A theological question

December 18th, 2007

I found Heart Rhythm Meditation after overwhelming and disassociative experiences with so-called kundalini awakening from hatha yoga and meditative/contemplative practice in the early spring of this past year. the heart-based way was found both intuitively, on my own, and strongly reinforced by my serendipitous discovery of the IAM website. After many months i have come to a place where i have a much better sense of where my energy should go, and how to respond if it becomes imbalanced.
yet the other night, i foolishly allowed myself to become entranced in a sort of upward/inward flow that took me all into my head and just above it, in a manner similar to those disassociating experiences i had in the spring. it was as if i was staring down at a puppet, my body, from some distant viewpoint. a sense of numbness or detachment from the senses, but also from all emotions and thoughts. if i had been someone who wanted to, it felt like could easily take it another step and disappear from my body and mind. in the past it caused great fear. but last night i just realized it wasn’t where i should be, and i began focusing on my heart as well as my navel center, to “resolidify” my awareness at their level.
Coming down from this, and back on my track of enchantment, not dissociation, brings me once again to some questions about the natures of the different religious traditions and the changes in consciousness they effect. i have never felt more cut off from the sources of life, love, mystery, etc. than in these “disembodied” states, and yet in yoga schools they are promoted as being the keys to spiritual development.
Often i have heard espoused an idea that all paths lead to one goal, all religions are based around the same supreme reality or something… but in my personal experience and the inferences i have made, in many ways, this couldn’t be further from the case. for example, a major difference i notice between, say, vendantic or buddhist views and those of certain occidental “mystical” or “gnostic” traditions are those on the nature of personality and the world. *generally speaking*, in the “eastern” approach, there seems almost no value for the personality, and the world - nature in all its conditions - is considered an illusion, a hindrance to the total dissociation of consciousness from all forms. but in, say, certain sufism, the personality - the individual - is “god’s secret” and the entire world is a theophany when properly apprehended. in islam, as in christianity, there seems to be the deep emphasis of a *personal* god, and in certain mystical threads, there is discussion of a relationship between one and their “guardian angel”, involving a sort of dual nature in the divine that necessitates the personal, earthly self as intrinsic in its fulfillment.
Personally, i feel the latter views are much more on the mark - in that they strive to encompass the divine in all its manifestations. to me, divinity is divine *only*, precisely, because of its “manifestation”, it’s revelation, it’s theophanic expression AS individuality, mystery, love, and ART. and so i truly do not understand the reverance for the empty “godhead” of vendanta, cut off from all identifications and forms. of course i am making generalizations about all these traditions, but i feel there is a substantial tendency in the manner i’ve described.
One aspect of IAM’s work that seems most relevant is the distinction between upward and downward forms of meditation, and the effects they bring. what i am curious to hear is perspectives on is how they fit together in the “bigger picture”. or how they don’t… the experience produced by each seems so radically different from the other.
thank you for your reflections,
and may your way glow and sing with love!
-christopher

