Carl Jung: Religious Experience and the Unconscious

According to the great Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung - the "Einstein of the mind" - the individual is born with an inherent disposition that becomes masked by the ego as he or she matures. And it is only by penetrating through the ego's mask that he or she discovers what and who she is. The danger, however, is that in doing so one will inevitably find a certain kind of madness.

In the lengthy video interview, attached, Jung observes that

"Man has a certain pattern that makes him specifically human, and no man is born without it." 

"We are only deeply unconscious of these facts" Jung notes, "because we live all by our senses and outside of ourselves. If a man could look into himself, he could discover it. And when a man discovers it, in our days, he thinks he's crazy . . . and really crazy."

Jung's view was that without some real, inner religious experience, the madness of the human ego could and would drive the individual actor to the depths of madness, a view that is readily understandable given the collective insanity witnessed by Jung during the first half of the twentieth-century. In candid correspondence written in the last year of his life, Jung observed:

"I am strongly convinced that the evil principle prevailing in this world, leads the unrecognized spiritual need into perdition, if it is not counteracted either by real religious insight or by the protective wall of human community. An ordinary man, not protected by an action from above and isolated in society cannot resist the power of evil, which is called very aptly the Devil. But the use of such words arouse so many mistakes that one can only keep aloof from them as much as possible."*

Carl G. Jung
(1875-1961)

The existential question for Jung, then, was: "Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving into the crowd?"

"To this question," he remarked, "there is a positive answer only when the individual is willing to fulfill the demands of rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge. If he follows through his intention, he will not only discover some important truths about himself, but will also have gained a psychological advantage: he will have succeeded in deeming himself worthy of serious attention and sympathetic interest. He will have set his hand, as it were, to a declaration of his own human dignity and taken the first step towards the foundations of his consciousness - that is, towards the unconscious, the only accessible source of religious experience."

"This is not to say," Jung cautions, "that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in his place. It is the medium from which the religious experience seems to flow. As to what the further cause of such an experience may be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem."

[Jung, "The Undiscovered Self, pp. 101-102]

* Letter from Carl Jung to Bill Wilson (co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous), dated January 30, 1961. Jung died on June 6, 1961.

Carl Jung: Mankind's Relilgious Impulse

Carl G. Jung
(1875-1961

The great Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, was both psychoanalyst and social critic, as the video embedded, below, attests. He saw society suffering from its own neuroses, and felt that the individual could only come to terms with such outer neuroses, by developing psychological knowledge of his inner being, with all its mythological and religious significance.

Writing in his small but essential book, "The Undiscovered Self," Jung observed:

"Just as man, as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find the real justification for his existence, and his own spiritual and moral autonomy, anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors."

"The individual who is not anchored in God can offer no resistance on his own to the physical and moral blandishments of the world. For this he needs the evidence of inner, transcendent experience which alone can protect him from the otherwise inevitable submersion in the mass."

"Merely intellectual or even moral insight into the stultification and moral irresponsibility of the mass man is a negative recognition only and amounts to not much more than a wavering on the road to the atomization of the individual. It lacks the driving force of religious conviction, since it is merely rational."

"(A) natural function which has existed from the beginning, like the religious function, cannot be disposed of with rationalistic and so-called enlightened criticism," Jung observed. "You can, of course, represent the doctrinal contents of the creeds as impossible and subject them to ridicule, but such methods miss the point and do not hit the religious function which forms the basis of the creeds."

Because of this, Jung, writing at the height of the Cold War, warned of the evil warping of the religious impulse by the deification of the state. In today's world, it is perhaps not so much the deification of the state that poses the biggest challenge to the exercise of one's religious impulse, but consumerism, materialism, religious and economic fundamentalism and apathy.

Nonetheless, Jung's recognition that we have within us the potential and need for inner transcendent experience remains a timely message. For, as Jung observed, it is the collective psyche of mankind that still poses the biggest threat to our survival, a point he noted long before anyone suspected or seriously projected the existential Malthusian challenges of over-population, desertification, global hunger, species extinction and massive global warming that now threaten our very survival. Thus, before he died in 1961, Jung observed that mankind creates its own greatest challenges. "We," he famously said, "are the origin of all coming evil."

