Quest Magazine

By Richard Power and David Thompson

Originally printed in the JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2007 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Power, Richard; Thompson, David "Falling Awake: The Life and Message of Joe Miller." Quest  95.1 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2007):7-11,17.

The Clear Light is the source of light that lighteth everyone of humankind that cometh into the world. It is the radiance of cosmic consciousness. Yogins realize it while still in the fleshly body, and all humans glimpse it at the moment of death. It is the light of the Buddha, the Christ and all masters of life. And to the devotee in whom it shines unimpededly, it is the guru and the deliverer.

I know I am nothing, no-thing, no-thing, not me, not me. I'm just a wild-assed spark of the Infinite functioning in the Finite! My viewpoint is that you surrender yourself to your deeper spiritual self, and be that spiritual self. Be who you are. And that's what you are. You're all God. You're carrying around the generator of force within you. Use it. That's what you got it for. You just needed some silly-billy like me to come along and mention it to you.

Annie Besant was a person of great importance, as an orator, a writer, and a leader—not only in the history of the Theosophical Society, but also in the history of India and in the struggle for the rights of women and children. She was at home on the world stage.

One morning in the 1920s, at the Theosophical Society in Chicago, she met a young man waiting for an elevator. "Hi, my name is Joe Miller and this is the happiest moment of my life." Besant took the young man into the library and they talked for some time.

The next day, someone told Joe that Mrs. Besant had been looking for him, but that she had left for India. The same night, the young man had a dream about her. When he woke up, he wrote her a letter in which he included a bit of poetry that had come to him after their chance encounter:

 

Of worldly jewels and riches I have none.

My strength of will surpasses all.

Thine not mine be done.

 

Sometime later, a man who had been traveling with Mrs. Besant brought Joe a message from her. She said "as far as you are concerned, when the time comes, you will know what you are supposed to do."

Over sixty years later, the Dalai Lama came to deliver a sermon at the Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill, a block away from the San Francisco Theosophical Society (SFTS) Lodge. The cathedral was overflowing with thousands of people. Joe Miller, the same young man who had stumbled into Annie Besant at the elevator, now in his eighties, was sitting with his fifth wife, Guin, in the inner vestibule. As the Dalai Lama made his way out of the cathedral, everyone sitting in the vestibule rose and placed their hands in a prayerful mudra, out of respect for this great being who is both the spiritual leader of millions of Buddhists and the worldly leader of an ancient government in exile. Then something remarkable happened: the Dalai Lama paused as he was passing the Millers (whom he had never met or known). He stepped away from his entourage, walked up to the Millers, took their hands and silently blessed them.

The story of what happened to Joe Miller in that sixty-year stretch, between his chance encounter with Annie Besant in Chicago in the early 1920s and the impromptu reverence shown to him by the Dalai Lama in the early 1990s, is a remarkable one. What was it that Joe found to do when the time came? What was it that he used his "strength of will" to achieve? Although Joe Miller's story is a tale of morality set in twentieth-century America, its import is timeless and universal. And though the story is poignantly, indeed eccentrically personal, it is also profoundly, almost cosmically, impersonal.

Spiced up with some street-smart slang (part burlesque/part beatnik), laced with obscure and arcane Sanskrit terminology, and spiked with ribald humor and hard-nosed common sense, Joe's life and teaching illuminates the deepest teachings of the great mystical traditions, both East and West, and makes them accessible in some revolutionary ways.

The School of Hard Knocks

How did Joe discover what he was supposed to do, as Annie Besant had promised he would when the time came? How did that extraordinary fruit get to ripen to its juiciness? How did the field of his life get plowed, seeded, and watered? And what was it that the Dalai Lama bowed to in Joe and his wife?

Joe Miller was born to a dirt-poor family in Minnesota.

"We didn't get the kind of clothes or grub the other kids got. I knew it too. At Christmas time, everybody would get together, and I could see that our relatives were awful fat and we were awful lean."

Show business ran in the family. His father had been kidnapped into the circus as a young boy because of his acrobatic skills, and stayed on to become a "daring young man on the high trapeze," before settling down as a housepainter. Joe, himself, only got as far as the eighth grade in school. But as a child, he had a gift for singing. And even as a child, there was a powerful and mysterious quality in his being.

"The old man and I would be working in a joint, wall-papering the place, and he'd say, 'Joe, what the hell, give us a song.' So I would sing "Irish Eyes Are Smiling" or "A Little Bit of Heaven." Once when I was singing that way, there was a sick guy in the other room. Afterward, he told his daughter that he was going to commit suicide until he heard me singing."

The "Force," as Obi Wan might say, was "strong in him." Indeed, in later life Joe was fond of invoking the Jedi mysticism of Star Wars. He would often declare, "May the Force be with you." And some of us who were fortunate enough to spend time with him saw him as our Master Yoda.

As a young man, Joe went into vaudeville and burlesque, and worked odd jobs. He drove a Wonder Bread truck, but only briefly.

"There I was, selling Wonder Bread and working the nightclubs after dark. Now that's a hell of a combination. I'd log about a hundred and twenty miles a day and then go work four or five hours in a nightclub. One fine, snowy morning, I fell asleep at the wheel, drove the truck off the road and turned it over."

He had some mystical experiences.

 

After joining the Theosophical Society, I was visiting a friend of mine back in Minnesota, on Lake Minnetonka. We were walking along and went into some trees. I smelled sandalwood incense. There was nothing like sandalwood anywhere near there. Then I just took a gentle, in-drawn breath and was filled with ecstasy. Well, it was about two years before it happened again. I wanted it to come back so bad I cried. . . After awhile, I got so that I could do that with a gentle, in-drawn breath. But it wasn't me. It was just tuning into that Thatness, the It-ness, God, love, whatever you want to call it.

