Aldous Huxley: On the Perennial Philosophy and the Ground of Being

" . . . (T)here is a hierarchy of the real. The manifold world of our everyday existence is real with a relative reality that is, on its own level, unquestionable; but this relative reality has its being within and because of the absolute Reality, which, on account of the incommensurable otherness of its eternal nature, we can never hope to describe, even though it is possible for us directly to apprehend it."

-- Aldous Huxley --

("The Perennial Philosophy," page 33.)

Just to the extent that we mistake our "relative reality" with "absolute Reality" do we suffer. That is the nature of samsara, the unawakened life. Our identification with the unawakened "self" of our normal, workaday consciousness obscures the consciousness of the true "Self" which is co-extant with the Ground of Being. The object of the Buddha's 'Eight-Fold Path to the End of Suffering' - the fourth of the Four Noble Truths - is, like all true spiritual teachings, to bring us to a unitive knowledge of this Ground of Being.

In his Introduction to "The Song of God," a translation of the Bhagavad Gita by his frineds Christopher Isherwood and Swami Prabhavananda, the polymath author and philosopher, Aldous Huxley, outlines "the Perennial Philosophy" underlying the world's great spiritual traditions, a philosophy which points to our ability to realize the ineffable Ground of Being.

"At the core of the Perennial Philosophy," Huxley observes, "we find four fundamental doctrines."

"First: the phenomenal world of matter and individualized consciousness - the world of things and animals and men and even gods - is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their beginning, and apart from which they would be non-existent.

Second: human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine Ground by inference; they can also realize its existence by a direct intuition, superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.

Third: man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul. It is possible for a man, if he so desires, to identify himself with the spirit and therefore with the Divine Ground, which is of the same or like nature with the spirit.

Fourth: man's life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground."

 "Direct knowledge of the Ground (of Being) cannot be had except by union," Huxley notes, "and union can be achieved only by the annihilation of the self-regarding ego, which is the barrier separating the "thou" from the "That.""  The ego, or smaller "self" is, thus, the face and identity of the "relative reality" which obscures our higher consciousness, while "the Self" of the divine "Ground of Being" is the higher consciousness which enables us to experience (although not describe) true "Reality."

"Thou art that," we read over and over again in the Upanishads, and in other Scriptures. "Tat tvat asi."

Rumi: "The Other Thing"

The Other Thing

There are few resistance pockets left,
patches of shade the sun has not struck,
but mostly this universe is transformed.
Every star has become the evening star.

Every soul, a king with no flag or parapet
to shield him from direct light.

Go within and discover this land
where everyone is a living soul
under a wide, sky-field with a king entering
from the other side, a jubilee, a singing
where wine and dessert and the other thing
are given away.

            Last night I was out of myself.
If I were that way again, I could finish
this poem, but I'm not.

My poet-self is a protective pawn
put before the king, who is Shams,
whose light changes every being to an ocean,
and every body to a coral reef.

-- Jalalludin Rumi --

[Coleman Barks, "The Essential Rumi," pp. 310-311.]

The Sage and the Tao

The "Tao" is "the Way" - the way of all things, the fundamental principle of the universe. The feminine and the masculine meet in the Tao, yin meets yang in the Tao, the Four Cardinal Directions meet in the center, and this center is the Tao. He who knows the Tao, knows his own Being and the Way of all things.

"The sage has the sun and moon by his side. He grasps the universe under his arm. He blends everything into a harmonious whole, casts aside whatever is confused or obscured, and regards the humble as honourable."

-- Chuang Tse --

"If it
      is bent,
          it will be preserved intact;
     is crooked,
          it will be straightened;
     is sunken,
          it will be filled;
     is worn-out,
          it will be renewed;
     has little;
          it will gain;
     has much,
          it will be confused.

For these reasons,
     The sage holds on to unity
          and serves as the shepherd of all under heaven.

