Quest Magazine

Printed in the  Summer 2018  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Mether, Thomas, "Meditation and Logic" Quest 106:3, pg 33-38

By Thomas Mether

Some people assume that meditative practice is meant to transcend the logical mind. This is a misunderstanding. In fact cultivating the powers of logic and reasoning is necessary for developing meditative practice. This truth can be found in a number of esoteric traditions.

Many of these traditions distinguish between two powers of mind. On the one hand is discursive reason, which reflects on what consciousness has revealed to it—what we ordinarily think of as thinking or reasoning. In various traditions this power is called manas, ratio, or dianoia. On the other hand is the power of consciousness itself, which sees directly. In various traditions this power to see directly is buddhi, intellectus, or nous. This power of consciousness to directly see sometimes apprehends an aspect of the Logos, or intelligible meaning structure or archetype of reality. This aspect of the Logos is a noetic idea. The experience of seeing it is a kind of epiphany when a noetic idea is directly apprehended by the consciousness (see Simon, Maritain, and Spruit). The first is a matter of thinking about an experience (say, of an image in the mind); the second is actually experiencing directly, without the mediation of thought. These are ideas in the true, philosophical sense; they are not to be confused with ideas as ordinarily understood. The psychiatrist and spiritual teacher Maurice Nicoll tells us:

We know the experience of suddenly seeing the truth of something for the first time. At such moments we are altered and if they persisted we would be permanently altered. But they come as flashes with traces of direct knowledge, direct cognition.

The description of an idea is quite different from the direct cognition of it. The one takes time, the other is instantaneous. The description of the idea . . . is quite different from the realisation of it . . .

Such ideas act directly on the substance of our lives as by a chemical combination, and the shock of contact may be sometimes so great as actually to change a man’s life and not merely alter his understanding for the moment . . .

We can think of an idea, in this sense, as something that puts us in contact with another degree of understanding and takes us out of inner routine and the habitual state of indolence of our consciousness—our usual “reality.” We cannot understand differently without ideas. (Nicoll, 3–4; emphasis Nicoll’s)

Real ideas are something like Plato’s Forms. They are the spiritual and intelligible dimensions of reality in which we participate both inwardly and outwardly. They are portals by which the consciousness receptively participates in Being, because they are the intelligible aspects of the inexhaustible intelligibility, goodness, and beauty of Being. As such, they initiate us into mystery.

That which experiences ideas (in the sense above) is called nous in Greek and intellectus in Latin. (Again, this is not to be equated with what we ordinarily call intellect.) The English word reason more or less corresponds with the Greek dianoia or the Latin ratio. To a great degree, the distinction between these two faculties has been lost in contemporary thought. Indeed this loss has been blamed for the rise of rationalism in Western culture.

Certainly there is an inflated rationalism present today. The philosopher Jacob Needleman relates it to his experience as an intern on a psychiatric ward. Many patients, he observed, show no lack of  reason; in fact, they can formidably deploy reason to justify their pathological forms of experience and to shut reality out. Here reason is a psychological defense formation.

Philosophy can fall into a similar state. Esotericist Frithjof Schuon says that modern philosophy “concerns itself solely with mental schemes . . . From the point of view of spiritual realization these schemes are merely so many virtual or potential and unused objects, insofar at least as they refer to true ideas” (Schuon, 2).^.

Needleman believes that if philosophy is no longer practiced as a spiritual discipline and a therapy of the soul, it becomes facile, “easy,” as opposed to genuine philosophy, which is difficult. He writes:

Maimonides explains why the pursuit of metaphysical knowledge . . . is difficult, profound, and dangerous. He who seeks this knowledge, which is equated with wisdom, must first submit to a long and difficult preparation—mental, moral, and physical . . .
            With Plato, as with Maimonides, we read that the direct search for wisdom is to be preceded by a certain training of all the natural faculties of man: the body, the emotions, and the intellect.

Note that it is not only wisdom that is so high and so difficult of attainment, and which requires such remarkable preparation. It is also the search for wisdom, the love of wisdom—philosophy, properly so-called—which requires this preparation. (Needleman, 12; emphasis Needleman’s)

For Needleman, present-day philosophy has become “easy” because it has been detached “from the goals of religion, practical ethics, and therapy, it seeks primarily to think well about problems . . . The modern philosopher, in his philosophizing, no longer loves, i.e., searches for a condition of the self, a new state of being.”

Modern philosophy prides itself on its close adherence to empirical experience, but Needleman says that this very fact detaches philosophy from its true role—serving as a difficult spiritual discipline and therapy of the soul:

Modern philosophy sought, of course, to rest itself on the touchstone of experience . . . Common human experience is the touchstone of almost all modern philosophical thought . . .

The Platonic philosophy is exemplary of philosophy as difficult precisely because the appeal to given experience is never the basis for a line of thought . . . In fact it could be said that for Plato . . . man has no experience; or, to put it another way, his experience is not anything like he imagines it to be. Therefore, the education toward philosophy must involve the acquisition by man of the ability to have genuine experience. (Needleman, 13; emphasis Needleman’s)

Since we live in a culture that is used to consuming vast amounts of information, we tend to mistake mere concepts—what Nicoll calls the “description of the idea”—for real ideas. We fail to suspect that the idea is a portal into deeper and more hidden dimensions of reality and ourselves. Even when we have an authentic glimpse of a true idea, it is inhibited by our habit to turn all ideas into conceptual tools. Thus, while a real idea may be conveying a genuine understanding, we are prevented from fully experiencing it.

Nevertheless, real ideas can catalyze inward realization, not only because they are portals to deeper dimensions of reality, but also because they lead to an encounter with the Logos, the divine intellect. All logoi (ideas) are rooted in and united by the greater Logos; each individual logos is a faint and potentially awakening trace of this Logos. Each individual logos, therefore, is also a call and beckoning toward the inexhaustible expanse of Being. Schuon writes: “When speaking . . . of the understanding of ideas, we may distinguish between a dogmatic understanding, comparable to the view of an object from a single viewpoint, and an integral or speculative understanding, comparable to the indefinite series of possible views of the object” (Schuon, 6).

But, I believe, it is misguided to see our present situation as the result of a simple eclipse of intellectus by reason. If we look at the history of human knowledge, we see that there is as much use of reason in the premodern world, before the so-called rise of rationalism, as there is afterwards. It is not so much a question of quantity (how much reason is used) as quality (the manner and way it is used). Instead, the situation may be better described as the eclipse of authentic contemplative experience that perfects the whole person and includes both intellectus and reason.

William Chittick, a scholar of Sufism, tells us that in all spiritual traditions there are two ways of knowing. In an Islamic context, he says there are “transmitted” (naqli) and “intellectual” (‘aqli) forms of knowledge.

Transmitted knowledge is characterized by the fact that it needs to be passed from generation to generation. The only possible way to learn it is to receive it from someone else. In contrast, intellectual knowledge cannot be passed on, even though teachers are needed for guidance in the right direction. The way to achieve it is to find it within oneself, by training the mind or . . . “polishing the heart.” Without uncovering such knowledge through self-discovery, one will depend on others in everything one knows . . .

In transmitted knowledge, the question of “why” is pushed into the background. When someone asks the ulama [scholarly authorities] why one must accept such-and-such a dogma . . . the basic answer is “because God said so,” which is to say that we have the knowledge on the authority of the Quran and the Sunnah . . . Intellectual knowledge is altogether different. If one accepts it on the basis of hearsay, one has not understood it. Mathematics is a science that does not depend on authorities. Rather, it needs to be awakened in one’s awareness. In learning it, students must understand why, or else they will simply be imitating others. It makes no sense to say that two plus two equals four because my teacher said so. Either you understand it, or you don’t. You must discover its truth within yourself. (Chittick, vii–ix, 2–3)

Chittick goes on to write:

Philosophy and Sufism diverged sharply from transmitted sciences by acknowledging explicitly that the meanings of things in the world cannot be found without simultaneously finding the meaning of the self that knows . . . Masters of the intellectual approach recognized that meaning hides behind the “signs” (ayat) of God, that all phenomena point to noumena, and that those noumena can only be accessed at the root of the knowing self. (Chittick, ix)

The philosophical school known as Illuminationism (ishraqiyya; the name is derived from ishraq, light, which is central to its theology and cosmology) included many great Sufis, such as Ibn Sina (also known as Avicenna, c.980–1037 AD), Suhrawardi (1154–1191), and Mulla Sadra (c.1571–1640). The Illuminationists teach that meditative contemplation requires cultivating the analytic and discursive power of reason as well as the intuitive power of immediate awareness.

