What do you do if you are committed to Naturalism and believe that the world you live in is the product of a long process of Darwinian evolution by natural selection but nevertheless feel strangely dissatisfied with this picture of reality? And what do you do if you are committed to Naturalism but have the strange feeling that there must be more to life?

You might go for one of these: politics, therapy, prescription drugs, meditation and shamanism. Perhaps you are discontented because of the socioeconomic conditions of late capitalism and need to work towards reform or revolution. Perhaps you are discontented because of a chemical imbalance in your brain and need medical treatment. Perhaps you are discontented because of psychological blockages and traumas and need to uncover and heal them. Perhaps you are discontented because your mind is too busy and you need to find stillness and quiet to appreciate the present moment. Perhaps you are discontented because you have lost touch with your body and the natural world and feel the need to “return to the source” or “go native”.

If you are committed to Naturalism and feel the discontents of civilization keenly enough, you will probably set up a dichotomy between Culture and Nature, Delusion and Enlightenment. This is why scientifically-minded rational Westerners are drawn to Buddhism and Taoism, which offer a path of liberation from alienation and discontent (dukkha) within a Naturalistic paradigm. It also explains why Westerners are drawn to shamanic traditions and to psychedelics, which hold the promise of restoration to a natural state of connection with Nature.

Of the five options listed above, the first three are more worldly that the other two. Politics and psychotherapy generally move within the orbit of human culture (apart from the further reaches of Humanist/Transpersonal therapeutic modalities) and prescription drugs can’t do much more than alter your mood. You may feel better up to a point, less alienated and discontented, and enjoy “ordinary unhappiness” as Freud put it, but you won’t scratch the spiritual itch.

If you take meditation and shamanism seriously and practice assiduously, you will begin to get results. You will start to feel more connected, more natural and more yourself. If you persist, however, you will also start to feel something else, an ineffable and mysterious sense of “the holy”. In deep meditation, the experience of the moment is imbued with holiness. In shamanic immersion, everything begins to glow with other-worldly numinosity. The forest glade feels like a sacred place. The drumming and chanting sound like sacred music.

In the presence of the holy, you begin to have a deeply-felt, intimate sense of the holiness of all things. In those moments, you no longer feel alienated and discontented. You feel connected and whole. You feel reverence and awe. You begin to have recognizably religious feelings, even if intellectually you are still a committed Naturalist.

Many people stop here or pull back. The re-sacralization of the world has been adequately achieved and they can get on with their lives a little wiser and happier, with a deeper sense of the sacredness of life. Others press on to “the source of all holiness”. However, once God has put his foot in the door, religion inevitably comes flooding in. It becomes clear that the true aim of human life is holiness and that the most direct way to holiness is exposure to the holy, and that the greatest human repository of the holy is, naturally, religion.

Listen to the birds.

Listen to the silence.

Listen to the fridge.

Listen to Chopin.

Listen to your body.

Read the Scriptures.

Read the signs of the times.

The One is what we commonly call “God”.

It is One without a Second,

the Absolute,

All and Everything.

We can get a taste of it in breakthrough experiences of ego death

on high doses of DMT.

o

The Three is what we commonly call “the Trinity”.

It is the basic structure of existence,

that which makes the world of form and multiplicity possible.

In Trika Shaivism, it is consciousness and form (Shiva and Shakti)

held in absolute consciousness (Parashiva).

In Christian terms, Parashiva is the Father, Shiva is the Son and Shakti is the Holy Spirit.

In Gnostic Christianity, the Holy Spirit is also Sophia (Wisdom), the feminine principle,

which is also the manifest Creation, like Shakti.

o

The Seven is what I call “the Ray of Creation”.

It describes seven levels of existence in the evolution of the universe:

Emptiness, Energy, Matter, Life, Mind, Planetary and Universal Consciousness:

Amun, Ra, Atum, Ka, Ba, Gaia, Jah.

“Amun” is the Plenum Void out of which the universe emerges,

what Lao Tzu called “the mother of the universe”.

“Ra-Atum-Ka” is the Holy Spirit/Shakti (energy, matter, life),

called “the Lord, the giver of life” in the Nicene Creed.

“Ba-Gaia” is the Son/Shiva (higher consciousness).

“Jah” is the Father/Parashiva (a fully evolved and unified conscious universe).

Parashiva, as the transcendent principle, is therefore both “Amun” and “Jah”,

both Mother and Father, embracing the entire family of Creation

as Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end;

and Shiva and Shakti are Son and Daughter, the Christ and Sophia/Holy Spirit,

completing the quaternity of the Cosmic Family.

o

The Twelve represents the cycle of time through the zodiac and thus the months of the year.

It represents the outer movement of the inner workings of the Seven-in-Three-in-One.

It will repeat endlessly until the last syllable of recorded time.

It is the history of the eternal return of the same intersected at every point by a ray of eternity.

In the midst of life, we are in death;

in the midst of the world, we are in God;

in the midst of earth, we are in heaven.

o

The Many is the life of this world on earth;

the One is the death of God in heaven.

That which mediates between the One and the Many is the Trinity.

o

Without the Trinity, the One cannot become Many and the Many cannot become One.

The Trinity is that which gives breath to the universe,

that which allows it to exhale from the One to the Many and to inhale the Many back to the One.

o

Without the Trinity, we are either lost in death (the One) or lost in life (the Many).

All things fall apart in a world without the One,

because the centre cannot hold.

o

In a dissipated, ever expanding universe we forget where the centre is.