     He is not self-absorbed,
          therefore he shines forth;
     He is not self-revealing,
          therefore he is distinguished;
     He is not self-assertive,
          therefore he has merit;
     He does not praise himself,
          therefore he is long-lasting.

Now,
     Simply because he does not compete,
          no one can compete with him.

     The old saying about the bent being preserved intact
          is indeed close to the mark!

     Truly, he shall be returned intact."

-- Lao Tzu --

The Evolution of Consciousness: A Global Imperative

"Responding to a radical crisis that threatens our very survival - this is humanity's challenge now. The dysfunction of the egoic human mind, recognized already more than 2,500 years ago by the ancient wisdom teachers and now magnified through science and technology, is for the first time threatening the survival of the planet. Until very recently, the transformation of human consciousness - also pointed to by the ancient teachers - was no more than a possibility, realized by a few rare individuals here and there, irrespective of cultural or religious background. A widespread flowering of human consciousness did not happen because it was not imperative."

"A significant portion of the world's population will soon recognize, if they haven't already done so, that humanity is faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. A still relatively small but rapidly growing percentage of humanity is already experiencing within themselves the breakup of the old egoic mind patterns and the emergence of a new dimension of consciousness."

-- Eckhart Tolle --
("A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose")

"Evolve or die." These are strong words, but they capture the essence of the stark choice that we have confronted ourselves with as the result of an ever burgeoning scientific technology unchecked by effective religious, spiritual or moral insight and actions. While virtually all of our ways of life have been fundamentally altered by our embrace of the last several centuries of technological change, it appears to be only now that the need for a wholesale change in the very nature of our consciousness is becoming readily apparent - or an evolutionary imperative, as Tolle notes.

While there is a plethora of material out there (including Tolle's powerful first book "The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment") describing what needs to be done to change one's level of consciousness, and how that might be achieved, it is by no means an easy challenge. Few truly evolutionary challenges are.

"If," writes philosopher Gerald Heard, "we are to advance through the evolution of consciousness beyond self-consciousness, to reunite consciousness now divided into the self-conscious and subconscious, and bring about a new and single quality of awareness and being, there is required of us a peculiar and rare quality of attention. It must be intense but without effort and strain. It must be that over-plus of evolutionary energy, which we call curiosity, and the German tongue calls Neuiger, the new appetite, raised to what Plato called illuminating wonder."

"Indeed," Heard observes, "because we are now so deeply prejudiced in favour of the assumption that it is only possible for one real experience to be presented to us, and that can only be the world of common sense, the necessary state of mind required for enlargement of consciousness must be one which is even without expectation."

"We are waiting for an experience of which we have no conception from the past," he points out, "and that being so, any clear expectation must distort or even completely inhibit a radically new awareness."

[Gerald Heard, "Pain, Sex and Time," pp. 164-165.]

Fortunately, since Heard's time (he wrote those words in the dark days just before the onset of the Second World War), we have had breakthroughs in technology which have allowed those who have experienced equal breakthroughs in consciousness itself to intimately share their experiences (and methodologies) with us.

Below, are two teachers, the "neo-Buddhist" teacher Adyashanti and Tolle himself, sharing their integral teachings with us. Each shares the fundamental insight that there is an untapped, inherent state of higher consciousness within each of us.

Syncretism: The Relevance of Buddhism, Christianity and Other Religions in the Twenty-First Century

In answering the question of whether Buddhism and Christianity can remain relevant for the twenty-first century, panelists Lloyd Geering, a noted theologist and critic of Christian and Islamic fundamentalism, and Stephen Batchelor, a self-professed "secular or agnostic Buddhist," make the case that the twenty-first century is a "continuation" of both Christianity and Buddhism, together with the syncretism of Islam, Hinduism and Greek philosophy, each of which has influenced all others over the course of history.

