There are lots of good reasons to be wary of religiosity and mysticism. Splitting is one of the most important. It comes in various forms.
Most obviously, religiosity and mysticism split us from other people. It is easy, almost compulsory, really, for a believer to consider that they are on a path that makes them special. Perhaps they are saved, while others are condemned. Perhaps they are God’s chosen, while others are ignored by God. Perhaps they possess some special revelation, while others wallow in ignorance.
But there’s another way of looking at splitting that seems to be the foundation of every variety of splitting. It’s the supposed split between who we are now and who we are meant to be.
Robert Saltzman speaks about this in his book, Depending on no-thing.
For me, thoughts and feelings are part and parcel of “myself” — not some aberration to be avoided or explained away. I feel extremely reluctant to say that there is a “self” apart from experience —independent of experience — although I know that some spiritual traditions encourage that belief.
The concept of a self apart from experience is what I call splitting, by which I mean the notion that there is a real myself — Brahman, or God, or “Source” — and then there is ordinary human experience, which is not “real” like “God,” but only illusory.
If human experience is inevitably illusory, then on what basis can one say that the supposed “real self” — God or whatever, which, after all, is a feature of human thought — is not illusory?
Some people imagine that “God” preexisted humans, and made humans. I find the reverse much more likely: humans made “God,” as the explanation for a universe they could not comprehend. They then split themselves off psychologically from their creation, thereby dividing the psyche in two: the defective, unreal “me” part of psyche, and the perfect real “God” part of psyche.
This split is only conceptual, but leaves many people — the same ones to whom “God,” or “Source,” or “universal consciousness” seems an indisputable “fact” — feeling that something must be healed or fixed by means of “spiritual practice.”
As I see this, a cooked-up metaphysics is the source of the split, and it is the metaphysics that needs healing, not “myself.” To be clear: it is the conceptual split that needs healing, not “myself,” which, being an expression of this aliveness, specifically a primate human expression, naturally suffers and feels pain, and that’s the way it is.
There are, of course, traditions that do not split “myself” into false and real. The perspectives of those traditions are much closer to my actual experience that those such as Advaita Vedanta that seem to encourage splitting, dissociation, and disembodiment.
I’m guessing that Buddhism in general, and Zen Buddhism in particular, is one of those non-splitting traditions. Zen is all about ordinary life, as exemplified by “chop wood, carry water.” That’s much different from “soar to the highest heaven” or “leave this world behind and find a better one,” which are the epitome of splitting.
For many years I felt like a failure because I never experienced the soul travel that the Eastern religion I’d embraced taught was the highest purpose of human life: returning to God by journeying through higher regions of supernatural creation. Of course, I never heard credible evidence that anyone else had ever done the soul travel thing. But since we weren’t supposed to talk about our mystical experiences, or the lack of them, it was really tough to tell whether I was the exception or the rule.
I now am highly confident that my inability to split the soul part of myself from the mind/body part of myself was a natural consequence of there not being two parts of me. As Saltzman said above, being a single entity simply is the way it is. The fantasy of being a soul or spirit that’s separable from mind/body is just a conception created by the mind/body.
In responding to a questioner, Saltzman said:
For you, the “old way” to which you keep returning is what I call splitting — the feeling that there is a person, “myself,” who is the creator of thoughts. Whereas I am saying that, for me, thoughts, thinking, and thinker are not three different happenings, but three different words for the same happening: this aliveness. Unless you need to believe in a god of some kind — which I don’t — there is no creator of this aliveness.
It just is, and its manifestations are naturally occurring, not caused by some imaginary “myself.”
…Prior to like/dislike judgments, prior to religion and metaphysics, and without nursing hopes of future glory, this actuality beyond comprehension is right before our very eyes in plain sight…if we want it.
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Are you saying that this is where the split ends ? Bless the Sound that was here long before we arrived and gonna be here long after we split.
“Splitting is the biggest danger in religiosity and mysticism.”
I’d think that not only in spiritual matters but in life generally, where mentally we desire to separate ourselves from what we see as intrusive or unwanted, painful thoughts and emotions, as being somewhat alien to what we prefer to believe we truly are.
