Spiritual Evolution: The Divine Plan for Life
The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment
From Darkness Unto Light: A Dictionary of Enlightenment
New Maps of Heaven: The Conditions of Life After Death
Other Dictionaries of Enlightenment
Treasury of Enlightenment
Spiritual Essays
Bibliography
Last revised: 10 Sept. 2009.
When time stood still
What inspired this book? What motivates me as its author?
The energy I have for the subject arises from an event that happened on 13 February 1987, a vision. Rather improbably, it happened while I was driving my car. I’ll try to describe it in as much detail as I can for interest's sake. You may recognize it as a variation on the spiritual parabola or Jacob’s ladder of consciousness.
The previous weekend I had been at a rebirthing workshop and had had a full breath release, an event which left me feeling incredibly clean and clear.
Moreover, I was at the time studying for my doctorate in sociology and had been counselling people on a volunteer basis. This experience as a counselor contributed directly to what happened next.
At first, like so many counsellors, I used “problem-solving therapy,” but soon became weary of trying to “sell” solutions to people who were not inclined to buy. They seemed to want to tell their stories no matter what and rebuffed any attempt I made to offer a solution until they had had their say. I started listening.
I found that people presented me with a puzzle and, when I listened and they talked about it deeply enough, they suddenly had an “Aha!” The puzzle turned into a picture which caused their upset to disappear. (Of course I am simplifying a more complicated process.)
In all sincerity that day, I said to the universe in general, “Is it possible that life itself is a puzzle? And, if so, what might the picture be that life is?”
I had turned the corner in my car and was travelling through a part of the city I knew well. Having asked my question, everything suddenly turned black. I forgot about my car and found myself staring at a wordless tableaux, a spiritual movie, if you will. All of it was relational, a cause-and-effect story in pictures. I was watching God’s wordless way of speaking to me.
At the same time as I watched this spiritual tableau -- and this is very important – I was filled with bliss. The experience of bliss resulted in greatly-increased comprehension. It somehow made it easier for me to take things in so that, what I could not wrap my thoughts around in everyday consciousness, I now knew and understood quite simply, intuitively, and directly.
I knew intuitively the identity of the actors in the film and the nature of the drama that was unfolding before my eyes. Words just arose in my mind to explain what I saw.
There was before me a large Golden Sun, which I knew intuitively to be “God the Father” (Brahman, the irreducible Essence, the Tao). From it emerged a small golden star, which I thought of as “God the Child" (the Atman, the Buddha-nature, the Christ, the Pearl of great price). This small golden star streaked out into the blackness of space and disappeared.
I noticed that I had the capacity to follow the golden star wherever it went. I simply wondered where it had gone and I was there, looking at that corner of "space."
In the corner where the golden star had gone, there was a kind of hazy cloud. I knew that cloud to be God the Holy Spirit, which I would now call “God the Mother” (Shakti, the Word, Aum/Amen, the creative universal vibration).
Within the haze, I saw a spiralling tube and recognized the Star-Child, moving through it. Now it had lost its brilliance and I could only see its perfectly-circular outline, as it wended its way through what I knew intuitively to be “lifetimes in matter.”
I watched for a time and then, suddenly, the Star-Child flashed back into brilliance and I knew that to be an experience of enlightenment. As soon as its luminescence returned, it left the tube and raced back to the Golden Sun in which it submerged itself. I knew this to be another, more senior experience of enlightenment.
The Star-Child having disappeared, I pondered what I had seen and the words formed in my mind: “Enlightenment is the purpose of life.” This understanding summarized my experience.
As soon as I had reached this conclusion, the vision disappeared and I was back behind the wheel of a car.
Knowing that part of the city well, I looked to the right and the left of me to see how far I had moved in the roughly eight seconds I had been somewhere else. I had not moved an inch. I concluded that the whole event had taken place outside of time.
The experience was not enlightenment. It was a teaching about enlightenment. I had been given a glimpse of God's great Plan for life, a representation of the total journey of an individual soul. It went out from God, on a spiritual parabola, all the while spiraling forward, through the universe of matter, and back again to God once it had achieved a supreme level of mergence or enlightenment.
"It all works out in the final reel!"
Behind the wheel of the car again, I came to a red light and looked over at the worried expression on the face of the driver in the next car. I wanted to roll down my window and shout: “It all works out in the final reel!”
For the next three days, I remained in bliss. I saw that all of nature praises God and reveals His Plan. Trees raise their leafy branches to the sky as if in adoration. Their leaves drop off, as our bodies do, but the trees don’t die. The birds flying through the air leave no trace; nor do souls journeying through life. The way the sand and sea mix and yet return to their basic natures reminded me of the relationship between the soul and the body. Everything natural was a metaphor of the Divine or one of Its created processes.
Thereafter my doctoral studies seemed insipid. I tried to enrol my professors in allowing me to study enlightenment for my dissertation but no one at the university, including the religious studies department, would hear of it. Religious studies said that the university regulations prevented them from studying such a subject. I was amazed.
Empirical materialism was the dominant paradign at my university in those days. Only what could be known through the senses was considered real. None of what I had seen was known through the senses; hence none of what I had seen was, to the university, real.
