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Stages of Mysticism: a Synopsis of Evelyn Underhill’s Practical Mysticism (Part One)

1/18/2017

 
PictureEvelyn Underhill (1875-1941) Photo credit: William Edward Downey. Public Domain
Evelyn Underhill was born a mystic. She experienced spontaneous unitive states of consciousness from an early age. As an adult, she studied and wrote about mysticism both to deepen her own understanding and to advocate the practices that nurture what she saw as one of the most important experiences a person can have.

She wrote the short, dense book, Practical Mysticism: a Little Book for Normal People, in 1915 as a guide for the “everyman” of her era.  (As she used the masculine normative throughout, I’ve decided not to mark each instance with a [sic] for ease of reading. Please forgive me this lenience.) Underhill firmly believed that mystical experiences are available to all who truly pursue them.

She admits that the topic is usually reserved for those cloistered away, and then goes on to say: “Yet it is to you, practical man, reading these pages as you rush through the tube to the practical work of rearranging unimportant fragments of your universe, that this message so needed by your time—or rather, by your want of time—is addressed. To you, unconscious analyst, so busy reading the advertisements upon the carriage wall, that you hardly observe the stages of your unceasing flight: so anxiously acquisitive of the crumbs that you never lift your eyes to the loaf.”

In other words, it was written for people going about their workaday lives with little or no comprehension of what she calls Reality, with a capital "R," which different people call the Ultimate, the Absolute, God, Allah, Brahman, the Sacred, and so on.

I believe that her message is just as important to us today, if not more so as the stakes are raised in our time concerning the future of humankind. But her writing style is challenging, to say the least. What I propose to write here is a series of posts that will provide a synopsis, chapter by chapter, of that already little book. I am doing this mostly, if I’m candid, to help myself and maybe others parse its compressed and nearly antiquated early 20th century prose into something more manageable for the early 21st century mind. That said, I find many of her florid turns of phrase to be both spot on and delightful, and at times, like in the above quotation, to show important consistencies between our times. Therefore, I will use her words liberally throughout.
​
Let’s get started.

​Chapter One: What is Mysticism?

​“Mysticism,” as Underhill defines it, “is the act of union with Reality.”

Setting aside, until chapter two, the question of what exactly Reality is, we are asked instead to consider the word “union.” Union, she says, is happening all the time. It is not some “rare and unimaginable operation” but instead something we are always doing. We are uniting with something, “in a vague, imperfect fashion, at every moment,” and “with intensity and thoroughness in all the more valid moments” of our lives.

So, the question isn’t whether we will experience union, but “what, out of the mass of material offered to it, shall consciousness seize upon—with what aspects of the universe shall it ‘unite’?”

The problem is that most of us spend our time uniting with things that are superficial and impermanent, less than Reality. At the root of this problem, according to Underhill, is the question of labels.

 “Because mystery is horrible to us,” she says, “we have agreed . . . to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the infinite gradation of values which they misrepresent.”

To put this another way, we are separated from Reality because we automatically categorize sensations and perceptions. We spontaneously label everything. But labels misrepresent reality because words and the mental categories they create are necessarily less than the experiences they represent. It is this veil of words, of superimposed mental categories, that prevents us from experiencing, “uniting,” with Reality directly.

​But we can overcome this separation by learning to experience our sensations directly, through “contemplative consciousness,” which is a faculty we all have. That will be the focus of chapter three. But before we get there, we need to talk about Reality.

​Chapter 2: The World of Reality

In her second chapter, Underhill takes on the question she set aside at the beginning of chapter one: how to describe the experience of Reality.

When we “reach out and unite with the fact, instead of our notion of it,” she says, we experience “direct communion.” When we achieve “an ideal state of receptivity, of perfect correspondence with the essence of things,” then there is an experience of “absolute sensation.”

“It is,” she goes on, “a pure feeling-state, in which the fragmentary contacts with Reality achieved through the senses are merged in a wholeness of communion which feels and knows all at once, yet in a way which the reason can never understand, that Totality of which fragments are known by the lover, the musician, the artist.”

OK, let’s back up a bit and recap. To begin with, we are always uniting with some aspect of Reality, however shallow that encounter might be. And sometimes the encounter takes on greater depth—in love and in creative acts. (And I wonder if we should consider adding here reverie and all of those events which these days we might call “peak experiences” à la Maslow and “flow experiences” à la Csíkszentmihályi.) Then, in the mystical experience, the encounter is no longer with only a piece of Reality: it is complete immersion.

Moving forward again, Underhill begins to explain how to cultivate this experience when she says, “Eternity is with us, inviting our contemplation perpetually, but we are too frightened, lazy, and suspicious to respond: too arrogant to still our thoughts, and let divine sensation have its way.”

She tells us, “It needs industry and goodwill if we would make that transition: for the process involves a veritable spring cleaning of the soul, a turning-out and rearrangement of our mental furniture, a wide opening of closed windows, that the notes of the wild birds beyond our garden may come to us fully charged with wonder and freshness, and drown with their music the noise of the gramophone within.”

​This spring cleaning of our inner lives is a necessary step in learning how to refrain from subjecting our immediate experience of sensations “to the cooking, filtering process of the brain.” Continuing on this theme, in chapter three we will learn “to put the emphasis upon the message from without, rather than on (our) own reaction to and rearrangement of it.”

​Chapter 3: The Preparation of the Mystic

According to Underhill, there are “two great phases in the education of every contemplative . . . the purification of the senses and the purification of the will,” also known as Recollection and Purgation." And both are achieved through "self-simplification.”

“What is it that smears the windows of the senses?” Underhills asks. And she answers, “thought, convention, self-interest.” Later she adds, “Religion, priggishness, or discontent may drape the panes.”

To make this clearer, she says, “To ‘purify’ the senses is to release them . . . from the tyranny of egocentric judgments . . . to make of them the organs of direct perception. This means that we must crush our deep-seated passion for classification and correspondence; ignore the instinctive, selfish question, ‘What does it mean to me?’”

Ok, you may be saying, I get it. I’m supposed to stop filtering sensations through my preconceived, enculturated categories. But how do I do that? I believe that Underhill would have us find inner stillness.

“At this very moment your thoughts are buzzing like a swarm of bees. The reduction of this fevered complex to a unity appears to be a task beyond all human power. Yet the situation is not as hopeless for you as it seems. All this is only happening upon the periphery of the mind, where it touches and reacts to the world of appearance. At the centre there is a stillness which even you are not able to break. There, the rhythm of your duration is one with the rhythm of the Universal Life. There, your essential self exists: the permanent being which persist through and behind the flow and change of your conscious states.”