"The future is in our hands," notes Batchelor. "Buddhism is just a concept. If Buddhists are able to revive and restore a vitality to its critical tradition of thinking, to find a way of engaging more directly with the contemporary issues of the world, then we can say that Buddhism could be relevant. If Buddhists do not rise to that challenge, then it probably won't."

In a somewhat ironic nod to Richard Dawkins, Geering observes, "Christianity might also hold us back. That is the problem of fundmentalism, whether Christian or Islamic," he notes. "It is, in fact, working against the aims (providing meaning and solutions for the twenty-first century) we have been talking about."
 

An Evidence-Based Spirituality for the 21st Century

"If it is indeed reasonable . . ,. to be both spiritually inclined and scientific," asks psychologist Charles T. Tart, PhD., "how could we go on to develop an evidence-based spirituality for the twenty-first century?" How can we get beyond simply "I believe it," or "I don't believe it," and start to find out what is true and false about the area we call spiritual and psychic, and how do you go on to develop that in a useful kind of way?"

"If you look at the results of real science, and not scientism," Tart observes, "there is a lot of evidence to show that humans beings sometimes show the kind of qualities that we would expect spiritual beings to have. And, therefore," he points out, "it is quite reasonable to be both scientific and spiritual in your approach toward life."

In the attached videos, Tart, a fellow of the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, lays the basis for a scientifically-reasonable twenty-first spirituality, examining research results in 'subtle energy' (known as chi or prajna in the East), 'psychic' healing, mindfulness, meditation and higher states of consciousness. The last video, Part 6 in the series, is particularly interesting as it compares Eastern spiritual 'psychologies' with traditional Western psychology (and what he calls "dismissive materialism").

"We can," Tart observes,"start separating out in a relatively objective way what is genuine and what is superstition or brain malfunctioning and use that to refine and clarify, and hopefully make more effective, various spiritual systems that are designed to make people have direct spiritual experiences. For instance, if meditation is associated with certain kinds of brain wave activity, and we can train that kind of brain wave activity more directly, maybe we can combine those two things and come up with a way to teaching meditation more effectively than it is done traditionally."

A Transformation of Consciousness: The Essence of All Religions

"There is a very, very dire importance to understand what is the essence of religion," Radhanath Swami points out, in the attached lecture delivered at the Unitarian Church of Dallas Texas.

"In a very broad sense," says Radhanath, a teacher in the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, "(the essence of religion) is to transform our consciousness - from arrogance to humility, from vengeance to forgiveness, from greed to generosity, and, most of all it is meant to connect us to the love within us so that we can be instruments of compassion in everything we do."

"This is the universal principle of religion," Radhanath explains, "to absorb ourselves in the love of God and to be genuinely compassionate to all living beings."

"Wherever we find love of God that is broad and deep," he points out (quoting his own spiritual guru), "it induces us to be truly compassionate and make sacrifices for the welfare of others. That is where the truth is. That is real religion."

"It is not about being a Hindu or a Muslim," he notes, "or a Christian, or a Jew, or a Sikh, or a Jain, or a Zoroastrian or a Buddhist, it is about loving God. It is about connecting to that higher experience of love within our heart and being an instrument of compassion within this world. That is the essence (of the world's wisdom traditions), and that is the greatest need."

Thomas Merton, Zen and the Nature of the Ego

The ego (or small "self") is wholly narcissistic and driven by fear, or its counterpart, desire. When one first becomes aware of the spiritual nature of one's being there arises a real risk that the ego will say: "Spiritual? You want to be spiritual and become enlightened? Just watch how spiritual I can become!"

Thomas Merton
(1915-1968)

The renowned Trappist monk and prolific author, Thomas Merton, addresses this process of spiritual self-sabotage in his book, "Mystics and Zen Masters." In recounting the story of how Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Zen (Ch'an) Buddhism was chosen, Merton illustrates how the self-seeking ego can embrace spirituality and the concept of enlightenment itself and, thus, fool even the most ardent spiritual seeker.