Jung and Krishnamurti: Society in Crisis

Jiddu Krishnamurti
(1895-1986)

What role does the individual play in the development of the state, and what role does the state play in the the development of the individual?  Have we reached a point where "sustainable development" no longer makes sense and we should be focusing on "developing sustainability," first by examining the effects that modern life has on the individual and his or her consciousness?

Two of the greatest and most innovative voices of the twentieth-century - the philosopher/spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti, and the great psychologist Carl Jung - both point to the minimal effect that the individual has in the development of the state, and the huge effect the state has in the development of the individual. And both point to the dangers inherent in these realities of modern life.

Carl Jung (1875-1961)

"The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life)," writes Jung, "no longer lie(s) in individual development but in in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself."

"The individual," Jung observes, "is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses."

"The rulers, in their turn," he  notes, "are just as much social units as the ruled and are distinguished only by the fact that they are specialized mouthpieces of the State doctrine. They do not need to be personalities capable of judgment, but thoroughgoing specialists who are unusable outside their line of business. State policy decides what shall be taught and studied."

[C.J. Jung, "The Undiscovered Self," page 22.]

Jung's analysis, written in 1957, is a devastating indictment of modern society, and one about which he gives a dire warning, in the following video clip. In it, Jung observes that man will "not stand forever his nullification," and then pointedly warns that, "we are the origin of all coming evil."




For his part, Krishnamurti notes that "(t)here is conflict between man and society because man is in conflict within himself. and the conflict is between that which is static and that which is living. Society is the outward expression of man," he observes, and "(t)he conflict between himself and society is the conflict within himself."

"This conflict, within and without," Krishnamurti notes,"will ever exist until the highest intelligence (in man) is awakened."

"To be a good citizen is to function efficiently within the pattern of a given society," he observes. "Efficiency and conformity are demanded of the citizen, as they toughen him, make him ruthless; and then he is capable of sacrificing the man to the citizen. A good citizen is not necessarily a good man; but a good man is bound to be a right citizen, not of any particular society or country. Because he is primarily a good man, his actions will not be anti-social, he will not be against another man. He will live in co-operation with other good men; he will not seek authority, for he has no authority; he will be capable of efficiency without its ruthlessness. The citizen attempts to sacrifice the man; but the man who is searching out the highest intelligence will naturally shun the stupidities of the citizen."

"The intelligent man will bring about a good society," Krishnamurti notes, "but a good citizen will not give birth to a society in which man can be of the highest intelligence. The conflict between the citizen and the man is inevitable," he concludes, "if the citizen predominates; and any society which disregards the man is doomed."

[Krishnamurti, "Commentaries on Living: First Series," page 51.]

Mankind faces "a crisis in consciousness," Krishnamurti warns in the YouTube video, below, as a result of the society it has built. "Considering what the world is now," he observes, "with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality aggression and so on, man is still as he was. He is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive, competitive; and, he has built a society along these lines."



So what needs to be done in order to face such a "crisis in consciousness," and to avoid "the coming evil" which Jung warns of? Krishnamurti, suggests that there needs to be a transformation both in mankind's consciousness and in our focus from the future to the existential problems of our mutual present.

"The State sacrifices the present for the future," Krishnamurti notes, "ever safeguarding itself for the future; it regards the future as all-important, and not the present. But to the intelligent man, the present is of the highest importance, the now and not the tomorrow."

"What is can be understood only with the fading of tomorrow," he concludes. "The understanding of what is brings about transformation in the immediate present. It is this transformation which is of supreme importance, and not how to reconcile the citizen with the man. When this transformation takes place, the conflict between the man and the citizen ceases."

[Ibid., page 52.]

A Stranger to One's Self

 Humankind is unique because we are conscious of our consciousness. So far as we know, no other species is capable of this self-reflection, And while this has allowed all that we know of culture - from philosophy to physics - to flourish, when it comes to the individual most of us are more or less blind to our inner realtities.

