Putting on the Mind of Christ

This probably is the first book to describe the overall path of consciousness development from a Christian perspective. As such, it is a stunning achievement. In a sense, however, this claim is much less grandiose than it sounds. For by “the entire path,” Jim Marion means one that includes the basic stages of spiritual development described so beautifully by the great saints and sages, plus the psychological stages of development only recently discovered by modern developmental psychologists (such as Jean Piaget, Jane Loevinger, Robert Kegan, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Carol Gilligan). Thus, a truly complete path would, as it were, combine the discoveries of both the ancient sages and the modern psychologists, and by definition, that more comprehensive or complete map of development has only been possible in the last few decades.

INTRODUCTION Putting on the Mind of Christ, The Inner Work of Christian Spirituality, is the first book to clearly describe the entire Christian spiritual path. Step by step, from the consciousness of infants, children, and adolescents, Putting on the Mind of Christ leads the reader to the consciousness that Jesus called the Kingdom of Heaven—the highest level of human spiritual development. Citing the New Testament, Christian spiritual classics like St. John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul, and my own inner experience, the book seeks to demonstrate that Jesus’ teaching and his death and resurrection were meant to show us the way to this inner kingdom. For the Christian, the follower of Jesus, the Way to the Kingdom of Heaven (higher consciousness) is Jesus Christ himself (John 14:6). More specifically, it is “to allow God to transform us inwardly by the complete renewing of our minds” (Rom. 12:2), so that, with St. Paul, we can honestly say, “We have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16). This “putting on of the mind which was in Christ Jesus” (Philip. 2:5), that is, the Christ Consciousness, is the goal of the Christian spiritual path. This book seeks to describe that path. It seeks to serve as a map to the Kingdom of Heaven.

Christian tradition which, for two thousand years, has had inner spiritual growth as its primary concern. In particular, the spiritual teachings of Jesus and of the Christian saints and mystics have generally not been appreciated and incorporated. This has happened for a number of reasons, two of crucial importance. First, the spiritual teachings of Jesus and the saints have not been understood. Second, those teachings involve levels of human consciousness beyond that of even psychologically well-adjusted, creatively-functioning adults. No modern psychology map of human development goes beyond the vision-logic level (chapter 8). The psychic, subtle, causal and nondual are not even recognized as real, yet it is of these upper levels that Jesus and the saints speak (chapters 9 to 17).

At the second, at age 11, I vowed to dedicate my life to the service of God, to pray privately for at least an hour or two a day, and, to the best of my powers, to become a saint; i.e., the best and most loving person I could be. Immediately after the third conversion, at age 15, I entered a Catholic monastery where I remained for the next seven and a half years. This third conversion was probably my first real “mystical” experience. I was swept up in a highly altered and exalted state of consciousness for several days. Afterwards, I could never again see the world as “ordinary” because, from that point on, I knew by experience that the invisible spiritual world was every bit as real as this material one. My first three years in the monastery were among the happiest years of my life. The monastery was in a rural area, the property bordering on a large lake. As monks, we kept silent most of the day and all of the night. We ate most meals in silence. We had no radio, television, magazines, and, of course, it being the 1960’s, no video games or Internet. We were allowed to listen to records on Saturday nights but I often skipped these recreations and spent the time meditating in the chapel. I didn’t feel I had to do this. I wanted to. I simply loved prayer more than noise. Prayer filled me with an inner bliss that mere music couldn’t touch. We meditated at least two hours every day in addition to all the other more formal religious services. Studies were hard. Sports activities were both mandatory and demanding. Friendships made were solid and lasting. Inwardly I was “high” on God for days on end (a stage in the spiritual life I will describe later in the book). I loved the silence and I loved monastic life.

About three and a half years into this idyllic existence, God lowered the boom. I was plunged into what St. John of the Cross, the famous Catholic mystic, calls the “Dark Night of the Senses” (which I describe later in the book). There were no more “highs.” It was no longer possible to do oral prayer. I couldn’t force myself to read a spiritual book. Meditation was an arid desert. I felt aching and empty on the inside. Spiritual things seemed revolting to me. But I kept meditating and carried on with my studies and other activities. I told no one what I was feeling inside. Then came the trials that are typical of this “night.” A teacher who misunderstood me punished me severely for no apparent reason, depriving me of a holiday the other students had. My best friend left the monastery. Another teacher took a dislike to me, and though I had a very good voice, excluded me from the choir when a record was being made. But these trials were nothing compared to the next three years. There was one severe interpersonal conflict after another. One new classmate didn’t speak to me for three years and tried to turn all my friends against me. Another teacher tried to have me thrown out of the seminary because I spoke up and objected when he was ridiculing a classmate in the classroom (he did succeed in having me publicly humiliated). The hostility and rage that I evoked from this priest so terrified me that I lost ten pounds in a week and developed an ulcer almost overnight. One of my best friends was thrown out of school, for petty reasons. My wrist was broken on the soccer field and my arm put in a smelly cast for months. I was often exhausted and depressed.

One of the things the Dark Night of the Senses does is to bring previously denied contents of the unconscious to the surface. So, on top of all this, I found myself having to cope with feelings of homosexuality. One spiritual director to whom I went for advice told me that, since I had homosexual feelings, I was to break off all contact with my five best friends. I did and had to tell them why.

This trial lasted four years. During that period I had taken my vows (poverty, chastity, obedience) from a sense of duty to God, yet I felt nothing. After three years of all this— with two more to come—I was numb on the inside. Thank God I had read St. John of the Cross. So I understood this spiritual passage. I stuck with it, kept praying, kept meditating, kept loving all as best I could, and kept forgiving those who caused me difficulties. It turned out I chose correctly. After five years of this I was worn out. I was so thin I looked like a scarecrow. I also began to realize that my own consciousness had grown well beyond many of my teachers, many of whom were stuck at the “mythic level” of consciousness (see chapter 6) or, at best, at a rationalized mythic level (see chapter 7).

Finally, on a lovely day in May, 1970, when some friends and I were attending a rally for the Black Panther Bobby Seale at Yale University, I experienced another inner transformation. This was the entrance into the subtle level of consciousness (see chapter 11). I experienced this transformation as a significant and freeing spiritual experience. To use the words of John of the Cross, I felt as though “liberated from a cramped prison cell.”

The publisher has asked me to address the following questions: if I were to write this book today, what if anything would I say differently and how, if such be the case, has my thinking changed? The answer is that I would take into account Ken Wilber’s breakthrough book of 2006, Integral Spirituality. In Integral Spirituality, Wilber, whom I consider one of the most brilliant spiritual teachers of all time, made another of his many breakthroughs in understanding and explaining the spiritual path. Ken was kind enough to seek my input and comments on his book pre-publication, and I concurred with his analysis and conclusions. Although a full understanding of his important theoretical breakthrough requires studying his book, I will attempt to explain here Wilber’s contribution in as plain a way as I can.

addition, in Putting on the Mind of Christ, I also included inner psychological development into wholeness (individuation) as part of the same process. In other words, I described a single path of spiritual development that conflated or included three different types of spiritual development: (1) growth in the cognitive stages of development (archaic, magical, mythic rational and vision-logic); (2) growth in the trained meditative states of development (psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual); and (3) growth in psychological wholeness—the integration of the light and shadow parts of the psyche, the male and female parts of the psyche Jesus that explicitly says in the Gospel of Thomas is essential for entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven the highest level of human consciousness.

In Integral Spirituality, Wilber differentiates between these three aspects of spiritual growth. He spends several chapters explaining the difference between states of consciousness which are available to people at all cognitive levels (though only high level meditators have mastered such states), and cognitive stages of awareness (each stage exhibiting awareness of more and more aspects of reality). He also has a chapter on the pursuit of psychological wholeness by integrating the shadow aspects of our psyches, thus healing our neuroses and other psychic damages.

Given these examples and others, it became evident to Wilber and to me that one can be enlightened (united with God and all of the reality that one is capable of seeing) in a meditative state sense while still being undeveloped in terms of cognitive development, even stuck in a rigid fundamentalist worldview Meditation cannot cure this any more than meditation can cure our neuroses. In fact, success in meditative realization could even cement these fundamentalist views by causing the meditator to wrongly conclude that God approves of such parochial understandings and exclusionary behaviors. I found this very dismaying, but, like Wilber, I have had to accept what clearly is the case for many spiritual teachers.

Meditation is still absolutely necessary to progress spiritually, but it is clearly no longer enough. We must also work hard to heal our neuroses and grow psychologically, and we must work hard to understand intellectually the great breakthroughs in human understanding and reasoning made by the modern and postmodern sciences.

The truth is, nobody knows. There are lots of theories, lots of educated guesses, but few real explanations” (87). We remain mysterious beings in a mysterious universe, a universe that is gradually becoming more and more conscious through us.

Book One Part I: The Kingdom Of Heaven

Chapter 1 WHAT JESUS TAUGHT ABOUT THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN A proper understanding of what Jesus meant by “the Kingdom of Heaven” is essential to Christian spirituality. The Kingdom of Heaven was the central theme of Jesus’ preaching ministry. By the “Kingdom of Heaven,” Jesus meant a particular level of human consciousness, not a place to which Christians are destined after death. Unfortunately, most church officials and theologians today do not understand Jesus’ concept of the Kingdom. Using Mother Teresa and Jesus as examples, we can see that the two chief characteristics of the nondual consciousness of the Kingdom of Heaven are a lack of separation between God and humans and a lack of separation between human beings.

The vast majority of contemporary Christians, however, are not the least upset that astronomers have yet to locate a physical place called “heaven.” That is because most of us do not believe that “heaven,” our promised after-death home, is to be found anywhere in the dimension of spacetime. Most of us believe that heaven, though a place, is somewhere in another, non-physical dimension. There is nothing wrong with these beliefs. There is an after-death place of love, light, peace, and joy that is properly called heaven, and leading virtuous lives will certainly help us get there. I will return to a discussion of these aspects of heaven (and the Christian belief in the resurrection of the body) in part 5 of this book.

Though Jesus acknowledged that an after-death heaven existed, Jesus devoted his preaching, not to that heaven, but to a Kingdom of Heaven that he said was here and now, near, “at hand” (Mark 1:15). The principal message that Jesus brought to us was the Gospel or “Good News” of the Kingdom of Heaven. Matthew, the author of the earliest Gospel, begins his account of Jesus’ public ministry with these words: “From that time Jesus began to preach his message, “Turn away from your mistaken thinking, because the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.’” (Matt. 4:17). By “at hand” Jesus meant “here,” “right in front of our faces,” “in our midst.”

Jesus told many parables about what this Kingdom of Heaven was like, a Kingdom of Heaven he himself saw, and lived in, every day of his public ministry. And he promised that those of us who truly sought this Kingdom within ourselves, forsaking all else to do so, would surely realize the same vision, not after death but in this life. For Jesus, therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven was something that could be realized by each and every one of us right here on Earth. It was a Kingdom that could actually be “seen,” not with our physical eyes, of course, but with the inner eye of understanding. The goal of the spiritual life, Jesus taught, was to “seek first” this inner vision of this world. Once we, while here on Earth, have realized within ourselves the vision of the Kingdom, he said, “all else will be added,” including, of course, admittance to the heaven after death (Matt. 6:33). But first, he taught, before there is any question about entering the after-death heaven, the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth has to be realized by going deep within ourselves.

Jesus wept over Jerusalem because the leaders of his own religion had not understood or accepted his message about the inner Kingdom of Heaven (Luke 13:34). Instead, the blind leading the blind (Matt. 15:14), they continued to emphasize external observances (like fasting and the washing of hands) and moral rules and regulations over the inner spiritual core of religion. Rather than follow the narrow path within that Jesus pointed out, they insisted on following the wide path of moral rectitude that their society honored, one that afforded them the first place in the synagogue, access to political leaders, and an assumed right to the allegiance and donations of the people (Matt. 7:13-14).

What then is this Kingdom of Heaven, the vision of this world that the mind (consciousness) of Jesus “saw”? First of all and most importantly, The Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus saw so well is a vision of this world that sees no separation (duality) between God and humans. Jesus of Nazareth, a human being like ourselves, a lowly carpenter from a nondescript town, nevertheless managed to realize and “see” that he and the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Jacob, and Isaac, were one. He “saw” with his everyday mind (consciousness) that he was completely united to the God that everyone else merely thought they should worship. “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30), said Jesus. And he also said “He who sees me sees the Father” (John 14:9). He saw his own complete union with God despite all physical and other appearances of “separateness” to the contrary, and despite all the Pharisees’ and Sadducees’ theological theories to the contrary. Not only did Jesus see this truth for himself, but he saw that this essential non-separation from God was also true for the rest of us. And he actually had the courage to go about the land of Israel telling everyone that this was the case. He asked us, “Do you not know that you are gods?” (John 10:34-35). In fact, it was because he had the nerve to “make himself equal to God” that the religious authorities, threatened that their own authority with the people was being undermined, handed him over to the Romans to be killed (Luke 22:71).

With his inner vision of the Kingdom of Heaven Jesus saw this unity of himself with God so clearly that he was able to create as God creates, by simply speaking his word. By speaking his word he healed the sick, multiplied fish and loaves of bread, and even raised the dead. Because he saw and lived in the Kingdom of Heaven while on this Earth, Jesus was fully aware of the fact that, though he was a human being just like us, he was also a divine being, the image and likeness of God in the fullest and deepest sense. In Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, the phrase “Kingdom of Heaven” or “Kingdom of God” means “God’s sovereign presence.” Just like Adam and Eve before the Fall, Jesus walked always in God’s sovereign presence. He wanted us to do the same. Second, The Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus saw so well is a vision of this world that sees no separation (duality) between human beings. Jesus saw there was no separation between himself and any other person, again despite all physical appearances of separation to the contrary. He saw every other person as himself (Luke 6:31). In fact, Jesus did not see other persons as “others” at all. He saw all human beings (and indeed the whole created universe) as part of himself. And this applied to all human beings, not just those of his own Jewish religion, and not just people who were considered, according to the norms of his society, as morally good.

Jesus tried to teach people to take the focus off externals, i.e., the “law.” Instead, he wanted everyone to look deep within themselves to where, in the inner Kingdom of Heaven, all humans are one.

It was from this great vision of no-separation (or nonduality) between God and humans, and between and among all human beings, that Jesus, following other great teachers of his religion, formulated his two greatest commandments, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and “You must love your fellow humans as yourself” (Matt. 22:37-39).

