The Point of Life

Here’s a question which, in one form or another, most of us will ask at some time in our lives though the intensity of the demand will differ from person to person. 

Q. I have a very simple question. What's the point of life? A lot of people would say it has no point. You're born, you live, you die and that's it. But there's got to be something more. I mean, if that really is all there is, why bother? I know it's enough for many people but it doesn't make sense to me and I feel increasingly frustrated with the negativity of that response. The trouble is most of the spiritual answers to the question of what life is all about don't satisfy me either. They seem too much like man made attempts to explain the unexplainable. There's something behind it all, I'm sure, but what?

A. Spiritual answers to that question are man made attempts to explain the unexplainable. What else could they be? But some are founded on various degrees of insight and experience, and some, I believe, are inspired by God and the Masters who are the spiritual guides of humanity and who bring forth various approaches to the divine to suit different times and temperaments. Nowadays we have access to practically everything there's ever been, spiritually speaking, but, paradoxically, more quantity here means less quality as if spiritual energy has become diminished through being more widely dispersed. As in greater breadth equals less depth. This is actually an easily observed phenomenon in all areas of life. The more you have of something the less you can actually get out of it. So that is both the advantage and disadvantage of living at the present time.

It seems to me that you are awakening to the soul. As you become aware of that spiritual presence within you so the conventional 'eat, drink and be merry' philosophies of the day seems increasingly superficial. But so also do contemporary spiritual forms appear to be unsatisfactory representations of the reality you sense, albeit fairly dimly at the moment if you don't mind me saying so. You are growing into the realisation that there is something behind appearance and you are not satisfied with the opinions of others, as many religious people are. You want to know for yourself but at the same time you wonder if there is anything to know. Are your feelings founded on something real or are they just imaginary or compensatory or whatever?

Your feelings are based on reality. You have a soul which is the spiritual component of your being and what you really are. Many people are not aware of that because this world has detached itself more and more from its source but you, obviously, are becoming so. This soul was created by a divine intelligence which imbued it with its own essence and also gave it individuality and free will. Thus the path you take is your own responsibility. There is a right path and a wrong path, though we all inevitably take many wrong turnings before we are firmly established on the right path. There is nothing wrong with that as long as we learn from our mistakes. But we have to reorient our face towards the light and it sounds as if that is what you are beginning to do.

The point of life is to learn what life is. At the moment we are only partially alive. There is so much more and this more we can only know when we go beyond our little limited self and become one with God. Some people might express this slightly differently but the true purpose of life in this world is to learn to love God. We can only start to love God when we become aware of Him both within ourselves and 'out there', in nature and in other people. Regard all people as manifestations of the divine, the Masters told me. Not always easy! But, in the same way as we would not regard our own ego and lower self as divine, so we are not told to regard those of other people as such either. But we should recognise that there is a seed of God in everybody and do the best we can to let that seed grow. In most people the seed is still no more than that, just a little seed hidden away in the heart. But it is there and if we wish for our own seed to grow we must acknowledge that of others. Don't make the mistake of thinking the outer person divine but always recognise the divinity within.

The point of life is spiritual and all else is peripheral to that. Everything else must be seen in the light of that, art, science, philosophy, politics, social relations, everything, and if these things are not seen in a spiritual light they are broken and will eventually break down. And true spirituality depends on the love of God. Various false forms of spirituality, forms which have always existed but which are common today in our acquisitive age, try to taste the spiritual fruit without first planting and tending the tree and letting the fruit come to ripeness of its own accord. Advocates of these paths sense the soul, as you are beginning to, but, instead of doing the difficult work of raising themselves up to God, they seek to bring God down to their level. No long term good can come of that which is why true spiritual teachers throughout the ages have always emphasised the love of God as the only proper motivating force for treading the spiritual path. This love will purify the self, sharpen the intuition and enable you to see the truth. It will automatically pull you upwards towards the divine and help you shed those worldly attributes which keep you attached to this earthly plane and all that pertains to it. Without a love of God your spiritual progression will never get beyond a certain stage.

The point of life is to love God and to do it of your own free will and without thought of reward. So how do you love God?  I've written something about that elsewhere. Here I would just add that loving God is your natural condition if you can forget your self. If you address yourself to God, the higher power, and submit yourself to His will, whatever it may be (and remember that the saint thanks God as much for what He withholds as what He gives), then you will start to perceive Him and, perceiving Him, you will love Him. When you love God you love His Truth which you intuitively see because that which you love, you become more like. So the divine alchemy works in you to transform the base matter of your lower self into the pure gold of spirit, and love is the catalyst for that transmutation. But remember this. You cannot love both God and the world, as the old teachings have always made clear though some contemporary teachings overlook, so if you would learn to love God then you must start to detach yourself from the things of this world. Leave behind its transitory pleasures and the quest for personal fulfilment and dedicate yourself to becoming a vessel pure enough to embody the divine light. Uproot anger and fear from your heart, free your mind of prejudice and conditioning and, most important because if you do this then those things will happen naturally, always remember the Creator keeping Him in your thoughts at all times.

