A forum for seekers of spiritual awakening through self-transcendence, irrespective of spiritual tradition, religious or non-religious background or affiliation.
.... Our goal is to walk with true spiritual seekers, and to provide encouragement along the path as these modern spiritual pilgrims quest for the holy modern grail --- a new state of consciousness and being ....
What consciousness holds fast
to you in dreamless sleep?
In dreams?
Awake?
Whither the coming and going?
From whence the remembering and forgetting?
In what the arising?
The abiding?
The subsiding?
Beyond substance and form,
beyond subsistence, sustenance and succor,
beyond the pale
of sentience, sense and insentience
lies the effulgent, the fullness, the ineffable suchness,
the answer to all such queries.
"Gatha, Gatha, Ngatha. . . ."
"Gone, gone, gone beyond,
. . . to the farthest shore."
"Three postulates are now generally accepted about man," Heard observes. "The first is that he is part of an evolutionary process which has gone on since the dawn of life. The second, that he is a culmination of that process."
"Never before," he points out, "has a single species spread over the entire land surface of the earth, dominated completely all other species, radically altered its environment by tools, instruments and machines and, passing beyond simple awareness, attained self-consciousness."
"The third postulate," he notes, "is that evolution progressively accelerates until, in man, it has reached its highest speed. This acceleration is so rapid that man, the final species, in his latest stages passes in a millennium through changes comparable to those which in dawn of life took a score million years."
"There are (also) two further postulates about which there is growing agreement among informed inquirers," Heard observes. "The first is that evolution has ceased in all other species; in man alone is further radical change possible. All the others have specialized: man is still unspecialized. The second of these postulates is that though man is, through his retention of an unspecialized condition, capable of further physical evolution, he does not seem to availed himself of this, his latent capacity. On the contrary, he appears to have kept himself "in solution" for an unprecedented time: indeed it might be said that he has, as far as bodily development is concerned, specialized in unspecialization."
"(M)an's development," Heard posits, "when it ceased to be physiological became psychological. His history is his specific evolution. He evolves mentally. Even if we had no record of what (mankind) has done since its physical evolution ceased, we might assume that it would be its intelligence which would expand. We should expect to find that this creature has produced a culture "projecting" on to its environment the energy which would otherwise have been expressed through further alterations in the creature's physique."
"This," he points out, "is to bring history under the general principles of natural history, to make civilization a development of biology, and to see culture as a continuation of a vital energy which, no longer manifesting itself in changes in physique, begins to express itself in discoveries of technique."
Thus, Heard notes, "(t)he first great stage of advance was the physical, the second was the technical, the third must be the psychical.
"The first," he points out, "is unconscious - blind; the second is conscious, unreflective, aware of its need but not of itself, of how, not why; the third is interconscious, reflective, knowing not merely how to satisfy its needs but what they mean and what the Whole means."
"When, then, we again change," Heard concludes, "this time from the technique phase of advance to the psychic, from indirect to direct expansion of understanding, at this point man's own self-consciousness decides and can alone decide whether he will mutate, and the mutation is instantaneous."
"(I)t is only in so far as man can intuitively or intentionally balance the growth of his mind, and understand himself as well as he understands his environment," says Heard, "that he can continue evolving and not relapse into the strangulated self-consciousness which gives him means without ends and powers without sanctions."
[Gerald Heard, "Pain, Sex and Time," Introduction, pp. xxviii-xxx]
"The cry in every human heart is the search for meaning to life," writes the editorialist in the Tamil copy of The Daily Mirror. "Each one however has to make that decision to go in search and make his or her own discoveries. The question then is whether we want to, during this span of our lives, find the way, the truth and life."
"The truth," Krishnamurti observed, "is a pathless land."
"Humanity was in a sorry mess for thousands of years," we read in the Daily Mirror's insightful article recapping the celebrations of the 2,600th anniversary of the Buddha's enlightenment. "Destiny always sought one who would be receptive enough to be imbued with enlightenment. The Buddha yearned to know the way and the truth for greater meaning to his life. He traversed the path and made such discoveries that he shared with all beings. The Dhamma was discovered and sown in human hearts through his teachings."
"Now," the editorialist continues, "in the frontiers of hope, we want to catch a glimpse of its birth in other wombs that are conducive to giving life. Creation is awaiting the new arrival in every generation. The creative force is lying dormant within our inner being, wanting to reveal to those who seek."
"There had to be a beginning to the earth we live in," we are reminded. "From within the Source, the cosmos was made to be. If we, the creatures have intelligence, then surely there had and has to be an even greater intelligence and power behind creation. Like the banks hold resources or wealth in their vaults, there is a repository of wisdom and truth, buried within the psyche of creation. Siddhartha Gautama was a thinker of that age, influenced in the matrix of Hinduism. Buddha discovers the seeds of truth. To a lesser degree, down the ages, there have been other great thinkers, who unearthed a few of those seeds of Truth. From the sages in the Himalayas to the great thinkers like Aristotle and Socrates; from discoveries made in the field of various sciences to the other achievements of man, the creative power of wisdom has generously sowed its seeds in those who sought them. The discoveries have enriched and blessed, so that all would benefit in every generation."
In a recent lecture at the University of Mumbai, in which he reflected on the truths of ancient wisdom and the realities of modern life, His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama observed: "This marvelous human intelligence is sometimes used for wrong purpose(s)."
The younger generations, he suggests, reflecting on the sorrows and fears of the twentieth-centrury must develop inner "peace." And such peace, he observes, is available through the ancient teachings of the Buddha and Buddhist tradition."
