For as philosophy professes purely the search and enquiry after knowledge, so Christianity supposes, intends, desires, and aims at nothing else, but the raising fallen man to a divine life, to such habits of holiness, such degrees of devotion, as may fit him to enter among the holy inhabitants of the kingdom of heaven.

William Law

A spiritual life is subject to many and wonderful changes, interior as well as exterior, and all are according to the mere will and good pleasure of God, who is tied to no methods or rules; therefore, following Him in all simplicity and resignation, let us wonder at nothing; let us neither oblige ourselves too rigorously to any exercise, nor refuse any to which He shall invite us, seem it never so strange, or to natural reason even senseless. For in His guidance there can be no danger of error, but, on the contrary, there is all security; and this may and ought to be a great comfort and encouragement to a well-minded resolute soul.

Reverend Augustine Baker

1

Through the gateless gate, the gate disappears: all is one. Nothing more can be said; nothing more can be thought: one hairbreadth’s difference and heaven and earth are set apart.

3 and 7

The shaman is a bridge between heaven and earth. So is the the prophet, the priest, the Christ, the Logos, the Mantra, the Shushumna, the Axis Mundi.

12

The garden is fenced about by the cycle of time, which is the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. Without a fence, all things fall apart and all things fly apart.

There are many ways of breaking through (I suppose).

Here are six I have personally experienced several times (not necessarily in order of preference):

1. The Psychedelic Palace. More often than not the onset is sudden: vivid colourful geometric imagery which flows and dances with the music. It is a familiar space, a happy place.
2. The Black Hole. At some point in the proceedings you slip into a black hole and emerge some time later unsure where you’ve been exactly. You can’t remember much and the music has passed unnoticed.
3. Regeneration. This is an experience of intense energetic dissolution and regeneration. It feels like all the atoms in your body are simultaneously and individually zapped by an alien regeneration machine.
4. Death and resurrection. This takes the form of a physical descent into the underworld, either earth or sea or ice caves, followed by an ascent and rebirth into the light. It usually includes a period of intense discomfort and claustrophobia and identification with the sufferings of humanity and/or all of life before the blissful release.
5. Apocalypse. Potentially very frightening, especially the first time. The world disappears, dissolves, evaporates, revealing an infinite plenum void of mysterious awesome Godhead. There is a dreadful feeling that this is in fact the end of the world. Eventually however, existence reconstitutes itself, one veil at a time. For some musings on this breakthrough, see the blog post Apocalypse.
6. Everything/Nothing Whiteout. This is the classic ego dissolution experience of mystical union with God (for want of a better word). It can be experienced as strange or familiar, blissful or terrifying. There is a sense of timelessness and spaciousness. Sometimes there is the bare feeling “I Am” or even “I Am God”. Although it can feel like an eternity, with hindsight it is possible to estimate the time as a matter of minutes. The pure state (without any thoughts at all) doesn’t generally last very long.

If none of these breakthroughs bring you to a state of Dust and Ashes before the inconceivable Mysterium Tremendum, you’re not quite getting it.

“If you can understand, it is not God.” (Saint Augustine)

“You will realize that doctrines are inventions of the human mind, as it tried to penetrate the mystery of God. You will realize that Scripture itself is the work of human minds, recording the example and teaching of Jesus. Thus it is not what you believe that matters; it is how you respond with your heart and your actions. It is not believing in Christ that matters; it is becoming like him.” (Pelagius)

“A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.” (Reinhold Niebuhr)

“Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” (Jean-Paul Sartre)

“There’s a lot of space out there to get lost in.” (John Robinson)

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence.

T.S. Eliot

Humans being the fallible (perhaps fallen) creature they are, tend to create societies based on greed, hate and delusion, the “three poisons” at the hub of the Buddhist Wheel of Life. I call this Babylon.

Perhaps there was a happy paradisaical state of human society in a past golden age, perhaps not. But at some point, human beings became accustomed to life in Babylon, that is, a collective life of greed, hate and delusion.

The history of the world is a history of Babylon in all its multifarious guises. However, there is also a parallel history running beneath the surface events, of the violent rise and fall of empires, which is the resistance to Babylon.

