Aldous Huxley: Annihilation of the Ego

What is the ultimate benefit of a contemplative practice? Is it not to come to a unitive state of consciousness and being, in which we realize that we, too, have broken the strong attachment chains of the ego and have become a conscious part of the divine, non-dualistic Ground of Being? Certainly, this is what the sages past and present seem to assure us.

John of Ruysbroeck

 The Flemish mystic, John of Ruysbroeck (1293-1381), observed:

"(In the Reality unitively known by the mystic), we can speak no more of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, nor of any creature, but only one Being, which is the very substance of the Divine Persons. There were we all one before our creation, for this is our super-essence. There the godhead is in simple essence without activity.

[Huxley, "The Perennial Philosophy," p. 31.]

Similarly,  in a description that is markedly similar to the Eastern process of negation, found in both Buddhist and Vedantist teachings, the renowned German mystic, Meister Eckhart, remarked:

"Thou must love God as not-God, not-Spirit, not-person, not image, but as He is, a sheer, pure absolute One, sundered from all two-ness, and in whom we must eternally sink from nothingness to nothingness."

[Ibid., p. 32.]

Sri Nisargadatta
(1897-1981)

"Our usual attitude is of 'I am this," the modern Indian sage, Sri Nisargadatta, observed. "Separate consistently and perserveringly the 'I am' from 'this' or 'that', and try to feel what it means to be, just to be, without being 'this' or 'that'. All our habits go against it and the task of fighting them is long and hard sometimes, but clear understanding helps a lot. The clearer you understand that on the level of the mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker you will come to the end of you search and realize your limitless being."

[Nisargadatta, "I Am That." pp. 59-60.]

Aldous Huxley
(1894-1963)

 "(T)here is a hierarchy of the real," Aldous Huxley observes. "The manifold world of our everyday experience is real with a relative reality that is, on its own level, unquestionable; but this relative reality has its being within and because of the absolute Reality, which, on account of the incommensurable otherness of its eternal nature, we can never hope to describe, even though it is possible for us directly to apprehend it."

"In the phrase used by Scotus Erigena," he notes, "God is not a what; He is a That. In other words, the Ground can be denoted as being there, but not defined as having qualities. This means that discursive knowledge about the Ground is not merely, like all inferential knowledge, a thing at one remove, or even at several removes, from the reality of immediate acquaintance; it is and, because of the very nature of our language and our standard pattern of thought, it must be paradoxical knowledge. Direct knowledge of the Ground cannot be had except by union, and union can be achieved only by the annihilation of the self-regarding ego, which is the barrier separating the 'thou' from the 'That'."

[Huxley, supra., pp. 33-35]

I am neither 'this' nor all attachments and forms; neither name, self-image, feelings or thoughts; nor the ego. "I am That" - the divine Ground of Being.

Andrew Cohen: "Enlightenment Is a Secret"

Andrew Cohen, Editor-in-chief,
http://www.enlightennext.org/EnlightenNext magazine.

Perhaps the first post-modern spiritual teacher, leading-edge "guru," Andrew Cohen, teaches a brand of radical non-duality he calls "Evolutionary Enlightenment." In doing so, he transcends his roots in the Advaita Vedanta lineage of Ramana Maharshi, and charts a path for our active participation in humanity's evolution and the evolution of the 'kosmos.'

Cohen's vision includes the following five "top-down" tenets for living an awakened life, here and now:

• Clarity of Intention: One must be 100% committed to the one intention of waking up to the spiritual reality of what and who we are.

•  The Truth of Impersonality: In a cosmos of 100 billion galaxies and 100s of billions of stars in such galaxies, it is sheer narcissism to focus our consciousness on what we are feeling and thinking from moment to moment; yet that is what the vast majority of us unwittingly do.

•  Face Everything and Avoid Nothing: To attain enlightenment it is necessary to face, and face down, the fears and desires of the Ego and attain to one's Authentic Self.