The Fifth Patriarch, when choosing his successor, asked each of the monastery's monks to write a verse illustrating their Zen insight. The much accomplished monk who was presumed to be the heir-apparent wrote:

"The body is the Bodhi tree,
The mind is like a clear mirror standing.
Take care to wipe it all the time,
Allow no grain of dust to cling to it."

Profoundly dissatisfied with this explanation, Hui Neng, the monastery's unordained cook, wrote:

"The Bodhi is not like a tree,
The clear mirror is nowhere standing.
Fundamentally not one thing exists:
Where then is a grain of dust to cling?"

The "clear mirror" is - or, so it seems -  really the ego which the heir-apparent was constantly trying to wipe clean. The problem, however, seems to be that it was the "ego"or "self" that was trying to wipe itself clean. Illustrating the principle that "self" cannot rid itself of "self" or "ego-nature," Hui Neng -  the unordained cook - was appointed as the Sixth Patriarch.

In rejecting the "mirror wiping" concept of meditation, Merton observed that Hui Neng "was not rejecting meditation itself, but what he believed to be a totally wrong attitude to meditation." Merton explains that a "wrong attitude" or error may occur when the ego, in a last-ditch effort to retain its hold on the spiritual seeker, embraces spirituality itself. He explains:

"1.  This wrong attitude assumes and gives primacy to a central ego-consciousness, an awareness of an empirical self, an "I" which, with all the good intentions in the world, sets out to "achieve liberation" or "enlightenment." This is the familiar empirical ego which is aware of itself, observes itself, remembers itself, and seeks ways to preserve and perpetuate its self-awareness. This "I" seeks to affirm itself not only in its actions, and its thoughts, but also in contemplation. In stripping off the exterior and sensible trappings of superficial experience, the ego seeks to realize its own spiritual nature more perfectly. This implies a rejection of one's sensible and active self in order to attain to an inner "silent" self, which is still, however, our "ego."

2.  The empirical and self-conscious self then views its own thought as a kind of object or possession, and in so doing accounts for this thought by situating it in a separate, isolated, "part of itself," a mind, which it compares to a "mirror." This is also considered a "possession." "I have a mind." Thus the mind is regarded not as something I am, but something I own. It then becomes necessary for me to sit quietly and calmly, recollecting my faculties and reaching down to experience my "mind."

3.  The empirical self then resolves to purify the mirror of the mind by removing thoughts from it. When the mirror of the mind is clear of all thought (so it imagines), the ego will be "liberated." It will affirm itself freely without thoughts. Why does it aim at this bizarre attainment? Because it has read in the sutras that "enlightenment" is a state of "emptiness," of "suchness." It is an awareness of an inner and transcendental mind. Presumably if all thoughts of material and contingent things are kept out of the mirror, then the mirror will be filled with the pure spiritual light of the Buddha mind, which is a kind of "emptiness.""

"So," Merton observes, "the ego-consciousness is able, it believes, to eat its cake and have it. It renounces its empirical autonomy in order to sink into spiritual, pre-biological nature. But since this nature is regarded as one's possession, the "spiritualized" ego thus is able to affirm itself all the more perfectly, and to enjoy its own narcissism under the guise of "emptiness" and "contemplation.""

In this manner, the ego, it turns out, becomes the ultimate ego-trap. The old axiom, "Know thyself!" is thus, still valid, albeit with the corollary: "But beware of thyself, and all its ways!"

(Excerpts from Thomas Merton, "Mystics and Zen Masters," pp. 19-23.)

Jack Kerouac: The End of a 'Beat'

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

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."

Surely, it has . . . and still does . . .

Pre-rational, Rational and Trans-rational Religion

In an extremely insightful preliminary to his video discussion with Father Thomas Keating, integral theorist and philosopher Ken Wilber looks at the differing perspectives humankind has on spirituality and religion, distinguishing the esoteric from the exoteric, and (broadly outlining his theory of “integral dynamics”) the pre-rational, rational and trans-rational religious worldviews.

