The subtlest form of this becomes the universal self, free from grosser or temporal attachments.
Worth mentioning: the aspects of selfhood are being presented hierarchically rather than chronologically. Reality is far more complex.
The contemplating self, the penultimate self in this scheme, assumes the duty of overseeing 'lower' selves, as, in a way, it transcends them all. The weight of all sensations, feelings and memories from the moon, combined with ideas and principles brought to consciousness by the sun, form its foundation. It is the gatekeeper of sorts, choosing what to deny and what to allow within selfhood.
About the Way. Ideally it runs like a thread through all the pairings of the 'companion-opposites'. It is through the Way that the sun and the moon maintain proper, or graceful, alignment without major deviations. This implies a harmony between inner and outer—where the animal self, for instance, avoids excessive agitation in the absence of true threat, or the gender self remains nested within marriage and the forms of sexuality that major world religions generally endorse.
When more or less all selves become aligned with the Way, their upward movement may culminate in the Divine self. Here kindles the most sublime and wholesome awareness, with actions performed in and emanating from profound tranquility. In this light, the biblical image of the lion lying with the lamb may signify complete sublimation and unification of the sun and the moon. While the Koran depicts paradise with different imagery, "peace" appears to be mentioned all too frequently in the scripture. The Bhagavad Gita describes yoga—union with God—as "action in inaction" standing for ultimate peace, unlike mere idleness. Thus, all three traditions—each in its own language—affirm the Sufi principle in question.
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...Coming back to harmony, the Way essentially keeps the sun and the moon in check—balancing their natural tendencies so they keep their upward momentum. This has already been illustrated with the animal self and the gender self, but there is more to selfhood than these.
In the servant/master self, harmony endures as long as the moon heeds "You shall not make yourself an idol," with the sun recognizing authority beyond itself. Handing it over to Exupery:
I realized: firmness and obedience are two sides of the same coin. "A hard nut to crack" is what we say approvingly about one; "she's her own mistress"—about another. I hugged her, but she was far away from me, like a yacht on the sea horizon. I call them people: they don't bargain, they don't enter into deals, don't adjust, don't compromise, don't betray them-selves out of self-interest, salacity or fatigue. Their heart is harder than an olive pit. I can grind them into powder, but I will never squeeze the oil of the secret out of them, and I will not allow a tyrant or a crowd to rule over their diamond hearts, for it is precisely such people who happen to be truly obedient. They are the ones who are meek, disciplined, respectful, they are capable of faith and sacrifice, having become obedient sons and daughters of deep wisdom, having become the guardians of virtue...
In the creator self, inspiration from the moon (as aesthetically informed by the Way) is meant to be expressed rather than remain imprisoned within imagination's confines. The Way will push it toward the sun, so to speak. The latter, in turn, is to ground its expressions in reality rather than far-fetched ideation. Here, as at many other levels, the safeguard for the sun is the sense of reality.
The lunar drive for possession in the owner self is to be checked by moderation—another key quality of the Way. This allows the moon to still its hunger more quickly and achieve sustainable balance, with the sun finding dignity in moderation rather than excessive pursuit of power or, say, status. When properly regulated, the owner self contributes significantly to the overall stability of selfhood.
In the lunar aspect of the family self, the Way will refine love to prevent excessive dissolution in its objects—whether parents, children or spouse. The sun, as love's recipient, will be reminded of reciprocity and responsibility. The same principle applies more broadly to the social self, where awareness of its rights and higher truths will prevent the moon from being lost in or oppressed by the larger, not necessarily wholesome, collective. The sun's proclivity for individualism, in turn, will be calibrated by the Way through reciprocity and responsibility toward community—potentially extending to the whole world and beyond.
In the contemplating self, the moon naturally gravitates toward accumulated experience and knowledge, while the sun takes a more critical stance. Here, the Way serves as an arbitrator of sorts, challenging the moon with new knowledge on the one hand and restraining the sun with some established and legitimate truths on the other. Their harmonious union at this level depends on mutual commitment to the sense of reality and its demands as issuing from the Way.
Ultimately, the union of the sun and the moon in the Divine self represents the most delicate and intimate merging of mind and heart. The clearest sunlight, that is, profound and clear awareness, joins with the most refined moonlight—radiant love. Buddhism, for example, calls this state Bodhi; yoga terms it Moksha, among other titles.
To recap, the Way's essential qualities gracing the companionship of the sun and the moon are auspiciousness, moderation, harmony, and the sense of reality. These generate increasingly stable states of content and peace, with grosser selves naturally shrinking back. Each higher component of selfhood grows less dependent on its foundations—sexual drive tempered by material and marital stability, which, in turn, yields to yet higher social commitments. Consider, for instance, the soldier who sacrifices comfort, family—even life—for his homeland; or the social self expanding even further beyond gender, race, or creed. All this comes to be mediated by the contemplating self, guided by the principle "Plato is my friend but truth is a greater friend" in any of its renderings. A sterner one appears in the Gospels:
Anyone who loves their father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.
The severity of this truth may be softened by the Divine Self’s quiet recompense: the healing of all wounds borne along the narrow path—the middle way, or simply, the Way.
~ ~ ~
...Following the Way—not to mention attaining spiritual heights—is an ideal scenario. Alas, as is often the case with ideals, they become rarely realized. Whatever followers of the Sufi tradition or other well-meaning individuals might aspire to, there exists a countervailing, bitter wisdom: to err is human.
A definitive sign of this "error" is a misalignment between the moon and the sun on a higher level, leading to an excessive attraction—or susceptibility—of the more subtle moonlight or sunlight to the grosser, dimmer emanation of its companion-opposite. This also implies being overpowered by its own grosser component. Simply put, disharmony will inevitably mark the dynamics of the moon and the sun if either or both fall short of the Way. I have previously compared this deviation to a swinging pendulum but further elaboration is needed—as is known, the devil dwells in the details.
Readers are now invited to visualize a bell-shaped spring, its ends attached to a horizontal surface. At the top of the arch, a barrier divides it into two equal sides. With another stretch of imagination, they may picture a vertical current—call it the Force—streaming through the arch's midsection. There, it gradually and uniformly lifts the spring's apex, drawing its sides closer together and preventing excessive deviation from the center.
Should either side stubbornly attempt to 'steal thunder' and veer away—such deviations must be accounted for in this imaginary setup—its support by the Force will be undermined. Moreover, the base of the deviating side, along with the entirety of the opposite side, will counterbalance and constrain this crooked progression. In fact, the opposite side will stretch further, this way increasing its potential energy. If the spring's movement doesn't correct itself, this will eventually result in a violent snap in the opposite, diagonally downward direction. Just to make it clear: both sides collapse—the difference lies in the angle and forcefulness of the fall.
All this imagery symbolizes none other than the dynamics between the moon and the sun—the two companion-opposites—as they deviate from the Way, that is, the Force. The illustration below may clarify all these... perturbations:
If readers' imagination still permits, the lunar side—let it remain on the left—should be entirely helical, with large, heavy rings at its base and more delicate coils at the top. The right, solar side of the spring, however, would scarcely exhibit any curvature except at its uppermost part or thread. At the very bottom, it would resemble a thick, straight strap. Only the upper left and right segments—the coils and the thread—truly reflect one another, bearing each other’s imprints. That is to say, the coils' greater mobility and lightness are but a solar reflection, while the thread's slight curvature is a mark of the moonlight. The Taoist Yin-Yang symbol, wherein each counterpart contains a fraction of the other, captures this dynamics:
As for the rings and strap at the lower portion of the spring, they are too polarized and gross to carry each other's imprints. For this reason, each will seek its counterpart primarily—or solely—on the outside.
Translating all this into more human terms, the rings and strap correspond to rather earthly drives and pursuits: food, sex, property, status, and crude emotional attachments. The coils and thread, however, imbue life with higher meaning and grace—whether through art, the pursuit of a just society, the search for scientific or ultimate truth, or a subtler sense of belonging and love. In essence, they are the source of poetry amidst the prosaic...
~ ~ ~
...In conclusion, I shall refine the definition of deviation still further.
As illustrated, deviation arises from a misalignment between the moon and the sun at a higher level—that is, between the coils and thread. There is yet a more straightforward relationship: the outright domination of the rings and strap within the entire framework, with the coils and thread largely 'retracted.' To put it bluntly, this means navigating life in an animalistic or semi-animalistic fashion. It would be more accurate, therefore, to call this state "inversion" rather than "deviation."
Moreover, while deviation manifests as disharmony, inversion presents itself as a kind of harmony—a fragile and base one. This is not to say that earthly, gross matters are inherently despicable. It is about setting priorities straight: while inversion wrongly elevates what shouldn't be at the top, deviation assigns primacy to the right things but in a wrong way.
Now is an opportune moment to connect all this with the hierarchy of selves. The lower part of the spring—the rings and strap—aligns with the animal, gender, servant/master, creator, and owner selves. A tentative divide between the lower and upper parts runs through the family self, where the coils and thread originate. That is to say, becoming human in earnest starts with love (of which compassion is an integral part) and responsibility for others.
The ascent doesn't end here though. The upper part of the spring extends through the social and contemplative selves, culminating—ideally—in the Divine...
~ ~ ~
I hope readers don't feel overwhelmed. After all, it took me a number of years to wrap my head around all these 'technicalities', so I don't expect others to grasp them immediately, overnight, or even within a week's time. If something doesn't make sense now, let it sink in. Perhaps, it is simply a matter of imagery and word choice. I will be using different metaphors and phrasings throughout Charting the Waters, starting right in the next section. It is important to note that behind all this hair-splitting or, rather, selfhood-splitting, lies a compelling reason that readers will better appreciate later.
Cosmology
With the basics established, embedding cosmology within them becomes the next task. The resulting 'cosmos' will comprise several 'galaxies', each bearing its own peculiar celestial—and at times infernal—bodies and rotating along a distinct trajectory, yet all moving in great synchrony and with much overlap.
One galaxy embodies the Jungian framework as much reinterpreted by yours truly; another condenses Daniil Andreev's visionary insights and include an extensive, uncut passage from his The Rose of the World; a third presents my elaboration on the Son-Principle or the Logos as introduced by Andreev; a fourth constellates my reflections on karma and reincarnation; while a fifth provides some metaphysical underpinnings for the above.
In my excursus into Jungian ideas and beyond, readers will note a lot of parallels with what has already been laid out. May this come to them not as a redundancy, but an invitation to perceive matters with fresh eyes and from a broader vantage point.
~ ~ ~
According to Carl Jung—and from here on out, this will be a somewhat loose interpretation of his ideas—the human selfhood isn't just 'suspended in midair' but carries within it a higher purpose, the call of the Self archetype. This Self represents the fullest possible realization of a given individual and closely resonates with the Christian image of God (and the image of God, in turn, cannot be conceived without God Himself). Jung called the movement toward this fullness, or depth, "individuation." Essentially, it’s the harmonization and refinement of thought, emotion, intuition, and physicality.
People are free to reject this deeper call, content with the 'small fry' of superficiality. You could call that a normal life. They—or rather, we—are also given another freedom: to turn in the diametrically opposite direction and ultimately fall under the sway of the devil (or 'demonicism,' if the idea of personified, conscious evil makes someone uncomfortable). In a way, this too is a kind of depth—the depth of baseness, not of height.
So, like a fairytale character, each of us faces—or has already made—a choice among three paths. Only one of them leads to the true fulfillment of the selfhood and, just as importantly, promises the most blessed (or least agonizing) afterlife...
...If the path toward height-depth is chosen, things seem simple enough (and yet also difficult): living out as many life roles as possible—child, student, spouse, parent, professional, artist (in the broadest sense), citizen, ruler (primarily over oneself), warrior (struggling with oneself or external circumstances), sage—with all their attendant joys and burdens and, crucially, a certain mindset marked by honesty, attentiveness, humility before the Higher Principle, and courage. Honesty and courage are especially necessary for confronting one’s "shadow," but more on that later. All of this opens the selfhood to the contents of the collective unconscious—its Divine layers—which then transform it in the image and likeness of God.
Alongside the call of one "abyss" or another (or the whisper of "shallows"), the selfhood contains two ontological drives: the striving for autonomy ("being," the masculine principle, "yang," "rajas") and the striving for belonging ("non-being," the feminine principle, "yin," "tamas"). Ideally, these are drawn into a dance by the centripetal force of the Self. If that doesn’t happen, the Self will (if not by hook, then by crook), try to pull them in—or, after futile attempts, abandon them to fate (if the choice was made in favor of the 'shallows') or forcefully fling them away with centrifugal force (a conscious choice for evil). By "fate," Jung meant the totality of internally unprocessed situations manifesting as external events. More on that later.
The Self archetype, or the inner image of God, as already mentioned, cannot exist without God in general. Among other things, He expresses Himself as the pulse of time, the "here and now" of history—regardless of how anyone individually experiences it. He can be imagined as an imperturbable, majestic elephant, moving with measured steps and bringing all endeavors to their ultimate logical conclusion. You can find yourself on the elephant—or beneath its feet.
For brevity, let’s call the call or centrifugal pull of the Self archetype the "Way." The drives it attracts, corrects, or rejects will be labeled "being" and "non-being," though readers are free to use other names (e.g., masculine and feminine principles)...
..."Being" and "non-being" require closer examination. Each of these drives divides into a coarser and a subtler aspect, with the subtler ideally governing the coarser. For instance, higher thought (refined "being") restrains blind, aggressive, "fiery" self-assertion (coarse "being"), while elevated emotionality (refined "non-being") restrains sentimentality and physical sensuality (coarse "non-being"). It’s also worth distinguishing proactive self-assertion ("being") from the inert reactivity of "non-being."
When the subtle aspects of "being" and "non-being" harmoniously unite within the selfhood, they empower each other to govern their coarser counterparts. In other words, higher thought, combined with elevated emotionality (the latter also blending intuition and creativity), becomes less susceptible to sentimentality and bodily urges; elevated emotionality becomes less reactive or prone to external domination. In this configuration—let’s call it the "Prince and Princess"—individuation, or refinement, proceeds most smoothly.
Where can this ideally lead? Depending on tradition, it might be called "enlightenment," "liberation," "resurrection," "holiness," or the "philosopher’s stone"—the kingdom of the "King and Queen," the mature "Prince and Princess," the highest, subtlest forms of "being" and "non-being"...
...If the "Prince and Princess" is the most promising configuration, let’s use it as a starting point to examine more problematic ones.
Higher thought somewhat estranged from elevated emotionality could be called idealistic individualism. Mythologically, it resembles the flight of Icarus. Obviously, "Icarus" can fly too far, and the resulting ultraliberalism becomes a final threshold before an inevitable—and often painful—return to what it initially sought to escape: "non-being," now showing its coarser side. In the myth, Icarus falls into water—a universal symbol of the feminine—to his death. Psychologically, this means falling under the sway of coarse emotions, physicality, and/or psychotic states. Nietzsche, for example, was swallowed by the abyss quite unceremoniously, losing his mind. And of course, this is a clear sign of straying from the Way.
Another danger for "Icarus" (the reckless "Prince") is the release of aggression previously kept in check. A fall from either the subtle side of "being" or "non-being" always jolts their coarser counterparts—the difference lies only in emphasis and the resulting intensity.
Elevated emotionality divorced from higher thought conjures the archetypal image of a princess languishing in a tower—hence the name "Princess in the Tower." This might manifest as misinterpreted or misdirected religious feeling, admiration, empathy, or humility. Without her "Prince," the "Princess" tends to withdraw into herself or becomes more susceptible to external influence. Meanwhile, sentimentality and sensuality inevitably gain the upper hand. The "Princess in the Tower" appears vividly in religious fundamentalism or ideologies like atheistic communism.
Turning to Tolkien’s world for imagery this time: the limited, self-satisfied, sentimental mindset lacking higher nobility (but not outright wicked either) fits "Bungo and Belladonna." Unlike their adventurous son Bilbo, they led a "two-dimensional" hobbit life. However, the "Bungo and Belladonna" configuration can refine itself (as Bilbo did) or degenerate into something low and dark (Gollum being proof). In the real world, this manifests as various forms of chauvinism—from entrenched nationalism to fascism, where evil is embraced not consciously but through the "shadow" (more on that later). Notably, both "Icarus" and the "Princess in the Tower" risk sliding all the way down.
The lowest configuration—the diametric opposite of the "Prince and Princess"—is "Clyde and Bonnie" (or classically, "Bonnie and Clyde"). This is the conscious embrace and reveling in evil, which is essentially demonism: ruthlessness, cold intellect, sadism, mockery, vulgarity, cunning, hyper-sexuality, and perversion in varying combinations. Ejected by the Way's centrifugal force, "Bonnie and Clyde" find it nearly impossible to align with its centripetal pull. This, by the way, fuels their metaphysical resentment toward the Way and envy of those graced by it...
...Everything left unfulfilled on the way to the "Self" and denied conscious processing is repressed into the personal unconscious, forming the so-called "shadow." Beyond failing the selfhood's higher purpose (rendering its existence meaningless), its "shadow" becomes a source of trouble—physical, psychological, or spiritual—the kind of fate called "doom": illnesses, accidents, recurring problems (e.g., disrespect from peers), down to demonic possession. Unintegrated elements of the Self will also find ways to manifest (kick them out the door, they come back through the window), but in cruder forms. For instance, the rise of feminism could be seen as a consequence of the collective "Princess in the Tower"—the repression of the refined feminine finding an outlet, however imperfect.
Let's illustrate the "shadow"'s contents and dynamics with envy, though pride, resentment, guilt, greed, sentimentality, and frivolity would paint a fuller picture.
Say, someone can't assert themselves through skill or personal growth. Faced with someone more accomplished, they feel envy and suppress it. Thus, the "shadow" forms and, unprocessed, it only thickens.
Regardless of its source, the "shadow" is always fed by the abrasive friction of "being" and "non-being" (henceforth, any excessive, entrenched negative reaction will be called "abrasion," emphasizing its erosive effect upon the selfhood). In an envious selfhood, inferiority and irritation come from "being," accompanied by a sorrowful, subdued "non-being."
A sure sign of the "shadow" is persistent irritation, especially when encountering the envied object. It's worse when the envier and envied share similar status or innate ability—making the accomplishment seem attainable. This could be called "just envy," unlike envy toward someone incomparably superior, where "know your place" would be the wisest approach.
Processing the "shadow". The first step is a brave, honest look: "I envy." Then, three constructive options: first, be inspired and strive for similar achievements (under certain circumstances, this may lead to revolution); second, learn pure, malice-free admiration, accepting one’s own limits; third, abandon certain ambitions as unworthy.
Yes, the Way doesn't treat all human strivings equally. The more we resist our higher purpose (the "Prince and Princess" and beyond), substituting it with surrogates; the more our empathy or admiration—psychic energy—is misdirected and corrupted, the further we stray and the more abrasion we suffer. Only proximity to the Way grants the clarity and courage needed for "shadow work"...
...Further dividing the "shadow" into negative/positive and individual/collective adds nuance—and clarity.
"Icarus" and the "Princess in the Tower" represent mostly failed (or occasionally successful) attempts at nobility. Their "shadows" fall "downward" onto "Bungo and Belladonna" and "Bonnie and Clyde," whose positive "shadows" (unlived nobility) point "upward." Negative and positive "shadows" attract like opposite charges, creating strong bonds between these configurations with all the resulting eventuality. The "Prince and Princess" stand apart, nearly "shadowless" or in the process of dissolving theirs. Thus, they’re safest on psychic and metaphysical levels—though not always in time and space.
The collective "shadow", linked to the collective unconscious, is a spiritual cesspool of demonic resentment, envy, and other low energies. The main danger of an unprocessed personal "shadow" is that it paves the way to the collective...
...Regardless of how readers take all this, processing envy's "shadow" may be the most practical takeaway. So to conclude, let's focus on pride, resentment, and guilt—the "shadow"'s other key players. But remember: without the Way's aid, these methods can only slow the "shadow"'s growth.
As said earlier, the first step is acknowledgment. Simple, right? Pride can be seen as spiritual theft—claiming credit for innate gifts or luck. Admitting you're a "thief" in this sense can dissolve some pride and the associated "shadow."
With resentment, three constructive approaches exist: forgive, restoring warmth (if possible); let go coldly, if warmth is unwarranted; or take just revenge (with the Way's contextual sense of justice), then let go—warmly or coldly. The Way itself seems to deal with its own 'grievances' in this fashion.
Guilt is the most complex and stubborn. Reasons abound: it can be felt toward others or oneself (e.g., one's better self); its full weight is hard to gauge, making it hard to relax physically or metaphysically—especially if reinforced by religion or other institutions; the Way's role here is even greater than with resentment. Sincere remorse feels like an invitation from the Way—not to dismiss guilt (especially grave), but to begin atonement. Ideally, the Way dissolves guilt over time, the surest sign of forgiveness. But this requires close rapport and acute sensitivity to discern its will.
I hope Jung—wherever he is—isn't offended by my personal Jungianism. Maybe I'll go ennoble myself a little and do some "shadow" work...
~ ~ ~
Readers are now invited into the 'galaxy' of Daniil Andreev—a spiritual visionary who lived some seventy years ago and left his remarkable The Rose of the World behind. For now, I'll be your guide through the book, highlighting what I consider its most noteworthy ideas:
The world we live in, as per Daniil Andreev, is "multilayered." That is to say, physical reality accessible to the five senses, or "Enrof" in Andreev's terms, is not the only realm there is. Cascading upwards from it would be the worlds of enlightenment, up to the subtlest chamber of the Most High. In the 'underbelly' of Enrof, these would be counterweighted by gross, low-frequency, "infraphysical" worlds—demonic at the very pit.
Exactly how this divide came into existence is described in Andreev's major work The Rose of the World. Suffice it to say that, in time immemorial, the higher Divine hierarchies chose to enlighten the material world, corrupted and defiled with demonic influences (the "predator-victim" relationship being one of the starkest examples), by way of evolution, instead of, so to speak, scrapping everything and starting anew.
In this evolution, humans, as beings that have transitioned all the way from amoeba to their present homo sapiens sapiens stage, are entrusted with a crucial task—it is through them that gross materiality must be fully enlightened.
As for the impermeable or unenlightenable layers of reality, mainly demonic ones, these are destined for ultimate separation from heaven, whether through complete destruction or 'corking', left to boil in their own 'juices'. This separation would loosely correspond to the "Last Judgment" of Christianity or the "Day of Resurrection" of Islam.
In my outline of Andreev's ideas thus far, I have not presented anything that many other teachings, especially those claiming to be 'interreligions', would dispute. Unlike some authors, however, Andreev is dualistic in the sense that he doesn't portray the devil as God's 'left hand' (Jung was guilty of this, by the way).
At the same time, Andreev speaks about the pressing need for the "sons of God" or demiurges who participated in the creation of the material world and have guided the destinies of their entrusted peoples, to give rise to so-called "witsraors" or demons of statehood, all for the protection of those peoples from even more infernal realms.
Unfortunately for humanity, these demonic or semi-demonic creatures have overstepped their domains, exhibiting tyrannical tendencies. They also seem to lack a clear notion of morality, at least during the time The Rose of the World was written. For this reason, the 'innermost souls' of the peoples—the feminine companions or cohorts of the demiurges tasked with ennobling mankind through beauty and love—have often found themselves in the witsraors' metaphysical captivity. In this light, Elena the Beautiful languishing in Koschei's dungeon or Sita held in Ravana's castle might carry greater gravitas than mere fairy-talish or mythical connotations.
In the physical realm (Enrof), the excessive, unauthorized, or malevolent activities of witsraors manifest as rigid oppression within their respective states, unjust external aggression, all forms of chauvinism, the glorification of power regardless of its deeds, coarsened mores, and aesthetic decline. Regardless, the existence of these phenomena, whatever their psychological or metaphysical roots, is undeniable.
As per Andreev, there exist even more hard-boiled entities in the underworld, chief among them Gagtungr or the Great Tormentor—also known as Lucifer—who corrupted the material world eons ago, much like Melkor in Tolkien's Silmarillion.
Since Gagtungr is far from meek or quiescent, the enlightenment of human consciousness and matter proves a formidable challenge, especially as people seldom achieve high mastery in discriminating between the paths of light and darkness. In this regard, the 'gray zone' between light and darkness—particularly the absence of a decisive "yes" or "no", or misguided answers to life's most critical moral questions—ultimately serves the evil one.
Andreev's division of religious doctrines into right-hand and left-hand paths is attention-worthy. Briefly, right-hand religions (which include most major world traditions) guide their adherents toward enlightenment, while left-hand religions are closely associated with demonic realms.
The above distinction is far from Andreev's original concept. For example, the Koran speaks of "the companions of the right", who will enter paradise on the Day of Resurrection, and "the companions of the left", who will face "scorching fire and boiling water, under a shadow of black smoke, neither cool nor refreshing"—the inhabitants of hell. Similarly, Hindu tantra is broadly divided into right-hand and left-hand paths, their methods and outcomes, by and large, aligning with this principle.
More is in The Rose of the World.
~ ~ ~
I will revisit the mapping of spiritualities onto the right and left later in my writing. For now, Daniil Andreev should be given a chance to speak for himself, free from my voice. For this purpose, I have selected one of my most cherished passages from his pivotal work. What follows is an English rendering of the original Russian text:
...I have now arrived at a critical juncture of this work. And yet, no matter how important it may be, I barely have the courage to say a few words on the subject.
It is time to reexamine a Christian dogma that is nearly two thousand years old. All sorts of dogmas of the Christian creed have been questioned in the past. Schisms, sects, and heresies have been born of differing interpretations of them. Even the slightest departures in ritual have sometimes grown into a virtual abyss separating schismatics from the dominant church. But in the course of those nineteen centuries, it appears that no dispute has ever arisen over what has been considered the cornerstone of the religion—that is, the belief in the three hypostases of the Holy Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
I do not intend to undertake a historical or psychological analysis of the circumstances surrounding the emergence of that specific understanding of the Trinity in the Christian Church. I possess neither the necessary sources nor the erudition required for such a task. And even if I did, I would be loath to use the lances of rational analysis to probe the mysterious spiritual depths in which the idea appeared and took shape in the first centuries A.D.
I will permit myself only to cite one page from the Gospels that seems to me to support another interpretation of the Trinity. Matthew and Luke state plainly and unequivocally that the Virgin Mary conceived the Baby Jesus through the Holy Spirit. One could thus conclude that it was the Holy Spirit, and not God the Father, that was the Father of the human Christ. But how can that be? Could the timeless birth of God the Son from God the Father find expression in the historical, human world except as the birth of the human Jesus through the power of that latter hypostasis? But no, the story in the Gospels is unequivocal on that point. What is equivocal is the Christian Church's understanding of the third hypostasis. In the course of its entire history, the Church has never elaborated the dogma of the third hypostasis. One is even struck by the contrast between the detailed—perhaps too detailed—teaching about God the Son and what is almost an empty space where the doctrines about the Holy Spirit should be.
But there is nothing essentially strange about that. It is no coincidence that the Christian religion is called Christian. Besides specifying the religion's origin in Christ, the name also reflects the fact that the religion is primarily the revelation of God the Son—that is, it is not so much a religion of the Trinity as it is one of the Son. That explains the extremely hazy generalizations, the equivocality, incompleteness, and even contradictions in the dogmas concerned with the other hypostases.
Who, after all, could God the Father be if not the Spirit and the Spirit only? And, in contrast to all the other spirits He has created, He is Holy. For every God-created and even God-born monad can make—and many have made—a wrong choice and turn away from God. But the Father, as should be obvious to all, cannot turn from Himself. He is primordial, unchanging, unclouded, and unsoiled, and He is called Holy in that very sense. What good can come of depriving God the Father of two of His eternally inherent attributes—His spirituality and His holiness? What is the justification for investing these attributes with an entirely autonomous meaning in the aspect of the Third Person of the Trinity? And in fact, on which of Christ's words, on what testimonies of the four Gospels can the teaching be based that God the Father is one hypostasis of the Trinity and the Holy Spirit is another? There are no such statements to that effect in the Gospels. The words of Jesus cited in support of that claim come from His well-known prophecy: "I will send to you a Counselor, even a Spirit of Truth." Differing interpretations of these very words even led to the Great Schism, which split the one Christian Church into Eastern and Western halves. But both interpretations still proceeded from a common postulate: the strangely undisputed supposition that by the "Counselor" Christ meant the third hypostasis. But there is not even the shadow of an intimation in these words that the Counselor to be sent by the Risen Savior is the third hypostasis or even a hypostasis at all. Nor is there any indication that the expressions "Counselor" and "God the Holy Spirit" refer to one and the same entity. Surely, it is more natural, consistent, and sensible from every possible point of view to draw an altogether different conclusion, namely, that God the Holy Spirit is God the Father, for God the Father can be nothing other than Holy and the Spirit.
Once again, in reexamining here the cornerstone of a great teaching, I am setting my lone voice against a stupendous, vast chorus, which has been thundering for so many centuries that there can be no doubt as to the reactions it will evoke, if it is even heard. I am even aware that in the eyes of some I am guilty of a great spiritual offense, having committed what is according to the Gospels the one unforgivable sin—blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. I solemnly proclaim: I prostrate myself before the Holy Spirit, I worship Him and pray to Him with as much veneration as other Christians. And I fail not only to see blasphemy of His name but even the slightest debasement of His image in the idea that He is God the Father and that God the Father is God the Holy Spirit, that these are two names for one and the same Person—the first Person of the Holy Trinity.
