Spirituality and consciousness

In the last two posts I wrote about experiences that appear to be spiritual but are in fact something else (some call them ego experiences - I would probably call them "personal" to differentiate them from the "transpersonal"; but words don't really help us much here I'm afraid). Some, though not all, of what I have been attempting to get at has been examined by David Tacey, in a book called Jung and the New Age (Brunner Routledge, 2001). Amongst many important observations, Tacey points out that genuine spiritual experience, the type that Jung had spent much of his life studying and describing, does not come easy. He quotes many, many examples from participants in the "New Age" writing, talking and acting as if spiritual experience were easy to come by, indeed, as something that can be purchased in the spiritual market place. For Jung, on the other hand, it had required struggle, especially personal struggle to unite the opposites within himself. I'm not sure if Tacey actually said this or merely implied it, but the "New Age" idea that we can simply meditate away the wounds caused by painful (and especially traumatic) experiences, or that we can simply heal them by bathing them in light and/or by just accepting that they happened, forgiving those that hurt us and just letting them go by saying "the past is the past" and "it is no longer present" is a very dangerous illusion indeed.

To save time, I quote below from various issues of the Conscios Living Seminars website (www.consciouslivingseminars.com ), as a way of retelling something of my own spiritual journey:

(From CLS Journal January 2003) "We go through life in a state of slumber. We are asleep, to varying degrees. Normal life is a state of sleep. Some have said it is a hypnotic state. That's an equally accurate way to conceive of it. Given the characteristics of the modern world, given its economic structure, given the political, legal and other institutions (such as preschools and schools!) that are necessitated by the economic structure, this hypnotic state, this state of being asleep, is assured.

The process of awakening can begin in an infinite variety of ways. Most, if not all, of these involve pain and suffering. Sickness, or death, or a financial crisis, perhaps. Or, simply, some experience which shatters our everyday illusion of stability, or permanence. Our everyday reality, our 'world-taken-for-granted' is suddenly shattered and our dream becomes a nightmare. There may be less dramatic ways to wake up, but I am not convinced that it is really possible. If growth can be pain-free, I have not seen the evidence".

(From CLS Journal February 2003): "Becoming conscious – or waking up – can begin at any time. Alternatively, we can remain unconscious – or asleep, that is to say, normal. This is the safest bet of all. The security that comes from remaining in our normal, everyday hypnotic state is comforting. Safe, secure and comfortable. This is 'the unexamined life'. It may lack the 'highs', but it also lacks the lows. We give up passion, vitality and joy, but we gain peace, security, safety and comfort.

My own awakening began relatively early, at the age of sixteen. Twenty-odd years of turmoil followed. Then, some extraordinary experiences, a brief period of magnificent illumination and, after that, the return of normal life, but with heightened awareness. Between the ages of 11 and 16, with my mother’s so-called '(mental) illness', I lived a nightmare existence. With her death in November, 1963 came peace – a calmness I had never known. Then, out of the blue, the sudden awareness of death and mortality. Depression. I was in my final year of high school, attending boarding school in a town in the NSW Southern Highlands. This was during 1964. Out of despair, I discovered the nineteenth century romantic poets, especially Shelley and, through Shelley, I fell in love with philosophy (I also came to understand and appreciate my first Shakespearean play – Macbeth).

Spurred on by a desperate need to discover the meaning of life – but especially to solve the riddle of God’s existence – I enrolled at uni the following year to study Philosophy. For the next three years (1965-1967) I pursued my questions about life, falling in love with existentialism, evolving a rather shallow understanding of Marxism and psychoanalysis and settling on the British empiricists, especially David Hume and...John Stuart Mill. And, it goes without saying, I loved the works of Rousseau.

From a love of philosophy – after failing and dropping out of uni, marrying and then returning to my studies – I fell in love with Psychology, pursuing this passion for the next 13 years. I described the process in my “story”. When I reached the end of my attempts to understand both myself and my world through this intellectual or rational process, I began my inner journey (November, 1984), a process, again, described in my “story”. This period of self-discovery (1984-1987) involved considerable pain. It also resulted in a period of joyful living. Then, back to the real world and, with that, more learning, more – and deeper – understanding. Unfortunately, more pain, too. But, unlike the pointless, needless, unnecessary suffering of the past, this was the pain that results from learning profound truths about the nature of life on our planet. I would say that this kind of pain is an essential component of growth on planet earth. And, throughout these past 15 years, moments of peace, moments of extraordinary connection and communion and occasional glimpses into the indescribable.

