For many years, several decades, I considered that closed-eyes meditation was the most important spiritual practice. That was a central teaching of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization headquartered in India led by a guru considered to be God in Human Form.
While the guru was very much here in the world, RSSB believed that the real form of the guru was manifested only in higher supernatural realms of reality, which also were the true home of the guru’s disciples — which included me until I deconverted from RSSB in 2005.
So ordinary living, while naturally important, was viewed as a lesser priority for RSSB initiates. And maybe even a harmful distraction. The RSSB guru was fond of quoting the Bible, where Jesus supposedly said in Matthew 10:37:
Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
So if loving father, mother, son, or daughter more than Jesus means that spending eternity in the lap of God is highly problematic, then seemingly loving a job, golf, movies, cold beer, or long walks on the beach with your dog should be even lower on a spiritual aspirant’s to-do list.
Now, though, I’ve given up supernatural beliefs. Which makes experiencing this world here and now the only “spiritual” activity I’m seriously interested in. (The quotation marks indicate that I’m no longer sure what spiritual means in my view of life, but I still use that word out of habit.)
In the final chapter of Michael Pollan’s new book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness, he speaks of what he learned while spending time alone in a cave at a Zen center in New Mexico. Well, it wasn’t really a cave, as Pollan describes:
The cave was a twelve-by-fifteen-foot cell dug into a south-facing hillside and lined with brown stucco; it was windowless except for a sliding glass door overlooking the meadow. In one corner stood a spartan single bed, in the other a small woodstove. Between them, against the back wall, a meditation cushion sat on a raised platform.
Pollan speaks of what occurred after he’d been in the cave for a few days.
Initially, I found I was talking to myself out loud, trying to fill the vast space of silence, which made it feel as though I had doubted my self rather than eliminated it — given it a little company. “Should I have a cup of tea? Put another log on the fire?” I would ask. And I would answer, “Sure,” or “Good idea.” But after a day or two I fell in love with the silence, and the voices stopped.
I found the handful of chores completely absorbing, as if nothing in the world mattered as much as splitting firewood or sweeping the floor of my humble hovel. These chores became my little rituals, fully occupying my attention and leaving no remainder of thought, self-consciousness, or anticipation. The distance between living and meditating had narrowed to a sliver.
When I described the satisfactions of my routine to Roshi Joan during one of our hikes, she smiled: “That’s the sacredness of the everyday.”
…To my surprise, these moments of simple and more or less self-less consciousness did not occur when my eyes were closed — in fact, the darkness sent me zooming off to all kinds of strange places. No, now it was when my eyes were open that the stream of thought stilled and pooled, and not only on the meditation platform; it could happen when I was moving around the cave doing chores or hiking in the woods.
The fact of consciousness loomed larger than the problem.
…My time in the cave had shown me another way to look at consciousness: less as a scientific or philosophical puzzle to be solved and more as a practice, a way to once again be altogether here, present to life and to this vault of stars. That, I guess, is the prize won on this quest, in place of the definitive theory or clinching argument I had once, naively, hoped to bring back from it.
Consciousness is a miracle, truly, and remains the deepest of mysteries, yes, but it is also so very simple it can fit into a sentence. I open my eyes and a world appears.
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I mentioned before that in Chan/Zen meditation, it is usual to meditate with the eyes open, either focusing on the floor a few feet away or facing the wall. I believe this enables the senses to be alert – but not inundated – rather than having the eyes shut, which can facilitate streams of thought.
It seems as though we live our lives through thoughts and concepts, walking around in a ‘thought bubble’, not really paying attention to what is around us, and it is through this constant stream of thought from which we relate to the world.
I don’t really think, as Pollan states that: “Consciousness is a miracle, truly, and remains the deepest of mysteries.” The words miracle and a mystery are pretty loaded terms, which we ascribe to anything we don’t understand – and believe we should. And I know for a fact that we can insert any sort of meaning onto what we don’t understand – enter the world of beliefs and superstitions!
