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.

Saiva Siddhanta

 Most people who are interested in Indian spirituality will be familiar with Advaita Vedanta, the non-dualistic philosophy whose principal exponent is Sankara. This is a profound but flawed system of thought which I have written about on several occasions, chiefly to point out its flaws. See posts under the Non-Duality label. Advaita was clearly influenced by Buddhism, even though the two were rivals, and one of the reasons for its popularity in the West is that, like Buddhism though not in quite such a dramatic fashion, it does away with God who is reduced to an existent in the relative world, albeit the prime existent. This makes it seem to the unwary, steeped in/corrupted by modern ways of thinking, a deeper analysis of reality than theistic religion.

Most Westerners also believe that Advaita is the summation of Hindu thought. The Traditionalist school of René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon adopted this approach. In fact, that is not the case. In India monistic religion precedes theistic religion which probably arose in reaction to non-duality as its shortcomings became apparent. The qualified Advaita of Ramanuja, which accepts the reality of both the individual soul and God even though the two can be joined in a union of oneness, is one well-known example, and there is also the later and lesser known example of Saiva Siddhanta, the -anta suffix signifying the end of something, the conclusion to which it leads, as in Vedanta which is the end of the Vedas, their culminating point. So Saiva Siddhanta is the final word on knowledge about Siva who in this system stands for the Supreme God.

As a doctrine in codified form Saiva Siddhanta appeared in the 12th century in the south of India with mystical texts that described how the soul, sinful as it is by its own nature, cannot attain liberation except through knowledge of Siva bestowed by his grace on one who loves him. Love is important as it is not in Advaita which is all about knowledge. Souls are intrinsically divine but separate themselves from God through egotism and the impurities or bonds acquired through experience in the material world. Union with the deity is attained through his grace and is absolute in that there is no sense of separation whatsoever, but even in this union the individual self remains thereby drawing a clear distinction between this approach and that of the non-dualist. For the Saiva Siddhanta devotee God always has a transcendent aspect even when he is fully realised as immanent, so even in liberation the Creator/created relationship remains.

God is perceived as the soul of the soul, closer to you than your own self, but he is also infinitely beyond you. This idea is similar to the Christian understanding of the relationship between the soul and God, and the spiritual approach to the deity in this system also has something in common with Christian practice. Siva, which is simply a name for the Supreme First Principle or Primary Person, can only be known through love. This love has four stages. The first is that of the good servant towards his master. The second is like the child towards its parents. These tend to imagine God as external but the following stages see him as within the soul and involve meditation on his perfection. The first is compared to friendship while the final stage which brings full knowledge of and oneness with Siva is likened to the union of lovers.

I have often expressed my conviction that the Incarnation had a spiritual effect worldwide, influencing whoever was able to receive it through inner sensitivity. Naturally, the greatest effect would have been through the spread of the knowledge of Christ by missionaries. But in addition to this Christ entered into non-Christian religions, which may have been culturally resistant to the actual Christian religion, by permeating them with his spiritual being. You can see this with the idea of the Bodhisattva appearing in Mahayana Buddhism in the centuries after Christ, and you can also detect it in the Bhakti movements in both North and South India. I suggest that Saiva Siddhanta is an example of this process. I'm not saying that Saiva Siddhanta is Christianity in disguise. It is what it is, completely itself and outwardly has nothing to do with Christianity. Nor am I saying it is exactly equivalent to or equal to Christianity. But the spiritual essence of it can be compared to the essence of Christianity because Christ has suffused it with his presence and stamped it with the concept of religious love. Christ is only fully present in Christianity but I contend that he is not entirely absent elsewhere to the degree that other religions are able to open themselves up to his universal spirit.

Feminism is not about Equality

This is a subject I return to now and again because it lies squarely at  the heart of the modern deviation. It's not the cause of the deviation. That is the rejection of God and the natural order of creation, but it is one of the major symptoms of it and a big contributory factor to the ongoing rupture from reality.

Feminism is not about equality. It may have seemed so at one time but actually, like many movements claiming to be for freedom and equality, what the impulse behind feminism sought was power. The desire for power is not in itself bad because the ability to exercise power is part of our divine right, but why do we seek power, to what end? That is the point, and the feminist desire was and still is to control men, to be the one in the driving seat. 

Now you could throw this accusation right back at men and say that they wish to control women and this is why they seek headship over them, but there is this difference. The male desire to lead the female, to be, archetypally speaking, the Lord to the Lady, is based on natural justification. This is because in spiritual terms the male represents the Creator and the female represents Creation as is illustrated in simple but profound terms in the book of Genesis. Creation came out of God just as Eve came out of Adam. The fallen female desire to dominate the male is the desire of a created being to usurp the role of the Creator which is why we can accurately call the inspiration behind it Satanic. 

These may seem hard words but they are necessary because they are so widely denied. They do not mean that the male is intrinsically superior to the female in individual or collective terms, but each sex has its role and should not seek to appropriate the role of the other. Nor do they mean that the power the male has over the female is for his own personal ends. That power is inseparable from responsibility, and should be exercised with love, just as it is with the Creator and the Creation which is his bride.

To be sure, there are different masculine and feminine types as is depicted in mythology with different types of gods and goddesses, and the relationship dynamic will not always be the same, but still the basic pattern remains and should be respected if a society is to function creatively and harmoniously.

The great spiritual deception of the 20th century was that progressive and liberal ideas were precursors of the spirit of the New Age or Age of Aquarius, and that the more advanced parts of humanity would adopt them with the spiritual laggards rejecting them. In fact, these ideas are not connected to a new age so much as they are symptoms of a decaying old age. Far from being spiritual advances, they are indicative of spiritual collapse, arising when material concerns take precedence over spiritual ones. The equality of the sexes, the very idea of equality itself, is an example of what comes about as the old age falls into decay. It arises from decomposing elements of the past not from glimmers on the horizon of the future.

That having been said, feminism has made the inroads it has because there is an element of truth to it.  Over the last few centuries human consciousness has been changing, becoming more aware of the self, of personal autonomy and freedom, and this has affected both sexes which both need to express the new awareness. In a sense, you can liken this to adolescence which would imply that what underlies feminism is at the same time a need to become fully individual and a form of adolescent rebellion. So, good and bad. The problem here is that the rebellion has gone unchecked and then been justified or rationalised as a good thing instead of understood as the negative aspect of a growth process which should be got through and grown out of. Thus, one could say that we are in a period of arrested development . We have rebelled against our divine parent and the natural order of being. Women responded to the need to become fully individual but did so from the perspective of the ego rather than the soul. In the latter case, the response would have been in the context of spiritual understanding and not entailed rebellion against God and man.

As with many ideas now firmly entrenched in the modern mind it's hard to see how we can get back to where we should be from where we are now without complete societal breakdown. Things have gone so far that only when we no longer have the luxury of a full stomach and a roof over our heads will we let go of our illusions and be prepared to fall in with how things are as opposed to trying to force them to be how we want them to be. This has been necessary in the past and will be so again. It is why we need to start preparing for a future when all our assumptions will be challenged at the deepest level. We will be stripped bare and we have only ourselves to blame because we have rebelled against reality.