Life has a point which has been described by spiritual teachings in all ages. It is to know yourself to be a child of God and to take up your inheritance. The concept of God has been distorted by human misunderstanding, greed, desire for power, literalism, bias and I could go on but this is very well known nowadays. The fact is, though, God exists and does so as the centre of your being. Your desire to know the point of life is His voice calling to you through the medium of your soul which is telling you that its needs (which are the most fundamental of your needs) are not being met. Listen to that voice and you will be given all that is necessary for you to take the next step on your path. It may not be very much but it will be enough if you recognise it and respond to it. It is said that God never leaves the true seeker comfortless and that has been my experience. At the same time, because our spiritual guides want to bring us up to their level they don’t make it particularly easy for us and that has been my experience too! But know that life does have a point and a purpose and a meaning and a goal, and your strong desire to know that puts you well on the way to realising what it is.

From Reason To Intuition

Our world view today is almost entirely formed by science and when I say science I mean reason, science’s progenitor. Reason is our God in the sense that it is the highest we are prepared to acknowledge. To live your life on a rational basis is certainly much better than to live it according to prejudice, unthinking cultural conditioning or emotional reaction because it is more or less objective (in theory at least), and generally aims for the greatest happiness for the greatest number. But, despite these advantages, reason is still very limited because it is a mental activity and the mind (as we currently experience it) is restricted in its field of operation to the material level, that is, the level of form. This means that reason, on its own, is a quite inadequate way of appraising reality in its totality. Unsupported, it is unable to see that there is anything beyond the material level, and, as a result, will often deny that there is.

But there is a transcendent dimension to life and knowledge of that puts everything else in an entirely different perspective. We don’t normally experience this higher dimension (the adjective is correct since it is a dimension of greater insight and freedom) because we are so identified in this world with our material selves, but, if we allow ourselves to do so, we can sense it, and we also have it revealed to us through religion. The expression that revelation takes may not appeal to the modern mind, precisely with its focus on the rational, but an unbiased sensibility should be able to see that the truth is there behind the out-moded presentation. The question is how can we move beyond simple faith and access that truth ourselves? Not through reason which largely relies for its data on input from the senses so cannot see behind the appearance of a thing to the thing in itself. We must try some other way.

There are really only two ways. Experience is one. Those who have been fortunate enough to have had a spiritual experience find that it takes them beyond the view of the world as described by reason alone while in no way conflicting with what is sane or rational. The other way is through what some call the intuition but what I will call here, in line with medieval philosophers and because it sounds more precise, the intellect. This is the light of God reflected in the human soul and it is that faculty in us that enables us to know by direct perception.

The person limited to reason will usually deny the existence of direct perception or else claim that what is called that just falls into the hunch, instinct or vague feeling category. Hence that it is purely subjective. However the fact that they may be right about that in some cases does not invalidate the reality of true intellect. It simply means that in our current state of spiritual development (or spiritual ignorance) imitations of it abound, and the lower is regularly mistaken for the higher.

Reason is always dualistic. There is always the thinker and the thought, and the thinker thinks his thought. But the intellect is not like that. It comes into being seemingly independent of the person in whose consciousness it appears. It is not born of experience, either personal or collective, for it is not the product of the past but arises spontaneously out of the living present, the ever-existing moment. It links the individual to the universal and the source of all things. It is objective, whole and, most of all, illuminating. Reason seeks to dispel darkness bit by bit and never succeeds totally but the intellect lights up the mind with complete clarity revealing truth in its pristine purity. Furthermore, what we know through reason is always external to ourselves but with the intellect knowing is part of being for it comes from identification with what you truly are.

Once we accept the reality of the spiritual intuition or intellect we will naturally wish to know how to develop a proper response to that. It’s really very simple. As implied above, the intellect will open up to the degree you coordinate your being to the reality of the higher worlds; that is to say, to the extent you bring yourself into harmony with the intrinsic quality of those worlds. This requires a radical reassessment of your life’s purpose followed by realignment of all the levels of your being. Thus it is not simply a question of believing in spiritual things and hoping for the best but of truly perceiving what is higher and of God and what is lower and of man, and then living according to the former. It is not a matter of passively sitting in meditation and waiting for insights to pop into your head nor does it involve ‘raising your consciousness’ (whatever that means). It is an active thing and it requires, first, purifying yourself of worldly desires and ambitions, and then doing exactly the same thing on the spiritual level. Many aspirants to the divine mysteries merely transfer the focus of their egotistical attention from one plane to another but it is still the ego seeking reward for itself and no spiritual benefit will ever come from that. I don’t wish to sound harsh here but, as I learnt from my experience with the Masters, the first requirement for any spiritual pupil is self-honesty. If you aspire to truth you must start by being completely truthful with yourself. Anything less and you are simply wasting your time.