 

He also had some heartbreaking human experiences.

I had a wife and two kids. The little girl loved the fat, and the boy only ate the lean. We had great times together because I was like a little kid with them. We were living in Chicago and I was working in Detroit. I took the day off, and went back. I had been tipped off she was playing around with somebody else. (Of course, I had been doing the same thing with whole chorus lines.) When I got to the door, there was a rumbling inside. Then I went to the back door and there was a guy going down the steps . . . She met someone with a lot of money . . .The divorce papers she had made up claimed "desertion," I got her to sign a paper that said I wouldn't contest it if she changed it to "incompatibility." Then they sent me a notice that they wanted to adopt the kids, but the notice wasn't sent from Chicago until three days after I would have had to notify them, so I couldn't do anything about it. I never saw the kids again . . . I never heard anything from my first two kids.

During the 1930s and 1940s, Joe traveled around the country doing gigs in hick towns and big cities. Along the way, he pursued his fascination with the mystical and the occult, "astral real estate," he would later call it. He was particularly interested in the use of color and music in healing. Wherever he went, he would look up mystics, occultists, charlatans, quacks, and true-blue experimenters, getting glimpses of inventions like the "Clauvilux" and the "Luxatone," i.e., "color organs" that could allegedly alter a person's psychic or physical condition. (Many years later, buried away in his steamer trunk, stuffed behind bookcases, and shoved underneath his and Guin's bed we would find the evidence of his explorations: prisms of all shapes and sizes, rose-tinted sunglasses, colored light bulbs and little booklets from obscure groups claiming to explain the hidden mysteries of healing with color and sound.)

Meanwhile, Joe continued to struggle in show business and in life:

"I was in LA. I had applied for a job, and I went out to see my aunt and uncle, thinking I could horn in on a Christmas dinner. But they said, 'Well, Joe, we're glad to see you, but we are going out to Christmas dinner with friends.' I didn't have a nickel. I did have a boarding room. When I got back downtown, I looked through all of my clothes and I found fifteen cents. At that time, you could get a box of soda crackers for a nickel and buy a dime's worth of cheese." He cried himself to sleep that night.

It took Joe several broken marriages, several decades of show business and odd jobs, and much inner searching before he found out what Annie Besant had been talking about and became the person that the Dalai Lama picked out of the big crowd. 

Cooking on the Big Burner

In the 1950s, and in the fifth decade of his own life, Joe found his bearing and set his course. It was then, as Joe would say, he "started cookin' on the big burner."

"Everything I have in this life," he told us years later, "I owe to the Theosophical Society." It was not rhetorical boast; it was a profound truth of sweeping personal and impersonal dimensions. Joe had been a member of the Theosophical Society since his early twenties, but it was only thirty years later, in the San Francisco Lodge (SFTS) that Joe found a home. He met his fifth and final wife at the Lodge. Guinevere Robinson Miller was a concert pianist, an accomplished astrologer, a graduate of University of California at Berkeley, and a dedicated member of the Theosophical Society.

Joe and Guin shared what they called "falling awake" (i.e., enlightenment) as a common goal. Working together, they said, two people could grow faster, evolving "geometrically" rather than "arithmetically." They were in many ways (family backgrounds, temperaments, education, etc.) polar opposites, but they complimented and amplified each other and, in turn, balanced one another. Together they became a force to be reckoned with.

Joe met another important person in his life at the SFTS, Agnes Kast. She was the Lodge librarian and had a knack for fitting the book to the person.

"If you came in and asked Agnes Kast for a book from the library, she wouldn't ask you what author or title you wanted, she would just walk over to one of the bookcases and get a book out and hand it to you. The happy part of it was that nine times out of ten she was right and handed you a book that would fit with what you were looking for."

Agnes introduced Joe to the work of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It was the first in a series of four compilations of Tibetan Buddhist teachings edited and annotated by Dr. W.Y. Evans-Wentz, who like Joe, had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. Evans-Wentz worked his way across the country, talked his way into Stanford and then into Oxford, traveled to Egypt, India, and Tibet and did some of the most important scholarly work of the century in terms of bridging Eastern and Western philosophy. And yes, of course, he too was a theosophist.

After reading his books, Joe wrote a letter to Evans-Wentz. Miraculously, like Joe's letter to Besant many years before, his letter to Evans-Wentz followed its recipient around the world, somehow fell into his hands, and got answered—from San Diego, only a few hundred miles away from Joe's own home in San Francisco. The correspondence was the spark of a unique and precious friendship, and led Joe on to deeper spiritual realizations.

I was working in a barbershop quartet—making people laugh, making people cry and hoping that on the overtone there would be some help going out to them, so that they'd come a little loose . . . I got a ticket [to see Evans-Wentz in San Diego]. I had to leave after the late show. I only had one day a week off. I looked at this guy. After all, I was talking to someone high on the hog. I didn't know how I would be received. Me, with my eighth grade education...He asked me which of his books I liked best, I told him Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrine. He asked me which part of it I liked best. I said I like 'Clear Light' and the 'Six Rules of Tilopa.' He said there was a book coming out that would be the answer for what I wanted to know. That's all he put out. Does he tell me the name of the book? No.

It turned out to be Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation. Joe read it to himself every morning for six months until he thought he was going to lose his mind. Suddenly, he had a breakthrough—not in his thinking, but in his being.