He left us the Holy Communion both as a sign of, and as a way of actually bringing about by inner death and rebirth in union with him, this inner realization of our oneness, our non-separation from God and each other. At that Last Supper he also gave us his “new commandment” that we love one another just as he loved us (John 13:34). How, then, did he love us? His love for us was based on this same no-separation (nondual) vision of our inner substantial union with God and each other. Jesus’ new commandment, therefore, requires us to come into the same level of consciousness (awareness) of the Kingdom of Heaven, and that same kind of love, that he himself displayed.

For Jesus and Mother Teresa the nondual vision of this world was not a matter of make-believe. They did not pretend that there was no separation between themselves and God or between themselves and others. They did not see and treat others as if they were themselves. Not at all. Rather, their inner nondual vision of the Kingdom of Heaven was such that they actually saw this lack of separation. They actually saw all persons as one with God. They actually saw all persons as themselves.

In fact, it cannot be done in an habitual everyday way unless a person has first realized nondual consciousness within himself or herself. After our own consciousness becomes nondual, we need no effort at all to see people as Christ. It is impossible to see them any other way.

To put on the mind of Christ, therefore, is to experience this nondual consciousness (awareness) for ourselves. And, once we do put on the mind of Christ, we, like Jesus, will see the Kingdom of Heaven all around us here and now. We see ourselves and everyone else, no matter who they are, as divine. And we will be living in the Kingdom of Heaven right here on Earth. Jesus, of course, did have one huge advantage over the rest of us. He was born with the inner ability to clearly see the nondual vision of the Kingdom of Heaven. Like all humans he probably had to go through the earlier levels of consciousness as a child, but, according to the Gospel, his everyday consciousness “saw” the nondual vision of the Kingdom by the time he finished his desert retreat, or perhaps even by the time he was an adolescent discussing religious matters with the elders in the temple (Luke 2:46-50). By adolescence Jesus had also begun to see his life’s mission, as given him by the Father who guided him from within. That work was to show us the way to this same inner kingdom by word and example, especially by his death and resurrection (Matt. 20:17-19). He was to become for us, as he said, “the Way” to the inner Kingdom of Heaven (John 14:6).

Chapter 2 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN—THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS The Kingdom of Heaven is nondual consciousness, the highest level of human consciousness. There are many different levels of human consciousness. Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980), who was a professor of child psychology at the University of Geneva from 1929 until his death was a pioneer in the study of the developing consciousness of children. His writings include The Child’s Conception of the World, The Moral Judgment of the Child, and The Language and Thought of the Child. Contemporary American philosopher, psychologist, and mystic Ken Wilber is…

We see, when we realize the vision of the Kingdom of Heaven, that we, like Jesus, are not mere human beings after all, but are now, and have always been, nothing less than immortal, unlimited, divine Spirit. In his ministry, Jesus wanted more than anything else to tell us about the nondual vision of the Kingdom he saw. He saw a Kingdom right here on Earth in which everyone was truly and substantially “one” with God and “one” with each other. At the same time, however, he saw that this nondual “oneness” didn’t take away from God’s transcendence or from our own humanness or individuality.…

Jesus did not say, “The Kingdom of Heaven is this” because “this” automatically excludes its opposite “that.” Nor did he say, “The Kingdom of Heaven is that” because “that” automatically excludes its opposite “this.” He did not say “The Kingdom is here” because “here” excludes its opposite “there.” Likewise, he did not say “The Kingdom is “there” because “there” excludes its logical opposite “here.” So Jesus ended up saying that the Kingdom was “not here and not there” (Luke 17:21).

That left him open to constant misunderstandings on the part of the Pharisees (and millions even today) who cannot understand any truth unless it can be expressed in logical black versus white terms.

This problem of understanding the words of persons at higher levels of awareness is why most Christian theologians, preachers, and church leaders have such a hard time (if not an impossible one) trying to interpret the Christian mystics or trying to compare the Christian mystics to those of other religions.

Finally, a few mystics have tried to express the vision of the Kingdom in words and, like Jesus himself, some have found themselves in serious trouble with the religious authorities for doing so. Some genuine Christian saints have gotten the same treatment from Christian church officials that Jesus got from the Pharisees and Sadducees. Over the centuries, many were condemned, and some were even put to death.

Chapter 3 MAPPING THE PATH TO THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

Part Ii The Seven Levels Of Consciousness Of The Human Personality

Chapter 4 THE ARCHAIC CONSCIOUSNESS OF INFANTS

Individual Consciousness Development The first level of human consciousness is the archaic and normally lasts into the third year of an infant’s life.

The infant’s first spiritual task, beginning about the fourth month, is to clearly realize that its own physical “self” is separate from, first the mother, and then from all other physical beings and objects. Gradually, based upon its own experience, the infant comes to realize that, much as it may narcissistically (self-centeredly) wish things to be otherwise, its physical reality is quite distinct from that of other physical beings and objects. And so, based on this experience that each of us had as tiny infants, we already come to the first three principles which will govern the spiritual path from start to finish:

All growth in consciousness is a process of inner realization. All inner realizations are the result of personal experience “meditated upon” in some fashion.

All growth in consciousness is a lessening of self-centeredness, a “death” to the old self-centered way of looking at the world and a simultaneous “rebirth” into a less self-centered way of seeing things.

As a person’s consciousness goes up the spiritual ladder from level to level, the person’s consciousness becomes less and less attached to (i.e., stuck in or defined by) physical matter.

How does prophecy work? We have already seen how everything that exists on the physical level of existence must first exist as a thought with accompanying emotion in the astral plane. If you were able to see or sense these thought and emotional vibrations before they “rain” their physical manifestations into spacetime, you would be a prophet. The basic principle of prophecy is as simple as that. Prophecy, as the word is used in the New Testament, is not limited to foretelling the future. It is a much broader term. It means opening our inner psychic faculties to hear the words, or see the images, sent down from the spiritual planes (including our

own “higher selves” or souls) for our guidance.

At the psychic level, the Christian turns within in a more radical way than previously. We identify ourselves, our “I,” with the inner witness who observes mind, emotions, and body, and we become skilled at watching ourselves dispassionately from the witness’ vantage point. This witnessing is meditation even if no specific meditation technique is practiced. We become decisively inner directed and selfreliant, rather than relying on the advice, opinions, and values of others. We learn to listen to the still small voice within before making decisions, learning in this way

to “pray always” (1 Thes. 5:17). We become sensitive to the messages of the soul or higher self. Because the soul itself is pure spirit and formless, these messages are often transmitted to us through the symbols, sounds, and feelings of the astral plane. One of the primary purposes of dreams, for example, is to convey, symbolically, the messages of our souls in a manner that, with training, can be then consciously interpreted by our everyday conscious selves. The Bible has dozens of examples of messages from Spirit being sent by dream. In a dream, Joseph was told it was all right to marry Mary, Jesus’ mother (Matt. 1:20); another dream told him to take the Christ Child and flee to Egypt (Matt. 2:13); and still another told him when to move to Galilee (Matt. 2:22).3

Putting aside the wonders of the psychic world, if we intend to consciously realize the Kingdom of Heaven before the end of our lifetime, we are best advised not to waste time at the psychic level or get lost in all its fascinating aspects (and lost we can easily get). There are also dangers at the psychic level, so much so that it is best not to dabble in this realm, such as with the use of Ouija boards or the unguided use of mind-altering

drugs. The lower astral regions are filled with extreme darkness and negativity; they are the location of hell—in fact, there are many hells of various types, each more hideous than the last. These regions are repulsive and psychically dangerous, and full of negative entities (thought forms, discarnate humans, and demons) that will harm you (or even take partial possession of you), given the chance. By “partial possession” I mean that if they find a damaged part of our emotional body that vibrates similarly to their own vibration, they may become magnetically attached to that part with the result that we thereafter have to contend not only with our own emotional damages but also with theirs.

Whatever the reason, artists with psychic ability are now more easily tapping into these realms and using them to create such things as violent pornography, video games, and movies. It is an unwholesome development, and it is the dark side of the recent general rediscovery of psychic abilities and the astral realm. In addition to the above dangers, there is a case to be made that much of what we call schizophrenia, a serious mental disorder that usually appears from late adolescence to early adulthood, is caused by psychically opening up into the astral plane (and sometimes communication with the beings who live there) before there is sufficient ego-development to handle these tremendous (and, for the rational ego, tremendously confusing) energies. All the major spiritual traditions advise serious spiritual seekers not to tarry at the psychic level, but to keep moving on the path. St. Paul gave this advice to the Corinthians. These early Christians were meditating, and developing and using their psychic abilities in many ways. But they became proud, boasted of their abilities, grew jealous of each other’s gifts, and neglected to keep their eyes on the still higher spiritual levels of consciousness. So Paul wrote to them:

The spiritual master don Juan Matus, the Yaqui teacher of the late Carlos Castaneda,6 tells of the stupendous psychic achievements of Native American “sorcerers” (his word for psychics) before the arrival of Columbus. He taught Castaneda and others many psychic abilities, which he called the abilities of the “second intention.” Don Juan’s “third attention,” he said, was the goal of his seer’s path in contrast to the “second attention.” I label don Juan’s “third attention” the causal and nondual levels in this book.

Chapter 10 THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SENSES The spiritual transition between the psychic level of consciousness and the next level, the subtle, is the “Dark Night of the Senses.” This is the name give to this passage four hundred years ago by St. John of the Cross (1542–91), a religious reformer and friend of St. Teresa of Avila. Considered by many to be one of the finest poets in the Spanish language, he was also the author of major works on mystical theology, such as The Dark Night and The Ascent of Mount Carmel.

John notes “that God nurtures and caresses the soul, after it has been resolutely converted to his service [emphasis added], like a loving mother who warms her child with the heat of her bosom, nurses it with good milk and tender food, and carries and caresses it in her arms.” He says that the person begins to experience “intense satisfaction in the performance of spiritual exercises, because God is handing the breast of his tender love to the soul, just as if it were a delicate child. The soul finds its joy, therefore, in spending lengthy periods at prayer, perhaps even entire nights; its penances are pleasures; its fasts, happiness.”1

I also know a young person who opened up to the kundalini by the use of street drugs. In this person the “fire” burned for months, almost incapacitating the person. That person is still recovering under the guidance of a spiritual master. I have also known of several priests who, by intense spiritual exercises, opened themselves to the energies of infused contemplation. But, intellectually, for whatever reason, they were apparently unable or unwilling to let go of the rigid mythic belief system in which they had been schooled. Their inner battle between head and heart resulted in disaster. They ended up in mental hospitals after suffering nervous breakdowns. I don’t think any of them has fully recovered.

As chapter 4 noted, the higher we ascend in the spiritual life the less dense or lighter our consciousness becomes. A definite quantity of these heavy negative vibrations, therefore, must be transmuted by the incoming subtle energies (i.e., changed into a lighter and faster vibrating form of energy) for us to graduate into the subtle level. I say “definite quantity,” “heavy,” “lighter,” and “faster” not because we can actually weigh or clock these vibrations physically, but because these physical terms are analogous to what is happening on the astral level. To give a concrete example, we feel lighter emotionally when we come out of a depression or a period of sadness or release a fear. This is the type of transmutation of energy, from a heavy form to a lighter one, that the subtle energies bring about. Each level of consciousness has a distinct vibratory frequency. It is analogous to the frequencies of the musical scale or the colors of the rainbow. Matter vibrates at

the densest frequency and possesses the least consciousness. The subtle energies, in contrast, have great inherent intelligence. They have such a great amount of inherent intelligence (as well as beauty and power) that one can properly call them “angelic.” The negative emotional vibrations are most often locked away by denial in the shadow sections of the person’s astral body. There are also negative mental vibrations stored in the thought body (the higher portion of the astral body). These include beliefs like “I am not a worthy person,” “Nobody loves me,” “I never get a break,” “Everything always goes wrong for me,” etc.). This negativity will burn up like fire when the subtle energies, at first so wondrously pleasant, finally hit those dark corners of the psyche. The subtle vibrations will reach those dark corners when the meditator finally relaxes enough, trusts the spiritual process, and lets go of fear (breathing it out, so to speak). In fact, a good capsule definition for the spiritual path is that it is a never-ending process of relaxing, of breathing in light, breathing out fear, and of coming into fear’s opposite, which is love (1 John 4:18).

When the subtle energies come in, and the Dark Night of Senses begins in earnest, the person, now able to “feel” psychic events, will often experience psychic pain, especially if her emotional woundedness is deep, and if there is unconscious resistance of which there normally is a good deal. On the positive side, this transformation will release the creative energies that have been used, up until then, to repress those parts of self the person heretofore judged against; usually parts of the self involving aggression and sexuality. The transformation will unlock the truths, usually trapped in denial, that have to be faced and accepted. In the end, the person, having been set free by the truth, will be far better off emotionally and usually physically (John 8:32). To the extent these negative vibrations are already in the process of being cleared by manifesting in the etheric and physical bodies as disease (disease being one way to cleanse the psyche of them) the advent of the subtle energy flow may have pronounced effects upon the person’s physical health, ultimately for the better. The higher energies will usually clear out the most life-threatening energies first, followed in order by the progressively less threatening ones.

One of the great values of this natural psychotherapy is that the causes of the inner negativity need not even be considered any more than we’d go through last week’s trash saying, “Ah, here’s the remnants of Sunday dinner, and here’s Tuesday’s lunch.” You just toss the trash and be done with it. The Night surpasses psychotherapy not only because it cleanses us of even emotional damages we know nothing about, but also because it is a much more thorough-going cleansing. But before the healing comes the pain. John says the person is plunged into “such darkness that they do not know which way to turn in their discursive imaginings.”9 There is extreme aridity of spirit. Nothing the person does, including any kind of prayer or spiritual exercise, gives emotional satisfaction. There is only a deep inner anguish that is with the person twenty-four hours a day and for months on end. The aridity may also be accompanied at times by depression. But, unlike the case in normal depressions, the person is always aware that the depression and aridity are a healing work of Spirit.

The person is often wracked by feelings of lust, anger, and confusion as the repressed contents of the unconscious surface. John calls these “evil spirits” the spirits of fornication, blasphemy, and vertigo (confusion). For example, John says, “An angel of Satan, which is the spirit of fornication, is given to some to buffet their senses with strong and abominable temptations, and afflict their spirit with foul thoughts and very vivid images, which sometimes is a pain worse than death for them [emphasis added].”10 “At other times,” he says, “a blasphemous spirit is added; it commingles intolerable blasphemies with all one’s thoughts and ideas. Sometimes these blasphemies are so strongly suggested to the imagination that the soul is almost made to pronounce them, which is a grave torment to it [emphasis added].”11 John is describing repressed aggression, especially aggression against religious authority (hence “blasphemous”).

