The Mystery and the Heart

What lies behind the appearances of this world and our ordinary perception of it is a mystery. We may be given some insights into that mystery from the external sources of religion and art, and the more personal ones of intuition and what we call spiritual experience but, in itself, it remains a mystery, and will do so until after death. That is true, I believe, even in the cases of those rare beings who have undergone the process called enlightenment. They may have severed the knot that binds an incarnate soul to self-identification, but, because they are still in a brain and body, they lack full and complete revelation. That will only come when the soul is set free from its earthly casings. For most of us it won't come even then, not in its entirety anyway, but the point I am trying to make is that there is no absolute knowledge in this world, and that is because of its currently very imperfect state which makes it impossible for spirit to manifest in anything like its proper purity. Speaking figuratively, the denseness of matter nowadays blocks its proper assimilation by spirit. Form, using that word in the sense of a Platonic archetype, can only manifest in a very rudimentary way. There are grounds for thinking that this will not always be the case (maybe what evolution means in spiritual terms is the refinement of matter so that eventually it may perfectly express form), but it has certainly been so for as long as we know, and will undoubtedly be so for the foreseeable future. Here we see through a glass darkly, indeed, and that goes for all of us, even if some see a lot better than others.

All of us who have some small sense of the spiritual try to describe our fleeting perceptions as best we can. But when we do this we need to be aware that words limit as much as they express, and that too close an identification with the literal meaning of the words we use can block off deeper understanding. The fundamentalist is one who prefers the security of the word (or the idea) to the more elusive freedom of the reality behind that word (or idea). Furthermore, any person aspiring to spirituality must know that we often approach the centre from very different points on the circumference which is why Christianity can speak, correctly, of the personal nature of the divine and Buddhism can speak, also correctly from its point of view, of emptiness and no self. I happen to believe that these Buddhist doctrines are largely provisional in that they relate to the cleansing of impurity and illusion, the negation of the false self and identification with form, but stop there rather than going on to see what remains when the false self has gone (which is fullness, completion and a transformed, indeed you might say a risen, self), but that is not the point. They reveal truths which Christianity, with its focus on the manifestation of God in a person, either lacks or does not emphasise, just as Christianity brings out truths neglected by Buddhism. Reality is too big to be encompassed by any one description of it, or, for that matter, by multiple descriptions of it.  It is a mystery, and is so because it is inexhaustible.

Of course, not all descriptions and depictions of the spiritual world are equally valid or of similar depth. That is something we occasionally lose sight of in these days when quantity appears to have the upper hand over quality and horizontal equalities are given more respect than hierarchical differences. Some penetrate more deeply into the mystery than others, some much more deeply and with a power that captures something of its real nature. But none can do more than hint at the mystery which remains beyond expression, inviolable and ever sacred. In truth, all we can do before it is prostrate ourselves.

The mystery is being but it is more than just being as normally understood.  After all, everyone has being and it is a common fallacy to say that, because of this simple fact, we are all already enlightened and only have to realise it. That idea may be attractive but it is not correct. For this realisation is not just a matter of intellectual insight or true seeing or meditative stillness or living in the now or stripping away illusion, though these are sometimes regarded as all it takes for the truth to stand clear and be known. To be sure, these are ways to detach oneself from the dominance of the thinking mind but, on their own, they are not entries into true spiritual being. Being can only be fully known in the heart or, to distinguish this from the physical organ with which it has nothing to do, the Heart. The Heart is to the mind as the sun is to the moon, and it is only when consciousness is fully anchored in the Heart that enlightenment takes place and the disciple enters into the mystery. Most of what passes for enlightenment these days is the enlightenment of the moon and, as such, lacks true light except that which is derived at various removes from the source. Only the person who is centred in the Heart is one with the source and only he can radiate the light as from himself, hence the golden aureole of the saints. Only he knows the mystery and he knows it because he has entered into it. And he has been able to enter into it not for the negative reason that he has disassociated himself from the mind but for the positive one that he has realised his true nature as the Heart.

Two Questions on Salvation

Here are two questions that have been put to me on roughly similar subjects. What lies behind both of them is the idea of salvation which is not very popular nowadays since it implies, a) that we are not what we should be and need to be saved from something, and, b) that we might not be saved. But what we need to be saved from is ego, pride and self-will on the one hand and ignorance on the other, and it can hardly be denied that we all have these to some degree. The reason we tread the spiritual path is precisely to overcome them. There may be those who don't like the idea that there is an element of judgment in this, but in a universe built on truth (which means law) as well as love the demands of justice and mercy must both be met. This is not to say that God's mercy has limits or is conditional, but it cannot override justice indefinitely because that would amount to injustice. Besides, in reality any judgment that takes place is not God's on us but ours on God.

Q. Do you believe that all paths lead to the same goal eventually?

A. Not necessarily. While it is true that there are many valid ways up the mountain, particularly at the beginning of the quest when we may be starting from very different points around the base, it is also the case that there exist numerous spiritual diversions and temptations to deviate from the true path as we ascend. This can be seen both as an opportunity and a test. It is an opportunity to exercise discernment and not succumb to what may be attractive to the ego, and it is a test to expose the unregenerate elements or errors of thought in a disciple that need discarding and which can usually only be so when their consequences are fully experienced. 