I don’t know whether I would want to 'prescribe' this for everyone, or even anyone. It is one way to awaken, to grow to consciousness. I’m quite sure there are other ways. But, so far as I am able to determine, they all involve some level of discomfort, some degree of dissatisfaction with our normal, everyday existence. And my experience – as well as what I have observed of others – leads me to believe that the idea that the process of waking up can be achieved 'easily and joyfully', without pain, is a dangerous illusion."

As I wrote in my "story", it was only in March 1988 that I began "to read books on spirituality and on the spiritual traditions of India, China and Japan. This was something I had deliberately avoided doing during 1984 to 1987, to ensure that my spiritual experiences were real and unforced, unaffected by my expectations. During this time (November 1984 to December 1987) I actually had several such experiences. These included communicating with my mother, who had died twenty years earlier, recalling several events preceding my conception and experiencing what ST called 'higher states of consciousness', including 'unity-consciousness'. These are, obviously, clumsy ways of naming unnameable experiences but this is, after all, the internet! The point is, I had experienced these things spontaneously; I had never read about them. Now - in March, 1988 - I began to read books on Taoism and Zen Buddhism (as well as a smaller number on what eventually came to be called 'Hinduism'), since these were the traditions that came closest to my own experiences. I was to continue reading this material over the next four years. It became especially important to me during the first two years of my community work with Aboriginal people (1989 to 1991), as I found myself confronted by the Machiavellian manoeuvrings of government officials who seemed determined to crush the spirit of the Aboriginal people I worked with. At times, my reading of Taoist and Zen Buddhist texts (together with the I Ching, the tarot and the runes) became essential for maintaining my sanity. As Jung wrote in 1948: 'It is a rare and shattering experience for (a human being) to gaze into the face of absolute evil'. A shattering experience is precisely what it was!...(B)y the time I met Harbans, I had come to a better understanding of the nature of such polarities as good and evil and had at least made a start to the process of acknowledging the worst as well as the best in myself".

(From CLS Journal March 2003): "As I mentioned earlier, my awakening began in early 1964, when I suddenly became aware of death. This led to despair and depression and, in this new state of consciousness, I discovered the English Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) and, through Shelley, something called 'Philosophy'. I fell in love with philosophy, enrolled in a subject with that name the following year (1965) and began my intellectual journey. At the beginning of the 1965 academic year I enrolled in an eight-week extracurricular course of (lunchtime) lectures in 'existentialism'. Amongst the earliest precursors of 'modern, post-war existentialism' were, we were told, three nineteenth-century philosophers: Arthur Schopenhauer(1788-1859), Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900). I quickly fell in love with the first two while finding Nietzsche fascinating but incomprehensible. I immediately bought and read a paperback called The Essential Schopenhauer, which comprised a selection of essays from a book originally published in 1851 and also read some excerpts from an earlier work by Schopenhauer, completed between 1814 and 1818. In addition, I read several commentaries on Schopenhauer. Until recently, I recalled very little of what I had read by or about Schopenhauer, remembering only that I was attracted by his pessimism. Yet now (March 2003), 38 years later, I have rediscovered what a wealth of insights this amazing genius had bequeathed the world. To my horror, amongst these are Schopenhauer’s reworking of what he had read in the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads and the Vedas. I say “to my horror” because I have no conscious memory of reading any of this material, even though some of it was actually underlined by me at the time! As late as last year, when I was writing my “story” for the website, I believed that my first exposure to (the ancient Indian philosophy which developed into what came to be called) 'Hinduism' did not occur until March, 1988. An important lesson!"

(From CLS Journal May 2003)

"Socrates (written Saturday, 22 February, 2003)

It seems as if everything took place in 1965. In that year, as part of my induction into first year Philosophy, I was introduced to Greek philosophy, especially as expressed by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (even though Socrates never actually wrote anything). This aspect of the course was almost useless; we used poor translations of the original Greek; the commentaries provided were one-sided; and the lecturers presented these philosophers to us in a form that, for me at least, was devoid of meaning. Although I read Plato’s Republic for a second time for the Political Science component of Government II in 1967 and although I learned a little more from it on that occasion, I basically gave the Greeks away for the next thirty-odd years. Not until mid-2000 did I return to these philosophers – especially Socrates and Plato; this time, however, they almost blew me away by their relevance to things I had experienced since first reading them.
Socrates occupies a unique position in the Western world. He never wrote anything, yet his influence has been profound. A mystic and a sage whose wisdom has rarely been surpassed, his message to the world has been twisted almost beyond recognition by friend and foe alike. Both have turned him into a 'Western intellectual', when he was much more like a Taoist sage or an Aboriginal elder. Yet, even though Socrates speaks to us only through others, such as Plato, and even though the translations from the Greek have rendered him almost unrecognisable, a sympathetic reconstruction is possible. Plato has him say: 'I am subject to a divine or supernatural experience … It began in my early childhood – a sort of voice which comes to me' (Apology, 31d). While it is inconceivable that Socrates would ever have said this, the picture of Socrates as someone with direct access to such a voice is credible. First hand accounts of Socrates in various life situations generally convey a picture of a person who felt himself to be divinely guided and who acted like someone who was so guided, even in battle (he took part in several military campaigns when he was young).