Dear Christopher,
Thank you for your comment and question, which show a deeply reflective nature and a deep inner experience.
To understand the contributions of the different religious traditions, one has to understand that there has been an evolution in theology over the last 5000 years. By “theology” I mean the concept of God, the self, and the relationship between the two. While there is only one reality, as the Sufis like to say, the prophets have explained that reality differently as humanity’s capacity for understanding reality has evolved.
Our historical overview of religion starts in Egypt, where all the major concepts of the religions to follow have their origin. The main question in early Egypt was about the nature of death; this was their mystery, and they developed elaborate concepts about the after-world that persist to this day, such as the review of one’s actions in life by an objective judge, and the possible reward of an eternal period of bliss.
The Hindu mystics took up the question, “What is death?”, and did their research by developing meditations that would put the body into a state as close to death as possible. The seven levels of Samadhi were defined and described by Patanjali, leading to pure consciousness independent of the body and mind. Then Buddha, trained as a Hindu, took the experience further through the meditations he called Jhanas and Arupa Jhanas. The ultimate experience attained by Buddha, “beyond space and no-space, beyond time and no-time”, meant there was no further development possible in that direction. This was the peak of upward meditation, and further explorations of reality would have to take a different direction.
The greatest human researchers and teachers of reality were called “Avatars” (Hindu), “Buddha”, “Christ”, and “Prophets” (Judaism and Islam). They came periodically through time, sequentially - as the early Egyptian “gods”, then Rama, Krishna, Shiva, Abraham, Moses, Guatama Buddha, Jesus, Muhammed, Mansur Al-Hallaj, and so on.
The Jews brought a new concept: that the Lord of the Universe was concerned and involved in the lives of human beings, especially those who chose to obey His Laws. The Jews, who so chose, became the “Chosen”, previewing what Christ would say later to his disciples: “It was not you who chose me; it was I who chose you.” As the Sufis say, we begin as a seeker, then we realize it is God who is seeking us, and we allow ourselves to be found. The ten commandments were a continuation of the six commandments of the pharaohs, but the originator and judge of these commandments was an infinite Being, not the human pharaoh. The triumph of this concept was shown by Moses in his confrontation with the Pharaoh.
As Buddha was completing the path of transcendence, the Jews were already developing the path of immanence. God could be found in His creation. He led the Jews by fire and a cloud of smoke, and sustained them with manna. The great mystery now was a new question: what is the purpose of life? Buddha’s research and teaching had left this question unanswered. His advice to reverse the forward roll of the wheel of creation to re-attain a state of desirelessness in a monastic setting put no value on the experience gained by humanity through life. Correspondingly, Buddha had not recognized a Creator of creation. Meanwhile, the Sufis were beginning to understand that God sleeps in transcendence and awakens through human consciousness, giving a vital role to the evolution of the created beings who represent the Creator.
Humanity’s understanding of the relationship between God and mankind was evolving: from Adonai, the Lord of the Universe (Moses), to the divine parent who endowed His/Her children with His/Her own qualities (Jesus), to “a hidden treasure waiting to be found”, located “closer than your jugular vein” (Mohammed).
Later, in spite of the teachings of Christ in the Gospel of Thomas (”Split a log of wood, I am there.”) the false concept of the fundamental division of reality into matter and spirit re-emerged within both Christianity and Islam. It had originated in Egypt and been carried through Hinduism, and would not be challenged again until the present age, when Hazrat Inayat Khan explained that the seeming separation of spirit and matter is no more than the difference between water and ice.
Now theology could be completed, reinforced by the discovery in physics of a new concept: the microcosm. This gave new meaning to the revelation in Judaism that man was made “in the image of God.” It wasn’t that God was anthropomorphic, but that each created being was a microcosm of the macrocosm, a miniature of the whole. This is the relationship between God and mankind: “God is human perfection, man is divine limitation” (Hazrat Inayat Khan).
Throughout the ages, the mystics have prepared the way for the coming of the next world teacher, and then translated his new revelations into meditative practices that would bring the practitioner to that same realization and experience. The path of the mystics and the orthodox would inevitably diverge as the new organization (church) formed after the prophet would stress a strict conformity, out of love for the teacher, while the mystics would incorporate their direct experience and extrapolate along the direction the prophet had pointed to, also out of love for him.
One of the main aims of Hazrat Inayat Khan was to bridge the theological understanding of east and west through direct experience of the reality behind both. This requires an enormous breadth of experience, from the transcendence of pure, uncreated light to the immanence of the divine in the present moment. He showed how all these levels of reality are present in the person, albeit unconsciously, and can be awakened in the heart of a mystic. The goal of life has turned from Freedom (from delusion and illusion) to Responsibility (on behalf of all life, for the growth and health of the one organism). Consequently, the ego cannot be dismissed nor superseded, for the ego allows us to say, “I will,” essential for taking our responsibility in life.
Our path of the heart is not an easy one. We must harness the ego without weakening it. We must place the mind at the service of the heart instead of the heart at the service of the mind. We must endure the pain of all hearts without diminishing the heart’s sensitivity. We must access the heart’s courage and power to do what the heart knows is right. We must overcome our limited self-concept to discover the greatness of the purpose of our lives. In doing this, we are guided by the ones who have gone this way before and left clues to their experience in the practices they devised.
At IAM, we specialize in the experience of immanence. We do not operate the model of Alchemy, which describes the dissolution of the self, as the schools of the past, but instead use a new model of human transformation, based on cosmic consciousness in the heart. I welcome you to the on-going experiment in human evolution, led as always by the mystics, following the example of the prophets.
With love,
Puran

Entry Filed under: Spiritual health, Meditation