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

The great 20th-century theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, author of the famous "Serenity Prayer," once observed:

" . . . (M)an, alone among all animals, stands in contradiction to himself. The possibility for this contradiction is given by the self-transcendence of the human spirit, the fact that man is not only soul, as unity of the body, but spirit, as capacity to transcend both the body and soul."

[Niebuhr, "The Nature of Man," vol. 1 page 30.]

For his part, the great Swiss psychologist Car Jung, wrote:

"Most people confuse "self-knowledge" with knowledge of their conscious ego personalities. Anyone who has ego-consciousness at all takes it for granted that he knows himself. But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconscious and its contents. People measure their self-knowledge by what the average person in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them. In this respect the psyche behaves like the body with its physiological and anatomical structure, of which the average layperson knows very little too. Although he lives in it and with it, most of it is totally unknown to the layman and special scientific knowledge is needed to acquaint consciousness with what is known of the body, not to speak of all that is not known, which also exists."

[Jung, "The Undiscovered Self," pages 14-15.]

Man, thus, stands in contradiction with his or herself, because most people know but little of their psyche, and almost nothing of their essence, an essence which is beyond both psyche and the soul. Few, indeed, even look. And this fact, seems to be a truth of all inner religious teachings.

For example, the great Buddhist master, Tulke Urgyen Rinpoche, observed that, "Buddhas become awakened because of realizing their essence. Sentient beings become confused because of not realizing their essence. Thus there is one basis or ground and two different paths."

[Tule Urgyen Rinpoche, "As It Is," vol. 2, page 43.]

Sufi teachings, the esoteric, inner teachings of Islam, are also based on this rarely realized "essence." "All dervish teachings," writes Idries Shah, "is based not on the concept of God, but on the concept of essence. . . . 'He who knows his essential self, knows his God.' Knowledge of the essential self is the first step, before which there is no real knowledge of religion."

[Idries Shah, "The Sufis," page 309.]

It is also recognized in the Christian scriptures, where the Book of James, notes that, "A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." (James 1:8) And, in the Katha Upanishad, one of the most ancient of all the Indic scriptures, advises that: "The wise should surrender speech in mind, mind in the knowing self, the self in the Spirit of the universe, and the Spirit of the universe in the Spirit of peace."

But the Katha Upanishad also famously notes that few look past the egoic self in a search for the truth of man's being. "Sages say the path is narrow and difficult to tread," says the ancient teaching, "narrow as the edge of a razor."

["The Upanishads," Penguin Classics, page 61.]

Very few, it seems, truly walk the 'razor's edge' it seems; for, as Jesus advise his disciples: "Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it."(Matt, 7:13-14)

It is, of course, notoriously difficult for an individual to plumb his or her inner depth. Over and over, in all traditions there are warnings, the crux of which are that 'the inner spiritual journey is a lonely path." For most people, who are not bothered by existential questions it is far easier to ignore the subtle yet disturbing questions of 'who' and 'what' we really are, and 'why' we are here.

Even religious institutions,  Jung observed, for the  most part, only address the outer conditions and needs of man.

"The Churches," writes Jung, "stand for traditional and collective convictions which in the case of many of their adherents are no longer based on their own inner experience but on unreflecting belief, which is notoriously apt to disappear as soon as one begins thinking about it. The content of belief then comes into collision with knowledge and it often turns out that the irrationality of the former is no match for the latter. Belief is no adequate substitute for inner experience, and where this is absent even a strong faith which comes miraculously as a gift of grace may depart equally miraculously."

"People call faith the true religious experience, but they do not stop to think that actually it is a secondary phenomenon arising from the fact that something happened to us in the first place which instilled nous into us - that is, trust and loyalty. This experience has a definite content that can be interpreted in terms of one or other of the denominational creeds. But the more this is so, the more the possibilities of these conflicts with knowledge mount up, which in themselves are quite pointless. That is to say the standpoint of the creeds is archaic; they are full of impressive mythological symbolism which, if taken literally, comes into insufferable conflict with knowledge."

