Simon Small: On the Inner Path and Contemplative Life

"I stand at the bottom of the pond as the fulcrum of limitless space, within and without, a gateway to both, an icon that joins the two. But who am I, so small and insignificant yet at the heart of existence? As I ponder this question, infinite space reveals itself once more. For as hard as I look, I cannot find myself. I can only find thoughts, memories, fears, beliefs and concepts that constantly arise and cease. But whoever I am does not arise or cease. I am who I have always been. Different thoughts and a new body, but I am who I am. And as my mind stills consciousness expands without limit. There is a deep sense that, indeed, it has no limit. It too is infinite, a vibrantly alive space. As I stand at the bottom of the pond, I am the still center of awesome space, but so is every other human being. And, in its own way, so is every animal, plant, virus, bacteria and living cell. And in some far distant galaxy, on another insignificant lump of rock, at the bottom of another pond, stands another still center of space staring uswards and inwards, filled and humbled by the mystery of existence."

-- Simon Small --
 ("At the Bottom of a Pond")

In a recent interview (attached below) Iain McNay, co-host of ConsciousTV, sat down with Rev. Simon Small, an ordained Church of England clergyman and author, to explore the latter's journey from run-of-the-mill modern materialist businessman to a Christian contemplative. Small's inner journey of self-inquiry led him from spiritualism, through A Course in Miracles, to Theravada Buddhism and back to his Church of England roots, revealing to him the spaciousness and interconnectedness that is at the heart of all the world's great wisdom traditions.

Small describes the fruits of the inner path in the following terms: "One begins to experience a taste that one is not separate to everything else, that this hard sense of being separate and cut off from all of this, and just relating to it, is actually just a perception, and that whatever I am is flowing out of the source of everything, just as this table is, and this room, and everything outside."

"Contemplation," he notes, "is an ancient Christian word for a universal experience. (It) describes what happens when we have those moments . . when suddenly our very small world that we are living out in our head almost seems to dissolve and suddenly there is this vast mystery there in the moment. We all have experiences like this. Many of us have them out in nature. We will be walking along and there will be a moment when the sunlight coming through the branches and hitting the leaves just stops us in our tracks. There is a sense of time almost stopping as well, and there is almost a sense of resonance in the moment so that we are no longer separate to the sunlight and those leaves. There is something vibrating there that is vibrating in us as well. We all have these moments."

A life of contemplation may not, however, be for everyone. The fruits of the inner path and contemplation are very rich, Small notes, but they come at a price, a price that many people are, perhaps, loathe to pay.

"At first, (contemplation) is a wonderful experience," he points out, "because you have never quite tasted anything quite like it. It is like the finest wine you have ever tasted, and you become aware. . . . Suddenly life has gone to colour from black and white.  But then very quickly," he warns, "one begins to realize that if you are going to pursue this you are not going to be able to live the same way anymore in the world. Things that you used to value, you won't value anymore. And you will begin to value things that you have never dreamed of before."

Small's advice to those who wish to explore the contemplative way is: "Enter stillness. Try and taste the wonder of being. Go out into nature, (into) whatever it is that brings this sense of wonder into your life. And then as you are experiencing that quality of consciousness, hold the question: Where do I go from here?" The answer will come, he notes.

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.

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.

The Ending of Ego-Addiction: "A Pathless Land"

". . .. (T)he annihilation, cessation, and overcoming of bodily form, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness, this is the extinction of suffering, the end of disease, the overcoming of old age and death."

"This, truly, is the Peace, this is the Highest, namely the end of all formations, the forsaking of every substratum of rebirth, the fading away of craving, detachment, extinction, Nibbana."

("A Buddhist Bible," Dwight Goddard ed., page 32.)

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Perceptions, mental formations and consciousness." Over 2,500 years ago, the Buddha identified these three mental phenomena - or, perhaps, noumena, to be more precise - as the root cause of suffering. In growing up we are conditioned by the people in our lives and our culture to regard so-called "normal" perceptions, mental formations and consciousness as being our "reality."

