Nyaya, the lamp at the door, shining inside and outside – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
1. Dr. Hagelin: Last week, Maharishi declared that, in truth, there is no difference between the unmanifest Unified Field and its manifest expressions in the universe: “Between the unmanifest and the manifest, there is nothing; it is the same thing.” Maharishi also said this unified reality of life is explained in the Nyaya Sutras of the Vedic literature: “Nyaya is the lamp at the door; the outside and the inside meet at the door.” My question for Maharishi is this: If there is no difference between the outside and the inside, ultimately, then what is the door that stands between them?
2. Nyaya, the lamp at the door, is the science of investigation about what makes light outside, what makes light inside: What makes silence behave like dynamism, what is the source of dynamism.
3. Investigation into that is called science: vigyan. The vi of vigyan comes from vishesha and vivrita.
4. The reality of the lamp at the door is that there is one light that is seen outside and inside. This is vivrita. It takes the vision round and round. This process does justice to the reality of light, revealing that it’s not two lights. The two appear, in the same way as a snake appears in the string.
5. The same is seen in the field of Vedanta with reference to the word and the gap. The structure of Veda itself is appearance and disappearance.
6. Veda is the supreme authenticity. 7. Science and technology both are the two aspects of self-referral consciousness.
8. For education to be preparation for successful life, affluent, fulfilled life, it has to be Vedic education. Children in this education will rule the world. Their territory will be Brahm–aham brahmasmi. The education of Vedic University will do justice to the total field of knowledge.
9. The total field of knowledge will create a civilization worthy of man. Human existence is purely divine.
10. German people want to create an education which will generate leadership. Our German Rajas are active on that.
11. Peace Government will purify the whole world consciousness.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is widely regarded as one of the foremost scientists in the field of consciousness.
It seems that with each passing year, the pace of change is quickening, and there are no signs that it is going to slow down any time soon. Along with rapid change comes unpredictability, and often volatility at every level of society—family, community, business, and government.
2012 is not likely to be any different. Numerologically, 2012 is a “5” year. In a 9-year cycle, it is the “middle” year. Archetypally, the number 5 represents unexpected change, uncertainty, and re-balancing of energies. So in case things haven’t been uncertain enough for you in our world, just hang on—chances are, it’s about to get more intense! So my inquiry is, since it could be a year of unexpected change anyway, what unexpected shift in the mass consciousness and collective action might be possible if we focused our energy and attention?
We can choose to struggle against the uncertainty or to take it as an invitation to discovery, new learning, and growth. We have no guidebook for today and tomorrow because the world has never been where we are now. So how do we navigate our unpredictable future? How do we prepare when we don’t know what we are preparing for? How do we ensure that we will be ok? In this article, I outline nine skills, approaches, and perspectives that could serve us well in navigating our uncertain future.
First, we can look at life as energy and learn more about how life works from an energy point of view. Everything is energy and that energy is always in motion. Life is energy in motion. Relationships are energy in motion. Family, society, business, and government are all about relationships and how the energy is flowing in those relationships. And in order for relationships to be healthy and productive, there cannot be winners and losers. Everyone, on at least some level, has got to win. The energy must be flowing in such a way that serves everyone. Therefore, we must be aware of how our choices, decisions, and actions are impacting others and look for the choices that move everyone forward.
Secondly, we can be willing to let things get messy for awhile. Although some might fear that things have to get worse before they can get better, a bigger-picture view usually helps us understand that the “getting worse” is just a necessary breakdown or unraveling that must happen before a new pattern or creation can form. Therefore, the messiness is actually serving a purpose. There is huge momentum in the evolutionary flow. We are on our way from where we have been to where we are going. If we fight against that flow and try to maintain control and keep things orderly, the ride is going to be even rougher than if we just trust that the messy period is a natural part of the evolutionary process.
Which takes us to number three.In uncertain times it is important to be able to perceive potential before it fully emerges, and then to follow that potential and let it show us the way forward. Focusing on solving problems slows us down and puts us out of sync with the rapid pace of evolution and change. A problem is not something to be solved; it is a message to be listened to and a potential partner with which to co-create. Problems are just symptoms that something is not working. And when something is not working, that is because something else now wants to happen. What may have worked at one time is no longer working because the situation or circumstance has evolved.
Culture and society are evolving at ever increasing rates. If we try to “keep up,” we are doomed to failure because we’re working too hard at trying to figure out how to keep up. However, if we choose to ride the wave and let the powerful flow of rapid evolution carry us and show us the way forward, we discover an enormous energy that can sweep us to the next place. Synergy and synchronicity kick in when we follow “what wants to happen.” Miracles start to become the norm. The problems then seem to disappear, become irrelevant, or solve themselves.
When things are moving fast, our focus must be on what wants to happen and where the wave of evolution is taking us next, not on fixing problems that belong to an old paradigm that no longer serves. Focusing on fixing problems keeps us stuck.
Let me make a point of clarification here. I fully acknowledge that we have crises in our world. And when a crisis occurs, we must, of course, respond in the short term to take care of immediate needs. When people need food and shelter, we must take care of that immediate need. However, as quickly as possible, our bigger focus must be on “what wants to happen here? What is this situation trying to show us? What must be our next big step forward?” One part of our awareness may need to be on taking care of the short-term needs, but some part of us must also be focusing on the bigger picture and what wants to happen.
A fifth skill for navigating uncertain terrain is the ability to step beyond judgments of right or wrong, good or bad. Again, everything that happens has a message—it is trying to tell us something. When we get caught up in labeling something good or bad, right or wrong, we can miss the message that the circumstance is trying to convey. If we step beyond the judgment into a place of listening, observing, and intuiting, there is always a message. The sooner we can hear and respond to the message, the more things will start to flow.
All of this is not to say that just following the energy and paying attention to the message will make everything easy and fine. Sometimes the message feels like it actually just makes things more complicated. Or doing what the message is asking may seem impossible. Our challenge here is to accept not having the answers. All we can do is listen, observe, intuit, and take one step at a time while following the potential as best we can.
The sixth skill that can serve us in uncertain times is knowing how to be both visionary and strategist. The unpredictable road ahead challenges us to live in the intersection between being and doing, between intuition and intellect. In Transformational Presence work, we talk about the vertical and horizontal orientations of awareness (see my latest book, Create A World That Works, chapter 4). Most of us default to one orientation or another. In these volatile times, we need to be equally at home in both.
