A New Year Beckons.....

It's nearly three years since Pale Green Vortex first showed up on the radar.  During this period, I have been privileged to explore a breadth and depth of topics that I would hitherto never have dreamed of.  It has been an immensely rewarding time for me.  I have listened to lectures and interviews with rapt attention, eagerly devouring significant information and enthusiastically taking notes, something I haven't done since my early days in Buddhism.  At times I have almost felt 'born again', a neophyte among the mysteries of life - something which, as I approach my sixtieth birthday, I hadn't exactly expected.  Along the way, I am more than delighted if a few other human beings may have benefited from some of what I have written.

What have I learnt through the multitude of posts that have appeared on Pale Green Vortex?  And what have I experienced to give rise to some of the writing?  Well, many things. But focal, I think, has been the following insight.  This marvellous living universe we inhabit is essentially a creation, an emanation, and a reflection of consciousness.  That consciousness is not a uniform thing; at least, any homogeneity reveals itself heterogeneously.  It manifests in a whole variety of different dimensions, or densities, depending on the degree of alienation of the specific form of consciousness from the source, from its own true nature, call it what you will. Of distinct concern for human beings, blessed as they are with the potential to move closer to 'divinity', is that particular slice of consciousness sometimes referred to as the Control System.  This is a distinctively heavy form of consciousness, dedicated to separate selfhood, which has constructed a good deal of what passes as human culture.  The affairs of politics, economics, finance, mainstream 'culture', media reportage, social systems, and the rest, are not there primarily for the greater good.  Nor do they exist as an expression of some universal, inalienable laws of nature.  All too often they show up as an expression of Control System consciousness. As such, their purpose is stupefaction and containment; to keep the divine spark down.

The fulfilment of human life lies in 'self-realisation', unfoldment, return to the Divine, etc etc - to be 'telestai', as the Gnostics put it, those who are aimed.  Two vital spin-offs from all this have also emerged.  Firstly, that a human spirituality, to be properly effective, requires some experience of the multidimensional nature of consciousness.  Without this, it is likely to remain superficial, half-baked, or largely intellectual.  And secondly, that spirituality without some real insight into Control System dynamics will remain incomplete and hopelessly naive.  This ignorance may well act as an obstacle to effective and appropriate compassionate activity. A fully-embodied spiritual life will seamlessly combine understanding and experience of consciousness (shamanic traditions and the more mystical aspects of traditions emanating from Asia remain foundational) with cutting-edge analysis such as that found in the more intelligent parts of the modern alternative community.

The plethora of ideas that has blasted like a whirlwind through Pale Green Vortex has been necessary.  And more ideas, we can be sure, will continue to come.  Yet there arrives a point where ideas - by their very busy-ness, their concentration in the head, even if they are felt ideas - become an obstacle.  They can begin to take on the function of an escape from that most difficult thing of all: a deepening, non-conceptual, direct awareness of reality in its totality.  The ideas are absolutely vital to sharpen perception, to help bulk out the body of consciousness.  But this very body of consciousness needs stillness, non-mediated awareness, to enter the further reaches of oneness, non-duality, and whatever else remains for awareness to bring its quality to.  This I sense to be the next step.

Interesting times ahead, perchance......

          

Getting Over the Guru

Things change.  In the 1970s, any serious attempt to do the consciousness thing invariably led to the question of the guru.  The aspirant may or may not have ended up following one single embodiment of the divine, but the quest was inevitably framed in this way.  Sometimes it seemed almost like a spiritual equivalent of the quaint Victorian notion that history consists largely of the lives of Great Men (not many Great Women in this particular version of history, I'm afraid).

Some of the pitfalls and dangers of this approach, in terms of potential for deception, manipulation, abuse, and the messy rest, have been well documented.  But one of the underlying weaknesses of the system, the root of many of the problems, is to my knowledge rarely appreciated. It is this: the guru normally turns up as the finished product.  The Great One appears on the scene already enlightened, awakened, or whatever.  Or, if not quite enlightened, still so far ahead in the game that it makes no difference for the disciple, staggering along light years behind.