It is true that most meditators judge their repressed negative emotions, including those involving sexuality and aggression, as “demons” and “evil.” In that sense, John is merely being descriptive of their judgments and of his own as he went through this transition. It is also true that these repressed emotions are “evil” both in the sense of being unbalanced, and because they have been, up until now, the cause of the person’s unconscious negativity and negative behaviors. Further, it is true that these repressed negative parts of the self (our inner “shadow” or darkness) are sometimes magnetically linked to the energies of other dark (negative) entities that share the same low vibrations. The dark entities to which these damaged soul parts can be linked include negative thought forms, discarnate human beings who, for one reason or another, have not found their way to the Light, and perhaps even real demons (the dark angels who emanate from, and answer to, the Archangel Lucifer).12

The Archangel Lucifer’s job, as assigned by God, is to be in charge of the negative pole of Creation. From Lucifer emanate the dark forces, first and foremost fear (the true opposite of love), and then countless other negative angels (energies) who carry the negative emotions of pride, anger, lust, envy, sloth, jealousy, covetousness, selfishness, greed, etc. These energies are negative, but each of these emotions is essential for the evolution of human consciousness into the wholeness of the Christ Consciousness. If they weren’t, God would not have created them nor would God continue to hold them in existence. It is best to show compassion, not fear, for all the dark forces. They are just doing their jobs. Send them love and they will either be transformed into the light or, if they fear the light you send them, they will go away. The dark angels, like the angelic energies of light, are intelligent. They also each have a kernel of truth (light) at their core. That is why Lucifer’s name means “light bearer.” They too can be transformed into light and the truth they hold released.

right side (Matt. 20:20-24). The Night is a rude awakening, exposing to our conscious awareness, and often even to others, those demonic parts of ourselves we’d been schooled by parents, church, and society to keep under wraps. Having finally begun to thoroughly confront our own inner demons, we are no longer as quick to judge and look down upon others. We realize that our “goodness” is not ours at all, but a gift, like all else, from God who, as Jesus said, is the only possessor of goodness (Luke 18:19).

Compassion as virtue, that is, as an habitually empathic attitude towards all persons, comes only after the Night of Senses.

The goal of the Dark Night of Senses is none other than the emergence in a person of the spiritual capacity for universal love. During this passage, our heart center, the focal point of the astral body, opens up, after having been virtually closed since childhood by a host of fears. In transforming these fears, we at last begin to know what love means, and genuinely start to love the way Jesus did. This Dark Night of Senses can go on for years and often does. Because of all the negativity that is being transmuted by being released into conscious awareness, all sorts of negative things tend to occur in our outer lives. This is because negative thoughts and negative emotions (conscious or unconscious) produce, by the laws of manifestation, negative external consequences in a person’s life. This has always been the case, of course, but we may now finally become consciously aware of the fact. If these outside mirror reflections of our inner world are carefully examined, they will usually shed much light on the types of emotional imbalances being healed within. Perhaps they will illuminate the nature of the negative false beliefs we harbor about ourselves. So, we can work with the external to heal the internal, and vice versa, and we can use dreamwork to check our progress with respect to both. Some people will also benefit from psychotherapy during this Night. Thus, we begin to learn the art of always being aware of our thoughts and feelings in dialogue with external circumstances. This is a skill that can be sharpened by journal keeping and/or dreamwork, and one that will serve us in good stead as we go farther on the spiritual path. Another reason why it becomes increasingly important to discipline one’s thoughts, and especially speech from this point on, is that our power to affect the outer world by thought and speech grows exponentially as we ascend the levels of consciousness (James 5:16). We must become much more responsible for watching what we think and say, lest we damage our own lives or the world itself. We need to take full responsibility for the increased voltage of our manifestational ability. Jesus, emphasizing this point, said, “I tell you this: on the Judgment Day everyone will have to give account of every useless word he has ever spoken” (Matt. 12:36). Remember useless word he has ever spoken” (Matt. 12:36). Remember 22).

Eventually the Night will come to its natural end, and I use the word “natural” here and elsewhere for a reason. Unlike most of the traditional Christian accounts of the spiritual path, I call nothing that happens on the path “supernatural.” I have long thought that the distinction between natural and supernatural (and “sacred” and “profane,” “natural” and “miraculous”) creates more confusion than it sheds light. There is some practical usefulness in distinguishing holy water from regular water or sacred places from the non-sacred, but there is nothing in God’s universe that, in the final analysis, is not holy or sacred. If we prefer, we may call everything that occurs in the growth of human consciousness (…

With the natural end of the Night of Senses, as John puts it, we will find our “house being now all stilled.”15 Our consciousness will then pop up to the next level, that of…

This abrupt kind of shift actually occurs at every level but, as is the case at the higher levels, we now become much more consciously aware of what is happening. Often, for example, after the long years of inner preparation in the Dark Night of the Senses,1 we emerge into the subtle level in the space of an hour, a day, or a week. The Christian tradition aptly calls these transformational endings “rebirths.” We have died to the old level of consciousness, which in hindsight is seen to have presented an inadequate, incomplete, constricted, and distorted picture of the world in which we live (and of Jesus’ teachings), and are reborn into a new, more expansive and finer world. John of the Cross writes with respect to entrance into the level of subtle consciousness, “In this new state, as one liberated from a cramped prison cell, it [the soul] goes about the things of God with much more freedom and satisfaction of spirit and with more abundant interior delight.”3 Whenever we are reborn into a new level of consciousness, we feel that we have finally discovered the truth. We always feel that we have finally come home. We always feel psychologically stronger and more integrated. And we always wonder why we could not before see the truth of the new level, which is now obvious. The first thing the reborn person is usually tempted to do is to write a book, or to go on the preaching circuit to tell others about this truth, just as Jesus did when he emerged from the desert. Many do so, though sometimes it might be better if they did not. Jesus constantly admonished those whom he had healed to keep silent and tell no one about what had happened to them. And one reason he did so was perhaps because he knew that the person, though healed and reborn, had lots more deaths and rebirths to go through before they could come fully into the mind of Christ. By preaching and gathering followers, instead of humbly moving on, we may end up stuck at the new level for the rest of our lives. In being reborn at any level, we always gain a clearer, more comprehensive, freer, and detached system of beliefs, a belief system closer to the mind of Jesus and the core values of Christianity. This new belief system (which includes but transcends the old) always affords a more aerial view of the world. The people we left behind at the old level are now seen to be stuck in more materialistically based details and distinctions that do not matter to Jesus or God, their consciousness weighed down

and “blinded” by the denseness of matter and its limitations. But the new more aerial view is also, paradoxically, a more grounded and down-to-earth consciousness than the one we had previously, one less caught up in preconceived assumptions, concepts, and head trips, one that is more accurate in seeing the actual world (visible and invisible) around us. All this is abundantly true of entrance into the subtle level. Once we have consciously realized the subtle level, it will usually take some years to get accustomed to the energies at this level and become competent exercising them in our everyday life. As John says, “after having emerged from the state of beginners, the soul usually spends many years exercising itself in the state of proficients.” This is usually a creative and productive period of life.

On entrance into the subtle level, for the first time, we are given immediate contact with our guardian angel, and with our personal spiritual master, who might be, for example, one of Jesus’ disciples. Torkom Saraydarian writes: “It is during this initiation [the Dark Night of the Senses described in the last chapter] that the physical, emotional, and mental nature is flooded with a great light and energy… This enables man to stand in the presence of his Angel and have direct communication with Him.”4 This could not happen before because our vibrations were too low to see or hear these spiritual guides regularly. The guardian angel (whom I prefer to call the angel of the true self) and the spiritual master will often begin to appear in our dreams. There is no mistaking them when they come, because they are numinous figures, meaning they shine from within by their own internally generated spiritual light. For a person of a different religious tradition, the guides and messengers will appear differently, perhaps as buddhas to the Buddhist or prophets to the Jew, though I know of at least one Jewish mystic who, to his surprise, encountered Jesus at this level, Jesus telling him that he [Jesus] still has an assigned role to play for his people. For a person of no religion who reaches this level (and some do so), the guides and messengers may appear as archetypes like the Wise Old Woman, the Beautiful Young Princess, etc. The form (the astral clothing) does not matter.

The causal or soul energies that are entering our awareness at this level are properly called angelic. They are angelic in their function as messengers from our Christ Self, in their tremendous healing powers, and in their sublime intelligence. There are no “free floating” energies in either the visible or invisible parts of our universe, that is, energies not connected to personal beings of one sort or another. In the Orthodox Christian tradition, these angels or energies are emanations from the great personal (though nonhuman) beings we call archangels. Although they have their own distinct spiritual existence, both the master and the angel also stand for our own soul, our true Self, or higher self, and, for the Christian, the Christ Self. For the Christian, Jesus also becomes, at this level, a personification of our true self. If we read certain Gospel passages, especially in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus speaks as the Christ (i.e., from the level of the Christ Consciousness), these passages contain surprising new meanings and depths if we substitute, where Jesus says “I” or “me,” our own true self. For example, “Whoever loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37), “Believe in God and believe also in me” (John 14:1), “Whoever accepts my commandments and obeys them, he is the one who loves me” (John 14:21), and “You cannot bear fruit unless you remain in me” (John 15:3). The same dynamic operates with respect to Jesus if we unite with him in Holy Communion. Each reception of Holy Communion becomes an opportunity to visualize ourselves as being more transformed into our divine Christ Self. Jesus, speaking as the Christ (our own Christ Self), said “I am the Bread of Life… Whoever eats it will not die” (John 6:48, 50). By interiorly incorporating this “bread” more and more as our own identity, we begin a rapid inner transformation in identity from human to divine. At the subtle level, our inner identification with Jesus as Christ comes ever more quickly into fulfillment. It is at the subtle level that we begin our final individuation, the process by which a person becomes spiritually and psychologically whole, unique, and full of inner beauty. We take the final steps in the creation of ourselves as friends of Jesus (John 15:15), joint heirs with Jesus of the Kingdom (Rom. 8:17), integrated and complete human beings who unite all the male and female parts of ourselves into one divine Christed whole (Eph. 2:14, Gal. 3:26). All the guides and messengers are sent to help us accomplish this task (Col. 1:16).

The spiritual guides may also communicate telepathically, so that we begin to hear their voices in our heads. We may experience raptures by being caught up in the sublime energies breaking through from the level of the soul. We may see synchronicities in our daily life (positive or negative), or experience profound new insights of every sort (what Teresa calls “intellectual” visions). There is practically no end to the types of psychic, subtle, and pure intuitional phenomena that may occur at this level as the soul’s way of knowing— pure intuition or knowingness—begins to become operative in us. In her masterpiece, The Interior Castle, beginning with Mansion Six, St. Teresa describes many of the subtle phenomena one may encounter. As Wilber says: Teresa… gives clear and classic phenomenological descriptions of so many of the subtle-level apprehensions: interior illumination, sound, bliss, and understanding beyond ordinary time and place; genuine archetypal Form as creative pattern (not mythic motif); and psychic vision going all the way to pure nonverbal, transverbal, subtle intuition. The subtle level of consciousness begins with peace after the commotion of the Dark Night of the Senses, and remains largely peaceful for several years while we gain experience and…

Though many Christian saints have had to go through this territory with almost no earthly assistance since there were (and are) hardly any Christian spiritual masters around to help them, the Buddhists wisely insist that it is imperative for persons at this level to have a living human master to keep an eye on them. Otherwise, especially if we are very psychic, we may wonder sometimes if we are losing our minds. There are dangers at this level. For example, the remaining dark parts of the self (which John calls the “roots” of the person’s negativity) can easily be projected outward into visions of the type called “hallucinations” and “diseased” by Teresa (and called devils or bad angels by John). Inner voices can also be infected with negativity, so much so that we must be extremely careful channeling spirits at this juncture or some very negative and unbalanced messages can come through. The horrendous visions of St. Anthony of the Desert probably occurred at this level, usually referred to as “Satan disguising himself as an angel of light.” It is about this level that the Buddhist masters warn their disciples in no uncertain terms, “If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him.” John of the Cross says, “This is the stage in which the devil induces many into believing vain visions and false prophecies.” It is the healing and illuminating action of the subtle energies within that principally matters, not the phenomena that may or may not accompany them. These can be a danger to the extent they are infected by the demonic dark forces of negativity. As we get closer to the level of the soul two things happen. On the negative side, the phenomena are likely to accelerate, becoming more de-centering and upsetting. On the positive side, our spiritual guides will step up their efforts on our behalf. The result is that, as our consciousness gradually ascends to the next level of consciousness (the causal level, Christ Consciousness), we also begin a simultaneous descent into a spiritual crisis the like of which we have never before experienced, into what John of the Cross calls the “Dark Night of the Soul” and the late Buddhist spiritual master Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called the realm of “hell.”7 This simultaneous ascent and descent can take several years and usually accelerates in intensity as it does. With it, the transition beyond identification with the human personality has begun in earnest.

After the sudden rebirth into a new level, it may (and often does) take several years to become fully accustomed to the energies at that level. For example, the very same subtle energies that caused all that commotion (when they broke through into the psychic level) now become normal. Next the person must become competent at the new level of awareness, gaining facility in the use of the insights and abilities of that level in their everyday life. God, in fact, will send them just the challenges they need to gain this competency. This too usually takes years. Finally, when competency is mastered, the energies of the next level begin to come in, ushering in the whole tumultuous (catastrophic) death and rebirth process all over again. And so it goes. The same mechanism operates throughout the evolutionary process, including that of physical and social evolution.

Torkom Saraydarian in Christ, the Avatar of Sacrificial Love, AEG, available through T.S.G. Publishing Foundation, Inc., Cave Creek, AZ, 1994, p. 106. Torkom Saraydarian (1917-1997) was born in Asia Minor and later came to the United States. He studied with Sufis (Muslim mystics), dervishes, Christian mystics, and masters of temple music and dance. He wrote 170 books on the huge body of knowledge he called the “Ageless Wisdom.”

Part Iii The Dark Night Of The Soul

Chapter 12 THE NATURE OF THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL The Dark Night of the Soul is the central mystery in the evolution of human consciousness on this planet.

We enter the Dark Night understanding ourselves to be mere human beings, sinful and mortal, but we come out of this profound spiritual passage with the realization of our sinless, immortal divinity. The sufferings of the Dark Night are intense, and have four principal causes.

In defense, I must say that our sense of awe with respect to Jesus, the Self, the Universe, and with All That Is Just As It Is, grows exponentially as we come into these levels. Awe, wonder, and amazement

constantly occur in these realms and are indeed the fuel that keeps us striving ever onward to God, despite the terrific dangers and obstacles. The death and rebirth of the Dark Night of the Soul is what separates humans who think they are mere mortal human beings from those who know they are divine and immortal. We enter the Dark Night of the Soul thinking that we are sinful, fallen, and in need of salvation, and emerge knowing that we are, and have always been, sinless and saved. Emergence in rebirth from the Dark Night of the Soul, therefore, conquers both death and sin, as St. Paul testified (1Cor. 15:55-56). The Dark Night of the Soul is the ultimate Baptism of Fire and the Spirit which John the Baptist said Jesus would manifest for us (Matt. 3:11).

