In the current context, academic qualifications are of no relevance. There are no credentials that one can wave about to hold forth on, for the sake of a better world, spirituality. People assume that the possession of a higher knowledge gives that person an aura, supernatural power, or at the least the poise and equanimity of a Mother Theresa. Without having experienced enlightenment, everyone nevertheless insists that they’d recognize the bells and whistles that accompany that state. We’re sure that we’d be able to pick out a person-in-the-know, but is that so? Can we be so sure of that? Isn’t there a risk of being wrong?
I’m no paragon of virtue. If you demand that I perform a miracle or two before you’ll deign to give me the time of day, then I’m going to have to disappoint you. I can’t boast of having lived an exemplary life. I’m not blessed with a saintly soul—there’s no likelihood of my being canonized. Just like you, I have good points and bad. I shine in certain lights, but not in others. I’m no sinner or saint (nor am I interested in drawing a distinction between the two). I cannot pirouette before you and say, “See, this is how you turn out once you learn the secret of life!” For one thing, I haven’t got that sense of balance.
A pity, you counter. So, if I can’t authoritatively pontificate while nonchalantly buffing my halo, couldn’t I impress in some other way? Am I qualified in my field? Have I got the credentials? Am I sanctioned by a higher power? Do I possess the right bit of paper from a suitably accredited institution?
Again I must say no. I’m afraid that I haven’t any laurels to wear. I can’t flaunt any of my own, and I refuse to dream them up either, only for people to find out years later and then for me to have to deny responsibility, “Oh no, it wasn’t me who put those letters behind my name. Must have been a clerical error.”
It’s a pity, but these days you need a credit rating to be read. You need the recommendation of your peers (who have, presumably, been validated by others). You need an academic title to get ahead. The pressure is on. It pays to be published, preferably with a string of best sellers. In short, to avoid the risk of being given short shrift, you need a track record.
Look, the woo-woo stuff that I’ll tackle here isn’t rocket science, so it shouldn’t be necessary for me to establish my credentials. In a perfect world we’d take each other at face value: you’d read what I’d written without bias and consider it on its own terms. You’d receive it from my hands without checking first to see whether they were stained or callused. Yes, I suppose that in this advertising-saturated, media-inundated, information-overloaded, everyone-has-an-opinion-and-a-soapbox-to-spout-it-from age one needs to filter out most of the nonsense. But for now I would suggest that you refrain.
The the bottom line is that the correlation between the stature—academic, professional, or moral—of a person and the importance of his or her words is not absolute. I insist that anyone could come up with a useful creation. You get a hundred monkeys typing and eventually they’ll string together the complete works of Shakespeare. And do you know it’ll read just as well as the original.
Accept for now that anyone, no matter what their roots are (or where they’re wont to root about) could very well come up something fine and dandy. In that case, let’s dispense with having people pass tests, roll out their background for inspection, prove that they are beyond rebuke, demonstrate their purity, dig out a qualification, present a clean rap sheet, wave around old money or spill blue blood.
Imagine if you will a criminal with something on his mind. Say that one day a villain on death row receives a genuine flash of insight. The crimes that he has committed are now just water under the bridge, because now he knows! He has discovered the answer. And out of the turned-over-a-new-leaf-goodness of his heart, he wishes to share it.
How far would that person get? Not much beyond the bars of his cell, I warrant. It wouldn’t wash, would it, no matter how watertight his ideas were? His jailers just aren’t going to listen, not to mention anyone else.
From whom would you expect to receive revolutionary news? If you take the pre-judgemental approach, then you’ll only ever listen to a Nobel Prize winner, Rhodes Scholar, saint, or to Dog Itself (or one of its come-down-to-earth incarnations). Hey, that really rather limits the field, wouldn’t you say? You may be waiting a while. So I’d suggest that you not shoot the dowdy messenger. Don’t dismiss him just because, in your eyes, he’s not dressed to deliver. Give the pizza-man a chance.
By now, I’ve probably convinced you that I’m different, not just what I think about, but how I do that thinking. But why should that be? Is it a deliberate thing? Do I do so out of contrariness? Am I being perverse, or is it my default setting—that is, is it the way that I’m wired?
To be honest, I suppose that it’s probably a little of both. I instinctively resist the predominant operating system of this culture. I often find myself jumping the rails of the conventional straight and narrow. I don’t buy into the basic assumptions that most people happily accept unchallenged. They appear delusional to me—the assumptions and the people. To me, they don’t make sense, and I refuse to have anything to do with them.