Few even think about these concepts, much less question whether our "reality" is so "real" after all. In a very literal sense, it could be said that we are "addicted" to our thinking, and the perceptions, ideas, inner narratives and identities that we take to be who we "are."

But is that so? And what can "we" do about it?

A modern enlightened master, Jiddu Krishhnamurti would ask us to question these propositions for ourselves; yet, his life's work points us to the truth that there is a near universal addiction to the ordinary  human consciousness. We are, he would likely say, overwhelmingly ego-addicted.

"When one makes an abstraction in thought, one moves away from 'what is,'" Krishnamurti writes in his book, "The Wholeness of Life." And that, he observes, has both ethical as well as psychological implications for the individual, suggesting that our propensity to think without an awareness of what we are thinking, is a life-long 'habit.' A 'habit' we should probably quit, as it interferes with our deepest psychological functioning, the ability to love.

"That movement of abstraction," he notes, "becomes a condition according to which one lives, therefore one no longer lives according to facts. This is what one has done all one's life; but one will never know what love is through abstraction, will not know the enormous beauty, depth and significance of love."

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)
". . . Truth is a pathless land . . . "

"Why does man put up with this suffering," Krishnamurti asks, utilizing his customary method of inquiry:

Why does man put up with this suffering? . . . What is it that suffers? When one says "I suffer," who is it that suffers? What is the center that says "I am in agony of jealousy, of fear of loss"? Is it the movement of thought, as time, which creates the center? How does that I come into being, which, having come into being says, "I suffer, I am anxious, I am frightened, I am jealous, I am lonely". That I is never stationary, it is always moving: "I desire this, I desire that and then I desire something else", it is in constant movement. That movement is time, that movement is thought.

["The Wholeness of Life," p.  152.]

Such 'desire,' along with 'anger' and 'ignorance' is, of course, one of the "Three Poisons" that the Buddha identified as the root of our human suffering, our addiction to self, our ego-addiction. End desire, end anger, end ignorance and one will end suffering is the essence of the Buddha's "Third Noble Truth," the noble truth of the end of suffering.

The Buddha suggests a comprehensive eight point methodology to end this addiction to ego-centric thinking (his "Fourth Noble Truth," the noble truth of the eight-fold path to the end of suffering), all of which is set out to stop the 'thinking without awareness' that is the root of ego-addiction. Krishnamurti, for his part, suggests rigorous self-examination and inquiry to overcome theses thought processes

"Thought identifies itself with the name and with the form and is the I in all the content of consciousness," Krishnamurti observes. "(It) is the essence of fear hurt, despair, anxiety, guilt, the pursuit of pleasure, the sense of loneliness, all the content of consciousness. . . . If one runs away from it, one has not solved it; but if one remains with it, not identifying oneself with it  - because one is that suffering - then all your energy is present to meet this extraordinary thing that happens. . . . (W)hen one observes suffering in oneself, not escaping from it, but remaining with it totally, completely, without any movement of thought, without any alleviation, comfort, but just completely holding to it, then one will see a strange psychological transformation take place."

And that transformation? Is it the end of "self," or ego death? One will, of course, have to find the answer to that on one's own? It was the Buddha who said, in effect, "do not take my word for it, do not worship me, find out for yourself if these truths are not real." Or, as Krishnamurti famously said to a crowd of his "followers" before setting out on his radical course of lonely self-inquiry:

"I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. . . . Because I am free, unconditioned, whole -- not the part, not the relative, but the whole Truth that is eternal -- I desire those, who seek to understand me to be free; not to follow me . . . Rather they should be free from all fears -- from the fear of religion, from the fear of salvation, from the fear of spirituality, from the fear of love, from the fear of death, from the fear of life itself."

["The Wholeness of Life," p.  153. Emphasis added.]

To end this addiction to thought, to end 'ego-addiction,' therefore, one must follow one's own inner path of self-inquiry and self-examination as one travels through this inner, "pathless land."