Just as we identify thought with the head so we can identify the seat of the intellect as the heart. The heart is the centre of our being. It is where we are joined to all creation and, symbolically speaking, where spirit is anchored in the body. The sun can also be regarded as a symbol for the intellect with the moon, shining by reflected light, standing for the ordinary mind. Taking this analogy further, we can compare the darkness of night with our current state of spiritual unawareness, illumined only by a few pale shafts of light here and there, while the dawning of the day foreshadows the awakening of spiritual knowledge.

All seekers need to develop intuitive sensibility but this is not the work of a few months or even a few years and during that time they should bear in mind the advice given by the Masters which was to trust the intuition but be careful to distinguish between that and wishful thinking. I have mentioned this before but it is worth repeating as many people have been tripped up by confusing the two. Those of us who have started the climb out of this world into the next need to be alert to the fact that, while we may be becoming more sensitive to spiritual truth, we are still limited by attachment to the ego. We still have our desires, fears and prejudices, and our intuitive awareness will not be perfect until we have surmounted these. Always remember that the intuition is not personal. It will enable you to see the truth but, for as long as you are identified with your lower self, it comes to you filtered through the mind.

Reason is a God-given faculty which helps us to make sense of this world and shape it to our will. But it tells us nothing about ultimate things. It knows nothing about the world beyond this one and cannot reveal where we have come from or where we should be going.  A person limited to reason is spiritually blind and ontologically ignorant and will remain so until their inner eye starts to open. This is the eye of the Intellect, the organ of spiritual vision, and only when the mind is illumined by the light from that eye can it be said to have truly awakened.

God

I've used the word God regularly in these articles but I know that nowadays many spiritually inclined people feel uncomfortable with that word. Some even reject it outright. Whether that’s because they are scarred by a primitive notion of a God of judgement and punishment or because they lean towards the Buddhist position which refuses to grant a personal dimension to the absolute (unusual, it must be said, and therefore possibly not entirely correct), it’s a pity because God does exist. Or so the Masters who spoke to me affirmed when they described themselves specifically as messengers from God. However they never defined God other than to speak of Him as the Creator so what does this word actually mean? Does it refer to a real being with actual personhood or is it an impersonal force or maybe just a cosmic emptiness that lies behind time and space and, in some mysterious way, gives rises to manifested existence?  Or is it all of these?

First of all, I must say that this is not something you can approach intellectually and expect to get very far, and that is why the Masters did not define God to me and I did not ask them to. There were certain questions which I would have liked to have asked them but which I instinctively knew were foolish and would have met with a gentle but firm refusal to answer. The Masters’ presence and authority were such that you simply knew what to ask and what to leave unspoken because it was not relevant to the issue at hand, that being practical spiritual training. To seek to comprehend what God is, except in the broadest possible terms, is vain. You can never understand God though you can know Him or as much of Him as you are capable of knowing.  On the other hand, it is certainly not wrong to have a mental image of God. In fact, this will help you to address Him and form some kind of relationship with Him.  However you must never allow your image of God to limit your conception of Him. Or, for that matter, your lack of image. He is always more.

People today have lost the gift of simplicity. We try too hard to think things through instead of responding with our hearts. But if you allow yourself to accept, if you allow yourself to have faith, you will understand enough of God for your needs. If you try to be clever about it you will probably get lost in philosophical speculations which lead nowhere, as the Masters say.  That is what happens to so many of us because we are reluctant to be as a child and listen to our hearts. We seek truth in abstractions but God is not an abstraction. He is the most concrete thing there is. He is there beside you as you read this.

It’s easy to be a philosopher but it’s hard to be a saint.

We are all familiar with the saying that God is love but let us consider this a little. Does it just mean that to love is the highest thing we can do? Surely not because then we would say that love is God. We don’t put it like that. We say God is love but if God is love then He loves and if that is so then He must have a personal aspect. Love requires a subject and an object. God as Creator is the subject; God in creation is the object. But this is not just God loving Himself because, through His love, He has endowed us with selfhood too. We are little gods in the making. That was the purpose for our creation.