I was working in a burlesque house. If I did a midnight show, I wouldn't get home until three o'clock in the morning. I would go up on the roof until sunrise. And as the sun rose, all my little friends, the birds, would be singly madly, throwing themselves into it and singing. That's one of the reasons I can't eat birds, chicken, or turkey. Because they told me something, those birds were saying that each day in life we go into deep sleep and come out of it in the morning, just as the planets move around, and catch the rays from that source from which we receive our greatest energy, the sun. They felt it. They were singing the sun up. They weren't only singing that, they were singing because in their hearts they were a conscious part of it in their own way, in their form of consciousness. They'll find out how tough it is when they come into these human physical bodies later on.

Some poetry and messages came to Joe up on the roof, just as the words "of worldly jewels . . ." had previously come to him in his dream about Annie Besant back in his early twenties. This time, he heard, "The manifested universe is the keyboard upon which the master artist of spiritual reality plays the symphonic arrangement of life."

The occasional ecstasy that Joe had experienced through a "gentle, in-drawn breath" had expanded into a realization of the oneness of all life, and Joe's quest to unlock the mysterious powers of sound and light had been turned into a reverent understanding of how those mysterious powers were already unlocked and at work within everyone and everything at every moment of every day.

Joe had begun to "fall awake," and Guin was right there with him. She had sharpened her understanding with the Diamond Sutra, just as he honed his with the Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation. They began to set words from the great mystical traditions to music (e.g., the Upanishads, the New Testament, the Psalms of David, and the Sutra of Hui-Neng). They call them "Songs to Live By" and performed them at the SFTS Lodge. Joe would belt them out and Guin would accompany him on the piano. Later, Chogyam Trungpa, an important Tibetan Rinpoche whom the Millers befriended when he first came to the United States in the 1960s, would call these songs "the first American mantras."

One of the teachings that they set to music was the "Six Rules of Tilopa," the one Joe considered his favorite from Evans-Wentz's book, Tibetan Yoga and the Secret Doctrine: "Imagine not, think not, meditate not, reflect not, keep in the natural state." (130)

By this time, Evans-Wentz was older, in ill health, and living in a hotel he owned called the Keystone, but Joe and Guin wanted to share their new consciousness with him.

"We called up the hotel. We got through to his room. The nurse put him on the phone. I said, 'This is Joe Miller.' He said, 'Are you downstairs?' I said 'No, I'm in San Francisco. My wife, Guin, has written some music and I would like to have you hear it.' So she played it, and I sang it into the phone. His voice had been very feeble, but after listening to the song, he shouted 'YOU'RE THERE NOW, STAY THERE!' That was my OK from him that I had dug what it was all about." Ken Winkler, who wrote Pilgrim of Clear Light, a wonderful biography of Evans-Wentz, wrote that Evans-Wentz considered Joe Miller the only person he had met in the West who understood the doctrine of the Clear Light.

My wife and I Just Take a Walk in the Park Every Thursday

After cooking on the big burner for a while, Joe and Guin Miller were discovered by a young generation of seekers during the tumultuous decades of the 1960s and 1970s, and served as friends and inspiration for a growing number of young people until their deaths in 1992. They were an open secret. Word of them spread throughout the world. They influenced countless people in immeasurable ways, but they started no organization, they did no marketing, they offered no titles or degrees. They didn't charge money for their time or their teachings; they didn't hide behind the pretense of being special in any way. They simply shared themselves and their love for life and for truth.

Here is David Thompson's first person account of his twenty-five year friendship with Joe Miller. It offers some of the ineffable flavor of this phenomenon, a flavor that had to be "caught," because it could not be "taught":

I first met Joe Miller on one of his Thursday "walks" in Golden Gate Park. He was standing at the entryway to the park's arboretum, greeting people, hugging them, and talking with whoever was close at hand. I watched but did not go up to him, being a bit standoffish and more than a bit taken back by all the people seemingly clamoring to get near him. He spotted me, came up, stuck out his hand and said: "Hi, I'm Joe. What's your name?" We talked a bit. I told him I had seen him earlier at a Sufi dance and was interested in finding out a bit more about him and what he was up to. He said: "I'm up to nothing! My wife and I just take a walk in the park every Thursday and a bunch of kids show up to walk along with us. We celebrate various religious expressions and I give a 'rap,' which is nothing more than what's going thru my head and heart at the time."

 

He continued: "If you stick around till the end of the walk, I'll buy you and everyone else an ice-cream, thanks to Uncle Sam. See, I'm on Social Security and that's how I get the money to buy the ice-cream. I don't take any contributions and I don't advertise anything. Just walk and talk. One more thing, and remember this. If things get too crazy around here, you can always leave." He gave me a hug and was off to the next person.

 

I walked with him for a while and joined in a large group of people doing "Sufi dances." We held hands, went one way then the other, sang a song, bowed to one another, walked forward, and then outward. It was kind of like a square dance, but with a spiritual bent. After a few dances, Joe got into the middle of the circle and talked to us. Quite frankly I don't remember much about what he said except for this. He said: "I don't care if you remember one thing I say, but if you remember the feeling, then you got something to take with you —because, to feel is for real!" Then he said: "Enough of this serious stuff. Let's go feed the ducks." And we were off to the duck pond where he handed out Wonder Bread for us to break into pieces and feed to the ducks that eagerly awaited our offerings.

 

We continued the walk, taking a short break to sit beneath an enormous cypress tree where together we chanted a Buddhist mantra: "Gate, gate, para gate, para sum gate bodi swaja."