Finding this stillness, she says, is comparable to the “Eastern visionary” beckoning us to “Take your seat within the heart of the thousand-petaled lotus,” or the Christian mystic urging us to “Hold thou to thy Centre.”

“This is a practical recipe,” she says, “not a pious exhortation. The thing may sound absurd to you, but you can do it if you will: stand back, as it were, from the vague and purposeless reactions in which most men fritter their vital energies. Then you can survey with a certain calm, a certain detachment, your universe and the possibilities of life within it.”

Through this “deliberate withdrawal of attention from the bewildering multiplicity of things” we begin to simplify and purify the will until it can “retreat to the unity of its spirit.” And there we unite not just with our own eternal spirit but successively with the “three levels of existence: which we may call the Natural, the Spiritual, and the Divine.” She also calls these levels the World of Becoming, the World of Being, and the Absolute or God.

Finally, Underhill sets out the path in toto:

“We begin, therefore, to see that the task of union with Reality will involve certain stages of preparation as well as stages of attainment; and these stages of preparation . . . may be grouped under two heads. First, the disciplining and simplifying of the attention. . . . Next the disciplining and simplifying of the affections and will, the orientation of the heart. . . . So the practical mysticism of the plain man will best be grasped by him as a five-fold scheme of training and growth: in which the first two stages prepare the self for union with Reality, and the last three unite it successively with the World of Becoming, the World of Being, and finally with that Ultimate Fact which the philosopher calls the Absolute and the religious mystic calls God.”

The next couple chapters go further into the practices of Recollection and Purgation, which we might also call meditation and detachment.

​To be continued . . .

Humility, Detachment, and Mindfulness: Connections in The Eagle’s Gift

12/1/2016

 
“Relax, abandon yourself, fear nothing. Only then will the powers that guide us open the road and aid us. Only then.”
Treading with caution, I returned to my notes from Carlos Castaneda’s The Eagle’s Gift to see what time and a clearer head might reveal. What I found was an interesting set of statements that show the connection between humility, detachment, and being present to this moment, or, as some people call it, mindfulness.

​​Humility

Let me jump right in with our first term: humility. Castaneda repeatedly refers to the necessity of humility, but never does he get to the heart of the matter so clearly as when he is explaining the “rule of stalkers,” which he assures us “applies to everyone.”
  • “The first precept of the rule is that everything that surrounds us is an unfathomable mystery."
  • “The second precept of the rule is that we must try to unravel these mysteries, but without ever hoping to accomplish this."
  • “The third, that a warrior, aware of the unfathomable mystery that surrounds him and aware of his duty to try to unravel it, takes his rightful place among mysteries and regards himself as one. Consequently, for a warrior there is no end to the mystery of being, whether being means being a pebble, or an ant, or oneself. That is a warrior’s humbleness. One is equal to everything.”
OK so, we know absolutely nothing because it is all mystery. Plus, we are no more or less special, and no more or less mysterious, than a pebble. If everything is equally part of the unfathomable whole, then no part takes precedence. Living this realization induces utter humility, and humility is necessary to gaining detachment: "[O]ne has to be utterly humble and carry nothing to defend . . . ."

​​Detachment and Mindfulness

Detachment, by which is meant the state of having overcome one's attachment to people, things, ideas, etc., is a fundamental aspect of Eastern spiritual paths but less prevalent, to my knowledge, in Western and tribal religions. (Though I’d love to be hear about examples from those traditions if they exist.)

Castaneda describes his capacity for detachment when he says, “I had learned to enter into a state of total quietness. I was able to turn off my internal dialogue and remain as if I were inside a cocoon, peeking out of a hole. In that state I could . . . remain passive, thoughtless, and without desires.”

In a further description of the state of detachment, he gives more detail and begins to tie it to mindfulness. “It was rather an alien feeling of aloofness, a capability of immersing myself in the moment and having no thoughts whatever about anything else. People’s actions no longer affected me, for I had no more expectations of any kind. A strange peace had become the ruling force in my life.”

What I appreciate most is Castaneda’s insight, as we see in the next quotation, that detachment is not in itself a sign of spiritual advancement. It is simply another state of consciousness we can train ourselves to hold. On its own it has benefits but it is not the goal. “[D]etachment,” he explains, “did not automatically mean wisdom, but . . . was nonetheless an advantage because it allowed the warrior to pause momentarily to reassess situations, to reconsider positions. In order to use that extra moment consistently and correctly, however, . . . a warrior had to struggle unyieldingly for a lifetime.”
To emphasize this point and the connection between detachment and mindfulness, here is another instance where Casteneda reiterates that the experience of detachment and being "immersed in the moment" is value-free: “An aspect of being detached, the capacity to become immersed in whatever one is doing, naturally extends to everything one does, including being inconsistent, and outright petty. The advantage . . . is that it allows us a moment’s pause, providing that we have the self-discipline and courage to utilize it.”

It is unclear from this book, at least to me, how we should use the pause to our best advantage.

​​Further Questions

Castaneda does not make it a point to delineate the connection I'm pointing out here: humility—detachment—present to the moment. It is just something that struck me as I read through my notes. What also struck me, again, was the absence of any mention of compassion. Yes, he talks about being “impeccable,” and having “a consistency of character.” But these are not the equal of what other traditions describe as ahimsa, compassion, altruism, or unconditional love.

Georg Feuerstein said detachment must be balanced by compassion. Compassion is the arrow on the moral compass that allows detachment and mindfulness to make us more human.

Perhaps that gets to the issue I have with Castaneda. His view of spiritual advancement, like so many others, is exclusively about transcendence, "losing the human form," and becoming pure energy. Maybe that is behind his literary and actual treatment of women, with our blood and birth and milk making us oh so very embodied. We represent everything that holds humanity in its animal form. 

I personally don’t want to overcome being human. I want to come to peace with it, to integrate the various aspects of this existence and experience that sacred wholeness. And this opens up the discussion about the difference between transcendent and integral forms of spiritual understanding, which will have to happen on another day.

In the end, there is indeed a useful reminder here. First we must be humble, see ourselves as equal to the dirt of the earth. When we can cease to see ourselves as special and realize we are just as mysterious and as ordinary as everyone and everything else, it becomes easier to relax our grip on the relationships and attachments that tether us to the past and to the future. When we release them and becoem detached, then we can completely inhabit the present moment. That is the order: humility, detachment, mindfulness.

​Further than that, Castaneda does not seem ready to go in this book. In fact, he appears to think it is enough in itself, if we gauge from this pivotal “incantation” he recites at a time when his inner world was in cataclysmic turmoil.

“I am already given to the power that rules my fate.
And I cling to nothing, so I will have nothing to defend.
I have no thoughts, so I will see.
I fear nothing, so I will remember myself.
Detached and at ease,
I will dart past the Eagle to be free.”