The first is intellectual and has to do with our realizing who we truly are. The Dark Night is necessary because, despite all that has gone before, despite years of Bible reading, prayers, and church attendance, despite reading mountains of spiritual books, and despite the years of meditation, we still don’t have a clue as to who we really are. If we are asked who we are, will still say our name is Mary Jones or John Smith. We will say we are of a certain gender, race, nationality, religion, age, occupation, and sexual orientation.

Once our consciousness moves beyond the boundaries of the personality we can encounter straight-on these angels of light and darkness. From the former come tremendous light, healing, consolation, insight, and assistance, but from the latter can come what Wilber calls the “subtler pathological states of what can only be called Kosmic terror, Kosmic evil, Kosmic horror.”4 At times the latter encounters can be terrifying in the extreme. In the life of Jesus as a human personality this confrontation with the demons is symbolized by his encounter with Satan (the Tempter) in the desert before he begins his public ministry. In Buddhism the confronting of these demons (just prior to enlightenment) is symbolized by Siddartha Gautama (who became the Buddha) being accosted by Mara (the Tempter) as he sat meditating under the fig tree. One Western Christian esoteric tradition calls the Dark Night of the Soul the “Crucifixion Initiation” (the Fourth Initiation according to their map of the spiritual path) because the Dark Night is the initiation, the baptism, that Jesus, in the fullness of time (Rom. 5:6), came to Earth to existentially act out for us in the physical by his death on the Cross and subsequent Resurrection.

I personally believe that God has “scheduled” this event to occur sometime during (perhaps at the climax of) the Age of Aquarius, the symbol for which is a young man carrying a water jug. It was this same young man whom Jesus’ disciples, on his instructions, followed into the Upper Room where Jesus gave us his legacy, the Holy Communion (Luke 22:10-20). The Age of Aquarius will see the fulfillment of this Holy Communion between humans and God, and between each one of us. By the end of the Age of Aquarius, if all goes well, humanity may live as the manifestation of the Christ on Earth.

Chapter 13 PRELUDE TO THE DARK NIGHT—BREAKTHROUGH TO THE CAUSAL LEVEL

God’s grace—the Holy Spirit—then intervened strongly and directly. I was given the realization that all love, including same-sexual love, necessarily comes from the God who is Love (1 John 4:8). I was also given the realization that the only way for me to experientially come into my true self, which I understood to be the same as my Christ Self, was to accept my sexuality. Those church authorities who would prevent me from coming into my true self, like Simon Peter when he tried to steer Jesus from his mission, were for me occasions of sin (Matt. 16:22-23). An “occasion of sin” is a Christian term that most Christian readers will understand. Christians would consider visiting a bordello, for example, as putting oneself in an “occasion of sin,” a place where the person has a good chance of succumbing to temptation. Here I am saying that even listening to these teachers would have been, for me, an “occasion of sin” because it would have seriously tempted me not to follow my inner guidance. Finally, I was given to realize that, to achieve my longheld goal of experiential union with the God of Love, I had to let go of my fear that exercising my sexuality would somehow offend God. This is because I knew from the Scriptures that fear (not hate as many suppose) is the true opposite of love (1 John 4:18).

An argument can be made that, from the point of view of spirituality, it is sexuality, not marriage, that is the true sacrament, or effective sign, of God’s union with us, and of ours with each other. According to some biblical scholars, Jesus appears to have made precisely this point (Matt. 19:12). The exercise of sexuality always has a powerful spiritual (inner psychological) effect. It is precisely because sexuality is so spiritually powerful that, however playful the encounter, it is best exercised with reverence and awareness. To do otherwise risks getting badly burned.

Thinking of what Jesus had said to the rich young man, I once again applied for the ministry, resolving once more to leave all for God (Matt. 19:16-21). But later I had a dream in which, while I was at a church service, the Christ Child appeared next to me in the pew and said, “Don’t you find this terribly boring? I’d rather go swimming.” I knew enough psychology to understand that water represents the subconscious, and that swimming would mean exploring the subconscious layers of the psyche. The message was that, for me at least, Jesus did not care about external ministries and observances, the forever crying out of “Lord, Lord,” but cared very much that I do God’s will by going deeper within my psyche (Matt. 7:21). I withdrew my ministry application the next day. Later I found out the official in charge of admissions had judged me morally unsuitable anyway because of the sexual activity. I began to keep a journal and often found myself writing all night, many times moved to rapturous love for God, and just as often dissolved in tears. I wrote for about fifteen minutes one time, but, when I “came to” and looked at the clock, ten hours had passed (an example of subtle level rapture). Many times I was listening to music for hours at a time, but when I “came to” I found that neither the radio nor stereo had been playing. The music, usually a wondrous mixture of every sound from rock music to Beethoven, had been coming from within. (This was an example of subtle level hearing.) Another time I went to a church service at which a great many church leaders were present. Thinking of what Jesus had said about the mother hen and her chickens, and realizing how much these high officials of the New Jerusalem1 resembled the high officials of the Old, I started to cry (Luke 13:34-35). I continued to cry uncontrollably throughout the service (Luke 19:41).

come hoping I would lead them to the light. Unfortunately, the poor souls got a rude reception. I practically threw them “bodily” from the room. I redoubled the sincerity of my nightly prayers to the angels for protection, as otherwise I would have been too scared to go to sleep. During this time, I was also given visions of various hells, one more loathsome than the next, and of the poor souls who, by their own thinking and deeds, had trapped themselves in those awful places. Often I was given visions of this world as though seen from the other side, as if through God’s eyes. In these visions I was shown how everything in the world, down to the smallest detail, positive and negative, operates with absolute perfection under the direction of a multidimensional intelligence so awesome that there is no way to describe it. For example, one time I went to a convenience store around midnight. While in the store, in a flash, I was shown the life history of everyone in the store as well as how they had come to be in that place at that particular time. I understood how perfect the choices of all had been, and how even casual conversation between the patrons had, in a sense, been preordained from all eternity and perfectly and exactly fostered God’s purposes for each person there. Even this description of the vision, however, fails to do it justice. I saw so much so fast of how God’s supreme intelligence permeates even a perfectly mundane experience that I was thrilled, staggered, and humbled. By means of these visions, I realized how we create everything in our lives down to the smallest detail or event, and that, putting aside all judgments of fault or blame, we must all take responsibility for all of our creations, whether thought, word, deed or omission. I was given the general laws governing the manifestation of physical things and events out of the energies of the higher planes. On occasion my adventures took me into what many people might call the “sexual underworld,” a place of unconventional sexuality, drug-dealing, prostitution, heavy alcohol use, and other socially condemned practices. But I learned much in that world. I was given to see (sometimes with great exactness, as from God’s viewpoint) that what Jesus said about many prostitutes and sinners entering the Kingdom of Heaven before the righteous is as true today as it was when Jesus spoke (Matt. 21:31). In the “underworld,” I met people who trusted life enough to allow themselves to experience the extremes of this world. These people were truly “hot,” or truly “cold,” to use Jesus’ words, and sometimes both (Rev. 3:15-16). Some, reminiscent of the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet, had learned, by the very experiencing of such extremes, to “love much” (Luke 7:47).

True, the path of these unconventional, marginalized people is a dangerous one that often proves fatal. But, as Jesus said, this path can be, and often is, a much faster path to the Kingdom than the safe, lukewarm, socially approved, avoid-all-risks-and-risk-factors path many Christians follow. We can grow in awareness (and love) just as fast by being “cold,” by resolutely exploring our dark sides, as we can by being “hot,” resolutely exploring our light sides. Either way, as Jesus said, is preferable to a mediocrity which results in little or no growth in awareness. Exploring the dark side is not a path to be recommended, but it is a reality to keep in mind, especially in dealing with human beings society has judged against.

I was thrown back on my own. This is to be expected in the Dark Night, and is specifically mentioned by Teresa. The person at this stage is in the process of claiming and owning his or her divinity. The spiritual guides will guide, as will a living spiritual master, but under no circumstances is anyone (and God sees to that) going to do the work for you. Whether you sink or swim is up to you. I redoubled my efforts, often doing spiritual exercises and meditating throughout the night. I studied John and Teresa’s accounts, but then I put the books aside. It was not the time for reading but for hard work on myself.

Then, two days after Christmas, while I was doing chores around the house, the “heavens” inside myself opened up and a loud voice said, “You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” I was astonished at hearing this voice and mortified by the content of the message (Matt. 3:17). Coming some nine months after the vision of Jesus, this was my first real experience with God the Father.

By the “Father” that tradition means a still higher spiritual realm called the monadic plane, which seems to be their name for what I call the Kingdom of Heaven, that is, the level of nondual consciousness. What seems most interesting to me is that I heard the exact words reported in the Gospel as heard by Jesus before I had even heard of the Western esoteric tradition, and before I had a clear awareness that there were such things as levels of consciousness. In other words, these things can happen whether one knows the theory behind them or not, and it happened to me despite the fact that, consciously, I had never heard of such a thing happening to anyone except Jesus. The direct experience of God the Father, I now know, meant that I was close to breakthrough into Christ Consciousness.

During this great experience, which lasted four days, my life passed before my eyes in a flash and I saw that my life up until then had been perfect, even its sins. This astonished me, though I was getting used to being astonished. In a sense, my life was “over” at that point, certainly my life as a mere human personality. As Gary Zukav says in his wonderful book, The Seat of the Soul, one of the reasons our soul creates a particular human personality is to heal emotional damages incurred during the earthly learning experiences of other of its created personalities. If a person works hard by spiritual practices and in everyday life (by replacing fear with love, vengeance with forgiveness, jealousy with supportiveness, etc.), he or she can literally finish the assignment early. The person is then eligible to be “called” to the next level of consciousness and invited to take the required initiation; no one takes a spiritual initiation without such an invitation, but the invitation is always given to those who are ready. In the process, the rest of the damages are transmuted and healed. As Jesus said, if we pay a small part of the debt, God, our loving Father, cancels the rest (Matt. 18:27). As tough as the Dark Night is, therefore, it is essentially an exercise in mercy. Because of this experience and the understandings I was given by the Holy Spirit, I believe that mercy is a fitting name for this material universe. And the divine Mother Mary, under her mythic title of Mother of Mercy, is an apt symbol for that universe. I realize that there are many Christians who would much rather not have Jesus’ mother acknowledged as divine. But the Catholic Church continues to develop its Marian mythology and theology under the guidance, I believe, of Mary herself. If Mary, as many Christians propose, were to be acknowledged as Co-Redemptrix (or Co-Redeemer) and as Mediatrix of All Grace, those titles, when added to those of Mother of God and Immaculate Conception, would make her divinity plain to see. It would also illuminate the divinity of the material universe for, Mary, as Mother or Mater, mythologically represents matter. 5

After this experience, I thought I was home free. I knew my consciousness had definitely entered into what Christians have traditionally called the Unitive Way and what I am calling in this book the causal or soul level. I figured the Night was over and started making plans to resume my life. But, unknown to me, all that had happened up until then was mere warm-up. It had been only the ascent to the causal level and simultaneous descent into the Night, not the actual Dark Night of the Soul itself.

With respect to the last, if you find the traditional Christian path of John of the Cross scary, you may want to think twice about the Native American path. That path, as outlined for outsiders in such books as Carlos Castaneda’s and Lynn Andrews’, often contains practices and experiences that would make your hair stand on end. The ancient shamanic paths, from which the Christian path was long ago derived, are often dangerous in the extreme. 3 St. John of the Cross, ibid., p. 402, p. 403. 4 John of the Cross writes that, even if Jesus appears to a person at this level, it is more likely an angel than Jesus himself. He is making in a different way the same point I am making in saying that one’s guardian angel, Jesus, and other spiritual beings, though they have their own identities, are appearing here in an angelic function, that is, as messengers from, and representations of, the person’s own soul or Christ Self.

A couple months after my breakthrough into the causal level of consciousness, as I sat writing at home, a sea of heavy darkness descended upon me. The darkness, though I did not know it then, had been uprooted from the unconscious parts of my astral body by my now total openness to the powerful new light of the causal level. The darkness had come in from the unconscious depths of my soul’s other incarnations. The darkness had also come in from that part of the world’s negative collective unconscious that vibrated at the same dark heavy level as my own soul’s repressed negativity. None of this I knew at the time, only now. In Matthew’s crucifixion narrative, this darkness is symbolized by the darkness which fell upon and covered Jerusalem for the three hours that Jesus hung on the cross (Matt. 27:45). All the “roots” of my buried dark side, to use John of the Cross’ word, were now fully exposed to the light, their deep sufferings and pain brought into conscious awareness.

When a “zapping” of this sort is done deliberately by a black magician, a person who uses psychic powers for negative purposes, it is called a psychic attack. It can totally debilitate a person (see the comments of Agnes Whistling Elk later on). In my case, it was not deliberate, but, rather, deliberately scheduled by God to help, not hurt. Warned by inner psychic alarms, I fled first from one of these people and then from the other. This was a classic subtle level test of energy discernment. We find the motifs of this initiatory test in many of the ancient myths. One has to wonder if they were just “myths” or if they came out of the actual experiences of the adepts of the ancient mystery schools, and were, like Jesus’ parables, told as stories to the uninitiated. Conversely, one also has to wonder, given what a psychic initiate experiences in this passage, whether the Gospel Crucifixion/Resurrection narratives are not historical, as I am presuming, but a psychological parable and, if so, what sublime intelligence created that parable? My belief is that both are true, the history and the wondrous parable. To me that is most awesome of all.

the path of Zen seems to increase psychic strain to the point that the old psychic structure, held together by the paranoid ego, finally snaps and collapses. As Jesus said, “a house divided against itself cannot stand” (Luke 11:17). And he also said the wheat and weeds (the positive and negative aspects of our personalities) have to grow together until the very end, and only at the harvest can the weeds be separated out and burnt (Matt. 13:28-30, 40). My story had now entered the harvest time, and the weeds, which had played their legitimate part in the individuation of the soul, were about to be transmuted by spiritual fire.