I would like to emphasize that I am expressing my own humble opinion here. True, that opinion appears to be a conclusion at which more and more people will in time arrive. It has also been corroborated by those higher authorities that have always been my single supreme point of reference. But I believe that no one has the right to insist on the exclusive and absolute validity of the idea, or on its dogmatic force. The one legal, universally recognized body with the authority to resolve the issue might be the Eighth Ecumenical Council, where representatives of all contemporary Christian faiths and the Rose of the World would discuss that postulate, as well as the postulate affirming the infallibility and irrevocability of the resolutions of ecumenical councils in general. Perhaps they might also reexamine certain tenets of Orthodox doctrine. Until that time, no one in the Rose of the World should unreservedly assert the error of the old dogma. They should only believe as their conscience and personal spiritual experience dictate, and work toward the unification of the churches and the resolution of all their outstanding differences.
The above idea, however, clears the path to the solution of a different, no less crucial problem.
It is known that a vague yet intense and persistent sense of a Universal Feminine Principle has been alive in Christianity from the time of the Gnostics up until the Christian thinkers of the early twentieth century—a sense that the Principle is not an illusion nor the projection of human categories onto the cosmic, but that it is a higher spiritual reality. It was clearly the Church's intention to provide an outlet for that feeling when in the East it gave its blessing to the cult of the Mother of God and in the West to that of the Madonna. And a concrete image did, in fact, emerge and was embraced by the people as an object for their spontaneous veneration of the Maternal Principle. But the mystical sense I spoke of—the sense of Eternal Femininity as a cosmic and Divine principle—remained without an outlet. The early dogmatization of the teaching on the hypostases, in rendering it beyond dispute, placed those with that sense in an unenviable position: to avoid accusations of heresy, they were forced to skirt the fundamental question and not give full voice to their thoughts, sometimes equating Universal Femininity with the Universal Church or, in the end, depriving the One God of one of His attributes—Wisdom—and personifying it as Holy Sophia. The higher Church authorities refrained from voicing any definite opinion on the subject, and they should not be faulted for it, because the belief in Universal Femininity could not help but grow into the belief in a Feminine Aspect of God, and that, of course, would have threatened to undermine the dogmatized beliefs about the Persons of the Holy Trinity. (It would be extremely interesting to see a comprehensive study done of the history and evolution of the belief in Eternal Femininity in Christian cultures at the very least. But such a work could only benefit from including other religions as well, if only those in whose pantheons the images of the great merciful goddesses are immortalized: Hinduism, Mahayana, ancient polytheistic teachings, and, of course, Gnosticism.)
I have met many people who are extremely sophisticated culturally and intellectually, and who possess undoubted spiritual experience, yet they have been surprised, even appalled, at the very idea of what they perceived to be the projection of gender and human categories in general onto worlds of the highest reality, even onto the mystery of God Himself. They considered it a vestige of the ancient tendency of the limited human mind to anthropomorphize the spiritual. Incidentally, the Islamic objection to the belief in the Trinity and to the cult of the Mother of God derives from quite similar psychological sources. It is for the very same reason that deism and contemporary abstract cosmopolitan monism reject so vehemently belief in the Trinity, in hierarchies, and, of course, in Eternal Femininity. Ridiculous as it may seem, even the charge of polytheism that Muhammad leveled at Christianity thirteen hundred years ago has been reiterated.
Such charges are rooted either in an oversimplified understanding of Christian beliefs or in an unwillingness to penetrate deeper into the question. There has been no projection of human categories onto the Divine in historical Christianity, let alone in the worldview of the Rose of the World, but something in principle quite the reverse. No one is questioning the oneness of God, of course. It would be naive to suspect anyone here of reversion to the age of Carthage, Ur, and Heliopolis. The hypostases are separate external manifestations of the One Essence. They are how He reveals Himself to the world, not how He exists within Himself. But God's external manifestations are just as absolute in their reality as His existence within Himself. Therefore, the hypostases should not in any way be taken for illusions or aberrations of our mind.
In manifesting Himself externally, the One God reveals His inherent inner polarity. The essence of that polarity within the Divine is transcendental for us. But we perceive the external manifestations of that essence as the polarity of two principles gravitating to each other and not existing one without the other, eternally and timelessly united in creative love and bringing forth the third and consummating principle: the Son, the Foundation of the Universe, the Logos. Flowing into the universe, the Divine retains that inherent polarity; all spirituality and all materiality in the universe is permeated by it. It is manifested differently at different levels of being. At the level of inorganic matter perceptible by humans, it can no doubt be seen as the basis of what we call the universal law of gravity, the polarity of electricity, and much more. In the organic matter of our plane here, the polarity of the Divine is manifested in the distinction between male and female. I wish to stress that it is manifested thus here, but the polarity of the Divine that is the basis for that distinction cannot be comprehended in itself, in its essence.
That is why we call Divine Femininity the Mother of the Logos, and through Him, Mother of the entire Universe. But the eternal union between the Mother and Father does not change Her timeless essence. It is for that reason that we call the Mother of Worlds the Virgin.
Thus, one does not discern in the teaching on the Trinity and the Feminine Aspect of the Divine the projection of thinking that is "all too human" onto the cosmic realms. To the contrary, the teaching represents an intuition of the objective polarity—the male and female—of our planes as a projection of the transcendental polarity within the essence of God.
"God is Love," said John. Centuries will pass, then eons, then finally bramfaturas and galaxies, and each of us, sooner or later, will reach Pleroma—Divine Fullness—and enter the beloved Heart no longer as a child only but as a Divine brother as well. All memory of our current beliefs about the Divine will vanish from our mind like pale, dull shadows we no longer have any need for. But even then the truth that God is Love will continue to hold. God does not love Himself (such a claim would be blasphemy), but each of the Transcendencies within Him directs His love onto the Other, and in that love a Third is born: the Foundation of the Universe. Thus, the Father—the Virgin Mother—the Son.
The greatest of mysteries and the inner mystery of the Divine, the mystery of the love between the Father and Mother—is not mirrored in human love, no matter what form that love may take. Nothing in the finite world is commeasurable with or analogous to the essence of that mystery. Nor can anything in the world, with the exception of what issues from those who have rejected God, be extrinsic to that mystery. The essence of the Trinity, the essence that is love, is expressed (but not mirrored) in universal love—that is, in our love for all living beings. In the love between man and woman, the inner mystery of the union of Father and Mother is expressed (but not mirrored) to the degree that it reaches us, having been refracted by a multitude of planes in the cosmic continuum. Therein lies the fundamental ontological distinction between these two aspects of our spiritual life, aspects that have almost nothing in common, yet are expressed by one and the same word—love—in our impoverished language.
~ ~ ~
In the footsteps of Andreev, I shall now present a small fragment from one of my essays, followed by another's complete text— each woven with Hindu motifs and guided with Shri Mataji's light—all to expound on the Son-Principle:
...It has been said that the world itself is a symbol. When the sun embodies the Father—that primordial masculine principle—and the moon reflects Divine Femininity as the Great Mother, the Way reveals itself as the Son. As Shri Mataji teaches, for instance, only those dwelling within the Son's radiant field—those permeated by His essence—may truly know God's parental grace, fatherly and motherly alike.
In the Hindu tradition, the Son will correspond to Ganesha; in Christianity, to Christ. Say, when Christ declares that none may come to the Father except through the Son, this is not as far-fetched as it might appear—one needs only to comprehend the true grandeur of Christ's personality, which far surpasses the historical Jesus of Nazareth, extending to the Way that harmonizes and ennobles the sun and the moon, the Spirit that breathes where He wills, unbounded by those accustomed chiefly to bread and wine...
~ ~ ~
One child wondered what Christ, as the Son of God, had occupied Himself with well before all the evangelical deeds. The same could be asked of the two-thousand-year Christian era, pushing the inquiry further: What have been the manifestations of the Alpha and Omega in the universe beyond judgment or, say, spiritual grace?
Though perhaps startling to Christian ears, Hindu wisdom may offer plenty of illumination here. Its precious gift in this regard would be the Ganesha Atharva Shirsha—a hymn to the elephant-headed Ganesha, the son of Shiva (Absolute Intellect, the Father) and Parvati (Supreme Love, the Mother). I shall examine its select passages, though my exploration will range beyond the hymn.
The Ganesha Atharva Shirsha in its English rendering starts as follows:
"Om, salutations to You, O Ganapati."
The name "Ganapati" comes from combining "gana" and "pati", where "pati" means "lord" or "father." Similarly, "Ganesha" carries the same essential meaning, with the "-esha" part coming from "ishvara" (meaning "supreme ruler"). These ganas, in turn, are Divine beings handling all kinds of tasks, from offering protection to delivering justice. Curiously, this isn't so different from the Christian concept of "The Lord of Hosts"—while the names don't sound alike, their meanings line up remarkably well.
The hymn continues:
"You are full of speech..."
To me, this feels directly parallel to the concept of the Word (Logos) in the New Testament.
"You are replete with knowledge [of God] and wisdom"
"You always abide in Mooladhara"
According to Shri Mataji, Mooladhara serves as the universe's cornerstone. In human beings, this expresses itself as the root chakra (pelvic plexus).
"You are Brahma, you are Vishnu, you are Rudra..."
Ganesha embodies all deities as aspects of the One.
"You are earth, water, fire, air and ether"
On the material plane, He governs interactions between these elemental forces within space-time.
"You have one tusk"
As a legend has it, Ganesha broke off His other tusk to slay a demon— emphasizing both His belligerent nature and self-sacrifice.
"O Four-Armed One, in your hands you hold a noose, a hook and a tusk, and you bless with the fourth"
Clearly, Ganesha wields more 'sticks' than 'carrots'—with only one of His four hands offering blessings. I shall revisit this.
His four arms, however, bear a much broader cosmological significance. For instance, this finds expression in the tetravalence of carbon in organic compounds—imparting great stability (as evidenced by my typing fingers not disintegrating into molecules). What also comes to mind are the four main states of matter or the four fundamental physical interactions. The intuitive division of Earth into four cardinal directions might seem far-fetched, but let it stand (for one thing, the young daughter of Jung's friend did dream God approaching from precisely four—not five or nine—directions). The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? As you wish.
Schematically, Ganesha can be envisioned as a 'square' within the 'circle' of Godhead—or more precisely, as a rotating diagonal cross with swastika-curved ends: its clockwise rotation imparting stability to all creation, its counterclockwise movement signaling decay, destruction, rejection by the Divine.
"You hold a banner with a mouse"
The mouse symbolizes both humility (smallest vehicle) and omnipresence (ability to go anywhere).
"You are a fat-bellied god dressed in red robes..."
Ganesha's red robes, along with His elephant head, symbolize automaticity—or, one might say, the innocence of His manifestations in the 'red' (low-frequency) material world, in contrast to His higher, deeper conscious essence. Even the pleasure of sexual union, Shri Mataji suggests, is made possible through Ganesha's subtle mediation—his energy flowing instinctively to the centers that govern the corresponding joy.
Regarding His conscious essence: for me personally, it is hard to gauge how much 'time' passes between events in Ganesha's 'clothes' and their entry into His awareness. Yet ultimately, He doesn't seem to approve of everything indiscriminately. To the point: a {sincere} prayer might hasten His consciousness of certain matters.
As for Ganesha's generous belly—according to Shri Mataji, it houses the Kundalini energy. This energy's primary purpose is to connect Him with the Divine Parents. The fundamental relationship between Ganesha and Kundalini will manifest throughout creation, from cosmic scales down to the human level.
Those fan-like ears? They signify the vibrational, wave nature of Ganesha—and by extension, all wave phenomena in existence.
Thus concludes my exegesis of the Ganesha Atharva Shirsha. The full hymn awaits curious readers in the expanses of the world wide web. My interpretations have, I trust, revealed the Son's cosmic role extending far beyond crucifixion and resurrection. Yet the sacrificial aspect of Ganesha-Christ merits further probing.
I have already mentioned Jung—or rather, the dream of his friend's daughter. Now I shall present another dream from Marie-Louise von Franz's C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, which serves both as symbolic confirmation of all that has been laid out and as a bridge to Jesus of Nazareth—or more precisely, Jesus of Golgotha:
The motif of the god hidden in the earth may be illustrated by the dream of a modern student. She had lost her Christian faith and inclined to the materialistic picture of the world offered by modern natural science. In its flat, rationalistic way, however, this image could not give her any psychological satisfaction. On the Christmas Eve before her nineteenth birthday she sees the following dream:
I am kindling a sort of Yule fire in front of the University. I jump over it, to find myself suddenly standing on the edge of the sea, where a fish tries to swallow me. I manage to escape from him and walk landwards away from the sea. There I meet a painter who is standing perplexed in front of his easel. He says that he can no longer paint and does not know why. Offering to find out for him, I climb into the landscape he has painted, which had suddenly become real. At first I come to a half-dark underground passage, into which some light still falls through an arcade. Standing there is an enormous round stone table, on which is lying a red-clad child about four meters long, a boy, chained. Revolted, I ask a woman standing nearby why he is chained. She says: ""Sh-h—it is dangerous—he is a nascent god!"
Then I suddenly find myself deeper down in the earth, in complete darkness, in a labyrinthine maze of passages. Everywhere I hear the groaning and the cursing of those imprisoned there. I know that I must direct myself leftwards and to the center, in order to avoid getting lost. I come into a barely lighted room; in it crouches the 'primal family' , a couple clothed in hides, and a child. But I have to go on and deeper down.
An inexplicable fear comes up in me because I know that something terribly dangerous lies ahead. "It" is in a chamber in the center of the earth. I know somehow that at the other end of the room there is a pole, set in the earth at head-level, and that the people who go and see "it" are taken with such panic that they start to run away, run into the pole and perish. I impress on myself over and over again: "Four steps—then look—then stoop." I go in and look. I see the countenance of God, which expresses such terrible sadness that nobody can bear it. Beside myself with terror I run away; but I remember to stoop and so I escape.
Then I am in a small room. On the wall hangs a painting by the painter whom I had met and under it is a legend: "Anathema and death to Artist P., because he failed to honor the fiery child who comes out of water, and that is why he will smash his palette." Now I know what I had promised to look for. I try to get out again onto the other side of the earth. I come into an enormous room where dead warriors and sailing folk of all ages are sojourning. They are dining merrily at long tables. I know that I may not make any sort of contacts with them or I shall have to stay in the Land of the Dead forever. I creep quietly along the wall and through the room. But when I am nearly away from it a warrior lifts his wine glass and calls out to me: "Ah, there's a girl who cannot go back among the living any more, unless she finds the water which is made from the Virgin." With one movement I am outside. I find myself suddenly on the earth's surface again, on the other side of the sphere of earth. I am deadly tired and aged and broken from shock.
I see a sort of apothecary's shop and go in. But I am so exhausted that I faint. As I am coming to, after a while, I see straight in front of me a shelf with a small flask of clear water. I know: "There it is! The water is sought after!" I take it, I give all the money I have to the apothecary, who says scornfully that it is nothing but ordinary water, and leave the shop. There is radiant light, the sun is at its mid-day zenith, and a man is standing near me. I know I have been always been married to him. We walk arm in arm to the shore of the sea and look out at the water. From the depths of the water comes a double team of black horses drawing a chariot on which something unrecognizable, numinous and covered with sea-foam is lying. It occurs to me, as I awaken: "That is the birth of Aphrodite."
This dream is so laden with symbols that full deciphering would require a good treatise. I shall limit myself to just a couple of fragments. One of them:
At first I come to a half-dark underground passage, into which some light still falls through an arcade. Standing there is an enormous round stone table, on which is lying a red-clad child about four meters long, a boy, chained. Revolted, I ask a woman standing nearby why he is chained. She says: ""Sh-h—it is dangerous—he is a nascent god!
So there is a Divine child here—a boy clad in red robes, with "four" in his description, chained to a circle. Personally, I see direct parallels with Ganesha.
Here comes the second fragment:
I go in and look. I see the countenance of God, which expresses such terrible sadness that nobody can bear it. Beside myself with terror I run away; but I remember to stoop and so I escape.
I shall carefully supply my insights into what may have caused this sadness of God or His 'golgotha'. No matter how innocent or unconscious Ganesha might be regarding His 'robes'—the material universe superimposed upon Him with all its contingencies—He becomes indirectly implicated in its iniquities. Figuratively speaking, it's like paying a salary (as cosmic law demands) that gets squandered on vice. Even sexuality—Divine in origin—can be contaminated and mischanneled.
Since all things eventually reach Ganesha's awareness (including petitions about evil deeds), one might ask: "Is it easy to be God?" Especially for One whose nature is perfect righteousness, yet who faces humanity's relentless tide of depravity—an endless sewer flooding His consciousness.
Returning to Ganesha's four arms: three wield weapons while one blesses. This configuration reveals His primary role as cosmic magistrate—the law of karma made manifest. In the physical realm, for intance, this very principle will manifest as Newton's Third Law—every action provoking an equal and opposite reaction, thus maintaining order and stability throughout creation's complex systems.
Considering humanity's spiritual purpose, that is, ennoblement or enlightenment, few qualify given our flawed 'raw material.' Thus Ganesha incarnated as Christ—sacrificing justice's rigors for mercy's gate, establishing Himself as heaven's portal on a cosmic level, as Shri Mataji teaches. Microcosmically, so to say, He resides in the Agnya chakra (optic nerve crossroads), symbolized by the cross—here again, Hinduism proves illuminating.
Yet Ganesha remains active as ever in Mooladhara as cosmic justice—the counterbalance to Christ's forgiveness and mercy.
Merry Christmas!
~ ~ ~
The previous piece mentions karma in passing. This gives me all the excuse I need to share my two meditations on the matter:
The concept of reincarnation—coupled with the closely associated karma—isn't crystal clear, mildly speaking, from the vantage point of the reincarnated at least. A certain aggregate of inclinations and qualities, as well as predispositions to bodily characteristics and life circumstances, does seem to migrate from incarnation to incarnation, changing and transforming along the way as 'karmic knots' get tied and come undone. Your station is St. Andrew; yours is Hiroshima... But all these things are often so obscure and hard to consciously learn from (the utility of unconscious learning being too ephemeral, as per my lights) that it all comes down to happenstance rather than a well-thought framework. It more resembles throwing a blind puppy into the sea and expecting it to turn into a dolphin than taking it to obedience school.
To begin, let's examine the idea of karmic punishment. Everything with a nervous system, no matter how developed, suffers simply by virtue of being alive, karma or not: from cold or heat, hunger or becoming someone's lunch, illnesses, injuries, disabilities, childbirth (so far exclusive to women), death—one's own or that of loved ones. Those sufficiently empathetic even feel others' sufferings, at least partially, which weren't meant for them originally. So how to discriminate between these "default" sufferings and deserved karmic lessons? And what moral fiber allows one to endure all this gracefully?
Moreover, karmic punishment doesn't always translate into suffering as such. For instance, there's contention that past-life misdeeds (or mortal sins) may manifest as a feeble, even animalistic mind in the present—like being born a dingo dog. What kind of punishment is that? What is this downgraded self supposed to learn? Will it feel humiliated by its faint self-consciousness? Unlikely. So what's the point?
Another quandary: Suppose something heinous befalls someone, making them suffer beyond all bounds (concrete examples being unnecessary—such happenings aren't rare on Earth). Must this mean the sufferer committed similar acts in a past life? Following this logic, their victim likewise deserved it, and so on ad infinitum. In this chain, we eventually reach Earth's first people—who either committed or endured the first terrible act. If innocence could suffer then, why not now?
In short, differentiating karma from non-karma is nearly impossible for ordinary human consciousness. Besides, even just suffering—is that reason to deny compassion, especially when its root cause remains dim?
Understanding reincarnation requires accounting for one 'little' variable—God. Witnessing a transgressor's diminished mind (human or animal) might suffice as punishment for Him. The Koran states God deprives sinners of reason—apparently a major way He expresses contempt. Personally, I've no better explanation for why someone would be born feeble-minded or degraded to the animal stage. As somebody put it: "The vision of justice is God's pleasure alone." Perhaps he was right.
One might still ask: Why would an omnipotent God permit innocent suffering? Here, Viktor Frankl's perspective helps—view suffering as nervous impulses within God's 'body', with sufferers as pained cells in a much greater scheme of things. While cells bear the brunt, they're not alone—they partake in both suffering and Divine love through God's 'nervous system'. Those alienated from God are, in a sense, cast from His 'nerves'. Some outcasts enjoy temporary safety; others get windswept. Thus, suffering may also stem from God's 'indifference', complicating matters further.
Despite karma's asymmetries and reincarnation's oddities, being born once—with one's trajectory set by God—would raise even more questions about Divine justice. Some are born into favorable conditions, including easier paths to salvation; others endure crucibles of passion and tragedy, some emerging indelibly marked—apparent candidates for damnation. Christianity and other two Abrahamic religions afford such thoughts little 'elbow room', writing everything off as inscrutable providence.
Finally, regarding karmic lessons: At least we know God doesn't expect everyone to calculate integrals, master tea ceremonies, or speak five languages. The honey in the soul's comb (per Exupéry) is a different currency—humility, sincerity, courage, love, compassion, and such. Only souls rich in this currency hear God say: "You are no longer a slave." Only they are crowned, while naked kings spin in rebirth's wheel. Until when? Until the Apocalypse—and its flip side, the Satya Yuga (Age of Truth), I suspect. Christianity and Hinduism are tenderly kissing, and they'll live happily ever after. Amen. A poem? Alright:
While the flight attendant,
having loaded the meal cart,
is monotonously, monotonously pitching,
the Christian God
steers
every
streetcar,
prescribes
every
Christian
(that applies to non-Christians alike),
so that one is pressed down with a mound of hardships,
while another is blessed and basks in prescriptions,
/ah-MEEN/.Meanwhile, children and all clear of dross,
enter heaven bypassing the thorns,
and Peter, the staunchest of Capricorns,
beckons them in.While I'm being skeptical
of the attendant's offerings,
other passengers engrossed in the drama,God, as He is,
palms off beings to the workings of karma,
albeit also—darn!—asymmetrical...
~ ~ ~
Joseph Brodsky has a terrifying poem titled "Portrait of Tragedy." It begins like this (as translated into English):
Let us examine tragedy, its wrinkled skin,
its hook-nosed silhouette, its masculine chin,
its contralto laced with infernal themes:
Effect's course bellow drowns cause's faint screams.
"Effect's coarse bellow drowns cause's faint screams." There is a cause, but it's somewhere far away, too faint and blurred to grasp the solemnity of the moment. Some hidden weights, some little gears, some cobweb threads, some frills trembled and vibrated in the universal mechanism—maybe a month, maybe a century ago—and now, dinner is served. I am karma, the chain of cause and effect, nothing personal. Don't know or remember the cause? Ignorance won't absolve you—this principle, borrowed by criminal code drafters, comes straight from the world order, from the Book of Life. I can't quote the exact verse from the Koran, but the gist is this: sinners sinned and then forgot. And then suddenly, a "chain" tightened around their necks. Or, in more Koranic terms, Allah seized them by their deceitful, sinful forelocks. Still, the Koran also speaks of the suffering of the innocent.
Those who don't believe in hidden patterns, in the inevitability of retribution—no matter how... bizarre or delayed—have every right. But even they would agree that certain cause-and-effect chains can be traced without any metaphysics. Take, for example, a prisoner who was made a "bitch", and who, broken, scraped and gnawed his way through the years until his release. Once free, he began doing to young women what had been done to him—except he also killed them. "Let us examine tragedy, its wrinkled skin..."
But if we do allow for some deeper metaphysical layer, what kind of causal ropes dragged precisely these women to him, and not others? What was their share of cosmic... responsibility? Was it carelessness, manifesting in the fact that they carried no knife or even a sharp hairpin? A fuzzy debt from past lives? Or the suffering of pure innocence? And those who broke that man, who later became a rapist and murderer (though his personal responsibility is out of question)—how did the murders of those women, to which they were indirectly connected, reflect on their lives? A sudden pain in the spleen? A fall from their bunk, breaking something? Some special streak of bad luck? A peculiar inner joylessness? Or was the bill presented to them only in the postmortem perturbations?
Once, while crossing the street at a red light when no cars were around, I caught myself thinking that children might be watching—and that someone might copy the act without considering the circumstances, like the absence of immediate danger. Suppose, then, that a child, trusting my example, tries to cross without looking and gets hit by a car. Abstracting away from the child, how exactly would metaphysics strike me? With a rabid dog attack? A neat throat cancer? Unexplained bouts of depression? Or would God mercifully wipe it from my Book of Life with His fingertip?
Whether metaphysics exists or not, tragedies certainly do. When the "contralto laced with infernal themes" begins to sing, it's too late to ponder cause and effect. Though carelessness isn't one of the seven deadly sins, it's likely responsible for many deaths—and worse (yes, there are things worse than death). Someone I like once said: "God does not love the brainless." Let's soften it—replace "brainless" with "careless." Happiness and health to all! Well, not to all and not at all times...
~ ~ ~
Only one puzzle remains for "Cosmology," or my cosmology, to click into place—my sketch On Metaphysics, which, at least in part, will endorse the outlook presented:
I will provide a series of quotes, then furnish them with my commentary:
...My eye was caught by a grey-haired woman in her sixties, who was apparently the centre of a most amazing disturbance, though what was happening, what was so disturbing, was not at first clear to me. Was she having a fit? What on earth was convulsing her—and, by a sort of sympathy or contagion, also convulsing everyone whom she gnashingly, ticcily passed? As I drew closer I saw what was happening. She was imitating the passers-by if 'imitation' is not too pallid, too passive, a word. Should we say, rather, that she was caricaturing everyone she passed? Within a second, a split-second, she 'had' them all.
I have seen countless mimes and mimics, clowns and antics, but nothing touched the horrible wonder I now beheld: this virtually instantaneous, automatic and convulsive mirroring of every face and figure. But it was not just an imitation, extraordinary as this would have been in itself. The woman not only took on, and took in, the features of countless people, she took them off.
Every mirroring was also a parody, a mocking, an exaggeration of salient gestures and expressions, but an exaggeration in itself no less convulsive than intentional-a consequence of the violent acceleration and distortion of all her motions. Thus a slow smile, monstrously accelerated, would become a violent, milliseconds-long grimace; an ample gesture, accelerated, would become a farcical convulsive movement.
In the course of a short city-block this frantic old woman frenetically caricatured the features of forty or fifty passers-by, in a quick-fire sequence of kaleidoscopic imitations, each lasting a second or two, sometimes less, and the whole dizzying sequence scarcely more than two minutes.
And there were ludicrous imitations of the second and third order; for the people in the street, startled, outraged, bewildered by her imitations, took on these expressions in reaction to her; and those expressions, in turn, were rereflected, re-directed, re-distorted, by the Touretter, causing a still greater degree of outrage and shock. This grotesque, involuntary resonance, or mutuality, by which everyone was drawn into an absurdly amplifying interaction, was the source of the disturbance I had seen from a distance. This woman who, becoming everybody, lost her own self, became nobody. This woman with a thousand faces, masks, personae—how must it be for her in this whirlwind of identities? The answer came soon-and not a second too late; for the build-up of pressures, both hers and others', was fast approaching the point of explosion. Suddenly, desperately, the old woman turned aside, into an alley-way which led off the main street. And there, with all the appearances of a woman violently sick, she expelled, tremendously accelerated and abbreviated, all the gestures, the postures, the expressions, the demeanours, the entire behavioural repertoires, of the past forty or fifty people she had passed. She delivered one vast, pantomimic regurgitation, in which the engorged identities of the last fifty people who had possessed her were spewed out. And if the taking-in had lasted two minutes, the throwing-out was a single exhalation—fifty people in ten seconds, a fifth of a second or less for the time-foreshortened repertoire of each person...
~ Oliver Sucks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
...It interested me to hear Freud's views on precognition and on parapsychology in general. When I visited him in Vienna in 1909 I asked him what he thought of these matters. Because of his materialistic prejudice, he rejected this entire complex of questions as nonsensical, and did so in terms of so shallow a positivism that I had difficulty in checking the sharp retort on the tip of my tongue. It was some years before he recognized the seriousness of parapsychology and acknowledged the factuality of "occult" phenomena.
While Freud was going on this way, I had a curious sensation. It was as if my diaphragm were made of iron and were becoming red-hot—a glowing vault. And at that moment there was such a loud report in the bookcase, which stood right next to us, that we both started up in alarm, fearing the thing was going to topple over on us.
I said to Freud: "There, that is an example of a so-called catalytic exteriorization phenomenon.
"Oh come," he exclaimed. "That is sheer bosh."
"It is not," I replied. "You are mistaken, Herr Professor. And to prove my point I now predict that in a moment there will be another such loud report!" Sure enough, no sooner had I said the words than the same detonation went off in the bookcase,
To this day I do not know what gave me this certainty. But I knew beyond all doubt that the report would come again. Freud only stared aghast at me. I do not know what was in his mind, or what his look meant. In any case, this incident aroused his mistrust of me, and I had the feeling that I had done something against him. I never afterward discussed the incident with him...
~ Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
...Carl Jung becomes an unwitting suicide link when he seems to experience exactly how one of his patients actually dies. Such experiences and coincidences will lead to a more complete theory of mind as well as the development of what Jung will call, Synchronicity.
