The Winnowing of Souls

I expect the next few years to include tests for the soul that become more and more finely tuned. The soul must eventually be made perfect, and if that seems a tall order, it is. However, the eventual perfection is not ours but God's, and acquired through his grace. All we have to do is be true to God, and to the actual reality of God not our chosen interpretation of that reality. This is what the tests are there to uncover. They are there to examine the deeper responses of the soul, beyond the merely intellectual level. They seek to unveil and reveal the heart. The true heart can be made perfect through the transformative power of God but he needs good ground in order to plant his seed.

Some of the tests will be conventionally spiritual. Do you believe in God or not? But that is just the beginning. What sort of God do you believe in? Why do you believe? What do you seek as a result of this belief? Is God more important to you than anything else, including, obviously, money and power, but also reputation and even family (see Matthew 10:21). Is it a holy God you believe in who acts for spiritual reasons and ends or is it a nice God who loves his children as they are now and accepts everyone for who they are, without requiring inner conversion, sacrifice and repentance?

Some have to do with the world. How do you see the world? How do you see the body? Do they have importance for themselves or as expressions of God and the soul or, perhaps, a mixture of the two? Some are to do with courage and response to stress, some are to do with taste and response to beauty and ugliness. Can you tell them apart? That seems an easy test but many people cannot in our day.

The purpose of the world at this time is to separate the sheep from the goats. The tests examine the mind but principally they examine the heart. The world seems real because it must do to make the tests real. But actually the world is not real in its own right. It can, and eventually will, be transformed or raised up into spirit but at the moment it serves as an environment for learning, and one of the things we have to learn is to reject the world as the world while, at the same time, love it as part of God's creation. That's an easy balance to strike if one perceives from the heart because what is, is, but it may be complicated for the intellectual mind which likes to partition and sees things in either/or terms instead of both/and.

We have it on good authority that not everyone who acknowledges God, of thinks they do, will enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 7:21). This is what the tests will pick out, the straight from the crooked, that which is true all the way down from that which is merely true on the surface. By their very nature the tests will be unexpected and require choice. Sometimes they will require sacrifice. They are a kind of mass initiation, and initiation is always preceded by tests and trails. So, be prepared for what is to come.

It's Not Real, Any of It

 And yet it is. This is the perennial puzzle the spiritual aspirant has to solve. He must walk a fine line on a tightrope with a big drop on either side. Is the world real or does the deeper reality of spirit render the material world ultimately unreal? The Two Truths theory in Buddhism addresses this problem but not entirely successfully as Buddhism cannot acknowledge the abiding reality of the individual self. Nonetheless, it does seek to come to terms with the difference between absolute and relative reality, giving each its place in the overall scheme of things.

I believe we make this more complicated than it need be. It's reasonable to assume that everything is real but some things are more real than others. The structure of life is hierarchical, and just as an amoeba is less than a man but still entirely valid on its own terms and in its own right, so we can say something similar about this world and the spiritual one. This world is real on its own level, and it is even real viewed from the spiritual level too but less so. It must be seen in the light of the spiritual to be understood properly but the fulfilment of its purpose requires it to be seen in its own light as well. If I sat by the roadside and did nothing all day because the material world isn't real then I would die, and would have wasted my earthly existence. That existence has a purpose which is developing the self, to which end the world must be taken seriously. I might return to the spiritual world if I denied the reality of the material to the extent that I  neglected it entirely but I would have failed in my earthly purpose. To opt out by denying the reality of the world is to defeat the vision and goal of spirit which is to become more conscious. more creative, more God-like, God being whole and perfect in himself but able to become more whole and more perfect by investing himself in a world of this and that, here and there, me and you.

Learning to keep one's balance on this path and walk straight will reveal to the aspirant the meaning of what reality is, and how it affects his life in the world. The relative may be a lower order of reality than the absolute but it is still part of reality and with the absolute makes up the whole. Just as spirit needs matter in order to know itself more completely and explore its own depths more fully, so God and the world are part of a mutually supporting totality - even if the world only exists because of God.

Everything is real but there are higher and lower realities. All reality comes from God and he is the height and centre of reality, but he is God so what he creates is fully real even if it is less than him.

Current Events in the End Times

 In a crumbling world such as ours it's very tempting to feel one should react to current events and respond in some way to what's happening 'out there', whether it be in the field of politics, the economy, social or cultural matters. We feel obliged to have an opinion or else it seems we are being irresponsible and don't care about the world. We must approve or disapprove. If we don't, we are turning our back on the world and that's wrong.