This keeps me safe, unsullied, unspoiled, and safeguarded from being infected by what I feel is aberrant thinking. I dislike falling into the trap of linear, rationalistic and reductionist reasoning, and try not to. I think things through on my own terms. I look critically at unchallenged assumptions:
- That death is real.
- That there’s such a thing as progress.
- That logic is the only useful cerebral technique, and that this way of thinking is to our advantage.
- That human beings are superior to other life forms.
- That enlightenment is as grand as it is made out to be.
- That the brain is the be-all and end-all of thinking.
- That adults ipso facto are wiser than children.
- That life exists in certain places but not in others.
- That one’s self, friends, family, ethnic group and countrymen are more important than the outsiders occupying the periphery.
-
‘Do gods exist?’ is not, in my opinion, a very useful question to ask. To have a picture already in mind for what you’re looking for is similar to a biologist going off in search of a species that he has already assigned attributes. ‘Is there life on Mars that is based on carbon, oxygen-breathing and intelligent?’ is a closed question. It’s far better for the bear to go over the mountain with an open mind to see what he could see.
Nothing in my construct rests on such an insecure foundation as a pre-carved deity figure. I would suggest starting out from a position of knowledge from solid ground, from the space between your eyes and ears central of the universe. Start with what you know—yourself. Venture forth from there.
I believe that it was Socrates who told his students: “Know thyself!” but I’m not sure if he told them what came next? What do you do once you’ve found that entity? What do you do with that ‘body’ of knowledge?
From your elevated centre, do you sense other life forms coexisting? I don’t know about you, but I see zillions of them scuttling about everywhere. Isn’t it easier to ‘believe’ in them than in any of the myriad of gods and goddesses dreamed up through the ages? I’d say that there is less of a chance of their being figments of my imagination than angels and demons and the like. So why don’t we start with the natural world?
Apparently there exist various lifeforms that we don’t think of as equal (to each other, and certainly not to us). Their ‘aural envelopes’ appear to vary. Instinctively we assign the different plant and animal species grades of consciousness. So where does that lead us?
My next trick relies on the idea that is is possible to grade that level of consciousness (though it won’t be necessary to do it). If this is possible, then we would be able to rank different life forms inter and intra species. Again, we won’t do that.
Please be clear, this doesn’t imply that I consider a particular life form superior or more worthy than any other. ‘We’re all the same, yet we’re all different’ is a difficult notion to grasp only if one is addicted to dualistic thinking. If you do regard it as a two-horned dilemma, then I suggest that you set it aside as a paradox to examine later (as I had to do when I discovered myself at that all-important yet humble hub of the universe).
It follows then that, given that there’s a ranking, someone has to be the top dog, the kingpin, el supremo or yokozuna. In terms of consciousness, that being would stand above the rest. Very well then, let’s nominate—elevate—that dirty rascal to the position of King, Emperor or—why not?—God? May as well make use of that word? If God does happen to exist then that being will automatically slot right in. The point is: we’re assured that our vacancy will get filled by someone or other.
As to whether that entity is up to the task is another matter. Whether it is omniscient, omnipresent—all those other ‘Oms’—we don’t know, since we don’t know exactly who was elected (a puff of white smoke from behind closed doors). No one is in a position to say what its attributes are. And I’m not going to go there either. Until or unless it effects a self-introduction, I’m not going to worry myself about it since, by definition, it’s going to have at least as great a sense of humor and forbearance as me.
Enlightenment is a tricky term. My concept of it probably varies from that of other people. Maybe we need a dummies’ guide. I don’t see it as something absolute that you attain in a magician’s flash of magnesium powder. I don’t go along with a sensory monitor that suddenly lights up a halo above your head. Nothing goes supernova. No instant cure renders you immune from ever afterwards making errors. No download of software provides profound answers to every question possible.
I don’t think that it works that way, because it hasn’t for me. Enlightenment does not equate with godhood. It’s humbler than that. Enlightenment is an ongoing process, not an endpoint. There’s never a stage or level when, once you’ve attained it, you get to sit back with a beatific smile on your face and switch off. You are never done.