While the soul is going about in this manner burning up within itself, a blow is felt from elsewhere (the soul doesn’t understand from where or how). The blow often comes from a sudden thought or word about death’s delay… I said “blow” because it causes a sharp wound… It isn’t felt where earthly sufferings are felt, but in the very deep and intimate part of the soul, where this sudden flash of lightning reduces to dust everything it finds in this earthly nature of ours… [emphases added] I saw a person in this condition [Teresa herself, of course]; truly she thought she was dying, and this was not so surprising because certainly there is great danger of death. There is no real danger of death, but try telling that to a psychic person to whom this has just happened. Something is definitely dying but what it is I don’t know any more than Teresa did. Certainly the “old man” (Adam, the human personality) is dying and the “new man” (the Christ Self) is being born, but what exactly does that mean? David Spangler speaking from within the Western esoteric tradition, says that the human, by a death and rebirth, is now becoming a “superman.” As yet, we don’t have any vocabulary except metaphor for explaining this event and others that occur at the higher levels of consciousness. St. Paul put the results of this death and rebirth this way, “When anyone is joined to Christ he is a new being; the old has gone, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17). Paul also said: “What does matter is being a new creation” (Gal. 6:15). That the advent of the Christ Self is the next step in human evolution on Earth, and that Jesus came to show us the path to it, I have no doubt. Bernadette Roberts also gives a graphic description of this psyche-shattering event: The opening up of our deepest interior center may be likened to an underground explosion, wherein all parts of being are sent flying out of control and scattered in every direction. Prior to this experience, and by virtue of a strong will, we had fashioned our own unity according to what we knew of its parts, and thereafter held these parts together with the tight reins of self-control. In a word, we were masters of our own house. The entrance into the dark night, however, shatters this man-made unity. From here on, God takes over the reins of control and becomes master of the house. [emphasis added] This is how John of the Cross described the event:

The two extremes, divine and human, which are joined here, produce the third kind of pain and affliction the soul suffers at this time. The divine extreme is the purgative contemplation, and the human extreme is the soul, the receiver of the contemplation. Since the divine extreme strikes in order to renew the soul and divinize it (by stripping it of the habitual affections and properties of the old self to which the soul is strongly united, attached, and conformed), it so disentangles and dissolves the spiritual substance—absorbing it in a profound darkness—that the soul at the sight of its miseries, feels that it is melting away and being undone by a cruel spiritual death. It feels as if it were swallowed by a beast and digested in the dark belly, and it suffers an anguish comparable to Jonah’s in the belly of the whale [Jon. 2:1-3]. It is fitting that the soul be in this sepulcher of dark death in order that it attain the spiritual resurrection for which it hopes.6[emphases added] For me this was the most traumatic event of my life. There is no describing the terror. I couldn’t imagine what had hit me. In the Gospel Crucifixion narrative and in the Creed, this psyche-shattering spiritual event is represented by Jesus’ death on the Cross and his descent into hell.

Torkom Saraydarian describes various “veils” which separate the different levels of consciousness in the person and cosmos. Saraydarian quotes Alice A. Bailey who writes in Rays and the Initiations, “They [the veils] lie between the subtle inner man, mental and astral, and his physical brain [emphasis in original]. They are that which prevents brain registration of the world of causes and the world of meaning.” Saraydarian himself writes:

in which the Initiate will learn to stand on his own freedom between “the earth and heaven,” renounce all that he has and all that he has been, and withdraw from the form life. This veil is called the veil of distortion because it presents a distorted picture of the reality beyond to the Initiate waiting in front of the veil. It is the body of glamors. We are told that it was the Christ who first rent this veil, “… from top to bottom” and let loose a great light… This light has the nature of love;… It would seem that, after he rends this veil, the Initiate enters into… the Plane of Intuition, [also called] the Plane of Buddhi, or the Plane of Enlightenment. The second veil, referred to in the New Testament as the veil of the temple, is rent at the time of the Fourth Initiation. It is the symbol for a precious vesture which hides the Monad, the Father, and is called the Lotus, the Chalice, or the Temple of Solomon. When direct communication between the personality and the Monad [Father] is achieved, the Fire of the Monad [Father] rends and burns the veil, the Dweller in the Temple is released, and the unfolding human soul meets himself on the Buddhic plane.”7

The great twentieth century Hindu spiritual master Aurobindo Ghose9 speaks of human consciousness as being made up of “two drops.” One is our everyday personality consciousness; the other is the soul/psychic body consciousness that “transmigrates” from lifetime to lifetime until the soul is liberated. If Ghose is correct, it seems that those “two drops” are what merge at this point on the path, and the “veil” between them dissolves or is burnt.

After she arrived, Deborah first tried to put me at ease by confirming what I already knew—that I had indeed broken through to what she called the “spiritual” (versus the “psychic”) level, and that Jesus was strongly with me. I said I felt like I was dying, though I knew I wasn’t. “Yes,” she said with great compassion, “that’s why I came. I sensed death. I didn’t think you were going to die, but I knew I had to come.”

What the psychic called negative emotions and entities are the “demons” the Church normally deals with in exorcisms and that Jesus and his disciples knew how to cast out (Luke 9:1). They are never to be taken casually. Because emotional energy is always magnetic, emotions attract their like in others both positively and negatively. There is hell to be paid, literally, by any exorcist “attracted” to heal a person of such demons. The exorcist’s own inner demons could be stirred up prematurely with insanity as a result. Due to this magnetism, the person’s emotional damages may be linked to actual demons, the nonhuman negative emanations of Archangel Lucifer, or to the negativity of discarnate human souls.

Here we may have one cause of suicidal depression, which contemporary psychiatry usually treats with mindaltering drugs. There is nothing wrong with countering the symptoms of such a life-threatening depression with drugs. Often this must be done immediately to forestall disaster. But much more has to be done for a complete healing to take place. Past life traumas such as this may also be the explanation for so many “unexplainable” major depressions, those in which the despair is out of proportion to anything that’s happened in the person’s current life. One person loses a job and recovers a week later, but another sinks into a suicidal depression. Why? For the second person, the job loss may have evoked emotional trauma accumulated from similar experiences in prior lifetimes.

On top of the three principal neuroses were many “mini-demons.” To name just a couple: the emotional trauma from having been hit by a car as a child; and the intense and prolonged fear I had absorbed while in the womb from my mother (all during the pregnancy she had been chronically worried and fearful for my father, who was fighting in World War II). Finally, Deborah told me that, in the realm of consciousness I had gotten to, I had rendered myself wide open to every negativity on the face of the Earth. She concluded that I was going to need a lot more help than she could give me at one sitting and referred me to a Jewish mystic who had had mystical encounters with Jesus, and who also happened to be a psychiatrist in New York City. Imagine for a second being hit full force—overnight— with the brunt of all this pain. There is no way to convey how horrible it is. St. Teresa says, regarding the pain’s intensity, “With the presence of this spiritual pain, I don’t believe that physical pain would be felt, little or much, even if the body were cut in pieces.”12 That is also why, as John of the Cross says, “But if it is to be truly efficacious, it will last for some years, no matter how intense it may be.”13 As with the Night of Senses, however, the person who arrives here always has tremendous inner ego-strength and great awareness. The person always knows what is happening, in the sense that they at least know that it is God’s doing (or the spiritual light’s way of healing and purifying them). They are always given enough insight to make it through although, like John, Teresa and Bernadette, they may have no idea of the pain’s source.

Unlike lower-level depressions, the person cannot continue repressing, denying, avoiding, or otherwise refusing to deal with these fears. Nor can one at this level continue projecting or displacing the positive or negative aspects of these neuroses onto other people, the “God in the sky,” or “the devil.” Once the contents of the unconscious have been exploded outward there is no way of undoing that explosion. Wracked with paranoia, the person will usually try to continue old habits, but it’s too late for that. The neuroses are now exposed to the tremendous healing power of the spiritual light of the soul. If one trusts and “hangs in there,” there no way the darkness can survive this light.

More than a year before, when I discovered I was in the Dark Night of the Soul, I realized I was on what the mythologist Joseph Campbell called the “hero’s journey” to the depths of the psyche. I put on my most rigorous and detached scientific attitude, and promised God that I would keep an absolutely open mind on the subject of same-sexual expression. If, in the depths of my psyche, I found something “wrong” or pathological with it, I would accept the traditional Christian view against such activity. But I found nothing of the kind. In fact, I found striking evidence to the contrary. For example, were it not for the psychic healing generated by such activity (such as accepting and loving my dark side), and were it not for the great spiritual power generated by the sexual activity itself, I would probably never have broken through into the causal realm. Regarding the morality of same-sexual expression, I now consider the case closed. As I’m sure the Zen masters would agree, it takes enormous psychic power to make this breakthrough into Christ Consciousness, analogous to the great amount of rocket fuel needed to lift the space shuttles into orbit. That is because the person’s consciousness is moving contrary to the inertial forces intent on keeping consciousness “weighed down” into spacetime. Perhaps that is what Jesus was alluding to when he said, “The Kingdom of heaven is taken by violence and violent men take it by storm” (Matt. 11:12).

I had the realization that Jesus was crucified upon a Cross (double-edge against double-edge) and between two thieves, one good and one bad, to symbolize two important things. The two thieves represent the shadow or dark side of the self, our divided inner house (Luke 23:32, 39-43). The good thief represents the denied truth that the dark side contains; like Jesus, one must now own this truth and bring it now (“this day”) with you into paradise (wholeness). The bad thief, the “lie” of the neurosis, must be left behind. The Cross symbolizes how tricky this is. Both our conscious side and our unconscious dark side contain truth and lies. This is symbolized by the double-edge against double-edge. The truths must be embraced and the lies abandoned for one to be resurrected into wholeness. After the session with the psychic, I decided it was time to shut down sexually and psychically. First, neither activity was any longer needed. Second, I had learned how the inner negativities could magnetically draw negative things, people, and even negative spirits from non-physical planes of existence. I wanted no more of this. Third, I was worn out. Fourth, AIDS was by then becoming a menace. I reopened John and Teresa’s books and, sure enough, there was my experience in black and white, especially in Teresa. As always on the spiritual path, we can read the words all we want, but we will only understand them when we experience the reality ourselves. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to work anytime soon, I put my house on the market. My old life was over.

As my own experience shows, Jesus will intervene directly to bring a soul to the Christ Consciousness if intervention is what it takes. If we take the trouble and find the courage to seek within as he asked us to, we will find it (Matt. 7:7-8). If we reach the Dark Night of the Soul, Jesus and the our spiritual guides put us under intense 24-hour surveillance. There is no way, as John of the Cross put it, they intend to lose us to the “Devil.” If you’re lucky, you may not find the degree of emotional damage I did. Some meditation techniques may ease the pain and make it easier, but it would be a mistake to count on an easy go of it. We are all a lot more fear-filled than we realize. Most adults are in heavy denial about the emotional damage of their childhoods and usually we have no idea of the emotional damage incurred by our soul’s other incarnations, let alone what will be our apportioned share in the work of redeeming the planet’s collective unconscious negativity.

The intensity of suffering in the Dark Night applies to persons whose souls are making the breakthrough into Christ Consciousness for the first time. Those who are born with the Christ Consciousness usually have a much easier passage when they recapitulate this transition (see chapter 21). The American born spiritual master Franklin Jones (now known as Adi Da), underwent such a recapitulation (which he calls “the death of Narcissus”) at age twenty-seven while studying for the Lutheran ministry in Philadelphia in the spring of 1967. He writes: I was in the bathroom when this episode began… As I looked at my face in the mirror, it appeared gray, disturbed and deathlike. The saliva in my mouth stopped flowing and I was overcome by a rising anxiety that became an awesome and overwhelming fear of death.

I was fixed in the certainty that I was soon to go mad and die… All day I stretched on the floor in the living room, revolving in this same overwhelming fear of death. Finally, on the third day after this process began… I lay on the floor, totally disarmed, unable to make a gesture that could prevent the rising fear. And thus it grew in me, but, for the first time, I allowed it to happen. I could not prevent it. The fear and the death arose and became an overwhelming experience. And I observed the crisis of that fear in a moment of conscious, voluntary death. I allowed the death to happen. And I “saw” it happen. It was not that an organic death occurred, but even organic death ceased to be a “concern.” There was a spontaneous, utter release of identification with the body, the mind, the emotions of the separate person, and the self-contracting (or reactive and separative) act that is the “ego”(or the presumed person)… The body and the mind and the egoic personality had died (or been utterly released as a concern and an identity), but I remained as essential and unqualified Awareness (and purely That, but also Freely Aware of the physical body and its natural environment).16

Chapter 15 RESURRECTION FROM THE DARK NIGHT I was gradually resurrected from the Dark Night. The spiritual revelations and realizations I received as a result of the Night were similar to those of Teresa, John, and Bernadette Roberts, showing the essential structural similarities. Foremost was the direct revelation of the meaning of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. With the completion of the Dark Night, the Holy Trinity is clearly seen as a living cosmological reality in which we, as Christ, participate. There is also the realization of one’s own Christhood and one’s consequent immortality and sinlessness. The Dark Night ended when I experienced a of Baptism of Fire and the Holy Spirit analogous to that which the Apostles experienced at Pentecost. After I put my house on the market I waited to emerge from the “belly of the whale.” Wracked by darkness and paranoia, I found it very difficult to relax and let go. Often, in writing in my journal, I found myself explosively angry. I spent hours releasing that anger by writing. Underneath depression there is always anger; under the anger, there is always fear; and under the fear there is always hurt. All along the spiritual path, these feelings, layer after layer of them, must be encountered, felt, and released. There are three ways to effect this release: (1) By spiritual healing practices, particularly meditation and psychic healing (including the laying on of hands, Reiki, yoga, psychotherapy, etc.), and even simple practices like a walk on the beach, getting a massage, or listening to soothing music. For Christians, a practice of inner transforming identification with Jesus in the reception of Holy Communion is an extremely powerful healing practice. (2) By physical disease, e.g., cancer, as the negativity flows out of the astral body to be “worked out” in the physical. (3) By violence, e.g., war, or the now commonplace occurrence whereby a formerly “mousy” person explodes in rage and kills ten people and himself. All three techniques are effective in clearing repressed emotions, but it is obvious which of the three is preferable.

These trials may also be necessary as a test of faith and because we have to get the message that all “ego” or “worldly” goals, fueled by fear and geared to our acceptance by others, must be abandoned. In my case much of my “image” and many of my ego goals were fueled by fear. Most of us are always trying to prove ourselves worthy and admirable to others and to the “Sky God.” We often read about even titans of industry or successful national politicians whose main goal is “to be loved,” or to “make their parents proud.”