So there is a personal aspect to God. As the active Creator of the universe God has personhood. But this is not all there is to God. It is, as it were, His face as it is turned towards us, and it relates to Him as He is in expression. Beyond this, though, there is another aspect to God. In terms of the manifested universe we can speak of God the Father. In terms of the world of form and appearance we can think of God as Creator. But behind this vast world of creation, what there? Before time and space, what then? One answer is that there is no thing but this is not nothing. It is ‘isness’ which has the potential to act but is inactive. It is the pre-manifested state and the ground of being which is God at perfect rest.

Well, I am disregarding my own advice here and starting to complicate what is essentially a simple matter. Spiritual truth is simple say the Masters, and so it is. Christ and Buddha spoke about the same reality but from different angles. There is a personal aspect to God to which we can pray but there is also the aspect of God at rest which we can seek to approach in meditation. These are not different things but different aspects of the same thing in its active and passive modes. But why even distinguish? The essential truth is God exists. God is. He is greater than the whole universe but He is also fully present in the smallest of things, and He dwells within your own heart as the core of your being. He is Life, He is Love, He is Light. He is the Most High and He is closer to you than your own skin. But more than that He is your Father and friend, and you are dear to Him beyond measure.

If God exists and if He loves us you might reasonably ask why His existence is not apparent. Why can we not perceive Him? There are various answers to this which I have discussed elsewhere so I will only mention them briefly here. To begin with, you could say that God is not hidden from us. It is we who have hidden ourselves from Him by our identification with the ego and the mind. But that is only part of the answer. In order to develop a true sense of self we need to experience a degree of separation. So we enter the physical world where (in our present state of consciousness) the denseness of matter is sufficient to cut us off from higher vibrations. Where, in effect, we can be alone with our self. This leads on to the question of free will. God wants free sons and daughters not coerced slaves so He gives us the opportunity to accept or deny Him. That is why there is just enough evidence in this world to support those who choose to believe in a spiritual basis to reality but not quite enough to convince those who are unwilling to accept this. The choice is up to us. God does not wish to force Himself on us. There can be no irrefutable proof.

Finally, it is worth asking how God’s existence might be apparent to our mind or senses for when we say we can’t see Him we mean we can’t see Him by means of these. But God is not a thing you can perceive as an object. He is not out there. He is beyond the world of form so he is not perceptible to thought. He is spirit and can only be perceived spiritually.

The Inner Path

The writings on this blog do not derive from any particular form of spirituality which some might consider a weakness but I believe it has a positive side. It could be thought a disadvantage because forms have a structure which enables us to approach the essentially transcendent (i.e. formless) world of spirit in a way that gives the mind something to grasp. A formulation of truth brings it down to a level that can be mentally comprehended. However when Christ was asked by Pilate “What is truth?” he remained silent because truth, in its essential purity, cannot be expressed. Pilate was none the wiser and many of us would be similarly perplexed if given such a response. We need to have spiritual truth in a container that gives it some kind of shape and colour, and we usually like a container which has the backing of a recognised authority hence the organised religions. These also provide us with a way to approach the sacred, which might otherwise be beyond our reach entirely, in that they offer a method and practice. A ladder by which to start the climb from earth to heaven.

All that is good and I am not, as some do, condemning it. However the trouble with any form is that, while it may start out as liberating as it opens up new vistas to us and gives us a means to approach them we might otherwise never have had, it can finish by being constricting. We may become limited to the form, unable to go beyond it, and sometimes the form becomes more important to us than that which it only exists to express. We must slough off that skin in order to go further which may mean adopting a new and more sophisticated form but ultimately means going beyond forms of any sort. A spiritual form is a bit like scaffolding. We need it to erect the building but eventually it must be demolished in order for us to go into the building and for it to be useable. The scaffolding has a purpose but that purpose is not its own, and for that purpose to be fulfilled it has to go. 

 To an extent this approach reflects my personal inclination but it also comes from the way I have been taught. The Masters who instructed me were not Christians or Buddhists or aligned to any spiritual traditions of this world, and they did not approach spiritual teaching from any particular angle as we might judge it in earthly terms. They lived in and spoke from the plane of direct spiritual awareness and their teaching reflected that. It was, in the highest degree, pure; without admixture or personal input of any kind, and I think that if you read their words as recorded in the book you will see that to be the case.

For some this might make their teaching seem less accessible. It could even be regarded as a little austere. It certainly lacks window dressing. But for those who wish to grasp the essential, and who do not require props which will eventually have to be thrown away, it is invigorating to have a teaching which contains only unvarnished truth, and which dispenses with all outer paths to focus solely on the inner one.