 Thus, for the rare individual who wishes to 'walk the razor's edge,' settling for the outer teachings of the various creeds and denominations is unlikely to suffice. With the "capacity to transcend both the body and soul," that lonely spiritual traveler will need to take the "inner way" that leads from the lower self-consciousness of the ego, to the higher God-consciousnes of his or her essence. He or she will have to become a Buddha, or at a minimum, a Bhodisatva, foregoing ultimate enlightenemnt until all beings become enlightened themselves.

Jung & Tolle: Finding Meaning in Difficult Times

How do people seek meaning in transitional times such as these, in times where economic, political and cultural "norms" that we have lived with our whole lives, and which have to a greater or lesser extent defined our lives, are increasingly being challenged? Where can meaning now be found?

In an interview in the late 1950s, the great Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, warned that, "Man cannot stand a meaningless life." Because of this, he warned, it is mankind which poses the gravest dangers to itself.

"The only real danger that exists is man himself," says Jung. "He is the great danger, and we are pitifully unaware of it.  We know nothing of man. Far too little. His psyche should be studied, because we are the origin of all coming evil."

This is a prescient preview of the dangers we face from one of the greatest minds of the early 20th-century, a period rife with great minds like Einstein, Heisinger, and Jung's friend and colleague, Wolfgang Pauli. All of whom, perhaps because they survived two world wars, and the birth of atomic weapons and an era of "mutually assured destruction,' were quick to warn of mankind's inherent danger to itself. “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, Einstein once remarked, "but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Eckhart Tolle, spiritual teacher/author of "The Power of Now,"
and "The New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose."

"We are the origin of all coming evil," Jung remarks. And, this, at a time before evidence of global warming, mass extinction of species, desertification, energy crises and toxic industrial pollution of the environment were seriously considered.

In contrast, current best-selling author and enlightened spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, looking at the  difficulties that many people in the West are nofacing due to seemingly ever-changing shifts in economic and cultural norms, notes that these problems may be a catalyst for change.

"For many people, limitation in one form or another is coming into their life situation. And, that is actually not what the media wants us to believe, that these things are dreadful. The challenge that many people are encountering at this time, is actually that which will push them into a new state of consciousness. That is the possibility. that is the promise. Whenever you encounter a crisis situation, whether it is personal or collective, there is the opening into a new way of being. It is a possibility. It doesn't mean that everyone will embrace that possibility.

"Do not believe what we are told in the media," Tolle observes. "That we should be in a state of fear. That the only real response, the only natural response to what is happening is a state of fear. That is an unconscious response. We need to see that change is absolutely necessary in this world, and the dissolution of many of the ego-based structures is absolutely necessary for the planet to survive, and for humanity to survive. So what's happening is not dreadfully 'bad.' What's happening needs to happen. The totality, the intelligence behind phenomena is doing it, So, it is a good thing."

Paradoxically, Tolle says that mankind can actually find the "meaning" which Jung saw as so necessary for our lives in the very challenges that we have been conditioned to see as "threatening" our way of life. As such, the coming changes will be what makes or breaks the human spirit, and so determines our fate.

Transcendent Times, Indeed! The Convergence of Science & Religion

As I've long suspected, we live in in the most transcendent of times. "Bliss it is in THIS dawn to be alive!"

The Vatican's Chief Astronomer, Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, confirmed in an interview published May 12th in L'Osservatore Romano, the Catholic Church's daily newspaper, what many I suspect have long since known: It is not antithetical to know and understand that the 'Big Bang' was the Creation!

Rev. Fune, the Jesuit scholar from Argentina who was "infallibly" chosen to be the Vatican's chief astronomer and to direct the Catholic Church's observatory in Vatican City, confirmed the position endorsed by Pope Benedict , that science does not contradict religion - a position explored in great depth by the Dalai Lama in his wonderfully affirmative book, "The Universe in a Single Atom".

Rev. Fune said Tuesday (as reported by Reuters UK):

"Dialogue between faith and science could be improved if scientists learned more about the Bible and the Church kept more up to date with scientific progress.