After giving a lecture, Jung went back to his room at the hotel where he was staying. Exhausted, he fell asleep until 2 AM when he suddenly awoke. In that rapid awakening, he felt a distinct wariness. In fact, he was sure someone had entered the room. Obviously still alone, but not fully believing it, he even opened his door to look out in the hall. No one there either.
Still the sensation of someone being close by persisted until Jung felt a dull pain in his head. To him, it seemed as if something had hit his forehead and went all the way to the back of his skull.
Eventually, he got back to sleep but only to have his experience relived in a different way the next morning. That's when he received a telegram that one of his patients had committed suicide. Jung eventually found out that the man had shot himself in the head, the bullet entering the forehead and stopping at the back of the skull. It was only then that Jung realized that he somehow had established a direct suicide link to his patient...
~ Doug Dillan, Carl Jung, Hauntings, and Paranormal Coincidences
...An old school friend made one of his unpredictable appearances and, perhaps because of the extraordinary vibes, or his own thirst for unusual experiences, decided he wanted to join in, and I gave him some acid. He was a veteran of the school midnight-loft-exploration team and, no doubt inspired by this taste of high adventure, had joined the army when he left school. He was now part of a certain elite military unit that was mysteriously involved in helping to defend the Sultanate of Oman against armed incursions from Yemen. I did not know exactly what he was up to at the time, of course, just that it was active service abroad, most likely involving deadly force, and he was definitely not someone I should have been tripping with at this point.
All continued to go well until a certain point when I looked at him and a kind of tunnel formed between us. My peripheral vision faded and I felt a connection forming. It was something I had experienced before, and I was quite relaxed about it. Next, however, something happened that I didn't expect.
The energy flowing through this 'tunnel' disturbed something in him, and a horrid entity emerged from the back of his head and jumped at me.
It looked like an obscene and predatory slug that I instinctively felt belonged to some low and gross dimension of existence. I was unsure how to react. I hadn't imagined such things existed. Ultimately, I knew, everything was part of one primordial being, and I could not imagine there was anything to fear, so I just faced it without any real idea of what was happening.
A fantastic blast of energy roared through me like a hurricane, striking this thing in mid air, and it began to disintegrate. It kept coming, though, fighting the power that assailed it, like an evil salmon trying to force its way upstream. It fell apart completely just as it reached me, and for a moment I felt the impact of its nature, a foul, thuggish creature with a murderous hatred of life; then it was gone.
I was shocked to the core and found myself spiraling downwards out of the high I had been on; I felt blasted and violated, and my mind was suddenly racing. I came out of the trip feeling numb and confused, literally feeling burnt inside, and there was a sour taste like ashes in my mouth that stayed with me for days afterwards.
Everything was different after that. My confidence, optimism and magical joy had gone. My emotions cut off so completely that I totally forgot about my recently rediscovered feelings...
~ Patrick Sheridan, Expecting to Fly
...In November of 1933, I chanced to stop by a small church on Vlasevsky Lane. There, an acathistus to St. Seraphim of Sarov was in progress. Hardly had I opened the door when a warm wave of choral music descended on me and surged straight to my heart. I was overcome by a state that is very difficult for me to write about, let alone describe without tears. Although I had previously disdained to engage in genuflection—my emotional immaturity having led me to suspect something servile in the custom—an irresistible impulse caused me to kneel. But even that wasn't enough. And when I prostrated myself on the rug, which was faded and worn by thousands of feet, as though some secret door in my soul swung open, and tears of blissful rapture, comparable to nothing else I had ever known, gushed forth uncontrollably. In truth, I care not how experts of various kinds of ecstasies would label what then followed, and into what categories they would place it. During those minutes, I was raised to the Heavenly Russia and presented before its Synclite of the enlightened. I felt the unearthly warmth of spiritual rays pouring from the center of the land which is accurately and fittingly called "the Heavenly Kremlin". The great spirit who had at one time lived on Earth in the person of Seraphim of Sarov, and who is now one of the brightest lights on the Russian Synclite, approached and bent down to me, wrapping me, as if with a vestment, in streaming rays of light and gentle warmth. For almost a whole year, until the church was closed down, I went every Monday to the acathistus of St. Seraphim and, incredibly, experienced that same state every time, again and again, with undiminished strength...
~ Daniil Andreev, The Rose of the World
That's probably enough. What conclusions can be drawn from all of this? First and foremost, the conclusion that there exists—at least on a planetary scale—a unified metaphysical field, whether it be the collective unconscious as termed by Jung or the all-pervading ether-akasha of Vedic philosophy, through which information and energy are transmitted almost instantaneously across distances. Otherwise, it would be impossible to rationally explain most of the experiences described here, as well as seemingly mundane occurrences like thinking of a person literally seconds before they call—something that has happened to me quite often. I can share a less trivial example from my own life: once, while walking down the street, a word I almost never use flashed into my mind—"rebirthing." Just a few minutes later, I ran into an old acquaintance I hadn't seen in years. When we started talking, it turned out she was practicing this very rebirthing, a breathing technique with spiritual pretensions. Of course, one could resort to the rhetoric of hardened materialists, chalking it up to an astonishing coincidence and so on, but to me, that would seem like... a hasty and half-hearted attempt to preserve one's own frail peace of mind rather than honestly examining the matter.
If we take the first conclusion to its logical end and look at things more globally—say, in the context of the debate over the primacy of spirit or matter—it becomes clear that the latter is merely a tool or a kind of vessel for the former, and not the other way around. In modern terms, the 'hardware' serves the 'software.' Some time ago, however, I was struck by a far more elegant metaphor for the interaction between physics and metaphysics, and, perhaps, readers will appreciate it, too. Imagine this: sunlight (the most refined spiritual level) heats the atmospheric air (a less refined level). Due to the resulting pressure difference, wind begins to blow, which, in turn, stirs the sea (a relatively gross level). Eventually, thanks to weaker disturbances in shallow waters, patterns form on the sandy seabed (the grossest level). This proves an excellent image of the transition of spirit into matter, assuming the goal is precisely the creation of patterns. The problem is that distortions or obstacles can arise at intermediate stages, especially when this occurs in a conscious being that encompasses all levels—the entire spiritual-material spectrum—and also possesses free will. Due to the interference of this will, for instance, the impulse from the wind over the open sea might not transfer to the water. Then the wind would blow with undiminished force all the way to the shore and, upon reaching the coastline, whip up such a storm that instead of sand patterns, you'd get a chaotic mess. This, in essence, is the nature of psychosomatic disorders—illnesses caused by the constriction and distortion of the transition from spirit to matter, from metaphysics to physics.
The next conclusion: metaphysics can carry either a "plus" or "minus" sign, rather than being some morally neutral 'soup'. At the very least, Patrick Sheridan was able to confirm this through personal experience: within the scope of his being, what unfolded was essentially an age-old drama—a clash of metaphysical light with metaphysical darkness. He describes darkness as something foul, cruel, and life-hating, while light is its opposite. It must be said that Sheridan's experience aligns in one way or another with that of countless others, whether visionaries like Daniil Andreev or Christian saints, or even spiritually 'ordinary' people who, for various reasons—often unintentionally—caught a glimpse beyond the veil of visible reality.
As for the very ability to perceive what is invisible to the ordinary eye, mental disorders (as in the case of the old woman with Tourette's syndrome), a psyche destabilized by psychotropic substances (like Patrick Sheridan's), natural talent or predisposition (as with Carl Jung or Daniil Andreev)—all these become something like portals into metaphysical worlds, with all their pros and cons. Personally, I would also add head injuries, nervous shocks, and spiritual (or pseudo-spiritual) practices to this list. Of course, these portals are far from being equivalent, and it would be better if some of them remained permanently shut.
And the very last question: where do you personally stand in all this metaphysics?
~ ~ ~
The mosaic—or kaleidoscope, if you will—feels complete now.
Interfaith Studies
The innermost core of one religion is closer to the innermost core of another religion than to its own surface.
Grigory Pomerantz
It takes only a leap from Grigory Pomerantz to Herman Hesse, whose literary genius will embellish the former's pithy remark:
...That night, when he finally fell asleep despite the turmoil of his thoughts and the buzzing of the mosquitoes, the missionary was beset by strange dreams.
He was walking through a darkening palm grove. Yellow flecks of sunlight were playing over the red-brown ground. Parrots were crying out overhead; high, high up in the trees monkeys were performing intrepid gymnastic feats; little birds glittered like jewels, insects of every kind proclaimed their joy of life in sounds, colors, and movements. As he walked amid this splendor, the missionary was filled with happiness and gratitude; he called out to one of the simian acrobats, and lo and behold, the agile creature climbed obediently down to the ground, and stood before Aghion like a servant, making gestures of devotion. Aghion realized that all the creatures in this enchanted place were his to command. He summoned the birds and butterflies, and they came in great glittering swarms; he waved and beat time with his hands, nodded his head, gave orders by clicking his tongue and looking this way and that, and all the glorious creatures arranged themselves in the golden air into hovering rounds and processions; they piped and hummed, chirped and trilled in delicate chorus , pursued and caught one another, described solemn circles and droll spirals in the air. It was a magnificent ballet and concert, a paradise regained; yet the dreamer's joy in this harmonious magical world, which obeyed him and belonged to him, was tinged with pain. Deep within his happiness there lurked a faint foreboding, a suspicion that all this was undeserved and must pass away, for how can a pious missionary feel otherwise in the presence of sensuous pleasure?
Nor did his foreboding deceive him. Even as he was reveling in the sight of a monkey quadrille and stroking a great blue velvet butterfly, which had settled trustingly on his left hand and was letting itself be caressed like a dove, shadows of fear and desolation came fluttering through the magic grove to darken the dreamer's soul. A bird cried out in sudden terror, a fitful wind roared through the treetops, the joyful warm sunlight grew dim and pale. Soon all the birds darted off, the lovely great butterflies, defenseless in their terror, were carried away by the wind, and raindrops splashed angrily on the foliage. Faint thunder rumbled across the sky and died away in the distance.
And then Mr. Bradley appeared. The last bright bird had vanished. As gigantic and somber as the ghost of a slain king, Bradley spat contemptuously and poured forth a stream of angry, scornful, insulting words: Aghion was a lazy scoundrel; his patron in London was paying him to convert the heathen, and instead he loafed and roamed about the country looking for bugs. Bowed with contrition, Aghion was forced to admit that Bradley was right, that he had neglected his duties.
Thereupon, the great rich patron from England, Aghion's employer, and several English clergymen appeared; along with Bradley, they harried and drove the missionary through thicket and brier, until they came to a bristling street in the suburbs of Bombay, and there lay the towering, grotesque Hindu temple. A motley crowd poured in and out, naked coolies and proud white-clad Brahmans. But across from the temple the dreamer saw a Christian church, and above the door there was an immense stone carving of God , hovering in the clouds with a flowing beard and grave fatherly eyes.
The harried missionary climbed the steps of the church, held out his arms to the Hindus, and began to preach. In a loud voice he called upon them to look and compare, to observe how different the true God was from their wretched grimacing idols with all their countless arms and elephant trunks. He pointed a finger at the tangled figures on the facade of the Indian temple, and then with a gesture of invitation at the divine image on his church. But terror seized him when, following his own gesture, he looked up; for God had changed, he had acquired three heads and six arms, and in place of his rather idiotic and ineffectual solemnity, his faces had taken on the knowing smile that is often seen on the images of the Indian gods. Faltering, the preacher looked about him for Bradley, his patron, and the clergymen, but they had all vanished; he was alone and helpless on the church steps, and now God too forsook him, for he was waving his six arms in the direction of the temple and smiling at the Hindu gods with divine serenity.
Utterly forsaken and disgraced, Aghion stood on the church steps. He closed his eyes and held himself erect; all hope was gone; he waited with the calm of despair for the heathen to stone him. But after a few anguished moments, he felt himself thrust aside by a strong but gentle hand, and when he opened his eyes, he saw the great stone God striding down the steps with dignity, while across the way the divine figures descended in swarms from their places on the facade of the temple. After greeting them one and all, God entered the Hindu temple, where with a kindly gesture he received the homage of the white-clad Brahmans. Meanwhile the heathen gods with their trunks, ringlets, and slit eyes went into the church, where they found everything to their liking. Many of the devout folk followed them, and in the end gods and people were moving in pious procession from church to temple and from temple to church; gong and organ mingled fraternally, and dark, silent Indians offered up lotus blossoms on sober English-Christian altars...
~ ~ ~
It is not my intention to dwell on the provisions and dogmas of any particular religious doctrine—this has already been done by others, and far better than I ever could. If such matters are mentioned at all, it will only be in passing, as occurred in the previous sections.
Rather, I aim to present evidence for the legitimacy of diverse religions, challenging the notion of a single 'truest,' most orthodox, or Divinely favored creed. I will also explore possible causes behind both the planet's religious diversity and the widespread disillusionment with traditional religions—at least, in the western hemisphere. Finally, I will touch on 'interreligion' and borrow nearly an entire chapter from Jacob Needleman's Why Can't We Be Good?, hoping to better illuminate the questions raised here and set the stage for "Gnoseology."
~ ~ ~
Before the free and mass spread of information; before scientific progress, rigorous psychological experiments, and large-scale sociological studies; before, in short, the reality check—religions could afford a degree of egocentrism, including literal interpretations of their sacred texts.
Now, such egocentrism cannot persist without descending into fundamentalism. Examples? A significant number of Jews and Christians adhere to literal biblical chronology, insisting the universe is no older than 7,000 years. Radiocarbon dating is dismissed; paleontological evidence, even dinosaur skeletons, is brushed aside on the grounds of being... a Divine test of faith. Many flat-earthers justify their views with scripture. The list goes on.
At the same time, virtually every traditional religion has a concept of holiness or enlightenment. Nearly all of them venerate martyrs, ascetics, and miracle workers—though it's worth a note that enlightenment doesn't always align with austere asceticism or supernatural feats. And vice versa: "If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love..."
Fundamentalists, however, either ignore these manifestations in other traditions or dismiss them with flimsy, concocted arguments. A Christian fundamentalist, for instance, will rarely acknowledge a Muslim or Sikh saint. At best, he might concede, "Perhaps so-and-so wasn't entirely misguided," but then add, "Yet without accepting Christ as the Son, he could not truly know the Father." Here, rigid formal logic prevails—whereas "the Spirit breathes where He wills."
Yet across traditions, there persists an ideal: the image of what adepts should strive toward. Crucially, this ideal hinges on moral and perceptual qualities, not doctrinal checklists. "By their fruits you shall know them."
This raises a pivotal question: Are there any studies that objectively rank traditions based on the number and quality of saints they've produced? Was Seraphim of Sarov holier than Kabir? If so, by what metric? What universal 'holiness gauge' exists beyond partisan claims? For fundamentalists, holiness outside their tradition is existentially threatening—precisely because it undermines the mental constructs they've invested in, often with sincere intent. But as the proverb warns, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
Now, traditional religions understandably feel they're on the "right side of history" amid today's Western excesses. But if these self-assured allies ever turn their gaze inward, the old divides—righteous vs. damned, faithful vs. kāfir—won't be slow to resurge. In truth, those divides never vanished; they merely faded into the background, muted by a common adversary. What would keep this motley coalition united if it dissolved?
And what of God—or the Absolute—whom every tradition claims to represent exclusively? How shall He manifest at history's end, toward which many faiths rivet their gazes? With 'Hollywood' theatrics (corpses rising literally)? Or is it going to be something more... tasteful? Something more natural and, at the same time, profound? There must be more to God than cheap 'special effects', methinks.
~ ~ ~
Beyond saints and enlightened beings, at least two other markers suggest a tradition might be graced by Divine presence.
First, the practice of exorcism—common across religions. After all, outright demonic (left-hand) movements are unlikely to expel their own 'patrons.'
More crucially, there are numerous testimonies of clinical-death survivors that leave little room for religious narrow mindedness. These individuals consistently encounter figures from their own religious pantheons: Christians see Christ, Muslims meet the angels of death as described in the Koran, Hindus behold Yamraj, and so forth. My reasoning hinges on this: If there were only one true spiritual path, it would inevitably dominate near-death experiences. Yet the evidence suggests multiplicity.
A key observation: Transcendent experiences oftentimes arise in the 'intermembrane space' between religions—as exemplified by figures like Daniel Andreev, whose visions defy singular dogma. What makes this possible? Drawing on themes from the previous sections, sublimation of the sun and the moon within the radiance of the Way may suffice to bring about genuine spiritual experience, regardless of denominational labels. Let Rumi speak here:
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen.
Not any religion or cultural system. I am not from the east or the west,
Not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal,
Not composed of elements at all. I do not exist, am not an entity
In this world or the next, did not descend from Adam and Eve or any origin story.
My place is the placeless, a trace of the traceless, neither body or soul.
I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one
And that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath,
Breathing human being.
There remains one final piece of evidence I've saved 'for dessert': metaphorical bridges between scriptures—connections one might least expect, yet once revealed, they become hard to unsee or explain away. My sketch below will make the case:
The Revelation to John, the final book of the New Testament, contains the following enigmatic lines (among many others):
"The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come!'"
Why the differentiation? Would the Spirit alone not suffice?
Turning to another example, the Koran describes the Light of Allah through an elaborate metaphor:
"Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. His light is like a niche in which there is a lamp, the lamp enclosed in crystal, the crystal like a shining star, lit from the oil of a blessed olive tree—neither of the east nor the west—whose oil would almost glow even without fire touching it. Light upon light! Allah guides to His light whom He wills. And Allah sets forth parables for humanity, for Allah has full knowledge of all things."
Why such intricate imagery? How does this aid Muslim believers in their daily prayers and other religious obligations prescribed by Islam?
Traditional exegesis provides interpretations, of course. Yet these may lack precision, given that profound metaphysical realities might be cloaked in metaphor. Here, an unexpected tradition—Hinduism—might offer illumination, despite Christianity and Islam's general apprehension of it. Specifically, the Hindu teachings on chakras (subtle energy centers in the body) and the Kundalini (a dormant spiritual force whose awakening leads to enlightenment) could serve as a clarifying framework.
For illustration, here's a fairly classical chart of the subtle body—though this particular one doesn't show the Kundalini coiled in the sacrum bone at the base of the spine:
Now, I shall juxtapose these traditions. The 'logistics' of enlightenment dictate that the Kundalini, the Bride or the Olive Oil, must rise along the central energy channel, the Sushumna nadi—symbolized by the olive tree "neither of the east nor the west"—until she reaches the seventh chakra, the "crystal lamp." There, she ignites the Light of the Spirit or the Light of Allah. Yet before attaining her final destination, she will be 'sealing' ever-rising harmonies of the sun and the moon—the right and the left energy channels respectively—as preparation of sorts. Simply put, she will refine cognition and emotion until they merge into the highest harmony possible.
In the Hindu fold, this Divine Light will correspond to Shiva, the primordial masculine principle. Kundalini, inherently feminine, is a manifestation of Parvati—Shiva's "chaste bride" and the primordial feminine force.
Deepening the connection to Islam: Islamic eschatology teaches that human bodies will be resurrected from the coccyx on the Day of Judgment, and the righteous will be rewarded with pure companions, or chaste virgins, of paradise. Given the anatomical proximity of the sacrum and coccyx (these bones were likely scarcely distinguished in the Prophet Muhammad's era)—and the Kundalini, symbolically a "chaste virgin" coiled at the base of the spine—the actual nature of Islamic paradise might differ starkly from its conventional depiction, revealing a state of Divine union, not mere sensual gratification.
All this can be viewed from yet another perspective: as the sun and the moon sublimate into higher harmonies, the Spirit becomes the sun's subtlest essence, while the Kundalini, the bride, embodies that of the moonlight. Their union within the Divine self marks true human fulfillment. Psychologically, the Kundalini manifests, among other things, as a sublime longing for this unity—or as a quiet revolt against life's gross trivialities. And so the Spirit and the bride say, "Come!"
Will you?
~ ~ ~
A quick note: remember that distinction between the right-hand and left-hand spiritual paths? Essentially, the former relies on the guiding light of the sun associated with the right energy channel, while the latter—on that of the moon emanating from the left energy channel. To put it differently, the sun will strive to control grosser impulses coming from the lower portions of selfhood, whereas the moon will permit them greater indulgence. Apparently, neither Daniil Andreev nor, say, the Koran approbates indiscriminate leniency toward grosser impulses. Nor does the Way.
~ ~ ~
It appears that many religious paths may well lead to the same 'mountain top'—assuming that peak is none other than the seventh chakra. Yet why is there no single route? Had one existed, it might have spared the world centuries of interreligious conflict. This question will anchor my next essay—or rather, a fragment of it. Readers may wish to revisit "The Basics", its argot now surging back:
Throughout history, certain individuals have entered the world not merely to represent—but in rare cases to fully personify—the Way. Jesus of Nazareth embodied the hypostasis of the Son, just as King Krishna of Dvaraka had incarnated the Father millennia before him. These perfect manifestations—called avatars in Sanskrit—stand apart from the more common luminaries—Lao Tzu, Muhammad, Guru Nanak, and Socrates, among others—who, while not personifications, nonetheless became conduits for the Way's expressions.
The fundamental purpose of spiritual practice lies first in stabilizing the lower strata of selfhood—the animal, gender and servant/master selves—creating the necessary foundation for the gradual refinement of solar and lunar principles. This process is to yield intermediate fruits—Muslims cultivating that inner salam which must authenticate their every greeting; Christians embodying serpentine wisdom paired with dove-like innocence; Buddhists discovering the simultaneous taste of detachment and compassion—all precursors to the ultimate realization.
Yet this sacred process remains vulnerable to distortion. Misplaced allegiance to false guides inflicts damage upon the lower selves—damage that inevitably compromises higher structures. While mainstream traditions generally preserve the essential thread, their periphery often decays into swamp-like sects. More insidious are the corruptions born of the strap and the rings—those gross energies that transform living wisdom into dead ritual, that reduce religion to a tool for power or pleasure.
A distorted image of the Divine proves particularly destructive—as Jung observed, such warped conceptions lie at the root of many neuroses. Contrast the suffocating determinism of a deity micromanaging every sparrow's fall with the liberating vision of a God who grants meaningful autonomy within cosmic order. Or consider the attribution of evil—or at least morally incongruous acts—to the Divine nature taking Satya Sai Baba as an example. This Indian guru is believed by some to be an avatar. When faced with allegations of the guru's sexual misconduct, his prominent devotee maintained unwavering faith, appealing to God's absolute prerogative to act as He wills, even should it involve molestation of minors. Such theological justification—far from demonstrating spiritual maturity—reveals precisely the kind of deformation that occurs when religious feeling becomes unmoored from essential truth.
Even authentic traditions face the constant challenge of maintaining living connection—the practical realization of spiritual principles demands not only humility and courage but a nervous system refined into perfect instrument. The challenge proves so exacting that most religious movements inevitably succumb to ritualization—love becomes suppressed, the coils of higher potential bound by institutional control, much like Sita imprisoned in Lanka. In the worst cases, religion degenerates into mere pretext—a banner under which lower passions march unchecked.
This condition of suppressed love generates characteristic distortions—scripture interpreted with wooden literalism; smug superiority over other traditions; misogyny disguised as piety; a fatalism that mistakes life's natural consequences or karma's causes and effects for Divine tests. Yet even in this diminished state, glimmers remain—some residual discrimination between good and evil, some faint echo of Divine retribution. These stunted forms might be called spiritual dwarfs—limited yet not wholly devoid of light.
A subtle suggestion of this pluralism may be found in the Koran:
And We have revealed to you, [O Muhammad], the Book in truth, confirming that which preceded it of the Scripture and as a criterion over it. So judge between them by what Allah has revealed and do not follow their inclinations away from what has come to you of the truth. To each of you We prescribed a law and a method. Had Allah willed, He would have made you one nation [united in religion], but [He intended] to test you in what He has given you; so race to [all that is] good. To Allah is your return all together, and He will [then] inform you concerning that over which you used to differ.
It can be safely assumed that the existence of multiple traditions—for all their imperfections—prevents the far greater danger of absolute spiritual monopoly.
This diversity may serve another purpose—the Way's attempts at 'realignment'. Buddhism seemed to have emerged as both continuation and corrective—addressing specific stagnations that had developed in Hinduism. The Buddha's pragmatic agnosticism—denying the eternal soul while prescribing practices leading to its discovery—functioned as skillful means to break Brahminical complacency. His teachings—though framed as negation—preserved all necessary elements for transcendence: the Void implying fullness, impermanence revealing the permanent. Like Sufi paradoxes that conceal to better reveal, these apparent contradictions serve the greater alchemy of liberation...
~ ~ ~
What of those who, through circumstance or choice, have not attained higher harmony via religious practice? In Exupery's words:
I force man to become different—more relaxed, enlightened, noble, diligent and purposeful in his endeavors. When he becomes that, he doesn't like the larva he used to be. He marvels at the light in himself and, delighted, becomes my ally and champion of my severity. The justification of my severity is in the efficacy. It is a gateway, and the whip lashes the flock through it so that they get rid of their cocoon and become trans-formed. Once transformed, they can no longer be dissenters, they become my converts.
Yet, what is the use of severity if, after passing through the gateway and losing his former self along with the cocoon, man doesn't feel wings behind his back, but finds himself to be a miserable cripple? Will he laud the harshness that has crippled him? No, he will wistfully turn to the shore he has left...
In my essay "A Tale on Why Rapunzel Didn't Go into Politics after All," I entertain these very thoughts—with even greater scrutiny. The following excerpt echoes some points already covered, but as the saying goes, repetition is the mother of learning. Meet Rapunzel—and be kind to her:
When you do something, Rapunzel, don't you love feeling uninhibited and conflict-free—when you don't have to weigh good and bad, when you act not toward some end but out of inspiration, simply because you want to? You might call this a state of flow. And surely you'd agree this feeling varies wildly between people. One person, in their flow, strolls through the park, light as a feather; another, riding their wavelength, decides to rob you—or worse. Forgive the grim example, but such contrasts sharpen the point, and I've made it now, methinks.
Communal life demands fetters of a kind—restraints on aggression, sexuality, and other primal impulses. Yet unlike secular norms (many of which align with natural order), religions often impose arbitrary prohibitions—on alcohol, "illicit" intimacy, unethical gain—or demand extraordinary acts: rituals, asceticism, mental disciplines. These can stifle the natural flow of life, leaching it of joy, or at least of scintillation. Recall the old chestnut: "If there is no God, but I believe, I lose nothing…" But in truth, Rapunzel, belief does impose obligations—a tax on that carefree flow. The crux? If those commitments bind you to Supreme Reality, and if you've the heart to endure unnatural constraints, a new flow emerges—higher, richer.
Think of learning an instrument: you sacrifice leisure to fumble through scales, squawk out notes, sweat over sheet music. Yet gradually—if the teacher is skilled and you diligent—your fingers grow deft, motions automatic. Soon, you make music; in time, you compose it. The joy of creation repays the drudgery tenfold. But note: both teacher and student must be worthy. The student's merit lies in grit; the teacher's, in mastery—technical and moral.
Now transpose this to spirituality. Most are mediocre students, and the "teachers"—those claiming to channel Supreme Reality—are often unfit guides. Why? Unlike an instrument (external, tractable), spiritual work turns inward. Your psyche becomes both tool and score. Yet the mind is a locked book—even to itself. Do you know yourself, Rapunzel? Pause before answering. Without an external light—say, a spiritual doctrine—self-discovery is like hoisting yourself from a swamp by your hair. Life's "higher meaning" rarely springs from mundane routine; it's revealed, a gift of metaphysics. Science explains how; the heart, untethered, wanders astray. Even Divine teachings, though, refract through the prism of individual mind—shaped by cognition, emotion, physiology, and conduct (noble or otherwise).
Imagine the ideal: a true emissary of Supreme Reality delivers a teaching; followers, by grace of temperament, grasp it undistorted and live it. Honest self-scrutiny would objectify the self—let you see yourself in third person—breeding fierce self-control (the cognitive pillar). Simultaneously, the heart's floodgates open, refining emotion (the metaphysical fruit of communion with the Divine). Merge these—cognition, sublimated feeling, aligned action—and a second wind arrives: a flow both keener and sweeter, the pulse of nearness to Supreme Reality.
Strip any element—the honesty, the devotion, the walking of the path—and the thing crumbles into pantomime.
Yet adherence to doctrine guarantees nothing. Religion doesn't ensure humanity—history's bloodiest chapters were scripted in holy text. Even sound teachings warp passing through crooked minds, becoming grotesque parodies. Worse, many "emissaries" are frauds. True guides refine hearts; false ones—imposters, false gurus—brew fanaticism. (Aggression in disciples is a red flag, but not the only one.) Too abstract? Hold the thought; I'll unpack it later.
Another flaw: religions often blame history's horrors on Divine will ("The Lord works in mysterious ways," "karma", and so forth)—not their own failures. Where's the post-mortem? Why no frank reckoning with why one Heaven spawned rival faiths? The result? Mass disillusionment birthed secularism—and sharper rejections of divinity.
But Supreme Reality hasn't vanished. Its laws still gird the cosmos, and saints across traditions testify to that loftier flow—their lives radiating a joy beyond the mundane.
So the takeaway? If your ideal society acknowledges Supreme Reality, Rapunzel, it must marry high precepts to meticulous design—learning from history's blunders. Aim for a world where millions earn that transcendent flow. Else, why endure a joyless grind? Would you tolerate barrack-like gloom, joyless faces, lives starved of wonder? What's the use of ideals if souls lack the antennae to taste higher delights?...
