Post by david on Oct 29, 2020 17:26:40 GMT
Spiritual development does seem to be easy. Our teachers tell us it is just a matter of overcoming the discriminating mind. How many people have already done it? Buddhist traditions make it seem quite rare but nevertheless claim a series of enlightened masters going back to the Buddha, often an enlightened master has an enlightened pupil and sometimes two enlightened masters meet.
The problem is that since the perfect state is outside space and time our fall from perfection must have been the start of time so we have been trying to achieve it since then. Astronomers are now thinking in terms of a series of big bangs. The bang scatters all the matter out from the centre of the universe until it is drawn back by its own gravity to form a single black hole which explodes to scatter everything again. If we are to attain perfection we must go through this state with perfect harmony and we do not often get the opportunity to practise.
To be perfect is to be perfect in will which means we accomplish everything we intend. It also means being morally perfect and perfect in wisdom so we take every moral decision perfectly with the perfect result. Should anyone in this world ever attain perfection all the world’s problems, including those of the animals, would be solved and the world would be ruled by great saints for hundreds of years. It has never happened in the whole of known history. Any claim that a tradition has been founded by an enlightened master is bogus.
Spiritual perfection is the hardest thing to achieve. It is quite literally the last thing we will ever do. We know that we are a long way from our true nature and it is hard to find the way back. Here is a test for those who believe in spontaneity. Do the right thing - NOW! I bet that panicked you! The problem is that self control and analysis are spontaneous reactions. When something startles us we freeze and when we see something strange we try to work out what it is. The reason is because this is the best way.
If we are to attain pure action we have to concentrate but we cannot do anything so simple it involves doing only one action at a time. Even something like making a cup of tea contains, if you examine it, a lot of movements all at once. Consider an insect trying to think like a human being. It does not seem possible by any effort of determination but human beings are possible. All the insect has to do is make the same effort of mental concentration. Now for our consciousness to be perfect we have to be aware of the position that every particle of matter in the universe has been in since the beginning of time and will be until time ends. It does not seem possible, just as human consciousness does not seem possible for an insect. The difference between us and the insect is that we are able to achieve a greater complexity of thought due to multiple concentration and many other things beyond an insect’s comprehension are achieved this way. You cannot do this by just letting go or overcoming attachment to words.
The simplest exercise we can try is chanting and its simplicity should not cause us to disdain it because it is due to this that we can concentrate on it more totally than on any other thing. Try to break down the act of chanting into all its component actions, physical and mental, and concentrate on each one while excluding your mind from anything that is not part of the chant.
People talk about acting from within the heart which they think they can do by simply not thinking. If this was true acting from the heart would be an easy thing and if it was easy we would be able to do it while thinking. The belief stems from Jung’s theory of the inferior function. He divided people into four types characterized by four functions: thinking, feeling, intuition and sensation. Each of these functions has one of the others as its opposite quality which he called the inferior function so that each of the four types has difficulty using the opposite quality. He did not oppose thinking to intuition, by the way. He opposed thinking to feeling and intuition to sensation which makes me think there may be something in it but he stated quite clearly that we will never be able to use our inferior function as well as our main function.
It is this principle which has caused Jung to have such harmful influence. The ultimate aim of the mystic is perfection but there is also the intermediate aim of harmony. We cannot accept that there are any irresolvable conflicts. No faculty can act in isolation and meditation requires an integration of intellect with intuition. When we concentrate our minds on a religious mystery we find an attraction to certain thoughts. Sometimes this is a subtle thing, a feeling that we meditate better on these thoughts. At other times it is more definite. Energy seems to flow into the thoughts. This may not prove that these thoughts are true but if you concentrate on these thoughts you will be sensitizing yourself to the most energetic principles. What we should not do is believe that these thoughts are true because we feel that they are true. That is neither intuition nor psychism but emotion which is not a means of knowing.