A seventh helpful skill is knowing when to act and when to press pause. The Hermetic Principle of Gender says that the creative process must always have both masculine and feminine energies. This means that inspiration and creativity must be met with strategy and action. Yet it also tells us that there are times for moving full-speed ahead and other times for pausing, reflecting, and intuiting the next steps. A related principle, the Principle of Gestation, tells us that all things come in their own time. The cake will not be baked until all of the chemical reactions have occurred in the oven. In an evolutionary flow, things take as long as they take, and some things are out of our hands. (For more on the Hermetic Principles, see Create A World That Works, chapter 11.)
Which leads us to the eighth skill: the ability to access greater wisdom. It is one thing to have a lot of knowledge; it is quite another thing to have the wisdom of how to use that knowledge. Or even to know when to admit that our knowledge is based on an old paradigm and therefore we really don’t know anything about where we are now! The invitation in those moments is to trust that there is a new paradigm emerging that requires new knowledge and skill sets, and that our job now is to learn fast.
Wisdom also brings clarity about what is yours to do and what is not yours to do. This is a really important awareness skill in times of uncertainty. You may be tempted to try to take care of everything. You can’t. Use clear discernment to know where you should actually be focusing your energy, and then give it all you’ve got.
Wisdom is not something we learn; it’s something we grow in to. However, we can certainly invite it in! Just the recognition that knowledge isn’t enough and that there is a bigger awareness to tap is already a start. On the unpredictable road ahead, there will not always be time to learn all there is to learn or to carefully craft a plan. When things are moving fast, intuition and inner wisdom, along with the wisdom and support of those we trust, may be all we have. It is important to cultivate that wisdom when things are calm so that it is there to serve us when we are paddling hard in the #10 rapids.
Finally, the ninth skill is presence. If your aim is not just to survive the road ahead, but to truly make a difference in your world, then it is important to develop a personal presence that is inherently transformational. Transformational Presence is a result of living in the partnership between intuition and intellect, soul and ego, being and doing. Transformational Presence is an embodiment of all that I’ve written about here and more. It is about showing up to life in such a way that creates the optimal conditions for transformation to occur. Transformational Presence means closing the gap between what you know and how you live. It means being in touch with a deep and profound inner wisdom and letting that wisdom guide you.
Navigating life is an art. What kind of artist you are becomes evident in uncertain times when all you have to fall back on is your craft and skill in artful living. Know and respect your weaknesses as well as your strengths. Take good care of yourself, because, when things are moving fast, you are the only one who can. And take advantage of the quiet times to continue growing yourself.
2012 will likely bring more uncertainty and challenges on all levels. However, we also can influence how the year unfolds by our thoughts, attitudes, intentions, and actions. As 2011 draws to a close and you prepare for the dawning of a new year, I invite you to spend some time listening to what the evolutionary flow is asking of you in the coming year. What is the vision you feel called to give energy to? What unexpected change could actually serve a greater good? How can you support that unexpected change? Just because something doesn’t appear to be possible today does not mean that it will not be possible tomorrow. Everything is changing quickly. And these unexpected times call us each to step into great wisdom and to learn how life works in a new era.
Listening to that evolutionary flow and partnering with it can take courage. It might mean challenging the conventional wisdom of the day and standing for new perspectives and approaches. Heading into 2012, I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from poet and activist Audre Lord:
When I dare to be powerful—to use my strength in the service of my vision—then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
Who might you be in these uncertain times if you forgot to be afraid? What might you accomplish if you used all of your strength and skills on manifesting a vision that serves a greater good?
Much has been written about the Mayan calendar ending in 2012. It doesn’t mean that the world ends in 2012. It means that up until now, in a sense, our story had been written. From 2012 on it’s up to us to write our story. The page is blank. What story will we as a collective write? What is the story that you choose to give energy to? And what is yours to do in order to manifest that story?
Whatever that is, live it now. The world can’t afford for you to wait any longer
When you take the perennial meditative journey to the depths of your own self, you discover what it was like before the beginning.
You come to rest in the timeless empty void before the universe was born, which the mystics call the ground of being. When you taste the profound freedom that is the inherent nature of that primordial ground, it can seem like the end of the path. Where else could there possibly be for you to go? The very notion of seeking for liberation, for enlightenment, for meaning or purpose seems absurd. The question, “Who am I? ” is answered before it is asked. And the ques tion, “Why am I here?” simply does not arise.
In traditional enlightenment, this is the end of the path. But the journey of evolutionary enlightenment does not end here. Why? Because the cosmic experiment that is life did not end here. If that empty ground, where every question is answered, was all there was to know and to discover, why would the universe exist? Why did something come from nothing?
Think about this for yourself: In the experience of the ground of being, which you can discover for yourself through the meditative journey, there is no desire to do anything, no impetus whatsoever. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to be or become. That’s what it was like before the universe was born.
And yet, here we are. Out of that utter peace, from the depths of that desireless ness, for some reason this miraculous pro cess burst forth. Why?
Why did something come from nothing?
This is not an abstract philosophical question but a profound spiritual contem plation that can take you to the essence of what it means to be alive. Why did some thing come from nothing … and become light, energy, matter, life, consciousness and you — 14 billion years later reading these words?
Why are you here?
If the eternal perfection that is the source of everything knows no desire, why would the universe have emerged? If the ground of all things has no impulse but to be, why did it become? But it did. And thanks to evolutionary science, we can behold just how far this miraculous explosion of becoming has brought us in the 14 billion years since that initial burst. We can reflect on its awe-inspiring progress, and wonder at its ever-greater complexity and integration and creativity. And we can ask ourselves, why did all of this come from nothing?
I believe that for a human being today who aspires to find enlightenment, that question is an essential part of awakening. It is not enough to follow the question, “Who am I?” to that timeless place where all ques tions dissolve. We also need to know: “Why am I here?” and to find the answer to “Why am I here?,” understanding the primordial moment when something came from noth ing is crucial. We need to know what actu ally happened at the very beginning, at that instant when being gave rise to becoming.