I think that Saltzman explains the ‘splitting’ phenomenon quite accurately when he points out: “Splitting is the feeling that there is a person, ‘myself,’ who is the creator of thoughts. Whereas I am saying that, for me, thoughts, thinking, and thinker are not three different happenings, but three different words for the same happening:”
I think it was J Krishnamurti who said, ‘There is no thinker apart from thoughts.’ We are then (what we call myself) everything that appears in consciousness at the moment, whether that is thoughts and emotions, what we see and hear, etc., the ‘whole’ shebang.
My ‘self’, being an ever-changing flow of mental and physical phenomenon, is not some separate self or entity but what we human primates – and every other creature – actually are. There is nothing then to be ‘healed or fixed’; no so-called prize to chase after, no imaginary self to be realised or banished, just this life as it appears here and now.
The quote of Hippolitus, In “The hystory of God, By Karen Armstrong, page 116:
>> Abandon the search for God and the creation and other
matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the
starting point.
Learn who it is within you makes everything his own and says:
[1] My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body.
[2] Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love, hate.
[3] Learn how it happens that one watches without willing, loves without willing.
If you carefully investigate these matters, you will find him in yourself. <<
[The change in the layout is done by me].
In humans there is the individuality of the sameness …AND … the sameness at work as two sides of the same coin and they can not
be separated from one another
So Mr. Saltzman , is not wrong but neither right .. obvious one can be aware of both sides of the coin.
Um. Just a couple of questions: –
Hippolitus: – “Learn who it is within you makes everything his own”
*Who is this entity within and who is this that makes everything his own.?
—
Hippolitus: – “[1] My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body.
2, 3 – – etc.”
*Who or what is this ‘My’.
—
Hippolitus: – “If you carefully investigate these matters, you will find him in yourself.”
*And who/what is this ‘him’.
@ Ron E.
First of all I am not a Hippolitus, and I have not like him and the many of others like him, any inner experience, so I can offer only my personal understanding.
[1] Who is this entity within
[2] who makes everything his own
[3] Who or what is this “my”
[4] Who or what is this him?
It is my understanding that he starts out, Hippolitus, with stating, suggesting, that …”questions like “what is A or whom is A” are “forbidden’ questions, forbidden as they do not offer an answer. By saying that a cow is an animal one has not solved the enigma of the cow.
Than in his suggestions , that do no ask for an answer, he points were and how to seek …it is a neti,neti form… he only says that the answer is something to experience.
Next:
The MY is that part of you, in you, that has control an stirring capacity over you actions .. you know how to make goffee or tea
On closer observation, when making coffee or tea you can, if you like become aware of the enigma of all your activities, thoughts and feelings ..you start to wonder as Mr. Saltzman does about the fact that they all “Just arise”
“MY” is related to the unique variation that separatesyou, Ron E, from all other unique variations of something similar … but at the same time .. that unique variation .. has no life of its own it derives its existance from a sameness, being human and nothing can be said about that sameness ..but it can be experienced …
THAT is what they say Ron, THAT is how I understand THEIR words.
Mr. Salzman had a full blown experience of the uniqueness of the personal variation of existance .. that experience changed his life
What he experienced was an unique variation of the sameness experience ..strange enough .. but I can not explain this
I addition:
It is my understanding that if there would no people around having so called inner experiences, humanity would not be able to answer ..ANY .. question related to their birth, existence and death.
The answers that exist are , without any exemption based upon, people having inner experiences, experiences that answered their existential cry out for help. .. these answers, are also without exemption cultural bound and not universal .. ALTHOUGH they aoften have something in common
As I have stated here before ..the “divine”solution offered to the elders of hebrew tribes were not communicated then and later to other elders of other communities that had to face the consequences
That said … we have the endless stream of people that own these “heard experiences” and present themselves as explainers sine qua non there is no hope of understanding.
Again .. nobody, having questions about his existente can answer that question, without inner experience or without lending his ears to OTHERS ..he is doomed to live his life under the decades of his body, his mind wiuthout any understanding of how they came to be or how they function and why.
Few, I suggest can bear that being lost to something that is beyond understanding ..there is no god to help, no fellow human being to tell the truth.
I tend to say stay away from hearsay… have a look at the crow .. he knows how to survive and so do we as humans and we are equiped with whatever is needed
Like all neo-advaitist pop Buddhist musings, this splitting thing begs the question: If it’s true that we don’t know whether our thoughts reflect reality, or whether they’re a hallucination, then what part of “us” determines the false from the real?