 

We finally arrived at the Pacific Ocean, and sure enough, there was Joe with a bag of ice-cream sandwiches, giving them to one and all, including the many little children who clamored about waiting for their ice-cream as if they were going to receive the keys to the universe. He gave another short talk where he summed up the experience of the walk and the essence of his "teaching." He said: "Remember one thing about all this spiritual stuff—it can't be bought, it's got to be caught."

 

Years later these words still ring clear. I found out in an instant that I could "catch it," if only I lived long enough and was lucky. But that's another story. I hung around Joe and his wife, Guin for the next twenty-five years.

 

Joe introduced me to books, music, meditation, people, prayer, thoughts, ideas and wonder. He also introduced me to the Theosophical Society in San Francisco where I attended many meetings—the Wednesday "Study Group", the Thursday "Music Hour," the Friday "Member's Meeting" (which was open to anyone who cared to visit), and the Sunday "Guest Lecturer's Meeting." During Lent, I attended the morning readings held at 6:30 a.m. when Joe read the Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, and returned at 6:30 p.m. when Guin read the Diamond Sutra.

The Theosophical Society was Joe's window to the world. Over and over he would say: "All I have in this world I owe to the Theosophical Society." He meant it, and he lived it.

Once he said to me: "Stay still for a while. Don't go gallivanting around the world looking for some magic potion to hit you. Just stay put and watch. You will be amazed at what happens."

That's what he did. He sat in his apartment upstairs from the Theosophical Society and watched television, read books, and waited for the doorbell or telephone to ring— and ring it did. One day Ram Dass or Ken Wilber would visit, and another day some crazy kid who had taken too much LSD and thought he was the new avatar of the world. Joe listened and talked to them all. Sometimes he gave out very specific advice and other times he just said: "You have to do it for you!" Sometimes he was soft and other times he was stern. Sometimes he let one stick around his apartment all day and other times he would say: "Now get the hell out of here and go do something." The Sufis tried to make him a "Sheik," but he told them that "Sheik" was sometimes just another word for "Jerk." The Buddhists tried to make him an Abbot, but he told them that he really wasn't into titles, and besides, he already had a name: "Joe."

During the 1980s most of us were pretty fed up with the political situation in the United States, especially its leadership. But Joe would have none of our "bellyaching." He loved this country like he loved everyone who came into his presence. He refused to talk politics but insisted every Fourth of July that we stand and sing "God Bless America." It was amazing to see and hear dozens of disgruntled people standing and singing, while one voice—a very high pitched tenor—rose above all others: "...Land that I love. Stand beside her and guide her through the night with a light from above."

I loved Joe, and over the years grew closer and closer to him. He allowed me into his world and his heart. His heart was huge and in it there was room for everyone. He would often say: "You don't have to like everyone, but you do have to love everyone." He meant it and he lived it.

And he got old. In his late eighties he had a couple of strokes. He recovered from each one, but as time went on he came to realize that his time was approaching. He didn't want to die; he loved to live and intended to live to be at least one hundred. But after a short stay in the hospital, he came home and began his preparation for death. One day he got into his bed and said: "I'm going to give it a try." He died about two weeks later. But during the ensuing two weeks, his "kids" attended to him. And by his "kids," I mean those of us who were closest to him. We weren't the famous or the most literate. We were the sign painter, the cabbie, the nurse, the schoolteacher, the student, the dancer, the unemployed, and the unemployable. We sat with him, first giving him a little water and as time went on, just being there, sitting, watching, and waiting. I was one of those who sat, watched, and waited. A day before Joe died, I was sitting with him reading from the discourses of one of his favorite teachers, Ramana Maharshi. Again and again, Joe would ask us the famous question of the guru, "Who am I?" I never really understood the significance of the question, but dwelt on it many times over the years. As I sat and pondered this question, I recollected reading about the death of Ramana Maharshi. His disciples were gathered about him and one by one he said to them: "Thank you." Then he died.

When I finished the discourse, I looked at Joe who was lying in his bed looking straight above. He slowly turned and looked into my eyes and said, "Thank you."

References

Power, Richard. Great Song: Life and Teachings of Joe Miller. Athens, GA: Maypop, 1993

Winkler, Ken. Pilgrim of Clear Light: Biography of W.Y. Evans-Wentz. Berkeley, CA: Dawnfire, 1982

Evans-Wentz, W.Y. Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954

Evans-Wentz, W.Y. Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954

Price, A.F. and Wong Mou-Lam. The Diamond Sutra and the Sutra of Hui-Neng. Boston: Shambhala, 1969

by Betty Bland

Originally printed in the JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2008 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bland, Betty. "Is a Puzzlement." Quest  96.1 (JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2008): 4-5.

I like puzzles: Sudoku, word jumbles, crosswords (if not too obscure), and picture puzzles. For some reason I particularly enjoy the multicolored patterns of different shapes and sizes in picture puzzles. Pictures with irregular edges or homogenous colors are particularly challenging, but provide great satisfaction as the pieces fit neatly together and progress has been made. The puzzle comes together painstakingly at first, slowly, ever so gradually. But as the pieces come together, the patterns emerge and the pile of missing pieces dwindles, the pace picks up. Finds become easier and easier until the last piece is in place.

The puzzle boxes usually proclaim something like: "750 pieces, all different." Think what confusion would ensue if there were several exactly the same shape. The more pieces exactly alike, the less satisfying the working of the puzzle would become. Each piece has a unique place in the picture, filling the exact grooves and matching with its neighbors. A single piece can be the key to finding other pieces, however, if one piece is missing, the puzzle cannot be completed and is usually discarded as useless.