A potted history of this resistance progresses through a Hegelian dialectic of three stages. It begins with a return to Nature, which develops and matures in the human imagination by means of poetry and myth. This is the thesis.

The conceptual limitations of poetry are then countered by philosophy. For example, the pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle reacting to the mythos of the ancient poets Homer and Hesiod. This is the antithesis.

When philosophy fails to satisfy the emotional and spiritual longings of the human heart, people turn to religion, as happened in the Hellenic world of late antiquity with the move from speculative philosophical monotheism to the living God of the Jews and Christians. This is the synthesis.

Poetry, philosophy and religion can (and are) co-opted by the dominant forces of Babylon. Thus they become tools of further oppression and control. However, there is always a hidden stream which continues to liberate people from the “mind-forg’d manacles” of Babylon.

This stream becomes sullied with time. As religion grows stale and tired, it loses its regenerative and vivifying force and people lose faith. But the stream can be purified and flow clear glittering crystal again.

Return to Nature. Remember poetry. Rediscover philosophy. Revive religion. This has always been the way out of Babylon and always will be.

Roberto Assagioli’s famous egg diagram is a very useful picture of the human psyche, especially when it comes to extra-ordinary states of consciousness.

Here is one way of understanding it, using Christ’s famous assertion, “I am the way, the truth and the life”:

I AM (Higher Self) THE WAY (Field of Consciousness), THE TRUTH (Middle Unconscious) and THE LIFE (Lower Unconscious and Higher Unconscious).

I AM is pure subjectivity, pure consciousness. When we are in this state, we are “One without a Second”, that is, subject with no object. THE WAY is our immediate experience of the world without the filter or mediation of thoughts or feelings, that is, a state of no-mind (mu-shin) and flow (wei-wu-wei). We simply experience whatever comes to pass in our field of consciousness. THE TRUTH is the wisdom stored in the middle unconscious, which is not present to consciousness, and does not interfere with the pristine clarity of our field of awareness, but is available for conscious recall at any moment, just below the surface of consciousness. THE LIFE is the energy released through accessing the depths and heights of the lower and higher unconscious, on psychedelics for example (Amun, Ra, Atum, Ka in the lower and Gaia, Jah in the higher).

“Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.”

Ephesians 4: 9-10

N.B. This also maps onto the 1,3,7, 12 model (see the blog posts The Ark of the Holy Imaginal and Between the One and the Many):

AHAM is 1 – HODOS is 3 – ZOE is 7 – ALETHEIA is 12.

AHAM is 1 – KENOSIS is 3 – GNOSIS is 7 – PISTIS is 12.

What does it take to be a Zen Christian Shaman?

Purity, faith and experience.

Also:

Resist the flattering voice of the devil with all the humility of a Mystic-Shaman; resist the lures of the flesh with the chastity of a Warrior-Monk; resist the temptations of the world with the purity of a Philosopher-King.

In other words, reject the world, the flesh and the devil.

Be humble, chaste and pure.

For a Zen Christian Shaman, the way is pure Zen – “a condition of complete simplicity (costing not less than everything)”, – the truth is Christian humility – “the only wisdom we can hope to acquire / Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless”, and the life is Shamanic transmuted sexual energy – “Love is the unfamiliar name behind the hands that wove the intolerable shirt of flame.” (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets)

So:

Faith and experience are the bulwarks supporting purity.

And:

We need the humility to get over ourselves and put our faith in a Higher Power, and we need to be chaste if we are to experience our life force (Eros) non-sexually. The stronger the faith and the deeper the experience, the easier it is to maintain the pure awareness of mu-shin (no-mind) in everyday life.

‘Buddha, according to a sutra, once said: “Stop, stop. Do not speak. The ultimate truth is not even to think.”‘ (Quoted in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps)

Another way to understand this saying of Jesus (with apologies to the Buddha!) is as Integral Yoga:

The “I am” is Raja Yoga; the “way” is Dhyana Yoga; the “truth” is Jnana Yoga; the “life” is Kundalini Yoga. The “way” is also Karma Yoga and the “life” is also Bhakti Yoga.

Simply put, the “I am” includes Self-inquiry; the “way” includes mindful walking, cooking, working; the “truth” includes lectio divina, contemplative reading; the “life” includes sacred music, art, ritual and plant medicine.