The guru-as-finished-product presents difficulties.  Foremost is that it creates an impossible obstacle to meaningful communication. There is no shared journey between teacher and student, simply one person who has already reached the destination, providing a map for another person stumbling hopelessly and haplessly through the swamps of samsara.

While he was at pains to distance himself from the hardline guru-disciple mould of some Tibetan and Theravadin schools, still my former Buddhist teacher came firmly embedded within the guru model.  While, to his credit, he greatly encouraged the development of friendship among his followers, still he founded the Order and, in his view at least, anything of import should come from him or pass through him for the thumbs-up.  Most relevantly, although he wrote at length about his earlier life in India, during the twenty-plus later years that I was formally a student of his, he never (to my knowledge) gave any inkling that he was following a path himself, learning and changing as he went. It was as if the process had stopped, no longer appropriate for such a person. Once more, any dialogue based on the shared experiences of two people following the same or similar paths was out of the question.  In latter years, my former teacher's life has been beset with a variety of problems and scandals typical of those that tend to descend on those set in the guru mould ( a fact which gives me no pleasure at all, by the way).  Much of this, in my view, could have been avoided, or at least minimised, if he had presented as a man on a journey rather than as a finished product.  

Imagine how heartening it has been to emerge into the wider spiritual world of today, and find people, openly warts and all, but doing their thing. As an example, Neil Kramer is somebody with a lot of experience and wisdom under his belt, along with a rare ability to communicate it clearly and effectively.  Yet to watch, read, or listen to Neil, it is clear that this is a person following a spiritual path, undergoing the process of unfoldment, as he would put it, in the company of many others doing likewise.  We're all in this together, baby: thus, dialogue is immediately opened up, the possibilities enriched and widened.

Here is another case, potentially less straightforward.  I was recently pondering my own experience of life, and the way that I frame it.  'Consciousness' and 'energy' are words that I use frequently.  My view is a bit 'substantive': there is something, which makes my style not quite Buddhist -at least not in its 'purer' forms, and not in the manner I believe my former teacher to be pushing nowadays.  Some Tibetan schools talk of 'the luminous void' rather than 'the void'.  While this is closer to my own experience, hardliners may consider it degenerate.  The vague notion arose in my mind that, while knowing little about it, my angle might be akin to that of Advaita Vedanta (though I should add that any viewpoint is, for me, a working model rather than a final ontological statement).

In one of those synchronicities that provide an unexpected twist to circumstances, I casually flicked on the television to Conscious TV (occasional programmes on Showcase 2, Sky channel 192 some evenings), something I have known exists but never paid any real attention before.  Imagine my surprise when I was just in time for an interview with Florian Schlosser.  His was a new name to me, but it soon became clear that, if he could be called anything, it is a teacher of  - neo-Advaita...!

It transpires that Florian has many interesting things to say, particularly about how Awakening needs to be 'embodied'.  More of this some other time, perhaps.  He sometimes refers to himself as Florian Tathagata, which makes me cringe, although this is unfair: 'Tathagata' is a favourite epithet for the Buddha, but it never bothered me then. Yet, despite his apparent 'Awakening', Florian speaks openly and unashamedly about the path that he is on: the process he has followed until now, and the issues he continues to deal with.  You feel like you can travel along beside this guy.  Even in the traditional, orient-derived bastions of consciousness work is the guru-disciple model crumbling, or at least softening significantly.  There is an emerging democracy of unfoldment.  This, I feel, can only be a good thing.

Photo: Guru Poornima festival

            

Wot's This Collectivism Lark Then???

Here's a clear, non-extreme discussion of some of the world-moulding stuff happening behind the scenes that people don't know about but should.  I don't go along with everything that Ed says, but that's not really the point. Turn on, tune in, digest, spread the info.

http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/2012/12/RIR-121213.php

John Lash: The Final Interview

Pale Green Vortex recommended reading (highly recommended reading)

On Red Ice Radio on November 22nd 2012 (link from this blog) John Lash gave what he declared to be his final interview to a wider audience.  This is not because he is retiring, or anticipates imminent death, or is going off to join the Salvation Army.  No.  He sees, quite reasonably in my view, that he has said enough in this particular genre. His task remains to work in deeper and more intimate fashion with those more fully involved in the projects most dear to his heart: Planetary Tantra and the Gaian Navigation Experiment.