Whoever invented the concept of enlightenment has a lot to answer for. It’s been touted as the ultimate panacea and marketed that way for yonks. Its subliminal message beats Coca Cola hands down. Swallow this, and everything will be well. You’ll win the girl, the car, the surfboard and the tee-shirt. You’re sold the story that henceforth every issue in your life will be smoothed away. You don’t need to do the hard yards for yourself, no siree. Why bust a gut trying? Just short-circuit the quest for enlightenment by seeking for the fool on the hill. Get the gen direct from the horse’s mouth.
The trouble is that there’s no such person.
I’d advise you not to leave philosophy up to the experts. I've never yet met anyone who fits into that box. They ain’t no such animal, I assure you (unless our top dog comes up trumps). Take it from me. I've known the odd genius. They were just ordinary people underneath.
See our little spark. Unhindered by geography, it leaps lightly around the world. It skips blithely across time, allowing us to experience ourselves in a multitude of bodies, both simultaneously and overlapping. Behold now that spark flare several orders of magnitude. I’m going to up its power (this spark is going supernova). Fasten your seat-belts. Warp infinity here we come. It’s time to tackle time travel.
To do that, we’ve got to circle around and sneak up on it. Shh . . .
I am here.
You are here.
Every single instant, we are neatly self-contained. The illusion is of a wondrous separateness—individuality, independence, autonomy, free will and choice. Life feels filled to the brim with potential. Well, it should. This is a carnival, you know.
We realize its boundaries: birth and death. We observe them when others pass across them. This knowledge serves to snip us off from one another even more sharply. Everyone occupies his or her (gender is yet a further distinction) quarter-acre patch of reality. We’re fenced off from everyone else, including God.
But dammit, we are God. We’re wrapped up in that containing consciousness. We are one another. We are one. ONE. US. I. Ism.
I wake up from a dream in which I was a butterfly. Or am I really a butterfly dreaming of being a man? I wonder, is the dream state more ‘real’ than wakeful consciousness?
After all, we only dip into wakeful waters for a matter of hours before needing to recharge our batteries. By contrast, you never become exhausted in the sleep state and just have to wake up. It's not as if you run out of oxygen.
Nevertheless, we don’t question that the waking state is higher than mere sleep. Of course it must be. Isn’t our level of consciousness greater when we’re up and about? It seems so, but maybe that’s another ‘obvious’ assertion to test.
Leave consciousness out of it for the moment. Instead, let’s do an assessment of quality of being. Specifically, let’s consider our depth of connectedness to each other, the planet, the universe and our roots. We’ll compare how we do when we’re asleep, as opposed to when we’re awake. In which of the two states are we more ‘at one’?
When you open your eyes, you take on an aura of individuality and otherness. The illusion is of being a separate entity. You’re here behind the rays that shine into your eyes. Things exist ‘out there’. Time feels real, space feels real, and the cinematography of our lives feels as if it's occurring. The reels roll, we’re mesmerized, and we enjoy the drama from the comfort of our seat.
But we slough all of that off when we sleep. At that time we’re centred. We return to our origins where it is natural to be, and we draw nourishment from being there. Don’t we feel freshest in the early part of the day just after we’ve arisen? And conversely, don’t we feel dullest at day’s end?
Since this is so, then I conclude that wakefulness is not our default state. We’re not naturally wakeful beings who sometimes need to sleep. We are the one source that dips regularly into wakefulness to enjoy the experience of those dreams, which makes us not so much a butterfly as a cocoon.
Another thing is that we assume that the adult form is more advanced than the immature version. The pupa grows not only in size but in wisdom, supposedly, as our memories accumulate. But I wonder about that. Just as I’m coming around to think that the wakeful state is inferior to the sleep state, I’m starting to hypothesize that the child is the father to the man.
In one of my dreams I go into a mall with people walking about everywhere. There’re all types, all races, and I’m struck with their variety and beauty. I look into everyone’s eyes (especially if the people are women and if their eyes are brown) and then I suddenly stagger and have to reach out for support.
I’ve just had an epiphany. Now I know what it means to be God! In every pair of eyes I see consciousness swim. This pulsing matrix of humanity is omnipresence all ready to blow. It’s like a fire that just needs a match. Am I the only one who understands? We’re only a spark away from the realization that all is one. We’re just a membrane away from grokking ourselves for what we are, will be and always were: the timeless entirety. Imagine the simultaneous smile when that light dawns!