Outer paths have their place and should certainly not be rejected before time. Nevertheless they must eventually be transcended or you will stay on them forever. They have the potential to take you to that point known in esoteric parlance as the 1^st initiation which is where the Christ child is born in your heart and you become a properly spiritually attuned person as opposed to one who aspires to such, but thereafter you must walk alone, depending more and more on your own light. Or rather not your own light but the light from within which is the light of God that shines in the darkness of your own mind but can only be perceived when you start to become sensitive to what is beyond your own mind.

I do not say that you cannot follow the inner path whilst also being aligned to an outer path but the further you proceed, the less importance the outer will have and the more the inner until the outer ceases to have very much importance at all. I believe that this is particularly the case nowadays when all outer paths have become much diminished in spiritual power and competent authorities working in them harder to find, but it was always true to an extent. The Masters told me that outward forms of religion were good for souls on a certain level but that there was a higher understanding of life they expected us to follow.  This was the inner path.

The purpose of spirituality is for each individual to build a personal relationship with God. This can only really happen when you approach God directly, without intermediary, and that can only happen when you dispense with ideas, interpretations (other people’s or your own) and expectations. You must be emptied of everything, and, in fact, much of the spiritual life consists of this emptying. It is an uprooting and a stripping away, and it requires letting go more than acquiring. Indeed, in many ways the inner path is the path of abandonment. But it is also the path of at-one-ment. If you follow an outer path, whatever it may be, there is always something between you and what you seek. Thus it is basically a dualistic process and that can never bring you to God who you must find for yourself and by yourself. Of course, this does not mean that you should refuse guidance or instruction. No-one ever found God without help from those more advanced along the way. But it does mean that everyone must make their own path. You cannot follow that of another. To begin with maybe but not forever if you wish to complete the journey.

The inner path leads, naturally enough, within. It leads out of this world and it can be a lonely way to travel. But any perceived loneliness is really only an illusion, albeit a powerful one to the traveller. The reality is that we are surrounded at all times by love. The Masters frequently told me this and I experienced it through their presence. Since they have withdrawn from me outwardly (as they must from all their disciples if those disciples are to progress) I have many times felt alone. However it is only through this spiritual isolation that we can eventually achieve oneness because each soul must forge its own private link with God and it can only do that when it renounces all that is not God and stands utterly by itself. And that is the way of the inner path.

The Atheist Illusion

It is understandable that many people think of themselves as atheists in the contemporary world, given the artificial environment in which we live, the largely out of date form of the spirituality to which we are exposed while growing up (if we are exposed to any at all) and the dominance of a scientific worldview that stubbornly refuses to recognise its limitations. However the truth of the matter is that atheists do not just deny God. In a very real sense they also deny themselves. If consciousness arises from material processes then it is mechanical. In a meaningless universe, you have no meaning. Why? Because individuality only has any substance in the context of freedom and there is no freedom if matter determines mind rather than the other way around.

In fact, the more you assert your right to deny God, the more you maintain his existence.

If you are an atheist it means that you regard life as arising from lifelessness, a bizarre, not to say irrational, notion.  It means that fundamentally you see love as only self-interested and so without any real validity or true existence. It means that you deny the sublimity of beauty for beauty, as opposed to what is just pleasing to the eye, has meaning only to the extent that it points beyond itself to a higher non-physical reality. That is what moves us to wonder and joy when we perceive it. And it means that, on the moral plane, you see everything as a matter of opinion because there is no objective truth. You may reject these points, or some of them, but they are the natural corollary of your beliefs. You may say that you don’t have beliefs but, of course, you do. For a start, you believe that all that can be perceived by the mind and senses is all there is to perceive, another irrational supposition. You may say that there is no evidence for a spiritual reality behind the natural world and point to the many flaws of religion which science has exposed. But science has not exposed any flaws of the substance of religion. It has only shown some of its manmade aspects to be manmade. And as for there being no evidence of a spiritual reality, all one can say is that there are none so blind as those who will not see. Do we discount the evidence of saints and mystics throughout the centuries? Do we reject humanity’s highest teachings from its greatest representatives? This may be regarded as circumstantial evidence but, for all the posturing of science, there is no plausible alternative explanation for life or consciousness or the fact, and I call it a fact because it is one, that deep inside us we know that this world is not our home, that we are spiritual beings whose source is elsewhere. We can blot this out if we choose, that is our right, but if we do we are making a big mistake because we are denying the substance of our being. And we are betraying our very humanity because the essence of our humanity is that we are more than human, by which I mean that we are more than just the outer aspects of a human being.