Today it is common knowledge that “driven,” aggressive Type A personalities are at high risk of heart attack. What is not common knowledge is that, from the soul’s point of view, virtually all adults in our society are Type A. Daily we create a society in our own image in which “heart” values are continually sacrificed to destructive competition and other forms of spiritual aggression such as wars on everything from terrorism to drunk driving to cancer to drugs. Everyone running for office is “fighting” for this and “fighting” against that. Our society pays a heavy toll for this pervasive, fear-fueled aggression. This aggression is counterproductive because, if we fight something, we give power to it and strengthen it. Every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. That is why Jesus taught non-aggression towards enemies. Jesus did not teach “turning the other cheek” because he was a “softie” or wanted people to be “doormats.” He taught non-aggression towards one’s enemies because he knew the spiritual law and its consequences: put out aggression, you get aggression back.

Regarding this part of the path, the early twentieth century American Protestant mystic Joseph S. Benner, in his little book The Impersonal Life has God saying the following: You, My Beloved, who have consecrated yourself to Me, and are bending every effort to find union with Me, but instead have found apparently that every prop of the World’s support has been withdrawn or is being withdrawn, and that you are without money and without friends, and know not where to turn for human help. Learn, My Blessed One, that you are very, very close now, and that if you will only continue to abide in Me, letting my Word abide in you and guide you, resting and trusting absolutely in My Promise, I will very soon bring you to a Joy, a Fulfillment, a Peace, that human words and human minds cannot possibly picture. For you have obeyed My Commands, and have trusted Me, and have sought first My Kingdom and My Righteousness, and therefore will I add all other things unto you, even those the World has denied you. In the Dark Night we learn the truth of what Jesus spoke when he said, “Take no thought for your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink; nor yet for your body, what you shall put on” (Matt. 6:25) and “Which of you by taking thought can add one inch to his stature?” (Matt. 6:27) and “Take, therefore, no thought for tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself” (Matt. 12:34).2 In the Dark Night we learn radical trust in the God within ourselves. Having learned this lesson, Teresa afterwards founded convents with no guaranteed source of income. Mother Teresa easily operated her worldwide charities without soliciting funds.

After the Dark Night, radical trust becomes second nature. We understand experientially not only what faith means,3 but that the only sensible way to operate in this world is by means of such radical faith and trust. The universe we formerly saw as full of threats of every sort is now seen as a non-threatening place, one full of gifts, abundance, and blessings. For me, as for Bernadette, the worst of the Night lasted six months (the exact period the psychic had predicted). In the Gospel this passage is represented by Jesus’ “three days” in the tomb. One day I felt the heavy darkness (which I likened to being buried immobile under thousands of heavy blankets) beginning to ease. A few days later I suddenly could “see.” I saw what Bernadette calls “the painful revelation of our deepest union with God.” This union with God is the essential revelation. We see that being “made in the image and likeness of God” (Gen. 1:26-27) is not poetry, nor does it refer to humans as some pale imitation of God. It is literally true. We see that our own selves and all humans are made of “God-stuff,” that we are, like Jesus, God Incarnate, begotten of God and made of the same substance and essence as God. We see that this has always been so but, up until now, we have been too blind to see it. I felt like the man in the Gospel whom Jesus said had been born blind so that later, after Jesus healed him, God could be glorified (John 9:1-3). For me the revelation took the form of the reversal of the way I’d always regarded God and the spiritual path. Up until then I’d been pursuing the “God within” (Luke 17:21). But it was only now that I realized that I’d been picturing this inner God as a sort of invisible extra appendix, a God within but one definitely separate. Now I saw that the opposite was a fuller and better expression of the truth: God isn’t so much within us as we are within God. We are actually cells in God’s body, God’s Incarnate, or Created, or Only-Begotten Body, the Christ (1 Cor. 12:12-27). I saw that what St. Paul said to the Athenians is true, that we live and move and have our beings in God (Acts 17:28). Anyone who reaches Christ Consciousness becomes more like an organ in the Body of Christ rather than just a cell. Like Jesus, we become the vine itself rather than a mere branch (John 15:5). Having died to identification with the personality, we are now capable, like the vine, of bearing “much fruit” (John 15:6-8).

St. Teresa says this is an “intellectual” rather than an “imaginative” vision. She means an intellectual “realization” in contrast to what we usually call a “vision” or a “waking dream.” She writes: Our good God now desires to remove the scales from the soul’s eyes and let it see and understand… The Most Blessed Trinity, all three Persons, through an intellectual vision, is revealed to it… and these Persons are distinct, and through an admirable knowledge the soul understands as a most profound truth that all three Persons are one substance and one power and one knowledge and one God alone. It knows in such a way that what we hold by faith it understands, we can say, through sight…”4 [emphases added] John of the Cross set out his realization in several places in his writings. He wrote in his prologue to The Living Flame of Love: Submitting to the judgment and better opinion of our Holy Mother the Roman Catholic Church, by whose rule no one errs, finding my support in Sacred Scripture, and knowing the reader understands that everything I say is as far from the reality as is a painting from the living object represented, I will venture to declare what I know. There is no reason to marvel at God’s granting such sublime and strange gifts to souls he decides to favor. If we consider that he is God and that he bestows them as God, with infinite love and goodness, it does not seem unreasonable. For he [Jesus] declared that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit would take up their abode in those who love him by making them live the life of God and dwell in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit [John 14:23… 5 [emphases added] For the Christian, and for the first time as Teresa says, there is a clear understanding of the “mystery” of the Trinity. One can now understand the Trinity because, in and by the Dark Night, one’s consciousness has finally been experientially “baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” as Jesus commanded (Matt. 28:19). John of the Cross points out that this substantial union with God has always been the case for everyone, the only difference now being the conscious realization of one’s substantial union.

She wrote, “My being is God, not by simple participation, but by a true transformation of my being.”7 Mystics of the Eastern (Orthodox) Church speak of theosis or deification, though the word “deification” makes it sound like we “become” God, which is not correct; what happens is that we consciously realize the divinity that has always been ours. Bernadette Roberts writes that, at this point in the path, she was “tempted” to declare that she was God but resisted the “temptation.” Why did she hold back? The first reason is that, when most of us think of God, we mean God as strictly transcendent, and no one is equal to God in that sense, not even Jesus, as Jesus himself often said (John 5:19, 30, Luke 10:22). A second reason is that we don’t want people to think we’re crazy. After all, there are lots of psychotics whose consciousness has somehow opened up to the fact of their divinity but who don’t understand that divinity is everyone’s nature. Third, there is always a reluctance by the Christian to classify oneself as in any sense “equal” to Jesus. Despite these reasons for reluctance, all the great Christian mystics speak the essential truth that is realized upon coming into Christ Consciousness: we are indeed God, or, to put it more modestly, we could say we realize that “only God is and we are not” as in “I live, now not I, but the Christ (God Manifest) lives in and through me,” (Gal. 2:20). Many things follow automatically from this new trinitarian understanding, this new vision of reality. First, one now sees oneself (and everyone else), not as the historic personality Jesus of Nazareth, but as members of the Eternal Christ and joint heirs with Jesus of the Kingdom (Rom. 8:17). In all one’s dealings with others, from now on, one is always aware that one is dealing with God’s Son, and that, whatever one does to others, one does to God’s Son (Matt. 25:35-40); in fact, not only to God’s Son but to oneself (since we too are one in substance with that Son). One sees that in this world there are no “others,” there is only Christ. One sees that this has always been the case but up until now, we had been blind to this truth. With St. Paul we can now declare that we have come “to that oneness in our faith and in our knowledge of the Son of God” as to become “a mature person, reaching to the very height of Christ’s full stature” (Eph. 4:13). Second, we see that, since humans are made of eternal “God-stuff,” there is no death (1 Cor. 15:54). Our mortal self is now clothed with immortality exactly as St. Paul says (1 Cor. 15:54). We no longer have to believe in life after death. We see not only that we will never die but that we have never been born. With Jesus we can say, “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58). We are now totally identified with our eternal soul, our true Christ Self.

Regarding the person’s realization of his or her sinlessness, John of the Cross writes: The soul thereby becomes divine, God through participation, insofar as is possible in this life. And thus I think that this state never occurs without the soul’s being confirmed in grace, for the faith of both is confirmed when God’s faith in the soul is here confirmed. 9 [emphasis added]

It also follows from this new vision of reality that no soul, each made of God-stuff, will ever be eternally lost. In the end, though some souls may indeed wander in darkness for thousands of years, God cannot fail Himself/Herself. It is impossible. In the end, every soul will be saved even if it takes a million years of painful negative learning to eventually bring that soul to God. Moses was not allowed to see the Face of God because the process of evolution had not yet completed God’s face (Ex. 33:20). We are God’s face. That is why Jesus, speaking as the Christ for all of us, said, “He who sees me (the Christ) sees the Father” (John 14:9). Does one honestly believe, though the process itself (Holy Spirit) is infinite, that God will not eventually see His own reflection, His Son, His face, “completed” in each and every one of God’s creations? Jesus himself, speaking as the universal Christ, explained that, “He who sent me wants me to do this: that I should not lose any of those he has given me, but I should raise them all to life on the last day” (John 6:39).

A still further realization is related to God’s omniscience or all-knowingness. Union with God brings the clear realization that there is no question that cannot be answered by going within. All the answers to any questions humans are capable of asking are contained within the depths of the self. The hard part, as any contemporary scientific researcher will tell us, is to ask the right questions. The second qualification is the law of kairos or “sacred timing.” God, our own deep withinness, does not reveal things until the appropriate time, that is, until we learn enough to ask the right question.

third qualification, with respect to omniscience, is that the person, as Bernadette Roberts says she discovered to the disappointment of her ego, doesn’t become

any smarter in terms of either IQ or spacetime knowledge and information. Even if the person becomes an open channel for revelation, like the disciples of Jesus who wrote the New Testament, or like Teresa in writing her Interior Castle, the revelation comes through that person’s previously learned thought-forms, vocabulary, cultural assumptions, and personal interests. Human limitations, though divinized, remain. One sees, therefore, that all humans are teachers for each other, and that all of us, no matter what our level of God-realization, have much to learn from each other. No one is superfluous. We each play our parts, and from God’s point of view, seeing only the perfection of the Son, we always play them perfectly.

As soon as I withdrew the projection, letting go of the fear I had for that older man and replacing it with affection, two things happened. First, my house immediately sold (three offers in a week after 15 months on the market), and second, I experienced a profound physical healing as the emotional poison left my system. Both physical drainage systems were affected. The upper drainage system, located in the head, discharged its poisons with the result that several teeth became infected, even one that had already had a root canal. The lower system, in the torso, had an even bigger release, causing a large abscess in the groin. Remembering that I’d had a smaller abscess during the Night of Senses, I asked the doctor what caused abscesses. I got the same answer as years before, “We don’t know what causes them.” But I felt I knew. My intuition (the causal level of consciousness is also called the level of “intuition” or pure “knowingness”) told me that I was blessed that these poisons had been discharged. Otherwise they probably would have caused a serious illness such as cancer.

During the workshop, Vywamus addressed me for the first time through one of the channelers. Vywamus, with enormous compassion and gentleness, and the type of pleasant humor one exhibits when handing a person a surprise birthday gift, matter-of-factly declared, “I see you are surrounded by fire right now.” Immediately, and to my amazement (as if Vywamus’ words had actually brought it forth), I saw that a fiery wind of some sort had completely surrounded me. I was on fire from head to foot. Flames were everywhere. I felt such intense spiritual heat that it was like being consumed. I remember even waving one hand like a fan in an effort to cool myself down. I also saw all sorts of “black stuff” in my aura being burnt up and transmuted by the raging spiritual blaze.

There is a tendency for those who have set themselves seriously on the spiritual path to make a big deal over the dramatic experiences of the mystics. So I repeat what Teresa and John and all the others have said: it is the change in consciousness or awareness that counts, not the dramatics. In fact, to the extent the spiritual energies cause disturbances in the body, emotions, and mind, they are doing so because they meet resistance (though resistance is not to be judged). The body, emotions, and mind must be gradually raised (and in a way that, to be safe, constantly requires grounding) to the vibrational level of the new energies, another strong reason for following a scientific meditation technique. Once the person becomes fully accustomed to the vibrations at the new level, there is no longer commotion but peace—at least until the next level’s vibrations begin coming into awareness.

In each case it seemed a normal channeling event, the channeler relaying spiritual teachings from Spirit. But behind the scenes, I could see that the spirits were working hard, deftly managing, using, and blending the energies of those present (“Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am in their midst,” Matt. 18:20). In each session there were interruptions, seeming asides, questions, instructions to chant this or that, etc. Finally (and I say “finally” because I can remember growing restless and fidgety on at least one of those occasions) something happened.

And in John 3:8 Jesus himself testifies, “The wind blows where it wishes; you hear the sound it makes but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. It is the same way with everyone who is born of the Spirit (Wind).” The “wind,” of course, as Jesus testifies, is the Holy Spirit.

psychic or subtle senses, not the physical senses. But they are of such power, effectiveness, and spiritual splendor that they are never forgotten by those who experience them. Nor is the consciousness of the person ever again returned to the pre-event level.

It was proved to me what Jesus had said, “Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven and all else will be added” (Matt. 6:33). Jesus, of course, knew how this world really works. Jesus knew that everyone, free will notwithstanding and whether they know it or not, is nothing less than an instrument and expression of God, and that God always takes care of those who obey God’s will (Matt. 7:21). 1 Joseph S. Benner, The Impersonal Life, 1916, 1941, 1969, 1983, De Vorss & Co., Marina del Rey, pp. 233-234.