“Part of what religion in its highest effort can do is help men and women move from the pre-rational forms of religion, to the rational forms, to the trans-rational,” he observes, noting that  “(t)here is an enormous amount of evidence that it can do that.”

Nevertheless, Wilber notes that all of these forms of religion are equally valid for those holding such religious views. The difficulty, he points out, is convincing each group that they are not exclusively right, thereby creating a conversation that can integrate all three viewpoints, and allowing all three viewpoints to evolve.

“Those who look into spirituality or religion for more than an hour realize that there are at least two very different types of spirituality and religion," Wilber observes, "and there are many different ways to categorize them. Traditionally, they are referred to as esoteric and exoteric, the inner and outer forms. Another way of looking at it is that some of the forms of religion are clearly ‘pre-rational,’ ‘magic’ and ‘mythic.’ And, yet other forms are ‘trans-rational.’ They are deeply, deeply contemplative, and move beyond any ordinary categories of reason and logic, but not beneath it. They transcend and include reason. They are not anti-rational."


Wilber continues:

“So how, indeed, to get this kind of conversation going in the modern world is very difficult. Because if you look at some of the more dogmatic forms of religion . . . not that dogma is bad, it has it’s place . . . but if you look at these types that we are calling exoteric, or religion of myth and dogma, its arguably the cause of more human suffering and death than any other man-mad cause on the face of the planet.”

“And yet if you look at the great paths of liberation, those (are) contemplative paths that have claimed to show men and women a doorway in the deepest part of their own consciousness to that realm which is timeless and spaceless, and beyond death and pain and mortality.”

“So on the one hand we have religion causing the most human suffering imaginable, and on the other hand the only path out of human suffering that we know of. How to get that conversation going is extraordinarily difficult and yet there arguably is no more important conversation we can have.”

Is there a Role for Science on Spirituality's 'Lonely Path'?

". . . And I will speak to thee of that wisdom and vision which, when known, there is nothing else for thee to know.

Among thousands of men perhaps one strives for perfection; and among thousands of those who strive perhaps one knows me in truth."                    ("Bhagavad Gita," VII:2-3)

It's been said, over and over, in all the world's great wisdom traditions, that the road to enlightenment or true liberation is a lonely path. Indeed, even in the world's most widespread religion, Christianity, those who traveled the furthest down the spiritual road, those like St. John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart, were often isolated by the Church authorities themselves. Speaking many centuries after the Bhagavad Gita was set down, Jesus (cryptically as ever) warned of the same existential loneliness in store for the true spiritual aspirant, saying, "The harvest is indeed great, but the laborers are few," (Matthew 9:27).

Essentially the spiritual quest for enlightenment is a lonely quest because it is an internal journey. Over and over, we read and hear testimony that it is essential for the spiritual aspirant to let go of the search for outward satisfaction, even his or her attachment to thoughts of outer things, in order that our real inner life is opened to us. The renowned 20th-century theologian, Paul Tillich, spoke of "the lonely self-inquiry" necessary to find the "depth" of one's existence:

". . . (A)ll those who have been concerned - mystics and priests, poets and philosophers, simple people and educated - with that road through confession, lonely self-scrutiny, internal or external catastrophes, prayer, contemplation, have witnessed to the same experience. They have found they are not what they  believed themselves to be, even after a deeper level had appeared to them below the vanishing surface. That deeper level itself became surface, when a still deeper level was discovered, this happening again and again, as long as their lives, as long as they kept on the road to their depth. . . ."                                   (Paul Tillich, "Shaking the Foundations," page 56)

Karlfried Graf Durckheim
(1896-1988)

Moreover, in today's Information Age, while our interconnectedness to a growing body of individuals seeking a higher meaning in their life seems to make this 'spiritual road' less lonely, it is deceptive. The pursuit of enlightenment is inherently a solitary business. While more people are striving for higher consciousness (perhaps "of hundreds," rather than "thousands," one strives to find the "Truth" of our existential being), even more individuals are hemmed in by the ever-illusive quest for more material wealth and 'security.' Such is the "Westernizing influences" of a worldview that tends to exult the material and discounts the spiritual.