Suhrawardi, for instance, discusses the mastery of illumined self-consciousness (ana’ iyya) and wakeful awareness. This is an experiential, contemplative knowing by a state of presence (al-huduri) of the subject (basir). It has two integral components: (1) the analytical reasoning power of discursive philosophizing (hikma bahthiyya) and (2) the concentrated power of direct, intuitive seeing. Neither one alone is sufficient for attaining a theosophical participation with the divine intellect (divine theosophy, hikma muta’alliha). Rather, both are necessary for achieving proficiency in illumination (al-qayyim ‘ala’ l-ishraq).

Similarly, the contemplative traditions of Judaism also hold that cultivation of higher states of consciousness is not sufficient. The whole person, including the logical and reasoning power of the soul, must be cultivated and perfected. In Kabbalah the sefirot that correspond to these two powers of mind are Chokmah (the direct seeing part, usually translated as “Wisdom”) and Binah (the logical and analytic part, usually translated as “Understanding”). The eighteenth-century Kabbalist Moshe Chaim Luzzato warns that cultivating higher states of meditative awareness will go dangerously off track if one does not perfect the soul’s analytical power. Thus for his students, training in cultivating meditative states of awareness included training in the ways of reason (derekh tevunos), for which he wrote a textbook titled the Sefer ha-higayon (“Book of Logic”). Initially the objective is to transcend the indirect mediation of ordinary discursive concepts. Once this has been achieved, the analytic and logical power can work directly upon contemplative experience. As contemplative experience becomes more experienced or grows by these two powers working in tandem together, the sefirah Da‘at (Knowledge) grows. Da‘at is realized experience or contemplative experience of God.

The Vedanta too, in all its schools, requires cultivating analytical discrimination (viveka) in addition to concentrative meditation (samadhi). Such a discrimination can discern between lower levels of apparent reality and higher levels of more authentic reality. This analytical process is called badha. Sometimes misleadingly translated as contradiction, badha refers to an insightful discernment that, in a sense, subtracts the less real from the more real. It discerns between reality and appearances that are not as they seem. The appearance has been mistaken for reality because of adhyasa—reified false superimposition. For example, think of the well-known figure that can appear both as two silhouetted faces and as a vase. With adhyasa, perception is frozen into seeing only one possible appearing—seeing only the two faces and not the vase, or vice versa. Except that in this case it is a matter, not of a kind of optical illusion, but of a distorted view of life and its existential situations.

To turn to Buddhist teachings on this topic, we can turn to the famous debate in the eighth century AD between the Indian Buddhist Kamalashila and the Chinese Buddhist Ha-shang Mahayana. This debate was precisely about the role of logical analysis in the path and its relation to the direct realization of sunyata (i.e., nirvana). Scholar Guy Newland summarizes this debate. The point of contention was the Indian and Tibetan insistence that

nondualistic insight into the nature of reality must be founded upon careful and thoughtful analysis of how things exist . . . The Chinese monk Ha-shang Mahayana—having seen this statement that meditative insight involves things such as analysis and differentiation— exclaimed, “I don’t see how this can be a sutra!” In frustration, Ha-shang then kicked the text . . . Ha-shang simply could not believe that any sutra could identify meditative insight with analysis because it was his conviction that we should dispense with all analytical thought and meditate on reality by not bringing anything to mind . . . Tsong-kha-pa [a Tibetan Buddhist sage] argues that this wrong-headed approach will leave Ha-shang and anyone who is like-minded with a great many sutras to kick . . . The liberating insight that will set us on the path to freedom is not “spacing out” or “emptying the mind”. It is a precise, rigorous meditative analysis that breaks through false appearances. (Newland, 101–02)

Ha-shang lost this debate. The Tibetans would follow Buddhist teachings from India rather than those from China.

John Powers, another scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, writes,

Buddhist meditation literature contains many descriptions of meditative trainings that lead to equanimity and insight. An important goal of these practices is the attainment of “a union of calm abiding and higher insight”, in which one is able to remain focused on a meditative object for as long as one wishes and at the same time to analyze its . . . nature. (Powers, 74)

In the early phases of training (including the early phases of mindfulness practice), the practice of meditative stabilization does appear to put thinking and meditation at odds with each other. But this is only temporary. The two were initially at odds with each other only because of the effects of the passions and vices upon them. Later, the wakeful power and discriminating power are fused. Powers elaborates:

Calm abiding is held to be a necessary prerequisite for attainment of higher insight, but meditators must initially cultivate stabilizing meditation and analytical meditation separately. When one has first developed calm abiding, one is not able to remain in that state while performing analysis, and so, one must alternate between calming and analytical meditation. Through repeated practice, however, one develops the ability to maintain the two types of meditation in equal portions at the same time . . . This, however, is not higher insight. Higher insight occurs when one’s analytical meditation itself generates mental stability and is conjoined with physical and mental pliancy. At this point, one enters into a powerful meditative stabilization that is characterized by stability and a wisdom consciousness that understands the nature of the object of observation. The combination of stability and analysis in a single consciousness serves as a powerful counteragent to afflictions and is a potent tool for developing the ability to perceive emptiness directly. (Powers, 79–80)

In this light, we return to Newland’s discussion of the development of insight in order to directly realize sunyata. Here too the purified power of logical analysis and discrimination is crucial for the more advanced levels of meditation.

To meditate on emptiness, we must first identify our most fundamental misconceptions. Through careful practice with a teacher, meditators can learn to locate within their own experience the particular sense of self that is the deepest root of cyclic misery. Once the meditator introspectively locates very precisely the target conception of self, she uses logical analysis in meditation to see whether such a self could actually exist as it appears. Using reason to prove that it does not and could not exist, she realizes emptiness. This knowledge of emptiness, the ultimate reality of all things, is a profound certainty attained through introspective meditation and inferential reasoning. (Newland, 23)

As we have already indicated, at the early phase of beginning to realize emptiness, this analytic component is still a conceptual and therefore a dualistic kind of understanding (Newland, 24).

Some may assume that when Buddhist texts speak of “conceptual constructs dropping away” in more mature meditative states, they mean that logical analysis and the powers of discrimination are no longer operating. This view appears to assume that the discriminative power of the mind only operates with discursive concepts. On this assumption, “conceptual constructs dropping away” is interpreted as meaning that all logical analysis and discrimination have also “dropped away.”

Again the assumption is wrong. The power of logical analysis and discrimination no longer works indirectly, by means of the mediation of concepts (mostly products of memory and imagination). Instead it is now directly fused with wakefulness and works directly on experience without concepts. This is what is meant in many Buddhist texts as “nonconceptual thought” or “nondiscursive discriminative power.”

In the later phase, the conceptual element drops away while the logical power of discrimination fuses with the power of yogic direct perception in meditative stabilization.

Strengthening their analysis of emptiness with the power of concentration, bodhisattvas gradually develop deep insight into emptiness. Through the practice of insight, their experience becomes less conceptual . . . Finally, they are able to know emptiness directly and nonconceptually. (Newland, 24)

Logical analysis thus can work without concepts. It works directly with or on a direct perception. Concepts are left behind, but the mental power of logical analysis fuses with direct awareness itself. And the powers of reason and logic are fused with meditative concentration.