• The Law of Volitionality: We do not do or say anything (or omit doing or saying anything) without a voluntarily intention to do so. All of our actions are of our own volition and, thus, we can no longer foster a 'victim mentality.'

• For the Sake of the Whole: In a post-modern world, enlightenment for one's own sake is irrelevant; it is only when we attain "autonomy in communion" with others that enlightenment is an effective and true evolutionary tool.

"Realization of the Absolute," writes Cohen, "is the most demanding and all consuming form of meditation that a human being can pursue. . . . Any trace of self-interest of any kind in any form instantly corrupts (the) most perfect purity and automatically, although usually imperceptibility, taints its reflection." ("Enlightenment Is a Secret," p. ix.) Thus, he stresses, one has to get out of the way to let the Absolute manifest:

"There is a secret that is infinitely greater than anything you have ever known. It is real and it exists and if you make room for it - it will overwhelm you.

You have got to get out of the way. You have to abandon everything you've been taught and everything you've been led to believe - all those limiting, confining, imprisoning, denying ideas and concepts that you have picked up along your way. You have to make room for that which is unbelievable. You have to get out of the way. "Oh my God!" you'll say, "I didn't know it could be like this."

If you want to be Free you have to open yourself to the unthinkable possibility. You have to allow yourself to consider that which is immeasurable. You have to rise up. You have to open your mind, open your heart, and renounce the past completely."

[Cohen, "Enlightenment Is a Secret," pp. 12-13.]

In the following video, Cohen describes "Evolutionary Enlightenment" and how it builds upon and surpasses traditional Eastern teachings of personal liberation. In some sense, his teachings of radical transpersonal enlightenment make him, perhaps, the first post-modern Bhoddisatva.

Andrew Cohen and Rupert Sheldrake: Is Evoution Sacred?

In a thought-provoking dialogue (below) between spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen and the innovative biologist Rupert Sheldrake, two voices from the leading-edge of our post-modern culture discuss whether evolution, itself, may perhaps be sacred.

Noted biologist and author,
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake.

"We can become aware of our connection to the cosmos and this vast evolutionary process," says Sheldrake," but the question is: 'Where is it going?' Does it just go ever and onwards and upwards forever until we get more and more enlightened and more and more cosmically aware? Or, does there come a point where there is some kind of a culmination of the whole cosmic evolutionary process?"

Noting that the Judeo-Christian tradition, which gave us "the vision of a progressive evolution in time," always had an explicit goal in the future, Sheldrake asks Cohen (a proponent of the teaching he calls "evolutionary enlightenment") what an 'end-state' to the evolutionary process would be.

In observing that it is a "big picture" answer that frankly verges on "the realm of fantasy," Cohen notes that the "direction or the 'teleos' of the evolutionary process is towards consciousness itself."

Spiritual teacher, Andrew Cohen,
Editor-in-Chief of EnlightenNext
magazine.

Cohen posits that, "it would seem that the urge towards consciousness would be fulfilled, or would be ultimately completed, when all the matter in the cosmos had become enlightened - which means conscious. When all the matter in the cosmos had become fully enlightened," he observes, "we would say that the primary urge - if that's what it is - would be vanquished, that it would be fulfilled."

Noting that the process has "barely begun," Cohen  observes that we are at the very beginning of a process that is of such infinite proportions that it is nearly impossible to conceive. Nevertheless,  he calls this "urge to become conscious" our primary driving motivation.

For his part, Sheldrake - an innovative biologist who is noted for his theory of 'morphic fields' - observes that "there is already a large degree of consciousness throughout the  universe, and perhaps that extra awareness comes from us, rather than somehow by our own conscious development we are going to inject consciousness into the rest of the universe."

Their discussion is a fascinating leading-edge discussion of concepts that have long been an integral aspect of the ultimate teachings of both Mahayana Buddhism and the Advaita Vedanta, as two of the most innovative contemporary minds approach what may be thought of as "the biggest question" from two very different directions . . . and nonetheless come to agreement.