~ ~ ~
In The Rose of the World, Daniil Andreev speaks of "zatomises"—celestial abodes where enlightened souls from various metacultures (Christian, Islamic, French, Chinese, etc.) reside. These serve as springboards to higher spiritual planes while simultaneously illuminating their earthly counterparts: Christianity, Islam, France, China, and so forth.
Andreev claims that during the writing of The Rose of the World, "Arimoya"—the zatomis of a universal human metaculture—was in the process of formation. This higher plane, associated with the rise of a future interreligion, would eventually manifest in our material world. Given the timeline, this zatomis has likely already taken shape and may now be seeking—or have found—its earthly receptacle. But what form might this take? And is such a unification even possible, considering the deep fractures within right-hand religions, let alone left-hand paths, not to mention the formidable secular tide?
I shall table these questions for now but vow to revisit them. Meanwhile, the following passage from Jacob Needleman's Why Can't We Be Good? will conclude this section while proving a suitable bridge to the next:
...But enough of textual commentary. We need to find the work of thinking together in our own lives now and here.
Please, now, come with me into my classroom, where I am about to make my own new discovery about this work.
It is the middle of December, the last day of classes. Outside, the sky is darkening and the wind is rattling the windows.
The course is called "The Nature of Religious Experience". We have been reading from the Upanishads, the Life of the Buddha, the Zen Buddhist Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, the Tao Te Ching, The Book of Job, Isaiah, Matthew, the sermons of Meister Eckhart, and the poetry of two great masters of Islamic spirituality, Rumi and Hafez. We have been speaking about religious experience—we have not been trying to have religious experience. But, of course, throughout the semester students have been asking the great questions of the heart; and I have been trying to maintain a necessary balance between my academic responsibility on the one hand and, on the other, my personal feeling not only for the intimate metaphysical needs of the students, but for the fundamental questions themselves about life and the search for truth, questions that are bound to arise in oneself—in myself—in the presence of such texts.
I had promised the students that on the last day of class, after they handed in their final essays, they should feel free to speak about anything, anything at all–free of all concerns about grades or tests or performance. Attendance in this final class meeting was understood to be purely voluntary –and usually about half the students would remain after dropping off their exams. Today, perhaps because of the threatening weather, only about a dozen students stayed. I invited them all to come forward and form a half circle of chairs in the front of the class.
We could hear occasional rumblings of thunder in the distance.
Teaching such material, I have over the years felt a duty to my students to provide some kind of forum, even if just as a token, relatively outside of academic considerations, that could, so to say, more directly acknowledge the personal metaphysical sensitivities that draw so many of these young men and women to such a course in the first place, sensitivities which are inevitably activated by the class discussions and the powerful readings.
In these 'unofficial' sessions, however, there would always arise one specific question that I found impossible to respond to in any adequate way. On this occasion it was the first question asked.
I groaned inwardly when I heard it:
"How do you recognize a real spiritual teacher? How do you tell the difference between someone who really knows something and someone who's just a charlatan?"
As is well known, the San Francisco Bay Area has for decades been the breeding ground of many new religious movements. Everything good and bad about the now widespread culture of "New Age" spirituality had its origin here—everything from the entry into our society of authentic teachers from the ancient traditions of Asia and the Middle East to spiritual fantasists from every nook and cranny of the world. The joke used to be that if you threw a brick out of any window in San Francisco, you would probably hit a guru. Amid teachers and practitioners of Christian and Jewish mystical spirituality; teachers of Zen, Tibetan and Vipassana Buddhism; Sufis, yogis and saints; healers and therapists of every stripe, color and price; amid men and women offering methods reflecting deep, esoteric truth alongside peddlers of psychospiritual superstitions and deceptively marketed forms of self-manipulation and self-inflation, what man or woman in search of the way would not be confused and bewildered? Of course these students need to ask this question!
And of course I need to respond to it. Having exposed them to teachings that have the power to awaken the hope that in this heartbreaking world there may actually exist Truth and guidance that leads to Truth, I am morally obliged to offer whatever help I can when this question is put.
Over the years I had put together a number of formulations about this question which, taken as a whole, was usually enough to pass for a satisfactory reply. But each time it left me with the hollow sense that they had asked for bread and I had given them a stone. And each time, I tried to justify myself by reasoning that it was not my place to imagine I actually had any 'bread', in the form of personal guidance, to give them. Nor was it my place to express my personal opinion about this or that teacher or group or religion. I am a professor of philosophy, not a preacher or a guru. But these rationalizations, although perfectly valid as far as they went, only increased my sense of failure in front of an honest, real question for the arising of which I was to some extent responsible. Yes, I am a professor, not a preacher or a guru—but I am also a man, a human being. And simply as a man, I am morally obliged to try to do justice to this question of the heart. But how?
THE ETHICS OF COMMUNAL THOUGHT
I began in my usual way by acknowledging the seriousness of the question, citing references in world literature describing the 'marks' of a genuine spiritual master. A spiritual teacher, we are told, seeks only the good of the pupil; he or she uses no seductive methods or tricks that play on human weaknesses such as suggestibility, spiritual pride, or emotional vulnerability. A true teacher in this realm has been 'authorized' by his or her own master, or in any case is connected to a lineage in which the mysterious current of Divine efficacy—called variously baraka in Islam, chi in Chinese tradition, or "the grace of the Holy Spirit" in Christian traditions—operates to ensure the authenticity of the teacher and his methods. And as for the personal qualities of the true spiritual guide, we are told that he or she is tranquil, humble, unconcerned with material things such as money, and is, above all, compassionate and all-loving, never given to egoistic anger or self-serving personal emotions of any kind.
But this time—perhaps it was because of the loud sounds of the approaching storm—I could not really put myself into this response. In fact, I never really was able to believe in such an answer. It was, in fact, pretty worthless, but I had never known exactly why.
A flash of lightning brightened the room for an instant—but long enough for me to see my students' faces as if for the first time, long enough for me to feel shame. I was answering this heartfelt question in a way that gave them nothing –while making them think they were receiving something useful. And the reason I was doing this—leading them round and around through a revolving door of mere words and academic abstractions—was that I very simply did not know how to answer it. What I was giving them were somebody else's answers, however much they were hallowed by time and tradition. But what I owed them, with their expectant, upturned eyes, was myself, my own conviction.
But what were my convictions? The answer appeared immediately—like another kind of lightning flash which, from that moment on, illuminated the whole world of my future work as a teacher of ideas. An answer, as I now understand it, that offers a genuine ground of preparation for a life ruled by conscience.
I was standing by the blackboard facing the students. I put down my chalk and leaned a little against the blackboard. It seemed to me as though the question about an authentic teacher had been hanging in the air for a long period, although in fact it had only just been voiced by Timothy Grattin, a bulldog-like senior who throughout the semester had both irritated and pleased me by the way he never let go of his questions.
For what seemed a very long period, I said nothing. And nothing occurred to me. But what was entirely new in the situation was that I felt no panic whatever. I did not inwardly scramble to find any words or ideas or references. I don't know how I must have looked to them, but inside myself I was receiving with all of my presence the experience of my emptiness in front of this question. And this sense of emptiness was like a gift. It was a gift that I was accepting and—here is the main point—it was what I owed to them. Finally, I understood that I was in the realm of ethics, the ethics of communal thought. I put all my trust and faith in the honesty of accepting my ignorance. Mentally, intellectually, and also in my heart. I now had no doubt that I was trying to do the right thing by them.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE QUESTION
"I don't know the answer to that question," I said. "Let's think about it."
That is what I said, but what began to happen in me was that I tried to allow the question to 'come down' inside me.
I continued: "All those qualities of a true teacher—they can all be imitated, obviously. Anyone can say they are authorized; anyone can say they are sent by God; anyone can pretend to be serene and compassionate, at least for a little while and to a certain extent."
All eyes were on me.
"So what are we to do?" I said. "What are we to do? We need help and genuine guidance, but we don't want to be fooled. We want to be open, but not gullible. We want to be critical, but not cynical."
And suddenly I saw that I was feeling the question as my own; I was feeling it and thinking it at the same time; I was the one who needed to know the answer, both for their sake and my own. I too was in need and in search of wisdom and guidance.
But now the next question arose in me with great intensity: how much do I really wish for wisdom and guidance? How serious is that need in me—or in any of us? The question of how to recognize a real teacher was transforming itself into a question of what it means to be a real seeker, what it means to search for wisdom and guidance.
All eyes were on me.
It was so clear now. I stopped in front of Timothy. "We all have this question," I said, acutely aware that everyone was waiting. "But how intently do we search for a teacher or for wisdom? Is our need really as deep as we say or imagine?"
Why had I never before thought like this? I had only to look in myself in order calmly to see the action of the question—in the world of my own inner impressions and inner memories; in the world of my doubts and certainties—as well, of course, as in the world of my own intellectual associations and previous insights. I had only to allow the functioning of my whole psyche, mind and feeling, to deliver to me associations that corresponded to the question, which was now my own, and to the need of the questioners in front of me. Their need—my sense of duty toward them—made it nearly impossible for me to lie or pretend, and at the same time made it possible for me not to be afraid to expose to myself my own uncertainty in front of such a question of the heart. I had only to feel my community with my students in order to allow the functioning of my sense of obligation to impact the contents of my mind—and thereby to allow my own psyche, as it were automatically, to scroll appropriate thoughts in front of my consciousness. In short, I had to allow not only their question, but their being—their personhood, their eyes and look—into myself while setting aside all merely mental 'answers' and while opening my own attention to the responses to them and their questions that were inevitably transacting deeply within my mind and heart. I had to be in question while responding to the question. I was choosing this approach—instead of automatically answering in my usual way. Is this not a matter of ethics? The ethics of communal thought? And doesn't it lead not only to truer insights, but, perhaps even more important, to serving the good of the other? Isn't thinking together a platform where morality and truth begin to meet? A platform—that is to say, a preparatory theater of life according to conscience
But I am getting ahead of myself.
I am standing there in front of the circle of students and in this state of responding to them from within my own inner questioning, I suddenly remember an old insight, about one of the great questions of philosophy, that came to me years before. An old insight suddenly breathing entirely new life.
This needs some explanation.
THE WORLD OF APPEARANCES
For many, many years—ever since as a teenager I precociously began to study philosophy—I had been fascinated and troubled by the idea, found in almost all great philosophical and spiritual teachings, that man lives in a world of mere illusions and appearances. While respecting all the great teachers of the past, I could never understand what they meant when they said that the world I was living in could be considered illusory. Wasn't this cup I was holding real? Perhaps I did not understand much about the cup, perhaps I lacked all kinds of scientific and other knowledge about it, but nevertheless, it was not an illusion in any normal sense of the word. This cup, poorly understood though it may be, is real—as is this pencil, that house, that person, this pain in my tooth, this mother and father, the sun and moon in the sky, this fact of death...
Yet so many of the wise teachers of old spoke of the world as a mere tissue of appearances, behind which existed, hidden from our sight, the world as it really is. And, so they said, no amount of information or inspired scientific theory could bring us any closer to seeing this real world behind the appearances. And as to how this real world was to be perceived they were frustratingly vague and often dogmatically 'metaphysical'.
And though I never could really understand this idea, I could never shake it off either. I could never accept the clever proposals of so many fashionable modern philosophers and writers who simply defined the problem away, usually claiming that since there was no experience (at least none that they had) of the supposed real world behind the appearances, the only sensible view, the only honorable and courageous view, was to concentrate our attention and our life on the world we actually saw and touched, and boldly declare that the world of appearances is the real world, and that the idea of another reality hiding behind it arises in us due to a mental aberration, or an unwillingness to live the life we actually have or, perhaps, simply from a disease of language.
It was only after many years of living with my inability to grasp this idea that the approach to a solution finally presented itself. And, as a matter of fact, it, too, presented itself in a classroom when another aggressive student, this time a dark-eyed, husky-voiced young woman with a misleading name—something like Angelica or Celestina –persisted in asking the question in exactly the same way I was experiencing it within myself. It just so happened that in the previous class just an hour before, I had been discussing another of the central ideas of the ancient traditions—the idea, namely, that our ordinary sense of self-identity, what we call our personality, is not our true identity. As taught in the philosophical traditions of India, for example, the idea is that hidden within ourselves—or what we call our 'selves'—is a deeper, Divine Self, which is our true identity, our true 'home', in the language of the ancient mythology. It is only through contacting, by experience and not just in theory, this deeper Self that we human beings can find the true meaning of our lives and the real experience of peace, the attainment of freedom from the fear of death and loss.
The same idea in different language is found in every great spiritual teaching and philosophy—Buddhism, Hebraic, Christian, and Islamic mysticism, the teachings of Plato and the great Stoic thinkers of Rome. Everywhere and in every culture the idea is there. So much is this the case that it is no exaggeration to say that this idea in its many diverse expressions, along with the maturely developed idea of God, comprises the one central doctrine of all the wisdom of mankind, the idea around which all the great spiritual teachings revolve, as planets revolve around the sun.
I remember very clearly what then took place as I tried again and again to come up with an explanation of the concept of the world of appearances that would satisfy the dark-eyed, persistent student, whose mind I greatly appreciated, however uncomfortable her persistence was now making me feel. Then, as in the present instance facing the question of recognizing an authentic teacher, my own mind finally came to a stop, having temporarily run out of "answers." The only difference between now and then was that at that moment in the past I did not willingly accept my inner situation. On the contrary: in a state of embarrassment at my inability to answer her question, I heard myself babbling whatever words or phrases were popping into my head from the countless books I had studied in the field of comparative religion and philosophy—words and phrases that were no more than so many various forms of restating the idea in question, rather than offering any real elucidation of it. Once again, I was leading a sincere student through and around a revolving door of mere academicism.
TWO HALVES OF ONE GREAT IDEA
But suddenly I saw and deeply felt what I was doing. And, seeing myself with unusual impartiality, my embarrassment sharply diminished, overshadowed by the arising of a strangely quiet mixture of intense interest and a tincture of honest remorse, a uniquely profound and bittersweet mixture of joy and sorrow—all permeated by a powerful awareness of myself present watching over everything in myself and outside myself. In a word: for a moment, a long moment, the experience of I am appeared. And next to this sense of I am all of my impulses of embarrassment and panicky grasping for an 'answer' seemed as though they belonged to someone else. They did not trouble me or seduce me at all.
And all at once I realized how to respond to her question, which, as I say, was also my own question and had been such for many years. It was so obvious! Why had I not thought of this before? I suddenly understood that the ancient idea that we live in a world of appearances veiling the real world was only half of an idea. And as such, it was impossible to make sense of it. Without the other half of the idea it was inevitable that all 'answers' could appear only in the form of bloated pseudo-metaphysical speculation which, in turn, would inevitably be justly demolished by a positivistic 'realism' of one sort or another that simply refused to honor the relevance of the idea at all.
And what was the other half of this idea—which fit into the first half with the precision of the pieces of a Swiss jigsaw puzzle? Simply this: Like the great surrounding world, one's own self was also a tissue of appearances, beneath which there existed a real Self. And it was only through contact with this real Self behind the appearances of one's own socially conditioned surface personality that the real world outside oneself could be experienced and known! Only the real internal Self hidden within could know the real external universal world hidden behind the appearances.
THE REAL WORLD CAN BE KNOWN ONLY BY THE REAL SELF
That is to say: hidden behind our own, my own, ordinary thoughts, feelings and perceptions; hidden behind our own sense of identity, which has been thrust upon us by the accidents of upbringing, social caste, education, reading, media, advertising and peer pressure—that is, through our identification with and attachment to the thousand and one influences of external conditioning—there exists another consciousness which is our real consciousness, whereas the consciousness we live in day by day and which we tragically sense as our real self is, in fact, only a transitory, fabricated surface phenomenon by no means to be considered as our genuine self. Call this surface phenomenon the "ego," perhaps, or the "me." And call the real Self just that: the real self, the real I which alone has the right to say "I am". It is this real Self which has the intellectual intuitive power actually to verify the idea of the world behind the appearances. It is the real Self which has the power to see this real external world and to understand it and, eventually, to merge with it. The surface self can know only the surface of the world.
THE QUESTION OF THE HEART IS A MORAL DEMAND
Such, or something very much like it, is the other half of the great idea of the world behind the appearances. But—and here in the present context is the most important point of all—I was able to come to this deeply realized insight only under the pressure of a moral demand, the demand, the duty, to respond honestly to a heartfelt question put to me by a sincere and serious student.
This was fundamentally a moral, ethical transaction, make no mistake about it. This was the action of the mind working (and making its own kind of intellectual sacrifices) in intense relation to the needs of another person's mind. This tiny moment of thinking together was a beginning moment of moral action involving two minds. In that sense, it was the realm of what might be called intermediate morality, something in between an ethical action in relation to another individual and a purely private act in relation to one's ordinary self alone.
Before proceeding to clarify this, at least to me, profound discovery, we need to take note of one other factor, one other result of the work of thinking together. It is a result of unsurpassed significance in the possible moral development of man, a result which our one-legged man was sent off to discover by the great Hillel and which glows in the heart of the method, if it can be called a method, of Socratic conversation, and which gives the only real justification for suggesting that for many of us the road to becoming capable of moral action must begin in the mind with the study of great ideas. The point is that through this act of accepting and suffering one's own total inability to respond to a genuine question put by the other; by accepting and suffering the hollowness of all one's 'answers'; by taking the risk of standing blankly in front of one's own know-nothing mind, what can then be given is a response, an insight, an idea that is profoundly felt in the heart as well as known by the head! That is to say, to a small extent, but resonant with immense hope and significance: the ideas of the mind merge with the intuition and energy of the heart. To a small extent, one then feels what one knows. And the significance of this event, slight as it may be and transitory as it may also be, is, as we shall see, incalculable. It is incalculable because it is only when we feel what we know that it becomes even remotely possible intentionally to act upon what we know. We cannot do what we know we should, because we do not know the good with the whole of ourselves.
THE AUTHENTIC TEACHER AND THE AUTHENTIC SEEKER
We are back again in front of Timothy Grattin and his question of how to recognize an authentic spiritual teacher. The lightning is flashing more frequently, accompanied by thunder. The rain is loud and steady. Thick sheets of water are streaming down the windows.
I am standing silently at my chair confronting Timothy's question. Having let go of all my inadequate answers, I willingly allow the silence to continue. I am not at all afraid that the class will see that their 'wise' professor is at a loss. A unique feeling of freedom begins to flow through me. Many seconds pass; a minute, two minutes. The roaring sounds of the storm seem only to increase, and even sweeten the silence. It is very clear that the whole class, all twelve of the young men and women seated in the circle, are to some extent sharing the tranquility of the silence with me.
Had I gently ended the class just then without saying anything further, no one would have been disappointed. Had I myself been a spiritual guide, perhaps that is what I would have done, so as to allow the question to sink down into them. But I was being drawn to something else; I was being drawn to the sense of an unknown act of faith. I was, somewhere in my mind and heart, quietly choosing to have faith in the act of simultaneously accepting both my own incapacity and the inescapable duty to respond with honesty to the genuine need of another human being's mind. It was now not at all difficult to stay with this faith; there were no temptations that I had to fight off, no new 'answers' slithering out of my professorial memory. I was as though saying to myself—or, to be precise, I was as though saying to the silence inside me: "Here I am. I do not understand. But I must understand." Never had I felt simultaneously so alert, as though there were danger everywhere; and so relaxed, as though I were also protected from any harm or failure.
If I now relate how I finally did respond, it may sound disappointingly evasive. But, in fact, even now, long after the event, it seems the only honest and practical beginning of an answer to this question—of course, when the question itself is honestly asked.
I started by saying, "How are you searching?"
The class looked at me expectantly.
I continued, speaking exactly as my thoughts came to me, without weighing my words:
"We want to know how to recognize a real teacher, but do we ever ask ourselves in what way we are searching for a teacher, in what way we are searching for truth? Could it be that we can only recognize a teacher when we are in a state of need, when real need pours through us and sensitizes our powers of perception? A hungry man looks for food in a very different way than a full man. Need can attract intelligence.
"We say we are searching. That is a very great thing—to search for truth. But what are we actually doing? We read books—sometimes, when it pleases us—or we listen to lectures—sometimes. But otherwise we may go through our day-to-day lives with no thought at all of this question, with no sense of need for something deeper in our lives, something that we cannot name. In that sense, we are really flattering ourselves when we say we are seeking truth. It is not so. We are seeking it sometimes, occasionally, when 'it occurs to us,' or for a deep moment or two when something chances to remind us—like an encounter with death or shocking injustice or personal loss or when looking up at the night sky—but then the moment passes and it is gone, the 'search' is gone. It is unwise and dishonorable to call such a haphazard process a search.
"Just as it is only the real Self that can see the real world behind the appearances, so it may be that it is only the real seeker who can recognize a genuine man or woman of wisdom.
"Does that seem right to you?" I asked Timothy. And then I turned to the others. They were looking back at me with great attention, but I couldn't tell what they were thinking or feeling. The only thing that was immediately clear was that although they had become extremely attentive, they were not agitated; they were not "excited." Their eyes were not roving the ceiling for objections or clarifications.
I continued: "Imagine a condemned man in prison. Nothing matters more to him than the possibility of escape. This need is always with him, no matter what he is doing, poised inside his mind like a hungry animal. People come to this prisoner, or he hears of people, who have a plan of escape. He listens to them all. He is open to them all. He listens to these plans with great care. And he studies the people who offer them. Who are they? Are they solid? Or are they just crazy? Can they control themselves? Or will they break apart at the first difficulty? And does the plan make sense? Does it take everything into account—including the inevitably of shocks and dangerous surprises? Or is it only wishful thinking? Only a fantastic gamble insanely depending on luck?
"Some plans he can see through immediately, but as for the rest, he neither rejects nor accepts anything a priori—because it is his very life that is at stake. His need gives him the power to be open and critical at the same time. His need is so great that it makes him cool and patient, yet at the same time ready, if necessary, instantly to mobilize himself for action."
Suddenly, I felt that I was now starting to talk too much, that I was on the verge of becoming a little intoxicated, allowing a metaphor to lead, rather than serve, my thought. I paused, and, with a certain effort, stopped my mind for a second, in order to let in the impression of myself as I was. The perception of silence, which had already drifted into the background, then returned, along with the sounds of the storm. And the unknown faith also returned from out of the background. But faith in what? Not faith in my now completely depleted mind. I understood that I needed to say more, to think more, to give more, but did I have anything more to give?
Had it all been a fantasy—this sense of the ethics of thought? I realized that I now had nowhere to go inside myself. Had I been fooling myself all along? The new faith was being shaken. A kind of despair was beginning to creep in, saying to me: "Look, it's not such a big deal; you're making too much of this. What do you expect? This is only a classroom. What you've said is quite adequate. Lighten up!"
Nevertheless, the demand to go further was becoming increasingly urgent. What had been said was not enough, not nearly enough. But from where in myself could the next step come?
A KIND OF LOVE
The answer soon appeared—and, of course, it did not come from anywhere in myself at all. It came from them, the students, from the other half of the ethical transaction. How could I have forgotten that? How could I have begun to speak in a way that left so little room for questioning, so little room for the other, for my "neighbor"!
I nearly laughed with joy at this realization.
Not Timothy, but another student, a brilliant woman named Adriana Waters, with crystal-blue eyes and a forehead like a white sail, asked, very simply:
"But suppose we don't have such a sense of need? Suppose it is too buried? What should we do? The question is still there—how can we know who to trust?"
A moment passed. I started to pace, then stopped.
One thing and one thing only came to me—the faith that intelligence can appear not from anything I can make happen, but only from staying in front of the truth and the need of the moment. The faith had returned, faith in attention, not in words or concepts. I was about to enter a kind of experience that was to be repeated many times after this—the experience, namely, that when we are at an ethical crossroads, when we are at the end of our ethical resources, it is through the awakening of conscious attention to our lack that a right action—in this case, simply a right thought—may be given to us.
"Can we stay with that?" I said to her.
"What do you mean?" she said.
"I mean, can you—can we—stay with the truth of our situation? The truth, in this case, is this: Let's say that here is an individual who is offering, or who seems capable of offering, spiritual guidance, wisdom, a way—call it what you like. Let's say I am very interested in him or her; let's say there seems to be something special about this person. But I am not sure—either of him or of myself. I don't know if this person is what he seems. I don't want to turn away from something that might be what I wish for; nor do I want to follow something or someone only through self-suggestion or wishful thinking.
"What do I do?" I stay with my uncertainty, which is now sensed as a need. It is not only he or she about whom I now have a question; it is myself who is in question. The need I now feel—maybe it is not the great hunger that creates intelligence and the power to choose. Nevertheless, it has its own degree of force and intelligence...
"But now, perhaps, I see something else as well—an impatience, a kind of pressure inclining me to close the question, to get on with it all, to come to a judgment about this person before me.
"But if I stay with the truth of the situation, the truth that I don't know if I can really trust this man and that my hunger is not so deep as to bring me instinctive certainty—if I stay like that, what happens then?"
Adriana replied with an unusually relaxed voice: "I think I see where you are going."
"Here you are," I said. "You want to know the quality of this man or woman in front of you, who may or may not be a genuine spiritual guide. You want to know, but your wish is only of ordinary intensity; you do not have the desperate intuition of a great seeker. Yet you are not complacent either, although you sense in yourself the pressure of habit that at any moment may shut down the question. What is taking place in you?"
The class is allowing this strange conversation to take place. No one is interrupting, not even the bulldog Timothy Grattin.
And, for sure, it is a unique dialogue that is now taking place. It is not academic, but it is not "not academic" either.
Adriana and I are genuinely thinking together.
In fact, we are suddenly having exactly the same thoughts together. I have asked her a question, the answer to which I honestly did not know. It was a question to us, not to her. It was to us, the two of us, supported by the good attention of eleven other students.
Her reply, which now came to her exactly as the same thought came to me, was:
"I guess I . . . just wait. I really don't have to make up my mind right away. I just go on speaking to this person, watching him, wondering. I don't have to decide!"
I nodded—not to her, but to us. "And now what?"
"My God!" she said, and stopped.
What had she discovered? Now it was I who didn't know.
"What?" I said. "What is it?"
"My God!" she repeated—and then went on: "I am now more interested in how open my mind is than I am in knowing whether this person is or isn't a real teacher!"
A long pause. Sounds of rain. Silence.
Of course—I didn't say it, I felt it—that's the answer. Our dialogue has brought her and us to a faith in the mind, a faith in intelligence. A real question has been answered—not by words, but by an event in the mind, an event shared by two people. A kind of love; it was a kind of love. A creation.
So that is the secret of Socrates!
Gnoseology
Interviewer: Do you now believe in God?
Jung: Now?... Difficult to answer. I don't
need to believe. I know.From Carl Jung's interview to BBC
My two much related essays—"On Knowing" and "A Bit of Math" will serve as a prelude, raising key questions and offering answers—some mere rewordings or reiterations of existing ideas—that will inform the rest of this section:
Faith—especially religious faith—often gets framed as the opposite of intellectual understanding. Why? Here's my take: if faith is a primal pull toward "non-being" (dissolving into something greater), while reason is the drive toward "being" (asserting the self), then surrendering to non-being—say, through religious devotion—takes less inner effort than mustering the "courage to be." Yet both impulses exist in us for a reason. ("If stars are lit, someone needs them.") Their union isn't just possible; it might be necessary.
That said, religion usually leans on dogmas—pre-packaged truths that resist scrutiny. (Buddhism's an exception—it's less about dogma, more about studying the mind.) Suppose these dogmas are "good", that is, aligned with truth. Grinding them through reason's gears might then seem pointless, even harmful. But reason may fire back: "How do we know they're true? Look at the wild diversity of doctrines, some flatly contradicting science or common sense!" Silence reason without feeding it something worthwhile, and its doubts fester. Respect curdles into aversion, even hostility.
Every rigid, dogma-heavy religion began as raw spiritual insight, mirroring its founder's inner life. The real test of a doctrine's truth? Not blind belief in its cosmology or rules, but whether it transforms followers—whether they touch the founder's spirit, or the Spirit behind him. True Christians, per Christianity, are known by extraordinary love; real Muslims, by deep peace. Religions, at their roots, operated on "trust, but verify," meant to engage the mind, not just soothe the soul's hunger for non-being.
But over time, faith tends to eclipse reason. Why? Maybe because our world's a hard place to live in—dissolving into tradition is easier than wrestling with being. Take Tertullian's "I believe because it is absurd." Most believers wouldn't say that, but swap it for "I believe because I believe," and you've captured the mindset of millions. Conscious believers are rare; true ones, rarer. Did religious founders hope for more from their followers? Probably.
Let's focus more on Christianity. A balance of faith and reason was baked into it from the start—meant to produce sages, not fanatics. Christ's "Be wise as serpents, innocent as doves" nails it: wisdom demands intellectual labor (discerning truth, untangling cause and effect); innocence, an intuitive clarity that guides reason. Is faith part of that intuition? Sure. Should we conflate faith and intuition? No.
The Beatitude "Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness" hints at this harmony. Thirsting for truth is both cognitive (rigorous honesty) and emotional (a gut-deep need to understand). The resulting "satisfaction" isn't just reciting creeds—it's a whole-being clarity. (I split "sensibility" into faith, intuition, and desire, but love's the missing piece—more later.)