In the Eastern Orthodox mystical tradition known as hesychasm, the logical and analytic part of the mind (dianoia) is also cultivated in order to become fused with the states of concentrated awareness (enstasis) and presence (prosuchi) as the direct power of nonconceptual analytic discrimination (diakrisis). As in the other traditions mentioned, logical fallacies and errors in reasoning are studied as a diagnostic stage on the path to self-knowledge. The kinds of fallacies to which one is susceptible are seen as symptoms of deeper emotional and character issues to be encountered and healed. They point beyond mere errors in reasoning to moral weaknesses of the heart.

In hesychasm, confessional disclosure (logismoi) to a spiritual father has a different purpose from the Roman Catholic sacrament of confession. According to the text known as the Evergetinos, “the purpose of this disclosure is not juridical, to secure absolution from guilt, but self-knowledge, that each may see himself as he truly is” (1, 20, 168–69).

The practice of confessional disclosure is part of the training of the reason to make the right distinctions, analyses, and inferences in the light of conscience (as the template of self-knowledge). It is also to detect hidden moral faults revealed by errors in reasoning and logical fallacies. As author Joseph Allen describes it, this retrospective clarity of confessional analysis slowly endows the nous with the prospective virtues of watchfulness, questioning, and discriminative discernment (Allen, 23–25). It is no longer necessary to suppress thought in order to develop the power of noetic attention. The new level of heightened awareness has become habituated so that thought is no longer a disturbance. Nous and dianoia reinforce and augment the powers of reason at a level that is hardly imagined in the modern world. Instead of being a distraction, the rational power fulfills its proper role within a nondistracted state of noetic presence of the I to itself.

Thus the study of logical reasoning is also a component of a spiritual psychotherapy and pedagogy. The third-century church father Gregory Thaumaturgos writes of another church father, Origen:

Going round and surveying us, as it were, with the skill of an husbandman, and not taking notice merely of what is obvious to everyone and superficial, but digging into us more deeply, and probing what is most inward in us, he puts us to the question, and proposed things to us, and listened to our replies. For whenever he detected anything in us not wholly unprofitable and useless and ineffectual, he would start clearing the soil, and turning it up and watering it. He would set everything in motion, and apply the whole of his skill and attention to us so as to cultivate us. (in Blowers, v)

Sources

Allen, Joseph. Inner Way: Eastern Christian Spiritual Direction. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995.

Blowers, Paul M. Exegesis and Spiritual Pedagogy in Maximus the Confessor. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991.

Chittick, William C. Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul. Oxford: Oneworld, 2007.

Evergetinos. Synagoge. Athens, Greece: Mattharon, 1957.

Maritain, Jacques. The Degrees of Knowledge. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995.

Needleman, Jacob. Consciousness and Tradition. New York: Crossroad, 1982.

Newland, Guy. Introduction to Emptiness: As Taught in Tsong-kha-pa’s Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path. Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion, 2008.

Nicoll, Maurice. Living Time and the Integration of the Life. London: Vincent Stuart, 1953.

Powers, John. Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion, 1995.

Schuon, Frithjof. The Transcendental Unity of Religions. 2d. ed. Wheaton: Quest, 1993.

Simon, Yves. The Metaphysics of Knowledge. New York: Fordham University Press, 1990.

Spruit, Leen. Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993.

Thomas Mether (Ph.D., philosophy, Vanderbilt University), has a Boehmist background in Lutheran and Russian Orthodox Sophiology. He has studied with traditional Hesychast, Ishraqi, Tantric, Eurasian shamanic, Neo-Confucian-Taoist, and Vedanta teachers. He is a Life Member of the Theosophical Society, joined the Gurdjieff Foundation forty years ago, and leads the Gurdjieff Work groups and facilitates the Theosophy study group in Nashville.

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Printed in the  Summer 2018  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Katagiri, Dainin, "Light of the Self" Quest 106:3, pg 30-32

By Dainin Katagiri

Buddha’s teaching constantly tells us how sublime human life is and how great our human capacity is. In Buddhism, this great capacity is called light. Each and every one of us has this light. When you look at your life and see how selfish and egoistic human beings are, you don’t believe you have a great sublime capacity. But you don’t discover your great capacity by evaluating and judging your human value. If you are thinking in that way, you have already shut yourself off from that light.

Don’t judge yourself as selfish or egoistic only. You are something more. So whatever you think about your life, first accept yourself as a person who has a great capacity. Then, in whatever situation you may be, calm your mind and take care of your life positively. If you get angry, try to calm your mind, even if you are just pretending. You may say that pretending to be calm is not realistic, but try to calm down anyway. That is not so easy for us, particularly under difficult circumstances. But still, whatever happens, you can stop, open yourself, and try to see the whole situation. Then you can learn a lot. 

The Whole World in the Ten Directions

You have a sublime capacity to understand your life. That capacity is called light, but it is completely beyond any intellectual understanding of what your human capacity is. Beyond your human speculation, you are already great because, whatever you may do, wherever you may be, light is working with you. This is called the light of the self.

In Shobogenzo Jippo (“The Ten Directions”) Dogen Zenji (1200–53), founder of the Soto school of Zen, mentions a saying by Chinese Zen master Chosa Keishin (Changsha Jingcen, 788–868). He says, “The whole world in the ten directions is the light of the self. The whole world in the ten directions is within the light of the self.” This saying seems to present two different ideas, but actually it is one picture seen from two angles.

The Buddhist term ten directions represents the entire universe—eight compass directions, above, and below—but it implies something more than the ordinary concept of the universe. The ordinary idea is that when you were born, the universe was already here. You are born into this world, and then you try to understand it.

But if you try to understand the meaning of “the whole world in the ten directions” in the ordinary way, you will never understand it, because you were not born into a world that was already here: you and the whole world were born together. You were born simultaneously with mountains, rivers, and the whole universe. That is the Buddhist teaching of interdependent coorigination.

A mountain appears to be very stable, but actually it is moving. Mountains are alive because mountains are constantly in the process of birth. If you understand a mountain in that way, you understand that your life is simultaneously there.

Day by day, from moment to moment, your life coexists exactly with mountains and rivers; you cannot be separated. This is your everyday life. We think we know pretty well what everyday life is. But in the deeper sense, “everyday life” is the great source of the flow of life energy, digesting everything and producing new life.

In Shobogenzo Shinjin-gakudo (“Body and Mind Study of the Way”) Dogen says:

Everyday mind is always every day, throughout this world and the other world. Yesterday left from that, today comes from that place. When you go, the whole world goes. When you come, the whole earth comes. The gate of this everydayness is opening and closing at the moment, the gates of myriad, myriad beings are opening and closing at the moment.

If you read this statement in Japanese, it’s very beautiful. When I translate it into English, maybe it’s not so beautiful. But, behind the words, please try to understand that everydayness is something existing with all sentient beings; it is present with the vast cosmic universe.

Dogen is difficult to understand because he uses words to express the oneness of the whole universe. Still, even if you don’t understand exactly, when you read this statement, something appears through the words, and you are really captured by Dogen’s beautiful statement.

Every day, from moment to moment, the whole world arises like images in bas-relief sculpture. If you calm the functioning of your consciousness, you can actually see images coming up from the background of space. It’s like watching a dance—something is constantly moving. In The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra recognizes that activity as Shiva’s dance, the cosmic dance of creation and destruction. In Buddhism we say it is the continuous stream of life energy, and it is called continuous practice.

In the realm of continuous practice there is a great opportunity—you can see the universe coming up as one whole. It’s just like a television. Push the button, and the myriad beings existing in the vast expanse of the universe immediately come into one screen. That one screen is called the self.

What is this self? Is it your small, egoistic self? Can you say yes or no? The self is a picture of the whole world coming up, but it’s completely free. Sometimes it appears as your individual self. Sometimes it appears as trees, birds, or pebbles. Sometimes it appears as vast space. This is the true picture of the great self you already have.

Your true self is not something separated from others; it is interconnected and constantly working with others. Where? Not in your own small territory, it’s working in the huge universe! In Japanese, that working is called komyo—light. The functioning energy of the whole world is the light of the self. Because light is working from moment to moment, the whole world constantly manifests itself as the human world. At that time, the whole world is within the light of the self.