"When consciousness awakens to itself, Cohen concludes, "that's when everything comes alive." A point which is acceded whole-heartedly by Sheldrake.

The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of Transcendentalism

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Perhaps it was the first exposure of Western cultures to the scriptures of India's millennial old wisdom traditions that sparked a lively interest in 'experiential transcendentalism,' or the possibility that there is a higher and more expansive consciousness above humanity's ordinary 'self' or 'egoic' consciousness and awareness. (The respected 20th-century theologian, in giving the prestigious Gifford Lecture at St, Andrew's College, Scotland, best expressed what is meant by "experiential transcendendalism," when he observed that, "Individual selfhood is expressed in the self's capacity for self-transcendence and not in its rational capacity for conceptual and analytic procedures.") Certainly "Brahma," perhaps the most famous of poem by the 'dean' of the "American Transcendentalists," Ralph Waldo Emerson, was inspired by his reading of that most-famed of Hindu scriptures, the "Bhagavad Gita."

The American Transcendentalists were followed by the birth of what was called the "New Thought" movement, characterized by the writings of Christian Science founder, Mary Baker Eddy, the Chicago-based Emily Tompkins, as well as James Allen and Ralph Waldo Trine in the United Kingdom.

The English public schools between the two World Wars birthed another wave of English spiritual seekers, such as Allen Watts, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood and Gerald Heard, whose presence and influence in America reached heights in the immediate post-World War II 1950's and early 60's. They would influence and collaborate to a greater or lesser extent with Huston Smith, and two young Harvard professors Richard Allport (who would re-emerge as spiritual teacher Ram Das) and Timothy Leary in their research into whether psybicillin (and later L.S.D) could trigger the mystical experiences and higher states of consciousness reported by so many of the world's great wisdom traditions.

Transcendentalism and the search for expanded or higher consciousness may have hit its heights in the 'psychedelic' '60s. With the maturation of the 'hippies' of the '60s into today's 'baby-boomers,' and the disillusionment of the "Me-Generation" of the 1970s and '80s (followed by 'Generations X, Y, and Z'), the search for enlightenment and higher consciousness gave way to the passion for "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll." Now, however, with the aging and pending retirement of the "boomers," the maturation of the "Me-Generation, and the disillusionment of their following generations, it appears that the search for transcendent experience is once again waxing rather than waning. But what exactly is meant by "transcendence" and "transcendentalism?"

Gerald Heard (1889-1971)

"Beat-era" spiritual philosopher Gerald Heard in his classic exploration of these rarified stages of transcendentalism and consciousness, "Pain, Sex and Time," discusses the nature of what he calls mankind's  ordinary "fissured consciousness" and its "ego-impulses," as compared with the evolutionary potential of the "undilated unconscious" and its potential to cause an "interior reintegration for the brave souls who are true aspirants after "higher consciousness" and spiritual awareness.

Written in 1939 and long out-of-print, "Pain, Sex and Time" was, it seems, before its time. A classic outline of how humankind's evolutionary progress and potential for ever greater and higher states of consciousness, Heard's treatise was finally re-published in 2004. It's republication, perhaps, is an indication of a groundswell of interest in man's spiritual and evolutionary potential - a groundswell, aided too no small extent, by the realization that material success and achievement is not only ultimately unsatisfactory to our inner needs, but is damaging to the Earth herself. As Heard, naively and perhaps prematurely (as it turns out), observed in 1939, only months before the onset of the cataclysm that was World War II:

"It is now obvious that men cannot live much longer the life of irrelevant distractions. We are becoming too acutely conscious and aware of time. Any stimulant, however pleasant at the beginning, repeated [often enough] becomes hateful."

[G. Heard, "Pain, Sex and Time," p.193.]