The deviations I speak of take various forms, which is only to be expected as they must appeal to each and every type of human consciousness. They will usually contain elements of truth but along with that they will include errors. The truth is the sweetness that attracts and masks the poison of the error but the error might well unbalance the whole so, no, I don’t believe that all spiritual paths lead to the same goal. At least, I don’t believe that all that are called spiritual paths truly are spiritual paths in the proper sense. Many may take you part of the way but then have to be abandoned if you would progress further but there are some that might not even be able to do this much. Having said that, I should add that if a disciple is spiritually mature enough the path he chooses is of less importance than the attitude he brings to bear as he treads it. That's because true spirituality is not dependent on method or technique but on intention and purity of heart. 

Q. In your book you seem to imply that everyone will eventually reach the goal of spiritual liberation and enlightenment but is this really true? It seems to me a nice thought but unlikely when you look at how human beings are. I’m sure we’ve all got goodness in us but there are some people who really do seem past redemption. And if human beings genuinely do have free will, there must be some who never turn to God. I was raised a Christian and I find it hard to shake off the idea that there are people who just refuse to be saved. I don’t believe in hell but are you saying that the idea of salvation is wrong?

A. This is one of those questions to which I can only give you my opinion but, for what it’s worth, here it is. It's based on the implications of free will which is the defining characteristic of a human being. I don’t think every human soul will realise its potential destiny and become an immortal spiritual being. I do think that what is sometimes called, after a passage in the Book of Revelation, the second death is a possibility. Slim, unlikely, remote maybe, but real. This is what happens to a soul that, despite repeated opportunities, persistently rejects God, becoming more and more entrenched in self-will. It means that the individual soul is spiritually disintegrated and its energies returned to the unmanifest source and original purity from whence they arose. It’s not that the soul is sent to eternal punishment. It simply ceases to exist as an individual.

This is not something that would happen to the normal irreligious or even sinful person (and who is not that?), but only to someone who persists in wrongdoing and extreme selfish thinking for life after life,  who constantly defies God and who eventually uses up all their allotted time. Our actions have consequences. If they did not then nothing would matter for all would come right in the end, but in that case the whole process of life in this world would be meaningless. Moreover it would imply that any freedom we might seem to have would be illusionary and we would be little more than puppets. That is not God's plan for us. He wants souls that consciously, voluntarily, joyfully choose the good.

The human soul, our individual self, was created and whatever is born must eventually die. There are two ways this can happen. The first is through the process of liberation when the soul is taken up in full consciousness into pure spirit and transcends itself to win eternal life. But there is also the possibility of the second death when the soul is dissolved into the elements as though it had never been. Obviously our spiritual teachers do everything they can to avoid this second possibility, but it is a possibility and it is so because of, as you correctly say, free will. Even God will not overrule the free will of a created being, but if that being, through pride and lack of love (because that is what is behind all this), consistently rejects the path of truth and righteousness then it will reach a point for which the bill for all its wrong choices must be paid. This reckoning cannot be put off indefinitely. It will then be faced with a stark decision, either to repent and work out its salvation with diligence or else to cease to exist. It is said that even at this stage it is the soul's own choice as to whether it turns around or not so its dissolution will take place only if it refuses to accept the consequence of past behaviour and current attitude.

Either the ego or the soul must eventually die. One is liberation, the other is extinction. The choice is ours.

There is no reason to be concerned by this, on the face of it, rather alarming teaching. The fundamental law of the universe is love and only a soul that absolutely rejects God’s love will be brought to this pass. And that soul will take the step in full knowledge of what it is doing, in defiance and self-will. I am sure we are given chance after chance to redeem ourselves but, at the same time, we must accept that the opportunities cannot be endless or that would make a mockery of free will. The freedom to choose death rather than life is a necessary part of the gift of freedom. 

I realise that this answer might seem controversial but it simply means that we have responsibility for ourselves.

Beyond Oneness

The spiritual path is a path of transformation in that it must change us from what we are now into something completely other. Different traditions, looking at the same thing from different angles, express this in various ways, ranging from becoming what you already are by removing veils of ignorance to becoming something completely new, and much ink can be pointlessly spilt on arguing which of these is the more accurate description of the process. Having said that, I now consider that the non-dualistic philosophies that teach awakening to pure consciousness, the consciousness that is always ever-present behind the sense of 'I' and the coverings of form, are limited in that they don't embrace the whole of reality. They express a very important part of it, but reality is stranger and subtler and more wonderful than their rather one-dimensional (pun intended) view of it, and their denial of the individual, and the potential for individual spiritual growth, as well as the validity and purpose of the created world and the fact of a God who is infinitely greater than His manifestation within us as consciousness, make them incomplete assessments of spiritual truth. They grasp one aspect of it but, in so doing, fail to see that there is more. For complete understanding only arises when you realise that duality and non-duality are not mutually exclusive but two equally important parts of the whole.

Despite its current adoption by the West non-duality originally stemmed from Hindu and Buddhist philosophies and practices. Traditional Western approaches to spirituality, however, certainly since the time of Christ and probably going further back to Greek and Egyptian times, do not deny the reality of the individual. Indeed they regard that as central to the whole business of spiritual perfection. God is not reduced to a near abstraction, as is the case with most non-dualistic approaches, but is a living reality. He is not just 'life' but is actually alive. And what He creates is real, a truth that is effectively denied in non-duality. There is, therefore, a higher destiny for humanity than simple reabsorption into the One. It is the uniting of spirit and matter, God and Man, the Universal and the Individual, but in such a way that the latter, though transformed and its limitations transcended, is not swallowed up in non-existence. The self is not destroyed or seen as illusion (the ego may be but that's a different matter) but sanctified and made divine through grace, though a grace that is only possible to receive because of the efforts of that self towards its own purification and transcendence. For while you cannot merit grace (or become spiritual) through your own efforts, it is only through supreme efforts that the obstacles to grace (or spirituality) can be removed.