In an interview with French Orthodox priest, Alfonse Goettman, the modern German mystic, Karlfried Graf Durckheim (see video at end of article), remarked that, "(t)he destiny of man is to become the one who can witness to the transcendent Reality at the very heart of existence." However as a culture, he observes, we seem to have turned a blind 'inner eye' to that destiny, much to our detriment.

". . . (C)ivilization in the West," he notes, "has developed only one pole of the human being and has sacrificed the other. Yet man is always called to a double mission: to recognize and master the world in which he lives, for which he needs efficiency, but at the same time to mature on the inner path which is vital to this fulfillment. The fruit of this maturity is seen in a person who is transparent to his essential being which he expresses in his daily life. It is a fact that western civilization has completely neglected this aspect of our nature."

His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama

Perhaps it is the Dalai Lama, with his profound respect for both scientific and spiritual inquiry, who best summarizes the basic existential problems - even threats - that an over-weighting of a 'mastery' of the physical world to the detriment of 'maturing' on the 'inner path' poses. In his insightful book, "The Universe In A Single Atom," he writes:

"The central question - central for the survival and well being of our world - is how we can make the wonderful developments of science into something that offers altruistic and compassionate service for the needs of humanity and the other sentient being with whom we share the earth."

". . . First of all like any instrument, science can be put to good use or bad. It is the state of mind of the person wielding the instrument that determines to what end it will be put. Second, scientific discoveries affect the way we understand the world and our place in it. This has consequences for our behavior."

Einstein famously remarked, "Science without religion is lame, while religion without science is blind." An apt paraphrase of this prescient observation in the context of over-weighting the importance of mastery of the physical world over mastery of one's inner self might be: "Spirituality without science is mute, while science without spirituality is deaf to humanity's deepest needs."

If the Information Age is to live up to its evident potential, it will perhaps do so by breaking up the relative loneliness of the spiritual path, thereby increasing the odds of finding the 'Truth' that Krishna gives in the Bhagavad Gita. The tool that might be most effectively wielded to break down this existential loneliness, given our overwhelming reliance on science and its technologies, is an authentic inner spirituality that is informed by open-minded scientific inquiry. Yet, the Western scientific culture by its logic and strictures continues, in most instances, to exclude the exploration of how inner, subjective spiritual experiences might fit into a more expansive worldview informed by both science and spirituality.

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

Virtuous Action through Spiritual Awakening

That patience is a virtue is conventional wisdom; yet the ego is virtueless. The self-absorbed, self-centered mind fixated in the stories we are always apt to be telling ourselves is utterly incapable of virtue, or patience for that matter. Our false 'self' - that restless and relentlessly wandering stream of thought that can carry us away at any time to the heights of pleasure or the depths of despair and suffering - the undisciplined movement of our 'thought-stuff' is virtueless.

All virtue lies in the undisturbed, discerning awareness of our depth. To know the stillness of tranquility - the inner peace that surpasses all understanding - to rest in this void and avoid nothing, neither labeling, judging nor blaming things, people or circumstances whether real or fancied - is to become capable of manifesting one's virtue, to awaken spiritually and thus become capable of undertaking truly virtuous action

Actions may from time-to-time appear to be virtuous to the onlooker, but unless they are inspired by and carried out from the inner place of one's virtue, tranquility and awakened awareness, they are not virtuous - even if the benefit to others is great. To one's own Being, to one's authentic Self they will still lack virtue. Such seemingly virtuous actions will still be self-reinforcing and one will still be swept away by the thoughts of the ego that say, "Look at me . . . Now I am being virtuous . . . Look how patient I am being . . . . Look at all the virtuous action I am undertaking for others." All for naught.