If we can’t know that our thoughts are real, and if there’s no “I” to make sound decisions, then it must follow that we have no capacity to make sane decisions. But according to Saltman, not so! Saltman explains that while our thoughts aren’t real, and there’s no “I” to make decisions, we also somehow have infallible wisdom based on “an actuality beyond comprehension,” and “we” just have to “choose” “it” if “we” “want” “it.”
An argument so blatantly mired in contradiction that it’s literal nonsense.
Um and sant64. Like me, your comments (as are mine) are interesting concepts and conjectures. When it comes to the mind-made question of who/what l am we don’t really know.
All we can ever know is this ever flowing, ever changing conscious moment. Perhaps that’s what Zen is referring to when they talk of impermanence?
@ Ron E.
Yes .. but!
The “but ” is related to this sentence:
>> All we can ever know is this ever flowing, ever changing conscious moment<<
The conscious moment, is an empty concept when it does not refer to content.
To say that whatever we can experience by the means related to the survival of the body, is "ALL there is" is not in accordance with what we know.
We have to deal with the so called inner experiences, whether we like them or not, whether we have them or not …they are just an fact of live and they have shape in great deal the road humanity has taken.
In a sense the Sant Mat "rethoric" is correct … the senses are bound to the world, the mind to the senses and something else has to bear it all.
In fact that is the outcome of Zen. .. the realization that we need not to be carried away by and lost in the ongoing movie .. being the silent witness … the observer.
That all said whatever I write are just words ..that is correct …. and they are by themselves not even interesting .. and maybe just an excuse to be together [echoing the late MCS]
There can be no grand dissolution of the universe without great disenchantment of my poetry verse.
Hi Um. Just a last few observations re your comments: –
“The conscious moment is an empty concept when it does not refer to content.”
I would say that the ‘conscious moment’ is its contents, whether its thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc., or sense phenomena.
—
“We have to deal with the so-called inner experiences, whether we like them or not . . .”
Yes, of course, we can only ever deal with what’s arising in the moment, even if that moment is a thought or image of the past – or future.
—
“In fact, that is the outcome of Zen. .. the realization that we need not to be carried away by and lost in the ongoing movie .. being the silent witness … the observer.”
Just to say, I can find no ‘silent witness or observer – only the process of witnessing or observing what arises in the moment – and acting or non-acting on it as my particular conditioning and information dictates.
@ Ron E
>> I can find no ‘silent witness or observer …<<
Nobody can, nobody ever did …
I have arrived at a point that I have to raise both arms in impotence and cry for help … as there is no help … i let them down and am going to make myself a cup of coffee to calm down .. even my stomach protests trying to grasp what cannot be grasped.
“If human experience is inevitably illusory…”
It is incomplete. So there is no issue of splitting. We are already split into pieces. Spiritual Meditation is the opposite of splitting. Learning from a true Saint is about taking the broken pieces of life, especially those we hide from ourselves, that are unconscious, and, under some legitimate guidance and wisdom greater than our biased views, we learn to focus on the one true integrating element, the Holy Spirit that you can witness within yourself. This element balances and integrates us, raises our consciousness, and enlightens us, so that we naturally, automatically become more aware and see and understand more things.
Then we see the context and basis of things. What we saw before was the illusion our limited and conditioned minds and hearts made of things.
By bringing into the light of consciousness those things in the dark, the illusions disappear of themselves.
So this idea of splitting is wrong, and a misunderstanding. We are already split, we have the dark things in the unconscious we keep there by pushing them away. So long as you push away those things by projecting blame on others, other people, other organizations, you are splitting from yourself. So long as you insist your own inner unconscious must behave by your rules, including the ultimate denial, that these things in your inconscious don’t exist, they will never come forth into conscious awareness. When they do, that is integration, that is becoming One. That is becoming whole. That is truly raised consciousness.
To accept yourself you will need to accept things as they are, the first step to accepting yourself as you are, even the hidden things you are working so hard to keep in the dark. Why give them power over yourself?
When you are conscious, you have choice. Then you don’t react on emotion, you don’t institutionalize complaint, you don’t crystalize complaint, but instead accept and allow those things to light that are in the dark within yourself. Start there. That is where spirituality begins. Not complaint. Complaint is duality, complaint is splitting.