I felt confined by the academic paradigm, was glad to leave it, and have never looked back. Moreover, I have never allowed my research, since that day, to be subject to academic scrutiny in order to preserve my freedom to wander where I will.
I remained entranced by the vision. I had to find words to express its wordless message. One by one, as I read the classics, statements appeared that explained what I had seen. Jesus saying that he came out from the Father out into the world and now returns to the Father was an exact description. Jacob’s Ladder was a depiction of it. Here it was discussed in Ibn Arabi; there in Krishnamurti.
I spent almost twenty years trying to put that eight-second movie into words and, in fact, this book is the latest attempt. And now it is done.
The Caveat
Having explained the background of this book, I feel I have reached its end. Let me leave the final say to the modern American master Adyashanti:
Life without a reason, a purpose, a position... the mind is frightened of this because then "my life" is over with, and life lives itself and moves from itself in a totally different dimension. This way of living is just life moving. That's all. (1)
We are faced at last with a dilemma. What Adyashanti points to is a life lived from the absolute. If we lived life from that level, we would no longer have a “purpose” to our lives because we would have realized the Divine, which is Itself purposeless.
But this stage of our spiritual life comes at the end of many lives of spiritual practice. If you are at that stage, I humbly bow to you. For you, this book will be simply so much paper.
Most of us reading this book (and certainly the intended readers) are Western householders, most again having families. We are responsible for people who depend on us, not all of whom can appreciate the joy of living life dedicated to the absolute alone.
We go to jobs where colleagues speak to us from the relative perspective and expect a comprehensible answer in return. We cannot retreat to a cave and commune with the infinite, living on a meager subsistence.
So long as we live in the world, we must have a middle path, one that looks to our gradual spiritual evolution, our measured unfoldment, one that allows us to continue to relate to and communicate with those among whom we mingle.
We will gradually work away at the statue, as Plotinus advised, (3) experiencing ever greater integrity by developing virtues like morality, completeness, and clarity. (4) The Buddha epitomized this middle path: “Not to commit any sin, to do good, and to purify one's mind, that is the teaching of all the Awakened.” (5)
While the absolute is “here and now,” this middle path is more here and now and more here and now. Given that enlightenment is virtually endless, as we experience more and more levels of enlightenment in more and more lives, we approach the time when we may wish to strike out from the shore and follow the more austere path to the absolute (and, again, perhaps we may find we have no need to). In the meantime, following the middle path will help us build a solid foundation, allow us to scale the initial heights, and still enable us to live with our loved ones and work in a relative world.
To walk this middle path between Adya’s divine purposelessness and the shallowness of materialistic agendas, we need to embrace a purpose for our lives. In fact, we need to embrace a very deep, very spiritual purpose to keep us on course. I recommend that our purpose be as laid out here -- the attainment of higher and higher levels of enlightenment - a purpose that we know to be infinite in reach. When the time arrives for us to immerse ourselves in the austere life of the monk, then we can let go of even that purpose. Until that day, this book remains more than just paper.
This need for a middle path will likely remain true for me for some time to come. It provides me with a view of life that comforts me and affords me welcome glimpses of progress. As long as I remain responsible to others, I need both of these.
May your efforts to achieve the purpose of life and consummate God’s Plan for you be blessed with success. May you be filled with divine joy and love.
Brother Anonymous
References
(1) “The Only Price,” 2004, downloaded from www.adyashanti.org, 2004.
(2) The very fabric of mystical sayings, especially Zen choans, is this paradox brought about by our mistaken juxtaposition of the relative upon the absolute. We think of the relative and the absolute as so many oranges. They are not. They are apples and oranges. Not until we “separate” them do many mystical sayings make sense.
"Die before dying" is a good example of this paradoxical juxtaposition of the relative upon the absolute. Its meaning is that the mind must die before the body dies if we are to know the absolute. The death of the mind is spiritual; the death of the body is physical. We cannot know the meaning of this statement if we hear it from only one dimension of reality (i.e, the physical).
(3) “Do as does the sculptor of a statue that is to be beautified: he cuts away here, he smoothes it there, he makes this line lighter, this other one purer, until he disengages beautiful lineaments in the marble. Do you this, too. Cut away all that is excessive. straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one radiance of beauty. Never cease ‘working at the statue’ until there shines out upon you from it the divine sheen of virtue.... Have you become like this? Do you see yourself, abiding within yourself, in pure solitude? Does nothing now remain to shatter that interior unity, nor anything cling to your authentic self? Are you entirely that sole true light which is not contained by space, not confined to any circumscribed form, not diffused as something without term, but ever immeasurable as something greater than all measure and something more than all quantity? Do you see yourself in this state? Then you have become vision itself. Be of good heart. Remaining here you have ascended aloft. You need a guide no longer. Strain and see.” (Plotinus in EP, 40-3.)
(4) “Temperance, courage, every virtue -- even prudence itself -- are purifications.” (Plotinus in EP, 39.)
(5) Buddha in TCB, 61.
Spiritual Evolution: The Divine Plan for Life
The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment
From Darkness Unto Light: A Dictionary of Enlightenment
New Maps of Heaven: The Conditions of Life After Death
Other Dictionaries of Enlightenment
Treasury of Enlightenment
Spiritual Essays
Bibliography