One who lacks inner stillness and discernment, lacks the capacity for virtuous action.

On the Road to Spiritual Awakening and Consciousness

On the road in quest of spiritual awakening, I've been contemplating and studying the question of what spirituality is, what consciousness is and what 'reality' itself is, for the last few years now - diligently studying it.

I really feel that I know, not only with my reasoning, rational understanding and analytical ability, but more importantly in the depth of my intuitive, supra-rational, non-cognitive mind and being that all paths and branches of knowledge lead to the same conclusion: It's all consciousness . . . reality, spirituality, the psyche . . . it's all one. This entire experience, this existence, what we inhabit, is all one pure and undivided, non-dual, utterly entangled interbeing . . . a unitive Meta-Consciousness... Physics, metaphysics, theology and psychology all, I believe, point to this same ageless truth.

If you haven't read Gary Zhukav's "The Dancing Wu Li Masters", I highly recommend it.

At page 31, Zhukav juxtaposes the views of Carl Jung (to many, if not most, the greatest Western psychologist, therapeutic analyst and expositor of the workings of humanity's psyche yet) and Wolfgang Pauli, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. In doing so, Zhukav comes to a most startling, and liberating conclusion - a conclusion that most fair-minded, scientific readers will be hard-pressed to refute I believe, if they press on and give Zhukav's layman's analysis of the great advances of 20th century physics - relativity and quantum theories - a considered and concerted study.

Quoting Jung and then Pauli, Zhukav writes:

"According to quantum mechanics there is no such thing as objectivity. We cannot eliminate ourselves from the picture. We are a part of nature, and when we study nature there is no way around the fact that nature is studying itself. Physics has become a branch of psychology, or perhaps the other way round.

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, wrote:

The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves.

Jung's friend, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, Wolfgang Pauli, put it this way:

From an inner center the psyche seems to move outward, in the sense of an extraversion, into the physical world . . ."

Then Zhukav weaves these two threads neatly together to a startling and liberating conclusion - a conclusion that is upheld as one peruses his history of modern physics from its Newtonian, pre-relativistic roots, through Einsteinian relativistic theory and quantum theory, ending with brilliant conclusions on Bell's theorem and the work of David Bohm (a physicist who likely missed out on the big "prizes" of phsysics, due to both McCarthyism and his metaphysical forays into the experience of consciousness with his friend, the enlightened spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti).

Zhukav, examining the insights of Jung and Pauli, concludes:

"If these men are correct, then physics is the study of the structure of consciousness" (emphasis added).

Thoughts anyone?

The 'Depth' of Spritual Experience: Part One

There are two things which I "take seriously without any reservations" - books and freedom. Both have proven to be vitally important on my quest for spiritual awakening, awareness and self-transcendence. Imagine my delight a couple of years ago when I passed a local church and out front of the minister's adjoining home I saw a table piled high with books and a sign that said, "Feel Free to Take Us Home." I left with an armload of dog-eared, well-read volumes that, judging by the titles, must have accompanied the minister around the world - from England to West Africa, to where they were neatly stacked awaiting me, here in suburban Ontario.

Amongst the books I scooped up was a two-volume set of Paul Tillich's collected sermons. As I didn't (and still don't) have any religious affiliation, nor any formal religious or theological education, Tillich's name wasn't familiar to me then. I later learned that Tillich was perhaps the greatest Protestant theologian of the 20th century - if not the top, certainly amongst the top handful. Tillich was encouraged to emigrate from Nazi Germany on the brink of World War II by Reinhold Neibuhr, a fellow German theologian and author of the "Serenity Prayer," with which I was eminently familiar by that time. Tillich went on to teach at Union Theological Seminary in New York, Neibuhr's academic home, and then for many years at the University of Chicago. He authored a number of renowned works, including A History of Christian Thought and The Courage To Be, and was featured for his work on the cover of Time magazine in 1959.