The world we live in is imperfect and therefore contains within it the cause of imperfection. It is in the structure of material shapes and is also deep within our psyches. When we try to act from the heart we find evil deep within it and it is hard to distinguish the true from the false. Sometimes the difference between good and evil is subtle, at other times it is obvious but we are still unable to recognize it because the passion of our attachment is too great. One of the reasons for Hitler’s success is that he was prepared to excuse what others would not.
What do we mean by acting from the heart as opposed to the head? Everything has its true nature hidden by the effect of material existence. This true nature contains all the possibilities of that thing: everything that it has been and will be, has done or will do and has happened and will happen to it from the beginning of time until its end. If the heart is the centre of our being it must therefore contain the rational intellect. The effect of acting from the heart is not that the intellect is treated as hostile but that it works in harmony with all other functions. What a lot of these wonderful philosophies come down to is that it is not possible to think and chew gum at the same time.
The truth is within us but it has to be examined carefully. Think about your fantasies and daydreams. Think most of all about those secret fantasies that you never tell anybody. There is a reason why you have them. The trouble is that the human psyche is not a closed system and not everything you get preoccupied with comes from you. You have to work out what is part of your true nature and you do this by trying to decide whether the obsession has any real passion to it or whether it is just a compulsion to think that way. Does it come and go? Do you at times feel curiously dispassionate about it? When you have decided that it is really from deep within then you have something that comes from your true nature. The next step is to try to understand it in terms of absolute reality and when you can do this you will have understood part of your true nature.
What actually is intuition? The word is generally used to mean knowing something without actually knowing why we know it. This is different from psychism which is a definite perception, just as sight and hearing are definite perceptions. Now if the principle of as above, so below is true we would expect each of the physical senses to have a psychic counterpart. The reason why there seems to be no psychic counterpart to smell, touch and taste is probably because nobody has any use for these faculties so nobody ever cultivates them. In principle they ought to exist.
Perfect existence ought to be a state in which all the faculties are in their perfect form and we are in a state of pure perception in which we perceive everything. There cannot in this state be any knowing without knowing the reason for the knowing because everything is known in relation to its cause and the relationship between every cause and every effect is known perfectly. It is, in fact, a state of perfect logic and the practice of logic is therefore a necessary part of spiritual development which helps to make the lower mind receptive to impressions from the higher. The fear that logic inhibits intuition is groundless. In fact the more we practice logic the more frequently we get those ideas which come as uninvited guests to our heads. You will find that it will always be possible (in principle) to fit them into a logical pattern.
Knowing without knowing why we know can come from two reasons. One is simply an unconscious form of psychism. The other is that it is a collection of ideas too hazy or complicated to put into a precise form. The clearest example is when we are judging someone’s character which is done by assessing a lot of qualities all at once. If you try you can generally pin down what it is that gives you that impression. The two can get muddled up and they can also be muddled up with prejudice, passions and wishful thinking. Intuition is not really a higher faculty and I suspect the enthusiasm for it to be due to aspiring magicians wanting to prove they have experienced something paranormal but have not been able to attain a psychic experience. There is also the attraction of the effortless attainment which makes us want to believe we can know without going to the trouble of finding out.
Does it have any use? Well, it has its place in art which always involves an intangible feel for the subject but here we have to be aware that we are not dealing with a single faculty but a number of faculties working in different ways because art is complicated and there a lot of things we have to have a feel for but the whole point of art is that it works through the senses so the final assessment is based on what you feel. Even here intuition is not inhibited by technique but as our technique becomes more exact so our intuition becomes more refined but art is not a means of gaining knowledge and acquiring a feel is no means of learning the truth.
Now here is the pitfall: many people say that because knowledge requires objectivity it requires a freezing of emotions. What they do not realize is that to try to learn by means of a feel is more easily interfered with by bias and preconceptions than to try to do it by rational investigation. If you must use intuition you must freeze more coldly than any rationalist.
May She be with you,
David.