Fundamental Spiritual Ideas

I was listening to MW talk about the historical Chinese attitude to secrecy and it stimulated some thoughts that I will share with you along with my 5 cents.

Mankind’s spiritual journey is recent and many “mistakes” have been made and are still present in most traditions.

Ignorance leads to arrogance. It is quite hard to comprehend the smallness of a wafer-thin ego-being in a monkey body in this universe … from an objective standpoint it barely exists. That is one reason why suffering occurs, it simply barely means anything in an objective sense because there is no-one really suffering.

All the crying and screaming that occurs is largely mechanical. Difficult to comprehend, I know.

Many have called the ego the problem and that we must kill it. Some “masters” say that they are free of ego, or that they are emptiness or are god or non-existent.

What, all at the same time – one might ask ??

And then many masters end up embezzling money or screwing their disciples, or getting murdered. Hmm … not so amazing now.

Oh, it’s a murky world on planet Earth.

Again it is the lowly level of humanity and his ridiculous arrogance that is the problem. We see enlightenment as a lofty mountain-peak … but perhaps the truth is that an enlightened human is just an ant in the objective world. An ant, a tiny being, but at least a real being.

As for “enlightenment”, presence, meditation, ego, mind, awakening, being … these words are used by everyone and anyone. Does anyone even check what they are talking about ? No.

Is there a difference between “ego”, “mind” … what does “being” mean ? If you say “being” are you referring to the same thing as the last teacher. No, no-one even cares to check. No-one even questions it.

And if someone says, “I am enlightened”. What does it mean ? Are you in the same place as the last guy ? Nobody even bothers to check. Comparing historical teachers they are completely different.

Humanity is so ready to do the worshipping thing, and recreate the parent-child dynamic .. this dependence … that no-one checks anything. We are looking for another dependent relationship.

Indeed in spiritual circles you can give a talk about “Presence” to a group of 50 people … and the 50 people will all nod their heads. But … they are all thinking different things. When they hear the word “Presence” they are all imaginging it means something different. (see this in business meetings too)

One must really see this in the flesh to realise how lost it all is.

The Indian enlightenment has quite a different flavour to the Christian, and again to the Taoist and again to the Buddhist. We call them all “enlightenment” but even just a cursory glance at the teachers in these traditions should tell you that you dealing with different things.

Again, no-one checks. It is quite incredible.

But then if you are able to read the newspaper objectively and witness the madness page after page, you would never buy a paper again. But as we have been educated to be, our fragmentation means we are able to peruse the terror / bombing /poverty / environmental destruction, and then look at the sale at Bloomingdales … and it’s all fine. Barely a ripple passes over us.

And then there is the endless talk of “progress” … that we are the generation who has finally understood how stupid the last lot were and now we will be in for a global revolution / global awakening / etc… ( which is exactly what the last lot said – and everyone said that for thousands of years !!!! Ha).

When you really see it, it is a shock. And it is that shock that has lead many on the path to retire to the mountains and give up on changing mankind.

Anyway, for what it’s worth here are the best ideas I have on the mechanism of the path :

If you take “an ordinary human” and remove the ego, you are left with a vegetable. You might occasionally see this happen to some unfortunate “mental” people.

But how can this be, I thought all we had to do was kill our ego. Well, no that is BS.

Because the ego-mind is a temporary matrix that this being uses to relate to reality. And … there is nothing else in there. Remove the ego and you get vegetable.

And that is why removing the ego doesn’t work (unless you have an accident). It is designed to be un-removeable … until a deeper force is ready to take over. That is why in these so-many satsangs where the teacher says “oh just drop your ego” … nothing actually happens to the people there. They go back again and again for 30 years and still they are the same. Sad.

The design is that the ego is non-removable until the soul is present. When the soul is present the ego naturally dissolves into it.

Does this “ordinary human” have a soul ? No, he has a seed. Which means that in the right conditions the body-mind can be used to develop the seed into a soul.

And in more harmonious times the regulation and rhythms of society were designed to allow this to happen. You had a human life which also watered that seed in you. Society was regulated like this … even marriage was designed for that.

One can imagine how many hundred thousands of years it took for mankind to arrive at a reasonable social regulation. Things like eating 3 times a day and a 7 day week and so many other things we take for granted.

But in non-harmonious times “ordinary humans” will result in precisely nothing and in fact because there is no-one in there, the suffering doesn’t mean a whole lot.

You would be very lucky to be born in a well-regulated society because you could make rapid progress. Today’s society is quite a mess, but there are even greate opportunities if you are willing to step outside the flock.

Are we all enlightened ?

You hear some people say this these day. How can we not be if “everything is enlightened”, if we “are all one”. Surely we “are all enlightened” and there isn’t anything to do. Everything is just great.

Do I need to answer this ?

We can do things, and we can build beauty, and when we talk of the development of the soul we are talking about an amazing transformation that is possible.

Perhaps it has taken the backbreaking and unthanked work of thousands of seekers painstakingly working out how to do it.

It is incredible that the possibility even exists for a human being.

There is a one-ness (even dogcrap is part of the oneness) and if that’s what you are happy with, then go no further.

But … somehow through some exceptional effort a legacy is left for us for the few that wish to follow it and we can turn ourselves from being the same as dogcrap, to being a soul. If you want to.

My understanding is that the in the East the first transmission was given to mankind … and it was the transmission of oneness. And that was quite a leap.

And a second transmission has been given to mankind that represents the individual within the oneness.

And that is the order that needs to be followed to transform the soul .. first you discover the oneness and then afterwards you discover the individual within the oneness.

And like MW says, then the individual surrenders to the oneness … but the soul retains his oneness and returns to the ocean. Which is the beauty of it. An incredible journey we are honoured to take.

Note that it is not possible to surrender before the soul is developed … because there is nothing there to surrender. You must awaken, and then surrender.

So the order is something like this :

> the human becomes well-regulated and able to do things at the relative level

> the oneness is discovered and developed

> the individual within the oneness is discovered and developed

> the individual within the oneness returns to the ocean

Global Awakening

Well, there is always hope but I think it unlikely. The basic nature of this universe is that everything rusts. Christianity with its humble beginnings ended up burning alive women … and worse. Things degenerate, and quickly.

It is simply the basic nature of this dimension of reality.

The secrecy of the past teachings was to keep the temple clean of the profane.

It is like the seagulls feeding from the dustbins … they pick out a piece of meat and rip it to shreds … and then nothing is left. If you open your tradition to the seagulls, pretty soon you are left with nothing. The darkness consumes it.

I see no reason why that mechanism is not still functioning.

Love, sex, faith, hope … all just used to sell Jeans these days. In the “oldie days” the words themselves had such energy they alone could transform you. Now, nothing.

And in India when Americans turn up the prices go up by 10 times and the fake sadhus come out with their manicured white beards, sitting motionless while a kindly good natured visitor puts 10 bucks in the tin.

Everything rusts.

We can hope that somehow these basic rules have somehow changed, but let that not prevent you from making tracks.