Do you think it is enough?
Picture
Blown Dandelion by John Liu. CC BY 2.0

Celebration Talk

9/3/2016

 
Picture
Here is the little talk I prepared for the book release celebration. It's based around questions that people ask about writing a book like this (and questions I hoped they would ask :-) ).
 
How long did it take to write?
The question I get asked most often is “How long did it take you to write it?” And the honest answer is, I’m not sure. I started doing the research long before I knew I was writing a book.

Like a lot of us, I was attracted to mystical paths and altered states even as a teenager. I read everything I could, cobbled together a meditation practice, and studied it in college.

Fast forward to when I started the physical practices of Yoga, and I just wanted to learn everything I could about it. In a very real way, I fell in love with Yoga; it was like a mad crush. I wanted to know everything about it, to make it as much a part of my life, a part of me, as I could.

When I became a teacher, I felt like I needed to get a handle on the early texts and philosophy. So, I started studying with Georg Feuerstein.  

And all along the way I’ve been fascinated by the question of how yoga went from being naked old men in the forests of India to scantily clad women in the studios and gyms of the U.S. It was a question I just kept picking at, as other people were at the same time.

Then, when Tamara asked me to do the Philosophy section for her teacher training last year (2015), I had the opportunity to put it all together, to tell the story. And this book is the expanded and polished version of my lecture notes for that training.

Short answer: I researched this book for roughly 26 years, and it took me seven months to write it.

Favorite part
The next question I really hope you want to ask, because I am going to answer it, is “What was your favorite part to research and write about?” 

Oddly enough, it was what ended up going into the chapter called “Western Seekers, Eastern Lights,” that time frame from around the 1890s to the 1930s or '40s. This is when yoga really changed, and that is a fascinating story, but that wasn’t what gripped me.

Also in this time frame we have these incredibly earnest reports from Europeans who went to India as spiritual seekers and just had their socks knocked off by this thing called yoga. And these guys, these middle aged white men, these journalists and gentleman adventurers, it’s these guys who I really resonated with.

Once you get past the ethnocentrism and the outright racism, I could identify with these guys, these seekers who found what they were looking for in the consciousness-altering techniques of yoga. Their stories were captivating to me.

The yoga they describe is old school. It’s an all-encompassing commitment to shedding the attachments of the ego and seeking peace, bliss, and liberation. It’s a long, slow, painstaking journey urged on by the promise of eventual enlightenment.

It wasn’t pictured as easy or fun or comforting. It was a strictly disciplined life of single minded devotion to one end. And that end was radical freedom.

And my heart swoons for it.

Bigger picture
Which leads me into the next question I’m happy to ask for you, “What effect did writing this book have on you?”

These stories about the old ways of yoga, and my process of coming to grips with seven or eight millennia of the various mystical paths of India had a few effects, which I think I can fit into four categories:
  1. It reminded me, constantly, day in and day out, of the true purpose of the practice. It really drove home the weight, the depth of the undertaking, giving it a sort of sense of urgency. A sense that rather than “your money or your life,” it’s “your ego attachments or your joy.” Pick now, pick in every precious moment.
  2. At the same time, the truly epic time frame of the process was made more real to me. The results of Yoga don’t happen quickly. Even people who may have been considered to be spiritually gifted had to spend decades slogging along, if you will. So, that has given me more space, more patience with my practice.
  3. I’ve gained a new slowness. Everything I read, just everything, pointed to this slowing down as indispensable. Especially those reports from the turn of the last century. Reading things like, “then we hold shavasana for an hour,” and “the perfection of padmasana comes when you can hold it comfortably for three hours.” So I guess I feel like holding a posture for a whole minute or even two is not that much to ask.
  4. Another freedom I’ve found came through being led back again and again to the old trope that all these paths, these many styles of yoga, are leading up the same mountain. And that, along with feeling really secure in my practice, has given me a freedom to investigate the paths of other traditions, other types of mysticism, from other religions.
 
Overall, I’d say the impact this book had on me was to drive home the gravity of the yogic endeavor. This is serious business, so serious that it was kept secret for hundreds of years. It was kept secret until it was threatened with dying out.

And because it was no longer secret, it was available and able to be modified and commodified. To be candid, I have conflicted feelings about that. Without it being made available, I might not have found it. But it also would never have become the watered down caricature that it’s presented as in the mainstream today.

So I guess, in my small way, I hope that this book helps usher in the next incarnation of yoga, where we can keep what’s been great from the last hundred years and also restore its magnitude, its great vastness and depth, where we can give yoga the reverence it deserves.
 

 Thanks again everybody for all of your love and support!

Warrior: The Origin of Virabhadra

8/26/2016

 
PictureShiva Dreaming, by Cornelia Kopp. CC BY 2.0
If it were up to Shiva, he would sit, meditating on Mount Kailasa all the time. It is only because of his interactions with the goddess in her many forms that Shiva takes any kind of active role in the world.

Here is the story of Shiva and Sati, and of how Virabhadra (of virabhadrasana/warrior pose fame) came to be.

The goddess Sati is the daughter of Daksha, and Daksha is the son of Brahma the Creator. Now, as children of the Creator, all of Brahma’s children also create. Daksha creates culture.

Shiva, the Destroyer, stands outside of culture, setting up a polarity between Shiva and Daksha. And indeed, there are many stories that set Shiva and Daksha against one another. This is one of them.

Sati married Shiva against her father’s wishes. So, when Daksha held a huge fire ceremony (yajna) and invited all of the gods and goddesses and the great sages, he did not invite Shiva and Sati. When Sati heard of this, she was angry and determined to go anyway. Shiva said, “Nothing good will come of it,” but he did not stop her.

The Yajna

PictureDaksha's Yajna, Public Domain. In the foreground Sati pleads with her father, Daksha.
When Sati arrived, the ritual was already underway and a great fire was burning. Her father was not happy to see her. When she asked why she and Shiva had not been invited, Daksha ranted. He told her that Shiva was worthless and not deserving of respect. He called Shiva names he considered disgraceful: king of the goblins, beggar, the ash-man, and the long-haired yogi.

Sati countered, “Shiva is everyone’s friend. No one but you speaks ill of him. All that you said, the gods and goddesses know and still they adore him.”

According to the custom (to the culture) of the time, when a wife heard her husband reviled, she was to either leave the place with her hands over her ears. Or, if she had the power, she should end her life.

Sati walked into the raging fire and died.

When Shiva heard the news, he was furious. In his grief and rage, he tore out one of his dreadlocks and from it created the personification of his anger – Virabhadra, a thousand-armed demon.