Light of the self is something you can know because that energy is always moving and acting in your own life. Usually you are not aware of it, but it’s true—you can taste this. You can actually realize the dynamic functioning of your own life. When you sit down on your cushion, the whole vast universe comes into you as your body, your mind, the contents of your life, and you can taste the depth of human life. Then you can stand up there and take care of everyday life as it really is. So please accept your life as the whole world, and take good care of your life.

Dogen’s Eyeball and Nose

Dogen says something very interesting about the light of the self. I don’t know if my translation is right or wrong, but in Shobogenzo Jippo he says, “It is a single sheet with the eye and its cornea.” That’s pretty interesting but not so easy to understand. In your eyeball, the cornea covers the lens. It’s transparent, so you don’t see it. When I say that the cornea covers the lens, I have already separated the cornea from the lens. But is there any space between the cornea and the lens? No, there is no gap. When your eyeball is functioning in the proper way, those two things are working together as one. If you have some space there, that’s trouble for you. Please see a doctor.

When Dogen Zenji says light of the self means no gap between eye and cornea, he means there is no gap between you as your subject, “I,” and your object, whatever it is. Words always create a gap between things, but subject and object are not actually separate: they are interconnected. Your life and the whole world are always working together as one dynamic functioning. So self and the whole world are not separated; they are the same. Whatever you do, you always do it with the whole world.

Dogen also says, “The whole world is one’s nostrils prior to the parents’ birth.” This is very strange, so what does it mean? The world prior to our parents’ birth is unknown for us, so this saying implies the whole world throughout the past, present, and future. We don’t know what that huge world is exactly, because it’s too vast, too eternal to know. But even though you don’t know, here are your nostrils! In other words, right now, right here, that huge world is your nose. This is the real existence of your nose.

When my nose appears, it is the whole universe. How? I don’t know. But if I accept that the whole universe is constantly in the process of birth, then my nose is also coming up from moment to moment. My nose appears as a particular being because the whole world is functioning as one being. So through my nose I can understand the universe that sometimes appears as time and sometimes as space. Through your nose you can learn a lot; you can know many beings, because each and every being is exactly the whole world. In Buddhism, we accept every aspect of human life like this.

Total Dynamic Activity

Why are you alive? What makes your life continue? Is it by your own effort? Well, of course you can say so, because you cannot ignore making an effort to live every day. But there is something more than that. You survive because something real is working every day. Your life is moving with the whole universe. That movement has no colors, no flavors, nothing, but it appears to you under certain circumstances. For example, when you dance wholeheartedly, you can feel that energy coming up.

When you see this energy in terms of your own life, it is called individual effort. Before that, it has no name; it is just dynamism. If we give a name to it, this movement of life is called great effort or universal effort. Universal effort is there first, and then it appears in various aspects of your life as your individual effort.

We use the terms universal effort and individual effort, but actually there is no gap between them. You take care of universal effort by your individual effort. It’s a little difficult to do this, because we are always critical about our own effort. We attach to getting a certain result from our effort. Then we judge it in terms of ideas and emotions connected with our heredity, education, consciousness, and memories coming from the past, so it’s very complicated. Universal effort is very simple. That’s why we try to understand our lives in terms of the universal perspective. How?

When you wash your face, accept washing as universal effort first, and then make your own individual effort. Deal with everything—your face, the water, your posture of standing in front of the basin—as universal activity. Through the actions of washing your face, you can go beyond your usual understanding and experience the pure nature of washing your face. This is the realm of total dynamic action. Right in the middle of taking good care of your individual effort as universal effort, the whole world comes into one screen. That one screen is the big picture of your life. When you see that living screen, you can learn who you really are.

What makes it possible for the whole world to come into one screen? It is by your own acting. When you act with sincerity and a warm heart, there is a great opportunity, a very subtle opportunity, to invite the whole world into your life. That is wonderful, but if you misunderstand acting, it is very dangerous.

The usual meaning of human action is dangerous, because when we act only on the basis of individual desires, customs, lifestyles, or heredity, we are always creating problems. That’s why people are afraid to act, why people want to withdraw from the world and be quiet. Still, wherever you may go, whatever you do, even when you are asleep, you never stop acting. Nothing stops your acting, so your activity must be refined.

In refined human activity, your whole body is in dynamism, but your mind is quiet and calm. At that time, no words are interposed between you and the universe, so your idea of a separate self disappears. If your idea of self disappears, is there no-self? Yes, that is true. You are walking in the vast expanse of the universe—with people, animals, mountains, the sky, the four seasons, space—and there is no gap anywhere. At that time you realize the big picture of your life and your great sublime capacity. 

Moving from Doubt to Wisdom and Compassion

In Buddhism, we try to be straightforward toward our great capacity, live wholeheartedly with sincerity, and display our light in everyday life as best as we can. But maybe you are skeptical of this capacity, so your mind doesn’t accept it. Maybe you understand it intellectually, but your body doesn’t accept it. That skepticism is called doubt.

For example, when I answer some question, you say, “Yes, Katagiri, I understand what you said,” then you say “but” and want to talk about it some more. Where does that “but” come from? It comes from a gap between you and your object. We are always talking about this gap and how to fill it up. That’s all right; talking is the nature of human beings. Discussion is interesting for us. But if you are always talking, you never know real reality. Finally you become exhausted.

Before you ask a question, you are already here; you are already alive. So how do you live right now? Buddhism teaches us how to straightforwardly accept how sublime human life is. That is the activity of Buddhist practice.

When you touch your real self, you experience deep communication between you and the object of your practice, whatever it is. Then you can accept something totally and deal with it straightforwardly without creating any gap. So keep your mouth shut, calm your mind, and just be present in the continuous stream of life energy.

The Buddhist understanding of the self or the whole world seems to be abstract, but it is not abstract. You can really see and touch the self. You can learn that the whole world in the ten directions is the light of the self. How? Action! Try to remember this. In the dynamic activity of your practice, something happens that you have never expected. You can learn something great. That is called wisdom.

Wisdom is a deep understanding of yourself and the whole world around you, not only what’s on the surface of life. With wisdom, you understand that your own life is simultaneously the whole world in the ten directions. Then compassion comes up, and you accept others with magnanimous openheartedness. Compassion makes you generous, and through this generosity you can live with people; you can take a breath with people.

True compassionate action is based on wisdom, so when you express compassion, it should be based on deep understanding. If you use the world just for your own life, it becomes stinky, and people don’t like you; they keep away from you. But if you act with the whole world, light appears in your everyday life. Then, very naturally, your compassion is transmitted to somebody else. People feel this. People understand. You cannot perceive it, but people immediately receive this warm communication. It’s just like lightning.

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Dainin Katagiri Roshi (1928–90) was founder and abbot of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center in Minneapolis. He is the author of several other books, including Return to Silence and Each Moment Is the Universe.

Reprinted from The Light That Shines through Infinity: Zen and the Energy of Life by Dainin Katagiri. Copyright © 2017 by Minnesota Zen Meditation Center. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications Inc., Boulder, Colorado: www.shambhala.com.

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Printed in the  Summer 2018  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Grasse, Ray, "The Mythologist: Brief Encounters with Joseph Campbell" Quest 106:3, pg 26-29

Ray Grasse

A myth is somebody else’s religion.

The man on the car radio who uttered the above remark did so with a certain wry charm that caught my attention, not just for its wit but for its insight. He tossed it off in the most offhand of ways, yet it made a valid point about our blindness to our own belief systems.

It was nearly two years before I learned that voice belonged to Joseph Campbell, a scholar of mythology at Sarah Lawrence College. I had perused a few books and articles on mythology by that point, and I was always intrigued by the way mythological themes seemed to crop up in movies—like the time I heard director Robert Wise deliver a lecture and describe his surprise when someone pointed out the parallels between his film The Day the Earth Stood Still and the story of Jesus. Aside from experiences like those, mythology was never quite the burning passion for me that it was for some of my peers, who insisted it was one of those subjects all serious thinkers should be deeply versed in. As embarrassed as I was to admit it, those stories about long-forgotten gods and goddesses just left me cold.