When I opened the first of the two-volume set, The Shaking of the Foundations, one sermon about "The Depths of Existence"stood out particularly. Its words were a powerful affirmation of all that I had been learning. My own foundations had been shaken by the proverbial mid-life crisis, and I had been forced to look within to find the depths of my own existence. To my shock, I found that I had very little idea of who or what I was at the core of my being, nor much idea of my place in the grand scheme of things. At a very early age I had rejected all notions of a God, of an anthropomorphic 'superman' in an imaginary heaven, as the superstitious foolishness of people who were unable or unwilling to understand the world, the universe and the scientific basis of their lives and being. I had great 'faith' in science, but didn't even know what science and the limitations of science really were.

The following passages from Tillich's "Depth of Existence" sermon put into words that I did not then know how to express all that I had discovered as a result of my existential crisis - that I was the person with the prejudiced mind who had been unwilling to examine or understand areas of consciousness, being and existence which I had willfully blinded myself to. I had been prejudiced, by my upbringing and culture, to what I only perceived others' notions and ideas of God were. I found that I had to cast aside all those notions of what others thought, and look within my own being to come to an understanding of who I was, before looking at any bigger picture.

In "The Depth of Existence", Tillich writes:

"The wisdom of all ages and of all continents speaks about the road to our depth. It has been described in innumerably different ways. But all those who have been concerned - mystics and priests, poets and philosophers, simple people and educated people - with that road, through confession, lonely self-scrutiny, internal or external catastrophes, prayer, (and) contemplation, have witnessed to the same experience. They have found that they were not what they believed themselves to be, even after a deeper level had appeared to them below the vanishing surface. That deeper level became surface, when a still deeper level was discovered, this happening again and again, as long as their very lives, as long as they kept on the road to their depth. . . . The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservations. Perhaps in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not. He who knows about depth knows about God."

Spiritual Awakening as the Core Purpose of 'The Perennial Philosophy'

The English pacifist and humanist, Aldous Huxley, wrote often and eloquently on spiritual awakening, self-transcendence and what he (and others) termed the "Perennial Philosophy". Huxley penned an entire volume titled "The Perennial Philosophy", in which he introduced the reader to some of the finest insights of teachers, mystics and explorers of the inner, esoteric core of the World's great religions and wisdom traditions.

Building on his storied family's roots in the introspective and quietististic Society of Friends, or Quakers, Huxley delved evermore deeply into the esoteric roots of all metaphysics and religion. While doing so he rubbed shoulders with many of the 20th century's deepest and most influential proponents of personal, social, religious and cultural change. In many ways, Huxley helped lay the groundwork for the questioning of the cultural norms and beliefs which would revolutionize (and globalize) the West's worldview in the latter half of the 20th century.

Of Huxley's many writings on the Perennial Philosophy - which is really the stripped-down core of the great wisdom traditions of all ages and continents - perhaps none more clearly set the Perennial Philosophy so clearly or succintly before the reader than the following excerpt from the Introduction to Bhagavad-Gita:: The Song of God that he wrote to his friend and fellow seeker Christopher Isherwood's translation (along with their mutual Vedantic teacher, Swami Prabhavananda) of the Bhagavad Gita, perhaps India's greatest contribution to humanity.

Huxley writes:

"At the core of the Perennial Philosophy we find four fundamental doctrines.

First: the phenomenal world of matter and of individualized consciousness - the world of things and animals and man and even gods - is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being, and apart from which they would be non-existent.

Second: human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine Ground by inference; they can also realize its existence by a direct intuition, superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.

Third: man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul. It is possible for a man, if he so desires, to identify himself with the spirit and therefore with the Divine Ground, which is of the same or like nature with the spirit.

Fourth: man's life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground."

Heady stuff for our times this . . . .and for all times!