Printed in the Summer 2021 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Kezwer, Glen, "Beyond Spiritual Struggle " Quest 108:3, pg 13-15
By Glen Kezwer
Spiritual struggle: two seemingly straightforward English words, but let’s have a closer look at each of them.
Spirit: the inner existence of a human being, which cannot be touched by the fingers, seen by the eyes, heard by the ears, smelled by the nose, or tasted by the tongue. In other words, the spirit is that which cannot be perceived by any of the senses, yet is the essence of all living creatures. It makes us alive, aware, and conscious.
Struggle: proceeding towards some goal with difficulty or effort.
So spiritual struggle means the strenuous or arduous endeavor to know our true nature.
Having been personally engaged in the spiritual pursuit for four decades, I find struggle to be too strong a word: path, effort, or transformation are more in line with my personal experience. I prefer path to struggle because this quest involves a starting point—wherever we are when we decide that the spiritual goal is worth seeking—and an ending point, which could be described as oneness, enlightenment, self-actualization, or self-realization, to name a few. Not everyone reaches the enlightened state, but the path is still worth pursuing, because it brings many positive changes along the way. It is overall a joyful journey, which nurtures a life of less troubling desire, pain, and suffering and increased happiness, ease, peace, and fulfilment.
Effort is definitely involved. We cannot come to know our spirit, or essence, without using certain techniques such as meditation, the study of the human mind—both our own and others’—and the examination of our place in the world.
The path certainly includes transformation. Our thinking and understanding of who we are and the universe in which we live constantly change along the way. The path begins when we realize that the knowledge we have had up to a certain point in our lives is inadequate. As Richard Smoley puts it, spiritual development “requires that we admit the limits of our ordinary ways of seeing and being” (Smoley, 19).
Why would a person want to pursue such a goal? After all, many people spend their entire lives without undertaking such a journey. The motivation can be as simple as the desire to live a life of happiness, free from pain and suffering. It can also be something deeper, such as a yearning to explore our essential nature, but whatever the motivation, the goal is the same: knowledge of our innate spirit.
Without knowing our essence, we can never attain true happiness. I don’t mean the temporary happiness that comes from acquiring a good job, attending a child’s wedding, winning a lottery, eating a good meal, or falling in love. I am not denigrating these moments of delight. They are all important and natural parts of the life of a human being, and their pursuit is worthwhile. But in the end, both happiness and unhappiness are opposite sides of the same coin, and more importantly, they are transient. However, there does exist a state that is beyond happiness and unhappiness, sorrow and delight, freedom and bondage, in other words, beyond life’s pairs of opposites. Some would even say that the achievement of this state is the ultimate purpose of a person’s life on earth.
The goal of spirituality is to attain the knowledge of the oneness or unity of all of creation. Human beings normally perceive the world from the perspective of duality. They see themselves living in bodies that are separate from the rest of the world—and indeed the universe—which can sometimes seem unfriendly or even hostile. The Indian scripture Ashtaavakr Gita succinctly sums up this situation. Ashtaavakr, the teacher, is speaking to King Janak, his disciple:
Ordinarily, all human beings with their eyes see objects, things, and persons as different, different. You are also saying the same thing: that there is a world, very real, and there is you, the person with a body, who is separate from the world. This has created a sense, a definite, particular sense, which concerns “I” as one person and “you and the world-body” as a second person. This vision is troublesome for everyone. (Swami Shyam 2001, 14–15)
Another Indian philosophical work, Yog Vashishth, puts it differently:
Your mind is meant only for seeing forms as forms—each one separate from the other; all others separate from the one; the one and the many separate from yourself; and the one, the many, and yourself as altogether separate from the very Self. (Swami Shyam 2017, 2:160)
For some, the spiritual journey involves cloistering themselves away from the world in a monastery or a nunnery. By shirking the world, they seek freedom from its vicissitudes in order to concentrate on contacting their inner being. While I believe firmly that people should choose whatever path is suitable for them, for most, this would be an extreme step. And can you really free yourself from bondage by removing yourself from the world?
Years ago, in India, I went with a friend to visit a temple. It is customary for temples in India to house, temporarily or on a long-term basis, renunciants, or sadhus. Sadhus are ascetics who have left the world—their possessions, job, family—and taken to wandering the country. They may be young men just starting out in life or older men who have already had a career, raised a family, and now have undertaken this path after fulfilling their worldly obligations. Whether young or old, the sadhu seeks freedom from the world. This tradition is still alive in India today, with an estimated four to five million practitioners.
My friend had two daughters, and at one point she was showing their photos to some of the sadhus. One of the men commented that she could not be free from the world and its trappings because she had a family. The only way to be free, he said, was to renounce all of that.
Her reply made sense to me: “Yes, but try having a family and being free from the world at the same time. That is the real practice.”
In my view, she was right. Any true renunciation of the pain and suffering of the world comes from renunciation of the division that occurs in the mind. The mind of a human being is where the essential work lies.
I am not saying that the ascetic path does not work for such men. The sadhu tradition is respected and has a long history, and I certainly wish them all success. However, whatever path we choose, it is the attachment in the mind that must be tackled.