Part Iv The Consciousness Of A Human As A Realized Divinity

Chapter 16 CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS—THE CAUSAL LEVEL

Christ Consciousness is the Christian term for causal consciousness. At this level the Christian is identified with his or her true Christ Self, which is seen as in a spiritual union with God the Creator. At this level one can truthfully say, “I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me,” as St. Paul said. The person with Christ Consciousness sees all other human beings as the Christ and treats them accordingly. This is the level of true Christian love, which is spiritual love identical to what the Buddhist masters call true compassion. The person with Christ Consciousness is free from neurotic projections and emotional addictions, and is able to live solely in the present, curiously detached from everyday struggles and anxieties. One is able to commune silently with God, now seen as the Great Void or Mother Creator within, from which all creation and creativity arises. We come now to the eighth level of human consciousness: causal consciousness. It is the first level of consciousness of the human, not as a human personality, but as a realized divinity. It is consciousness at the level of the soul, i.e., individualized Spirit. For Christians it is the level of Christ Consciousness, the level of true Christian love, and has traditionally been called the Unitive Way or union with God. To Buddhists this is the level of the bodhisattva, the being with the Buddha consciousness of true compassion. To students of the human aura, it is the level at which the crown chakra opens dramatically with the result that the head is now encircled with a halo. The heart center also fully opens and we become vessels of tremendous love and compassion. This level is also called that of pure intuition or knowingness. The reason the word causal is used is because this is the level of causes, the archetypal principles or ideal patterns by and from which the lower planes of existence (astral and physical) are built. The spiritual master Plato called these archetypal principles the Ideal…

outer layers, as Teresa, John, and Bernadette all admit. But the disturbances grow less and less the farther one travels into the causal realm as the great light in our core gradually transmutes these remaining negativities and integrates them around its center of wholeness. The remaining negativity tells us that we are not yet perfect. We have not yet reached, as Jesus instructed us to do, the state of perfection of the Father (Matt. 5:48). We, as “baby” divinities, still have to learn how to live this new divinized life, how to operate at this new level of energy vibration and awareness. We must also learn to develop our intuitional senses, the equivalent at this level of the physical senses at the physical level, the psychic senses at the psychic level, and the subtle senses at the subtle level. These intuitional abilities, strictly speaking, are not “senses,” for the soul has no “senses.” We must learn to “translate” pure intuitions into understandable forms such as ideas, words, and images. In prayer we sink easily into what St. Dionysios called the “Darkness” or “Void,” the Father/Mother Source of All That Is, the great well of divine creativity from which God’s Word and all creation continually arises (cf. Gen. 1:2). As Bernadette says, we learn to find refuge in that center whenever trials arise, getting better and better at “sinking down and sinking into” this Dark Void that we now see as our own center. Some Buddhists call the void shunyata, meaning “emptiness.” The need to practice this sinking down and into the void is critical because the healing begun during the Dark Night continues nonstop for all the years we live at the causal level. But, as Teresa says, “Even though there is much tumult… no one enters the center dwelling place and makes the soul leave.…

Long ago, the sacred grandparents said that there was no day and no sun. The Great Spirit was the only. The Great Spirit was the center. The Great Spirit was the source [God as Mother] without end… The Great Spirit hid and divided up into niece and nephew [female and male, the Christ, Jesus and Mary]. Together they sang the creation song. Everything vibrates with this voice [Holy Spirit, AUM, the Great Amen]—the universe, the galaxies, the sun, and the earth. Light and darkness and all things are but a song of the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit is sleeping [immanent] in all the named and nameless things.

Emotionally, we will notice at the causal level a gradual unfoldment of great inner warmth for everybody and everything. Other people notice it too. We may be astonished to see that, no matter what the circumstances, we can’t help but express this great emotional warmth. It comes through in speech, in manner, in humor, in gesture. There is no effort involved. It just is.

Paul describes this spiritualized love in the following familiar passage: Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous, or conceited, or proud; love is not ill-mannered, or selfish, or irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs; love is not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth. Love never gives up: its faith, hope, and patience never fail. Love is eternal… Meanwhile these three remain: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love. [I Cor. 13:4-8, 13] Here is how Chogyam Trungpa describes compassion: The fundamental characteristic of true compassion is pure fearless openness without territorial limitations. There is no need to be loving and kind to one’s neighbors, no need to speak pleasantly to people and put on a pretty smile. This little game does not apply. In fact it is embarrassing. Real openness exists on a much larger scale, a revolutionarily large and open scale, a universal scale. Compassion means for you to be as adult as you are, while still maintaining a childlike quality. In the Buddhist teaching the symbol for compassion… is one moon shining in the sky while its image is reflected in one hundred bowls of water. The moon does not demand, “If you open to me I will do you a favor and shine on you.” The moon just shines.

Another sublime description of Christian love comes from the pen of St. Isaac the Syrian: What is a charitable heart? It is a heart that is burning with charity for the whole of creation, for men, for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons—for all creatures. He who has such a heart cannot see or call to mind a creature without his eyes becoming filled with tears by reason of the immense compassion that seizes his heart, a heart that is softened and can no longer bear to see or learn from others of any suffering, even the smallest pain, being inflicted upon a creature. This is why such a man never ceases to pray also for the animals, for the enemies of Truth, and for those who do him evil, that they may be preserved and purified. He will pray even for the reptiles, moved by the infinite pity that reigns in the hearts of those who are becoming united to God.

At the level of the emotions, we find ourselves detached. St. Teresa says, “There is a great detachment from everything and a desire to be either alone or occupied in something that will benefit some soul.”9 Bernadette was astonished when she saw herself remaining utterly at peace while the woman she worked for went into a tirade and fired her from her job. In my own case, I noticed it first at the movies. I found that, no matter how sad the movie, or how scary, or how tragic or violent or heartrending, it didn’t affect me as it had before. I stayed at peace, observing, interested, and aware, but generally undisturbed. True, I felt great compassion for people whose sufferings might be depicted, but the portrayals could not move me from my own deep inner peace. At first, to be honest, I didn’t care for this change. I wanted to feel scared or heart-broken or angry as I once had, but I no longer could. Carlos Castaneda writes that, after he “lost the human form” he had a similar experience: I found myself in a most unfamiliar state. I felt detached, unbiased. It did not matter what la Gorda had done to me. It was not that I had forgiven her for this reproachable behavior with me; it was as if there had never been any betrayal. There was no overt or covert rancor left in me, for la Gorda or anyone else. What I felt was not a willed indifference, or negligence to act; nor was it alienation or even the desire to be alone. It was rather an alien feeling of aloofness, a capacity of immersing myself in the moment and having no thoughts whatever about anything else. People’s actions no longer affected me, for I had no more expectations of any kind. A strange peace had become the ruling force in my life. I felt I had somehow adopted one of the concepts of a warrior’s life—detachment. La Gorda said I had done more than adopt it; I had actually embodied it.

At this point on my path I realized that all these familiar negative feelings had been addictions (the contemporary word for what Christian spirituality has traditionally called attachments and what many Buddhists call desires).11 I realized that, once our own magnetic inner emotional negativity is substantially gone, i.e., we have grown beyond attachments, outside negative vibrations cease to have any effect because there is no longer a negative magnet inside us that they can attract. Although great art, both comedy and tragedy, are healing to the degree they cathart inner negativity, this is not the case with most movies, popular entertainment, the tabloid press, or the evening news. The latter often feed our addictions to negative emotions like fear, anger, jealousy, revenge, and guilt. It is an endless exploitation because, like all addictions, they are impossible to satisfy. We can never get enough. At the causal level of consciousness, we find ourselves radically free of this endless horror, this never ending stress on the nervous system. We find ourselves peacefully looking at all of life with the same detachment we now have for a movie. The Hindu spiritual master Paramahansa Yogananda puts it this way:

The root-cause of sorrow is in viewing the passing show with emotional involvement… no matter what difficulties come, ever affirm, ‘It is all a dream. It will soon pass.’ Then no trouble can be a great trial to you. No happenings of this earth can in any way torture you. [emphasis added]12 Another great benefit from this lack of attachment (lack of magnetic negativity) is that, generally, we can no longer engage others’ egos. We don’t get into fights or arguments with anyone over anything, not because we are trying to avoid fights and arguments, but because we now have very little “ego” and so are no longer capable of magnetically engaging the egos of others. Generally, everyone leaves us alone because we are absolutely unthreatening to anyone anymore. (I say generally because there are some people who are so negative that they feel very threatened by the light.) For the most part, everyone likes us because we evoke the very best feelings in them and never trigger their negativity with our own.

None of this means we become emotional zombies. On the contrary, we are now free to feel the richness of the emotions of our present situation. Our emotions once more have the spontaneity of a child’s (Matt. 18:2). Jesus wept when Lazarus died (John 11:35) and blazed scorching anger when he routed the moneychangers and vendors from the Temple (Matt. 21:12-13). But none of this was a result of past negative emotional programming. These were powerful emotions, exactly suited to the situation. Unlike the child, however, we are now never swept up in, or controlled by, emotion. We are so detached that, if the situation warrants, we can will one emotion to cease and immediately switch to another. Free from neurotic projections, we can also see people and situations far more accurately, and speak and act accordingly. We can, as Castaneda says, “live in the present,” appreciating the newness of each person and experience, rather than, as before, seeing everything through the same monotonous emotional conditioning. Both the Tibetan master Trungpa and Castaneda’s Yaqui master don Juan describe this new perception by saying that there is now a “space” between whatever happens and our reaction to it. We are no longer emotionally programmed to react in a knee-jerk fashion. We can now use that space to choose how to react, or to not react at all. The farther we travel into the causal level, and the more skillful we become at using this spacious new way of seeing, the more interesting every person and experience becomes. We experience people and situations deeply, seeing each person and experience as sublimely unique and as having much greater mystery and beauty than we ever before appreciated. Still another feature of the causal level, as alluded to by Teresa above, is an increasing appreciation of, and desire for, silence. Silence seems to become more wonderful than speech because it seems to have more depth. Often there is nothing we now like better than to be alone for a whole day or days at a time (cf. Mark 6:46). It may seem (even to ourselves) that we are doing nothing during these times of silence. But that is not so. In the silence we are communing without thought at a deep level with the void that is the source of all creativity. Some Christians have called this the contemplative gaze. When we are drawn out of silence by the press of everyday affairs, however, we are often amazed at the new creative thoughts, impulses and actions that flow out of us, often things we never considered before. This is because the essence of God is perpetual creativity, and we are now finally taking our places as powerfully co-creative children of God.

Generally, after someone dies, they remain in a realm near to the physical plane for a few days or weeks. This allows them to comfort those left behind, to guide others to tidy up unfinished projects, and even to satisfy their curiosity over such things as who shows up at the funeral. Sometimes, however, the person gets stuck in this inbetween realm and fails to move on into the light. These cases may occur when there is an extremely strong emotional attachment to someone (e.g., a new spouse) or something (e.g., their home, alcohol, an unfinished project) and/or where the…

All of this is not to say there are no challenges at this level. The detachment from the cares of this world, and the love of communing with God in silence, can get out of hand, and become immoderate and unbalanced. We now see everyone and everything as God-stuff, as part of the Christ, as the Word or Dream of God (as in the Buddhist shunyata or “emptiness of form”). Because we know with absolute certainty that God is running this world down to the finest detail, there can be a temptation not to care about the world anymore. There can be a temptation to forget that, here in spacetime, forms are important. Giving in to this temptation, by an overindulgence in the enjoyment of formlessness, can be not only a neglect of our new cocreatorship responsibilities, but a grave hindrance to realizing the next level of consciousness, the nondual. It is always a mistake to get attached to anything, including silence and emptiness. Chogyam Trungpa stressed that it is not enough to realize that form is emptiness; we must go on to the next level where we’ll finally see that emptiness is form. The Christian practice of returning to the world after realizing our union with God to work in selfless service for others becomes important if we are to get grounded enough to get to the next level. There is nothing like having an organization to run, bills to pay, or children to raise to keep us planted firmly on the earth. Bernadette, for example, left the convent, married, and raised four children, while Teresa and John were endlessly busy setting up their reformed religious community.

There can also be a temptation, in the other direction, to be so anxious to bring Christ to the world that we neglect the necessary communing with the inner creative void. As always, moderation and balance, coupled with continued effort forward, are the keys. For those prone to detach themselves from this world and the distinctions of form, the initiatory tests for the next level, the nondual, will often be about learning to see that, though other people are indeed the Christ, they are also often deceitful, jealous, angry, fearful, and even treacherous. We must learn to see these negative energy forms clearly and cope with them appropriately. There is no room for a pollyannaish “everything is rosy” approach to life. As Trungpa says, you have to learn that, despite your wonderful vision of the world, things are indeed as bad as they seem.

The spiritual path to the nondual vision of the Kingdom of Heaven is long and arduous. This is all the more reason for Christians to start early and work hard. For those who are serious about following the path Jesus laid out, Jesus advised no turning back once we put shoulder to the plow (Luke 9:62). 1The crown chakra is the wheel of vibrant energy and light located just above the top of the head. Jesus and the saints are usually depicted with halos of golden-white light about their heads. This symbolizes the openness of their crown chakras, that is, their wholeness or sanctity. Anyone who has such an open crown chakra is by definition a saint because the crown chakra only opens fully as one realizes the Christ Consciousness. The existence of this pictorial tradition within Christianity shows that, at one time at least, the existence and significance of the chakras was known and understood. 2In Platonist philosophy these “ideal forms” are eternal and immutable and the rest of creation (the lesser forms) are pale imitations, and have no effect on the

Our experience on the physical plane, by means of a continual biofeedback type of mechanism, does influence the ideal forms themselves. Though the ideal form is there at the level of the Logos (John 1: 1-3), we self-evolve or self-create our own uniquely individuated expressions of God by our choices and experiences over lifetimes.

When the Buddhist master talks about eradicating desires he means attachments, those sticky (magnetic) emotional addictions that are based in fear, the type of attachment that is called blind because it fails to see the emotionally unbalanced projections (both positive and negative) that are always present in such addictions. When the Buddhist says that at the causal level the person becomes free of karma or desires, she is speaking of freedom from such addictive emotional programming.

Chapter 17 NONDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS—ASCENSION INTO THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

Nondual consciousness marks the end of all division between “creature” and “creator.” It was the level from which Jesus spoke when he said that “The Father and I are one.”

We come now finally to the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus preached, the nondual vision of this world, a vision so complete and wondrous that there are no words that can adequately describe its magnificence. It is a vision that, by definition, is beyond the dualities of human language and the linear, dualistic, chopped-up consciousness through which almost all humans now see the world. If the causal level of consciousness was characterized by peace, the nondual level is characterized by joy or bliss. Hindus call this state of bliss ananda, the goal in consciousness of all Hindu monks (swamis). The Christian tradition has called it the “beatific vision of God” while on Earth. The vision of the Kingdom of Heaven is the level of consciousness of the human as fully realized divinity.

There are also two senses in which it is not proper to call this final level a “level” at all. First, we don’t get to this level of realization unless we first relinquish all polarities, including higher and lower, as a way of seeing or talking about reality, or definitively explaining anything, including the levels of consciousness of the spiritual path. In fact, as Wilber says, we have to “fall off” the path to get here. In other words, we finally have to stop seeing the spiritual life as a path at all. We have to once and for all simply surrender to what is and what has been all along: our divine identity now consciously realized and “seen.” The ninth or final level, in this sense, is not a level at all, but the divine ground of being that underlies all the levels. This same type of surrender, letting go of striving, and acceptance of what is, is necessary before the breakthrough into any new level of awareness, but this particular letting go is the final, most thorough, and most decisive letting go of all (Luke 9:24, John 12:24-26). The second sense in which this is not a level as the others before is that this “level” of the Father is not so much a level above that of the Christ Consciousness (as if the Father were “above” the Son), but rather it is the fulfillment of the Christ Consciousness (John 10:30, 38). When the Gospel Crucifixion narrative has Jesus saying, “It is finished” (John 19:30) when he dies, it means just that. Once the human personality, in the Dark Night, is crucified upon the Cross of its inner contradictions by being plunged into the belly of Jonah’s whale, baptized into Jesus’ baptism, or subjected to the descent into hell (whatever image you prefer), the work is essentially done. It is indeed finished. The human as consciously identified with his or her spacetime personality dies, and we are “resurrected” as a Christ (John 1:12-13). It is then Christ who unerringly takes us to the Father (John 14:6). That is why I said the healing initiated in the Dark Night continues non-stop throughout the causal level. The light of the Christ Consciousness is now always shining upon us and is forever healing and enlightening us (John 9:5). For the Christian, the causal level can be understood as the “forty days” between Easter and the Ascension. The “forty days” can be likened to the period between our resurrection into Christ Consciousness and our ascension into nonduality.