In Sanskrit, vira means hero and bhadra means blessed, fair, and beautiful. Just as in the renaming of Rudra, the Howler, into Shiva, the Auspicious, we see a wild and violent deity beseeched to mercy through renaming.

Virabhadra

PictureShiva Carrying Sati Away from the Yajna. Wall picture at Srikhanda Bhoothnath Temple in West Bengal. Photo By Sripat Srikhanda. CC BY 2.0
The description that follows of Virabhadra and the ceremony is from Tales of the Shiva Purana, compiled by H. G. Sadhana Sidh Das.

“Virabhadra shone with energy and he had thousands of mouths and eyes. His hair glistened like lightning and his hands were full of all sorts of weapons. When he spoke it was like thunder. From his body, Virabhadra created a female demon named Bhadrakali.

“’What are our orders?’ asked Virabhadra and Bhadrakali of Shiva. ‘Go and destroy Daksha’s Yajna,’ was the order. To help them in this mission, Virabhadra created several other demons from the parts of his body. All of them had a thousand arms and carried weapons. Virabhadra, Bhadrakali, and these other demons headed for Daksha’s Yajna. When they got there, they found that the sacrifice had already started and the sacred fire was burning.

“The sages were reciting hymns and the Gods were watching. Musical instruments were being played. Virabhadra roared and the sound of the roar was so loud that several of the Gods began to run away. The earth shook and there were tidal waves in the ocean.

“Daksha was frightened. But he summoned up courage and inquired who they were. ‘We are Shiva’s assistants and we have come to take part in the sacrifice,’ replied Virabhadra. Virabhadra and the other demons then proceeded to burn down the structure where the sacrifice was being held. They tied up the priests and threw all the offerings away.
​
“With their weapons, they attacked the Gods. Whatever resistance the Gods tried to put up was taken care of by Virabhadra’s [trident] and Bhadrakali’s spear. The Goddess Sarasvati lost her nose and the God Agni lost his arms. The sage Bhaga had his eyes gouged out and the sage Pusha lost all his teeth. Virabhadra sliced off Daksha’s head and gave it to Bhadrakali. Thousands of thousands of Gods died and the sacrifice became a battlefield.

“Vishnu tried to fight it out and he and Virabhadra shot arrows at each other. But one of Virabhadra’s arrows struck Vishnu on the chest and he fell down unconscious. Spurred on by Brahma, the Gods began to pray to Shiva. These prayers pacified Shiva and he asked Virabhadra and Bhadrakali to refrain from causing further damage. Brahma asked about the Gods who had been killed to bring them back to life. 

“When Shiva calmed down, he returned the lives of the dead Gods and everyone was back to normal. But Daksha’s head could not be restored. So a goat’s head was put instead and Daksha was forgiven.”


Shiva, the long-haired yogi who lives outside of culture and is concerned only with meditation, defeats the Culture Maker whenever they come up against one another. Culture is maya, an impermanent illusion. Culture led Sati to throw herself in the fire and Shiva sent a vicious reminder that some things are more important than following the rules. 

On the Cloud of Unknowing: Medieval Mysticism from a Yogic Perspective

8/24/2016

 
PictureDark Cloud Silver Lining, by Nareign. CC BY 3.0
The Cloud of Unknowing is a classic text of medieval Christian mysticism.* For some, this book has just too much about our “wretched sinful nature.” I completely understand. It took me some time to process my initial negative reaction. I wrote about that here. And now? I am absolutely digging The Cloud! And I want to tell you why.

In amongst all the talk of sin and the devil and our shame and guilt and puniness, there is the essence of mysticism. Check this out: after our anonymous author bids us not to be “inside yourself, outside yourself, above yourself, behind yourself, or on one side or the other” (chapter 68), he tells us spiritual work should feel as if we are doing exactly nothing.

“Continue doing that nothing, as long as you are doing it for the love of God. Do not stop. Work hard at it with a powerful desire to be with an unknowable God. . . . [C]hoose ‘nowhere’ and this ‘nothingness.’ Do not worry if you are not able to figure this out in your mind. That is the way it is supposed to be. This nothingness lies beyond your grasp. It can be felt more easily than seen. It envelopes those who contemplate it even briefly in blinding darkness. An abundance of spiritual light creates this darkness. Only our outward nature calls it ‘All.’ It teaches the essence of all things, both physical and spiritual, without giving specific attention to any one thing alone. The experience of this ‘nothing’ that happens ‘nowhere’ dramatically transforms our love” (68-69).

Do nothing; be nowhere; become transformed. That's the message of the mystics throughout the ages. Elsewhere he says, much as the Tao does, to “Think of yourself as wood in a carpenter’s hands, or as a house in which someone else lives” (34). But I am getting ahead of myself.

The Goal

​A mystical path is one of seeking union with the Ultimate, and that is our author’s stated purpose. “I desire to help you tighten the spiritual knot of warm love that is between you and God, to lead you to spiritual unity with God” (47).

The method he advocates is contemplative prayer. This is not the kind of prayer I grew up with. Not “Now I lay me down to sleep” or reciting the rosary. This is not the freeform supplications of Sunday morning or even Wednesday evening preachers. To describe what he means, our nameless author says, “The essence of contemplation is a simple and direct reaching out to God. People who pray at this depth do not seek relief from pain nor do they seek increased rewards . . . ” (24).  They are not praying for anything; well, not for anything other than moving closer to God.

Also super important, our author does not see God as a father-figure God, a jealous God, or any other form of God that can be described. “[Y]ou are far better off contemplating God’s pure and simple being, separated from all his divine attributes” (5). Much later he says, “We speak one way with people, and another way with God” (47). In fact in this type of prayer, “Words are rarely used” (37).

Contemplation is wordless prayer to a formless God.

The Work

PictureInfrared Dark Cloud, NASA public domain.
Contemplative prayer isn’t easy. In fact, “Everyone finds contemplation difficult,” he says, “regardless of personal experience” (29).  It is hard and constant work, as we see in these admonitions:
  • “Devote yourself now to a time of contemplation. Beat upon this cloud of unknowing. Rest will come later. This will be hard work, unless you receive a special grace. Let it become habitual from continual practice” (26).
  • “Though I highly recommend brief prayer, there is no limit on the frequency of prayer” (39).
  •  “You do not have any freedom to practice moderation during contemplation” (41).
  • “Engage in it tirelessly for the rest of your life” (41).

​He does not, however, advocate “vulgar straining.” Rather he beseeches the reader to “discover how to love God joyfully with a gentle and peaceful disposition of body and soul” (46).

To accomplish this “devout intention directed to God” (39) we must forget everything else: “Let modest love prompt you to lift up your heart to God. Seek only God. Think of nothing else other than God. Keep your mind free of other thoughts. Give no attention to the things of this world” (3).