When I ask this question, I’m not just talking about whether you believe in a biblical God or a big bang, or a whole series of cosmic explosions. I’m talking about a different kind of knowing — a direct, experi ential recognition of what occurred in that moment 14 billion years ago. You don’t need a powerful telescope to see all the way back to the big bang — you can go there, right now, in your very own experience.
Scientists look at the big bang from the outside, so to speak, using complex instru ments and the laws of physics to show us the explosion of light and energy, which became matter, which, in turn, gave rise to life, from which emerged the capacity for consciousness. But the perspective I’m shar ing with you is one that looks at that very same event from the inside — that gets right beneath the surface of the stillness before the beginning, and locates the very impetus behind that primordial moment of birth.
The big bang is not just a metaphor or a disputed scientific theory about what occurred 14 billion years ago. It’s happening right now. Something is coming from nothing every second. You might not be conscious of it, but it’s true. Your own experience of action and reaction is not unbroken — there are countless moments of zero between each and every thought, every impulse, and every response. Something is coming from nothing, in and through each and every one of us, constantly. If you slow your experience down, and keep slowing it down, you’ll start to see that there is a vast chasm of empty space that is the foundation of everything that is occurring, the ground out of which each impulse arises. Even as you are aware of the body, of the passing of time and the movement of thought, beneath it all you can become conscious of this current of stillness that is the ground of being.
Because you can locate that empty ground in your very own experience, you can also locate the seed of everything that came out of that nothingness. The essence of evolutionary enlightenment is found in that precise moment when nothing became something. When you contemplate the ground of being, you can begin to intuit for yourself what that very moment must have been like…
This article was excerpted from Andrew Cohen’s new book “Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path to Spiritual Awakening.”
In Evolutionary Enlightenment we are presented with an authentic spiritual innovation: a new philosophy, path, and practice of spiritual enlightenment for the twenty-first century, forged through more than two decades of transformative spiritual work with men and women around the world and in serious conversation with leading luminaries from almost every religious and spiritual tradition, both ancient and modern.
Andrew Cohen, founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning quarterly magazine EnlightenNext, has re-envisioned spiritual enlightenment in a completely new context. This context is, as he writes, nothing less than “the fourteen-billion-year epic of our cosmic evolution-a vast perspective that enhances and enlarges to almost infinite proportions our sense of the significance of what it means to be human.”Evolutionary Enlightenment takes readers on an experiential journey into this new perspective, path, and practice.
Taken from direct transcriptions of Cohen’s talks and retreats, and meticulously edited by Cohen himself, the chapters in this book combine the powerful transmission of a mystic with the clarity and precision of an original and creative thinker.
Imagine what it would be like to witness the very moment of creation, when the first spark of light exploded out of the vast, empty void at the origin of the universe. Cohen starts by taking you on an experiential voyage “back to before the beginning of time.” But unlike more traditional Enlightenment teachings, which rest in the profound stillness of that empty ground of Being, Cohen doesn’t stop there. Instead, he guides you on a creative journey “inside the evolutionary process,” and begins to reveal the principles of a new kind of enlightenment.
FROM THE FORWORD BY DEEPAK CHOPRA
When books speak to you personally, you hear the author’s voice whispering, not just in your ear but to your deepest yearning. Andrew Cohen did that for me, making me believe something I long to be true: There has never been a better time to be enlightened. When I was a child, it was easy to feel left behind. I was born too late to shoot arrows beside Arjuna, meditate under the Bodhitree with the Buddha, or sit on an olive-covered hillside in Galilee hearing the Sermon on the Mount. There is a pervasive sense, even in advanced spiritual circles, that we are looking overour shoulders at the epochs when humans were closer to God or to their souls or to the promise of Moksha.
So it’s heartening to hear a teacher who insists, with passion and a clear voice, that we haven’t been left behind. This is only one of the messages to be found in these pages. Andrew has the pulse of modern life at his fingertips. His diagnosis of the demands and distractions of our noisy, busy world shows the accuracy of a skilled diagnostician. But long ago, when I spent many hours a day diagnosing patients, I learned that none of them would take any advice until they understood, quite basically, what the first step to healing needed to be. That first step was always the same: “You’re going to get better.” Reassurance is medicine, even if it can’t be bottled, and in this book Andrew touched me with a deep sense of reassurance: Don’t worry. There’s a place for the seeker. The universe has collaborated to bring you here, to this moment, so that you can wake up.
The famous adage is wrong: The journey of a thousand miles doesn’t begin with the first step. It begins with the assurance that you can take the first step. Many people lack that assurance, for all kinds of reasons. Some feel unworthy to seek beyond the limited territory of the known; some feel trapped behind walls or inwardly blocked; some feel paralyzed by timidity, fear, doubt, and skepticism in all their dubious coloring. When Andrew asks, Why do some people develop a passion for spirituality while others don’t?, the answer he gives agrees perfectly with my own perspective: they haven’t awakened to the evolutionary impulse within.
EVOLUTIONARY ENLIGHTENMENT HAS FOUR SECTIONS:
Part 1 – The Cosmic Journey
Imagine what it would be like to witness the very moment of creation, when the first spark of light exploded out of the vast, empty void at the origin of the universe. Cohen starts by taking you on an experiential voyage “back to before the beginning of time.” But unlike more traditional Enlightenment teachings, which rest in the profound stillness of that empty ground of Being, Cohen doesn’t stop there. Instead, he guides you on a creative journey “inside the evolutionary process,” and begins to reveal the principles of a new kind of enlightenment.
Part 2 Understanding The Territory
In part 2, Cohen turns your attention to the inner landscape of the evolving self. He describes the many different dimensions that make up who we are: our biological impulses, our cultural values, our egoic tendencies, and Cohen’s original concept of the “authentic self,” which is the individual embodiment of the evolutionary impulse. In doing so, he empowers you to identify these different dimensions of yourself and awakens your own power to choose who you want to be.
Part 3 – The Path & The Goal
Part 3 shows you how to put Evolutionary Enlightenment into practice. Cohen presents a new context for the age-old practice of meditation, which he describes as “the art and science of stillness.” He then dedicates a chapter to each of his five fundamental tenets, exploring the core challenges and potentials that individuals confront on the path of spiritual evolution. Profound yet practical, Cohen’s five tenets begin with a deep reckoning with your fundamental clarity of intention, and lead you to the recognition that your own spiritual transformation is not for yourself but for the sake of the whole.