Funes, an Argentine, said he believed as an astronomer that the most likely explanation for the start of the universe was "the big bang", the theory that it sprang into existence from dense matter billions of years ago.

But he said this was not in conflict with faith in God as a creator. "God is the creator. There is a sense to creation. We are not children of an accident ...."

Transcendent times, indeed . . . . Could this put the other bookend on the sad 300+ year litany of debate that started with the faux-Enlightenment that saw Galileo condemned as an heretic, and the most-brilliant of modern-Jesuit scholars, paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, silenced under a Vatican publication ban and external exile to the avowedly atheistic 'People's Republic' of Maoist China?

Galileo is no longer spinning in his grave, I suspect, but rather dancing the Macarena while Teilhard de Chardin smiles knowingly from the palaroma of Unitive Consciousness in which we, and this Universe, "live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28)

John, the most mystic and beloved of the Apostles, gave us the New Testament's account of creation when he wrote:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God." (John 1:1-2)

Now the New Testament itself is fairly old in relative terms at this stage in the game. Thankfully, the physical sciences finally found and clarified the voice of its own testament to the creation of the heavens and the earth this past century when the physicists Gamow and Herman first detected that voice - the cosmic background radiation which still radiates out the radio waves that carry the Word of the Big Bang to us from far across all the reaches of the Universe. And the social sciences too found their testament when Carl Jung wrote of the synchronystic, universal experience which is the unity of our being with Wholeness. This universal adventure and the indications of an awakening of a newer Enlightenment than that of old that Rev. Fune's interview herald make now the best and only time that we can live up to our potential. This universal adventure which continues to expand all that is - and us along with it - is itself a testament to that original creation out of G_d (whatever that word might mean to each of us) some 18.3 billion earth years ago.

These are truly transcendent times in which we are fortunate to be alive! Sit up and take note Messrs. Dawkins and Hitchens, and all you intelligent designer label fans out there! It is time to clarify your terms and visions and join the unfolding of this greatest of stories. Keep an open mind and expand your horizons. . . .

What Is Spiritual Awakening, Enlightenment etc.?

Enlightenment is a "new state of consciousness and being" which is deeper and more profound than our ordinary self-consciousness or "ego". Experience of this deeper, impersonal state of consciousness is available to anyone - particularly, anyone who has the clarity of intention and impeccable and unwavering commitment to individual and collective liberation from the egoic enslavement of our conditioned, learned processes of rational and analytic reasoning.

Enlightenment is the state of the adept - beyond our reacting to sensory stimuli through (i) mere reception of the stimuli, like when a frog reacts if he were poked with a needle, (ii) the deeper perception of what a stimulus represents, like the dog that gets nervous at the vet when it sees the needle, or (iii) through conception, or forming ideas about possible stimuli - physical, purely mental or a combination of such - as when a child reacts when first told he or she is "going to get a needle", irrespective if they have been inoculated before.

These three "ordinary" states of consciousness, as well as the state of the adept, or cosmically conscious person who has benefited from an experience of enlightenment experience are clearly discussed in Richard M. Bucke's classic work, Cosmic Consciousness, which was written by Bucke (a friend and student of the poet, Walt Whitman) in 1901 and went on to become - or so I hear - a "Hippie Bible" in the '60s. It is still in print.

More recently the three ordinary levels of consciousness preceding enlightened consciousness were set out by Neale Donald Walsh (he of "The Complete Conversations with God" fame) in his book, What God Wants: A Compelling Answer to Humanity's Biggest Question. Walsh describes these three levels of ordinary consciousness - reception, perception and conception - as reptilian, mamallian and human. He describes the differences in terms of (a) getting to close to a cobra's personal space, in which case it will react and strike, (b) a he-lion perceiving a rival as being too close to his personal space, and his pride of lionesses and reacting to the smell of another lion's urine on a tree used for marking his territory with his scent, and (c) the physiological reaction of jealousy we humans experience when we think (or conceive the idea) that someone is hitting on our spouse at a cocktail party.