What I am saying here is that spiritual truth in some mysterious way actually goes beyond unity (or non-duality, if you prefer). The non-dualistic philosophies of the East that reduce everything to pure consciousness are completely logical and make perfect sense. And they are not wrong. They correctly perceive that duality is but a mask of unity, a mask that must be seen through if one would see and be what is. But they stop there. However there is more, and that more is the reason for and the gift of creation. Spiritual truth goes beyond the simple logic of oneness, enunciated to perfection by the Buddha, to something higher that is only made possible by the fact of manifestation in form. That something is the relationship between God and Man or, in other words, love. Love is the reason for all that is and it can only exist in duality. This is why I think that the union of the sanctified soul with its Maker goes beyond the enlightenment of the non-dualist. The latter discards the world of becoming to seek truth only in being but the former unites being and becoming to bring about something higher than either of them on its own. It combines the two to produce a new truth and a state of being beyond either of them. And this is why Christ, both in his teachings and in his person, presented a higher form of spiritual truth than did the Buddha. I mean this in no sense disrespectfully for I have always loved and revered the Buddha. But for him the highest truth was in pure consciousness, the ground of being, whereas for Christ it is in relationship. Christ unites in his person the two worlds of being and becoming, giving meaning to both, but Nirvana is the end of becoming which means it is the end of relationship and the end of qualitative growth. Essentially it discards the beautiful and the good in favour of the true alone. In Christ, however, all three co-exist equally and eternally.

This does not mean I think that the Buddha's enlightenment was in any way invalid. His achievement was unparalleled in that it penetrated to the very heart of being. He had purified himself of all desire and attachment and gone beyond identification with the mind as we all must. However I do suggest that it is not the final answer to the question posed by life in this world. Perhaps it was the final answer at that time but Christ brought something new, something that reconciled being and becoming in a way that might not even have been possible in Buddha's day.

When I look back at the teachings I received from the Masters who spoke to me I see that they support the interpretation of spiritual truth that I have outlined here. Of course, these Masters never went into theoretical details, being only concerned with the practicalities of spiritual instruction in the here and now. Matters of duality and non-duality would have been irrelevant to them as signifying no more than mental constructs. But the corner-stone of their teaching was the absolute necessity for love and humility, and these are virtues that are directly concerned with the self and its sanctification. They point to going beyond but including the individual. They are not qualities required for awakening or the dispelling of illusion so much as preparing the soul to become receptive for union with God, a union that takes one beyond the non-dualistic state of pure consciousness (in some senses analogous to that of Adam before the Fall) to one in which the self is transformed by grace into true divine being.  And this is not the transcendence of self but its sanctification. 

An image may help here. The non-dualistic enlightenment entailing the realisation of pure consciousness is like a clear blue sky, but the higher state of spiritual beatification introduces the radiance of a blazing sun into that sky. Is this duality? Of course, and that is the glory of creation!

The Advaita Illusion

Advaita Vedanta is often regarded as the ne plus ultra of religion and metaphysics, the spiritual philosophy to which all others tend and for which they are only preparatory. This is because it uncompromisingly boils everything down to the One, and the One alone. Consciousness is not regarded as a property of the Absolute but its very nature. It is all there is and everything else, the world, the soul, even God, is reduced to an ultimately unreal manifestation of that. To some this idea seems a logical progression from the initial sense of multiplicity, and its radical purity and simplicity no doubt increases its attraction. At one time I assumed it was correct, and that it was just another, albeit slightly extreme, philosophy that identified Man’s origin and end as in God, but that was before I examined it properly and realised that its denial of self did not just mean that self (or identification with it) had to be transcended by the spiritual person but that it did not even truly exist in the first place. I now believe that it is based on a one-sided misinterpretation of reality and a desire to force all experience into a pre-determined box. There is no doubt that its position has a good deal of metaphysical justification, but it leaves too much out to be accepted unreservedly, and, in the final analysis, it must be considered a reductive view of how things are.

Perhaps the first thing to appreciate when trying to understand advaita is that it came out of Sankara's attempt to save Hinduism from the increasing spread in India of Buddhism. So rather than a natural thing in itself, arising out of pure spontaneous insight, it is better thought of as developing in reaction to something. It might even be considered, in part at least, as a compromise; and, indeed, later thinkers did accuse advaitins of giving up too much in their efforts to rescue the religion of the Vedas and the Upanishads from the onslaught of Buddhism with its perceived atheism. Specifically what they gave up was the idea of God and the reality of individual souls. This may seem academic in terms of attaining to an absolute consciousness but actually a proper understanding of the true metaphysical nature of things is all-important for determining correct spiritual practice.

Advaita is usually perceived in the West as the essence of Hinduism and the point up to which the entire religion leads, but that is not in fact the case. There are competing points of view within Vedanta itself, in particular that of Ramanuja who, while affirming fundamental unity, also taught the reality of individual souls, thereby rejecting Sankara's interpretation (and it was an interpretation) of the Upanishads. And then there is Tantra which describes existence as Siva-Sakti, roughly translating as Consciousness-Light Energy (or, simply put, spirit-matter), and so confirms the reality of the two poles or facets of existence which are different but not separate, and which need consciously uniting or integrating in the disciple for enlightenment to take place.