Each one of us can be likened to a piece in the puzzle of life. We are each unique in shape, size, pattern, and fit. When we are jumbled out in the world, trying to make ourselves fit in where we are ill at ease, there does not seem to be any reasonable pattern to our discordant life. But, one day some bit of magic occurs and we find a neighboring piece—a kindred spirit who, through friendship, can play a part in the process of our spiritual growth. This usually results in several connections so that a cluster may be found.

Now it is true that sometimes, what seems like a good fit really is not, and so the trial and error may continue. But at some point we know we have found the peace of connecting into our spiritual home. Once in a while we may be jarred loose for some reason or other, but in the long run, we know where we belong. Contact with another person (maybe even through the written word) is usually the catalyst that draws us, as social animals, to find our place in relation to others. The saying that no one is an island speaks a truth about humanity. Although essential to the whole, one may feel like an isolated piece on the edge of an irregular shape and out of sorts until the pattern falls into place.

Of course, the analogy goes only so far. Life is fluid and multidimensional. We are constantly changing, as are those around us, but our uniqueness is valuable to the whole. The cluster of our particular patterning —religious, cultural, professional, or personal—is essential for completing the rich fullness of human expression. We are important and our relationships to others are important.

To carry this metaphor a bit further, I will share a story from my childhood. An elderly neighbor had given my mother a little figurine of a child standing beside a baby carriage in a prayerful position. Being a little girl of maybe seven or eight who was particularly fond of dolls and baby carriages, I was always attracted to this little figure, but knew that I was not supposed to touch this fragile treasure. Well, I not only liked dolls, but also tended to get into my share of trouble. So the inevitable happened. I touched; it broke. I felt so bad about it that I gathered together every one of the twenty or so fragments, determined that I would fix it. For the better part of an afternoon, armed with Duco Cement, a newspaper surface, and diligent patience, I stayed out of any additional trouble by painstakingly reconstructing the figure.

Over the years that was one of Mother's most prized possessions. As it was always positioned in a place of honor, I was gratified to know that I had saved such a valuable piece. It was only years later that I learned it was not of monetary value after all, but that the latticework of yellowed lines of glue that crisscrossed the entire piece represented to my mother a loving daughter who had invested many a penitent hour in order to preserve something deemed important. The traces of glue gave it value beyond words.

The glue that binds us together as fellow travelers in our spiritual journey is the precious gold of the alchemists. Different though we may be, we become more precious as we join together in harmony, bound by mutual respect and love. Step by step, piece by piece, we find our unique place by connecting with and serving others. Madam Blavatsky, in Collected Writings vol. VI, said of the Masters that: "The highest interest of humanity, as a whole, is their special concern, for they have identified themselves with that Universal Soul which runs through Humanity, and he, who would draw their attention, must do so through that Soul which pervades everywhere" (240). She states that our purposes are intricately bound with helping and healing humanity in its deepest heart. If we want to be in tune with the highest purposes for which the Society was founded, then we need to recognize our soul-connections with our brothers and sisters.

If this is true, why do we, who are committed to the spiritual path, often presume an overblown importance of our particular identity that translates to "My way or the highway?" Do we not know that the path requires a healthy dose of loving kindness every step of the way? How can we even imagine that the path is trod by seeking glamour for the self, intellectual pride, or indifference to the plight of others? As the King said to Anna in The King and I, "Is a puzzlement."

Our thoughts and actions this day can be the glue that begins to put a shattered figure like Humpty Dumpty back together again, through active involvement in appreciating and resolving differences among our brothers and sisters.

Radha Burnier

Originally printed in the JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2008 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Burnier, Radha. "The Middle Way." Quest  96.1 (JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2008): 7-11.

To be speaking about the Middle Way seems to be an appropriate way of honoring the founders, both of whom took the Buddhist vows, the Panchashilas, and openly declared themselves to be Buddhists. They were not Buddhists in the conventional sense of the term, but rather, according to the way that A. P. Sinnett made use of that word in his book Esoteric Budism spelled with a single "d" Budhisim or Budhi, signifying higher intelligence. 

The term "middle way" is very much associated with Buddhism and the Buddhist teachings. It was a term which came into currency with the great holy teacher and philosopher Nagarjuna who lived in the second century and who expounded this concept of "the middle way." But the concept itself, not the term, existed much earlier. For example, in the Upanishads there is mention of the "razor-edged path," a path on which you had to go straight ahead carefully and not stray here and there. Perhaps the phrase "straight is the gate and narrow the way" expresses the possibility of finding similar ideas in the different religions of the world. The razor-edged path suggests that there are dangers; the danger of falling off or falling down on one side or another. It is like what the circus people do when walking on a wire. One has to remain in perfect balance to go along that path. 

It is the same idea that was presented by Thomas Kempis who said that it is necessary to let go of all aims except the one aim of journeying towards the light of wisdom, the Eternal. All of us who are familiar with At the Feet of the Master know that the chapter entitled "Love" had its origin in a teaching which spoke about the earnest aspiration to liberation. The Sanskrit term [mumukshutva] which was translated as "the desire for liberation" speaks about it as a single-mindedness, a letting go of all aims but the one aim of finding "the true—the eternal." 

Hearing the term "the razor-edged path," one might think it is the most dangerous, but it is the safest of all paths because it is where a complete equilibrium is preserved and therefore there is complete security. It is a path where there is a profound peace, a path where there is absolute harmony. If you stray from that path, get lost in the surroundings, and find other paths, there maybe conflict, there may be hesitation, but when you tread the middle path, it is secure, because it is one-pointed and in it, harmony can be found from the beginning to the end. 