I disagree. One can safely say that everything now is bad. That's just reflects the general degradation of the world and is the way of the end times. We do not have to react to events in the end times when they are all going to be spiritually negative. Even if some are less negative than others, they are all still negative. This is especially the case when you realise that many of these events are manipulations anyway, designed to push us in this direction or that. Our task at this time is to attune ourselves to the spiritual by which I mean the reality of God not some idea of ourselves as higher beings in our own right. Forces will try to pull us away from this central truth. We will be distracted or diverted, our passions aroused, provoked into anger or indignation, required to take sides on worldly matters. All of this just keeps us locked in the material even if we give our reactions a spiritual justification.

I am not saying one should turn one's back on the world although it may come to that. But nor should one partake in it or even take it that seriously. Of course, if one lives in the world and not as a hermit one has to take it seriously up to a point, but one should not allow oneself to get involved in it. There will be many attempts to force involvement on us. You may see x is wrong so assume that what opposes x must therefore be right but often they are just two different aspects of what is seen to be the same thing when viewed from above. 

All the attempts to elicit emotional involvement should be ignored even when they appeal to supposed spiritual concerns. Try to see everything as part of collapse. That may seem a depressing attitude to take but it is the only realistic one in an end times scenario. If you feel it is your part to resist collapse then by all means go ahead but you should still know that the outer world only matters as support for the inner world, and that must always be primary. To try to maintain the outer world as a structure for inner growth is the sole requirement, but there will come a time when that is no longer possible and one must retreat to the fortress of one's own mind and not take any part at all in what is happening out there. You cannot act as a beacon for those who seek to flee the collapse if you allow yourself to be defined by it or are in any way identified with it. Detachment is the need of the moment though this should be the detachment of one who is attached to God not simply lack of concern for the world.

The Kanheri Caves

The second place I visited while in Bombay waiting to go further south was the Kanheri Caves which are rock-cut caves about 25 miles from the city located in what is now called the Sanjay Gandhi National Park though it wasn't a national park at the time of my visit in 1980. These caves (there are over 100 of them) are cousins to the better known Karla Caves, also in the state of Maharastra and also Buddhist in inspiration. The ones at Karla are believed to date in construction from the second century BC continuing up to the fifth AD. Now they are fairly remote but at the time they were created this area formed part of an important trade route that ran between the Arabian Sea and the Deccan, the great plateau that sprawls over the centre of India. Karla is significant because of its Chaitya which is a shrine or prayer hall. The decorated stupa and columns, now almost 2,000 years old, remain in an excellent state of preservation, and there are fine sculptures of Buddhas on elephants and what are called Mithuna couples, Mithuna being a Tantric concept representing the union of complementary forces that lies behind all creation.

The Great Chaitya

Elephant sculptures

Panel at the entrance to the hall

There is nothing quite as grand as this at Kanheri but it is still impressive. The caves are cut out of basalt, the hard dark rock also used in Egypt which seems to lend an air of mystery to the objects into which it is carved. Many of these caves were Buddhist viharas or monasteries and include a small stone platform serving as a bed for the monks. I once slept on something similar at an ashram and can vouch for the toughness of those ancient monks.

There is a Chaitya here too which is like the one at Karla though not quite as well preserved. When I visited it had the usual pungent odour of bat droppings but still managed to retain an atmosphere of peace and prayer.

 At the entrance to this hall there is a statue of the Buddha standing in a pose of upright meditation as below.

This turned out to have some local significance because while we were at the site we were told about a holy man living nearby who had acquired a reputation by practising a form of tapas or asceticism which involved standing up all the time. The Hare Krishna devotee with whom we were visiting the caves wanted to go and see him, and I went along too which involved, as far as I remember, a short trek into the surrounding jungle which looked something like this.

When we found the sadhu in a secluded part of the forest he was very friendly. He didn't speak English but there was an attendant with him who told us he had been doing this for 20 years, and had neither sat nor laid down for all that time. You may wonder how he slept but a rail about 3 feet high had been installed for him and he leant on that from time to time. I mentioned this incident in Meeting the Masters where I hinted I felt he was rather wasting his time, but who can say? He was obviously inspired by the prodigious feats of asceticism related in stories of yogis from the distant past, and though the past was a different time with different demands and practices, it may be that for some people spiritual benefits can come from extreme physical austerities and self-mortification. The root meaning of the word tapas is heat, and the idea is that tapas can burn away material desires and attachments while at the same time creating an inner energy akin to spiritual fire which can lead to liberation and enlightenment. The modern spiritual seeker does not really deny himself much and comforts himself for his lack of effort in that department by saying it is the mind not the body that should be disciplined. But disciplining the body is a form of disciplining the mind, and one which, taken to the extreme it was here, would be beyond most of us. So, perhaps this sadhu was standing up to be spiritually counted (if you'll forgive the pun) more than most of us.