That is, until I encountered Campbell. After reading just the first few pages of volume 1 of his Masks of God series, I was hooked. Writers like Mircea Eliade, Frithjof Schuon, and Claude Lévi-Stauss conveyed their ideas with a greater sense of seriousness, perhaps, but Campbell’s insights and style ignited a fire in me for the meaning and symbolism of those tales as no one else had. He conveyed such an infectious sense of wonderment that it felt like setting foot onto an exotic new continent with each new cultural mythology he mapped. Before long, I was driven to get my hands on everything he’d written.

The Campbell Seminars

In late 1981, I learned that Campbell passed through Chicago once every year to present lectures and seminars up on the city’s north side, and I jumped at the chance to attend them. The routine was much the same each time: he’d deliver a public lecture on a Friday night, followed by a seminar in greater depth on the same topic over the rest of the weekend. Since he was still relatively unknown in the Chicagoland area, the attendance at those weekend seminars was usually modest, with anywhere from fifteen to thirty people crowded together in a room on the Loyola University campus just off of Chicago’s lakefront. One year he’d discuss the work of James Joyce, the next year the psychology of the chakras, another year the Arthurian legends.

 For a man in his late seventies, his vitality and enthusiasm were remarkable, as was his ability to rattle off volumes of information on a wide range of topics without ever relying on notes. Trying to digest it all sometimes felt like trying to drink from a firehose. Even his passing asides were provocative—intellectual depth charges that released their power only later on. Like his offhand remark that “Hitler set out to create the Third Reich but gave birth to the state of Israel instead.” Or “myth is the opening through which the transcendent truths of the universe pour into manifestation.” Of course, “Follow your bliss” was the one that eventually turned into a household meme, but it wound up being repeated so often that it began sounding more like fingernails on a chalkboard than the inspiration axiom he intended.

Then there were the anecdotes, a seemingly bottomless well of them. During one workshop he made passing reference to the fact that singer Bob Dylan “saved the Bollingen Foundation from going out of business.” The Bollingen Foundation was a publishing house and educational organization devoted to the works of Carl Jung. Campbell left the comment dangling for a few seconds before finally explaining that Bollingen had been on the brink of bankruptcy a couple of decades earlier, when Dylan unexpectedly remarked during an interview with Rolling Stone magazine how much he liked the I Ching—the traditional Chinese book of divination and wisdom. The most conspicuous translation of it on the shelves at the time was by Richard Wilhelm and Cary Baynes, published by Bollingen. Dylan’s passing comment was enough to catapult sales of the book, so that after teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, Bollingen suddenly found itself awash in money. That’s show biz.

But I discovered I didn’t quite see eye-to-eye with Campbell on everything. He clearly had no great love for popular culture and seemed to reserve a special distaste for the countercultural ’60s—the hippie movement in particular. Along with that, I sometimes detected a certain hard right-wing sensibility lurking beneath his comments that took me by surprise. But these instances were so infrequent, and his manner so charming, that it didn’t diminish my respect for his knowledge.

The Critique

Because of the small size of the groups, it was not only possible to ask questions during his talks but relatively easy to corner him during a break to speak with him privately. On one occasion I worked up the nerve to seek out his feedback on something I’d written just a few nights before, about Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Since first seeing it as a teenager, I read everything I could about the film and was fascinated by the story’s symbolism, especially in the way it touched on classic archetypal themes. With those thoughts swirling in my head, I sat down and wrote a few paragraphs detailing my ideas about the film and how it symbolized the hero’s journey to enlightenment. It went like this:

The film’s central character, the astronaut Bowman, is shown journeying to the planet Jupiter—in traditional astrology, the planet most commonly associated with God. (In Sanskrit, by the way, the word for Jupiter is Guru.) But before he can complete this epic journey, Bowman must first slay the modern equivalent of the traditional “dragon”—a high-tech computer named HAL. Unlike the classic dragon, which is more of a symbol for the emotions and instincts, the computer represents a more modern challenge: the hyperrational mind. Bowman’s act of disengaging HAL speaks to the need to “unplug” the mind before one can reach enlightenment. Once that’s achieved, Bowman is able to enter the mysterious stargate—symbolizing transcendence itself. Once there, he undergoes a transformation and is reborn as a star child. At film’s end, he returns to Earth as an alienlike embryo, Bodhisattva-style, and is shown floating high above the earth. The mystic arc is complete, the hero now having returned to the world transformed by his experience.

There’s a hint of archetypal sexuality in all of this too, I added, since the large spaceship which housed Bowman for most of his journey is phallic-shaped, and upon arriving at his destination he’s ejected like a sperm cell and then plunged into the vaginalike “stargate” (depicted initially as two vertical walls)—after which a cosmic baby pops out, the aforementioned star child. Both Freud and Jung would have loved it, I felt sure.

I felt quite proud of my little commentary, and couldn’t wait to get Campbell’s feedback about it, never for a moment thinking how presumptuous it might be to expect that he’d find it terribly original. So during a break one afternoon, I handed him a copy, which he politely accepted. The next day during a break I was standing near him while he spoke with others, secretly hoping he might volunteer some feedback. When that didn’t happen, I edged closer, then nervously mustered up the nerve to ask him if he had a chance to look over my short piece.

            “Excuse me, but did you have a chance to read my paper?”

            “Oh, yes—I read it last night!”

He was upbeat, but there was no sign of judgment one way or the other. That was worrisome. I decided to go for broke and ask him outright what he thought. Obviously trying to be diplomatic, he said, “Well, you know . . . they based the movie on my work.”

What could I say to something like that? I might have been embarrassed or dejected, but he was so gracious about it that I simply said, “Oh!” Not only was my theory about the film nothing especially new to him, but the movie was inspired by his own research.

Well, maybe, maybe not. While I’m obliged to give Campbell the benefit of the doubt on that point, a colleague to whom I later mentioned this exchange questioned whether world-class geniuses like Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke really needed an outside thinker to come up with an archetypal story like theirs. It made me wonder whether Campbell’s suspicions about a direct connection between his work and that film might have been a bit like the motorist who buys a red Volkswagen and starts noticing every other red Volkswagen on the road. Perhaps the hero’s quest had been such a prominent a fixture in his own mind that when he saw it cropping up in a major Hollywood film, he assumed it was influenced by his own writings on the subject—whether that was really true or not. The irony is that Campbell himself taught that similar themes appear in places far removed from one another in time and space, and don’t necessarily require a causal connection. Did that happen here? We’ll probably never know for sure.

The Apparent Intentionality of Fate

Of all the ideas Campbell discussed in his talks, the one that left the greatest impact on me stemmed from a passing remark he made about the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, specifically an essay he wrote titled “Transcendental Speculation on the Apparent Intentionality in the Fate of the Individual” (see sidebar). Schopenhauer suggested that when viewed through the lens of hindsight, one’s life can take on the appearance of a carefully constructed novel, as though the seemingly unintended events and accidents of one’s early life were really integral elements of a larger unfolding destiny. Campbell went on to quote the philosopher:

Would it not be an act of narrow-minded cowardice to maintain it would be impossible for the life paths of all mankind in their complex interrelationships to exhibit as much concert and harmony as a composer can bring into the any apparently disconnected and haphazardly turbulent voices of his symphony?

Who was this “composer,” I wondered? I found myself coming back to Schopenhauer’s passage repeatedly over the years, and would eventually incorporate it into my own writings about synchronicity and destiny. (Incidentally, I’ve been asked on occasion where one could find that translation Campbell drew those lines of Schopenhauer from. I asked Campbell about that myself, in fact, and he said it was his own translation.)