In the Mahatma letters it states that, "we recognize but one law in the universe; the law of harmony, of perfect equilibrium." In the Bhagahavad Gita, there are several definitions of yoga and one of the very well-known definitions is that yoga is equilibrium. Yoga is the unbreakable peace which human beings can come to if they tread the right path. Yoga is a sublime sense of harmony. In fact, the universe itself is in that state of harmony. In the dialogues J. Krishnamurti had with David Baum, he makes a rather startling statement that the universe is in a state of meditation. That means a state in which there is total harmony, peace, and bliss. Otherwise meditation is not possible. There is balance all over the universe. 

Sir Martin Rees, the eminent scientist who is the British Astronomer Royal, states in his book Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe, that there is this kind of equilibrium or balance in the cosmos itself. According to him, these six numbers, which are either very, very small or very large, represent various forces in the universe, but all those forces exist in a state of equilibrium. It is very similar to the Eastern idea that there are three gunas or three kinds of forces working throughout manifestation. When they are in a state of equilibrium, it is called spiritual sattva or truth. Sir Martin Rees mentions that through the ages, the force of gravity has been in a state of fine balance with the force of expansion. If the force of gravity were too great, the universe would collapse into nothing. If the force of expansion were too great, the universe would expand away into nothingness. 

But neither of these has occurred. The universe remains preserved in that state of very fine equilibrium. In the Indian tradition, it is said that the second aspect of the logos is called Vishnu. He is the preserver, that is, the principal which maintains the balance in the universe. When there is that kind of balance, there is a unity of all opposites. If there were not such a unity, there could not be that equilibrium, so when that balance is disturbed a little, duality arises and then continues on the path of diversity. 

It is difficult for us to be aware of that kind of balance and of the existence of an unbreakable unity in this diverse world. Only when we come to realize that diversity is not different from unity, can we really experience something of the eminence of God—the presence of the one reality everywhere. I believe that we should stop thinking of unity and diversity and begin to think of unity as diversity and diversity as unity. They are the same as many examples will show. A flower, any flower, is made up of different things, but it is a unity. The thousand petaled lotus is a symbol of the fact that there can be any number of different things, but from the point of view of reality, they all form part of that one blossom. 

In Buddhist tradition, they also speak about the universe appearing like a vast lotus flower. The word "thousand" does not literally mean thousand, it only means innumerable or uncountable. Buddhists also say that at the tip of every one of those petals of the lotus a Buddha is seated. This symbolizes that from all those different directions a person can come to a state of enlightenment and perfection. In nature, we find that almost everywhere there is growth, there is balance. It is not only the forces of the universe that are balanced, but everything grows in a balanced way. HPB mentions in one of her writings that a baby who begins as a tiny little embryo does not grow one leg first, then the nose, and then another part. The baby grows in an all-round way and in perfect shape. 

The other extraordinary thing is that all things know when growth should end. A coconut tree is a beautiful example. It grows up into the air perhaps seventy or eighty feet, and it retains its balance. It knows when it should stop growing in order not to topple down. In many of the phenomena of nature there is this wholeness—the harmonious blending of all parts, but we are unable to see the significance of it because our minds are in a state of duality.

Our minds are divided into different sections and the Gita speaks about a consciousness which arises entirely above all duality and diversity. That is the Middle Way. We cannot think of light without darkness or darkness without light. When we use the word pleasure, implicit in it is the absence of pain and vice-versa. Everything seems either good or bad, but all of that is part of the world of unreality, or Maya, the world of illusion. Things are not good or bad. All things are what they are. They are not pleasurable or painful. They are what they are. Our mind interprets what we experience as either pleasure or pain, as likeable or unlikable, as attractive or not attractive—so it is within our being at present, our mental being, that we have created duality and division. Therefore, we bring about imbalance in ourselves and in all our surroundings. Since the universe is in a state of meditation that is of profound harmony, and the law of harmony is the most important of all the laws and includes all the laws, the universe brings about a restoration of the harmony wherever it is broken—that is the Law of Karma. 

HPB explained that the Law of Karma is not a punishment. The Law of Karma is a beneficent power which brings or restores harmony all the time, for example, whenever human beings create problems because they see everything in terms of duality and division. Therefore, a pathway which restores and maintains harmony from beginning to end is the best pathway and that is the Middle Way. Long before Nagarjuna, the Buddha gave his first sermon near the city of Varanasi in which he said that all excess should be avoided by the person who wishes to tread the spiritual path. In his day and even today, there are people who practice extreme austerity; standing for years with one arm lifted till it withers away or lying on bed of needles. The Buddha said that kind of extreme austerity serves no purpose. On the other hand, if there is indulgence in pleasure—becoming addicted to pleasure--this also needs to be avoided. There must be no attachment to pleasure nor a repulsion to what appears as pain. If karma brings about what is painful to us, perhaps it is more important to think about how imbalance has been created rather than resist the karma. In The Voice of the Silence there is the statement "chafe not at karma." Can we accept karma with a calm, observant mind and look intelligently into what underlies that karma? 

The Lord Buddha spoke about non-indulgence and avoiding austerity. While the body has to be preserved and looked after, if we give too much attention to it, it becomes a kind of self preoccupation. If we give too much attention to all the things around us, it becomes materialism. Although the body has to be looked after, we must not overdo it, because dwelling inside the body, there is that which unfolds its powers through the body. He spoke about this and if tradition is to be believed, also spoke many a time about an inner balance of our psychological being. I do not like to use the word "mind" which seems to separate desire from thought. The Sanskrit word manas, on the other hand, indicates that complex of desire and thinking which is what we really work with. 