According to the great Swiss psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, one may achieve this state of liberation and self-transcendence spontaneously (a) through an act of Grace - documented, if rarely - or, (b) through a profoundly deep, honest and personal contact with friends (particularly if those friends have become aware that freedom and liberation from the false but 'seemingly real', sense of "ego" or separate individual identity is possible in this lifetime), or (c) more likely, through consciously walking on a path "which leads to a higher education of the mind, beyond mere rationalism".

Enlightenment, self-transcendence, mystic union - the state of consciousness and being described by every great world religion or wisdom tradition - is, thus, a heightened state of depth consciousness beyond what a person who has not progressed on the path to a higher understanding of his or her mind and state of being is normally capable of. It is the experience of a profound spiritual awakening, and the continued, quiet abiding in that state.

Awakening as the Dharma Wheel Turns.

Jung said that every psychological problem is really a problem of the soul - a spiritual problem or disconnect, if you will. Jung studied the Eastern religions, and I know my analyst is a student of Jung. Imagine my surprise then when a man with years of psychoanalytic practice who has been one of my greatest spiritual teachers confessed that he was never really quite sure about what people mean when they speak of Dharma.

Bhuddism, a technically atheistic wisdom tradition given that the Bhudda never spoke of or recognized a 'creator' as such, puts great store on the turning of the Wheel of Dharma the awakening of sentient beings to the unchangeable, empty void and "suchness" in which we live and move and have our being. It is said that a great advance in sentient consciousness occurred some 2,500 years ago when Siddhartha Gautama, the Bhudda or Awakened One, arose from meditation under the tree in Bhoda Gaya where he achieved transcendence and began to speak of the The Four Noble Truths which are the heart of the Bhudda's teachings - the Noble Truths of the nature of suffering in the egoic state, its cause, the possibility of ending suffering by eradicating its roots in attraction and aversion to phenomenal 'reality' of our everyday world, and the Eight-Fold Path to achieve this. This it is said was when the Dharma Wheel, the awakening of consciousness to the absolute nature of our being, began to turn.

Virtually every time I meet with my doctor, I sense the Dharma Wheel turn a notch as our discussion is always based, at least to some degree, in knowing that overcoming egoic suffering is our human destiny and deepest impulse. The Dharma is the law of spiritual cause and effect. Each moment we realize and are conscious of how our words, actions and the state of our being either contribute to the awakening of us all to the underlying consciousness that grounds our seeming 'real world' and psyche in the absolute or obscures this consciousness in seemingly real egoic suffering, the Dharma Wheel spins imperceptibly. The Bhudda was a great psychologist, as was Jung. I sense each turned the Wheel of Dharma. I know that my doctor does as well, even if he is uncertain about what this means to me or others. The inevitability of spiritual awakening, the emergence of our Authentic Self from the entwinement of the Ego is Dharma in action as the Wheel turns.

Enlightenment and Spiritual Awakening: "Bottom-Up" vs. "Top-Down" Transcendence

I hear a lot of discussion about spiritual awakening and self-transcendence where the emphasis regarding the whole enlightenment 'thang is as a process - a walking along a spiritual path rather than getting effortlessly and spontaneously to an end state, if there is indeed such a thing as an end state. That seems to be the case in most religious bodies and groups - in what the famed psychologist, William James, distinguished, in Varieties of Religious Experience as "outer religion".

Who knows? Maybe we're kind of looking at this backwards or askew. I know that for me that would be no surprise. I don't see enlightenment as a process but a state of being (be-ing). That's perhaps the fundamental difference between “bottom-up” or gradualist enlightenment which would be a process, and the sudden occurrence of an enlightenment which is experiential, “top-down”, occurring suddenly and that's it - the process of 'spiritual awakening' versus its outcome 'self-transcendence. . . .What's the old Zen adage? “Before enlightenment , chop wood and haul water. After enlightenment, chop wood and haul water.” … Or as my friend Harry taught me (my friend and teacher who had his “bright light” experience after 22 years of practicing affirmative and invocative prayer together with transcendental meditation), “If you are on a train reading the newspaper, and all you're doing is reading the newspaper . . . that is enlghtenment.”