Christ's "Let your 'yes' be 'yes,' your 'no' be 'no'" is a manifesto for intellectual integrity. Life's biggest questions—Does God exist? Is this teaching true?—demand binary clarity. If even coding relies on 1s and 0s at its core, shouldn't we demand sharper answers when eternity's at stake? But first, you need a method: frame the question, set criteria, test rigorously. In this light, "yes/yes, no/no" anticipates Popper's falsifiability. Christianity's version: "God is love; if following Christ's commandments brings no love, God's a no." Not science, but at least it's testable.
So how do we judge our answers? Revisit psychology (Buddhism beat Freud to the being/non-being duality), myth, even alchemy. Take the parable of the house built on rock vs. sand. What if your "yes" or "no" is wrong? You'll know by the foundation's stability. Christianity calls this "new being" (palingenesia)—a fusion of God's spirit and human nature. Alchemists sought it as the philosopher's stone; Hindus, as sat-chit-ananda. Reason stretches toward this "new being"; faith craves dissolution into it. Hamlet's question rewrites itself: to be or not to be—in what?
Psychologically, "new being" brings unshakable clarity—God stops being a hypothesis and becomes a "yes" so solid it needs no words. The wise builder's house stands because it's on rock (the philosopher's stone); the fool's collapses. Every foundation gets tested. Fanatics (repressed doubters, per Jung), hyper-rationalists, and the half-convinced will crumble. Even Buddhists get this: analysis alone won't cut it. The Buddha's flower sermon—one disciple smiled. The lesson? Wholeness. Harmony. Beauty.
Now, love. Christianity's mark is meant to be a distinctive love. Not affection for hobbies, but Love with a capital L. Earlier, I split sensibility into faith, intuition, desire—but spiritual Love's the crown. Alchemy's metaphor fits: the king (exalted reason) and queen (Love) should reign together. But often, the king chases the maid (base desires), or the queen marries the groom (dull reason). Both are unstable—half-rock, half-sand.
Salvation, then, is freedom from reason and faith's extremes, grounded in "new being." For Islam, it's mastering the nafs (base urges); for Buddhism, extinguishing desire to awaken Buddha-jnana. Different paths, same firelight.
And you? After all this, can you say "yes" or "no" and build on it? The storms will come. Live ready.
~ ~ ~
Among the many glorious tools of mathematics, there is one called a scatter plot —you look at a cloud of points and try to figure out some kind of overall direction. Maybe it's going upward, maybe downward, or maybe, if there's no clear trend, you just admit—whether with a sigh of relief, frustration, or a shrug—that it's all just chaos:
According to Jung, real life doesn't begin until you're forty—everything before that is just research.
Socrates supposedly said: "An unexamined life isn't worth living."
So... what's the common thread here?
You can think of life as a kind of scatter plot, where the mind tries to draw out patterns and meaning. Early on, there aren't many "points," and things are pretty straightforward: here are my parents—I love and respect them; here are my friends—I love them too; here are my enemies—may they vanish into the void; here's my toothbrush and toothpaste—use them morning and night.
But as we grow up, gain experience, and widen our mental horizons—what Jung called "research"—those points multiply. And connecting them starts to feel like building more complex constellations, not just random dots. Ideally, these constellations should reflect reality, not warp it. That's why the "research" needs to be done in a kind of Socratic spirit—with honesty and an open mind. Why is that important?
Well, take one of the big questions: does God exist? Closely tied to that is what happens to our soul—or consciousness, if you will—after death. If we sketch out our answers a bit too hastily or frivolously, then maybe not in this life, but after it we might be in for some very... unpleasant surprises. As Pascal put it: "If God doesn't exist and I believe, I lose nothing. But if He does exist and I don't believe—I lose everything." Or take the Chinese wisdom: the noblest path is the path of reason; the bitterest, the path of experience.
Now, what's postmodernism all about in scatter-plot terms? It's basically the idea that there's no shared direction. Everyone's just drawing their own meanings out of a general hodgepodge. It's kind of like a polished philosophical version of teenage rebellion. That said, if you don't treat chaos as some absolute truth but just use it to poke at dogmas—all to discard lame, untenable ones—that's totally in line with Socrates. Or, with Jung, if you will.
But, suppose, in the midst of all these points there actually are some universal patterns—some truths. What happens if someone chooses not to look at all the points honestly? If they start narrowing their focus to fit their preferences? That said, there is a whole toolbox of psychological defense mechanisms to help with that kind of self-deception. Jung, who saw a lot as a psychiatrist and therapist, was pretty clear about this: narrowing your awareness like that, cutting off parts of the picture, tends to backfire. A lot of neuroses—and their not-so-pretty outpouring into life—can be traced back to exactly that.
The ideal situation? You take in the full picture, all the points, and you start to see not only universal meanings but also the local, personal ones that line up with them. What does it take? Sure, honesty and openness of mind—but also... luck, opportunity, grace that flow from the "inter-dot space," the one that quietly helps arrange things not just in the big picture, but also in a day-by-day fashion. It's a way of living somewhere between total clarity—especially about the big, universal stuff—and total fog. As Laozi put it:
People in the everyday world are so clear and bright;
Only I am dim, like twilight.
People in the everyday world are so detailed and sure;
Only I am vague and uncertain.
Life's a puzzle. May the Dao help us!
~ ~ ~
What prevents one from erring in the gnoseological sense? In other words, what grants someone the conviction that they truly know something—that cognitively, emotionally, and physiologically they have invested themselves not in a fragile illusion, not into the biblical "spider's house", but in something authentic? And here, what interests me most is not mundane knowledge, but rather the fundamental convictions by which people live.
How did Jung come to know the existence of God? What convinced Needleman that collective thinking yields deeper insights than solitary reflection, and where does the higher Self fit into this dynamic? What enabled Daniil Andreev to regard his spiritual experiences not as mere hallucinations but as revelations worthy of an entire book—one he considered the crowning work of his life? And what, precisely, allowed Shri Ramana Maharshi to perceive his merging with the higher Self—or what I term the Divine self?
At the very least, all these figures share one crucial commonality: their most pivotal spiritual experiences befell them; they were not volitionally summoned. Second shared trait: the content of these experiences—including their emotional resonance—was sublime, profound, and utterly beyond the ordinary. Third: preliminary intellectual mediation was more often than not at play.
Consider, for instance, the twelve-year-old Jung, who initially resisted the terrifying spiritual vision looming before him. He strained his willpower to suppress it—until, exhausted, he finally mustered both the courage and the understanding to let it unfold:
...I saw before me the cathedral, the blue sky. God sits on His golden throne, high above the world—and from under the throne an enormous turd falls upon the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks the walls of the cathedral asunder.
So that was it! I felt an enormous, indescribable relief. Instead of the expected damnation, grace had come upon me, and with it an unutterable bliss such as I had never known. I wept for happiness and gratitude. The wisdom and goodness of God had been revealed to me now that I had yielded 'to His inexorable command.
It was as though I had experienced an illumination. A great many things I had not previously understood became clear to me. That was what my father had not understood, I thought; he had failed to experience the will of God, had opposed it for the best reasons and out of the deepest faith. And that was why he had never experienced the miracle of grace which heals all and makes all comprehensible. He had taken the Bible's commandments as his guide; he believed in God as the Bible prescribed and as his forefathers had taught him. But he did not know the immediate living God who stands, omnipotent and free, above His Bible and His Church, who calls upon man to partake of His freedom, and can force him to renounce his own views and convictions in order to fulfill without reserve the command of God. In His trial of human courage God refuses to abide by traditions, no matter how sacred. In His omnipotence He will see to it that nothing really evil comes of such tests of courage. If one fulfills the will of God one can be sure of going the right way...
~ ~ ~
In the contemplative self, memory belongs to the moon, while the sun embodies forms, ideas, and principles—the differentiation of the physical and mental continuum into composite parts and causal relationships.
The union of the sun and the moon in the Divine self will signify the most seamless merging of consciousness and sensitivity, leaving no room for doubt about one's Divine dignity. This state of absolute certainty is called nirvikalpa samadhi in Sanskrit.
This profound gnoseological concept requires both demystification and an acknowledgment of its elitism.
Let us begin simply. When learning addition, one starts with concrete examples: Two apples plus two more—how many now? Here, the moon operates through direct experience (the tactile presence of apples) or memory, grounding the abstraction in reality. The sun, meanwhile, manifests as the abstract principle of addition, which eventually detaches from its tangible origins.
But is this nirvikalpa samadhi? Does "2 + 2 = 4" create an unshakable foundation in the mind? Mathematically, yes—yet psychologically, it offers no deep tranquility, no immunity to life's turbulence. Even the certainty of mathematics falters under scrutiny: Could there be a dimension where two plus two equals five? The faintest doubt excludes it from nirvikalpa samadhi.
A subtler example: "I think, therefore I am." This, too, fails the test. Does the "I" vanish between thoughts or in deep sleep? Without unwavering certainty, it cannot be nirvikalpa.
True nirvikalpa samadhi—though it may be mediated by intellect and memory—doesn't arise from them, but rather is an irreducible inner revelation. It manifests as sat-chit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss), where the Divine self shines so clearly that it utterly dissolves all doubt. As Shri Ramana Maharshi taught, it unfolds in stages—like a flame growing ever brighter. He described his first experience thus:
...It was about six weeks before I left Madura for good that a great change in my life took place . It was quite sudden. I was sitting in a room on the first floor of my uncle's house. I seldom had any sickness and on that day there was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden, violent fear of death overtook me. There was nothing in my state of health to account for it; and I did not try to account for it or to find out whether there was any reason for the fear. I just felt, "I am going to die," and began thinking what to do about it. It did not occur to me to consult a doctor or my elders or friends. I felt that I had to solve the problem myself, then and there.
The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: "Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies." And I at once dramatized the occurrence of death. I lay with my limbs stretched out stiff as though rigor mortis had set in and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the enquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, so that neither the word 'I' or any other word could be uttered, "Well then," I said to myself, "this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body am I dead? Is the body 'I'? It is silent and inert but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of the 'I' within me, apart from it. So I am Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. This means I am the deathless Spirit." All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly, almost without thought-process. 'I' was something very real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with my body was centered on that 'I'. From that moment onwards the 'I' or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death had vanished once and for all. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time on. Other thoughts might come and go like the various notes of music, but the 'I' continued like the fundamental sruti note that underlies and blends with all the other notes. Whether the body was engaged in talking, reading, or anything else, I was still centered on 'I'. Previous to that crisis I had no clear perception of my Self and was not consciously attracted to it. I felt no perceptible or direct interest in it, much less any inclination to dwell permanently in it...
~ ~ ~
If we compare the experiences of twelve-year-old Jung and sixteen-year-old Venkataraman (not yet called Shri Ramana), the latter's encounter with the Divine self proves more fundamental. The then Jung received merely a taste of nirvikalpa samadhi, so to speak, while Venkataraman became a maharshi—a great sage—in the blink of an eye.
What is noteworthy is that in both cases, the direct experience of the higher Self was preceded by the work of thought, or the thread, which served to relax selfhood enough for it to open—like a setting prepared for the diamond of the Self. Indeed, this seems to be the thread's primary role in the greater scheme: to meticulously verify something before completely surrendering to it.
Ironically, Jung once had the chance to meet Shri Ramana but declined. In a way, I've arranged their 'rendezvous' here, on the pages of Charting the Waters.
As for Jacob Needleman, was he on close terms with nirvikalpa? Apparently so:
...The essential work of man is to become man. It can be said that it is this that the world needs—more, far more, than anything else. The world needs people, real people. Yes, we must do what we can and, yes, there are those among us, thank God, who act and give and help. But it is precisely because the ethical life of man has remained so universally and unchangingly corrupted over the millennia that we are so grateful for those who do act selflessly. And it is precisely this entire situation within oneself and within the life of man—that is to say, the exceptionalness of these human acts of goodness that in their exceptionalness are actually evidence of man's unchanging ethical bankruptcy—it is precisely this situation, this historical and psychological fact, that shows us what the truly essential work of man must be—and that is to become what we are created to be, beings in whom the Self, or God, speaking with the voice of Conscience, is heard and obeyed within us and in our actions toward our neighbor. Such is the definition of man: the being who can act from an inner initiative that is both deeply his own and at the same time the action within him of the Creator of Reality.
This inner God, Conscience—or, as we may call it, the heart of the Self—is that Higher about whom the tradition speaks when it says, "Thou shalt have no other god before me". As our one-legged man will discover, the One God of the Tradition is the invisible but all-powerful force of love, a love that contains in equal measure forgiveness and judgment, mercy and rigor, ever-renewing life and implacably lawful cause-and-effect. This love is both all-powerful (the omnipotent God) and at the same time capable of being almost totally blocked in human life, for in order to manifest itself it must be chosen and willed. Therefore it is all-powerful and weak at the same time, depending on the inner work of man. As the one-legged man will learn–and we are surely him—all that usurps the place of Conscience, all that masquerades as Conscience and thereby blocks it—all of that is the essential meaning of the ancient word "idolatry." An 'idol' in its essential meaning is not some little clay figure or carved face; an 'idol' is a self-deceptive imitation of Conscience.
Therefore, and again: the essential work of man is to become Man. And Man is, as we are told, made in the image and likeness of God. Or, if one wishes, the true human self is the Self—Atman who is Brahman; the Buddha nature which, being "no self" is fundamentally the fertile Void or Silence that is the Compassionate and Implacable Builder and the Destroyer of worlds and 'selves'.
The essential work of man is to remember the Self.
The 'essential', then. The man whose state of being had the effect on people of strengthening their wish to remember the Self was now on the other side of a thick door. During the whole day he had been meeting with individuals seeking help in their struggle for self-knowledge. Some brought their questions embedded in intense personal emotions involving personal and family relationships, health or money. For others their question was coated with the desire for explanations about their unbecoming behavior in their day-to-day affairs. Still others suffered their question as an inability to make inner spiritual efforts due to various forms of doubt. And what such people doubted was the fundamental idea that they and all human beings have been given life not for themselves alone, but to serve universal purposes. That is, being of a type that believes only what it can touch or sense in the ordinary physical meaning of these words, and not having yet actually experienced the invisible Higher, such people were unable to be motivated past a certain point by the idea of the Self.
And there were many other kinds of difficulties and types of people who came.
For all of these people, this exceptional man tried to help them see that the essential question behind all the forms of their social, psychological and material difficulties was their lack of awareness of their state of being. Every difficulty in human life, including the tragic impossibility of living our days according to genuine moral ideals, stemmed from the fact that we do not see that we are held fast in a small part of ourselves while yet, as human beings, we are created to live in the state of being awake to the Self. No happiness, no safety, no love, no meaning can be ours in the shrunken state of being within which we live out our time on earth. Unaware that we are asleep to the Self, we are asleep to the meaning and the power of genuine action, which means the ability to be and to will the Good.
Out of this shrunken state of being comes the endless violation of man's God-given obligation to his neighbor. Out of this shrunken state of being comes perpetual human conflict, resolvable only externally by one form or another of violence, including the fundamental curse of war.
Therefore all human problems, no matter in what sphere of outer or inner life, are signs and effects of our state of being. And all solutions—social, economic, psychiatric, economic, technological—must eventually fail. They will fail because they represent the lower aspects of human nature attempting to do the work of the higher. In that sense, all our 'solutions'—in our individual as well as in our collective lives—are idols: self-deceptive imitations of conscience, instruments pretending to be agents. It is only the Self that can put the instruments of mind, heart and body to the uses of the Good. It is only the Self that can master the uses of money, technology, capitalism, mathematics. This is so in the greater global world just as it is so in the individual inner world: it is only the Self that can master the instruments within man (or, in the ancient language, the "animals"): only the Self that can master the ingenuity of the human mind—its powers of memory and combination that subdue the passive material of the human psychophysical organism and make us inwardly as well as outwardly a menace as destructive as our possibilities are great. It is only the Self that can master our infinitely precious sexuality, our hidden powers of intuition that contain the molecular sensitivities of all animal life, our artistic creativity which can produce astonishing vehicles of wonder—which, however, can no more irrigate the real roots of our parched lives than can isolated rains irrigate the Sahara desert.
All who came to this man knew this, but they needed his help in order to remember it in their hearts. His understanding was able to show them—in ways suited to their subjectivity—that it was necessary and possible to see one's inner chaos with a wordless, silent attention that allowed the sensitivity of the Self to enter the body, mind, and heart.
And I knew it, too, waiting for my turn to see him. It was now almost an hour past the time of my appointment. I looked at my watch, knowing that by now there would be barely enough time for me to speak with him before he would have to leave for his return flight home. Very well, even a short time would have to do; and so I tried to concentrate my attention on finding the words to express my question, trying by myself to discern and 'taste' the one question hidden within my personal life problem together with the difficulties of struggling with my inability to see my weaknesses.
Suddenly I heard a stirring behind the door—chairs moving, good-byes being said—and I readied myself.
But just as I was standing up, and before the door opened, an event happened that then and thereafter became the source for me of an entirely new understanding of ethics.
I must also say that the event I wish to describe took place within the space of only a few seconds—certainly less than a minute.
I had just stood up and still retained something of my inner state of collected attention when to my surprise another person noisily entered the small vestibule where I was waiting. It was a man I knew very well, a certain Justin Lander. He was a member of a small group of men and women with whom I met regularly to discuss our questions and experiences in relation to the search for self-knowledge. Apparently, the enterprising Mr. Lander had on his own made an appointment with the man behind the door. And why not? I had mentioned this man to him and to the others, but only Mr. Lander had taken the initiative to make an appointment. 'Initiative', or, to be more accurate, 'pushiness', was more or less Justin Lander's middle name.
Now in his early forties, Justin Lander had already made a small fortune in the real-estate business. He would from time to time—completely unannounced—visit my class at the university and try to dive into the discussions without any notion of the material the class was working on. Yet underneath it all there burned within him an unmistakable wish to understand and, underneath all his annoying pushiness, a delicate yearning to be of help.
The moment he burst through the door, my first reaction, after a flash of irritation, was to feel sorry for him. The hour was so late that he would obviously not be able to see the man he had heard so much about.
I was just starting to tell him the situation so that he would not have to wait to no purpose, when suddenly everything within me became extremely quiet.
I looked at him. I did not like this man. Nor did I dislike him, exactly. Or rather, I liked and disliked him in equal measure, neither one side nor the other particularly intense. A sort of calm wind seemed to be passing through me, carrying away all my judgments of him, as a tranquil tidal river in the early morning swiftly and silently carries out to sea everything floating on the surface of the water.
I no longer felt the slightest bit sorry for him. And, as for my undeniable right to keep the appointment I had so deeply desired and needed, it, too, was carried out to sea.
I did not form in my mind any thoughts having to do with 'sacrifice'. No thoughts having to do with how important it would be for Mr. Lander's own inner life for him to meet this man of knowledge. There was absolutely no struggle with my ego or my own need and desire: there was no calculation, there was no marshaling of moral principles, there was no bargaining with my mind or emotions. The word or idea of 'ought' never once appeared. There was no special feeling of compassion for Mr. Lander. No sense of my 'duty'.
All that I can say is that in the state I was still in—that is, retaining some small degree of finer and more concentrated attention in my entire presence—the action of a universal law was perceived and irrigated my presence. This law, as palpable in its own subtle way as the law of gravity, moved my mind and body in instantaneous, silent, unforced obedience. The law was in this case instantiated as "He came to you, you received him, now you will put him first."
Not a command, but a simple prediction. Not you must put him first, but, simply, it will happen that you will put him first. You may put him first. You are able to put him first.
A law which in this case takes the form of: "Because of your state, you are in some measure able to act. And if a man is able to act, it follows by the logic of reality that he will act to put the welfare of his neighbor first."
None of this was in words. All these words are futile attempts to characterize this experience.
In any case, just as the door was opening, I said to Mr. Lander in a matter-of-fact way, "I was just leaving."
And as I was just about to exit the vestibule, the thick door opened all the way. The visitor—an elderly woman I didn't know—warmly shook the hand of the man I had come to see, while Mr. Lander squeezed his way past her through the doorway after the man gestured for him to come in.
Before he closed the door, I looked at the man I had come to see. There was for an instant a slight surprise in his eyes and then a deepening, a look of rigor and impersonal understanding of what had taken place in me. He closed the door after Mr. Lander, and I left the vestibule and the building.
This indeed was silence!...
~ ~ ~
It is worth noting that while Jung first 'tasted' nirvikalpa samadhi as an adolescent within the framework of Protestantism, and Venkataraman (Ramana Maharshi) arose from Hinduism, Jacob Needleman—though well-versed in various religious and philosophical traditions and comfortable in the 'intermembrane' space between them—retained a particular gravitation toward Jewish mysticism.
What of Islam or Buddhism? Can nirvikalpa samadhi be found in these traditions? If one admits the direct experience of the Buddha's enlightenment as genuine—yes. If one acknowledges the Prophet Muhammad's ascent to the seventh heaven (the seventh chakra) and his Divine communion as real—yes. And if one is persuaded by Romain Rolland's depiction of Ramakrishna's 'intermembrane' mystical experiences, they too will recognize the radiance of nirvikalpa:
...The first path to be explored was the religion of Islam. He was hardly convalescent when he started out upon it at the end of 1866.
From his temple he saw many Musulman fakirs passing by; for the large-hearted patron of Dakshineswar, Rani Rasmani, a nouvelle riche of a debased caste, in the breadth of her piety had desired rooms to be reserved in her foundation for passing guests of all religions. In this way Ramakrishna saw a humble Musulman, Govinda Rai, absorbed in his prayers, and perceived through the outward shell of his prostrate body that this man through Islam had also realized God. He asked Govinda Rai to initiate him, and for several days the priest of Kali renounced and forgot his own Gods completely. He did not worship them, he did not even think about them. He lived outside the temple precincts, he repeated the name of Allah, he wore the robes of a Musulman and was ready—imagine the sacrilege—to eat of forbidden food, even of the sacred animal, the cow! His master and patron, Mathur Babu, was horrified and begged him to desist. In secret he had food prepared for Ramakrishna by a Brahmin under the direction of a Musulman in order to save him from defilement. The complete surrender of himself to another realm of thought resulted as always in the spiritual voyage of this passionate artist, in a visual materialization of the idea. A radiant personage with grave countenance and white beard appeared to him (thus he had probably visualized the prophet). He drew near and lost himself in him. Ramakrishna realized the Musulman God, "the Brahman with attribute". Thence he passed into "the Brahman without attributes". The river of Islam had led him back to the Ocean.
His expositors have later interpreted this experience, following as it did immediately upon his great ecstasy in the Absolute, in a very important sense for India, that Musulmans and Hindus, her enemy sons, can only be reunited on the basis of the Advaita, the formless God. The Ramakrishna Mission has since raised a sanctuary to Him in the depths of the Himalayas, as the cornerstone of the immense and composite edifice of all religions.
Seven years later (I am grouping the facts for the sake of clearness) an experience of the same order led Ramakrishna to realize Christianity. Somewhere about November, 1874, a certain Mallik, a Hindu of Calcutta, with a garden near Dakshineswar, read the Bible to him. For the first time Ramakrishna met Christ. Shortly afterwards the Word was made flesh. The life of Jesus secretly pervaded him. One day when he was sitting in the room of a friend, a rich Hindu, he saw on the wall a picture representing the Madonna and Child. The figure became alive. Then the expected came to pass according to the invariable order of the spirit ; the holy visions came close to him and entered into him so that his whole being was impregnated with them. This time the inflowing was much more powerful than in the case of Islam. It covered his entire soul, breaking down all barriers. Hindu ideas were swept away. In terror Ramakrishna, struggling in the midst of the waves, cried out, "Oh Mother, what are you doing? Help me!" It was in vain. The tidal race swept everything before it. The spirit of the Hindu was changed. He had no room for anything but Christ. For several days he was filled by Christian thought and Christian love. He no longer thought of going to the temple. Then one afternoon in the grove of Dakshineswar he saw coming towards him a person with beautiful large eyes and a serene regard. Although he did not know who it was, he succumbed to the charm of his unknown guest. He drew near and a voice sang in the depths of Ramakrishna's soul, "Behold the Christ, who shed his heart's blood for the redemption of the world, who suffered a sea of anguish for love of men. It is He, the master Yogin, who is in eternal union with God. It is Jesus, Love incarnate." The Son of Man embraced the seer of India, the son of the Mother, and absorbed him into Himself. Ramakrishna was lost in ecstasy. Once again he realized union with Brahmin. Then gradually he came down to earth, but from that time he believed in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate God. But for him Christ was not the only Incarnation. Buddha and Krishna were others...
~ ~ ~
Daniil Andreev—whose revelations largely laid the foundation for "Cosmology"—appeared keenly aware that altered states of consciousness could be triggered not only from the heights of enlightenment but also from the underworld. Moreover, the Orthodox Christian tradition, with which he primarily identified, speaks of 'prelest' (прелесть in Russian)—metaphysical experiences that lead one astray from what is most essential. For this reason, Andreev's guiding spiritual 'metronome' was what he termed the voice of the heart: a blend of inner peace and joy (the coils in my framework) paired with discernment (the thread). How might this align with nirvikalpa samadhi? Not identical, but strikingly adjacent. This brings us, once again, to the vital role of the contemplative self in discriminating between authentic and counterfeit spiritual experiences.
~ ~ ~
Grigory Pomerants, another son of Russia, once underwent a profound spiritual experience—one that emerged in the 'intermembrane' space between religions and bore all the hallmarks of nirvikalpa.
He recounts:
...Nature can be likened to a machine that grinds away the most precious thing of all: the Divine personality. Confronting this truth while utterly ignorant of philosophy (my knowledge at the time was limited to Marx, Engels, and Lenin, none of whom grappled with such questions), I realized that not only I, a sixteen-year-old, but even the greatest minds were ensnared by this dilemma. I resolved to face my metaphysical fear of infinity head-on, to stare it down and perhaps discover what lay beyond. I distilled my struggle into a formula: 'If infinity exists (material infinity, as I could conceive no other), then I do not exist; and if I exist, infinity cannot.' For three months, I fixated on this paradox. I didn't know the word 'meditation' then, but in essence, I was meditating on a pure Zen koan—the kind masters use to propel students into despair so they might emerge into higher consciousness. The premise is simple: the mind's structure is flawed. When logic leads only to dead ends, and one gazes into that abyss long enough, the mind's false scaffolding—imposed by a flawed civilization—may finally collapse.
After three months, breakthroughs came, accompanied by liberation and joy. Curiously, there were two realizations—a hint, perhaps, that truth lay beyond words. But I was too young to heed it. I clung to the content of those insights, only later learning from a friend that I'd 'invented' ancient ideas: one a seed of objective idealism, the other of subjective idealism. The revelation wasn't original. What mattered was the experience itself. At first, I dismissed it and succumbed to the classic heresy of solitary seekers: the graphomaniac's vanity, mistaking rediscovery for genius. Unsurprisingly, the experience bore little fruit initially. For years, it lay dormant, useful only in moments of desperation.
In 1942, northwest of Stalingrad, I confronted sheer terror. My first battle had been fear-free, so I'd assumed courage came easily. But when tasked with a simple mission, I froze. A prior wound and shell shock—what I'd later call 'the mental trauma of injury'—resurfaced under bombardment. For thirty minutes, I lay paralyzed, wrestling with primal fear. As an intellectual, I observed my panic, marshaling reason to resist. Yet my sole victory was forcing myself to stay put; the fear remained, gnawing. Then, rifling through anti-fear arguments, I suddenly remembered: I'd faced the abyss of space and time without fear—why dread German planes? It was this naive thought that made the difference: my past conquest of metaphysical fear dissolved the physical terror. It vanished instantly, and never returned. Only much later did I articulate why it worked.
Ultimately, this experience matters not just intrinsically, but as a key to understanding far greater truths. Two decades later, when I encountered Zen Buddhism, its essence felt familiar. Zen cultivates metaphysical anguish to the brink of despair, then breaks through it—precisely what I'd done. That anguish stems from the mind's flawed architecture, which I'd already unmasked. This groundwork also illuminated other traditions, like Christianity: Why did God reveal Himself to Job, not his friends? Job's friends theologized flawlessly, burying God under their 'rightness.' Job raged, questioned incoherently, and teetered on despair. Yet it was in that raw struggle that his heart spoke—and God answered. Systematic theology obscures; desperation reveals...
Once again, reasoning—itself a form of the thread—accompanies spiritual experience. Moreover, it serves to descend the hierarchy of selves, illuminating even the basest animal self, namely the primal fight-or-flight response.
~ ~ ~
In the light of all of the above, readers might be curious to go through the following sketch of mine:
The Prophet Muhammad reportedly employed mubahala on several occasions to resolve religious disputes—challenging opponents to solemnly testify to their beliefs before God while inviting Divine wrath should those beliefs prove spiritually untenable. One naturally wonders what became of those who accepted this challenge.
Yet my greater interest lies elsewhere. For the disputants, this was ultimately a profound reality check: did they believe blindly, carried by religious inertia, or with conscious conviction rooted in direct spiritual experience or intellectual effort? We might reasonably assume those relying on mere tradition would quickly decline—wisely so, having only their self-preservation instinct to guide them.