He mentioned those ideas of Schopenhauer’s during a weekend in which he explored the parallels between James Joyce’s Ulysses and Homer’s Odyssey. In addition to explaining how the symbolic stages in each of these works paralleled one another, Campbell also hinted at the richly interlocking worldview that Joyce portrayed in Ulysses. That perspective resonated beautifully with ideas I’d been trying to develop around the subject of synchronicity for the book I’d just begun writing, The Waking Dream. I was especially fascinated by Joyce’s manner of ingeniously interweaving disparate events as if they had been orchestrated by some great cosmic mind. I felt certain that must reveal something important about Joyce’s own view of life, so when I finally had the chance to question Campbell about that privately, I asked whether he believed Joyce’s two books Ulysses and Finnegans Wake truly reflected a symbolist and synchronistic vision of existence. He nodded cautiously, but was careful to clarify:

“Well, yes, that’s certainly true of Ulysses, but it’s not really true of Finnegans Wake.”

            “How’s that?”

            “Ulysses deals with the mythic aspect of our ‘day’ world, of waking life. But Finnegans Wake plunges you down fully to the world of dreams, into that deep mythic realm.”

After spending some more time with both of these difficult books, I eventually understood what Campbell meant. In Ulysses, the reader at least has some reference points to ordinary reality, but in Finnegans Wake the reader is cut loose entirely from worldly moorings and set adrift in the deep waters of the collective unconscious. It’s not so much a statement about our everyday world as about the cosmic ocean underlying it.

The Power of Myth

Campbell’s energy was such that when he died of cancer in 1986, it came as a surprise to everyone. As it turned out, it was finally in death that he attained the worldwide fame for which he seemed destined, thanks to Bill Moyers’ 1988 series of TV interviews called The Power of Myth. Among other things, it was from that show that viewers first learned that filmmaker George Lucas drew inspiration for Star Wars partly from Campbell’s work. And in contrast with Kubrick and Clarke’s script for 2001, George Lucas openly admitted to that influence, so there was no disputing matters this time around.

Though I didn’t continue to follow this subject as passionately as I originally did back then, my way of thinking continued to tap into mythic and archetypal currents in a number of key ways. That’s been especially true when looking at cultural trends and understanding how modern stories sometimes echo ancient themes. For example I’d find myself looking at Walt Disney’s animated film The Lion King and notice how it resonated with the Egyptian myth of Osiris, as well as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, with its story of a son avenging the evil uncle who murdered his father. Or I’d be watching Wim Wenders’s film Paris, Texas and notice how closely it resembled the ancient story of Odysseus, about a man struggling to find his way home in a semiamnesiac state, then meeting up with the woman he loved while he was in disguise.

I’ve also been fascinated by how our collective mythologies seem to be changing in both subtle and obvious ways, whether as found in novels, films, or even politics. Mythic undercurrents continue to pulsate beneath the surface of our lives. It reminds me of a metaphor penned by author William Irwin Thompson that I often come back to: we’re like a fly crawling across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Our personal stories are embedded in far larger dramas, but like that fly, we’re too close to recognize those stories spread out directly before us.

It’s left me wrestling with a question that first occurred to me decades ago, and which I still ponder from time to time: to what degree do our mythologies liberate us, and to what degree do they imprison us?

I’d love to have gotten Joseph Campbell’s answer to that one.

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Ray Grasse is a writer, editor, and astrologer. He is the author of several books, including The Waking Dream (Quest Books, 1996), Signs of the Times (Hampton Roads, 2002), and Under a Sacred Sky (Wessex, 2015). He is also the former associate editor of Quest. He is a consulting astrologer, and his website is www.raygrasse.com. 

Schopenhauer on Fate

All developments in the life of a human being would accordingly stand in two fundamentally different types of connections: first, in the objective, causal connection of the course of nature; second, in a subjective connection which exists only in relationship to the individual who experiences it and which is thus just as subjective as his own dreams, in which however, the succession and content are just as necessarily determined and in the same manner as the succession of scenes of a drama cast by a poet. That both types of connections exist simultaneously and the same occurrence, as a link in two quite different chains, which nevertheless have aligned perfectly in the consequence of which each time the fate of one matches the fate of another, and each is made the hero of his own drama while simultaneously figuring in an alien drama. This is freely also something that exceeds our powers of comprehension and can only be conceived as possible through the most fabulous preordained harmony.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

From Transscendente Spekulation über die anscheinende Absichtlichkeit im Schicksale des Einzelnen (“Transcendental Speculation on the Apparent Intentionality in the Fate of the Individual,” 1851) in E. Grisebach ed., Schopenhauers sämmtliche Schriften in fünf Bänden, “Schopenhauer’s Collected Works in Five Volumes”) vol. 4, 264–65 (Leipzig: Inselverlag, 1922), translated by Scott Horton. In Horton, “Schopenhauer: Causality and Synchronicity,” Harper’s website, Feb. 13, 2012: https://harpers.org/blog/2012/02/schopenhauer-causality-and-synchronicity/.

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Printed in the  Summer 2018  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "A Great Soul: An Interview with Ravi Ravindra" Quest 106:3, pg 14-18 

Ravi Ravindra is a familiar figure in Theosophical circles. He is a regular lecturer at Olcott, the Krotona School of Theosophy, and other venues. Professor emeritus at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he is the author of a number of books, including The Pilgrim Soul: A Path to Transcending World Religions; The Gospel of John in the Light of Indian Mysticism (originally published as The Yoga of the Christ); and, most recently, The Bhagavad Gita: A Guide to Navigating the Battle of Life (reviewed in Quest, fall 2017), a new translation and commentary on the classic sacred text of India. (For a profile of him, see Quest, Winter 2013).

Ravi was at the Olcott headquarters in November 2017, when I had the opportunity to interview him. Although we had never met before, and I had only read a couple of his books, I was amazed at our agreement about subtle issues concerning consciousness and self. It was one of the most moving interviews that I have ever done. 

Richard: Let’s begin by talking about your latest book, which is a new translation of the Bhagavad Gita (reviewed in Quest, Fall 2017). There are a lot of translations of the Gita out there. What inspired you to make another one?

Ravi: First of all, the translation was secondary from my point of view. I was more interested in the commentary. In India there is a very large stream of spirituality that is very otherworldly—as if this world is all maya and one doesn’t really need to take it seriously. Shankara, the great Indian philosopher, emphasized this especially. He himself was not quite so attached to this perspective, but his followers saw it as central. Later, the Ramakrishna Mission continued with this position. To me it seems rather strange. Why would Krishna bother to take incarnation if he has no interest in the world? Why would he ask Arjuna to fight?

From my point of view, the Bhagavad Gita is very much a teaching for this life and is concerned with this world. It is not suggesting that this is the ultimate reality, but there is no suggestion that Arjuna should leave everything and go to a cave or to the Himalayas and meditate.

Richard: Shankara is associated with the Advaita Vedanta, and that, as you suggest, seems to be the dominant philosophical school in India since his time, although there are, of course, many others. Do you see any problem with this almost exclusive focus on Advaita Vedanta, either in India or in the West?

Ravi: The difficulty is that Advaita Vedanta is speaking about the oneness of the source from which everything comes, but without uniqueness there can be no manifestation. Every blade of grass is unique. From a purely scientific point of view, there are 10^{3,480,000,000} possibilities of uniqueness. That is more than the number of atoms in the universe.

No human being can ever be the clone of another human being. No blade of grass can be a complete clone of another blade of grass. There is so much variation, so much possibility for uniqueness. Advaita Vedanta agrees with this point of view, for it regards everything in the manifested universe as coming from the same divine energy—that is where the oneness actually is. But at the same time, nothing can be manifested in the universe without uniqueness. Nothing would exist—at least nothing that we could see—without this uniqueness. One need not put them at the same level, as if they’re contradictory. This is part of the difficulty: one does not realize that different things are at different levels of expression.

You and I are absolutely unique, but one could also say that if I ever succeeded in discovering the very source from which I originate, I would also discover that that is the very source from which you originate.

Richard: That makes a great deal of sense. So the source from which we all originate is taken to be the sole truth, and the uniqueness aspect—

Ravi: Can be neglected.

Richard: Well, it’s not only neglected, but it’s discarded as somehow illusory or unreal. How would you respond to that attitude?