There is a story about a person, named Sona, who was born in a rich family but after hearing the Buddha, he took orders and became very absorbed in practicing all the disciplines. His zeal was so great that he walked up and down the pathway near his house till his feet became lacerated and the path looked like a butcher's shambles. The Buddha, somewhere far away, could see all this and he realized that Sona was very sincere, but that he was overdoing all this. Sona was very devoted, but he did not know how to maintain balance, so the Buddha decided he would visit Sona at his residence. Meanwhile, Sona began to think, "I am working so hard at following what the teachings have said, but I seem to be getting nowhere and not making progress. What if I go back home where much wealth awaits me? I can use that wealth to help other people instead of making, what seems to be, a fruitless effort here."  When the Buddha saw him, he said "Sona are you not thinking like this? Thinking of going back to your worldly life?" Sona replied, "Yes, I have been thinking like that because I have no success with my practice." And the Buddha said, "Before you became a monk, you were a good musician. You played well on a particular stringed instrument and when the strings were taut could you play well?" Sona answered, "No, of course not." "When the strings were too loose could you play well?" "No, I could not." The Buddha taught him saying: "Spiritual practice is like this; if you are too eager to gain your objective, to reach a certain place, it is like making the strings too tight and then you will not succeed." 

It is very interesting to find something similar in the Mahatma letters. The Master says: "Remember, too anxious expectation is not only tedious, but dangerous. Each warmer and quicker throb of the heart bears so much of life away. The passions, the affections are not to be indulged in by him who seeks to know." We can think here of our ordinary experience. If you are too anxious to find happiness, you will never find happiness. The anxiety is a form of unhappiness, so you are actually moving the wrong way. If you exert yourself a great deal to discover peace, peace will never come to you, because the exertion is a disturbance. If you are too eager to understand yourself, you may become a self preoccupied egoist. Too much eagerness or too much anxiety is not desirable. That is why it was said: Do not be anxious to become the pupil of a spiritual teacher. You do good work, purify your love, lead a holy life, and whatever you merit, will come to you. 

This is an important part of the Theosophical understanding of the Path. Merit alone— worthiness—is what brings reward, without your asking for the reward. Perhaps, not even thinking of what the reward might be. Do the work and everything which is according to the law will happen. One should not be eager for progress or enlightenment, but wait for the right time and make yourself worthy. The Middle Path implies all that.

Becoming unbalanced because of too much eagerness or becoming too slack will leave us stagnating. Therefore, idleness and sluggishness are not desirable. At the same time, superficially desiring to tread the path, as well as the anxiety--the eagerness, the constant wishing to reach somewhere by not being indifferent--becomes a new form of ambition. Such are the dangers which might occur when treading the path. What is the Middle Path between those? The Mahatma goes on to say that the person on the Path must not even desire too earnestly or too passionately the object he would reach, else the very wish will retard or even prevent the possibility of its fulfillment. 

Nagarjuna's teaching was, at that time, something very new because he spoke about this way of proceeding which is a way of tranquility, of taking things as they come. He said that if you look at something or listen to something, do not immediately reject or accept it. Neither rejection nor acceptance is desirable. Can you simply observe? We can see that there are various states of mind that go contrary to this teaching. A mind which does not accept or reject is a still mind. It is looking, it is reflecting, trying to go deeper into things, while not arriving at conclusions. This is something that Krishnamurti referred to or spoke of—not to come to conclusions. Do not say that so-and-so has done this or is doing the wrong thing. Perhaps it appears wrong to you, but wait and observe. Sympathetically observe by observing and listening without conclusions, without judgments, and always remaining calm. 

In the Mahatma letters it is taught that it is the calm and unruffled mind which goes through life without wanting anything, without deciding anything—except in a pragmatic situation, but we are not talking about that—but by remaining with things, allowing things to be what they are; not trying to model them, and change them to suit our own likes and dislikes. There must be emptiness within. Even if we try it for a short time, we will find that much of the stuff in the mind, manas, is simply dropped and the mind becomes less encumbered, free, inwardly receptive to everything—to the truth. Compare this to what happens to a seed which you plant in the soil. If every now and again you dig it up to see if the seed is growing, it will never grow. Similarly, if you see the truth in some words which are spoken or written, do not try to follow it up with your small mind. Receive it quietly, give attention to it. Try to be more awake because if you are trying to work with it too much, to immediately put it into practice according to your own ideas, that truth may disappear. Allow that truth to remain deep in your heart just as you would allow the seed to remain in the soil, to grow by itself. All that we can do is to provide the right conditions for the seed to grow. Similarly, truth will reflect itself in a quiet mind, in an empty and pure mind, and when it does, we can let it be and not be ambitious to go further to learn more. 

When the mind is inwardly free, the greatest problem, which is the problem of egoism, solves itself. In fact, this whole thing is paradoxical, because the ego is the great illusion maker. It is, itself, an illusion, and if we try too hard to wipe away that ego, it only increases. It struggles harder and it may overcome us. What is important is to observe rather that fight the ego and all its actions in order to understand what harm it does. 

Nagarjuna's advice was that there must be that state of quiet attention and receptivity to truths which we have not known. When the mind is quiet, we begin to perceive more and more of what is hidden within everything in Nature. As we said, in all the diverse things of the Earth, there is a unity of the one reality which we are not able to see, but if the mind can be quiet, then we will begin to see what we cannot observe today. 

I think the Middle Way—that freedom from drawing conclusions—is really the way of the Theosophist. All belief is a conclusion, especially religious belief. We do not know anything about the higher truths as we are still only at the beginning of the way. Belief is the most pernicious form of coming to conclusions and in the Theosophical Society, belief is not encouraged. Taking Buddhist vows or doing something external may have their place, but listening, study, meditation, reflection—those should become part of our way of life; then we would be truly treading the Middle Path.

by Patrician Edwards

Originally printed in the JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2008 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Edwards, Patrician. " Thinking Aloud: Are We Soup or Salad?." Quest  96.1 (JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2008): 28-29.