More spiritually substantial individuals would prove harder cases, though I suspect even they hesitated to apply this ultimate test to abstract theological matters like Christ's divinity or the Trinity, preferring Islam's more concrete formulations. Essentially, mubahala probed the gnosiological depths of believers—their certainty of knowing—with fear of Divine punishment ensuring rigorous self-honesty. (For clarity, gnoseology examines what makes us feel we truly know something.)
This reveals a hierarchy of knowing: from blind faith, to evidence-based conviction, to that rare Divine knowledge so absolute it admits no doubt—what Hinduism terms nirvikalpa samadhi, where one's Divine self manifests with such force that all self-doubt dissolves. Unlike fanaticism—which often compensates for hidden uncertainties with aggressive certainty—genuine nirvikalpa carries the mark of true divinity: a noble synthesis where love and mercy ultimately temper even Divine justice.
Consider a modern parallel: would you stake your eternal fate on your deepest political or ideological convictions? "I support X position— damn me if I'm wrong." If you hesitate, that reveals something important about the nature of your belief. If not, it reveals something equally telling. This isn't about proving positions right or wrong, but about understanding how we know what we claim to know—perhaps the most revealing inquiry of all.
~ ~ ~
My goal is accomplished if readers are left with even a trace of gnoseological disquiet. If, conversely, someone feels profound inner quiet—that, too, is perfectly acceptable. I shall revisit these themes again toward the conclusion of this work. Before 'Methodology' begins, however, Needleman will once more accentuate the pivotal question of the current section: "How do we know that we know?":
...Our main point here, however, is that even to begin this 'training', this indispensable inner struggle, a preparation of the mind is necessary. Moral action is never automatic; it presupposes intention, free choice. And intention inevitably either begins or must pass through the mind. Sooner or later, the mind has to assent in order for any action to be free.
Of course, it may sometimes happen that our actions are right and good without our seeming to have made any decision whatever. But for most of us, apart from rare moments of great crisis and demand, when the whole of our inner being may rise up in a surge of intuitive will and moral force that simply overrides our everyday personality, such apparently spontaneous behavior may simply be automatic, conditioned behavior. It cannot be called moral. It is not what we wish for when we wish to be good.
For most of us, most of the time, the free assent of the mind is necessary in order for any action to be moral. And the free assent of the mind is enabled principally by ideas and logic. For most of us, and certainly for most of us born and raised in the modern world, shaped as it is by the ideal of scientific, i.e., mental, knowing, it is absolutely essential to examine the ethical and moral coloration of all that we call knowledge, both as a society and in our personal lives.
Do the contents of our minds support moral action? Do our ideas about nature, about the human self, about the universe, about history, language, the origins of religion, the human body – about time and space, war and peace— empower us to do—or even to know—what is good? Is our mind, with all its beliefs, opinions and 'certainties', moral, immoral or ethically irrelevant?
We are in front of a fundamental, but embarrassingly difficult nest of questions: What ideas and opinions actually inhabit our minds? How did they get there? What are they worth?
Consider the following picture of the contents of our mind. Imagine a large bric-a-brac shop that sells anything and everything brought into it. The place is crammed with old household objects and pieces of furniture, mostly scarred or broken and covered with dust, which the eager manager pompously refers to as 'antiques'. There are numerous small appliances—old radios, toasters, record players—which do not work and maybe even never have worked. There are old lamps with no shades and age-darkened lampshades with no lamps. There are glass cases full of 'jewelry'— mostly cheap, decades-old costume jewelry. Covering the walls are hundreds of paintings, ranging from gigantic, smeary landscapes that would require a truck to transport, to tiny miniatures consisting of wormy strokes of color that represent scenes of life or human faces only when one squints or maybe even shuts one's eyes entirely. And as for the thousands of dog-eared old books and magazines, phonograph records, old postcards, and framed photographs of movie stars or other people's family members, one has the impression of an abandoned mad-house or a dungeon once peopled by bored lunatics.
Such are the ideas, concepts, views and opinions that reside in our minds—ideas, views and opinions about anything and everything in the universe. No matter what the world presents to us, no matter who or what we meet in the course of our day, or what is said to us or even what or who glancingly passes by, the moment we attend to it, we instantly have an opinion about it, an idea about it, a 'point of view', as we sometimes pretentiously describe it. Our bric-a-brac mind is constantly serving us up its furnishings, pictures and appliances in all their disconnected, dusty glory. Yet very few, if any at all, of these ideas, views and opinions that color and shape our experience and our very lives have ever been examined and weighed as to their truth and worth. Very rarely, if ever, are we even aware of them. We are, perhaps, never aware that this or that passion or decision or anxiety or fear or hope or resolute action is not 'mine' at all, but actually belongs to some disconnected idea, view, or opinion that has taken up lodging in my mind and is actually doing my 'thinking' for me. It is not I who take this passionately held moral stance, let us say, and am ready to sacrifice my all for it—it is an appliance in my mind that feels like me, like I, only because my real I, my real self, has never stepped forward to look at it, examine it, and decide whether to keep it and use it...
In this bric-a-brac shop, however, one does occasionally come across some precious article—a beautiful old cameo hiding in a clutter of rhinestones and plastic pearls; the first edition of a great book; an exquisite Meissen statuette surrounded by a dozen bourgeois imitations; an antique Sarouk carpet, its regal splendor obscured amid a pile of cheap, machine-made 'Persian' rugs. Such are the profound ideas introduced into human life by far greater minds than our own – by men and women who had attained the ability to see the truth about man and the world, and who devoted themselves to passing on to future generations signs and indications of this truth and the path that leads to its realization in the life of mankind. But in our bric-a-brac minds even these great ideas lose their value—their moral power—because of their association with the cheap objects that are offered for sale throughout the shop.
Great ideas are never meant to enter the mind alone. They are always part of a tissue of ideas, an organic whole. No idea can exist alone. If an idea is not related to other ideas that altogether form the whole of a living teaching, it will inevitably become associated in a misleading and even dangerous way with imitation, 'bric-a-brac' ideas—the concepts, 'views' and opinions that now infest our minds.
We need to look at these two kinds of inhabitants of our mind: ideas that come from a higher source than our ordinary thought, and the concepts and opinions which are conditioned into us by the influence of education, society, media, and which are unconsciously and uncritically accepted as our own thoughts and views. We need to understand the power that our thoughts and opinions have to determine our ability to be good. That power is at least as important as being aware of the food we eat. Ideas and opinions and the perceptions, experiences, and impressions they allow us constitute the food of the mind. Our actions, that is, our moral health, are affected by the quality of this food we put into our mind no less than our physical health is affected by the quality of the food we put into our bodies...
Methodology
"So, pure attention is very focused. And such attention will absorb only what is worthy of being absorbed. Something that isn't worthy, pure attention will not absorb it. It won't look towards such things. It will be averted from such things on its own. Because it is so pure, it can't be corrupted by impure things. It won't go there."
Shri Mataji
Methodology as presented here is all about controlling and purifying attention, selfhood's currency of sorts. More poetically:
For attention is a kind of field of rambling mathematical dots;
The dots ramble over the body, emotions, feelings, and thoughts;
The dots, having rambled away, come back with a certain catch;
Attention is a coveted prize for various centers of force;
Robust frontal lobes are required for a good attention control;
Too dispersed an attention will certainly make you a fool;
And too much concentration will make you an idiot, too;
The line between foolishness and idiocy isn't so clearcut
God assembles the dots into a congruous kaleidoscope;
Only God assembles the dots into a congruous kaleidoscope;
One humbly offers attention to God for this very end;
This proves to be more beneficial than slaughtering a buffalo herd;
The sacrifice of attention is better than donating to church;
Attention may have something to do with skittish bosons of Higgs;
Controlling and refining attention is a primary duty of man;
Relaxing attention in God is by far the greatest of joys;
And now you can go back to your half-eaten buffalo wings.
The very concept of "attention" holds a duality—an interplay of the sun and the moon: from the sun, it derives the freedom to choose what to focus on; from the moon, the capacity to absorb and reflect what has been chosen.
A crucial point: the field of attention is finite. Once its 'particles' are absorbed, they cannot be summoned anew without first being withdrawn from where they were invested. Shifting focus demands reclamation of attention, not creation of new 'particles', so to say.
Moreover, before something can be attended, it must first be perceived. Here, the physical body may well anchor attention, providing an initial reference point. But subtler phenomena—ideas, worldviews, the very structures that shape attention—are harder to discern. These forces may align with or resist the current of the Way, quietly directing attention even as they elude its grasp.
More about discernment. Selfhood must strive to recognize as many of its manifestations as possible—this awareness fosters differentiation, rendering attention more mobile, flexible, and ultimately, more receptive to enlightenment. This is basically why this work provides such a detailed portrait of selfhood, spanning from the animal self to the Divine: by identifying traces of different selves within oneself, one can—to some degree—detach from these limited forms. If the Way wills it, such detachment may release particles of attention, allowing higher harmonies to come into play.
What might these manifestations look like in a religious framework? The animal self, for instance, might express itself through obedience driven by fear of punishment—though, to a point, such fear may be justified. The owner self, meanwhile, will cling to tradition due to emotional or material investment, while the social self will manifest as love for fellow believers, often shadowed by disregard or disdain for those outside the fold.
For clarity, I will refer to this process—releasing particles of attention and their subsequent enlightenment within the field of the Way—as "spiritual transcendence." Readers will now be offered a passage from Needleman's Why Can't We Be Good?, where he speaks of "thinking together". In my framework, this is precisely an example of spiritual transcendence—a dissolution of individual selfhood into a higher communal unity:
LIFE WITHOUT ETHICS?
I don't remember in which class I first tried it. It could have been any one of them—the introductory course in philosophy and religion or the Plato seminar or the advanced undergraduate course on Emerson and Thoreau or perhaps the course called "Modern Religious Thought". I remember only that I was trying to introduce the general subject of ethics and that I was operating under the assumption that everyone in the class more or less understood the meaning of the word and that everyone had his or her own personal experience to draw on in order to think about it. And so, when I asked for examples of ethical dilemmas or conflicts from the students' own lives (without their going into too much personal detail), I was bewildered by the fact that not only did no one offer to speak, but that no one even seemed to understand what I was talking about. It even seemed that they had no concrete idea of what the word "ethics" meant!
How was this possible? Obviously, such situations had occurred in their lives, as they do in everyone's life—situations where one is painfully obliged to choose a course of action without being sure whether it is morally right or wrong; or where one knows what is right, but is strongly inclined to act otherwise; or where there is sharp disagreement between oneself and another person about the good and the bad in an urgent life situation. So why had these students become uncharacteristically tongue-tied? It was not as if I were asking them to divulge intimate secrets—I was asking only for generalities. What was their difficulty? Did they really not recognize the ethical dimension of their lives?
Suddenly, I began remembering certain things about my students. Over the years it had been like this: We would approach the subject of ethics, of good and evil, of right and wrong, and almost always they would speak of whether something made them "feel good" or made them "feel bad," or "feel guilty." Not whether or not they were guilty, but only whether or not they felt guilty. Not whether it was good or bad, but only whether it made them feel good or bad.
I had not paid much attention to this difference of language. Oh yes, I was always struck by the almost universal moral relativism of the young men and women that I tended to come in touch with. As in many other parts of our modern world, it is so much the fashion to deny the existence of absolutes in the ethical sphere that anyone who dares even to ask seriously about this possibility is immediately branded as naive or fanatical. Who's to say what's good or bad, right or wrong? What's good in one place or for one person may be bad in another place or for another person: these are the 'ethical' certainties of our modernistic era, and so many of our children— and almost all students like mine—simply accept without any second thought that all morality is relative to time, place, ethnicity, religion, social class, nationality, and so on. This moral relativism is not ever in question, and many are the teachers and instructors who drill this point of view into them with a fervid dogmatism that easily rivals the dogmatism of any religious fundamentalist.
That much I understood about my students' opinions and beliefs concerning moral values. But what I hadn't seen until now was the possibility that, partly because of this fixed relativistic mindset, they had never actually experienced, as such, the genuinely ethical element in human life! Or, rather, because they obviously did face choices and demands over and over again, as we all do, involving honesty and lying; the keeping and breaking of promises; stealing; injuring others; breaking and obeying rules, laws, and principles; self-sacrifice and self-gain; cheating; honoring or betraying trust—although they obviously faced situations involving these elements, such situations were in their consciousness immediately translated into matters simply of what "feels good" or what "feels bad".
These were my troubled thoughts the day that I first tried the exercise in question. My mind was reeling. I badly wanted to go somewhere and think more calmly about what I seemed to be seeing about my students. I wanted to think more carefully, more contemplatively about it. It was as though a powerful new vein of reflection about all our lives had suddenly opened up: it was now no longer a question only of correct or flawed philosophical beliefs and opinions about ethics, but of the existence or absence of actual ethical experience. Was the experience of the ethical momentously disappearing from our world, like some great endangered natural species?
I could not, however, go somewhere and reflect. I was obliged to continue with the class, and when I did—acting almost out of desperation because I was so unsettled by the apparent paucity of ethical experience in these young men and women—it led eventually to what was for me a revelation about the real causes of ethical conflict in human relationships. And about what, precisely, we must work at in our mutual human relations. It led me to understand, if only in the rehearsal theater of the mind, what is needed in order to call down into our threatened common life a genuine contact, however preliminary, with the reconciling force of non-egoistic love.
TURTLES"Take an ethical problem that none of us is able to solve, a problem that our whole society, our whole world, is unable to solve," I said, as I started roaming around the classroom. "Take abortion—a completely intractable ethical problem. Logically speaking, each side has its uniquely compelling arguments and its uniquely good reasons—to the point that this very issue of abortion seems at the present moment to be the chief representative of the many-aspected metaphysical contradiction rooted in the fact of modern society, with its anomalous values, existing and seeking to perpetuate itself within the bosom of the great universal laws of nature and organic life that often oppose these anomalous values. In any case, no rational human being on either side of this question of abortion is entitled to just dismiss the other side. At the same time, nowhere, even among the most thoughtful individuals, is there more intense passion, more ferocity, more 'certainty' on each side."
Heads nodded in agreement.
"Our society simply has no generally acceptable solution to the ethical dilemma of abortion," I said as I returned to the front of the room.
I sat down at the metal table.
"So here is a test for us. This is ethics. We are in front of a painful and momentous question of right and wrong. How shall we try to think—to think, and not just wrangle—about it?"
The class remained quiet as I carefully explained the ground rules of the exercise and the standard of listening it demanded of everyone.
I then asked the class: "Who feels strongly that women should have the right to abortion?"
As I expected, almost all hands immediately went up. There were about fifty students in the class.
"Who volunteers to speak for this point of view?"
Slowly, one after the other, and to my surprise, all but three or four hands went down. I attributed this to "stage fright," but later I understood that something much deeper was involved.
"And who will speak for the opposite point of view – against abortion?"
Not a single hand went up. This was not too surprising, considering the makeup of the whole student body and the general political temper of San Francisco. But it was disappointing in terms of the experiment I wanted to try.
"Is there no one who thinks that abortion is wrong?"
I detected a slight twitching in three or four students.
"If you did feel this, would you be afraid to admit it?"
The twitching increased for a moment and then stopped.
"Well," I said, "that means we can't try the exercise."
At this, Janet Holcomb, seated to my right against the tall windows, said that, although she was pro-choice, she would be willing to argue for the other side for the sake of the experiment.
"No, it has to be a sincerely held opinion," I said. "Both sides have to believe in the rightness of their view with equal conviction. The forces on each side have to be equal and opposite—as they are in the world, and in our lives."
I waited, but no one came forth. I was sure there were one or two who held the view that abortion is morally wrong, but they had retreated into an intimidated silence. In fact, a gray pall had descended upon the class, a hollow silence. The men, in particular, seemed frozen.
"Why don't we take another topic?" sang out Elihu Andrews, a broad-shouldered, sweet-voiced black man.
"All right," I said. "What?"
After a few seconds, one proposal after another rose to the surface, looked around, and then immediately sank back out of sight into the gray silence.
"The war in Iraq," said Bernardo Di Giorgio.
"Gay marriage," said Agnes Huong.
"Globalization."
"Israel and Palestine."
But the hollow silence continued—an atmosphere of dull withdrawal. I was looking at fifty turtles peering out from deep inside their shells. Why? Why were these ordinarily vibrant and even volatile students now so passive?
Ah, but then one of the turtles stuck out her head and softly said: "Partial-birth abortion!"
PASSION AND ATTENTIONIt was like watching a black-and-white movie suddenly turn Technicolor. Immediately the air became electric. Hands flew up like startled birds. It was astonishing. Everyone began talking—to me, to each other, to themselves. Arguments were already starting—men and women alike. Here, obviously, on this issue, was where the white heat of the problem of abortion had moved. Was it not now, at least temporarily, at that point in time, one of the chief points of concentration of the moral crisis of our whole world?
At this point there was no problem finding volunteers for the exercise. The only problem was which students to choose from among the many who were offering themselves on each side of the issue. I had to decide fairly quickly. Should I take a man and a woman? Or should it be two women? Should it be seen as a 'woman's issue'? Or was it more deeply true that it was first and foremost a human issue?
But why even look at it like that? Or, rather, to look at it like that meant to choose the participants solely on the basis of both the urgency of their concern for human life and welfare, and the intensity of their desire for the truth, wherever it might lead. What was needed was passionate conviction existing side by side with the willingness to step back from one's passions without intending or even wishing either to deny or to justify them. My God! Here, right away, in the theater of the mind, the fundamental ethical imperative was already rising—namely, the willingness in the midst of emotion, in the midst of fear or anger or craving, to try to free oneself from total and complete 'identification' or 'absorption' by one's inevitable and automatically arising passions. Granted, it was only in the rehearsal theater of the mind—but wasn't that the whole point of this exercise: to study, within specially supportive conditions, the possibility and the laws of the struggle to be good, a struggle that otherwise seems such an impossibility in the concrete, complicated conditions of everyday life?
But was I being presumptuous in assuming I was able to make such a determination about the motivations of my students? Was I foolish to imagine that I could see into them in this way?
In fact, and surprisingly enough, it was not at all difficult. There was simply no mistaking the presence of this mysterious quality in them: the simultaneous existence of passionate conviction and equally intense self-questioning: a conviction that was not 'certainty'—that is, it was not fanaticism; and a self-questioning that was not 'self-doubt'—that is, it was not timidity.
It is not possible for me accurately to characterize this quality in words. Hovering above or within the powerful contradiction between their personal conviction and their inner self-questioning there existed another, a third, quality. It showed itself, if I may put it this way, in the atmosphere that embraced them, that gave a certain softening glow to their skin, and which worked a manifold subtle contouring of their features, a contouring that made them as beautiful, present and normal as an Egyptian Fayum portrait. And it expressed itself physically, this quality, in the fact that they were suddenly moving with the integrity of little children—the body and mind in one piece. I knew whom to choose.
It was two women—Janice Eberhart and Arlene Harris, both sitting in the front row.
Janice was in her early twenties, slight and quick as a small bird, with abundant henna-red hair that she wore in a braid behind her. She had the habit of sitting in her chair with her head bent forward, her chin touching her fingertips, which were pressed together as though in a posture of prayerful supplication—a posture she held tightly when she was trying to formulate a thought with special sincerity or logical precision.
Arlene Harris was a black woman whose age was difficult to determine—probably in her mid-thirties. Her skin was intensely, luminously dark, as were her large, steady eyes. A tall, raw-boned woman with close-cropped hair and high, wide cheekbones, she would occasionally come to class all smiles, wearing a blazingly beautiful Nigerian boubou that made her seem nothing less than an African tribal queen. She was a straight-A student.
Today she was dressed in her more customary crisp jeans and cardigan sweater.
I moved two chairs to either side of the metal table and motioned for the two women to come forward and take their places. "Remember," I said to them, "you must be rigorous about this. The other person must repeat, not necessarily in the same words, the exact gist and meaning of what you have said. Only then is she entitled to respond. It will sometimes be tempting to settle for less, but don't do it. It has to be a truly fair statement of what you have said, without anything essential left out."
Then, as the two women were taking their places and turning their chairs to face each other, I said to the whole class,
"You have an important role in this exercise. You have to be quiet and very attentive; you have to listen very carefully. The people in front need to be supported by the attention in the whole room. The exercise will not succeed without that."
THE SHOCK OF THE QUESTION"The subject is partial-birth abortion," I said, still facing the class. "And just so everyone clearly understands what is at issue, will someone please define it?"
A man at the back of the class said something not very clearly, and immediately four or five people were calling out their definitions. Up front, Janice, who was taking the "pro-life" position in the exercise, sternly offered a precise definition. Speaking with some emotional difficulty, and with her palms pressed together and the tips of her fingers touching her chin, she said,
"Partial birth abortion is a procedure . . . where the doctor delivers the baby . . . up to the point where only the head remains inside the womb . . . and he then punctures the skull . . . and removes the brain."
No one moved. The clock on the wall suddenly seemed to be ticking very loudly.
After a long moment, I motioned to Janice to go on and begin the dialogue. Without a moment's hesitation, she started, speaking—as has now become a habit among many younger women—with many of her assertions curling up at the end as though they were questions:
"I am against partial-birth abortion. To begin with, I think it has to be understood why the woman has decided so late that she doesn't want to have the pregnancy? There are cases where continuing the pregnancy might be dangerous to her health – and that's where I might say there's a little bit of room. But if it's not a matter of her own safety, her own life, then I would say that there are a lot of families who need children and can't have them and who could adopt them—it's not as if the child would be unwanted. Of course, to do that causes terrible emotional turmoil, but it's going to be just as emotionally damaging . . . in a different way . . . to abort the child as to have the child and let it go. It's still . . . I mean, some child could have been around and is gone now."
She continued, pushing one thought out on top of the other:
"Sometimes the child is called a fetus, but we can't really say whether or not it is a living child? And I think calling it a fetus just smears the issue? And makes it easier to accept. And, look, suppose when a child is born early, a premature child, and they would try to save the baby's life . . . but suppose the mother decides she doesn't want the baby, so there is a period where you just call it a fetus? And you can kill it.
"And I've seen videos where it is done and they take the camera up close so you can look at it and it's . . . alive! It looks like . . . a small child!"
I interrupted her.
"Very good," I said, in a professorial manner that I hoped could keep everyone's attention mainly on the intellectual content of what was being said, and because I did not want to start the experiment with an overlarge demand on Arlene's memory. "Obviously, there's much more to be said; hold it for your next turn. Now listen to Arlene. And remember—she must give a fair summary of what you've said."
Arlene began speaking in a flat, matter-of-fact way. "It seems that your main concern is that the woman opts to abort this baby so late in her pregnancy. She should have made the decision earlier. But there are so many families who want to adopt children and they could have the child and raise it with the proper care." Arlene paused. "Is that right?" she asked with uncharacteristic hesitancy.
Janice quickly and warmly replied, "Yes, that's right."
"No," I said to Janice. "There was more. She's leaving out something. Say what Arlene left out."
Janice obeyed, repeating what she had said—but this time with much less emotion—about the baby being alive and about the hypocrisy sometimes involved in calling it a "fetus."
Arlene then repeated that part.
"Are you now satisfied?" I said to Janice. "Has Arlene given a fair and complete statement?" Janice nodded yes. "Then let's proceed."
I motioned to Arlene.
With her hands coolly crossed in front of her on the folded-down writing surface of the lecture-room chair, Arlene leaned forward. "It would never be something that I myself would do," she said, "but I feel that it is a choice that every woman should have, even if it is . . ." She searched for a word "not correct." She turned her steady dark eyes to me for a moment and then continued in a curious monotone: "I'm thinking of it from the point of view of the needs of the planet. There are so many people in the world, so little space and so little food—it is all out of control. If this were a poor Third World country, another nation, it wouldn't be a question at all. They don't have the option of having such a procedure. But here in America, where we consume way beyond our share of the world's resources, we have the ability to have such a procedure. So in America even though abortion of this kind might not be morally correct, it's a choice a woman should have."
Speaking now smoothly and effortlessly, Janice replied:
"So you're saying that it's a choice that all women should have, that it's not something you would personally choose, but that all women should be able to decide for themselves and that it would be especially important now, especially in America, because we have such an overpopulation issue in the world and such an issue of resources not being equally distributed to everybody that the choice is, maybe, not good, but maybe makes sense in relation to the whole society we have today."
Pause. "Is that a fair summary?" I asked Arlene. She nodded yes, but weakly.
"Are you sure?" She said nothing.
I began to detect something going on under the surface of this suspiciously calm exchange between the two women. In most other cases when I have tried this experiment, with issues involving politics, racism, religion—as well as with this general question of abortion—the students' struggle to step back from their passions was much more visible. Here this struggle had appeared only at the very beginning with Janice's definition of partial-birth abortion. After that, it had settled into an apparently lukewarm conversation and I began to wonder if I had paired the wrong people.
THE MORAL POWER OF LISTENINGBut this was all about to change. It was about to change because of what always happens if this exercise is sincerely tried primarily as an exercise in the study of the moral power of listening. What may have seemed for a few moments to be a lukewarm conversation was actually the manifestation of a totally new effort of attention, each participant working in an unfamiliar way to listen carefully to the other without reaction, without judgment, without anxiety about winning or losing. And this mutual struggle for impartial attention brought about one of the most beautiful, visible results of this exercise—it gave both participants the sustained experience of intentionally separating themselves from their opinions, rather than simply holding them back like chained dogs. Moreover, this effort of genuinely stepping back—inwardly—from their own emotionally driven opinions in order to attend to the other person was deeply sensed by everyone in the class, even though they might not have been able to explain what was so unusually gripping about an apparently modest, quiet little discussion.
"Arlene," I asked, "are you sure you're willing to accept that Janice has given a fair summary of what you said? What about the matter of Third World countries?"
"Yes, that's right," said Arlene matter-of-factly, "she did leave that out."
Before Arlene could then repeat that part of what she had said, Janice jumped in.
"Okay," said Janice, "here it is: in Third World countries they really don't have the luxury or choice to have an abortion or not. But because in America we have so many things and so much money—which we take from the rest of the world—we are free to make these decisions."
"Is that fair enough now?" I asked Arlene. She said yes. "All right," I said to Janice, "now give your response. Take your time." She needed no time at all.
"Okay," she said, cheerfully, "in Third World countries, where abortion is not an option, mostly women do not have birth control and so have many children that they can't take care of—and it's true we don't want to recreate that situation in our society where we have so many resources available. So I do agree that we have the ability to make that choice where other countries don't have that option. But I'm wondering if just because we're so powerful it's okay for us to have that choice? Like—the more powerful we get, the more choices we're allowed to have?—no matter whether they're ultimately for the good of people or not? And I wonder if there are other solutions to the problem of late abortions that people are not considering just because the choice of abortion seems so readily available here? Like in other countries maybe they would be obliged to figure out a way to do something positive with a negative situation—whereas here we sort of look for the quick fix out of it—like a magic pill to make it go away? And that attitude may be a block that is difficult to correct—and so maybe this issue won't be resolved for a long time, because that attitude is everywhere in American society."
And now Arlene: "She says that here in America we have so much power, and the more power we have the more choices are available to us and people have the ability to make these decisions. But because it's so easy to make these choices, people are being less than resourceful in finding other options that . . . that preserve . . . that are . . . better?" Arlene stopped. Something was happening.
"Are you all following this?" I asked the class, in order to allow some space in the process that was taking place between the two women.
Janice bowed her chin against her fingertips, nodded her head, and stated that this was a fair summary of what she had just said. At this, Arlene suddenly sat up very straight, tall and broad-shouldered in her chair. Her steady eyes glowed.
"Reply," I said to her, almost in a whisper.
"I agree with Janice," she said, "Americans as a whole are morally lazy and if abortion was not so readily available it would make people think more about it. And maybe that would be a good thing, a very good thing!" She waited a moment and then in a strong voice:
"But I still think the option should be available. It's just not right," she said, her voice rising, "to tell someone that they can't make a choice with their body. There's something going on inside of them and they should have control over that! Now, I'm not saying that you can never tell a person what not to do; there are complex issues involving the definition of fetus and about people being born or not being born and so forth—I'm not going into that right now. So, yes, certainly there are things you have to say no to. It's wrong to kill someone, obviously. But it is also wrong to tell a woman what to do with her body and this is what the dominant forces in our society have not yet understood. Me, the woman, the rights of my body, my rights . . ."
Here Arlene stopped. Again, the ticking of the clock became audible.
I turned to the class: "Please notice," I said, "that a new point, a new issue has just been introduced into the exchange."
A MOVEMENT TOWARD CONSCIENCE
But it was more than just a new point, it was a new and deeper part of the psyche that was emerging out of Arlene's mind and instincts, and it instantly affected everyone. Right or wrong in any usual sense was not the issue. The issue was the human heart, one's own self emerging, one's own feeling, one's own thought. Arlene's words had new authority, the authority that comes from the beginning of the movement toward conscience. Toward conscience, no more, but also no less. The beginning, no more but also no less. She was struggling for her conscience. Years of creating conditions in which I was able to demand of young men and women that they try to think honestly had sensitized me, perhaps excessively, to this element in them, this moment when they cast aside both the 'acceptable' and the superficially innovative and began to speak simply from themselves, right or wrong. When this happened, it was never violent, never strident, and it was always full of quiet electricity.