Chogyam Trungpa calls the nondual level that of “tantra” or “luminosity” while other Buddhists call it “nirvana.” The Hindu Paramahansa Yogananda calls it “cosmic consciousness” (not to be confused with the cosmic consciousness of “nature mysticism” back in the psychic level). The Roman spiritual master Plotinus called it simply “the One.” In his book, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Ken Wilber begins his description of the nondual level by quoting Sri Ramana Maharshi, whom he calls India’s greatest modern sage. Sri Ramana Maharshi writes: The world is illusory; Brahman [God] alone is real;

Brahman is the world. The first two statements, says Wilber, “represent pure causal level awareness, or unmanifest absorption in pure or formless Spirit; line three represents the ultimate or nondual completion (the union of the Formless with the entire world of Form). The Godhead completely transcends all worlds and thus completely includes all worlds.”3 In Christianity, though there have been others (e.g., St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximos the Confessor, and the Celt John Scotus Erigena), there is perhaps no greater spokesperson for the nondual level of consciousness than Meister Eckhart. Eckhart calls the nondual level that of Deitas or Godhead, the level, so to speak, above what we normally think of as God. It is the level of Jesus’ Father, to which, as Jesus said, no one comes except by means of the Christ Consciousness, i.e., “through me” (John 14:6). What Eckhart’s Deitas and Jesus’ “Father” definitely are not is the Creator God whose existence had been “proved” by philosophers such as Eckhart’s predecessor in the chair of theology at the University of Paris, St. Thomas Aquinas, using human dualistic or dialectical reasoning. When Eckhart says, “I pray God to rid me of God,” it is precisely Aquinas’ reasoned-to Creator God that he wants to transcend. In fact, the secret to entering the nondual level is to transcend all the archetypal forms of the causal level, that is, to cease seeing the world in this way rather than that way, or in any way at all that can be conceptualized and described in linear language (cf. Luke 17:21). Bernadette calls this process the letting go of all judgments (John 8:15). Trungpa says we must see the world directly, that is, without our normal, filtering, abstracting, conceptual glasses. Eckhart advises: Empty yourself of everything. That is to say, empty yourself of your ego and empty yourself of all things and of all that you are in yourself and consider yourself as what you are in God. God is a being beyond being and a nothingness beyond being. Therefore, be still and do not flinch from this emptiness. Eckhart describes the nondual vision that comes from this radical emptying out: In the breakthrough, where I stand free of my own will and the will of God and of all his works and of God himself, there I am above all creatures and am neither God nor creature… I discover that God and I are one… I am an immovable cause that moves all things… there I had no God and was cause of myself… There I stood, free of God and of all things. But when I took leave from this state and received my created being, then I had a God [Creator].5 At the nondual level of human consciousness all dualism disappears. That means the separation in our consciousness between subject and object dissolves entirely. The seer becomes the seen as well as the eye. The difference between the logical opposites “creator” and “creature” disappears, and the difference between the individualized Spirit (the soul) and universal…

The reason why we can now no longer see God, either within or outside ourselves, is because God is no longer an object, either an intellectual object or a projected emotional object. Nor can we see our own self as an object. We are now totally identified with God so that, when we look out upon this world, God is the one looking out (cf. John 14:10). When we look within, it is into the voidness of the uncreated Father from whom there is no separation. There are no objects of consciousness to be found either within or without. We are now within the Father and the Father is within us (John 10:38). God and we, the I-I, are looking out upon the world together in such a

completely identified way that there is a oneness without a twoness (duality). And any other person who encounters us is directly encountering God in human form (“he who sees me sees the Father,” John 14:9). I want to emphasize again that the individuated soul (the Christ Self) is not annihilated. Those Buddhists and other believers who take the “no-self” theory literally (or any Christian who understands Jesus’ “losing of self” as literal, Matt. 10:39) are mistaken. The individuated soul is transcended, which means that it is both preserved and negated (just as, at the first level of consciousness, the body is preserved, i.e., remains in existence, but negated when the child ceases to identify the self with it). Here at the ninth level of consciousness, the seat of our identity once again shifts—for the last time. We now see our identity, our I, not as the individuated Christ Self, but as limitless spirit, as consciousness itself. The individuated Christ Self remains in existence. Very much so. For one thing, it would be impossible to operate in spacetime, or even in the invisible parts of creation, without it. For another, the creation of the Christ Self, the completely individuated divinized soul, is the entire purpose of material creation. It is the end point (omega) of human development in spacetime. It would make no sense for the Christ Self, the product of eons of spiritual labor, to then be annihilated. Bernadette Roberts explains: When the unitive life falls away [as we enter the nondual level], however, we do not suddenly become God; God does not suddenly disappear. All that happens is that we finally take our rightful place with Christ in the Trinity as part and parcel of God—God manifest. The ultimate realization of no-self is not its identity with Father or Holy Spirit—the omniscient unmanifested Father or the omnipotent manifesting Spirit—rather, it is the realization of our true nature, our true identity as the manifest aspect of the Trinity—Christ. In this breakthrough, we also realize the Oneness of Christ, Father and Spirit, three distinct, non-interchangeable aspects of the Godhead. There are no such things as greater or lesser aspects of God; the three act as one, and to finally see how this works is what no-self is all about. On entering the nondual level, one of the things that Bernadette discovered was that, echoing the words of Eckhart quoted earlier, there is now no difference between God’s will and our own will. Our human will is now seen as one with the will of God. So we can give up all the constant fretting over what God’s will might be, and whether or not we are truly following God’s will. Because the will of the Father and Son (God’s and our own) are now the same, we have a tremendous unification of life-force power

in ourselves, a laser-like unification with intense energy and focus. This is so much so that, as with Jesus, it gradually becomes more and more the case that what we “decree” God decrees. When we forgive, God forgives (Luke 7:48). If we curse a fig tree, it may die (Matt. 21:19). When we say, “you are healed,” or “your sins are forgiven,” that is the case (though the faith or repentance of the one being healed or forgiven is equally important (Luke 7:9, 50). Like all powers and realizations, this one too keeps developing and deepening ever afterwards. Like all realizations, the truth revealed here has always been the case for all humans, though the house-divided-against-itself status of most human consciousness (Luke 11:17) prevents people not only from seeing this, but also from being able to use this unified power. Because of this laser-like focusing of the life-force, the person lives afterwards in what many mystics have called the “Eternal Now.” We live totally in the present. Those of us who are unable to let go of our addictions, on the other hand, are forever living in the past, incorrectly seeing and interpreting present events and people through the foggy lenses of prior emotional and belief-system conditioning. At the same time (the opposite pole of this inner imbalance) we might be forever trying to live in the future, always saying, “Things will be different and better after… (insert: graduation, marriage, a new job, children, a new partner, my children’s…

She is content just to be; life passes by, passes over her; she feels, reacts, can be hurt, cast down, groan under the pressure of life, but in another sense be ‘away,’ almost with a sense of nonbeing which can frighten at times. Below the level of superficial questionings and doubts is an assurance, an inability to worry or be anxious; no temptation ‘to do something about it’ by way of rousing the attention, applying the mind, making an effort… there is only sufficient attention and room for what she has to do in her daily round. For Petra the terrible anxiety that many of us feel due to the relentlessness of time’s passage is no more. Once we live in the eternal all such anxiety ceases. We can now focus completely on the creative task at hand, taking immense joy in the exercise of our divine creativity, but completely detached from future outcomes and expectations. Like a child, we become carefree in a way most adult humans can only fantasize about (Matt. 18:3). We now live in a dimension free of time, in eternity.

Paradoxically, once our consciousness enters the nondual level, we cannot help but live in the present; it is impossible to live otherwise. There is also another sense in which our consciousness has now become like that of a child. We have perhaps heard people say (perhaps we have said it ourselves) that, no matter how old our bodies may look in the mirror, there is a part of us that feels exactly the same as when we were little. That part of ourselves seems (and actually is) timeless. It also seems (and actually is) spaceless, because it hasn’t changed in the slightest, even though we may now live in California whereas, as a child, we lived in Illinois. This timeless-spaceless withinness of ours (which is the identical timeless-spaceless withinness that is within everyone else) is none other than God. At the nondual level of God-consciousness we actually come to operate on the everyday level from this consciousness, from this timeless spacelessness. We no longer have to go within to feel it. We are it. Always. Consciously. In that sense, we have once again become a child, operating from the same wondrous spaceless “place” and timeless “time” we first felt inside ourselves when we were very young (Matt. 18:3). At the nondual level, all the polar opposites disappear for they are now all seen as complements that forever make wholes.

When Jesus said that the devil ( diabolus in Latin) is a liar and the Father of Lies (John 8:44), he was talking about the rational dualistic vision by which almost all humans see this world, the intellectual seeing that chops up the world, separates us from each other, and separates us from God. The words “devil,” “diabolus,” “demon,” and “duality” are all based on the root word “two” or, in Greek, duo. In Genesis the devil, the Father of Lies, is pictured as a fork-tongued (dual tongued) snake. In nondual consciousness, the Devil, or duality, is now finally and completely vanquished. When Genesis has God saying that he would forever put enmity between the offspring of Eve (woman) and the offspring of the lying, forked-tongue serpent (the Devil) (Gen. 3:15), one of the meanings is that the perpetual struggle we encounter between the demands of our inner life-force (the feminine) and the demands of our reason (the masculine, dualistic, and the origin of the lie of separation) will go on until the “woman” triumphs by giving birth to nondual awareness in Christ (see Revelation, chapter 12). The nondual transcendence of identification with a self does not mean that we get absorbed or annihilated into God like a drop of water entering the ocean as Evelyn Underhill suggested it might be after reading the accounts of certain Muslim Sufi mystics, or as one might conclude after reading some of the literature of the Buddhist no-self school. There is no annihilation of the individuated soul. Rather, the soul is taken up into the Father so that the entire universe enters into the soul. The ocean enters the drop of water. So completely are we raised up that, for example, we see the entirety of Creation as our own body. Because of this radical raising up the passage from the causal level to the nondual level is sometimes called the “Ascension Initiation,” the last of the five major initiations of consciousness…

(John 10:34-35), even lords over the angels as Eckhart and the Scriptures say (1 Cor. 6:3). By means of the polarities and dualities of spacetime, we somehow transcend spacetime forevermore. It is a project, this assembly line for the production of gods, that is well worth whatever price we pay for living on this planet, no matter how many lifetimes it may take. The Hindu yogi calls the movement from causal to nondual awareness the movement from nirvikalpa samadhi, utter absorption while at prayer in formless cause, to sahaj samadhi, the state in which our God consciousness is so absolute that there is no need to pray at all (in order to “reach” God, that is). We now go about as God doing the busiest tasks and rendering service to all. Meister Eckhart explains: Therefore, if all creatures are asleep in you, you can perceive what God works in you… seize God in all things for God is in all things… Love your neighbor as yourself. If you love one human being more than another, that is wrong. If you love your father and mother and yourself more than another human being, that is wrong. And if you love your own…

Jesus appears to contradict himself at times, and for the same reason. When Jesus said “only the Father is good,” Jesus was talking about his relationship, as Son, to the Father as Creator, that is, he was expressing the truth at the level of the Christ Consciousness. But when Jesus seems to contradict himself by saying “the Father and I are one,” he is expressing the truth as seen at the nondual level of consciousness wherein the Son and Father are one without a two. Ultimately, when seen from the nondual level of consciousness, the terms “goodness,” “beauty,” and “truth” (as well as their definitional opposites “evil,” “ugliness,” and “falsehood”) are seen as inadequate, one-sided distortions when applied to either God or Creation. The ultimate goodness, beauty and truth is not propositional. It is simply “what is,” just as God and we are “Who Are.”

The Buddhist Trungpa makes the same point, saying we see everywhere the “isness” of things, the waterness of water and the garbageheapness of a garbage heap. No subjects, no objects, only this.

St. Paul of the Cross, at this stage, used to admonish the flowers not to make so much noise as they forever screamed to him, “God, God, God.” Wilber says: It is the radical end to all egocentrism, all geocentrism, all biocentrism, all sociocentrism, all theocentrism, because it is the radical end of all centrisms, period… The All is I-I. I-I is Emptiness. Emptiness is freely manifesting. Freely manifesting is self-liberating.

Zen, of course, would put it all much more simply, and point directly to just this. Still pond A frog jumps in Plop!12 This is the end of the line, the place where Jesus said he and the Father were one (John 10:30), the place in consciousness he told us to strive for in which we are perfect as the Father is perfect (Matt. 5:48). This is the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

It is not necessary that we become theologians or intellectuals to come into nonduality. On this point, something that Bernadette experienced is instructive. When she came into nonduality, by the spiritual principle of like attracting like, she met an elderly woman who, being at her level, understood her. The elderly woman’s only surprise was that Bernadette was still a relatively young woman. This was a surprise because the older woman thought that the transition to nondual consciousness was a normal part of the aging process! She had not seen it as mystical or supernatural or even religious. This elderly woman was one of thousands of souls who arrive in these realms with no particular expertise in mysticism or religion. So, to any readers discouraged by all the theology, take heart, it is not necessary to know spiritual jargon to get into heaven. All that is essential is to surrender to the action of God’s grace within the self. A person with nondual consciousness is a liberated soul (John 8:32). On dying, he or she will enter the after-death Heaven to which all believers aspire. But it matters not, for one is already in Heaven, and knows it. “For this is eternal life, to know you, Father, and to understand the Christ whom you send forth” (John 17:3).

while the nondual consciousness of Jesus of Nazareth was perfectly aware of his oneness with God, Jesus never claimed to be equal to God as transcendent, nor even to be the complete expression of the Christ, God’s Son.

People routinely make such sacrifices to win a gold medal at the Olympics or to try to win the Presidency. We must at least be as dedicated (2 Tim. 4:7; 1 Cor. 9:24). We have to be willing to go all out, day after day, for a lifetime.