Ravi: This is really why I felt obliged to write a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna takes a unique incarnation for a unique situation; there have already been nine incarnations of Vishnu and there is a tenth yet to be. Each one of those nine incarnations is completely unique. Rama is one of them, Krishna is another, Buddha is another. They look different, and they also emphasize different things. As well, they have different perspectives and different attitudes.

In fact, celebrating the uniqueness is almost the fundamental emphasis of the arts. Nothing in nature would have been so beautifully expressed by Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo if they simply said, “All this is unreal.”

The trouble is that the Oneness is wholly unmanifest; therefore no work of art, no philosophy, no theology could capture it, which is not in itself a bad thing. It is a recommendation that unless my mind can be completely free of its own movements, I cannot actually experience the Oneness.

Nobody needs to be against Oneness, but the whole manifest universe is where our activity is. The activity needed to allow our spirit to come to this subtle understanding of Oneness remains in the manifested universe.

These days in the West, there is a whole movement called Science and Nonduality [www.scienceandnonduality.com]. They have annual conferences where they have invited me to speak. They have given me—I suppose they give it to everybody—a water bottle on which it says OM = mc². My own impression is that only people who don’t know very much about OM or about mc² can assert this kind of equality.

Richard: I myself think that nonduality has become an almost mindless slogan. If you think about it, the word nonduality is self-contradictory because it’s implying that there is this thing called duality and then there’s this other thing that is nonduality, so you have two things—you still have duality. I don’t know what they do with that, but I don’t call myself a nondualist, so I don’t feel obliged to solve this problem.

Ravi: Actually, the classical expression in Sanskrit is ekam evādvitīyam (one only, without a second). It is actually in one of the oldest upanishads, Chāndogya Upanishad (6:2.1).

Richard: I see. Sometimes the term Advaita seems to be applied to the distinction between Atman and Brahman: they’re saying there’s no difference between Atman and Brahman. In Indian terms there is also a dualistic perspective that posits kind of a personal God, Ishvara, in between the two. Is that more or less correct?

Ravi: More or less, but even in Vedanta, there are several variations on the theme, if you don’t mind stepping back a little bit here. Strictly speaking, in the Indian tradition there is really no myth of creation. There is what we might actually call a myth of emanation.

Brahman, which is the label for the highest reality, literally means vastness, but contemporary English usage of vastness doesn’t convey vastness in time. It simply conveys vastness in space. Thus Annie Besant, translating the Bhagavad Gita from Sanskrit into English, uses The Eternal for Brahman, to indicate the time aspect.

In any case, it is vastness or endlessness in both time and space. Brahman does not create the world, it became the world. Brahman is not only in everything, it is everything. Although there is manifestation at different levels of materiality, even what we would ordinarily call completely dead matter has Brahman or some level of consciousness in it.

Incidentally, I have recently been trying to ask our physicists why they are so convinced that matter has no consciousness. If we have a magnet and some iron filings here and a piece of paper there, only the iron filings know to be drawn to the magnet. We could say it is a law of nature. The paper doesn’t do it. Why do the iron filings do it? Do they have no awareness, no consciousness, that there is a magnet here and they should come to it?

Another point to be made is also emphasized by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. He says everything that exists is a combination of the field and the knower of the field: “I am the knower of the field in all fields.” It is practically a definition of yoga that a wise person at the end of many births realizes that all there is is Krishna. Here is Oneness. However, he goes on to add, such a person is a great soul but very rare. In Sanskrit:

bahūnām janamanam ante jñānavān mām prapadyate

vāsudevah sarvam iti sa mahātmā sudurlabhāh 

At the end of many births, a wise person comes to me realizing that all there is is Krishna.

Such a person is a great soul, a mahatma, and very rare.

Richard: One problem is that the definition of consciousness is so muddled at this point. You see this with the question about how consciousness arises out of matter. Usually what they’re trying to say is how does our human introspective, subjective consciousness arise as a unique and almost aberrant thing out of everything else, which is dead? That is not a very sustainable position.

Ravi: These days, at least in some academic circles, there is some interest in consciousness. But the contemporary understanding of the transformation of consciousness seems to be about a change of the contents of consciousness: from bad thoughts, you go to good thoughts. For example, if you are feeling hatred for somebody and then you begin to love them—that kind of transformation.

But classically in the Indian tradition, for example in the Bhagavad Gita or in the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali, the transformation of consciousness refers to going beyond thought altogether. It is a structural change. It is not that bad thoughts are changed to good thoughts. It is not a change of content, it is a change of structure. This has been difficult for me to convey to people in the academic world.

Richard: Or I suppose you could look at it another way: illusion is, arguably, the confusion of consciousness with its own contents; that is, the identification of consciousness with its own contents. Liberation would involve the ability to detach oneself and see all of this from a kind of distance: the cognizing Self on the one hand and all these thoughts, all these physical experiences, on the other. Is that something like what you mean?

Ravi: Actually, you can take a very specific example of this. The very last shloka [verse] in the Bhagavad Gita says wherever there is the skillful warrior, Arjuna, and the lord of yoga, Krishna, there is victory and prosperity.

The point is that both of these need to be understood within oneself. All the sages in India have interpreted the Bhagavad Gita as an internal dialogue and an internal struggle. Can I be like Arjuna, engaged in the battle, or in any activity, and at the same time be like Krishna, remaining above the battle? I think this very much speaks to what you’re saying.

Richard: In practical terms, does this mean that while you’re engaged in the battle, you’re simultaneously standing back from it? Or is it a sequential thing, where for a while you’re immersed in it and then you stand back?

Ravi: Simultaneously. That is my understanding. My teacher, Madame Jeanne de Salzmann, had a slightly different way of putting it, although she also used these expressions—to be engaged in the battle and to remain above the battle. On one occasion, she said that it is important to be a warrior and a monk simultaneously. Only a monk knows when to lay down the weapons and to pray and when to pick the weapons up and to fight for the essential.

To be a warrior and a monk at the same time—this is one way of saying to be engaged in the battle and to remain above the battle. This is a different imagery, which is useful because all of our expressions limit something in a way. Therefore if we can have more than one expression of truth, it can free us from mistaking the expression of truth for the Truth. Then one searches behind the expressions. What are they pointing to?

Richard: Maybe the enormous mixture and confrontation of religions is making it possible to do this. At least some people see this and are willing to say that these are different facets of perspective on truth, rather than any one perspective being absolute.

Ravi: These days I’m promoting interpilgrim dialogues. A pilgrim is on a journey, but periodically one meets at the base camp. Other pilgrims come in from other directions, and one can learn a great deal from them—about the location of a chasm or an iceberg, or about which parts are dangerous, which are easier.

But it also involves a willingness to change the journey. I’m a Hindu because I was born in India of a Hindu family. Somebody is a Christian because they were born a Christian in a Christian family. There is nothing wrong with that to start, but as far as I’m concerned, I would actually regard it to be a failure in my life if I died merely a Hindu. In fact, I’m happy to say that precisely because I’m a Hindu, I can be a Christian and a Buddhist simultaneously. These are just labels. Why can’t I learn from the great sages other than Hindu sages?

Who are my sages these days? Are they only Indian? Why is Christ not my sage, or Socrates? In the sciences, we have no difficulty with this. Newton proposed the law of gravitation, but if it applies only in England, it can’t be true. And if only English people can understand it and no one else can, it can’t be true either.

In these days, one can travel, one can get information about anything. So my sages are the sages of the world. Of course I have only a limited amount of energy, so I’m not really able to reflect on all of the sages, but to limit oneself intentionally—saying it’s going to be only the Christian sages or only the Hindu ones—to me this is a sin against the Holy Spirit.

Richard: Perhaps we could move on to Christianity, because you’ve made quite an effort to connect yoga with the Gospel of John. Maybe you could say a little bit about the relation between them.