Arlene continued: "This body remains mine until the day I die and during that time it must not be legislated with undue purpose. This is not just about fetuses, this is about me and every woman who wants her freedoms. We have been struggling for centuries for the rights that men enjoy. In Roe the Supreme Court decided that it was the parent who deserved the highest level of constitutional protection. This is what I'm focusing on. Women need to be respected enough to have the same rights as men, the right to decide what's best for our lives, best for our bodies, to be seen as equals, to be treated as equals. Of course, partial-birth abortion is a nightmare, but do the men making the laws understand the nightmare of unwanted pregnancy as it sometimes unfolds in the course of a woman's pregnancy? Have they themselves ever menstruated? Ever feared their own pregnancy? Have they ever had a uterus or had a Pap smear or a cervical exam? Have they ever borne children or felt one grow inside of them? Do they know what it's like for a woman who finds herself terrified and alone in her decision to abort a pregnancy? Who has no options that protect her health and who feels forced to take matters into her own hands? How can they propose to legislate something they will never understand? How can they make rules about my body, who have never lived in a woman's body? . . . and never really include the opinions and influences of most women in their decisions?"
Janice, still in the posture of a supplicant, kept her head bowed, her palms pressed together, her chin just touching the tips of her fingers. Only one thing had changed: her eyes were now tightly closed as she listened with great concentration to every word Arlene spoke.
What was now happening was something that sooner or later takes place every time I have tried this exercise, and every time it is like a miracle. It takes place when the deeper feelings begin to emerge—not the agitated emotional outbursts we all know only too well, but the deeper passions of the emerging conscience. The "miracle"—though in fact it is actually lawful—is that the stronger and more deeply felt the passions of conscience are, the more an individual also quietly witnesses him or herself—that is, the more dynamically calm the individual becomes. And this act of stepping back within oneself then spreads or echoes itself in the other partner of the dialogue, and also, to some extent, in the students in the class. Just as in our mutual relations with one another the agitation of emotionalism tends to evoke agitation in response, so too can the steadiness of attention that is the inner companion of essential moral feeling evoke the same state in one's neighbor.
In the class all heads were now turned toward Janice. How would she respond to this powerful statement by Arlene?
With her eyes remaining closed, Janice summarized as follows:
"Women should have the choice to do what they want with their bodies, just the same as men. And in women the fetus inside them falls under that jurisdiction. And there has to be a definition of what is wrong that we all understand and agree on. And therefore we have to accept abortion—late-term abortions have to be allowed under the principle that all people have the right to do what they wish to with their own bodies."
"Is that a fair summary?" I asked Arlene. Of course, it was and it wasn't. The content was "accurate," but Arlene's passion was absent in Janice's account, inevitably and justly so—justly all the more because the same quality of feeling was arising in Janice as well, although it was about to express itself in another form. And I can say without any hesitation that the feeling each woman was experiencing about the issue of abortion was, without their naming it to themselves, accompanied and balanced, or rather, in a strange way enhanced by another equally deep essential passion, another equally deep harbinger of conscience: namely, the wish for truth, wherever it leads. The love of truth. One has to see it to believe it, to know what it really is like. The love of truth is not what we believe it is when we start the process of thought and dialogue. The ordinary intellect alone cannot really love truth. It can be "interested" in truth, but what it really loves and serves is usually something else, something not so beautiful in us. As Socrates shows through the genius of Plato's art, the love of truth can appear only when it has to be paid for inwardly, only when one comes upon the resistance of one's "own" entrenched opinions. When one comes upon this resistance and still presses on, abandoning the attachment to one's own thoughts, an inner action is taking place which Socrates presents as a foretaste of "dying." The true philosopher, he taught, studies death and dying through the act of sacrificing attachment to an "important" thought as it is occurring within one's own mind.
SOMETHING EXCEEDINGLY FINE
And now Janice, her eyelids fluttering and then opening wide, turned her head toward Arlene and began her response. It was obvious to everyone that "something," something exceedingly fine, was now passing between these two women.
"Arlene has very clearly brought out one of the main points in this whole question," she said, looking directly at Arlene, but keeping her hands still pressed together in front of her. "Is the fetus part of a woman's body, or is it a separate entity inside the woman? And . . . we do have rights, but also responsibilities over our bodies. But I think there's a different kind of responsibility we have toward children, our own children. And I wonder if we really understand the difference between the two kinds of responsibility—and even what the word 'responsibility' means? So that if I have a child—I mean, if you get to the third term and a woman decides for whatever reason that she doesn't want to continue, then the question is: has she been irresponsible with her own body or irresponsible with another . . . body, somebody else's. Like when does the responsibility of motherhood take hold? I think that's the question and I think people sort of blur it off when they say, well that's a fetus and what does that have to do with motherhood—there's no maternal instinct, there's none of that.
"Of course to say that motherhood or maternal instinct doesn't exist—is obviously wrong. But the question is when does it start? When does there actually come to be this relationship between a mother and her child? And I've known people who have had miscarriages and they feel this bond was severed; so when did the bond start? And that is, I think, a matter of taking responsibility for something else and not just your own body . . ."
Janice stopped in mid-sentence. Slowly and uncharacteristically, she placed her hands on her knees and quietly looked at Arlene. Arlene, for her part, also assumed an uncharacteristic posture, though the change was more subtle than Janice's. Her broad, proud shoulders gently relaxed and rounded themselves like folding wings. Her luminous black eyes held steady.
The students in the class, wondering who was going to speak next, were patiently turning their heads back and forth. For a moment, I was tempted to say something in order to break the silence. But just as I started, I realized how foolish that would have been. Whatever it was that was passing between the two women was becoming more and more palpable. It was something very fine and very strong—the word "sacred" would not be wholly inappropriate. And seeing that, sensing that, I suddenly remembered that it was this "something" that was the whole point of the exercise. I wondered to myself: how could I have forgotten that—even for a moment?
Finally, Arlene responded: "What I hear you saying . . . is that we're drawing a distinction between the woman's responsibility for her own body and the woman's responsibility for the body that she's growing inside of her. Saying that we have to look at where her responsibility for her own body ends and where it begins for her as a mother. Saying she has to decide when does it become her child."
Without waiting for me to say anything, Janice leaned forward and spoke directly to Arlene—in a strangely resonant soft whisper that was distinctly heard all the way in the back of the class. "That's right," she said.
LOVE AND LISTENING
There now took place what was in its way one of the most dramatic events I have ever witnessed in a classroom. Arlene just sat there, apparently thinking of how to respond. She just sat there without saying a word. No one was at all inclined to break the silence. A process was taking place within Arlene that was completely unknown to any of the students. Was she desperately struggling to find a counter-argument? Maybe... and maybe not. Was she feeling 'defeated'? 'Bested'? There was no sign of that at all. Yet it was clear she was struggling.
What she finally said took us all by surprise.
She said only a few words:
"I can't really argue with that," she said, almost in a whisper.
Everyone caught their breath while the words seemed just to hang in the air. I could see Janice ready to rise out of her chair, perhaps to embrace Arlene. The class did not know what to do. It seemed that not even Arlene understood the change that had taken place in her and, through her, in the rest of us.
Perhaps because I had witnessed something like this before, in other kinds of conditions, I saw very clearly that for a moment Arlene had submitted herself to another quality of energy within herself. At the same time, I sensed the reflection of this inner action also taking place within myself. I sensed in myself a reflection of her inner freedom, a taste of the love of truth—truth not as words, but as a conscious energy that binds contraries together, that binds people together, truth as love. And it is because genuinely moral action in another person evokes in ourselves a taste of our own inner possibility,—it is because of that that we cannot help but feel genuine respect and love for a good man or woman. Her good action evokes a reflection of that action in ourselves. We ourselves become good when we sense another's goodness. And in that moment we see that we wish for that; we cannot help but wish for that. We are built for that.
Of course, special conditions are necessary in order for this force to pass between and within people. In the usual inner and outer conditions of our everyday life, our egoism either cannot allow such perceptions to enter, or else we are fooled by artificial goodness in another, or else—in the end—we simply schizophrenically bifurcate ourselves, and our down-deep love of the good goes into hiding while in our surface personality we are 'good' only when it serves our interests; and in our mind we become either sentimentally naive about ourselves and others or nightmarishly cynical (or 'realistic') about the way of the world. Or, even worse—and of course very common—the upsurge of evil and brutality in man evokes in us the same mysterious forces of subjective fear and hatred that are the sources of human evil always and everywhere.
We are speaking now of a specific moral triumph in and through this one woman, Arlene, and in and through these two women thinking together and working to listen to each other. The class had broken into confused chatter—Had Arlene 'lost' the 'debate'? But if so, why did everyone feel a victory had taken place? . . . with no 'loser'? Why did everyone feel so elated? Why was there such a celebratory mood in the classroom? With absolutely no sense of anyone or any opinion being 'right' or 'wrong'?
Yes, it was 'only' in the rehearsal theater of the mind, but what a moment it was! And yes, it wouldn't last for much longer than this moment and it might not influence the actions of anyone's life, but what a glimpse of human possibility, what a glimpse of the awesome demand of what we all too easily speak of as ethics! Such a moment—call it, if you like, a moment of moral mysticism, or a moment of communal moral power—not only brings the meaning of ethics closer to us, it also, and equally, shows us how far from the good we actually are in our everyday life and in our everyday state of being, in our everyday mutual relations.
"We can go on with this in another way," I said, finally.
"Tell us," I said, speaking to both women, "what are your observations about this process of listening? What struck you about it—either about the work of listening, or about how you're now feeling about your point of view on this issue? Is your position, your opinion, in any way changed? In what way?"
"It's a very powerful exercise," said Arlene, her voice still reflecting her vibrant state. "If you have to repeat precisely what the other person has said it means you have to listen very carefully."
"And what does that do to you, what does that mean, what does that act require of you?"
"It demands that I focus," said Arlene. "It means I have to really understand what the other person is saying . . ." Arlene's usually steady eyes were drifting toward Janice. It was clear that although she was addressing me, her heart was with Janice.
"And it really changes my perspective."
"How so?"
"I really can't hold on so tightly to what I believe if I'm constantly releasing it in order to listen to what she's saying."
At that I nearly lost my composure. "Fantastic!" I said. "We go through our whole lives getting into discussions and arguing about this or that—and never, not once, do we ever listen to each other like that!"
I then turned to Janice, whose hands were now completely relaxed on her lap and whose look was riveted on Arlene.
"Although Arlene was the one who gave way," I said to her, "I'm sure you must have been experiencing the same kind of thing that she was."
Janice looked at me and for a moment she started to bring her hands together, but then softly dropped them back onto her lap.
"Absolutely," she said. "Obviously, we both got to say a lot more than you usually get to say in a discussion, but I found myself listening to a person, not to an argument . . ."
Again I excitedly broke in:
"This is entirely the most important point in the whole exercise. Repeat what you just said!"
"I was listening to a person, not just to an argument."
I turned to the class. "Do you hear that?" I said. "Do you understand what they discovered? You can go on disagreeing forever with another person. You can have a point of view that is 180 degrees different. You can be as passionate about your opinion as you want. But as long as you recognize and feel that you are listening to a person, there will be no violence, there will be no war."
After a long silence, I said to the women: "Thank you. You were both wonderful."
Arlene stood up to go back to the rows, but Janice didn't move. "But wait," she said, bringing her palms together once again and lowering her chin to the tips of her fingers. "What happens when it comes down to actually making a decision? Actually having to choose what to do? What then? It's all well and good to have a discussion about this, but what about when you actually have to act?"
The class suddenly became quiet as stone. Arlene stood by her chair in the front row by the window and did not sit down.
The professor—myself—is also quiet as stone. The question, the one question, has descended into the classroom and hovers in the air like a great winged life. Due in large measure to what has just gone on in the class, the one question of how actually to live enters now into everyone equally and evokes in everyone an 'essence-feeling' that is somewhere between wonder and despair. Wonder as when one looks up at the immensity of a sky laced with an infinity of starry worlds; despair as when one honestly confronts the course of mankind's criminal life on earth along with the seemingly intractable chaos and moral weakness of one's own individual manifestations in life.
~ ~ ~
In his brilliant writing, Needleman also talks about spiritual transcendence as arising from mere watching oneself and acknowledging whatever comes one's way:
...At the conclusion of the next class, I began by referring to the passage in the Meditations, already cited, where Marcus asks himself to "stop letting the guiding principle within you be tugged around like a marionette by the strings of selfish impulses" and also several comments by both Marcus and Epictetus about the power that minor annoyances have over us.
I said to the class: "In addition to your reading assignment" (we were already coming to the end of the Meditations), "I would like to invite you to try something. This is purely voluntary. It is not required. The exercise is this. For the next two days, until the class meets again, try to experiment with a new kind of relationship to the things that annoy you—starting, if you like, when you leave the classroom in a few minutes. The exercise is to simply step back in yourself and observe your state of being annoyed or irritated. Don't try to do anything about it. Don't try to get rid of it or justify it or judge it to be good or bad. Just observe it and whatever you can see that is connected with it. Step back from it without trying to change it or escape from it. Do you understand?"
A few heads—not many—nodded yes, but without much enthusiasm. Apparently, many of them felt that being aware of annoyances was something that more or less happens with them all the time anyway. "For example, " I continued, "say you spot a parking place, but someone else slips in ahead of you. Or you are standing in line at a checkout counter and the person ahead of you is buying maybe nothing more than a pack of chewing gum and making a complicated payment with his credit card." They laughed, and their interest was being awakened. "Just observe that you are annoyed. Step back from it within yourself. Every day, every hour, sometimes every minute, things annoy us, irritate us, so there's no lack of occasions to practice this 'philosophical' exercise'.
I was tempted to let it go at that, especially as the hour was over. But when I realized that they were now sitting quietly with their eyes wide open, and that there was no looking at watches or at the clock on the wall and no closing of notebooks or packing up of book bags, I said a few words more.
"In this way," I said, "it may be possible to try something related in a preliminary way to the ancient practice of philosophy, a practice about which Socrates becomes silent at the end of the dialogues, but which, across the centuries, may have been orally transmitted, until through the slave Epictetus it reached the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
"I'm suggesting that you treat it simply as an invitation, an experiment.
"And we'll be trying it, too," I added, gesturing toward my assistant, who was sitting by the window.
With that I dismissed the class.
That was on a Tuesday. As I often did, I drove back home with my friend and teaching assistant, John Piazza. A man in his late twenties, John had done his undergraduate work in philosophy and was now completing his postgraduate training in Classics. He was a great help to me in many ways, with his finely trained academic mind and his feeling for the spirit of ancient philosophy. In addition, his knowledge of classical Greek helped me keep my explanations of the texts grounded in historical reality. But of paramount importance, his vision of the role of real philosophical questions in the moral development of young people coincided exactly with my own.
On our drives home we usually discussed the day's class in preparation for the next class, but today we both spoke very little—as though instinctively acknowledging that some unknown possibility, potentially of great value, may have been introduced into the context of academic philosophy, and not wanting to cast a net of speculation over it in advance of discovering its results.
"OH, I FORGOT!"
I began the Thursday class by discussing some abstract metaphysical ideas, intentionally avoiding any mention of the exercise. I wanted to see if the students themselves would bring it up; I was trying at all costs to keep the exercise as purely voluntary as possible. In a short while, however, after elaborating a little on the Stoic concept of the logos—keeping the discussion away from the practical aspects of Marcus's text—a natural silence appeared and I picked up the book. "By the way," I said, turning the pages as though looking for a particular passage, "did anyone try the exercise?" I looked up and saw a great many blank faces.
I put down the book. Only one hand went up—and, after a few seconds, a second hand went halfway up.
Actually, I was not surprised. I set the book aside and walked around the desk and stood closer to the class.
"Now," I said, "we are in front of something important. Answer honestly—remember, you are not being graded for this—how many of you simply forgot about the exercise?"
About a dozen hands slowly went up, one after the other, followed by another ten—and then almost everyone else raised their hands. I was now looking at two students (or, more exactly, one and a half students) who remembered the exercise and about forty who admitted to forgetting it—and about four or five who were not admitting anything.
"The fact that almost all of you forgot all about this exercise—despite the intense interest you showed after it was described to you in class two days ago—this fact needs to be correctly interpreted and not just brushed aside or covered over. The fact is that you, we, all of us, are swallowed by our lives. We say, "Oh, I forgot," and we calmly move on to the next thing. In this "Oh, I forgot" there lies one of the most fundamental aspects of the human condition, one which, if understood properly, explains why we do not and cannot carry out our good intentions. But if you go on to study books and teachings dealing with the self-perfecting of human nature, you will almost never find this fact mentioned—the fact that we simply do not remember our deeper questions in the midst of our lives, and therefore never really do what we know to be good, except when we are shaken by a crisis into a deeper state of self-presence. As you read such books and hear such teachings—religious, philosophical, mystical—you will almost never find this fact addressed. It will simply be assumed that you will, if you wish, remember to put the ideals and methods offered into practice . . ."
I decided to go no further with this today—I would come back to it later. And, of course, I did not wish to explain that to confront this mountain of a fact about human nature was one of the principal objectives of this kind of exercise. Nor did I want to say that this was the main reason I did not offer it as a course assignment. I could easily have "made" them remember—at least, I could have made many more of them remember—by causing them to fear the consequences if they did not try it, or say they tried it. But that would have been simply to evoke in them the same kind of influence—fear, in this case—which the exercise was designed to help them wake up to in the midst of their day-to-day lives.
DR. KINDER'S MISUNDERSTANDING
I turned now to the one person who had fully raised his hand. This was Dr. Nathan Kinder, a retired physician who was one of the numerous senior citizens—the "sixty-plus club"—who sat in on my classes from time to time, and often took them for credit. A slender, dapper gentleman with a narrow, ruddy face, clear blue eyes and sharp, prominent features, and with a full head of brilliant white hair, he looked very much like some kind of crested bird. He almost always came to class wearing a sports coat and a bow tie and carrying a carved wooden cane which, judging from his confident stride, was more a fashion accessory than an orthopedic necessity.
I liked him very much. Perhaps he took more than his share of time speaking in class, and perhaps his questions were often more like pronouncements, but he always spoke with wit and intelligence. And, most strikingly, he always seemed to be listening not only to me, but to the students. At the same time, side by side with his refined demeanor and his considerable background of scientific and literary study, and underneath his wealth of experience with suffering humanity, there was something touchingly hungry in his eyes. I sensed in him a raw human need that would often show through when he spoke, but which was almost always immediately eclipsed by his wealth of accumulated knowledge and his highly refined sense of status. It was as though a pure, young man—a kind of adolescent seeker—would begin to express himself, only again and again to be seduced by the "wise old physician" with his sharp old nose and his cane and bow tie.
"So, Dr. Kinder, you remembered?"
"Well, yes," he said. "But at first I felt this exercise was too easy, too modest, not challenging enough. And as for the problem of remembering it, that was not at all difficult. It stayed with me the whole time. In fact, years ago when I was studying the history of philosophy, I actually used to try this task from time to time. So, it came to me quite naturally. At the same time, I have to say that I also felt somewhat uneasy about this feeling of self-confidence."
After glancing around, he went on:
"Yesterday morning my wife told me that her sister was coming to our house for lunch and I immediately took this as the focus for trying what was suggested. My sister-in-law, Helen, is very annoying to me and always has been. So I made myself a plan that under no circumstances would I show the slightest irritation with her. I said to myself, thinking of Marcus Aurelius, that she, too, is a human being who has in herself the same Divine principle as all human beings"—and here the doctor smiled devilishly—"only she is perhaps capable of concealing it more cleverly than most."
Some of the class chuckled appreciatively. The doctor leaned back, touched his bow tie and continued:
"Well, to make a long story short, throughout the entire lunch I actually was able to hold back any sign of annoyance with her and halfway through I noticed that I was not even feeling any annoyance! I was so interested in that—by not showing irritation, it somehow caused me to be free of feeling it with her. But just as I was congratulating myself on my success, she made one of her typical disparaging comments about something or other to my wife and I just almost exploded."
The doctor stopped, looked around for a moment, and then leaned forward and his blue eyes suddenly became young. "What do you think?" he asked, suddenly completely oblivious to his audience, the class. "What do you think?"
While I was trying to find a reply, the young woman sitting next to him smiled warmly at him and the pure adolescent went back into hiding. The "wise old blade" took over again and he said to me with his complicit smile, "I guess that's only worth about a C plus." And many students quietly laughed with the good doctor.
"Well, Dr. Kinder," I said, "it's worth far more than a C plus that you actually remembered to try something."
Suddenly, the adolescent appeared again.
And suddenly, it was just me and him.
"Tell me, Dr. Kinder, why do you give yourself such a, so to say, mediocre 'grade'?"
With one hand, he absently straightened his bow tie, and, in a young, questioning voice, said, "Because I finally did get annoyed?"
"But, Dr. Kinder, why do you consider that a failure?"
I didn't mean to stop him, but he was stopped. He looked at me questioningly.
In fact, I looked back at him questioningly. To tell the truth, strange as it may sound, I myself was in the process of remembering the exercise—that is, remembering, feeling what the real purpose of it was. I thought to myself: how easy it is to forget what is essential in this search—which is simply to see what is.
And so I said, "Dr. Kinder, what was the exercise? Can you say?"
The wise old doctor answered: "To not let anything or anyone annoy you. And a very good exercise it is!"
MARY ADIJIAN'S DISCOVERY
I looked around at the class. "Is that how everyone understood it?" I asked—and then, before waiting for anyone to speak, I turned to the person who had only halfway raised her hand.
She was one of those students who sit inconspicuously toward the back of the class and off to the side, and who rarely participate in the discussions. I knew her mainly because her name—Mary Adijian—was always the first called whenever I was obliged to take attendance. An avid note taker, she sat tall in her chair and dressed with an understated old-fashioned femininity. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and had dark, liquid eyes and a large, calm face framed with black hair hanging down in ringlets.
"Yesterday," she said, "on the way home from school I stopped at the cleaners to pick up some clothes I had left there a few days ago. I gave the woman—a little Asian woman—the receipt and she went through the racks and then looked at me and said they weren't there, my clothes weren't ready. I immediately started to get irritated and I showed her the receipt where it said that they'd be ready Wednesday, yesterday. The woman simply said, "Not ready yet. Tomorrow try again." And then I said—I think I was even shouting: "But it was promised for today!" And then she sort of giggled and all she said was, "Not here. Tomorrow try." Of course, she wasn't really laughing at me—it was just an embarrassed little giggle, but it really upset me.
"I was just about to sort of storm out the door. And just then I remembered the class and the exercise. I remembered the words: "step back". I said to myself, "I am annoyed. This is it." And suddenly—I can't really describe it—suddenly it was like I was two people."
She paused, trying to find words. And then she simply repeated: "It was like I was two people."
Again she paused. The class stayed silent. Finally, she said: "I had no idea my mind could do that!"
"Do what?" I asked, softly.
"Just that," she said. "Like one of me was angry and the other me was just peacefully watching the whole thing."
"And then what happened?"
"Nothing much. I was still annoyed at the woman, but at the same time I was not annoyed. And I sort of heard myself just simply saying, in a nice way, "Thank you", and I just left."
What forcibly struck me in what she said were the words, "I had no idea my mind could do that." My own mind started racing. I didn't want to jump to conclusions on the basis of one student's experience, but I couldn't help feverishly wondering: was it true? Could it be true that the power of the mind to step back from itself, the power of the attention of the mind to watch one's own thoughts and feelings, to separate from oneself in this simple, fundamental way; could it be that not everyone knew about this – simply by virtue of being a living, breathing human being? Or could it be true that a whole generation of men and women didn't know about this?
I was so intrigued by this question that I failed to point out what was potentially of ultimate significance in Mary's experience—that by stepping back to observe her own annoyance, she had actually become in that moment free from being dominated by it, and that she had spoken to the Asian woman in a courteous fashion, even though she was still 'annoyed'. And, most important, she had done so without being moralistic about it—without telling herself that she ought not to be angry, that is, without the inner violence and insincerity that so often characterize our 'good deeds', and which really mask and suppress impulses whose energy eventually manifests itself in other perhaps even more harmful ways. That is to say—she had been given a taste, however preliminary and fleeting, of the moral power of the force of attention. Just by seeing her annoyance, it had become for the moment 'detoxified', allowing, without any forcing or hypocrisy, a relatively beneficent human manifestation to take place in the form of a simple "thank you."
I wanted to put together some comments about what Mary had discovered—without just yet introducing the word "attention", which for most people is usually just a loose synonym for "thoughts". For most of us, to "give attention to" and to "think about" usually mean more or less the same thing. Whereas the real meaning of the word "attention"—at least so far as I understand it—has to do with a power of the human mind that is entirely separate and different from what we ordinarily experience as thinking, or having thoughts. And further—and again, as far as I understand it—there are many degrees and levels of this force called attention, and the ultimate moral and spiritual development of a human being is substantially dependent upon an individual's sensitivity to these higher levels of attention. And furthermore, to make matters even more difficult to grasp, in the translations of the many of the great spiritual texts of the world, these higher levels of attention are sometimes rendered by the words thought or mind or even reason, when what is being spoken of is something entirely different and of a much finer quality than what is ordinarily denoted by these terms...
~ ~ ~
The professor also offered his students an exercise on controlling attention:
...To go further with the class, and to go further with the whole enterprise of practicing philosophical exercises on the other side of the Socratic threshold—that is, in "the streets" of one's own actual life—it seemed to me absolutely necessary to see if others in class were, like Mary Adijian, actually unacquainted with the mind's power to separate from itself. And then, if I discovered that it was so, the next step would be to offer them the chance—if they wished—to discover that their minds did have that power. And after that to represent to them, if only theoretically (for who was I to try anything beyond that?), the far-reaching moral significance and implications of this power for their own personal lives and, indeed, tracing a very large arc, for the whole of mankind!
The next step, then, was to provide an exercise, or a sequence of exercises, that would enable them to begin to become a little bit acquainted with this power and that would enable them, whether or not it was a new discovery for them, to study it in a carefully circumscribed context in their actual lives.
"Between now and Tuesday," I said as the hour ended, "when you're alone watching television, simply turn it off in the middle of a program. And then quietly get up and go have a glass of water or do something else for ten or fifteen seconds, or maybe half a minute or so. And then quietly come back to your chair and turn the TV on again so that you are back watching the same program.
"The point is to study the subjective difficulty in the act of turning off the TV. And then to observe that once you have turned it off, how easy it is simply to do something else without any real sense of loss. And, finally, come back to the TV, sit down, collect yourself a little, and then turn it on again and try to catch a glimpse of yourself being sucked back into the program, whatever it is.
"It's important that you try this exercise in the middle of a program that actually interests you—not during a commercial break, and not at a point in the program when you're ready to switch channels. It has to be done when you are really glued to the set—do you understand what I'm saying?"
Smiles of pure delight slowly spread throughout the class.
I went on:
"You can also do it at the movies. In the middle of a scene, just get up and go to the lobby for a few minutes and then, after collecting yourself for a few seconds, go back to your seat and watch yourself getting drawn back in."
I then dismissed the class.
As the students were putting away their books and papers, and getting up to leave, a voice called out: "What is the reading assignment?"
"Continue with Marcus Aurelius," I answered.
And then another voice sang out—in a dignified Mexican accent:
"Professor, what does that mean "collect yourself"?"
A few students continued filing out of the room, but most stood still, waiting to hear what I would say.
The question caught me by surprise and I did not want to give any kind of ready-made reply to it. I mutely stood there for a few seconds. Finally, I said: "It means letting yourself become quiet inside so that your scattered attention is drawn back toward you."
The student—his name was Octavio—quickly, all too quickly, said, "Thank you, Professor." And as though a switch had just been turned back on, the students resumed their chatter and their slightly chaotic movement out the door...
Needleman did this exercise himself, too:
...Although I have worked at this exercise a number of times over the years, I tried it again myself over the weekend. The first time, it delivered the same shock it had brought me in the past—the shock, namely, of experiencing the heavy pull outward of my attention and the powerful resistance to breaking the connection to the TV. It was not just that I liked the particular show or program I was watching, or that it was evoking pleasant or unpleasant associations in me of second-hand processes of desire, say, or fear or curiosity. That was part of it, of course; but the real shock was glimpsing once again that what I liked and what I wanted to maintain was the inner state of total loss of the awareness of myself sitting there in my chair. In other words, as I kept finding excuses not to turn the TV off, I realized that I liked my absence much more than I wished for my presence.
But the second time I tried it something new appeared that even more forcefully demonstrated the ethical significance of this modest exercise as a means of studying the power of the mind to free itself for a moment from the thrall of impulses, thoughts and images. The point is that these impulses, thoughts and images, taken together, are a fundamental cause of the emotional reactions that determine so much of our behavior in our day-to-day lives.
The program I had happened to be watching was the courtroom drama, Law & Order. During the program I remembered the exercise at least a dozen times, but I could not find the determination actually to click the remote I was holding in my hand. The show was coming to a climactic end in a courtroom confrontation. And suddenly, without bargaining with myself, as though jumping off a diving board after a long hesitation, I pressed the off button of the remote.
I was not surprised by the sweet silence that immediately ensued, and I savored it to the full. Nor was I surprised by the fact that I was no longer so interested in the outcome of the drama—which just a moment before had held me spellbound. What surprised me and profoundly interested me was something else: it was a completely new impression of my attention returning to me from outside of myself. What I saw, what I felt with great clarity, was the, so to say, my-ownness of my attention. It was mine. It was myself. It was like a substance, a current of conscious substance that was my self returning to me and once again inhabiting me, my body, sitting there in the chair. It was, so to say, my I-ness returning. And along with this unique sensation, or feeling, there was the sharp sense of astonishment tinged with remorse and a certain kind of fear that I had so complacently allowed my selfness to go so far away from me—without my care, as though I were a shepherd who had thoughtlessly forgotten all about his flock. How could I have allowed that? Why did I not miss my attention, my I-ness? What if it had never come back?
