Problems on the Spiritual Path—Part 2

Sitting in a field, or a wood, or on a mountain and soaking up the healing harmony of my surroundings, I could always experience that clouds and sunsets and birds and trees and flowers and bees were all still flowing on as happily as ever, eternally changeless in essence. What was the difference between me and nature, I wondered?

Why does it flow and I don’t? Where did I go wrong? The trees and flowers are not neurotic or mentally confused, yet they are as conscious and sensitive as I am. Scientific experiments have shown that even plants have some form of seemingly primitive ‘emotional’ or ‘symbiotic’ attachment to those who care for them. Plants are attuned to the thoughts of man and are in vibratory rapport with all other forms of life. They are also affected by any creature’s death. Yet their reactions are momentary and not reflective.

A tree does not fret and worry about how it is going to manage to put out buds and blossoms and bear fruit. It has no anxiety for the future, for fear of insufficient rain or sunshine for the coming year. It does not know how, or what, it does, and yet through an effortless unselfconscious unfoldment, it grows and opens out in glorious diversity. Like the rest of organic nature, it is conscious, but without ruminative thought. The natural world is a fantastically complex process of multifarious levels of Consciousness in operation without the intervention of separative locally individualised and self-conscious mentalities. That flawless flow of Consciousness, which is the substratum of all existence is simply flowing through the natural world and unfolding it without resistance.

There was my answer! I had forgotten that I too, was a product of that process. The natural world has not set itself apart from anything. On the relative plane, it just is. As a function of the inseparable Omnipresence, it is sustained by it. But man has come to think of himself as a separate entity from nature, even on the gross relative plane. In today’s world he often feels estranged even from his own parents, and thus, by extension, from all of humankind. He has the illusion of being encapsulated in his own separate existence, with his own autonomous mind and an individual consciousness. He feels dreadfully alone and has the erroneous belief in the necessity of forging his own salvation, or ‘unfolding’ for himself. If he could overcome his sense of isolation—created by his sense of selfhood (ego and mind)—he could be as spontaneously unfolded just like the rest of creation.

But it is the idea of mind itself which obstructs the flow of that underlying Consciousness of the universe, and prevents him from experiencing his true nature as the Self. The Self is described in Sanskrit as Sat-chit- ananda, the primal formula, meaning Existence=Consciousness=Bliss.

This is the nature of Cosmic Consciousness, which is always there awaiting us, whenever the tightly coiled spring of the little self is unwound. And we are immersed in it like fish in the sea. But even when we understand the problem intellectually; even if we are able to accept the fact that we are constantly existing in a state of unrecognised bliss (needing only the removal of mental block-ages to experience it, as shown in the mystical experience, or in the temporary effects of some psychedelic drugs), it does not help us very much. Although we may know, in essence, that we are already the Self and that there is therefore nothing more to be attained, we do not experience it as living reality, but only as a mental idea.

All mental ideas must dissolve in the light of direct conscious experience. Therefore, since mere intellectual knowledge does not make us any the happier, it becomes futile to give up our sadhana or spiritual practice, which is the only well-proven means to realise such experience. If the methods of the sages did not work, they would not have been persisted in for thousands upon thousands of years. So, we can opt to use the methods and work on ourselves, or remain lost, anxious, aggressive, stressed and unhappy.

But in any case, our inherent nature refuses to allow us to backslide for too long. Once we have become conscious of ‘being on the Path’, we may try to give it up, become tired of practice and forget it for a time, but our driving need will win out in the end. Once you know something of the spiritual life,

you cannot easily return to cabbage-hood. Besides, the Omni-presence is always working on us from within. When a springtime bud is near its flowering time an inexorable force of nature impels it to burst into blossom. And so, it is with us. Some unbidden pressure builds up inside and pushes us to carry on our inner work—to make us flower. And we ignore its promptings at our peril. Even anguish stirring in the soul is a birth-pang of the spirit—a prelude to our inner blossoming.

It is wiser to attune ourselves to these inner promptings which tell us we are drifting away from the Self, rather than relying on the wretched ramblings of the mind which lead us further astray. We cannot expect the endlessly chattering mind to quieten by itself. We have to do something about it. The slippery sense-of-ego and its self-justifications for ‘sloping off’ can never be over-come without constant vigilance and awareness of its wily ways. There is no easy way out. Ultimately, we have no hope of attaining inner peace without working on ourselves.

Part 3 follows next month:

From: Sharing the Quest: Revelations of a Maverick Mystic

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