Advaita, like Buddhism, reduces the individual to the ego or separate self, but there are no valid grounds for assuming that the self-reflective principle in a human being amounts to nothing more than a veil on pure unlimited consciousness, and is an illusion of ignorance. Just because the soul can transcend identification with itself and know its uncreated origin in God does not mean it does not exist. It is a failure of imagination on the part of non-dualists not to be able to see that the individual can co-exist with the universal. Indeed, that these two should co-exist is the whole point of creation. Of course, advaitins do not believe in creation as such, seeing the world as little more than an illusion caused by ignorance of the real nature of things, but then they have no explanation as to why there should be something rather than nothing in the first place.

It is important to differentiate between ontological identity, which is above the world of sense-perception, and the notion of a separate self. That is to say, between the individual and unique 'I' on the one hand, and the sense of 'me, my and mine' on the other. Neither advaita nor Buddhism do this, and part of the reason they fail to discriminate between the individual soul and the ego, its separated component, is that they have no understanding of the Fall as taught in Judaeo-Christian religions. (The closest they come to it is the Buddhist view that all life is suffering). So they see the self as fundamentally bad instead of understanding that it has gone bad, or been corrupted, but can be redeemed. Truly, a perfect example of throwing the baby out with the bath water. Or, perhaps more pertinently, rejecting the whole grain just because of the husk.

It might be countered to the above remarks that many non-dualistic teachers have obviously had some experience that proves the truth of their doctrine, and any intellectual arguments against it are irrelevant in the face of this higher knowledge. Granted, they may no doubt have experienced some kind of mystical at-one-ment. This is not actually that uncommon. In the great majority of cases it will be a contact with the soul which is the spiritual level of consciousness existing above the passing movement of time. However this is then interpreted according to the pre-existing mindset of the experiencer, and often in the context of advaita or Zen or some similar belief system which seems to offer ultimate truth. To an up-until-now materialistic mind any contact with the soul can seem so extraordinary that it might see it as obliterating the self, despite the fact that there has only been a temporary melting of the boundaries of the ego. But what matters with an experience is how you react to it, what you do with it, and to treat it as a reason to deny God and the individual self is to misinterpret it and could well arrest any further future spiritual development. In effect, the supposedly denied and non-existent ego is taking the experience to itself, adapting itself to the experience and possibly even subtly strengthening itself in the process which is why false interpretations of spiritual states must be corrected. The disciple may end up worse off than when he started, spiritually speaking. 

It is well known that Hindu mystics have visions of Krishna while Christian ones see Jesus, and that in many cases this is because their already existing beliefs colour or even determine their experience. Similarly a non-dualistic belief system will influence the subject's interpretation of his experience which assumes the form his mind imposes on it. That is why wise spiritual teachers do not recommend taking personal experience as the sole basis for comprehending reality. The imperfect nature of the mind receiving the experience is a factor in how it is understood. This is not a rejection of mystical experiences (in the examples above the vision of the deity may be an astral illusion but it may also be a crystallisation of a true spiritual energy in a form familiar to the devotee), but points to the truth that an experience and its interpretation are not the same thing.

On one level, advaita seems to teach a pure form of the standard mystical idea of union between man and God, but because it denies the reality of both the individual soul and God (as God), it can lead to a mistaken idea of what spirituality actually is, and this will affect proper practice.  Its absorption of everything into the One might make it seem the highest form of spirituality and the one that lies behind all others as their uniting principle, and that is how it has been presented in the past.  And yet it is essentially reductive since it takes no account of any relationship between God and the soul, has no awareness of why the world should have come about in the first place, no real understanding of the many different levels of being and no insight into the fact that the soul is not just the ego.

To misconceive the nature of spiritual reality means that your approach to it might be completely wrong. The doctrine of advaita has gained considerable intellectual respectability over the last hundred years, but it did not go unchallenged in the past in the land of its birth and should not go unchallenged now that it has become popular elsewhere.  It seeks to express the most profound of truths but leaves out something essential which is the reality of creation. I am not disputing that Man is ultimately woven of the same fabric as God and that we can know this in the sense of wholly realise it, but I reject the notion that individuality is an illusion to be seen through. If that is the case then love is also an illusion other than as a sort of rather bland universal benevolence. I don't mean this entirely seriously, but does the married non-dualist love his wife as a person or as a manifestation of Brahman, one amongst countless others? Tell her that on your next anniversary. Of course, if he is true to his doctrine he will not have a wife or, indeed, any kind of personal relationship at all.

I would also suggest that the non-dualist reduction of God to 'the last thought', as I believe Ramana Maharishi phrased it, is a categorical error. Why limit God as Creator in this way? The Creator of form is surely beyond form. Furthermore, there is a sense in which advaita might be accused of anthropomorphising even the formless Brahman in a way not entirely dissimilar to those who envisage God as a person. By describing the divine reality in terms of pure consciousness is it not saying that the fundamental human state is analogous to the divine state? Why should this be so? Why would the highest form of human knowingness (for want of a better word) be the highest form per se? Might not God in His essence be completely beyond anything we can begin to conceive of? I should have thought that He/It most certainly would be.