Part 4 – Enlightenment & the Evolution of Culture
Unlike many spiritual paths, the goal of Evolutionary Enlightenment is not just personal liberation, but the creation of a new culture. In this section, Cohen illuminates what he calls the “intersubjective” or collective dynamics through which our values are shaped, and shows how we can begin to forge new ones by coming together in the mutual recognition of our essential role as conscious agents in the evolutionary process.
Andrew Cohen is a spiritual teacher, cultural visionary, and founder of the global nonprofit EnlightenNext and its award-winning publication EnlightenNext magazine. His original teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment redefines spiritual awakening within the context of cosmic evolution and highlights a new understanding of God or Spirit as the creative impulse toward change in both self and culture. After a transformative meeting with the renowned Advaita Vedanta master H.W.L. Poonja in 1986, Cohen began teaching internationally and almost immediately started reshaping the larger cultural conversation about the purpose and significance of enlightenment in our time. He founded EnlightenNext magazine almost twenty years ago as a forum for serious spiritual and philosophical inquiry, and has since become known for his unique capacity to foster culture-changing dialogues among leading thinkers from a wide array of traditions and disciplines.
Mountains Reflected in a dragonfly’s eye. — Issa (1762-1826)
This exquisite Haiku brought to mind the striking words of a Japanese sage that “the very mountains can become Buddha.” If mountains have a buddha-nature, then the host of lives that compose a mountain — boulders, waterfalls, trees, shrubbery, grasses, lichen, and the thousand and one creatures that aerate its soil — must each have a buddha-nature which, in the course of ages, could become Buddha. And the dragonfly? Surely its metamorphosis from larva to the lovely winged thing that swoops low across meadows and ponds is an epitome of being and becoming.
What is the impelling force behind the process of becoming? This is a large theme, and elicited from contributors to our 1995 Special Issue on “Evolution: Miracle of Being and Becoming” a number of articles bearing directly and indirectly on this absorbing topic, each open-ended so as to leave our readers free to weave the varying strands of thought into a harmonious whole by the light of their own intuitive wisdom. Abandoning an either-or approach, they have sought viewpoints which embrace neither the stance of creationists nor that of materialistic evolutionists. The questions are as challenging today as they were 150 or more years ago: Did man ascend gradually from the monkeys to the apes, with mind, spirit, and consciousness as by-products of a series of chance mutations? Or is each of us the handiwork of a Supreme Being, a Personal God who continues today as since the Garden of Eden to create a new soul for every human being born on earth, so that there is no evolutionary history behind each individual soul? Are there other alternatives?
Addressing the scientific view, the article reviewing The Hidden History of the Human Race should be read by the evolutionist only if he seek truth uncluttered by prejudice, while microbiologist Catherine Roberts challenges the California State Board of Education to “recognize the inseparable link that exists between biological considerations and spiritual questions of ultimate cause and purpose.” The theory of “an inherent evolutionary impulse” rings truer today than when Alfred Russel Wallace first proposed it in 1858; a few avant-garde scientists are searching out “the hidden face of consciousness as the motivator” behind all evolution and beginning to perceive our earth as a living, sentient being, whose rhythmic processes move in harmony with solar and galactic cycles.
Along religious lines, the story of Adam and Eve and the Serpent receives fresh and appealing interpretation; instead of blaming Eve, Adam, or the Serpent, the Garden of Eden episode becomes a triumph of self-awakening. Other traditions view this event in terms of higher beings than ourselves lighting the fires of mind in early humans, and depict human sexuality in an evolutionary context where the methods of reproducing our kind have varied from “ethereal nonsexual beings, to more material androgynous ones, to today’s sexual mankind,” with a probable return over millions of years to androgynous and nonsexual forms of human reproduction.
What keys are offered to elevate the human race, a part of our nature still animal-like, another part portraying traits and qualities of soul and spirit that might outshine the angels? “Know Thyself!” said the Oracle at Delphi. Did we have knowledge of ourselves, we would glimpse in broad strokes not only our beginnings when divine beings imparted to us the elements of harmonious and creative living, but also something of our wondrous future as co-workers with the gods. The times are demanding that we view ourselves and every portion of the cosmos from within out. Regardless of outer form, we and every entity, micro and macro, are essentially beings of light, “sparks of eternity,” imbodying on earth as part of an aeons-long journey of self-discovery.
All the articles in this issue, while delineating different approaches to the Evolution theme, have as their basic motif the ultimate attainment of full self-awareness and godhood. Consciousness — whether we call it life, divinity, mind-stuff, or whatever — is viewed as “the ground of all being,” composing a chain of “interrelated consciousness-centered beings,” which undergo the full range of possible evolutionary experiences before ultimately returning home “to unconditioned be-ness consciousness.” Underlying all is the “irresistible urge” within its heart that propels every entity to find its “spiritual identity with the divine Self of the universe.” As the dynamic cause of evolution, consciousness undergoes a “constant ebb and flow of various activities of life, cosmic to human,” with destruction and regeneration of form being vital to progress and the means of releasing our spirit-soul to higher realms. Of great import is our need for “role models with a unified vision, a worldview that allows us to . . . sense the fundamental inner unity of all life.”
In truth, could we perceive the full death-and-birth cycle of every atom in nature we would see enacted before our inner eye the awesome miracle of divinity infusing and suffusing every portion of the universe. All is in motion, urged ever forward and onward by an impelling force that keeps every being, from protozoon to human, seeking to better itself and its environment, as it strives toward humanhood on its way eventually to imbody in full awareness the light, power, and energy of godhood.
Grace F. Knoche was born in 1909 at the theosophical headquarters, then at Point Loma, California, and attended the Raja-Yoga School and Academy founded by Katherine Tingley. She joined the TS in 1929 shortly before Mrs. Tingley left on her last tour to Europe. Under G. de Purucker as Leader, she worked at the headquarters as a compositor in the Press, in the Secretary General’s office, and on the Leader’s secretarial staff. She assisted Dr. de Purucker in revising the Encyclopedic Glossary, and was on the committees responsible for reorganizing his Esoteric School materials, later published as The Dialogues of G. de Purucker (1948) and Fountain-Source of Occultism (1974). She continued her studies at Theosophical University, receiving a Ph.D. in 1944. At various times from 1933 to 1946 she taught violin, Greek, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Bible translation, and Qabbalah at Theosophical University, and painting and sculpture at the Lomaland school.