Ten thousand things clamour for our attention,

but every thing has meaning only relative to some other thing.

o

Our postmodern condition is a condition of utter alienation from the One;

lost in the forests of the night of the Many,

we are lifeless because deathless.

o

History is a nightmare from which we are trying to awake;

the Mushroom our alarm clock,

the Trinity our dawn.

Liquid modernity is a bourgeois brave new world of limitless material, cultural and spiritual consumerism justified and sustained by an illusory transhumanist progressivism.

Surely this also is vanity and vexation of spirit.

Ecclesiastes 4:16

All is One.

There is One God.

God is All.

o

But what about us?

And what about the ten thousand things?

How can we reconcile the One with the Many?

o

If there is only Self there is no Other;

if there is only One without a Second

there is no Universe.

o

If we insist that All is One,

we may conclude that appearances can be deceptive

and that the Many is actually just an illusion.

o

This is the claim of Advaita Vedanta:

the world of appearance is Maya,

the dream of Brahma.

o

If we hold to the One,

either the phenomenal world is an illusion

or consciousness is an illusion.

o

If Monism holds,

either immaterialism is true

or eliminativism is true.

o

Alternatively, we can give up on Unity

and say that there is Duality.

This is traditional Theism:

o

If the Universe is real,

there must be a Creator and a Creation,

God and not-God.

o

In traditional Theism

to say that you are God

is the highest sacrilege.

o

You are not God.

You are a Creature

created by God.

o

Traditional Theism is dualistic:

God is One,

but God and not-God is Two.

o

However, Two logically entails Three.

If there is God and not-God,

we have God, not-God and “God plus not-God”.

o

In the Chinese Yin/Yang symbol

we have the black half, the white half

and the circle uniting them.

o

In Vedanta,

we have sat, chitta

and ananda.

o

In the Hegelian dialectic

we have thesis, antithesis

and synthesis.

o

In Gurdjieff’s system

we have active, passive

and neutral.

o

In the Indian guna system

we have tamas, rajas

and sattwa.

o

In Trika Shaivism

we have Parashiva, Shiva

and Shakti.

o

In Christianity

we have Father, Son

and Holy Spirit.

o

The simplest geometrical three dimensional shape,

the basic building block of reality,

is the tetrahedron.

o

In fact, the very possibility of a dynamic, relational universe

of multiplicity and diversity

depends on the Law of Three.

o

One is static.

Two is unstable.

Three is infinitely creative.

o

Hence the Trinity:

God is One

and God is Three-in-One.

Shamanic consciousness is soul consciousness.

Master shamans don’t do psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy;

they do soul retrieval and character building.

o

Mind and body are contained within soul,

therefore physical and psychological healing are natural side-effects;

but the focus is spiritual.

o

The sacramental use of plant medicines is a spiritual practice, not a therapy.

It is about creating great souls,

not psychologically well-adjusted egos.

o

Great souls are beyond self-concern,

personal needs,

personal problems.

o

They are not fragile; they are antifragile.

And this is not “spiritual bypassing” –

it’s spiritual training.

o

The Master leads by emptying people’s minds

and strengthening their cores.

Lao Tzu

I AM

ONE

GOD

JAH

TAO

ZEN

AUM

Today is Palm Sunday.

Traditionally, on Palm Sunday you are given a “palm”, a slender reed which you can fold into the shape of the a cross.

The symbolism, in reference to Christ’s entry into Jerusalem and his impending crucifixion is obvious.

But is there a deeper, more esoteric meaning?

With the long reed placed before us, we can imagine that it represents time.

The left end of the reed is the beginning and the right end is the end of linear time.

The beginning is described in the first book of the Bible:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)

The end is is described in the last book:

“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away”. (Revelation 21:1)

What is before the beginning and after the end of time?

God.

What is eternally present in the invisible cleft of the here and now?

God.

What is beyond the far and near horizons of your world?

God.

So what happens when you fold the reed into a cross?

What happens when you fold this universe of spacetime in upon itself?

“When the tongues of fire are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one”

“In my beginning is my end”

“at the still point of the turning world.” (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets)

The Biblical story is about the life of Jesus and the history of the Jews and the whole of Creation from beginning to end.

Fold it in on itself and beginning and end meet at the intersection of eternity and time, the vertical and horizontal, at the centre of the cross of Christ, who says,

“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” (Revelation 22:13)

So what happens when time folds in on itself like this,

esoterically symbolised in the folding of the palm reed cross on Palm Sunday?

Eternal life.

Conventional Christianity is dualistic:

there is God and there is Creation;

there is Heaven and there is Earth.

o

Esoteric Christianity is nondual:

there is One God;

and that’s it.

o

Nothing exists outside God.

But how can this be?

Because of the Trinity.

o

God is Three-in-One:

Father, Son and Holy Spirit

or Parashiva, Shiva, Shakti.

o

Metaphysically speaking,

this is panentheism:

God is immanent, transcendent and phenomenal.

o

The phenomenal (Shakti)

is the world of your experience,

which is the only world you can know.

o

The immanent (Shiva)

is the conscious subjectivity

which makes experience possible.

o

The transcendent (Parashiva)

is the absolute consciousness

which grounds and sustains the conscious world of Shiva-Shakti.

o

Parashiva is the Father;

Shiva is the Son;

Shakti is the Holy Spirit.

o

In nondual Christianity,

the Holy Spirit is not just a subtle spiritual influencer

or an inward rush of pranic energy, but the entire cosmos.

o

Shiva is mind; Shakti is cosmos.

Shiva-Shakti is mind and cosmos;

Parashiva is sustaining absolute consciousness.

o

All is One;

All is Three-in-One;

God is All.