Since the initiatory events I described in a recent blog piece, the two people who have spoken to me most directly, who have said the right things at the right time, have been Neil Kramer and John Lash.  The nature of their respective contributions to my life have been rather different, at times complementary.  One area in which they have both provided clarification is the important one of belief.  This is worth a few words here.

As Neil explains, we actually need very few beliefs in order to function perfectly well.  A belief is a heavy thing: adopt a particular belief, then everything else has to fit in around it.  Sustaining a belief can be an exhausting, full-time activity.  Instead of believing, Neil suggests that we simply 'hold' ideas.  Just hold it.  Don't give in to the knee-jerk reaction to either say 'yes, I agree', thereby accreting it to your already top-heavy ego identity; or to say 'no', in so doing making a contrary absolute statement.  Hold an idea and see where it goes.  You can lightly hold an enormous number without them dragging you down.

John Lash's section about belief on metahistory.org (link from this blog) is well worth reading.  'The unexamined belief is not worth holding.' 'It is desirable to believe as little as possible' because 'belief can destroy our capacity to experience.'  Here's the nub of the situation.  A fixed belief acts as a veil between the believer and the world that is perceived as being outside.  It's a kind of screen through which all incoming data is filtered.  In truth, belief is for cowards, those unprepared to face the ever-changing uniqueness of the eternally present moment.  Because belief can destroy our capacity to experience, it alienates us from what is really going on.  Our full-body, open-heart response is denied; everything has to go through the head.

When belief solidifies, it becomes ideology.  And ideology is the focal point for all the social movements that we may come to label that elusive term 'evil'.  Nazism, Stalinism.  More recently, the sinister machinations of collectivism and 'ideological environmentalism'.  They all thrive on the blindness and stupidity that are planted inside the individual by belief. Blind, insistent belief, abstracted ideology.

To change tack, while staying with John Lash: his book 'Not In His Image' is one of the most important on my bookshelves. On the one hand, it provides a deeper and more comprehensive critique of the Christian ethos than any I have encountered.  On the other, it describes in great detail the Gnostic mythos of Gaia-Sophia, along with the part we humans have to play in its unfolding.  When I read all this, I took it as one of the most beautiful myths I had ever come across. And when I read about the Gnostics, I felt that I was reconnecting with my true but lost spiritual heritage in the west.  For anybody serious about understanding how we came to be where we are now, and intent on finding their own place in the spiritual/mystical traditions of the west, 'Not In His Image' is a must-read.

John Lash is a firebrand, and in his final interview he signs off from the exoteric world in typically provocative fashion.  He introduces what he terms 'the taboo subject': violence.  Why, he asks, are humans endowed with such an extraordinary capacity for violence?  He suggests that there is indeed a reason, and that it needs to be taken in hand via magical/tantric action to take out the psychopaths who have perverted the course of human history and heaped so much misery on the great mass of people.

Hmmmm.....  Certainly a novel idea.  Personally, I have no problem with the elimination of various psychopathic politicians and other control system big boys (and a few girls).  I name no names, but there are those whose physical demise I would greet with a sense of relief.  However, there remains a problem; I'm not sure that John has really thought this through.  Remove a bunch of psychopaths, and there will be another gang waiting in the wings ready to take their place. For anyone thinking that psychopaths are mainly criminal serial killers, it's time for a reality update.  Studies suggest that around 3% of males, 1% of females, can be classified as psychopathic.  This is, it seems, across the board, regardless of culture, ethnicity etc.  The chief characteristic of psychopathic behaviour is absence of conscience.  Psychopaths, therefore, tend to turn up in large numbers in politics, high finance, big business, positions where power is the thing.  They can work the system like no-one else.  So John's approach seems rather like symptomatic medicine: get rid of the signs of the disease without really getting at its roots.  Symptoms will continue to pop up elsewhere.

Anyway, plenty of food for thought.  And, in the meantime, thanks for everything so far, John Lash.  I, for one, shall be keeping track of his words and deeds for the future.