During the Cabinet administration after Purucker’s death in 1942, Grace served as private secretary to the Chairman of the Cabinet, continuing as private secretary to the next two Leaders, Colonel Arthur Conger and James A. Long. She worked closely with James A. Long on his new magazine, Sunrise, begun in 1951.
On Mr. Long’s death in 1971, Grace assumed leadership of the TS and became editor of Sunrise. For almost 35 years she encouraged the membership to assume responsibility for directing the course of their lives along universal principles, stressing that the same compassionate life currents that build and shape the evolution of the cosmos also inform the patterns of everyday experience. Always a collaborator at heart, Grace worked to establish a spirit of cooperation among the various theosophical organizations. She died in Altadena, California, on February 18, 2006, at the age of 97.
Books by Grace F. Knoche published by Theosophical University Press:
The Mystery Schools (Full-text online)
To Light a Thousand Lamps (Full-text online)
Theosophy in the Qabbalah (Full-text online in PDF format)
Whenever I contemplate the mystery of consciousness and how it evolves within and through us, I am always struck by the same thing: How easy it is to see a glorious future in those moments when we are spiritually awake, when our awareness is enlightened — and how difficult it is to see that glory when it is not.
When spirit overwhelms us, when we experience higher states of consciousness, previously unseen worlds open up to us. On the wings of spiritual ecstasy, deeper and higher human capacities for penetrating insight, profound cognition, blissful intimacy and all-encompassing love reveal themselves in all their glory.
It is, in many ways, very similar to what it’s like when we fall in love. When we fall in love, the surging waves of surrendered affection carry with them an experience of a trust and vulnerability that is intoxicating, spiritually fulfilling and life-affirming. And when we fall out of love, the bond of trust disintegrates, intimacy evaporates, and transparency and vulnerability disappear. The thrill of euphoric unity is gone and one is alone again, trapped in the prison of one’s own personal mind and separate ego.
The same sequence often follows extraordinary episodes of spiritual illumination. When we experience states of consciousness beyond ego and realize spiritual communion with others, we enter into another dimension that literally transcends the old and familiar. And in this new world, we discover a oneness, an ecstatic intimacy, an ease of being and a unity of mind that make all things possible. But when those higher states eventually dissipate, too often the palpable sense of unlimited possibility is nowhere to be found.
In the new enlightenment, in what I call Evolutionary Enlightenment, the goal is individual and collective conscious evolution in real time. That specifically points to the co-creation of new structures in consciousness, psyche and culture. It’s about creating the future from the inside out. And this process always begins with transformation at the very deepest depths of our own selves — a transformation that shines out and touches the world around us with the immediacy of its own radiance and potency.
In the early stages of our own spiritual development, we are dependent upon the experience of euphoric states to be able to see, feel and know that these higher potentials really do exist. The bliss and ecstasy of those states temporarily breaks the deep and often unconscious shackles of postmodernity: nihilism, cynicism, narcissism and materialism.
It frees our awareness to expand in all directions, to embrace not only the outer limits but also the innermost core of our larger body, the entire cosmos. When we share that liberating existential clarity with others, a truly enlightened perspective emerges. Together we can see and feel, directly cognize, and intuit a glorious future that is possible to create here and now, in the present moment — not as a remote ideal but as the most screamingly imminent potential imaginable.
When many individuals simultaneously know and experience the perfection of the possible, Spirit itself calls us all to its own next step. Indeed, we are compelled to be the future that we see. Under the intoxicating influence of spiritual bliss, all of the individual and collective ego’s fears and attachments are rendered null and void. But until the individual or individuals have actually taken that next step, until those higher potentials have become a permanent attainment, our ability to see the future that we want to create will always depend upon the experience of spiritual intoxication.
However, when we do the unthinkable, when we actually and demonstrably evolve to a higher stage beyond the veiling influence of postmodern existential confusion, we will be able to see that future as easily as we see our own face when we look in the mirror. Seeing that glory will no longer be dependent upon the presence of a higher state because we will already be there. From that point on, we will always only be creating the world that we have already become.
‘Discover Evolutionary Enlightenment, A New Path to Spiritual Awakening’
My teachings are about spiritual enlightenment — both what we could call traditional enlightenment, and also what I call the new enlightenment, or Evolutionary Enlightenment. Traditional enlightenment is what I learned from my teacher, but Evolutionary Enlightenment is what I have discovered and created in my own work over the last almost quarter of a century. During this time, I have discovered a new source of emotional, psychological and spiritual liberation that easily exists within anyone’s reach, anyone who has the eyes to recognize it and the heart to desire it. To put it simply, enlightenment is evolving. It is no longer found only in the bliss of timeless Being; it is found also in the ecstatic urgency of evolutionary Becoming.
It was only after many years of deep introspection, dialogue with masters and thinkers from all traditions and committed work with thousands of spiritual seekers throughout the world that I began to understand what this new enlightenment is all about, why it is so different from what has come before, and why, as I believe, it holds the key not only to our personal development but to our cultural evolution. In the passage that follows, I will briefly share with you the journey I took from the old enlightenment to the new enlightenment.
I became a spiritual teacher in 1986 after a powerful awakening irrevocably transformed my life. My own teacher, H.W.L. Poonja came from the Advaita Vedanta tradition, and it was the timeless simplicity of this ancient teaching that catalyzed my awakening. The essence of my realization was simple: everything IS as it is. It was a classic satori, or enlightenment, experience — seeing through the illusion of time directly into timelessness, awakening to the eternal Now, the mystical, absolute, nondual, nonrelative Ground of Being. My teacher taught me — as he’d been taught by his teacher, the great saint Ramana Maharshi — that the freedom I was looking for was already present as the very ground of my own awareness.
That ground, the deepest dimension of who we all are, always already exists prior to time and the creative process. That is why mystics throughout the ages have told us that there is nowhere to go and nothing to do except to realize THAT. After my own awakening to this timeless truth, I initially taught in the same way that I had been taught. My spontaneous response to those who came to me in the first few years of my teaching career was simply this: Realize and surrender.