When we returned to the cave complex we were told to look at cave 34 where there were paintings of the Buddha on the ceiling. The paintings were very faded and not much compared to the famous ones at Ajanta 250 miles away, but the best of them shown here is still striking with its graceful simplicity, all the more so considering it is 1500 years old.

Buddhism has long gone from India but this was the country of its birth, and the religion is Indian through and through. It may have absorbed characteristics from the various lands where it has been adopted, magic from Tibet, Taoist influences from China and even a kind of military quality from Japan, but the core idea of detaching oneself from the material world for entry into the spiritual peace of enlightenment is pure Indian. The Kanheri caves and others like them, of which there are many, bear witness to the age-old search for truth on the sub-continent.

Elephanta

 In 1979 I spent a month in India visiting the north of the country, going to Calcutta, Darjeeling, Varanasi, Delhi, Agra and Srinagar. I wrote about this trip in Meeting the Masters in the context of that book. I also mentioned that I returned to live in India in 1980 and spent 5 years there but did not include much about that time in the book since it wasn't directly relevant to the main theme. However, some readers said they enjoyed the travel interlude, and suggested I write some more about my subsequent life in India. Over the course of this blog's lifetime I have put up a few posts about my time in India, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, but I thought I might now write a more sustained narrative covering that period in my life.

I am at Bath railway station waiting for a train to go to London. On the ground is a steel trunk about 4 feet long by 2 feet wide and 2 feet deep. It contains all my possessions, bar a record player. That is taking a sea voyage and will arrive at its destination in a couple of months. The record player is not travelling alone. It has been packed in a tea chest along with a few bits of furniture that belong to my friend Michael Lord. We are flying to Bombay to start a new life in India.

The date is early April 1980. Michael and I had been living in Bath for around 15 months, running a stall in an antiques centre by day but actually living a life dedicated to meditation and the spiritual path. That story has been told in my book Meeting the Masters along with how I was spoken to by spiritual beings who instructed me in the nuts and bolts of the spiritual life as it applied to told me at that time. These beings, who spoke to me through the mediumship of Michael, told me think of them as messengers from God, and from their words and quality that is just what they seemed to be. I appreciate that seems improbable in the context of the modern world but it might be reassuring to spiritual seekers to know that such beings do exist and do watch over us whether they engage directly with us on the physical plane or not.

Michael and I had been to India for a month-long holiday in September 1979, and I assumed that was that as far as my contact with the country was concerned. But in the weeks following our return we came to the realisation that it would be easier to follow our way of life out in India, and began making plans to move there. When I mentioned this to the Masters they confirmed it was their wish we did this but we had to come to the understanding ourselves without being directly prompted by them. Free will is sacrosanct in the spiritual world.

Having made the decision, we then had to determine what part of India to go to. Michael knew the north of the country well, having served there as ADC first to the Governor of the Punjab and then to the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, during the Second World War when he learnt to speak Urdu. He had also visited for extended stays on a couple occasion since, the most recent time being just before he met me when he managed the guest house of the Hare Krishnas at their headquarters in Juhu which is a suburb of Bombay. However, we decided to go to the South as that remained relatively traditional and in tune with its spiritual roots to a greater degree than the North which had seen many centuries of Muslim occupation, some relatively positive, Akbar and Shah Jahan, some much less so under their successor Aurangzeb. In contrast, the spiritual roots of the South were undisturbed over many centuries, some would say, millennia.

Our initial plan was to go to Bangalore and then make plans from there. To that end, we flew first to Bombay (now Mumbai but I shall mostly call all the towns which have been renamed by the names I was familiar with), where we were going to spend a couple of weeks staying with Michael's friends at the Hare Krishna guesthouse before going further south. Michael had never been a devotee but he was sympathetic, and although I came to the group with a slightly cynical view due to my experience of seeing Western Hindus chanting and dancing around Piccadilly Circus in their ochre robes, trying to be something they very clearly were not, I found them charming and sincere in their ashram so I have nothing but good to say of them. The majority of them were honest seekers even if I believe they would have been better off elsewhere as their cultural origins made a Vaishnavite Bhakti religion deeply rooted in Indian tradition quite alien to them. It would require them always to be playing a role which could never be theirs. That is not a good basis for a spiritual path.