Now I have mentioned Ramana I must address the fact that his espousal of advaita might make it seem unassailable. He is, after all, one the major spiritual figures of the last century, and one about whom nothing but good has ever been said. However two things about Ramana should be borne in mind. First of all, his spiritual awakening was not attained within the context of advaita which he subsequently adopted as the one mystical system available to him that could be said to correspond to his experience. He used advaita as the best framework to give form to his insight. I mean no disrespect to someone whose level of spiritual attainment cannot be doubted to say that his experience of the world, both intellectual and actual, was not particularly extensive, and even the best of us must operate within the constraints of our environment, mental and physical. Ramana, as we all are, was a product of his world and had perforce to express himself within the limitations of that world. I know this might seem heresy to some but we would say that about Christian mystics of the order of St Francis of Assisi so why not about Ramana too? So, although he is taken as a sage epitomising the truth of advaita, it must be recognised that he did not come to his realization through that path, and his utilisation of it, to a certain extent at least, was part of his cultural heritage.*

I would like to conclude with the following brief reflections. These are not made in any negative critical spirit because there are many things about advaita that I unreservedly admire. Its seeing beyond form to the pure reality of Brahman that lies behind all things is an insight of the highest magnitude. However, by dismissing creation as maya and seeing created beings as having no reality other than an ephemeral, illusionary one, it fails to reconcile and integrate being and becoming which I believe is the true purpose of the spiritual path. When the Masters told me to forget the personal self and merge with the universal self they were not saying that the 'I' they were counselling to do this had no existence, but that it had to go beyond itself. When they told me to see all beings as manifestations of the divine they were not saying that these beings had no reality in themselves, but that God was present in everyone.

• It is true that in absolute terms the essence of your being is in pure being, but if any part of you functions or is expressed on any plane other than pure unmanifest being, which is always the case in this world, then you are a created being and subject to the personal God. This is so even after enlightenment.

• Advaitins fail to understand that the perfection of being is not in oneness but in relationship.

• Does the self have real existence or is it just an illusion caused by ignorance and faulty identification with form? I say, in contradistinction to the ego, it has a real, though relative, existence and therefore must be transcended (as a centre) but not denied. However, as the greater includes the lesser, what is transcended is also included, though seen from a totally new perspective. 

• Advaita says that there is no self and the seeing of this is enlightenment. I say that self does exist but must be actively renounced or surrendered for true holiness and the light to be born. Christ was crucified, that is he had to give up every aspect of his self-nature in a way that was only possible if that self-nature was real. He did not just come to an understanding that he had no self because no such thing existed. 

• If by maya what is meant is that manifested things have no ultimate reality in themselves, and that behind multiplicity there is unity, then no one could find anything to argue with in the advaita position. This is the standard spiritual belief. But if this is taken to mean that there was no creation and no real individual souls, that is a different matter. If maya is the creative power of God in action, well and good, but if it is reduced to little more than a veil on reality caused by ignorance, as it often seems to be in advaita, that is to misconceive its nature.

• Advaita says that all is consciousness and that when the sense of 'I' is removed pure consciousness alone remains and there is nowhere further to go as all differentiation and distinction has been removed. There is no individual soul anymore and no God, only the impersonal Brahman. But can this pure consciousness be equated with the divine awareness? Surely the latter would be capable of concentrating on many things (everything, in fact) at once, and this is certainly not a talent possessed by the enlightened human being. In reality the individual soul may have realised its identity with God but it has not become God who remains as a vastly greater Supreme Identity.

If I had to sum up what was missing in advaita, and other non-dualistic systems, I would say that reality encompasses both unity and diversity, and if you restrict it to one or the other then you have missed the mark. And that is what I think advaita does. But this does not mean that it cannot be a genuine spiritual path. It is just not the whole truth and it has limitations which should be understood. So, when I say, admittedly somewhat provocatively, that advaita is illusion I am not referring to its essential point that all things are manifestations of Brahman and that what that is, we, in our essence, are too. The only aspect of it that I do not accept is that the oneness of all things precludes the relative (though real) reality/existence of created things. For God is infinite being and what He creates is real even if it derives all its being from Him.


*It’s been pointed out to me that Ramana’s teachings do actually go beyond advaita in that they include elements from other sources such as Kashmir Saivism and Tantra. There may even be some (limited) influence from Christianity. He did, after all, attend a Christian school, and when he first went to Arunachala he wrote the famous note saying that he was going in search of his Father and in obedience to his command. But still advaita Vedanta is the main influence on how he expressed his realisation. And anyway, none of this alters my general point about the limitations of advaita. In fact, if anything, it supports it.

The Threefold Path

There is some debate these days about whether or not spiritual effort is a contradiction in terms, but what's the alternative? Just being in the now? Try that and see where it gets you. You may experience an initial sense of wakefulness and peace but that will soon wear off once it ceases to be a novelty. For the fact is that while spiritual practice on its own will not make you a spiritual person, you will not get anywhere without it. It is perfectly true that no amount of practice can turn a self-centred ego-bound creature into an authentic saint or sage since spirituality cannot be reduced to a technique or mechanical process that gets you from a to b regardless of your motive for the journey - it would be meaningless if that were so. But, given the right attitude, which is one of humility and sincerity, correct practice will purify the mind and help remove the psychological obstacles to spirituality. It's like cleaning a dirty window so that the light can shine through. The fact that there is always grace does not mean that it can be received by any except the pure in heart; at least not in more than brief and occasional moments.

Some contemporary teachers take the end of the spiritual journey, which they think is pure consciousness, and say you are that now so all you have to do is realise it. Remove ignorance and there it will be shining forth in all its glory. That is at best a half truth. A better way to look at things is to say that you may have the seed of spiritual consciousness within you now but the seed will not develop and grow without being properly tended. This tending is the spiritual path which is both long and hard. There's no getting away from that, and the paucity of genuine saints and enlightened souls in the world surely proves as much. The modern mentality expects quick results but that is not how nature works, and it is not how spiritual life proceeds either.