What is the nature of our unity, our diversity? E Pluribus Unum, from many one. That is a concept woven into the very nature of the American identity. But what does it mean? How does that affect us in our every day encounters with each other? What does it mean as we contemplate our basic nature? Who am I? What am I? And how does who I am relate to who I am with you? And to probe even deeper, how does the question of unity and diversity address my connection with the guide of my understanding? There are so many questions, so very many questions.

For many on the path toward enlightenment, it is obvious that we are not alone or separate. There is a power greater than our individual being that has revealed itself using many different names: Buddha, Jesus, Allah, Shiva, Great Spirit, Zero Point Energy Field, The Force, thus reflecting the cultural diversity of world. We, of the twenty-first century, are very fortunate because we have access to the wisdom of these cultures.

Two thousand years ago, Aristotle said, "A democratic state is limited only by the range of an orator's voice." Until recently what was said of a democratic state was also true of the opportunity to learn. The spread of knowledge was limited by the sound of the teacher's voice. This began to change several centuries ago with the invention of the printing press. Wisdom was able to be transported beyond the sound of the wise person's voice. Through books, we here in the United States, have been able to read about and become familiar with the ancient and contemporary teachings of China, India, and other distant and exotic places in the world.

With the advent of telephone, radio, and television, our ability to access the teaching and wisdom from far-flung places has increased immeasurably; however, with the widespread use of the Internet during the last few decades, the knowledge available to us is phenomenal! Therefore, we are no longer limited by what our parents, our teachers, and our preachers had available to teach us. We are truly blessed and live in an enlightened age. How lucky we are! But knowing more also creates more questions.

One of the most vital questions is: What is the nature of our relationship with the ultimate being in the universe? Many people have had personal experiences with the Source of All Being. In this age of relatively easy publication either in print or on the Internet, many of these people have shared their ideas, impressions, and conclusions. However, these ideas do not always agree with each other. Several have come away from their encounter with contradictory ideas and impressions about our nature, the nature of the Supreme Being, our relationships with each other and with the Supreme Being. That is not surprising because when one tries to understand infinity with a finite mind, there is bound to be some confusion.

There are some general conclusions that I feel are safe to draw. Contact with this Higher Power, under all guises and names, usually leads to the conclusion that we are not only intimately connected to "It"; we are also connected to each other. Our ego-self is diminished and our higher-self becomes dominant.

As we are a part of the whole, do we also maintain our individual, unique, separate identity? This question fills me with a sense of awe, because when I first turned my will and my life over to the care of a Higher Power (as I understand it) I discovered a pure and uncluttered sense of self. I also knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that as I gave up my stubborn insistence of trying to run my life, I, became more in charge of my life. I invite anyone to explore this topic more deeply.

This experience has led me to ask the question: Are we soup or salad? I devised this analogy to explore the relationship we human beings have with ourselves, with each other and the rest of creation, and with the First Cause, the Creator.

Let us consider the following: Creamed soup combines several distinct ingredients and blends them together. The tomatoes are no longer recognizable as just tomatoes. The celery and onions do not maintain their separate shape or unique flavor. The elements of each ingredient are present, yet transformed. The flavor is tomato-celery-onion, which is entirely different from tomato, celery, and onion. All the flavors are blended. Every bite is the same, a mix of each and every ingredient. Is our diversity in unity like soup? Does our diversity ultimately blend us so completely with the Absolute that our Self becomes blended into the whole? At our essence, are we essentially an indistinguishable bite of the Absolute?

The second alternative is salad. Again, several ingredients are combined to make a single dish. However, in a salad each ingredient maintains its unique character. Together, the tomatoes, celery, and onions make up the whole dish yet their individual flavors remain identifiable. How does the model of the salad explain the nature of our unity in diversity? As we unite with the Absolute do we maintain our unique identity as Bill and Mary and Sue?

That is a profound question; one whose answer will give us a clue as to whom and what we are at our very core. What is the nature of our soul? It is a profound question; it is an interesting question, but at the level of practical living, it is an unimportant question.

Our job as human beings is to love! Love ourselves, love each other including the apparently unlovable, and to love our Creator. Our job is to be grateful, to appreciate, and enjoy the many blessings we have received. However, we have been endowed with a curious mind that takes pleasure in philosophical pursuits. So, it is not surprising that we wonder about our ultimate nature and purpose of our existence. It is human nature, the source of great enjoyment, and also a great blessing.

Therefore, I take great pleasure in presenting you a third alternative. We are sort of soup and sort of salad, much like vegetable soup. In vegetable soup, each ingredient contributes some flavor to the broth. At the same time, each ingredient maintains its own identity and unique contribution, but, and this is important, it is softened in the cooking process.

We, like vegetable soup, are cooked by life and the experiences we encounter. The fact that life cooks us is experientially apparent, obvious to every one. As Shakespeare said, we are all faced with the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." We know that life has an ability to cook and soften us. We also know that the process, no matter how painful, moves us toward a greater connection with ourselves and with our Higher Power.

As we cook and as we soften, we yield our incredible, unique contribution to the broth of the Absolute. God would be lonely without us. I guess that means I believe that even as we are cooking and blending we maintain our divinely created uniqueness.

I have offered three different possible analogies rather than a definitive solution. That is because I am on the path, not yet at the place of Absolute Knowing. What do you think? Are we soup or salad or vegetable soup?