While we were staying at the Hare Krishna ashram we visited a few local places, local by Indian standards that is. But the first really was close by, being an island located in Bombay Harbour a mile or so offshore. This is the site of the famous caves temples at Elephanta which were constructed around the 7th century AD, and in my opinion are one of the marvels of India. There are several rock-cut temples dedicated to Shiva on this little island, and they contain some of the most imposing statues of ancient India. The statue of a god or spiritual being should manifest that being's presence, and the ones at Elephanta project extraordinary power and even a touch of spiritual terror. Gods should be terrifying because they are incomprehensible and far above us. They are not comfortable or safe. 

A picture of the cave entrance from 1858

Inside the Caves today

The most famous sculpture in these caves is the Trimurti. It is a relief carving over 20 feet high of the three-headed Siva in his form of Sadasiva who is the Supreme God of the universe in Saiva Siddhanta. The three heads represent the traditional trinity of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Siva the destroyer, the three principal forces in the universe according to Hinduism. These are normally three different gods but here they are presented as manifestations of Siva, three aspects of one god.

The Trimurti

The face on the right is the Brahma aspect. He holds a lotus flower, symbol of creation. On the left is Siva as Rudra, the old Vedic god, notoriously swift to anger. He has a moustache giving him a military appearance which is appropriate for the fierce destroyer. In the centre, facing the worshipper, is the Vishnu aspect who appears to be in meditation and transmits a sense of deep peace. The statue has two dvarapalas on either side. These are guards who protect the sanctum of the deity from the profane. They mark out the sacred space which the god fills with his presence, and are a barrier between the material and the spiritual, a kind of boundary marker but also performing a similar function to the cherubim with the flaming sword who stands at the entrance to the Garden of Eden, preventing Adam and Eve from returning.

To the left of the Trimurti there is a 16 feet high statue of an Ardhanaishvara who is a decidedly strange figure. Look closely at the picture here and you will see why.

A  four-armed Ardhanarishvara 

The figure is badly damaged but enough remains to see that this is a representation of a half male/half female being. Seemingly absurd, even in our deluded days, it makes some sort of sense if you see it as a representation of the totality of cosmic existence pre-creation. One side shows Siva's consort Parvati with a female breast, long hair, a womanly hip protruding out and a mirror in one of her hands. The other side depicts the masculine Siva, and the whole represents the spiritual state including but beyond the division into two sexes when Siva and his Sakti, which stand for consciousness and creative energy, are one. The ancient Indian system recognised that sex lies at the root of reality, the one becoming two in order to create so while this figure may be preposterous and even, in my view, somewhat blasphemous as a literal being, interpreted symbolically it does carry a certain truth.

In the centre of the main cave there is a shrine to the linga which is the symbol of Siva in his most primal or unmanifest form so representing the god at his most archaic level. This is the heart of the temple and source of its spiritual power. The linga or lingam stands for pure consciousness and the formless reality that underlies all things, but it is also the creative and destructive power that calls the universe into being and then returns it to cosmic dust. In the picture here you can see it as the dark, rather stunted pillar-like object through the doorway guarded by two more dvarapalas. The linga normally sits in a yoni which is the container of the female force, the two together symbolising the masculine and feminine creative powers of the universe, Siva and his Sakti which are the equivalents of spirit and raw matter in this system.

Siva linga shrine

There are several other statues in these caves and the Wikipedia article from which I took these pictures includes excellent descriptions of them. It's been a long time since I was there but I remember the impression of power and mystery present at the the site and particularly coming out from the statues. This was a religious conception very different to that which inspired the churches and cathedrals I had previously known. It spoke of deep and dark mysteries which could fascinate the soul, but there was little sense of light or purity or the upliftment to be found in Christian iconography. I recall that Michael who had seen it before said he felt somewhat repelled by it though could appreciate the artistic genius that lay behind it. I understood what he meant. To this day I am in two minds about its spiritual qualities. Siva was a pre-Vedic, pre-Aryan god and his worship goes back to the ancient past. In Indian religion nothing is rejected. Everything is assimilated and becomes part of the whole which results in profound metaphysical knowledge lying alongside very primitive concepts and practices. Siva worship undoubtedly includes both. The shrine at Elephanta is an extraordinary attempt to express the mysteries of existence but it explores the depths more than it scales the heights.