If it is to be effective the spiritual path has to take us from where we are now. It has to deal with us as human beings with a mind, emotions and a physical body for that, after all, is what most of us identify ourselves as being. So the path must relate to all three aspects of our human nature in order to render these susceptible to the spiritual impulse. We can therefore think of it under three headings which are the level of mind, the level of feelings and the level of action. All of these require attention.

• On the level of mind we need to learn detachment and discrimination or discernment. Detachment means detachment from the world and the aims and ambitions (including spiritual ones) of the separate self which we are beginning to see is not the true centre of our being. It means standing back from reaction, maintaining inner calm and not resisting what we experience. Discrimination means discrimination between the real and the unreal, the lasting and the transitory, the unchanging truth and the outer forms which both point to and obscure that truth depending on how you look. It also means differentiating between the true real and its many imitations and approximations. Meditation also relates to the level of mind in that it is the means whereby the mind is rendered still and quiet so that what lies behind it (figuratively speaking) may be sensed. The technique of self enquiry (Who Am I?) belongs to this level too, but note that it cannot, by itself, give a valid answer to the question it poses because, without being supported by total surrender, it can never awaken the heart which is where the answer is to be found. Spiritual accomplishment on the level of the mind is symbolised by the sage. 

• The level of the feelings has to do with the awakening of the heart. This requires an intense love of God, but how many spiritual seekers really have that? Love of God, in the sense I am using it here, is not the same as bhakti yoga which is a path for the devotee type who sees God as a separate object outside himself, and who generally limits his idea of the deity to association with a particular form. I don't dismiss this as a spiritual method but devotion to an ideal is not the same as love for God. By this I mean awareness of the holy presence that lies behind all form (and, for that matter, formlessness),  the supreme spirit that transcends creation while equally being present within every atom, and which has a personal aspect different to but not separate from the impersonal absolute, and which is the source of all love, the totality of all understanding and the centre of the will to good. Bhakti yoga is devotion to something conceived of as outside yourself, but love of God is love for that divine presence existing both within creation and yourself. It sees this presence as beyond form but, at the same time, with an individual aspect for the idea of Being without One who is, or Consciousness without a being conscious of itself does not hold up logically. Remember the Creator said the Masters. The Impersonal Absolute and the Creator are simply two modes of the same thing and cannot be separated, nor can one be seen as ontologically higher than the other. They are one. The Masters also told me many times that love was the key to progress. Love requires a God who loves, who is not just impersonal being. They also made clear that if you don't have the love of God you can never have a true knowledge of God.  Spiritual accomplishment on the level of the feelings is symbolised by the saint. 

• The level of action is concerned with what you do and why you do it. We all have to act. It is sometimes thought that the enlightened person does not act because truth is in being rather than doing which may be so, but then even doing nothing is a form of action in that it withholds action so is defined by it. So everyone acts. It is why we do what we do that matters, and the basis for right action can be summed up by asking whether we act from our own will or from seeking to do the will of God.  Now the problem with the will of God is how do we know what it is? We must interpret that in relation to ourselves, and many have justified wrongdoing by claiming that they were doing God's will. So self-deception is always possible in this regard but we can protect ourselves from that, to some degree at least, if we act without attachment to the fruits of our action or the sense of I am the doer. And, on an everyday level, doing God's will means that whenever you can either act or react from the personal self or forget the inclinations and desires of that self, you do the latter. Essentially, doing God's will is forgetting your own, and right action arises spontaneously from any given situation when you don't respond from ego.

These are the three aspects of the spiritual path and progress is made when you attend to each one of them in its proper place. If you ignore one you cannot become complete in any of the others because they are all part of a self-consistent whole, and the neglect of any one of them shows that you haven't understood the whole so your grasp of any part of it will be at best partial. Leave out the disciplines relating to the mind and you may reduce your idea of spirituality to the psychic level. Leave out those of the feelings and you may reduce it to the psychological level. And if your actions are not dedicated to serving God what good are they?

Further Thoughts on the Masters

I've been asked how I know that the Masters are real. Given that my only direct access to them came through a third party, how can I be sure that they exist objectively as beings who are what they say they are? Although, since they said very little about themselves, perhaps I should rephrase that to ask how can I be sure that they are what I claim them to be?

This is a fair question but it's one that comes from a certain level of consciousness, namely one rooted in logic and reason. Now logic and reason are important in this field, as in all others, for without them a spiritual approach can fall into all kinds of superstitious error. We need them to act as essential checks and balances on intuitive impressions and religious beliefs. Nevertheless, on their own, they cannot discern metaphysical truth, and they are superseded by direct spiritual insight. I appreciate that phrase is meaningless to mainstream contemporary opinion but that's because such opinion has limited itself to the external world of appearances, and cannot accept as real what is beyond the reach of the physical sciences.

The facts are as follows. During periods of meditation I was spoken to by what appeared to be discarnate entities through the medium of another human being. These voices (as there were more than one) referred to themselves as Masters on some occasions but, when asked what they actually were, told me just to think of them as messengers from God. They made no high-flown claims for themselves but used this term merely as a simple description.

Some possible interpretations of this experience are;

1. The medium, Michael Lord, was a fraud and was consciously making this up.
2. He was doing this without being aware that he was doing it, i.e. it came from his subconscious mind.
3. Uncoordinated mental energies, which are the product of human thought and imagining, floating about in what might be termed psychic space, assume a kind of semi-life for a period when attention is directed towards them, at which point they can take on a semblance of reality and be channeled by the psychically impressionable.
4. Deceitful spirits on the astral plane were amusing themselves by posing as spiritually enlightened beings.
5. This was a standard channeling experience in which discarnate beings adopt the persona of enlightened spiritual masters in order to absorb energy from their listeners.
6. It was what it purported to be.