This warning - written nearly 75 years ago - seems eerily prescient in our times, although it shouldn't. For, when we look back at the history of 'transcendentalism,' we have been on a crash course with the limitations that time has on humanity's consciousness throughout what may be called the '"Scientific Age" (which has now rapidly morphed seamlessly into the "Information Age"), and the need for a change in our consciousness has always been readily apparent, if only to the few. As Heard remarked, a handful of generations ago now:

 "There are . . . three great stages in man' evolution; the appetitive animal, the intelligent human (Nietzche's "transitional creature"), and the being who once more knows itself to be a part of the Whole, but this time is clearly aware that the Whole is a comprehensive consciousness."

[G. Heard, "Pain, Sex and Time," p. 153.]

Now, however, rather than an early warning, Heard's remarks may represent the clear statement of an evolutionary imperative and warning. Even the incomprehensibility of man's inhumanity to man, as demonstrated in the Second World War, was unforeseeable to Heard, it seems. How much more incomprehensible would the current challenges we face with what has become a 24/7 global worldview- a population boom, environmental degradation, mass extinction of species, growing rather than shrinking poverty and hunger - have been?

Heard writes that, "Without silent recollection the mind cannot recognize its own unity, still less the wholeness of that into which it would expand."

[G. Heard, "Pain, Sex and Time," p. 181.]

Now, it seems - with our growing awareness of the limitations of our old consciousness and the problems caused by it - that there is an ever-growing recognition that we must strive individually and collectively to meet what is our evolutionary imperative, our call to transcend the collective state-of-mind that has created the problems we face. For, as Heard also notes in "Pain, Sex and Time," those species that fail in continuing to evolve almost inevitably perish.

Ending the 'Optical Delusion of Consciousness' to Demonstrate 'True Compassion'

"A human being is part of the whole called by us the universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness."

"This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

"The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive."

(Albert Einstein, 1954)

The primary basis of all the world's great wisdom traditions and religions is love - not "love" in a personal sense, per se, but a love without conditions and without any particular object. And, of course, the result of this unconditional, all-inclusive love is the 'compassion' Einstein speaks of, or what the Dalai Lama calls "unbiased compassion."



"Compassion,' from the Greek 'pathos" (meaning suffering), means that we recognize the suffering - both physical and psychological - of others, and that in a very real sense their suffering invokes suffering within us. Interestingly, realization of the Buddha's 'First Noble Truth' on the path to enlightenment, or "liberation from the self" (the 'Noble Truth of Suffering') is that to the 'unawakened' mid or 'imprisoned' mind, this life is dukkha, or "suffering." Einstein realized, as the Buddha did 2500 years before this time, that what the individual (indeed the world) needs to survive and flourish is "a substantially new way of thinking."

Today, as ever, there is an imperative need for this new way of thinking; or, as spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen explains,  there is an "urgency" for individuals to seek enlightened consciousness and adopt a purposive relationship to the attainment of that rarified state of being, not for themselves alone, but for the sake of others - for the sake of the Whole. We need, as others teachings have long advocated, to become what may be thought of as 21st century bhoddisatvas, vowing not to give up until there is a broad based enlightenment  - or the adoption of "a substantially new manner of thinking," to use Einstein's phraseology - amongst all human (and other sentient) beings.

Andrew Cohen, Editor-in-Chief,
EnlightenNext Magazine

The vow of a boddhisatva - even a 21st century boddhisatva - like all things spiritual, it seems, is somewhat paradoxical: There is a need for individuals to awaken spiritually for the sake of all humanity; yet, in obtaining spiritual enlightenment, individuality slips away. As Cohen observes in his book, "Enlightenment Is a Secret:"

"The most delicate and difficult task possible to accomplish in this life is simply to be Free. One who succeeds is very rare. It is hardly ever seen. If a person can be Free it is the greatest blessing. It means an alternative to the human mess is possible. Simply being awake and staying awake is a demonstration of the solution. Living Freedom is the solution. You become the answer. You become the solution. Few have the courage to do it.

And yet . . . this aspiration to be "the solution," even for the sake of the Whole, remains personal and therefore paradoxical. While all the violence and suffering that is rampant may make it seem that it is "a very selfish endeavour" to seek a higher state of consciousness and being for oneself, Cohen observes that, "Nothing could be further than the truth."