I am not writing this to convince atheists of their error but to support those whose intuitive sensibilities are crushed by the apparent logic of the arguments ranged against spiritual belief. This belief can’t be proved by reason (it’s not meant to be) but it is not irrational. Spirituality does not deny reason but it does go beyond it for it goes beyond the mind, or the mind as we currently conceive it. There was a time when science was the friend of truth. Indeed the word just means knowledge so why should it not be? Unfortunately that is not the case at the moment. Science is now the friend of science. Like the priests of old it has too much power and will not relinquish it without a struggle. I am a lover of science as a servant of God but I utterly reject it when it seeks to supplant God and install itself on his throne with the excuse that if God does not appear to it on its own terms then he cannot exist.

People say, who is this God in whom you believe? Human beings have believed in all sorts of gods so why is one any more plausible than another? But human beings have tried to express the inexpressible. That is why the forms and perceptions differ. These are necessarily limited by the imagination and understanding of the people who have come up with them. I freely admit that my conception of the spiritual power that transcends the manifested universe whilst also being present within every atom is partially (though only partially) determined by my cultural background and personal experiences. But that does not alter the fact that there is a Creator, a spiritual being who is the origin of all life in this universe and who is quite obviously far beyond anything that I or anybody else might conceive. A person might have a spiritual intuition of a greater or lesser degree of intensity and that gives them an insight into the nature of reality. But that person will have to express the intuition according to the mould of their mind which may be more or less able to encompass the intuition but will still be limited because the mind is restricted to form which always has boundaries.

I think there are two sorts of disbelievers in a spiritual reality. There are those, probably the majority, whose inner experience has simply not been sufficient to dislodge the weight of contemporary intellectual opinion. They are victims and in no way to be condemned except, perhaps, for not thinking a little more deeply about something that is of supreme importance, though some of them may have done just that but simply not been able to come to any conclusion. So they get on with their lives as one must. It is not necessarily a virtue to believe in God and it can’t be called a vice not to so long as one seeks to behave in a way that accords with goodness. It’s how you believe or disbelieve that matters, and what you do as a result of that. Even so, having made that clear, I should add that, while a non-believer can still make spiritual progress of a sort, it is most unlikely to go as far or be as fast as that of a person who does accept the higher truths and acts accordingly.

So there are those who simply don’t believe because they see no reason to believe.  But then there are those who actively deny God. Whether through anger or fear or resentment or dislike of the thought that there is a higher power to which they will have to submit, they reject God because they don’t like the idea of God. I think the first category of people simply doesn’t know enough but the second category doesn’t want to know and they reject spiritual knowledge because they don’t want it to be true. Naturally they would never admit that to be the case, preferring to take apparently logical refuge in science and condemn religion for its outdated and superstitious aspects while completely ignoring its more metaphysical and mystical core. But they are driven by their emotions, and the attachment they have to their prejudices has blinded them to the truth.

We live in a world that appears to have abandoned God but, to all those who yearn for a higher reality than the contemporary world allows, I would say this. Hold fast to your vision. Have faith in an absolute power of goodness and love, and follow the spiritual path in confidence that this world can never extinguish the truth even if it can sometimes veil it. Every human being seeks God whether they know it or not but if you do know it you are lucky. Pursue that knowledge and do not allow anything to deflect you from the path.

A Holiday in India

There is a chapter in Meeting the Masters which recounts a trip to India that Michael Lord and I made shortly before going to live there on a more permanent basis. This was in 1979 while we were still in Bath and I was just beginning to find my spiritual feet. It was the Masters' wish that we went to India though they did not tell us that until after we had decided to go. That, incidentally, is a basic spiritual rule. You are not told what to do. You may be impressed by the higher powers but you must respond to impression and make your decisions for yourself.

Anyway, in the book I mentioned that Michael had taken a few photographs during that trip, and I would have liked to have included some of them in the book. Production costs made that impossible but the great advantage of a blog is that there are no production costs! So this post is a bit of an indulgence as it will really only consist of a few photos with the odd comment. It's more a direct extension of the book, for those who, having read it, might be interested in such a thing, than a development of its spiritual themes as most of the other posts are.

Michael's camera in 1979 was a pretty basic one, even for the period, so the pictures are not of a high quality. Also, though he took around 20-30 photographs, not many survive and some of those that do are too underexposed to put up here.

We started our trip in Delhi where we visited the Red Fort, the Jama Masjid and other tourist sites but the first photograph I still have was taken at the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta, one of those  grand buildings the British put up in the Indo-Saracenic style which mixes Mughal and Gothic revival architectural features. It's now a museum.

As you can see I was not a particularly willing subject!

While in Calcutta we stayed at the Ramakrishna guesthouse and visited the Swami who had initiated Michael into that order a few years previously. He was a venerable, old gentleman but still fully fit, mentally speaking, and demonstrating the inner calm that the Masters were frequently telling me to acquire but which I singularly lacked. Of course, inner calm may be easier to maintain in an ashram than in the hurly-burly of the world but, as an attitude of mind, it should be unaffected by outer circumstances whatever they may be. That is because it is not a question of controlling emotion but of being centred in the true, and seeing the external world as precisely that, external to what is really real.