Andrew Cohen, Editor-in-chief,
EnlightenNext magazine.
"Evolution," says spiritual teacher, Andrew Cohen, "really means we are part of a process that is going somewhere in time." In this, Cohen shares the view of a raft of spiritual teachers and philosophers from the Buddha to modern era sages like psychologist Richard M. Bucke, the Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin and the polymath philosopher/author Gerald Heard.
"(But)," asks Cohen, "(t)o what degree are we actually aware of the fact that we are part of a process that is becoming more complex and more self-aware in time, and that our own experience of consciousness and cognition is the very leading edge of that movement?"
"It is very interesting," he notes, "especially for those of us that are interested in the evolution of consciousness and culture, that as we make heroic spiritual effort - as we make the spiritual effort to become more conscious (and) more self-aware - as a result of making that spiritual effort we begin to feel our own movement."
"For the evolutionarily enlightened individual," Cohen observes, "that perspective really points us back to ourselves. And it says: 'To what degree are we enabling and encouraging this process of evolution to occur within this evolving cosmos as a result of our own heroic efforts?' Because," he notes, "ultimately . . . especially at the next stage of human cultural development, the ultimate source of meaning and purpose for the individual is going to be found through how much we are actually contributing to the process of evolution that made it possible for us to be here."
Cohen's teaching of 'Evolutionary Enlightenment' is a modern perspective that picks up the metaphysical gauntlet thrown down to post-modern spiritual seekers by his lineage in the Advaita Vedanta. Cohen's evolutionary teaching at once gibes with what we now know of humanity's origins and challenges the spiritual seeker to become an active and conscious participant in the imperative we have to chart the next leap forward in humanity's cultural and spiritual development.
In the following video, Cohen re-contextualizes the traditional Bodhisattva's vow in addressing the question of what comes next for us.
"Your whole life, when you take it seriously," Cohen notes, "becomes an expression of spirit in action, because you realize that is the whole thing, that is what you are doing here, (and) that's the whole point of this existence. Without that, life doean't mean anything. Otherwise you are just living a materialistic life satisfying narcissistic and selfish desires (that) ultimately doesn't mean anything."
"We are the luckiest people that have ever been born," Cohen observes, "so we have a different burden. We have to get over our ego so we can take responsibility for our tremendous good fortune."
"Ultimately, what we need," Cohen notes, "is a moral, philosophical (and) spiritual approach to life that makes sense of it all, because the post-modern predicament . . . doesn't make any sense. (We) are highly developed, intelligent people that don't know what (we) are really doing here. When we find out absolutely what we are doing, then we can discover the kind of conviction that can get us out of the ego and into the (evolutionary) process."
"Saying 'yes' to evolution has very powerful spiritual implications for the individual, and it involves saying 'yes' to life in ways that we never really have before," Cohen concludes. "And then saying 'yes' to eternity, and (then) saying 'yes' to the future, we have to take responsibility for all of it; (and) that means we have to become 'God,' so to speak, both metaphorically and literally."
After the American Transcendentalists and the New Thought movements, with their various teachers and teachings, yet before the Hippies with their LSD, and before the New Agers with their crystals, there were the "Beats." And before the "Beats," as after the "Beats," there was the prolific writer and wanderer, Jack Kerouac - the singular "King of the Beats."
Kerouac, for all his hard-drinking and womanizing ways that were immortalized in "On the Road" and his many other novels, was nonetheless, and more than anything else an Arahat, a spiritual seeker. His most personal writings, the notebooks he kept that were published as "Some of the Dharma," reveal over and over the depth of the spiritual enlightenment he chased from his native Maine to New York City, and from San Francisco to the deserts of Mexico and the beaches of Florida.
In "Some of the Dharma," a masterpiece of existential poetry and prose, he writes:
MY PERSONALITY SELF is only like a river in its valley - the river is like Mind Essence, the shores Jack Kerouac - as soon as it gets "out to sea" there is no more river and my realization of essence of mind restored unshackled to shoreless void---but mind will continue to suffer down other rivers after my river runs out of its banks, so "I'll suffer again," because I'm mind, my realization of suffering is due not to my personality-shores but due and informed by the mind essence "waters" that stream through---So as long as ignorance exists I'll, as mind, suffer---consciously, too---The mistake of ignorance is in my own mind now.
["Some of the Dharma," page 183.]
Again and again, he would turn to the theme of ignorance, and the pursuit of his enlightenment with or without the help of the Buddha, the saints or God.
The world is what's in the mind.---
The reason why concentration is advised is because
sentient beings have a tendency to run wild in the
wrong direction and stampeded to Ignorance---
["Some of the Dharma," page 183.]
Kerouac died as he lived, and fittingly it was in 1969, before he would witness the demise of the love spread during that era. He died at the age of 47 from an internal hemorrhage caused by cirrhosis of the liver, the result of a lifetime of hard drinking.
Yet, in the end, it seems Kerouac may have obtained, in his own way, a peace that few of us come to know. On the final pages of "Some of the Dharma," he writes:
The Karma Emptiness Movement works automatically, evil is paid up prompt. . . . . .
ALSO It's worse than death not to know that "God" is the same thing as yourself----
and that's precisely the situation everywhere---and everywhere they're "dying"---
Kerouac concludes that his life was due to "a load of unpaid karmic debts," which his "automatic sentient suffering (would) make good."
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.
, 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.
" 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.