Perhaps there are some other explanations but I think they would be variations on one of the themes above.

Let's look at some of these interpretations.

1. If Michael was a fraud on a conscious level he showed a skill, intelligence and insight that he did not begin to approach in any other part of his life. He also never tried to exploit this talent in any way, either with me or publicly. The voices were not his and the sense of power and authority that accompanied them were certainly not his either.
2. Much of what was said above applies here too. Michael's unconscious mind would have had a wisdom not possessed by, or even approached, by anyone I have ever met or, for that matter, heard of. It would have had the ability to assume several quite different and very powerful individualities, and known things about me that Michael did not and could not know, as well as tell me things about myself that I was unaware of but could see on reflection were true.
3. I think this explanation accounts for quite a lot of mediumship. Usually nothing very profound or insightful comes from it. It tends to lack focus and purpose, consisting, for the most part, of bland spiritual platitudes, already known and accepted by the medium. It is more general than particular, the very reverse of my experience.
4. Also quite common in channeling circles. It can range in content from elaborate descriptions of the inner cosmos, heavy on occult detail, to flowery, devotional communications for the spiritually sweet of tooth. The Masters who spoke to me fell into neither category, being exclusively concerned with pointing out to me the ways in which I was bound to the lower self or ego.
5. In my view many teachings from so called ascended masters fall into this category. There are, however, significant differences between these teachings and the ones that came through Michael. The most significant, though the least obvious to an outsider, is the matter of vibration. The spiritual intuition will always be able to determine what has a truly sacred quality and what doesn't. Unfortunately a lot might seem sacred that certainly isn't, and that is especially so these days when spirituality has been made a good deal more democratic, not entirely to its advantage. On a more concrete level, I might point to the fact that the Masters who spoke to me made no claims as to status, were solely interested in spiritual instruction, required no praise or worship, never discussed such fantasies as a New Age of love and brotherhood, did not encourage dependence, and did not give me their names or discuss anything to do with the personality. In contradistinction to the often long and rambling communications from the psychic plane theirs were always short and to the point. There was no fat on their messages.
6. This is obviously my preferred option. In fact it is the true one!

The Masters don't have a very good press in some quarters nowadays because there has been a certain amount of foolishness spoken in their name through the channeling phenomenon. In addition, some aspirants dismiss any kind of spiritual help as 'dualistic', and say that truth can only be found within and independently. That may well be so but it does not preclude help and guidance from a true teacher which all of us need at some stage on our journey, particularly to point out ways in which we might deceive or delude ourselves, an ever-present danger on the spiritual path. It is also believed in the non-dualistic world that a realised soul, once the body has died, is gone for good. But the assurance of Jesus that he would be with his disciples to the end of the world completely contradicts this. As does the fact that the Masters told me that they were closer to me than my own skin, and always knew what was in my mind. Hence my view that some liberated souls may cease to have any contact with the phenomenal worlds but others retain that in order to direct, guide and serve suffering humanity.

When it comes down to it, it is up to each individual as to whether or not he or she can accept the reality of spiritual Masters. Meeting The Masters was not designed to convert anybody to that belief but to confirm to those already open to it that their intuition is correct. It can be a cold, dark world for the sensitive aspirant trying to make sense of life and its purpose. The knowledge that there are beings of light and love who have us in their care and under their guidance, even if we can't perceive them, should be a consolation and a source of strength when life's trials seem almost overwhelming.

What Spirituality Is Not Part 2

I concluded the previous post by saying that spirituality was not connected to the quest for enlightenment by which I meant that a concern with reaching a supreme spiritual state belongs to the ego. But I am not disputing the fact of enlightenment or self-realisation, though I do say that it is very rare and the current democratisation of it by some students and teachers does nobody any favours. The idea that we are all already enlightened and only have to realise it through not much more than a shift in perception is nonsense. We may all have the seed of enlightenment within us but the seed needs to take root and grow, and a shift in perception leading to the understanding that we are not the mind/body, and that life exists only in the present moment, is but the start of a very long process. The majority of contemporary Western non-duality teachers (none of whom, incidentally, is enlightened in the proper sense as a comparison with individuals such as Ramana Maharishi and Krishnamurti will show) confuse initial awakening to the soul with full enlightenment. Their teaching may have validity on a psychological level, and even take you a certain way down the spiritual path, but it is human-centred and unless you move beyond that limiting framework, you risk being left stranded in a cul-de-sac where the denial of the ego by itself is regarded as its own transcendence. For the ego is not simply an illusion to be seen through by the wise. It is a stone-hard reality that can only be burnt out on the funeral pyre of sacrifice and suffering.


Continuing with the theme of these posts, spirituality should not be confused with humanism, a philosophy that originated in the Renaissance, when the reality of God began to be removed from the centre of things, and really took off in the 18th century when that reality was pushed to the sidelines. Humanism makes the critical mistake of not recognising what a human being actually is for we only become fully human when we go beyond our ordinary selves. It may have introduced certain ideas deemed progressive, but these are really only secondary and the devil is always happy to see us 'improving' the world and ourselves if, in so doing, we forget God. Spirituality is not concerned with making us happy or fulfilled as human personalities. Its only purpose is to enable us to realise our identity as souls. Its priority is not to make a heaven on earth ('my kingdom is not of this world'), and it is not in any way political. 