After Calcutta we went to Darjeeling and then Varanasi but unfortunately no photos remain from those visits. They were probably just standard tourist photos of the Himalayas and the Ganges so no great loss though I do regret the absence of a group photo of the Buddhist monks who were staying in the same lodgings as us in Varanasi. There was no problem in getting them to smile for the camera, something I evidently found difficult!

While flying to Delhi en route to Kashmir something unpleasant got into Michael. I had been warned of the possibility of this by the Masters, and told that my conduct was the key as to whether it happened or not. In this case I had aggressively argued with him over what I perceived as his unspiritual (as in worldly) behaviour. He had reacted, and the resultant 'bad vibrations' had given the entrée to some kind of demon which had possessed him. I didn't realise what was going on at the time but was profoundly shocked by the transformation. He hissed at me and then shouted, oblivious to anyone who happened to be nearby. His eyes became a dull reddish colour and even his skin turned sallow. He was totally uncompromising and hard, quite unlike his normal self. This lasted for the entire flight to Delhi and the thing was only ousted when Michael fell asleep while we were waiting for our ongoing flight to Srinagar. He remembered nothing when he awoke. The Masters told me afterwards what had happened and said that they permitted this as a means of showing me externally what my own lack of control looked like. Extreme, you might say, but effective. I realise demonic possession is not much accepted nowadays, except by fundamentalists who probably see it in many places where it is not, but it was recognised by Jesus who regularly drove out demons, and even today it remains a possibility for those of a mediumistic tendency. Full possession is rare but partial overshadowing may be more common than we realise.

Michael was well protected by those he served and this sort of thing happened on very few occasions and when it did it was always initiated by a spiritual lapse on my part. That, as I say, is why the Masters permitted it, which remark prompts me to say that the main job of a spiritual teacher is to expose the disciple's lower self. Normally we keep this side of ourselves well hidden and acknowledge only its more peripheral aspects. But everyone has this self which is the result of our fallen nature and which is chiefly embodied in what we call the ego. The confrontation with the ego is pretty much the whole of spirituality.

(As a brief aside, I have been asked what I mean by the fallen nature. Essentially it is this. When our soul descended through the planes on its way to incarnation in this world (where it was sent to gain the experience needed to expand its self awareness) it began to lose contact with its spiritual source. The energies of matter became dense enough for the illusion of separation to be possible (separation from God, from Nature, from each other), and this led to identification with our outer selves, the ‘bodies’ that were our vehicles for the material planes, and resultant loss of connection to our inner or true self. Thus was formed the separate self or ego. The fallen nature is a consequence of the identification with the ego.)

Kashmir was a perfect place for healing and rest. We stayed on a houseboat on the lake called Nagin Bagh and for a week did little more than read, walk, swim and laze in the sun. Here's a picture of the boat.

and here's a not terribly good picture of Michael in a shikara, the narrow rowing boat that ferries people around on the Kashmiri lakes.

The Masters came frequently while we were in Kashmir, and it was there that they explained what had occurred at Varanasi airport. They told me that there was no need for fear but every need for vigilance which perfectly encapsulates how the spiritual aspirant should regard evil. Don't be offended by my use of this word. One of the great failings of those interested in spirituality outside of a religious context (which can sometimes amount to no more than a sentimental aspiration to universal happiness) is the refusal to accept the reality of fallen powers. That is just naive wishful thinking. Either that or a failure to understand (or want to understand) that spirituality is about making choices and, if there are right ones, which there are, then there are wrong ones too. Everyone has the right to make their own choice but not every choice is equal.

From Kashmir we went back to Delhi and then on to Agra. North India is a confluence of Hindu and Muslim civilisations, and the latter reached its apogee in the Mughal Empire which by any criteria must be one of the most splendid ever to have existed. But by the criterion of architectural excellence it is surely peerless, and Agra is the centre of that. Naturally Michael took a picture of the Taj Mahal but there is no point in me showing that. Instead here is the photograph he took of me at Akbar's Tomb that I mention in the book as the only one I which I smiled.

Sometimes you feel a connection with a place. I felt a strong connection with India from the moment I got there and, in fact, the Masters told me that such a connection existed as I’m sure it does for many of us, given the size and antiquity of the country. India includes every aspect of humanity within itself from the most sublime to the most debased, and it is unique in that Hinduism, the religion of the country, does not arise from a particular revelation or prophet, like all other major religions, but from the country itself. To be sure, there are numerous saints and sages in Hinduism but none of them, not even the avatars such as Rama or Krishna nor the gods such as Siva or Vishnu, are the real origin of Hinduism for that is nothing less than the externalisation of the spirit of India. Far from perfect, inevitably, since nothing is on this plane, but carrying enough of the inner quality of the country to represent it truthfully. And that is why, to be a Hindu, you really have to be born in India.