This instruction to turn our thoughts away from worldly things is central to contemplative prayer, because “whatever you think about looms above you while you are thinking about it, and it stands between you and God” (5).  “Whatever you think about”—we are to forget about everything, even things we might not consider worldly, things we would consider sacred—everything but God.
  • “Even holy work interferes with meditation. Similarly, you will find it inappropriate and cumbersome to think profound holy thoughts while working in this darkness of the cloud of unknowing” (8).
  • “Thinking about humility, charity, patience, abstinence, hope, faith, temperance, chastity, or voluntary poverty is counterproductive” (40).
  • “Forget about time, place, and body when you engage in spiritual effort” (59).
  • “Put distracting ideas under a cloud of forgetting. In contemplation, forget everything, including yourself and your accomplishments” (43).

Our author recognizes the difficulty of this, especially in letting go of the self. He offers a few pieces of advice that we’ll recognize as encouraging mindfulness, such as “Pay attention, then, to how you spend your time” (4), and “I want you to evaluate carefully each thought that stirs in your mind when you contemplate God” (11). At one point he entreats his reader to relax completely, realizing the impossibility of our effort, and to accept ourselves as we truly are (32). “Nothing humbles us,” he says, “more than seeing ourselves clearly” (13).

Clearing the mind of thoughts about oneself is key to clearing the mind of everything: “You can see that if you are able to destroy an awareness of your own being, all other hindrances to divine contemplation will also vanish” (44).

There is one tool that our author offers to help us control the wandering mind, and that is to choose a word and hold fast to it.

“You may wish to reach out to God with one simple word that expresses your desire. A single syllable is better than a word with two or more. ‘God’ and ‘love’ provide excellent examples of such words. Once you have selected the word you prefer, permanently bind this word to your heart. This word becomes your shield and spear in combat and in peace. Use this word to beat upon the cloudy darkness above you and to force every stray thought down under a cloud of forgetting. . . . Do not allow the word to become fragmented. If you keep it intact, I can assure you distractions will soon diminish”(7).

But earlier, you may be saying, didn't he say this type of prayer was different, wordless? The difference is in the way we use the word: “Let the word remain in a single lump, a part of yourself” (36). He is not advocating using words to ask for anything, nor is he advocating the intellectual investigation of the concept the word represents. That would be futile. Really, he’s quite persistent in reminding us that our thinking minds are unable to comprehend God:

​“[W]e are incapable of thinking of God himself with our inadequate minds. Let us abandon everything within the scope of our thoughts and determine to love what is beyond comprehension. We touch and hold God by love alone” (6).

The purpose of the focal word is to turn off the thinking mind, not encourage it.​

The Cloud

PictureCampfire and Sparks, by Kallerna. CC BY-SA 3.0
​Then, when we have quieted the mind, put all of our thoughts under a cloud of forgetting and set aside even our discriminative faculty, we approach the cloud of unknowing.

“God remains far beyond even our most profound spiritual understanding. We will know God when spiritual understanding fails, because God is where it breaks down. St. Denis wrote, ‘The only divine knowledge of God is that which is known by unknowing’” (70).

The experience of the cloud of unknowing, he says, consists of “a dark gazing into the pure being of God” (8).

While he tells his reader that the process is lifelong, the actual experience of union can happen in a flash.

“Genuine contemplation comes as a spontaneous, unexpected moment, a sudden springing toward God that shoots like a spark swirling up from a burning coal. . . . Any one of these sparkling moments may take on a unique quality resulting in a total detachment from the things of this world.”(4)

“Many think contemplative prayer takes a long time to achieve. On the contrary, results may be instantaneous. Only an atom of time, as we perceive it, may pass. In this fraction of a second, something profoundly significant happens. You only need a tiny scrap of time to move toward God. This brief moment produces the stirring that embodies the greatest work of your soul.” (4)

And that is the end to which he would have us strive: “the greatest work of your soul.” Later he amends himself, saying “Perhaps it would be better to speak of it as a sudden ‘changing’ rather than a stirring” (59).

What exactly is this “greatest work?” What is it that changes? “After God graciously transforms our soul, we begin perceiving what is ordinarily beyond our comprehension” (4). The cloud of unknowing “teaches the essence of all things, both physical and spiritual” (68). We begin to gain control of our will and may come to experience heavenly bliss (4). We find rest for our soul (26). And “Once this moment passes,” he says “prayer for others will be inclusive, caring equally for everyone.” After which he immediately assures us that,
​
“When I speak of the passing of the moment, I do not imply that we come down completely, but rather that we descend from the height of contemplation in order to perform activity required by love” (25).

Perception, presence, bliss, rest, seeing into the essence of things, and recognizing the equal worth of all people—those are the results of union with God.

The Cloud and Yoga

Every one of the mystical elements our author relates is also described somewhere in the Yoga tradition. The Bhagavad Gita tells us to reach toward God with love. The Yoga Sutras tells us that after we still the mind and come to reflect the Sacred, we will have a new perception of reality and control of our will.

In Yoga, some of the tools we use to overcome the self are
  • bhakti: devotion
  • tapas: discipline
  • svadhyaya: study of scriptures and self
  • pratyahara: withdrawing attention from the senses
  • vairagya: detachment from the world outside and from the ego
  • dhyana: meditation

These tools help induce samadhi (union), which results in ananda (bliss).
​
That is what I saw in The Cloud of Unknowing, a stunning description of the timeless human experience of touching the Sacred.

Om / Amen

Picture
Darwin River Dam, by Bidgee. CC BY 3.0.
* Link is to the modern interpretation I use throughout, edited by Bernard Bangley.

​Morality at the Foot of the Mystic Mountain

8/13/2016

 
PictureDharma Wheel on the Konark Sun Temple in Odisha, India
If we start with the idea that all mystical paths lead up the same mountain, it can be a useful exercise to compare the scenery on the different paths, to get an idea of the terrain they all share.

Morality is a prominent feature at the base of the mountain of mysticism, like mesquite trees before moving up in elevation to manzanita and oak here in the desert. Every mystical path begins in the mesquite morality forest. Getting our ethical existence in order is primary, before practice, before higher states, before experiencing the great indiscriminate Absolute.

The eight limbs of Yoga put the yama and niyama (the moral restraints and observances) squarely first. And the noble eightfold path of the Buddha puts right speech, right action, and right livelihood before mindfulness and concentration.

These Eastern schools tell us there is a practical reason for this. We have to get our moral lives tidied up before we can make real progress toward liberation. Otherwise, when we sit to meditate, the inner landscape is cluttered with emotion and thoughts about things left undone.