"You are doing the human race the highest service by realizing your Self," he notes. "Self-Realization is evolution. Coming to the end of aggressive, destructive and selfish behavior is evolution is action. When you evolve to the point that you are able to actively manifest the profound understanding discovered in Self-Realization you are cooperating with all the forces of nature. Only then will your own life be the very expression of the opposite of everything you claim to abhor. What more can you possibly do? What more can anyone possibly do than that? When you have Realized your Self you simply 'are.' When you have found that harmony that you are, then you will be the harmony and no longer an obstruction to it. When sturggle has come to an end, so does all division."

The end of "all division" is the end of Einstein's "optical delusion of consciousness," of course. It is the attainment of a wholly "new manner of thinking" that Einstein would undoubtedly acknowledge as the necessary state which we all need to demonstrate "true compassion."

Both Philosphers and Science Point to a Unity

In another post, I have written about how cutting-edge physics, metaphysics, psychology and philosophy all point to a certain unity (or "Unity") that exists beneath our ordinary egoic existence. Yet, it never fails to astound me how ancient philosophers and sages from the world's great wisdom traditions formulated the same conceptions and came to much the same conclusions thousands of years ago.

"Atomic" theory, or "atomism" was first formulated by the Vedic teachers of ancient Hinduism and was carried forward not only into the Advaita Vedanta, but also into Greek philosophy, in large part because Alexander the Great pushed his army all the way from Greece to the Gates of India.

My favourite ancient Western philosopher (along with Socrates, and his pupil, Plato) is the Roman Emperor and neo-Platonic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius. In his Meditations (at Book 6:25) Aurelius  writes:

"Think of the number of things, bodily and mental, that are going on at the same moment within each one of us; and then it will not surprise you that an infinitely greater number of things - everything, in fact, that comes to birth in this vast One-and-All we call the universe - can exist simultaneously therein."

For a meditation nearly two thousand years old, it is awe inspiring that Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (like "Indra's Many-Jewelled Net" in Hinduism) cover the same truths as the most modern metaphysical teachings (like Andrew Cohen's "Evolutionary Enlightenment"), as well as those of cutting edge physics (as in Bell's Theorem, which shows there is "entanglement" or the 'faster than light/influence at a distance' phenomena which haunted and frustrated Einstein for the balance of his career.)

Andrew Cohen's Teaching: Evolutionary Enlightenment

Andrew Cohen, spiritual teacher and founder of EnlightenNext magazine, describes his teaching of "Evolutionary Enlightenment", as follows:

"Traditional enlightenment is what I learned from my teacher, but Evolutionary Enlightenment is what I have discovered and created in my own work over the last almost quarter of a century. During this time, I have discovered a new source of emotional, psychological, and spiritual liberation that easily exists within anyone’s reach, anyone who has the eyes to recognize it and the heart to desire it. To put it simply, enlightenment is evolving. It is no longer found only in the bliss of timeless Being; it is found also in the ecstatic urgency of evolutionary Becoming."

Cohen, commenting on The Momentum of Karma, has the following to say about the individual's responsibility to evolve his or her own consciosness:

Unless a moment comes in your own evolution when you are willing to take responsibility for all of your past, without conditions, no matter what the implications, the karmic momentum will not come to an end. If you don’t stop it, it will continue. It always does. And that momentum will inevitably determine your choices and ultimately, your destiny.  

Evolution, Karma and The Fourth Way

Karma - the universal law of cause and effect - ensures the one constant we know: the constant evolution of change.  Ouspensky observes the following in his book, The Fourth Way, at page 9:

The evolution of man, if it occurs, can only bethe result of knowledge and effort; as long as man knows only what he can know in the ordinary way, there is no evolution for him and there never was any evolution for him.

One of the early 20th century, Ouspensky's teaching, above, reflects the evolutionary enlightenment taught by modern spiritual teacher, Andrew Cohen.