I was not born in India but a part of me felt it belonged there which is possibly why, just six months after this holiday, Michael and I returned there for a more extended stay. I have a few photographs from that time which I will put up here at a later date.

The World's a Stage

This question is on a similar theme to the earlier one on karma and destiny. It also ties in with a section in the book which discusses the Master's comment that everyone has their part to play. And, of course, the title is taken from Shakespeare’s line that ‘All the world’s a stage’, a conceit he may have used but did not invent.

Q. Do you think we're just actors in a play? It sometimes feels that way but if it were true it would mean everything was planned in advance and that doesn’t make sense to me.

A. I do think that this world is a stage and we are something like actors in a play. I think we have our roles and that our true selves and the true life are elsewhere. However, although we do have our parts, the script is largely improvised and it is our responsibility. So, although you can quite correctly say that this is not the real world and our lives here are not our real lives, the part we play here and, more especially, the way we play that part has a powerful bearing on who we are and what we become. We are making ourselves through playing our roles. They are not us but through them we either progress or not depending on whether we play them well or badly. It is as if we are assigned a character and a costume and then given some instructions by the director on how the part should be played before we go on stage but nothing is written for certain though the general direction the play should take may be determined in advance.

From the spiritual perspective this world is not real but when you are inside it it seems so and that is as it should be. At least, that is as it should be until you begin to transfer your consciousness from the lower to the higher self. If you regarded the world as unreal but were not identified with the soul, that is, with the higher world, you could not properly learn the lessons the world has to offer. You would just stagnate. The actor plays his part best when he is fully inside it, when he really believes in it, and we must believe things are true to experience them properly. However there comes a time when you must start to see yourself as the individual behind the part you are playing and shift your focus from the character, the personality, the mask, to the true self that is the character’s animating principle. So, to begin with, you must believe in your part to play it properly but eventually you must dis-identify from it if you wish to transcend it. And transcend it you must or you will remain stuck in it.

Earth is a school say the Masters. It is a school that is designed in a certain way. We are given the tools we need to experience certain things here and experiment in certain ways. We play with things, we build things, we make things but what we are really making is ourselves. When all we have done has crumbled we will be left with ourselves. When the play is over and we walk offstage it is not the acclaim of the audience that matters but what we have made of the part we were given. And what it has made of us.

It is immaterial whether you have a large or small part in this play. For all we know the medieval concept of the Wheel of Fortune might well be based on truth. You could have been a queen in a previous life, a person of power, riches and authority. In this life you are an ordinary mother with a not very interesting job, struggling to pay the bills. These are both just parts and, from the spiritual point of view, neither one is necessarily any better or more important than the other. What you have to do in both cases is detach yourself from identification with the current expression of your self and realise the essential quality of your self. What you are now may certainly may an aspect of your being (though it may not) but it is not who or what you really are. Play your part well but do not identify with it.

The Masters told me that one should not confuse what (a person) really was with the role he played. “Do not judge the soul by the mask it wears in the world” they said. What this means is that the soul comes into this world wearing a mask that disguises its true nature, even from itself most of the time. This mask is its outer form for this life which may be determined by its previous lives, and may even in some cases be representative of what it is, but it is still not what it really is. One simply cannot judge by appearances. Some of the greatest amongst us may be in humble positions and many of those with worldly fame and power may be quite ordinary in spiritual terms. The Boy is a perfect example of what I mean. He was an uneducated, working class man, and from a worldly perspective he achieved nothing. And yet he was the vessel for one of the greatest spiritual manifestations of the last century. If he had not been a great soul himself he would not have been able to serve in that capacity for the Masters would not have been able to use him. I am not saying that worldly acclaim necessarily indicates spiritual poverty. Only that you really cannot judge the soul by the mask it wears in the world. Having said that, it is perfectly true that the more attuned you are to spiritual realities, the less the things of this world, its rewards, its praise, worldly power and success, have any appeal so, unless a soul has a particular mission, it is unlikely to put great efforts into achieving these things.

So we are actors, or like actors, and we play many parts on the earthly stage. When the play is done, though, we cannot just disrobe and carry on as we were before it began. While playing our role we are responsible for every line we utter. The actual part may not be us but everything we do while playing that part reflects on us and will come back to us. So play your part to the best of your ability while all the time realising that it is only a part and not what you really are.