What I want to explore here is the same idea in Christianity, especially through the perspective of the anonymous writer of The Cloud of Unknowing. This little text is a window onto the Christian monastic mysticism of the Middle Ages. Reading this book for the first time, I was surprised at the familiarity of his message. Contemplative prayer has a lot in common with the meditative practices of Yoga, with the goal being to settle the mind on one focal point in order to pierce the Cloud of Unknowing and, eventually, experience Ultimate Reality.

A little background: I was raised in the Catholic Church. It felt very unmystical to me. To my child mind, it appeared to be rule-based and cold—a land of authoritarian priests and nuns; pompous, empty rituals; and an outdated morality shot through with gender inequality. I quit the church in my early teens, rejecting the beliefs of my parents, as we do, in order to become an autonomous young adult with ideas of my own.

In college I studied the Tanakh / Old Testament and the New Testament. I learned the history of Christianity and even some theology. I read the medieval women mystics. But I was always wary. Christianity never attracted me the way Hinduism and Buddhism did.   
​
But that was all a long time ago now, and I was hopeful that I could approach The Cloud in the same way I would any other mystical text—with respect for its parent tradition and seeking what benefit it holds.

All was going well, even delightfully, until our anonymous author started to talk about sin. And not just sinful acts but our “sinful nature.” Call it a stumbling block, a button pusher, a trigger—I had a visceral reaction, my gut and shoulders tightened up, one eye brow raised, and mentally I kept trying to check out, reading without really processing.

Instead of letting myself of the hook, I decided to ask, Where does this come from? What does it mean to the writer and does it mean something different to me? And of course, that’s exactly what was going on.

Sin as Avidya / Ignorance

As kids, moral teachings come across as “This is a sin. Don’t do this. Don’t do that.” It’s just a list of rules and proscriptions. This was my experience with Catholicism, because I was a kid.

As adults we can understand that “sin” is anything that moves us away from the Truth, away from the experience of union with God.

(I gotta say, I still don’t have the same experience of the word God that I do with Brahman, the Tao, or the Sacred, though I understand intellectually that they are all referring to the same Ultimate, the Absolute.)

In Yoga, sin is the equivalent of ignorance, avidya. Because we misunderstand the Truth about the sacredness of the world, we act according to our own selfish desires, seeking to affirm our attachment and avoidance preferences. To make progress toward spiritual liberation, we have to learn how to let go of our self-centered and self-constructed desires. Therefore “bad” thoughts, words, and deeds are those that are unwise, that move us away from Truth, and “good” thoughts, words, and deeds are those that are wise and move us closer to it.

In The Cloud of Unknowing, our unknown author tells us that sin is the result of “weakness and lack of understanding.”  Lack of understanding causes misperception, and this faulty perception in turn creates errors in thought and false judgments. The misperception, he says, is cleared up through humility, through selflessness.

He advocates using the word “sin” as the focus of contemplation, not as a reminder of individual acts, the memory of which he says will only distract from contemplation, but as a reminder of the evil that is to be overcome, the ignorance that creates distance from God.


“Sin,” he says, “is an indefinable lump that is nothing other than yourself.” This might seem startling to some, but is this idea so different from the yogic principle that the ego personality, your self, is not your real Self? I proposed it could make sense to think of it in such terms.

"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake"

PicturePositivity! (At quotesgram.com, this is labeled as an advertisement.)
But equating the self with "sin," with ignorance and misperception, is difficult for many of us to do for at least two reasons: (1) the baggage of our childhood experiences with Christianity. And (2) 100 years of our culture being imbued with the positivity-at-all-cost model, starting with New Thought, then New Age and the self-esteem movement. We’re so afloat on the power of positive thinking that we shrink back from or rise against anybody who tries to point out our faults.

​We are good. We are worthy. We “deserve the best.” We have been sold the idea that everything ought to make us feel good about ourselves, especially spirituality.

PictureBy SanDorfALot
But go deep enough into any religion, and you’ll be told the opposite. Not only are you not, by default, good and worthy. You are not, as Chuck Palahniuk has Tyler Durden remind us, “a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying matter as everything else.”

There comes a time when we have to learn that we are nothing; we are less than the shit in a fly on the windshield of the Universe. Compared to the vastness of the Absolute; to the eternal nature of the Sacred; and to the inevitability of death, we are terrifyingly meaningless. Our existence is a flash in the pan; we are tiny, fragile, limited, and finite. In fact, a central theme of mysticism is that “you” aren’t even real. You have to let go entirely of any sense of “you” to meet what is Really Real.

This experience of our utter insignificance, trembling before the Ultimate, brought low by the realization of Truth—this is the dark night of the soul. This is the “perfect humility” The Cloud
 talks about. And out the other side of it is the way to knowledge, understanding, and the experience of union.

To tie this with the topic of morality, the author tells us, "Strive for perfect humility. When you have it, you will not commit sin. Once you have experienced a moment of perfect humility, you will remain less susceptible to temptation."

It is these instances of selflessness that change us at the core.

Moving up the Mountain

It’s a long and treacherous path up the mystic mountain, and we prepare for it with morality. “The first step toward contemplation involves cleansing your conscience from sins you know you have committed, following the regular practices of the Holy Church. This will destroy the root and ground of sin in the soul,” says The Cloud.

Just like with the yama and niyama or any seemingly proscriptive list of rules, at first they are external, then with their internalization and with progress on the path, the principles on which those rules are based emerge as part of our perspective, the lens through which we see the word and act within it. With these principles in place, actions in accord with the “rules” spontaneously flow from the movement closer to the Sacred.

Then, with the inner landscape tranquil, we can head up the mystic mountain in earnest.

Now, with this more tolerant and perhaps more mature understanding of sin, God, and humility, I turn back to read The Cloud of Unknowing
 again, to find what waits on this new plateau.
Picture
Table Mountain Contour Path, By Abu Shawka CC0

Stages of Faith

8/5/2016

 
Picture
Preparing for a lecture and discussion on the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Bhagavad Gita, I decided to throw in this information about the stages of faith. As I constructed my notes, it occurred to me that this is really super important stuff. It's a map of where we've been and where we're going, and it's a useful tool for understanding others on the journey. So, I decided to share it here. 
********************************
As we grow, so does our mental capacity. As this happens, we go through various stages of development - cognitive, moral, social, and otherwise.

James Fowler put forward this model of the stages of spiritual development across the lifespan. What follows is an extreme simplification of his ideas. If you find yourself interested, please check out his book, Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning.

Stage 0: Undifferentiated faith
  • Infancy
  • Learning to trust or fear the important adults in our life and also to trust or fear the environment. We come to believe that either the world will take care of us or that it won’t.
  • This sense of trust or fear will become foundational in our later sense of faith in the Divine.