Realize and discover that mystery that cannot be understood by the mind, and surrender to that and that alone. Realize that you were never born. Surrender to the fact that you were never unfree. Realize that there was never a problem and never back down from that realization. Surrender to that and that alone. I was convinced beyond doubt by my own experience that there was nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one to be or become. In fact, in those days, I was so sure about this view that I questioned the authenticity of any spiritual teaching that implied that there was anything in the future to become other than who we always already are.
This teaching is not new. It has been the precious jewel that has passed from Master to disciple for thousands of years. The perennial goal it points to is essentially transcendence — a dramatic release or escape from time, mind and world that is found when one awakens to the timeless, formless domain of Being. In most traditional mystical teachings, this other-worldly emphasis on transcendence as the goal of enlightenment hasn’t changed since the Buddha preached the dharma in ancient India 2,500 years ago or since Adi Shankara wrote his Crest-Jewel of Discrimination in the eighth century.
And for us postmodernists, it also hasn’t changed since the glory days of the 1960s when Harvard psychologist-turned-psychedelic-rebel Richard Alpert, a.k.a Ram Dass, published his groundbreaking spiritual manifesto and call-to-arms, Be Here Now. Almost 40 years later, spiritual bestsellers are still proclaiming the same message: Transcend the mind and time. Rest in the “now,” in the infinity of the present moment. All else is a temporary illusion.
From this perspective, the world and all of manifestation is a mere “play” of consciousness, or lila, as it’s called in Vedanta: What happens here is not ultimately real. Only the Absolute, unchanging, timeless, formless, unmanifest Ground is real. Therefore, nothing needs to change in this manifest world, and true freedom is found in escaping from it altogether. Why entertain an illusion? Why try and improve that which is not real in the first place? But as powerful and as liberating as this perspective was at the time of my own awakening, as a spiritual teaching in our day and age I soon began to find it problematic.
I observed that many who came to me in those early years found themselves plunged into the same miraculous state of liberated consciousness that I had discovered, but the effect of this powerful experience was generally not the same. It seemed that, in most individuals, awakening to the bliss of Being did not automatically lead to radical transformation. Many individuals had great difficulty letting go of doubt, even in the face of their own ecstatic flights into enlightened awareness. They were reluctant to accept and stand for the liberating truth of what they had seen with their own minds and hearts. To me it always appeared obvious that the power and significance of that which is Absolute was given validation only through our willingness to stand for and embody its glory as ourselves — through action, through choice, through the way we lived in the world of time and form.
As I began to engage more deeply with those around me, I discovered that the state of the individual’s soul — their capacity for integrity, authenticity and higher conscience — always played a critical role in determining how ready they were to embody their own deepest realization. So I began to put more and more of my attention on the all-important question: How can we cultivate the ability and readiness to express the beauty, perfection and wholeness discovered in spiritual revelation?
This was the beginning of a radical divergence from the path and perspective I had been taught. Slowly, over a 10-year period, my teaching became more and more about the transformation of the individual and the world; whereas in the traditional teaching the emphasis was really on liberation from self and world.
The differences in the way I was now seeing were based upon an emerging new way of interpreting what enlightenment meant. In the traditional Eastern metaphysical perspective, the world isn’t real, it’s only an ephemeral appearance, an illusion, a mere insubstantial, transient dream in the mind of God. I felt differently. To me, the world was certainly real and, in fact, was an inherent and all-important dimension of what God always is. For millennia, this question has been the spark of an ongoing metaphysical argument among sages, seers and philosophers.
And it is a significant one. If the world isn’t real, then nothing needs to be done about the way things are. But if the world is real, then it soon becomes apparent to us that there is real work to be done. This work was what my life was now devoted to. I was wholeheartedly committed to the transformation of the world — to bringing the power of enlightened awareness into the world through rational action, through moral being, and through engaging with the process of time in the most deliberate and creative way.
From the very beginning, since my early days as a seeker, I had always been convinced that enlightenment had to make sense. It gradually dawned on me that I was going to have to figure out for myself how to translate the profound shift of perspective I was experiencing into a form that would make deep sense to the world I was living and working in. I needed new ways to interpret the meaning and purpose of enlightenment as it traveled from its roots in the traditional East to its new home in the postmodern West. I knew that the questions I needed to answer in order to find my way forward were important beyond just my own experience. But I could never have predicted where they would lead me.
As the years passed, my emphasis that enlightenment is an action and not merely a higher state emerged more and more powerfully in my teaching. I remember one particular morning many years ago during a retreat in India. I was giving a talk and an unbridled passion poured through me spontaneously. I didn’t know where it came from, but it was calling for this miracle, this mystery beyond time, to become manifest in the world of time and form as ourselves. I found myself imploring those around me not only to awaken to their true Self as timeless Being but to dare to respond to the urgent call to express that liberation in the world of Becoming.
Over time it became clear to me that this awakening passion was really a passion for much more than enlightenment in the traditional sense. The spiritual energy that was running through my veins was calling me to a new, active and creative expression of enlightenment. It was an enlightenment that by its very nature could never be content with the way things were in the past, no matter how glorious that past may have been.
It was an enlightenment that could also never be content with how things were in the present moment, even at those rare instances when everything seems like it couldn’t be more perfect. It was an enlightenment that was defined by a ceaseless and ecstatic reaching forth toward an as yet unborn and unmanifest potential, a constant stretching toward a future perfection that would always lie just beyond one’s fingertips. My inner eye and heart were focused on the freedom of that mysterious place between the immediacy of the present moment and the endless thrill of the possible.
Slowly but surely, in my quest to redefine enlightenment, I began to connect it to the most important emergent narrative of recent cultural history: the discovery of evolution. Seeing our presence in this world from the vantage point of a 14-billion-year process powerfully recontextualizes the spiritual impulse in a thrilling, rational and deeply meaningful framework. In this context, we realize that awakening to timeless Being, the perennial goal of Eastern enlightenment, is only half of the picture — half of the totality of reality. The other half of the picture is the world of form, the process of Becoming — the universal creative impulse, that explosion-in-motion that is the entire evolutionary process that we are all part of. If enlightenment is the discovery of what IS, then it must embrace the ultimate nature of all things: seen and unseen, known and unknown, form and formlessness, both Being and Becoming.