Surely, what’s appearing in the here and now is never a mystery – it’s simply what is (the here and now being all we can ever truly know). The idea of anything being a mystery only manifests where we turn what is perceived into a concept. There is no real need to turn something as natural as consciousness into a mystery by overlaying it with abstract thinking.
After saying that, obviously, there are still many things we don’t know and can continue to study, but to term them mysteries can be the slippery slope to relegating what we don’t understand to the realms of fantasy thinking.
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A couple of related quotes: –
Steve Hagen writes: – “There’s no mystery. Reality is clear and obvious. If you pay careful attention to your actual experience, this is what you’ll find. There’s truly no ultimate mystery at all, until we grasp.” (By grasping, he is referring to our habit of making something out of it – which is not inherent in what is perceived).
And Alan Watts: – “A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So, he loses touch with reality, and lives in a world of illusions. By thoughts, I mean specifically, chatter in the skull. Perpetual and compulsive repetition of words, of reckoning and calculating. I’m not saying that thinking is bad.”.
You people can’t seem to take the me myself and I out of the equation. That is not the guru and you are not the soul because we are not on that level. The whole rssb philosophy is to leave the self and the body behind but when the so-called guru is afraid to die it puts a damper on the project.
And in the legal world remember when Joe Colombo stood up there with the Italian Anti-Defamation League and claimed that there was no Mafia? Remember when Jim Jones from the people’s Temple gathered around his flock for one last loyalty test before they drank the Kool-Aid?
Remember Waco?
Do you remember that Osho too ?
These people aren’t even gurus in the false sense of the word. Many people get buck teeth from sucking on too much money.
@ Ronald
In the end the question arises as to who is responsible fort what?!
The snake-oil-seller?
OR
The person that goes to the market …
Stops, to listen to the snake-oil-seller …
Buys his products?
etc
The snake-oil-seller as far as I understand has no power, to make one go to the marked, stop to listen and buys his “oil” ….
No body ever asked, advised or persuaded me to step into the world of spirituality….nor to step out.
True Satsangis ( followers of RSSB) don’t read this page because they can’t stomach someone beating up on their daddy ( metaphorically of course ). Many read it but they aren’t the true ones. Myself I make no claim to any spiritual knowledge or meat and potatoes either one. This takes zero energy for me to do this and robs me of nothing. It takes more energy to actually make a meal than to talk about the disgust that is the Babaji. ( And his sidekick Yosemite Sam ). Whatever it makes reverberate around other people’s skull isn’t reverberating in mine. My intentions are true and honorable. I’ve worked for plenty of Jews when I was in the natural food restaurant business I got in trouble from the owner for putting too much portions of fruit in people smoothies. The Juice Factory. Austin texas. I served Carlos Santana’s there the day they played at the ZZ Top romping stomping BBQ at memorial stadium . We were already vegetarians. 1974 I think
I am quite tyar bar tyar
Oh the last two or three times I saw him live in person I’ve had these same thoughts so they must be harmless , nobody got hurt.
Haha those …. that beat him up lean on the same wood for support as those that cannot stomach it.
I’m so worried about people using me for my money but I don’t have any money. That’s what I’m worried about.
“Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be experienced.”- Gabriel Marcel
Real money is energy. More this thing, more you can create your own world.every human born with some energy…by the age of 6 we start losing this energy as we are caught by Maya…or we start becoming materialistic…
By age of 16 a spiritual flame is born…it decides which way it will go…some people start becoming Spiritual and most of others get absorbed in world mundane affairs.
Shabad, water(Buddhist) manifest this energy. That’s why surat shabad is important. But who can sit for 2.5 hrs meditation daily if he is just seeing darkness rather than light.
Collect more shabad, it will place you where you belong when death happens.
Open eye meditation is best if you apply the techniques I said earlier regarding degree of awareness around you.
God is not just inside