In the past I had often heard the idea stated: "I am my attention." But it was now more than a respected idea. It was a lived certainty. And as time has passed, this certainty has been many times reconfirmed and its meaning deepened...
Only a few students proceeded with the exercise; the rest ignored it altogether or simply forgot about it:
...As though being summoned out of a dream, I heard the voice of Octavio Zambrano softly calling to me from the middle of the second row:
"Professor, may I ask a question?"
"Yes, Octavio, please," I said, walking around the desk and toward him. It was a pleasure to look at the always smiling, somewhat frail Octavio Zambrano, with his glowing olive-brown face and his guileless dark eyes. And I was always charmed by the way he addressed me—as is the habit with students in Mexico—by the one word, "Professor," as though it were my whole name and identity.
"Professor," he said, with self-effacing courtesy, "may I ask about the exercise you suggested to us?"
"Of course," I said.
I knew nothing about Octavio's background, but from the very beginning of the semester it was obvious that he had recently exited his adolescence with unusually refined manners and a strong thirst for learning of all kinds, especially for the study of philosophical ideas.
"I didn't try to do the exercise with television," he said, "because I don't have a television set and I haven't gone to the movies in the past week. But I did take the liberty of trying it with the computer because I believe that the same principle is involved. Am I correct?"
Immediately, all eyes went to Octavio. Had the students been cats or dogs, all ears would have been standing straight up.
"Go on," I said.
"Well, Professor! It was very strange. I chose to try it with the computer because for a long time I have been aware that my computer is like a drug. Once I am online, I go into a kind of twilight zone. Hours can pass without any awareness on my part. And when I finally get exhausted and then I turn it off, I feel a terrible sense of having wasted myself..." Octavio paused, struggling with embarrassment. His olive-brown skin had reddened.
The vertical ears of the cats and dogs were quivering.
"We have even started a club in the dorm— about twenty people—a little like a twelve-step club, that we call the Log-off Club. We try to help each other break the habit which we feel is eating away at our lives."
My own ears were now quivering. I wanted very much to hear everything about this club. But I encouraged Octavio to continue.
"During the past week," he said, "whenever I sat down at the computer and thought about the exercise before logging on, I was sometimes successful in turning it off and on again. But when I was already online and the thought of the exercise came to me, it was absolutely impossible for me to turn it off. And not only was it impossible, I never even noticed that I was neglecting the exercise. I mean, I sort of noticed it, but—and this is what I want to ask about—I experienced the strange sense that just by thinking of the exercise, I had more or less already succeeded in doing it! That it was sort of just as good as doing it! That thinking about it was as good as doing it!"
Octavio was now perspiring. As for me, I was astonished at the significance of his observation and the emotional depth of his response to it. I had not anticipated that this exercise would bring about the experiential discovery of this fact about ourselves which underlies the hypocrisy that haunts our lives, enabling us to go on and on betraying our ethical ideals while at the same time believing that we are doing what is good—or, in any case, that we are doing all that we possibly can...
~ ~ ~
In the following imagined dialogue, the technique of self-observation—and spiritual transcendence that may ensue—is applied to envy, one of humanity's most corrosive vices. This demonstrates the remarkable breadth of the method's potential application:
— Envy. You've got envy.
— What do I have besides feeling envious?
— The realization that envy is something unworthy.
— Is this realization part of me, too?
— It is.
— Which of these parts will grab the biggest piece of the pie?
— The one you give more attention to.
— That's it?
— That's it.
— What about self-flagellation?
— The realization that envy is bad should suffice. You can self-flagellate all you want, but there's a risk this will add weight to your envious self, too. It's better to simply admit you are... a complex, compound being, without feeling guilt on the one hand or pride on the other.
— In other words, there's an "I" that's aware of both envy and the disapproval of it, but doesn't judge itself as 'good' or 'bad' in some final analysis?
— Yes. It kinda floats above it all. There's a chance genuine generosity will pour into your consciousness through this "I."
— Where does this generosity come from?
— It comes from up There.
— Should I flagellate myself a tad, still?
— While you're self-flagellating, the deeper part of your "I" will watch all this contrition. Isn't it better to hop into the observation post right away?
— Is that even possible?
— To a point. Up There, they'll figure out which armpits to grab you by and how to drag in the rest gradually.
— Does this only work with envy, or...?
— Or.
— Okay, gimme a ticket.
~ ~ ~
Connecting "Methodology" to all the preceding sections: Spiritual transcendence, first and foremost, requires abiding steadfastly in the field of the Way ("I am the vine; you are the branches..."; "Without me you can do nothing"). Otherwise, an attempt at transcendence will invariably result in deviation toward the sun—or the right energy channel—with all the associated lamentable outcomes.
Only when the proper alignment is in place, it enables the crucial work of self-differentiation—that gradual disentangling of selfhood from its compulsive identifications. This occurs—say, through true "thinking together," where souls meet in a sincere love of truth; through non-judgmental self-observation, that gentle yet unflinching inward gaze; or through the sustained effort to prevent attention from scattering away.
Essentially, one must navigate the narrow passage between egocentrism's crushing rocks and egotism's whirlpool, recognizing that authentic responsibility extends beyond the personal to the communal, while yet preserving the diamond-core of higher Self—by whatever name we call it.
The difference between egocentrism and egotism? The following sketch of mine probes it:
Every so often, arrows of accusation fly my way—mostly from my Christian friends. Their chief complaint? Pride, a false one, they claim. When I ask them to define pride so I might understand the charge and, should their arrows strike true, amend my ways, the accusers often tie themselves up in knots—revealing, in the process, their own spiritual... shortsightedness. On one side lies the danger of pride; on the other, the peril of following the blind looms just as large. Which misstep is worse: tripping with the right foot or the left?
In practical terms, I define pride as a peremptory self-assurance that bars the ultimate truth—or at least some higher truth—from entering. This is a topic worth exploring further, for among other things, it may arm my dear Christian friends with fresh ammunition against me. But they should remember: such weapons can backfire.
Why would selfhood deny something greater than itself? Here, we must distinguish between egocentrism and egotism—the latter being synonymous with self-love, which, from my perspective, constitutes the essence of pride.
Egocentrism arises when a psychophysically immature or inexperienced selfhood perceives the world through a limited lens—a trait common in children, for instance. When an egocentric person resists new knowledge that contradicts their worldview, it is not out of pride but cognitive inability to reconcile the unfamiliar with the known. The dominant emotion here is fear. With life experience and the development of abstract thought, egocentrism ideally fades, making way for a more objective understanding of reality.
Egotism, however, is another beast entirely. If, despite all efforts to dislodge selfhood from its high horse, it insists on measuring everything by its own yardstick—rationalizing its mindset, justifying its actions, and disregarding moral boundaries, whether societal or Divine—then we are dealing with pride. When challenged, such a selfhood doesn't react with fear but with rage.
Why do some individuals become this way? One possibility is a demonic nature—utterly devoid of God, at least in the form of love for truth. Demonic undertones may resonate within, sometimes overwhelming, an otherwise healthy selfhood. Alternatively, there may be a trauma-rooted, emotionally charged protest. Or perhaps, in its most recent incarnation, this selfhood was a grizzly bear and has yet to "cool down." Take your pick.
Yet if selfhood possesses an intrinsic, unshakable wisdom—if its emotional core is a love for truth—can it truly be accused of pride? Does an apple tree, heavy with fruit, grow proud? No—it bends beneath the weight. Those who accuse such a tree of pride reveal only their own egocentrism.
Have I struck the bull's eye this time?
~ ~ ~
Yet there is more to spiritual transcendence than "thinking together" or, say, self-observation. Often, these approaches prove most effective when skillfully integrated with complementary methods from religious and philosophical traditions. Besides, not everything is meant to be transcended but, rather, embraced and 'dwelt in.'
Carl Jung, for instance, observed that most neuroses arise from clinging to a distorted conception of the Divine. As per my lights, this writing of mine presents a rather 'workable' image in this regard—one that even a Buddhist could find functional. To put it differently, it offers wholesome representations of reality, or Reality, for the particles of attention to briskly 'circulate' within.
Self-observation, say, can be powerfully synergized with prayer, a nearly universal religious practice. Whether a devotee recites a Christian prayer, a Muslim du'a, a Jewish tefillah, or a Hindu mantra, not everyone pauses to notice the inner origin of these words or the emotions accompanying them. A rigorous inward gaze, however, might reveal an unsettling truth: the absence of genuine love for the prayed-to Divine. Curiously, this very realization, raw and unflinching, holds far greater potential for Divine closeness—notably, in the form of Kundalini's workings regardless of her religious titles or 'garments'—than does lingering in the 'gray zone' of half-hearted devotion. As Kabir warns:
What use is prayer,
penance, worship,
when your heart
loves another?
Friend, tie yourself to Madho;
you can't meet Chaturbhuj through wisdom alone. (Rest)
Toss aside greed
and people-pleasing;
throw away lust,
anger, and pride.
Religious practices
tie people down with self-pride:
They all get together
and worship a stone.
Kabir says,
"I found Him through devotion;
by becoming simple-hearted
I met Raghurai.
Curiously, Kabir has his own term for the Kundalini—"Ram's water":
Burning, I found Ram's water:
it cooled my flaming body. (Rest)Though you go to forests
to kill your ego –
you will never find Bhagwan
without this water.Fire burned
both gods and men –
Ram's water saved
His slaves.
Amidst this world's ocean
is a pool of solace;
though you drink from it forever,
it never dries up.
Kabir says,
"Praise Sarangpani;
the water of Ram
has quenched my thirst.
Be that as it may, another avenue for attention's wholesome circulation: the boundaries of proper conduct. Think of them as the scaffolding for building the temple of the Divine self, with some of those supports becoming permanently woven into the very fabric of being. Take the Ten Commandments, for instance. The same could be said for Islam's meticulous hygiene practices, Hinduism's purity rituals, or the universal wisdom behind prohibitions against intoxication. Even modest clothing acts as a kind of living boundary—though one might argue the burqa overshoots that mark.
Here, the commandment against adultery merits a closer look. The deeper truth is that sexuality, along with the attention attached to it, ought to flow through auspicious or graceful forms even within marriage—a harmony of ethics, aesthetics, and biological purpose. Why? Because the Divine, both within us and without, may turn away from a selfhood stained by sexual impurity. The first chakra, after all, was meant to meet another first chakra in a way that honors life's creation. Mismatch the energies, mismatch the chakras, and you risk losing the higher Self's grace—this is far from being a dogma, but the simple metaphysics of alignment.
Then there's our relationship with the elements—they are nothing but subtle technologies for purifying attention, each tradition arriving at similar truths through different doors. Imagine if every practitioner—whether Christian, Muslim or Hindu—adopted the common denominators, including washing hands and feet at prayer's threshold, letting fire cleanse, or standing barefoot on good earth. The precise alchemy of aligning one's inner currents, however, requires an individual approach no universal manual could provide. Depending on the inner 'situation', one might require, say, water's purifying flow more acutely, while another needs fire's transformative blaze to harmonize their being.
Perhaps, the most delicate matter—spiritual guides. The twin dangers are obvious: giving your heart to false teachers who scatter and defile your attention like coins thrown in the dirt, or turning away from true messengers out of some stubborn blindness. Between these cliffs runs the narrow path of discernment—that quiet stance of "Allah (or Buddha-Consciousness) knows best." The wisest posture isn't fervent allegiance nor cynical rejection, but a watchful neutrality that lets wheat and chaff separate in their own time.
Essentially, taken together, all of this is meant to purify one's attention so the Divine, in turn, could leverage it toward its own ends and ways with far greater ease and, equally importantly, more enjoyment for those harmonized.
I cannot dictate how religious traditions revise their tenets in accordance with the cosmology, theology, or methodology presented. I can speak only for myself. And speak for myself I will in "My Gnoseology".
My Gnoseology
The time of blossoming has come
Shri Mataji
I practice Sahaja Yoga, the spiritual discipline founded by Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi. She regards it as nothing less than the fulfillment of the Last Judgment in Christian terms or the Time of Resurrection (Qiyamah) of Islam. As for Her own role, She refers to Herself as an incarnation—or avatar—of the Divine Mother, a claim substantiated primarily by Her unparalleled ability to awaken the Kundalini on a mass scale.
This bold assertion invites a stark binary, much like C.S. Lewis's argument in Mere Christianity regarding Christ's divinity. Lewis contends that Christ's extraordinary declarations in the Bible permit no middle ground: they must either be absolute truth or absolute falsehood—there is no 'gray zone', so to speak. One must answer with either "yes, yes" or "no, no."
The same uncompromising logic may well be applied to Shri Mataji's words. Either She is indeed an avatar of the Mother Goddess, or She is a fraud—in which case, say, by the standards of Islam, She would stand in direct relation to shaytan, the accursed adversary of humanity, or what Daniil Andreev termed Gagtungr in his The Rose of the World. There can be no ambiguity.
In what follows, I provide an account of why I personally have answered "yes, yes" after all:
From a young age, I experienced occasional nightmares without any apparent connection to my waking life. Certain dreams imprinted themselves deeply:
~ I am sitting by a bonfire among strangers who suddenly reveal their intention to stab me, only to find myself lifted into the care of a white-clad woman wrapping me in a blanket.
~ When crossing the bridge in what resembles an unfinished construction site, I sense something unspeakable lurking in the dark waters beneath, freezing me in terror.
~ Chased recurrently by a grotesque crone around a tree, I simply step aside, watching her continue her mindless circling.
If dreams reflect metaphysical reality, I had become acquainted with its shadows early—though not without glimpses of light.
Around four or five years old, I developed a stutter—a seemingly insignificant detail that would later reveal its spiritual dimension.
My teenage years brought an attraction to heavy metal's aggressive rhythms, whose English lyrics I only later understood to be disturbingly violent and obscene. Though the music's hold on me lingered, I eventually walked away.
At fourteen, the metaphysical darkness made its most direct assault: lying awake one night, I felt myself being pulled as though 'inward' and 'downward', my very sense of self fragmenting as suffocating pressure mounted. Just when madness seemed inevitable, my consciousness reassembled—an experience that never repeated but left its mark.
My relationship with the Divine had always been complicated. Even as a child, I intuitively knew God existed. Yet I couldn't reconcile His supposed omnipotence with the world's suffering. By adolescence, this tension hardened into hostility. Even when spiritual longing eventually awakened in me, I resisted turning to God, haunted by fundamental doubts about His justice.
At some point during my university years, I encountered Sahaja Yoga. A fellow student presented its extraordinary claim: the Kundalini energy (I was familiar with the term by then, though more in theory than practice) could awaken spontaneously through simple techniques involving Shri Mataji's image, hand gestures, and affirmations—no years of ascetic practice required. Success would manifest as a cooling breeze atop the head and mental stillness. Skeptical but intrigued, I attended a session. While I felt little during the ritual, the room's temperature dropped inexplicably. More compelling was my instinctive trust in Shri Mataji—enough to continue.
That night, I placed her photo by my bed. As ambient rainforest sounds played from my tape recorder (set to turn off automatically), I awoke to eerie gothic-like music—though morning inspection confirmed the tape hadn't changed. More alarming was the palpable hatred radiating from a shadowy figure at the foot of my bed. Heart pounding, I mentally called to Shri Mataji. The dark presence dissolved, and I slept peacefully.
The next morning demanded an explanation for the night's events. As I weighed the possibilities, only two credible alternatives emerged: either Sahaja Yoga itself was suspect, or the fault lay within me. Sorting through memories and impressions, I gradually recognized the more likely truth—the disturbance came from my own being, something Sahaja Yoga and Shri Mataji had simply revealed rather than created. This realization, rather than deterring me, strengthened my resolve to continue practicing before rendering final judgment.
Before proceeding, a brief note on Sahaja Yoga's concept of "vibrations"—essential for understanding what follows. These subtle physical sensations—most often felt in the palms, fingertips, or crown of the head—may manifest as a gentle breeze, tingling, prickling, numbness, or occasional brief pain. The cooling sensation is most prized, recognized as marking purity and Divine connection, while other sensations typically signal blockages in the subtle energy system.
Vibrational experiences vary in intensity and sometimes appear in mixed forms—a refreshing coolness may carry traces of warmth or faint tingling. The ability to perceive these sensations, known as "vibratory awareness," develops as the Kundalini energy ascends toward the crown chakra. Individual sensitivity depends primarily on the condition of the Vishuddhi (throat chakra), with perception ranging from barely noticeable to exceptionally distinct.
...And so I began practicing Sahaja Yoga. Since I needed to determine its spiritual provenance—whether it descended from Divine sources or arose from more questionable origins—I must now recount, as succinctly as possible, where this investigation led me.
During those initial weeks and months of practice, several remarkable dreams visited me:
~ A seaside house where an incoming wave lifts me into dark waters. From the depths, a light flickers. I dive toward its source, dissolving in radiant warmth—only to awaken feeling weightless, renewed, brimming with joy.
~ Faceless figures standing in formation. Though unrecognizable, I sense our connection—one that fills me with unease. As I turn away, forested mountains unfold before me, accompanied by a soothing, cool breeze.
~ A churning black vortex over the sea morphing into a creature reminiscent of Alien, its forehead branded with an inverted red pentagram.
~ A black octopus fastened to my left hand, its suckers searing my flesh with blistering pain.
~ A torchlit forest trek, evading serpents until I stand ankle-deep in a cavern's black waters, my feeble light struggling against the consuming dark.
Yet these night-visions existed alongside waking moments equally ripe with significance.
After several months of Sahaja Yoga practice, I moved into a rented room in an apartment building. On moving day, I visited my bedridden landlady in her room. The next morning, her daughter came to my door with unexpected news: the cactus in her mother's room had bloomed for the first time in eleven years.
I interpreted this, along with certain dreams, as a celestial sign confirming I was on the right path with Sahaja Yoga. Such reassurance proved valuable as I began experiencing persistent headaches around this time. During a classical concert with fellow practitioners, for instance, while they enjoyed the music, I endured what felt like a vise gripping the right side of my skull—a pattern that would characterize nearly all my subsequent headaches.
Through Shri Mataji's teachings and discussions with advanced practitioners, I came to understand these discomforts through the lens of the subtle system—that intricate network of chakras and nadis (energy centers and channels). Blockages or "catches" in this system, I learned, could manifest as various pains. In my case, this included not only the right-sided headaches but also burning sensations in my chest and jaw. While never debilitating, these symptoms were decidedly unpleasant—a far cry from the sublime states of awareness I'd anticipated from Kundalini awakening. Still, I consoled myself that once thorough cleansing of my subtle system was complete I would eventually feel much lighter.
Much illuminating was discovering the metaphysical roots of my stutter. Sahaja Yoga attributes such speech impediments to oppression by "bhoots"—spiritual entities that infiltrate and drain one's subtle system. My specific blockages appeared concentrated in the heart and throat chakras, along with the right petal of the forehead chakra corresponding to the brain's right hemisphere (interestingly, I later encountered scientific studies linking stuttering to unusual right-hemisphere activity). Years of immersion in heavy metal's "vibrationally heavy" influence, among other impurities, had clearly taken their toll.
My compromised energetic state became apparent not only through self-awareness but also through others' perceptions. Once, a well-meaning yogi insisted on cleansing me despite my warnings. True to my premonition, he developed migrating jaw tensions that persisted for a week—an experience that deterred him from repeating the attempt, though our friendship endured.
Yet these challenges were balanced by moments of unexpected grace. Alongside the blockages and their discomforts came flashes of pure bliss that affirmed the practice's transformative power. As my throat chakra gradually cleared, my vibratory awareness grew more refined—manifesting most tangibly as waves of cooling energy across my palms and fingertips.
A revelatory moment came during a bout of profound melancholy, when I first experienced Kundalini's unmistakable ascent: a surge of energy rising from the base of my spine to the crown of my head. This current left me cleansed and mentally lucid, as if floodgates had opened to sweep away all turbid thoughts. Such experiences—repeated and deepened over time—finally allowed me to distinguish Kundalini's true nature from the misconceptions I'd previously encountered. I came to understand with certainty that Kundalini resides precisely at the spine's base (neither higher nor lower), that her awakening has nothing to do with sex, and that her essential nature embodies light, joy and profound peace.
This sacred energy responded most vividly to elevated stimuli—whether the intricate ragas of Indian classical music, the resonant cadences of Koranic recitation, or the structured harmonies of Western symphonies. Conversely, it remained inert to heavy metal's aggression or pop music's triviality. Similarly, I observed distinct vibratory responses when encountering authentic spiritual figures—a subtle but reliable indicator distinguishing genuine grace from mere ceremonial pretense or outright malevolence. These reactions became, for me, a form of Divine authentication.
An increasing number of experiences illuminated Sahaja Yoga's deeper dimensions, further validating the practice in my eyes.
Once, I guided a Reiki practitioner through Sahaja Yoga's "protocol" of Kundalini awakening. The experiment proved startling. As the master later recounted, a neon haze streamed from the photo toward his crown chakra, triggering such acute pain that he recoiled mid-protocol. His reaction aligned with my intuitive assessment of him—his psychic abilities stemmed from his brain trauma and surgery rather than genuine spirituality. This encounter not only confirmed the photograph's potency but also validated Sahaja Yoga's caution regarding ungrounded psychic phenomena. Subsequent experiences with Reiki practitioners consistently lacked the cool vibrations characteristic of authentic spiritual energy.
Another confirmation came unexpectedly when another energy healer joined me in watching a traditional dance honoring Shri Ganesha—the Hindu deity Sahaja Yoga associates with the root chakra. Though the visitor knew nothing of this correspondence, she spontaneously reported unusual activation in her base chakra during the performance. Until then, I'd accepted the deity-chakra connections primarily on faith; this independent verification lent them tangible credibility.
Perhaps, the most transformative (thus far) was a meditation session where searing pain—concentrated behind my right eye—threatened to overwhelm me. Choosing to trust Kundalini rather than resist, I continued. The agony gradually eased, replaced by something extraordinary: the emergence of a luminous "pillar" of awareness that has since remained my constant inner compass. This unshakable clarity, promising protection against dissolution into madness, became the perfect counterbalance to that terrifying adolescent night when my psyche had nearly unraveled. To this day, it stands as my most profound personal confirmation of Sahaja Yoga's credibility and efficacy.
When I became more acquainted with religions, specifically Islam, I resorted to mubahala as part of my 'investigation'—that is, I invited Divine wrath upon myself should Sahaja Yoga be spiritually misleading. The heavens remained silent; no wrath descended. We were clear, Islam and I.
While Christianity doesn't employ such direct 'daredevil' challenges, the Bible contains a very grave injunction against false prophets:
And the Lord said: "If anyone causes one of these little ones – those who believe in me – to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come! If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.
By that time, I had already begun sharing Sahaja Yoga with others. As my unconventional interpretations of Christ—particularly equating Him with Shri Ganesha—risked causing "one of these little ones" to stumble, among other things, I addressed Christ directly along the following lines:
"You know, Lord, that nothing can shake my certainty about You. But since I may be endangering both my salvation and others', let me die or suffer grave injury today if my understanding is false—for only such drastic consequences could change my conviction and prevent me from misleading others."
I not only spoke this challenge aloud but documented it in a text message to a friend, instructing him to publish it should I meet with misfortune. As readers will have deduced, I survived that day unharmed. My conscience now stands clear before both Islam and Christianity.
In keeping with Christianity, I once exchanged a few emails with Grigory Pomerants—the renowned philosopher—and his wife, the gifted poet Zinaida Mirkina. Notably, while both identified primarily with Orthodox Christian tradition, they affirmed the validity of alternate spiritual paths to the same 'mountain top.' With that in mind, I had sent Grigory Solomonovich an essay whose contents I now recall only vaguely. To my surprise, he responded enthusiastically—even exultantly—with a few encouraging lines added by Zinaida Alexandrovna. As our conversation continued, I inevitably raised the subject of Sahaja Yoga with them. Though their reaction this time was measured, Zinaida Alexandrovna confessed she'd long been aware of an inner current ascending her spine to the crown of her head—an experience I immediately recognized as Kundalini's movement.
Curiously, a confirmation of the chakra system and Kundalini's workings once came from yet another poetess—this time Emily Dickinson:
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
Not that I needed much convincing—it was just one of the many elements falling into place.
A major 'element' in this regard happens to be my wife, an Orthodox Christian with rather... non-orthodox, expansive horizons. Her experience of Christ's divinity is attention-worthy: at around age twelve, while reading the Bible, she had felt not only spiritual exultation but also a distinct flow along her spine and what she called "a portal into infinity" opening above her head. This aligned perfectly with descriptions of Kundalini awakening, particularly its ascent to the seventh chakra at the the head's crown. The experience had profoundly transformed her.
Though she first heard the term "Kundalini" from me, she had to acknowledge the parallels between her childhood revelation and this ancient Eastern concept. To this day, she continues to experience what I identify as Kundalini's flow—always in connection with moments of Divine beauty and grace, as she puts it, including her Kundalini dancing (to her own surprise) to the Hindu hymn "Shri Lalita Sahasranama" or, say, Muslim calls to prayer.
Where do I stand now? For nearly two decades, I have practiced Sahaja Yoga. I confess those dark metaphysical stains still linger at the edges. In my mind's eye, I see myself as a besieged fortress: though invaders have breached the outer defenses, the central tower stands unshaken, its small but fierce light growing steadily brighter.
For years, Kundalini's energy could only move through my Vishuddhi—my throat chakra—as through parched and barren land. Yet, 'golden tendrils' have pushed through this scorched earth, even producing fragile blossoms. And through determined effort, my stutter has nearly disappeared.
I don't remember exactly when my personal gnoseology reached its resolution, but it did. This isn't to say I am a fully enlightened being (far from)—only that my faith in Sahaja Yoga and Shri Mataji, at least in their Divine essence, is unshakable.
~ ~ ~
If some readers are still with me—and since I am, in a sense, promoting Sahaja Yoga here (with grace)—I would like to offer them a 'gnoseological experiment': a somewhat abridged protocol of Kundalini awakening. This may serve to confirm at least some of my claims here. Readers are, of course, free—even encouraged—to take any precautionary measures of their preference, whether that means remaining in a sacred space or, say, invoking the forces of Light before they proceed.
Throughout this experiment, your left hand will be pointing toward the photo of Shri Mataji (you will find it below), the palm facing up. The 'maneuvering' part will be executed by your right hand. You will also need to say several affirmations, mentally or out loud, with as much solemnity as possible. Ready?
If yes, with your right hand placed on your heart, the first affirmation goes: "I am not this body, emotions, or thoughts. Essentially, I am a pure spiritual being."
Your right hand is now on your forehead: "I forgive everyone." Try to do this in earnest, however ridiculous this may sound.
This time, your right hand rests on the back of your head. At this juncture, you ask forgiveness for all your misdoings, by commission or omission, against your own Divine self, or inner God, as well as that of other living beings.
Finally, you raise your right hand above the top of your head, the palm facing down. You could address here the Divine Principle the way you conceptualize it, as follows: "Please, awaken my Kundalini (or the Blessed Olive Oil, or the Bride of the Spirit)".
Having done all that, just calmly register what is happening above your head and inside you. After that, you can put down both your hands on your lap, the palms facing up. Sit quietly for some time observing your inner state. Chances are, you will feel something beyond ordinary. However faint the experience may be—do not underestimate its significance in the grand scheme of things.
Afterword
In the foreword to his Citadel—also known as The Wisdom of the Sands—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry writes something I have borrowed verbatim for Charting the Waters, though in my work, it appears at the end:
I want to finish my book. That's it. I am trading myself for it. It seems to be clinging to me like an anchor. In eternity, they will ask me: "How have you handled your gifts, what have you done for people?" Since I didn't die in the war, I am trading myself for something else. Whoever helps me with this is my friend... I do not need anything, be it money, worldly pleasures, or company of friends. I desperately need quiet. I do not pursue any selfish ends. I do not need someone's approval. I am now at peace with myself.
I believe I have fully expressed what I regard as the most attention-worthy matters. I have spelled it all out, demystified it—not merely 'pointing at the moon' with one finger, but with all ten.
If I were to recap this whole work—essentially my mind map—in one passage: Life as it is, as we know it—is not an end in itself but a tightrope that one must feel within oneself and walk along, balancing; a field that must be transformed into something more... appealing through the balance between will and desire, between thought and feeling, between the sublime and the earthly, between one's small yet systematic efforts and Providence. Life teems with various forces—the full spectrum from the demonic to the Divine. The idea of balancing and transforming is Divine; all other ideas about life are, at the very least, non-Divine—peripheral, ditch-bound, prone to falling off the rope. The judgments of a person who clumsily and disharmoniously handles their sexuality, their drive for self-assertion, their sense of possessiveness, their emotionality—cannot be trusted, at least when it comes to matters of worldview. For the most part, people are poor tightrope walkers. But you, my readers—try. The Kundalini—as understood and awakened in Sahaja Yoga—may prove a great ally in this. She might.
And the final notice: don't trust Sahaja yogies, myself included: ultimately, the business of enlightenment is between the Divine and you.
July 2025