Ravi:   First of all, as far as I am aware, if there is one common lesson from any of the great scriptures or sages, it is simply that a radical transformation of my whole being is required before I can come to truth or God or the Absolute. Within the Christian tradition, John’s Gospel has for centuries been regarded as the most spiritual of all the gospels. Like yoga, it is an invitation to a science of transformation.

For example—although this precise expression is in the Gospel of Matthew—Christ said that unless you leave your self behind, you cannot be a follower of mine. There is always the suggestion that spiritual discipline is not, as it were, freedom for myself but freedom from myself, myself being the end product of my entire past conditioning. If I am not free of that, I am naturally bound to react in a certain way, because I happen to have been born in India rather than in the U.S., or in the twentieth century rather than in the second century. All this influences me, so to be able to actually see the situation totally, freely, and impartially requires being free of myself.

The same idea is expressed in Buddhism. To be free, this is sometimes called akinchana, almost “self-naughting.” Similarly, another Gospel says unless you die to your old self, you cannot be born as a new person. There is very much the same emphasis in the Yoga Sutras.

In yoga and throughout Indian literature, the source of all our difficulties or problems, what stands in the way, is regarded as avidyā, ignorance. The Yoga Sutras even describe what avidyā is: to take the non-Self for the Self and to take the transient for the eternal. This raises the question of what is myself. What am I? This becomes a very central question because anything that one knows or sees doesn’t seem to be satisfactory. One is then drawn to subtler and subtler levels.

On the other hand, the Abrahamic tradition sees the main source of all our difficulties and problems as disobedience to the will of God. It began with Adam in the Garden of Eden. Particularly in the Christian tradition, even from its very first breath a baby participates in sin, just because he or she is the progeny of Adam and Eve. This becomes the doctrine of original sin.

But the New Testament was written in Greek, so it’s helpful to go back to some of the Greek origins of these words. Sin in Greek is hamartia, which literally means to miss the mark. Now that has a very different feeling. What is my mark, which, if I miss it I am committing sin? Did Adam miss the mark?

From my understanding of the story in the Garden of Eden, Adam is actually being graduated by God. He’s not being punished. Otherwise, what is he going to do—just hang around in the Garden of Eden? He’s actually being sent to do something in the world.

In any case, any transformational teaching strongly recommends self-inquiry, because that is the self that needs to be transformed. Unless I am becoming aware of this, how am I going to be transforming anything? I have difficulty with organized religions, because the churches are not interested in encouraging self-inquiry. You look in the concordance of the Bible. There are hundreds of entries under faith, and a few entries under knowledge, but not a single entry under self-knowledge.

On the other hand, the Gnostic gospels very strongly emphasize this; so do all the Christian mystics, Meister Eckhart and John of the Cross among others. For example, in the Gospel of Thomas: “The kingdom of God is within you and without you. If you would know God, you must know yourself. When you know yourself, you will realize that you are the son of the Living Father. If you do not know yourself, you are in poverty. In fact, you are poverty.” I personally do not know a stronger statement encouraging self-knowledge or self-inquiry.

The word for self-knowledge is not always exactly the same. It can be self-observation, self-inquiry, self-study. It is very strongly emphasized by Parmenides and by Plotinus that knowing and becoming are not two different things. The only kind of knowledge that is worthwhile is that which changes the one who studies. It transforms you, so—as Plotinus remarked— knowing and becoming are one thing.

In the thirteenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna asks Krishna what true knowledge is. Krishna then, interestingly, describes the characteristics of the knower. Again, here is the idea that no knowledge is really worthwhile unless it transforms the knower. Therefore self-inquiry and self-transformation are not two different things.

Richard: Very striking. I’ve been tempted to relate what Christianity called the Son of God to what Hinduism calls Atman. I AM in the Gospel of John seems to refer to this Atman.

Ravi: Let me take the saying of Christ in John 10:30: “I and the Father are one.” In India, one would say, “I am Brahman,” or “Atman is Brahman.”

There is another remark to be made here, which has been written about by serious scholars. All the great statements of Christ, such as “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” should in fact be translated, “I AM is the way, the truth, and the life.” In English that expression doesn’t make sense, so it gets changed in a way that tends to make it seem almost egotistical coming from Christ. But he repeatedly says, “I am not the author of the words I say. I simply say what my father in heaven tells me to say.”

This idea—I AM is the way—is what Yahweh means in Exodus when he asks Moses to go and tell the Pharaoh to let his people go. Moses asks, “Who shall I say has sent me?” In Exodus 3:14, it says, “Go tell the pharaoh that I AM has sent you.” I AM is actually in fact referring to Yahweh, so when Christ says “I AM is the way, the truth, and the life,” that reference is very high.

I often quote the seventeenth-century Dutch mystic Angelus Silesius: “Christ could be born a thousand times in Galilee—but all in vain until he’s born in me.” Christ represents a level of consciousness that could well have been present in the man called Jesus. You can read Meister Eckhart, who says that every Christian is called to be Mary and give birth to the Word. Or even Saint Paul: “I am crucified to the world. I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”

Richard: That’s the principle: the Son is the I AM?

Ravi: Yes.

Richard: I wouldn’t be very good at debating these views with you, because I almost entirely agree.

Ravi: No, you don’t need to. I think we can even disagree on things. Sometimes this sounds like a joke, but any serious conversation can take place only among consenting adults. If we both agree that scriptures are worthwhile, that the spirit world is not nonsensical, then we can actually have different perspectives. We can even disagree on many details in which we learn from each other, but if one does not consent about the major idea, I often don’t talk about these things at all.

To put it slightly differently, as Socrates said, “Any real philosophy can be done only in a state of eros.” What he meant by eros was love, not only what has now become known as erotic love. If you and I wish to have a philosophical conversation, we need to be in a state of a kind of love. Then we could even disagree. After all, lovers don’t always like the same kind of food, or the same kind of theory, or the same works of art.

Richard: That’s very beautiful. Let’s explore what you could call the dual role of religion. On the one hand, religion is or ought to be about fostering this process of self-inquiry that you were talking about, but religion also seems to have a social function. It’s used as a tool for advancing a more or less common level of morality. Religion in its exoteric form has to deal with a lot of people who really aren’t interested in self-inquiry. In fact they have always been a small minority. It’s this that most people want, so the ordinary form of religion is what most people get.

There seems to be a real tension between these two aspects of religion. One is, shall we say, very individualistic, with a matter of self-inquiry, discovering oneself, ultimately discovering that the Self is common to everyone. Then there are the social and moral and conventional roles that religion plays. These two roles often come into conflict.

Ravi: First of all, although they often wish to have believers rather than searchers, I don’t feel that one needs to be against the religions. I’m always impressed that when there are earthquakes somewhere, or floods, churches will often gather funds to help people. Even otherwise, my impression is that without religions human beings would be even more barbarous than we are.

I also think the religions can be great museum keepers—wonderful icons, wonderful cathedrals, wonderful texts. They preserve them. But you know, nobody ever became a great artist just by visiting museums.

In Christianity, the spiritual search was more or less assigned to the monasteries. If you are serious about spiritual search, then you don’t get entangled with the social life, you join a monastery where you can practice spiritual disciplines.

Then the monasteries are separated from the church organizations, which are not always necessarily in harmony with the monasteries. If you look at history, you see that very few popes have been canonized. This indicates that the whole ecclesiastical process is a little different from spiritual development. They don’t have to be contradictory, because occasionally popes also have been canonized, but a person could also be like John of the Cross—canonized after he was given a lot of trouble by the church.

I am not against the churches. I don’t need to waste any of my energy by being against something. I just need to ask repeatedly, what am I for? That is the usage of my energy that I am interested in.

Richard: That’s a good place to stop. I think this has been a very profound conversation, certainly one of the most profound interviews I’ve ever done.

Ravi: What one can say also depends so much on who is asking. In fact, this might interest you. When I was with Krishnamurti, I was asking questions, and in every situation there were sidekicks who thought I was asking too many questions. One day, he said to me in their presence, “Please keep asking. That way you assist like a midwife at the delivery of something which is difficult to deliver.”

 

 

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