Moral of the story? When you're peeling carrots, peel carrots. And when you're listening on the news to what is happening in Tibet, do not let yourself figure out how you would or can solve that problem. Rather, be the solution by manifesting the state of compassion that the Dalai Lama encourages. (Now if only I could bear that in mind when I am on the train reading about Tibet.)

Common sense says “nothing changes, if nothing changes. But I've often told my friends and those I work with (work, not in the sense that I'm employed doing it, although I do talk about it there, too), that in these times we need "uncommonly common sense." It's not that, “nothing changes if nothing changes,” I think. . . but, rather. that “Everything changes if no-thing changes”. One of the only 'absolute' constants in this relative world is that everything, everywhere is always changing (transitory, insubstantial and impermanent, as the Bhudda would tell'ya. . . .)

But, if the one thing that we perceive to be permanent in this egoic state which causes suffering changes, then every-thing does indeed change - that is, everything in the “outside” world, or at least in our perception and emotional reaction to the objects, even the mental objects, of the exterior world. And that one “thing” that needs to change? Our identification with, and the relentless persistence of the internal dialogue of, our unexamined, habitually conditioned thinking (i.e., learned way of thinking), our thinking without true awareness. That is, the inner “voice” which in our egoic state we take to be “us”, the stream of constant thinking that we can fall back into at any time and that can carry us away, precipitating virtually any action on our part - from the most altruistic acts to acts of murder or self-immolation.

For, of course, the one permanent firmament and fixture that we all have is our awareness, our “consciousness”. We are aware, therefore we are. We are conscious in our dreams and even on awaking from dreamless sleep again we are conscious. . . . We are aware. We are awareness or consciousness itself. . . . It is our awareness, our inner witnessing that is the portal through which we seem to look out from the Absolute to this relative world. If our identification with the constant thinking that obscures this awareness ceases wholly - and I believe that this is a spontaneous event if it is to be permanent, even if it occurs for us after years of prayer, meditative and contemplative practice - a “top-down” experience even if after years of “bottom-up” practice in mental discipline - then that is the enlightened state of being, that is the Absolute.

This end state, the impersonal experience of remaining "absolutely self-less while being relatively present" (to use the words of Robert Thurman, the Dalai Lama's friend and one-time student) is, I believe, the experience and the state of enlightenment that all wisdom traditions and religions speak of and aim for. “What manner of man,” Jesus taught, “can add one cubit to his stature by taking thought?” And, less so, it should be added, to the extent that one is carried away by the thinking of and the dentification with this seemingly real but false “self”. One cannot anything to one's "stature" or state of being by taking or being taken away by thought, one's awareness and connection with the Divine Unity, with the Absolute can only be lessened. Remember, Jesus also said, “Of my self, I am nothing. . .”

The Christian mystics also speak and always spoke of a 'Mystic Union' - the experience of “union with God” or the Absolute that Carl Jung wrote of and called “the thirst of our being for Wholeness” - even if these mystics, the not-so-famous and the famous-alike, the St. Johns of the Cross, the Joans of Arc and the Meisters Eckhart who were variously imprisoned, martyred at the discretion of the Church or forced to recant in the West, unlike the experience of mystics in the Orthodox tradition where the mystics of the Church, high and low , were and are equally reverenced along with the Bishops, the Fathers of the Church and the Saints. All these mystics spoke of and variously described this experience of the Mystic Union, this enlightenment and communion with the Divine, with God, with the Ground of Being.

I understand that Andrew Cohen, the modern teacher who speaks and writes of enlightenment for our times in terms of conscious or "evolutionary enlightenment", makes a great distinction between these two approaches and experiences - the bottom-up approach and experience versus the sudden, spontaneous spiritual awakening that he seems to have experienced by all accounts. Indeed he, like the Bhudda, teaches that the end goal is when all beings experience this liberation from the ego together, a concept he aptly calls "autonomy in communion".