Stage 1: Intuitive-projective faith
  • Early childhood (3 – 7)
  • Cognitively, this stage is fantasy-filled. It’s all about imitation and imagination.
  • Fantasy and reality are the same.
  • In this stage, development of spiritual understanding is based on interactions with important adults and the stories they tell.
  • In order to progress, we must develop concrete operational thinking; i.e., we must be able to use concrete concepts (concepts with a physical referent)

Stage 2: Mythic-literal faith
  • Middle/late childhood (7 – 15), this is the first stage that some people never move beyond
  • Here there is a literal interpretation of mythology and religious stories.
  • God is seen as a parent figure
  • To move on from this stage, we must develop abstract thinking

Stage 3: Synthetic-conventional faith
  • Early adolescence (15 – 21), can last into and through adulthood
  • This stage is characterized by conformity to the beliefs of others and integrating the faith of one’s culture
  • It is the beginning of creating a personal identity and shaping a personal definition of faith
  • To move on from this stage, we must experience internal conflict between personal beliefs and social expectations

Stage 4: Individuative-reflective faith
  • Late adolescence/early adulthood
  • Independent critical thinking leads to unique, individualistic worldview
  • This is where we begin to balance our view of self, other, and Sacred
  • To move on, we must desire to integrate the way we see the world with the worldview of others
  • (We have to want to get over “I’m right and you’re wrong” thinking.)

Stage 5: Conjunctive faith
  • Middle adulthood and beyond
  • Awareness of our finiteness and limitations leads to becoming more open to paradox and opposing viewpoints
  • (We know that we don’t really know. We are always open to the possibility that we could be wrong and someone else might have something valuable to say.)
  • There is an increasing appreciation of symbols and myths
  • We value our own direct experience as well as affirm other people’s beliefs
  • To move on, we must desire to reconcile our personally developed transforming vision with the world as it is
  • (We’ve changed but our world hasn’t. And that has to be ok.)

​Stage 6: Universalizing faith
  • Middle and late adulthood
  • Few ever reach this stage
  • Awareness of complex universal issues and loss of egocentric focus leads to transcending belief systems and realizing a sense of oneness with all beings
  • Conflicting events are no longer viewed as paradoxes
  • Often manifests as disciplined activism toward transforming the social order

So, to simplify it even further, when it comes to stories like those we’re going to talk about,
Stage 1 would say, “Neat!”
Stage 2 would say, “It’s not mythology; it’s history.”
Stage 3 would say, “This is a blueprint for how I ought to live.”
Stage 4 would say, “I call bullshit!”
Stage 5 would say, “Fascinating. What can I learn from this?”
Stage 6 would say, “How can I implement these lessons to make a world a better place?”

Embodying the Tao

7/19/2016

 
PictureChinese bone oracle script for "de" or virtue. From the 2nd millennium BCE.
A companion piece to Finding the Tao Within

People who embody the Tao are called by different names in different translations of the Tao Te Ching - sages, masters, holy men, wise men (though the original text doesn't distinguish gender). And these are the people we are called on to emulate. Throughout the text, their virtues are listed and praised.

What follows is my attempt to create a complete and yet succinct list of the characteristics of those who embody the Tao. I suppose I do so in hopes that in remembering to practice these virtues I too might come to embody the Tao, even if only for small moments here and there.

Contentment

Those who embody the Tao
  • Practice contentment; they are free from desire and unaffected by temptations and distraction. They accept what arises and are content and accepting of themselves
  • Do not strive and do not seek success
  • Let go of plans and concepts; they do not set goals
  • Do not chase after what is difficult to obtain
  • Do not wish to stand out but prefer to blend in
  • And they are accepting of death​​

Wu-wei (non-doing)

Those who embody the Tao
  • Practice not-doing; they are unmoving and do not seek
  • Act without action; work without effort; teach without words
  • Let actions come spontaneously
  • Have learned to stop thinking and stop learning; they do not look to others to tell them what to value
  • Practice non-interference and do not meddle; they stay uninvolved

Detachment

Those who embody the Tao
  • Are detached from their actions
  • Don’t try to control things or impose their will on others
  • Have no expectations; they act without agenda
  • Do not cling to the outcome of their work
  • Don’t shy away from something because they may have to give up comfort, because they are not attached to comfort.

Simplicity

Those who embody the Tao
  • Practice simplicity; they conserve time and energy
  • Practice moderation; they eliminate extremes and avoid complexity
  • Focus on basic needs and live simply
  • Stay composed; they don’t become restless; they don’t rush or scurry
  • Do only what needs to be done, and they ask for nothing in return

Non-competitiveness

Those who embody the Tao
  • Manage the ego
  • Are humble and selfless
  • Are unconcerned about ego-gratification; they don’t seek approval or become arrogant or self-satisfied
  • Are not greedy
  • Do not try to put themselves ahead or above anyone
  • Do not seek faults in others
  • Don’t compare or compete; they do not rejoice or gloat in defeating an enemy

Silence, solitude, peace

Those who embody the Tao
  • Practice quietude; they do not talk more than is necessary
  • Practice serenity and tranquility
  • Value peace
  • Embrace solitude

Impartiality & Compassion

Those who embody the Tao
  • Are kind
  • Are impartial they treat everyone and everything as equally valuable; they don’t close their minds with judgments
  • Practice compassion, even toward the ignorant, the bad, or an enemy; they care for all things and people; they are available to all people
  • Are tolerant and amused

Integrity

Those who embody the Tao
  • Are forthright; they do not use cunning or contrivance
  • Have integrity; they are genuine and incorruptible
  • Are dignified and courteous; they respect themselves and others
  • Don’t practice superficial virtues to look good to others
  • Abide in the depth of substance, in what is real
  • Are aware when things are out of balance; they assess situations without becoming part of them
  • Maintain awareness of what is essential, the heart of each matter; they are able to read situations and respond appropriately without ever leaving their calm center
  • Are circumspect and serious when it is called for
  • Do not forget their humanness
  • Understand the whole and view the parts with compassion
  • Admit to faults and to not knowing; they know that they do not know
  • Are careful and alert; they are as careful at the end as at the beginning
  • Fulfill obligations and correct their mistakes

Patience and acceptance

Those who embody the Tao
  • Are patient; they allow things to unfold, to take their natural course, to come and go; they have faith in the way things are
  • Keep their hearts open
  • Trust their inner vision; they remain open so they can listen to their intuition
  • Are loose and fluid; they are receptive, supple, yielding, weak, bending, flexible
  • Do not become defensive
  • Embrace paradox; they understand they must let go to receive; be weak to find strength; be soft to endure; They recognize that the Tao/true virtue may appear otherwise from outside: great integrity can appear like disgrace; perfection can seem flawed; fullness can seem empty
Picture

Finding the Tao Within

7/18/2016

 
PictureDetail from Celtic Horse Gear, Santon, Norfolk. Mid-first Century AD. Photo by Gun Powder Ma. CC BY-SA 3.0
Like the philosophy it espouses, the Tao Te Ching is a fluid text. It meanders this way and that, whirls in gentle circles, and burbles along contentedly. Reading it is like sitting by a quietly flowing stream.