Being is that timeless void out of which the cosmos was born, the empty ground from which everything arises and to which everything ultimately returns. Becoming is the something that emerged out of nothing and is still emerging in this moment. Becoming is Eros, the evolutionary impulse, the first cause, that original spark of light and energy that created the entire universe. And I realized that it was that very same creative spark that was now awakening in my own heart and mind as a sense of ecstatic urgency to evolve. This is why I began to reenvision the very goal of the spiritual path, seeing the purpose of enlightenment as not merely to transcend the world, as I had been taught, but to transform the world through becoming an agent of evolution itself. Enlightenment was not the end of the path. It was the beginning.
In the East, they believe that enlightenment is a final endpoint, a monumental attainment that marks the end of becoming for the individual. Someone who is enlightened has liberated him or herself from identification with anything that exists in time. And this conclusion makes sense when you consider the cultural context in which it first emerged. In ancient India, they had not yet discovered evolution. Like most of the world at that point, they had not yet discerned that time had a beginning and moved in a straight line from the past to the present to the future.
They believed that time, like life and death, was a repetitive process that was constantly going through the same cycle and would for eternity. As a matter of fact, many Hindus in modern-day India still prefer to see our cosmic origins through the lens of their ancient Vedic science, rather than accepting the findings of Western science and modern cosmology. And if reality is seen through this particular cultural lens, it would make sense that one would soon grow weary of the eternal tedium of cyclical existence and hunger for a final release. That’s why the traditions say that the individual who is “fully enlightened,” who has gone all the way, is that rare one who has finally achieved emancipation from the endless repetition of birth and death on the wheel of endless becoming.
It’s important to remember that up until very recently in human history, we didn’t know what we know today: that we are all part of that developmental process that had a beginning in time and that is going somewhere. It’s only been in the last couple of hundred years that we discovered evolution, and only in the 20th century that we came upon what is known as “deep time” — the incomprehensible span of 14 billion years since the universe burst into being. When we apply the perspective of evolution to the nature of enlightenment, it changes everything.
From the perspective of the eternal timeless ground, the traditional teachers are right. The highest spiritual truth is that nothing ever happened, you and I were never born and the big bang never occurred. That’s enlightenment, that’s liberation, that’s samadhi, that’s satori. But from the perspective of evolution, the entire picture changes.
Modern science and cosmology have clearly revealed that time doesn’t move in predictable cycles that return again and again to the same point, but is, in fact, a linear process. Fourteen billion years of development have produced all of manifestation — the entire known universe and everything that’s contained within it — including its greatest mystery: the capacity for consciousness itself. The arrow of time is a creative process and that capacity for creativity and novelty is the most extraordinary part of the whole dramatic unfolding from the big bang to the present moment. This is not just another repetition of an endless cycle. This hasn’t all happened before. Where we are going is not predestined.
The most exciting part of this realization is that we discover, if we look deeply into our own experience, that our own emerging desire for spiritual freedom is not separate from the impulse that is driving the entire process. I call this the Evolutionary Impulse. When we awaken to this impulse, we discover something miraculous: that that dynamic and ever-evolving creative principle is none other than our own Authentic Self. This is the new source of spiritual liberation in the teaching I have come to call Evolutionary Enlightenment. It’s not just about awakening to timeless being — it’s about awakening to eternal, ecstatic Becoming.
Evolutionary Enlightenment calls on us to awaken to both the timeless peace of Being and the relentless passion of the Evolutionary Impulse.
The reason that the Evolutionary Impulse is the source of the New Enlightenment is because of its future-oriented directionality. And this is the important distinction: the old traditional enlightenment is not future-oriented; it is not time-oriented at all. Traditional enlightenment points us beyond the world, beyond time and space, toward what has been, at least until now, the perennial source of spiritual freedom and mystical liberation: the Ground of Being.
But those of us in the 21st century who are looking toward the future urgently need a mystical spirituality and source of soul liberation that points us not away from the world but to that big next step we need to take in our world. That next step will not emerge by itself — it must be consciously created by human beings who have awakened to the same impulse that is driving the process. As we awaken to this vast perspective, an overwhelming and profound truth becomes clear: At this point in evolution, the process is dependent upon us.
The evolutionary process desperately needs our conscious and committed participation. This has become the defining theme and ultimate purpose of Evolutionary Enlightenment over the last 10 years. The old enlightenment, with all its power to free the human mind and heart from suffering, can only lift us beyond the world. But when we realize that the world needs our engaged and enlightened action, it becomes urgent that we find a spiritual path, practice and philosophy that empowers us to courageously and passionately participate in the fast-changing process that we are in the midst of.
This liberating spiritual perspective on the human experience is contemporary and inherently creative. It’s a spiritual teaching for our own time because its central tenet is that a more enlightened future for our world depends on one thing and one thing alone — our higher development. The world around us changes for the better as much as we are willing to change ourselves. The world we occupy and cocreate begins to transform as we do. The old model of enlightenment was one in which the individual was liberated but the world remained the same. In the new enlightenment, the point is no longer merely the liberation of the individual; it’s the evolution of self, culture and cosmos through the individual. That’s Evolutionary Enlightenment.
Q&A part V of the Hitchens vs. Turek debate at VCU, VA. Full debate: http://www.vimeo.com/1904911
and (annotated)
Again ethics, Hitchens reference about Sokrates who would feel shame when making a dishonest or shady argument clearly points at Tureks demagoguery (Hitler=Humanist) from before.
At 3:03 Hitchens is asked about the purpose of life though, enjoy the answer.
Finding the Holy of Holies: Sticky Particles and the Ground of All Being
by James O’Dea on September 12, 2010
There was some excitement at the Tevatron collider site in the U.S. recently not because they had found what has been mischievously referred to as the “God particle,” but because they had ruled out a quarter of the energy range where the Higgs particle is said to exist. Meanwhile the contest of the colliders is still on with researchers at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland reasonably confident that they will be in a position to be much more definitive about the all important particle somewhere in 2013.
The Higgs particle is so important because, if found, it would resolve the great mystery that clouds our understanding as to how energy gains mass on the way to becoming matter. It has been described as the molasses that acts as the sticky stuff in the universe serving the formation of matter’s atomic building blocks.