Another friend, in his early days on the spiritual journey, decided that his possessions were an obstacle to his progress, so he should dispose of them. Living in Montreal, he went to the Jacques Cartier Bridge and threw many of his belongings into the St. Lawrence River. It didn’t take him long to realize that this had been a mistake, especially when he had to start buying replacements for the things he had dumped. This kind of renunciation did not work for him.
For me, real freedom comes from renouncing the idea that we are bound by the world, which we see as separate from ourselves. My experience is that the mind of a human being creates the world, so in order to be free from it, we each have to transform the working of our own minds. In deep sleep, no world exists; neither do the mind and its accompanying happiness and unhappiness. When we wake up in the morning, the mind reappears, along with the whole world that it has constructed.
The world is a source of both joy and suffering. We pursue material objects, and once we get them we feel happiness—but only temporarily. A cousin of mine had just landed a good position with a prestigious law firm. He was pleased with his new status—and of course, the income that came with it—and decided to buy himself a car commensurate with his new position in life. I can’t remember what kind of car it was, but he proudly told me that there were only 250 of them in all of southern Ontario. After two short weeks, a thief made off with the car. His object of joy had quickly been transformed into a source of pain.
I do not at all advocate giving up things or living a life of deprivation. The two people who introduced me to the spiritual path were a wealthy couple from South Africa who were not shy to show that they were well-off, yet they had devoted their lives to the spiritual quest. We don’t have to give anything up. We only have to add one thing—knowledge.
Here I am going to introduce another term for spirit: Knower. The Knower is that which knows the thoughts that come and go in the mind. Scientifically, in order for an object to be observed, a subject is necessary. The thoughts in the mind are the objects to be known, and the Knower is the subject that watches them. The Knower is always present. It is there when we are awake, when we dream, and when we sleep. It was even there before we were born and will remain after we die. It is the spiritual essence of one and all.
Many people are unconsciously aware that the Knower exists. I was once in the city of Kanpur in India, giving a talk on meditation to a group of young Rotary Club members visiting from Argentina. Their leader, Dick, a friendly, jovial man in his fifties, was fluent in English. As I spoke, I would pause every few sentences so that he could translate. Things were going smoothly—I understood enough Spanish to know that he was giving an accurate rendering of my words—until I got to the word Knower. He stopped me, saying that he did not understand. After I elaborated a bit, a light bulb lit up in his head. He raised his index finger and said excitedly, “Ah yes, I understand. El que sabe. The one who knows. I’ve intuitively known that there is such a thing as a Knower all of my life, but I’ve never before heard it expressed in words. I thank you.”
He had always had an unconscious awareness of the Knower, and the mention of it allowed him to recognize it.
Knowledge of the Knower is the ultimate destination of the spiritual path. The Knower can also be called the Witness Self, Watcher, Observer—whatever word best helps us understand it.
The mind gets us into the thought of separation, and the same mind can get us out of it. It has to be transformed and come to where oneness or true happiness lies.
Although the Knower is always present, it mostly remains hidden. The way to gain greater awareness of the Knower is through meditation. For me, the three most powerful words on the spiritual path are, “Close your eyes.” By doing so, we enter a state of oneness where there is no division. We see the world as our own being or creation and not as something separate.
In meditation, our vision is cut off. Vision is the predominant sense. It is estimated that 80 percent of sense perception is mediated through our sight. Shutting it off allows us to concentrate on our inner being, the Knower.
In meditation, we sit in a comfortable position, close our eyes, and watch. Thoughts may begin to come and go in the mind. Contrary to what many people think, thoughts are not a hindrance in meditation. This is a very important point. As the Knower, we simply observe the thoughts and remain aware that they are not separate from us. Our thoughts may cease, leaving a peaceful, blissful state. This is the state of the pure Knower, unadulterated and free. It is our essential nature, unfettered by any sense of division; it is the sense of oneness:
To realize the sense of Oneness, the sense of division should be given up. This will happen when one stills the mind and unfolds the sense that unifies everything that is perceived as separate. When this sense of division is transcended, it is called renunciation. (Swami Shyam 1998, 92).
The only thing to renounce is division. This comes through meditation.
I will end with a quote from the Ashtaavakr Gita that perfectly describes the ultimate state which is reached on the spiritual path:
The removal of bondage and the elimination of sorrow and suffering come to be realized and experienced only when a person reaches the nature of Oneness. (Swami Shyam 2001, 114)
Sources
Smoley, Richard. “Why Ritual Works: An Explanation Based on the Hawaiian Tradition of Huna.” Quest 108, no. 3 (summer 2020), 13–19.
Swami Shyam, trans. Ashtaawakr Gita: The Scripture of Knowledge for All Times. Kullu, India: International Meditation Institute, 1998.
Swami Shyam, trans. Ashtaavakr Gita: Simplifed Knowledge of the Self. Two volumes. Kullu, India: International Meditation Institute, 2001.
———. Yog Vashishth: The Eternal Clarity. Kullu, India: International Meditation Institute, 2017.
Glen Kezwer is a physicist who has been practicing and researching the science of meditation since the early 1980s. Following the spiritual path is the central focus of his life. He is the author of Meditation, Oneness, and Physics, and The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita, as well as many articles on science, meditation, and spirituality. He is a course author with the online teaching website Transformationmeditation.com.