As for the message that Socrates conveyed to his followers, it sounds so similar to what we find in the Vedas and Upanishads that one is tempted (as Schopenhauer did) to assume a direct influence from the latter. Whether this was the case or whether, as is more likely, sages and mystics of all ages and in all places simply “tune in” to the same truth, the similarities are striking. Socrates believed that a cosmic intelligence operated in the universe. Human beings were a part of this essence and had knowledge of the essential nature of the universe prior to being born and their essence continued to exist after death. All so-called 'learning' is a 'recollection' of what we already 'know'.

Socrates believed that the ordinary physical world of time and space was but an image or reflection of an ideal, perfect world. This was an ultimate, changeless reality. The process of what today we would call 'becoming enlightened' he called (in the English translation!) 'education'. As we grow, develop, learn, become educated (enlightened) we gradually acquire more and more 'knowledge' (ie consciousness or awareness) of the essential nature or reality (outside of time and space), that is, of the ideal or perfect world. This (what today we would call) expanded consciousness has nothing to do with ordinary sense-perception (seeing, hearing and so on) and nothing to do with merely verbal or rational or cognitive or intellectual knowledge or understanding. The nature of this perfect, ideal world is perfect love, perfect beauty, perfect justice and light. A person who has reached this state is called a 'lover of wisdom', that is, a 'philosopher' (philein = love; sophia = wisdom). A 'philosopher', for Socrates meant someone who was a genuine sage, an enlightened person, or a mystic. or a visionary. A philosopher is someone who is literally in love with truth. Such a person is characterised by what some schools of thought call 'the sixth state of consciousness'. In The Republic, Plato has Socrates teach that an ideal state is one governed by such people. These are people for whom the welfare of the whole is paramount".

I hope that, in trying to save time, I haven't lost the esssence of what I have been trying to say. For me, at any rate, the spiritual journey has been a highly personal one, one, further, which has not been free of pain, free of struggle. I obviously absorbed far more of the mysticism of the east, as well as that of ancient Greece, far earlier than I once acknowledged. But this material was just "stuff" bubbling away in my unconscious, until a series of experiences, over a twenty-yera period, reawakened them. At some point, healing of past wounds occurred. Then, experiences of transcendence, of the numinous. Then, reading ancient texts which enabled me to make some sense of these experiences. Then, more real life, personal experiences which challenged my new understanding. And yes, more pain, too. This is surely to be expected. If we are all connected, how can we avoid experiencing some of the enormous amount of pain in the world - unless we are unconscious?

To recap: We are essentially spiritual beings. We are born into a world that has lost its way, does not meet our essential human needs and, in this way, leads to unconsciousness, ill-health, sickness, dis-ease. At some point, there is the possibility of awakening, of becoming conscious, of healing. This requires, as a necessary condition, healing past trauma - including not only abuse, but neglect as well; this requires some pain, as we re-exerience past painful events in otder to let them go. We can not just "let them go". We need to relive them in a safe environment, express the emotions that were unable to be expressed at the time and then let them go and choose to live in the present. Genuine spiritual experiences will begin to occur spontaneously, without prompting from over-zealous "spiritual" gurus intent on ensuring that you experience what you're supposed to experience. Transpersonal, transcendent, numinous experiences of the divine, including the divinity of your fellow sentient (including human) beings will occur from time to time, as you continue your journey through life. You will occasionally experience moments of oneness with your children , your partner and your special friends - and, sometimes even with people you hardly know or don't know at all, or with other sentient beings. Sometimes you might even experience moments of union with all of creation. But don't expect this state to last, to be permanent. Life on this planet will involve downs as well as ups, pain as well as pleasure, moments of spiritual crisis as well as moments of spiritual ecstacy. If you have chosen to be conscious, you can not avoid pain and negativity any more than you can avoid pleasure and positivity. We are here to experience it all. And we are meant to do it in a spirit of playfulness. We are meant to laugh and sing and dance and have fun along the way. At least, that's how I see it.