Could it be that materialists are waiting to say that Higgs will now replace God? Or that more people will turn to atheism at the realization that God is not sitting there as an instrumental agent who turns invisible forces into stars and planets? Having declared that the Hand of God is really a sticky particle it will be one more nail in the coffin of the Creator and one more challenge to the idea that consciousness is the first cause, primary field or ground of being out of which everything arises!
‘Well not so fast,’ says Plato. In his own way he saw this coming. In his day, he complained that some of the philosophers were beginning to surmise that the universe was chiefly comprised of rocks and gases. He reminded them that the universe has not only measurable quantities, it has qualities. These qualities were the progenitors of form: truth, beauty, love, justice, harmony — all these qualities combined in different degrees to give birth to ideas and to interfuse and give life to diverse forms.
I was recently at the annual Language of Spirit dialogue instigated 18 years ago by the physicist David Bohm and his Native American counterpart Leroy Little Bear. We are all familiar with the native sense of “all my relations” — and by that they mean the relatedness of every form in existence. What struck me at this last dialogue was how much the native elders stressed being known by place. They quipped that westerners are always on the move…and moving into other people’s territories, because they never stay long enough to know and be known by place. I found it a startling idea that I could enter relationship with place to the degree that it became a field of mutual appreciation: maybe that finch on the tree and I could commune rather than its being simply admired by me; perhaps even the qualities in the tree itself could mentor me, or the rocks, stones and crystals could reflect qualities beyond the spectacular geometry of their formation. Is all life looking at itself and its relatives as a reflection in a mirror we call consciousness?
Bohm was so interested in dialogue because it helped open us up to the deep mirror of consciousness itself. He saw the manifest aspect of the universe in space and time as part of an explicate order but that underlying the substrate of matter is an implicate order, which is generative and holographic. He suggests there is a “proto-intelligence” in matter since it arises out of an implicate order which is a seedbed of consciousness. “The separation of the two, matter and spirit, is an abstraction.” (Bohm)
Meanwhile the colliders are busy searching the energy range, measured in gigaelectronvolts, where the Holy of Holies, in the realm of Physics, may have hidden itself. And even if they manage to nab it, what will it really mean for those of us who believe that as long as spirit is denied science will continue to live its current schizophrenia as both evocateur of human possibilities and enlightenment, and servant of a frighteningly reductionist materialism.
What will it mean? It will mean the difference between whether we see ourselves in a living universe or one designed for machines, for consumption and competition over ever increasingly limited resources. It will mean the difference between continued rebellion against The Holy Order of Nature or the re-emergence of Nature as our greatest teacher. It will mean the difference between biophilia and necrophilia i.e. love of life or love of dead things. Loving your right to a gas-guzzling car over protection of the ecosphere is a form of necrophilia. It goes with a consume, junk and dump approach because anyway it’s all dead stuff. With such necrophilia comes the loss of one-third of earth’s species since 1970 and looming ecological and climate related catastrophes.
But the lovers of Life look for the re-marriage of science and spirituality where we explore the ground of all being, seek to know it better, appreciate the many ways to understand it and come in some humility to feed from a Holy of Holies which resides inside the Great Mystery. Such knowing opens us to profound states of unity and ecstatic awareness, which no sticky little particle, however brilliant, is capable of delivering on its own.
Preview of Interview with James O’Dea
President of Noetic Sciences, James O’Dea gives a moving interview with Regina Meredith on the process for peace and transformation.
James O’Dea is a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and was until recently its President. The Institute of Noetic Sciences is a non-profit membership organization founded in 1973 by astronaut Edgar Mitchell which explores the frontiers of consciousness and global paradigm change.
James also spent ten years as the Director of the Washington Office of Amnesty International, where he testified before Congress, met with U.S. presidents and numerous foreign heads of state and government leaders, and represented Amnesty International to the State Department, the White House, and the World Conference on Human Rights.
Subsequently, he spent five years as Executive Director of the Seva Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to international health & development issues in Latin America, Asia, and on American Indian reservations. Seva is a Sanskrit word meaning service. Prior to that James lived and worked in Turkey and Lebanon, and witnessed civil conflict, war and massacre, which influenced him deeply.
James founded and co-led with Dr. Judith Thompson an international series of “Compassion and Social Healing” dialogues funded by The Fetzer Institute. The dialogues, spanning a seven year period, brought together leaders and activists in a variety of fields related to human rights, peace, and social reconciliation initiatives. James and Judith are currently involved in a major initiative to expand the theory and practice of social healing funded by the Kalliopeia Foundation.
Since 2008, James has been a member of the Evolutionary Leaders, a group convened by Deepak Chopra and Diane Williams to unify efforts in support of evolutionary changes in political, economic, ecological, scientific and health and healing arenas. He is also a member of the Global Systems Initiatives, an organization bringing a whole-systems approach to complex global issues, founded by Louise Diamond. He regularly participates in the Language of Spirit Dialogues which are convened by the SEED Graduate Institute for Native Americans, Physicists, and thought leaders.
He lectures all over the world, and has essays published in numerous magazines and books including currently the Mystery of 2012 (Sounds True); Consciousness and Healing: An Integral Approach to Mind Body Medicine (Elsevier) and Earthrise: The Dawning of a New Civilization in the 21st Century (Goi). His new book, Creative Stress: A Path for Evolving Souls living through Personal and Planetary Upheaval, was published in March 2010 .
James O’Dea Keynote – Living in the FIre of Change.mov
A keynote address by James O’Dea from the Living in the FIre of Change conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. A Fierce Light Flash! Made with support from the Ontario Arts Council www.fiercelight.org
In this inspiring satsang, Adyashanti discusses his first visit to a prison— San Quentin—where he meets with men sentenced for life. Their remarkable stories of finding peace and happiness within are compelling examples of what happens when the ego lets go of hope for a better future. “When you look inside with utmost simplicity and sincerity, what you find is the light of being.” 90 min. DVD recorded on June 28, 2006. http://www.adyashanti.org
“If you filter my words through any tradition or ‘-ism’, you will miss altogether what I am saying. THE LIBERATING TRUTH IS NOT STATIC; IT IS ALIVE. It cannot be put into concepts and be understood by the mind. The truth lies beyond all forms of conceptual fundamentalism. What you are is the beyond—awake and present, here and now already. I am simply helping you to realize that.” — Adyashanti
