Non-Duality and Preparedness: A Sufi View of 'Oneness'

"I am by nature a traditional mystic," says author Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. "The new age spiritual teachings, so to speak, didn't mean much to me. My focus was on the inner experiences of the individual, the inner mystical experiences that really belong to classical Sufism."

"And then a strange thing happened in the spring of the year 2000," he notes, "suddenly my attention was shifted. It's like  somebody turned my head from here to there, and then I saw what I call this 'emerging consciousness of 'Oneness,' that there is something awakening in the world that hasn't been here before."

"In a way," he notes, "you can trace it back to the mystical understanding of 'Oneness,' because 'Oneness' is a basic mystical experience. Many, many, many people have had experiences of 'Oneness.' They've woken up for a moment, like the poet William Blake said, "to see the world in a grain of sand." They've had those momentary experiences where they see everything as one; they see that the universe is one dynamic whole."

"But the idea that this might become part of our collective human experience," he observes, "not just an individual mystical experience, which it has been traditionally in the past - the unio mystico of the mystics - that somehow the whole of humanity is taking a step to a different level of awareness, this really began to interest me."

"And, all I can do," says Vaughan-Lee, "is say that there seems to be a need to prepare the ground, so that if such a moment should happen, if there should be something that happens that awakens humanity, the whole of humanity . . . that one can begin to prepare the stepping stones."

"But how it is going to happen I don't know," he observes. "I thought it was going to be much simpler."



Preparing such a foundation, however, may be of the utmost importance. Without a preparatory foundation, Vaughan-Lee observes, the individual may be dangerously unprepared for such an awakening of consciousness.

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

In a related video, Vaughan Lee observes that "a human being is quite complex. We have a soul that longs for God, but we also have a personality, an ego that has developed, that has conditioning - (the) influence of parents and all of the dramas of being alive, of being part of humanity. And when you really seriously commit yourself to spiritual life, you have to start to clear out some of the clutter you have accumulated in your life."

"For this," he warns, " it is necessary to have some psychological system. Otherwise, what happens is that the bright light of the divine in you floods you, and you get unbalanced. You have to become grounded in yourself."

"Sadly," he notes, "there have been people who have become intoxicated by God but then became unbalanced because they haven't done the inner work that is needed for grounding the human being. You need a process to help you to prepare, to help your 'inner self' to prepare."

"If you haven't done that inner work, if you haven't explored yourself psychologically, then the spiritual energies that come into the human being will unbalance you and you will become ungrounded."