That does not mean that inequalities and the suffering of the poor are of no concern to spiritual people, but the solution to these problems will not come from trying to solve them on their own level. Rather it will come when we reach upwards and see things in their true light, when we 'seek first the kingdom of heaven'. Political problems can only be solved with spiritual solutions because it is only when men and women know themselves to be souls that the right way to live in this world becomes apparent. As long as we are in ignorance of our true nature there will be disagreement. That's because political opinions are opinions, and where there is one opinion there will be two and so inevitably there will be conflict. To go beyond conflict we need to go beyond the duality of thought-based opinion, but a focus on politics per se will always lead to division and therefore some form of conflict. Besides, as the Masters have said, politics are born in the cradle of corruption, and the reason for this is that all politics invariably comes down to the search for power. Hence my belief that an overtly political person cannot be a spiritual one, which truth is illustrated in the lives of Jesus and the Buddha, particularly the former who made clear his view that the right way to live in this world could only come by being fully focused on the next. This is not an excuse to maintain the status quo, but true change can only come from inner transformation and it will not arrive until enough human beings know themselves for what they really are. If you want to change the world then first change yourself. 

The humanist approach is based on liberty, equality and fraternity, and you might think these ideals are a laudable foundation on which to build your worldview. What could possibly be wrong with them? But if we look at them in the light of spirituality then things are not so simple. First of all, take liberty. What is freedom? There is outer freedom in which no man owns another or can force another to do his will, but what of inner freedom? What is that? The truth is that inwardly we are all slaves. Slaves to our desires, to our prejudices, to our fears, and, most of all, to our selves. No man is free who is identified with self. So freedom is not of but from self. God gave us a self so that we could give it back of our own free will, and that is the only true and lasting liberty. 

Equality is the over-riding belief of the present day. To dissent from this is the nearest thing to heresy we have now, but I think that many of us, while in no way denying the essential oneness of humanity (which is surely what equality must be founded upon) feel that something is not quite right as it stands. Spirituality presupposes equality, doesn't it? The only answer to that is yes and no. The oneness of humanity is a spiritual fact (meaning that it is true at the deepest level and not just a theory or ideal), and the Masters told me to regard all people as manifestations of the divine. But they also said that men were by no means equal on the Earth, (though adding the essential proviso that one should not let that be a cause for dismissing anybody). If we want to be true to life as it is, and not just force it into a system of our own choosing that conforms to our own particular prejudices, we will have to arrive at an understanding that takes both these facts into account. Anything less will be lop-sided and so eventually fall over. However the reconciliation of apparently contradictory points of view is not a problem if one approaches things on an intuitive level. It's only a limited mind-centred approach that sees conflict where none exists in reality. Human beings are all sons and daughters of the Most High, but we are at different stages of growth and express different aspects of the divine.

Finally, take brotherhood. Can that be a mistaken ideal? Surely not, but again an important element is missing. How can you have brotherhood without a Divine Parent? It's no good acknowledging the brotherhood of man if you ignore what actually gives that brotherhood its basis in reality. The rock upon which human brotherhood is built is that we are all sons and daughters of the One God. Without full recognition of the Universal Father-Mother-God the brotherhood of man is just a dream with no substance or binding force.

The point here is that humanistic ideals are not wrong, and their introduction was necessary at a time of great privilege and an excessively hierarchical approach to society. But they are incomplete without seeing them in the light of the reality of God. Now they can be regarded as one of the many imitations of the good in this world, but if something does not have God at its centre it cannot be called good and will only end up distracting us from what is truly good. All spiritual aspirants must know that a lesser good can be (and often is) used to divert our attention from spiritual truth. And the politically inclined should realise that a spiritual approach cannot be allied to either a liberal or conservative agenda in this world, even if it may share certain points in common with both.

Moving on, there are many practices nowadays called spiritual that really just stimulate or sedate the mind. Even meditation can be one. The purpose of these practices is usually to bring about some experience or other, an experience of peace or bliss or whatever it might be. However spirituality is not about experience. It is about ego transcendence. That is to say, it is about actual ego transcendence not the experience of ego transcendence which is quite a different thing and can actually strengthen the ego. Higher states of consciousness do exist and can be accessed but that's not the way to make a sinner into a saint. I appreciate this is an unfashionable way of putting things nowadays, but a sense of our own unworthiness is a vital part of treading the spiritual path. The Masters at one time told me that in order to cultivate humility I should think of myself as the lowest of the low. This doesn't mean a grovelling, almost masochistic self-abasement but a free and frank recognition that, of ourselves, we are nothing and God is everything. And what is someone identified with their own ego if not a sinner? When it comes down to it that is precisely what sin is and why we are all sinners. This is the meaning of the story told of the 8th century Muslim saint Rabi'a. One day she met a man deemed wise in the ways of Allah who told her that all his life he had trodden the path of obedience and had never sinned. Her reply illustrates the difference between the conventionally religious person and the illumined mystic. She said, "Alas my son, your existence is a sin wherewith no other sin may be compared."

The spiritual path leads from this level of reality to a higher one but because it starts from this world it can easily become mired by the stains of worldliness. In fact, unless the truth, as it is represented in this world, is continuously nurtured and protected it soon loses its authenticity, and lesser imitations spring up to replace it. It's like a beautiful garden that must be weeded and tended on a regular basis if it is to remain beautiful and not turn into a wilderness. By the same token, if spiritual truth is not constantly maintained and restored there is always a falling away from divine law built on metaphysical principles to human morality based on the preferences of, and changing mores derived from, the mind. If there is no recognition of a higher power this morality then descends further because it is usually based on the recollection of spiritual teaching stripped of its spiritual content. And that is why we must constantly remind ourselves what spirituality is not as well as what it is.