After working with various versions of the Tao these past few weeks, I found myself seeking straightforward answers. What exactly should I be doing? How can I turn this babbling brook into a directed stream?

The irony! I get it. Studying the Tao Te Ching is a practice in itself. In its roundabout way, it plants the seeds of patience and contentment and then nourishes them. Wanting to streamline the Tao is like wanting to hurry along the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. It will take its time.

Be that as it may, I did find the following exercise useful in digging deep into the text and to settling my mind. What I did was this, I sat with two versions, Derek Lin's and Stephen Mitchell's, and went through chapter by chapter writing out every piece of advice, every line that gave a command (do this/be this), and every example of what sages and masters do or are. Then I organized them by theme, while putting them in my own much less formal language. 

These ideas, it turned out, could be separated into two categories: (1) finding the Tao within and (2) virtues of the person who is at one with the Tao. Here I'll post the former, with the latter to follow soon.

How to Find the Tao

The Practices
  • The Tao is within. There is no reason to seek it outside of yourself.
  • In order to tune in to the Tao, practice
    • Relaxation
    • Observation
    • Quiet introspection
    • Concentration
  • Work at understanding yourself.
  • Step back from your own mind. Do not cling to ideas. Know that names and institutions are provisional, not the Tao. Empty your mind of what you think you know about the world.
  • Realize all things change and don’t hold on to them.
  • Cultivate the Tao quietly.

About the Practices
  • Through these practices, develop emptiness, non-being, space within.
  • Keep to the discipline and don’t be lured by shortcuts.
  • The process is gradual and steady.
  • When you identify with the Tao
    • You will stay centered in oneness and let things take their course.
    • You will see the world as yourself.
    • You will be at ease.
    • There will be no need to practice individual virtues; virtue arises spontaneously.
Next time, the spontaneously arising virtues . . . 
Picture
Laozi. Photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra. CC BY 2.0

Brahman, the Tao, and the Ground of Being

7/9/2016

 
​Before they reach it, words turn back
together with the mind;
One who knows that bliss of brahman,
he is never afraid.

Taittiriya Upanishad, 2.9.1

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name than can be named is not the eternal name

Tao Te Ching, 1

​The crux of the issue in talking about mystical experiences is that they are beyond words. Luckily, this hasn’t kept mystics from attempting to describe their experiences, mostly at the request of others. But their descriptions are littered with paradox and negatives; for example, ultimate reality, it is said, is both immanent and transcendent, and yet neither of these nor both together adequately captures it.

And yet we must persist for several reasons:
  • to keep the highest goal ever present in our awareness
  • to filter into our lives what truths we can
  • to make space for those pauses while reading or writing, contemplating or meditating, when we settle into stillness and the ultimate manifests within
  • to remind ourselves to listen closely so that we might hear the gentle or cataclysmic guidance it offers
  • and to let it quietly color our perspective, transforming how we experience and interact with the world.

​Brahman and the Tao

PictureNaturally Grown Wood by Ewig Lernender, CC BY-SA 3.0
Brahman and the Tao are both mystical ontological concepts that attempt to convey what cannot be conveyed in words or even completely comprehended by the rational mind. They may, and I like to think they do, symbolize the same subject, which is whatever we are experiencing when we have that feeling, that numinous sense, that we’ve tapped into the very structure of existence.

Brahman, in Upanishadic and Vedantic philosophy, is the all-encompassing whole. It is being and consciousness. It is all matter and energy. Brahman is everything and everything is Brahman. Many of its descriptors make it sound like something static, but Brahman is also process. It is the living breath of the universe.

The Tao, the ancient Chinese philosophical concept on which Taoism is based, is described in much more fluid terms. It is the principle by which all of nature unfolds. The Tao is the balance of opposites. It is the deep, immovable way of the world that, if we can reconnect to it and live in accord with it, produces harmony in our lives.

These words, the Tao and Brahman, are meant to express the all-embracing principle, process, and spirit of both what is and what is always becoming. Neither seeks to posit something separate from us. We are always part of the whole that is Being. We just fail to remember it.

Sages in both traditions recommend similar practices to help us tune in to this ultimate essence: observation and awareness of self, other, and nature, exemplary ethics, compassion, silence, meditation—all methods of loosening the grip of the ego personality and overcoming our perceived separateness.
​
And eventually they say, with enough dedication and practice, we can become living representations of the Tao, of Brahman. We can relax, having no fear, because there is nothing separate from Being and therefore nothing to fear. We don’t have to act, because it is the process that acts, not us. Wisdom arises spontaneously.

Ground of Being

PictureGod Blessing the Seventh Day by William Blake c. 1805
To me, the idea behind Brahman and the Tao isn’t really conveyed in the word “God.” As for many others, God for me is too anthropomorphized. It is reified into a separate thing. Maybe this is because God is a He. Both the Tao and Brahman are genderless. And while you may seek union with Brahman and the Tao, as you would with God, you would never pray to them. They are perfectly impersonal and cannot be supplicated to.

This is not to say that all three aren’t pointing toward the same idea, just that our (okay, my) personal experience with the God symbol has too much baggage. I get it that it’s this bigger (biggest) concept being referred to throughout much of the Western monotheisms. This is what Paul Tillich was trying to pull into language when he suggested using “ground of being” to expand the God-concept out of our culturally conditioned notions.

I am reminded here of one of the earliest findings in the scientific study of the efficacy of prayer. It turns out that prayer is most effective when we pray for “God’s will” to be done, that is to say, for the best overall outcome rather than our preferred outcome. In a way, this ties together the traditions. When we let go of the enculturated wants of the ego personality, let go of our separateness from the Whole, and step into the flow of the Tao, the consciousness of Brahman, and/or the hand of God, life moves harmoniously.
​
In the end, all of these ideas point toward the experience of stepping into union with Being. The Ultimate, the Universe, the Really Real, the Sacred, God, Brahman, the Tao, the ground of being—all are signs we put up along the road and tack to trees along the path. All are signs to point the way home.

Picture
Babia Gora National Park by Andrzej Otrebski CC BY-SA 3.0
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