How To Know God Part 5

This man had devoted his life to the values of stage two, and the challenge he faced now was to expand, not outwardly, but inside. In stage two the ego is so bent on accomplishment that it ignores the threat of emptiness. Power for its own sake has no meaning, and the challenge of acquiring more and more power (along with its symbols in terms of money and status) still leaves a huge vacuum of meaning. This is why absolute loyalty is demanded by G.o.d at this stage-to keep the faithful from looking too deeply inside. Let's clarify that this is not an actual demand made by the Almighty; it is another projection. The retired executive in my anecdote had a decision to make, whether to begin to cultivate an inner life or to start up some enterprise that would give him a new external focus. The course of least resistance would be to gear up a second business; the harder road would be to heal the disorder of his inner life.

This is the choice that carries everyone from stage two to stage three.

What is my greatest strength? ...

Accomplishment.

What is my biggest hurdle? ...

Guilt, victimization.

Anyone who finds satisfaction in being an accomplished, skilled worker will find stage two a very tempting place to rest on the spiritual journey. Often the only ones who break free to a higher stage have had some drastic failure in their lives. This isn't to say that failure is spiritually worthy. It carries its own dangers, primarily that you will see yourself as a victim, which make the chances for spiritual progress worse than ever. But failure does raise questions about some basic beliefs in stage two. If you worked hard, why didn't G.o.d reward you? Does he lack the power to bestow good fortune-or has he forgotten you entirely? As long as such doubts don't arise, the G.o.d of stage two is the perfect deity for a compet.i.tive market economy. He has been cynically referred to as the G.o.d of getting and spending. However, there is still the problem of guilt.

"I came from a small town in the Midwest, the only student from my high school to ever make it to the Ivy League. Getting in was the prize I valued the most," a friend of mine recalled.

"A month ago I was leaving work at my law firm, on the way to a new restaurant. I was late, and as it happened, a homeless man had chosen the doorway of our building to spend the night. He was blocking the door, and I had to step over his body to get into the cab. Of course I've seen homeless people before, but this was the first time I literally had to walk over one.

"I couldn't shake that image the whole time I was riding uptown, and then I remembered that the first month I was in college, twenty years ago, I was walking in the part of Boston known as the Combat Zone. It was one string of bars and adult bookstores after another. I was scared and intrigued at the same time, but as I was leaving, a stumbleb.u.m on the sidewalk ahead of me went into a seizure. He fell down, and some people ran to call an ambulance, but I just kept on walking. Twenty years later, sitting there in the cab, I could feel the old remorse wash over me. I had been lying to myself, you see. The homeless man in front of my building wasn't the first time I had walked over somebody."

Despite its external rewards, stage two is a.s.sociated with the birth of guilt. This is a form of judgment that requires no all-seeing authority, except at the beginning. Someone has to lay down the commandments defining absolute right and wrong. Afterward, the law-abiding will enforce their own obedience. If you translate the process back to the family, the origins of guilt can be traced along the same lines. A two-year-old who tries to steal a cookie is reprimanded by his mother and told that what he is doing is wrong. Until that point taking a cookie isn't stealing; it is just following what your ego wants to do.

If the child repeats the same act again, it turns into stealing because he is breaking a commandment, and in most families some sort of punishment will follow. Now the child is caught between two forces-the pleasure of doing what he wants and the pain of being punished. If a conscience is to develop, these two forces have to be fairly equal. In that case, the child sets up his own boundaries. He will take a cookie when it is "right"

(permitted by mother) and not take one when it is "wrong" (causes guilt through a bad conscience.) Freud called this the development of the superego, our internal rule maker. Super means above, in that the superego watches over the ego from above, holding the threat of punishment ever at the ready. Learning to modify the harshness of the superego can be extremely difficult. Just as some believers never get to the point of accepting that G.o.d might be willing to bend the rules every once in a while, neurotics have never learned how to put their conscience in perspective. They feel tremendous guilt over small infractions; they develop rigid emotional boundaries, finding it hard to forgive others; self-love remains out of reach. Stage two brings the comfort of laws clearly set down, but it traps you into putting too much value on rules and boundaries, to the detriment of inner growth.

What is my greatest temptation? ...

Addiction.

It's no coincidence that a wealthy and privileged society is so p.r.o.ne to rampant addictions. (1) Stage two is based on pleasure, and when pleasure becomes obsessive, the result is addiction. If a source of pleasure is truly fulfilling, there is a natural cycle that begins with desire and ends in satiation. Addiction never closes the circle.

Stage two is also power-based, and power is notoriously selfish. When a doting parent finds it almost impossible to let a coddled child break free, the excuse may be "I love you too much, I don't want you to grow up." Yet the unspoken motive is self-centered: I crave pleasure it brings me to have you remain a child. The G.o.d of stage two is jealous of his power over us because it pleases him. He is addicted to control. And like human addiction, the implication is that G.o.d is not satisfied, no matter how much control he exerts.

Psychiatrists meet people every day who complain about the emotional turmoil in their lives and yet are blindly addicted to drama. They cannot survive outside the dance of love-hate; they create tension, foster mistrust, and never leave well enough alone. Other addictions are also based on behavior: the need to have something wrong in your life (or to create it if it doesn't exist), the obsession over things going wrong-this is the "what if" addiction-and finally the compulsion to be perfect at all costs.

This last addiction has taken secular form in people who crave the perfect family, perfect home, and perfect career. They do not even see the irony that such "perfection" is dead; it can be bought only at the price of killing our inborn spontaneity, which by its nature can never be controlled. There is a corresponding spiritual state, however, that aims to please G.o.d through a life that has no blemish whatever. In the loyalty oath of Psalm 101, the believer makes promises no one could live up to: I will set before myself no sordid aim ...

I will reject all crooked thoughts; I will have no dealing with evil.

Such absolutism itself amounts to an addiction-and it is here in stage two that fanaticism is born.

The fanatic is caught in a self-contradiction. Whereas an orthodox believer can feel satisfied if he obeys the law down to the last detail, the fanatic must purify his very thoughts. Complete control over the mind is unachievable, but this doesn't prevent him from imposing ever-stricter vigilance on "crooked thoughts." Fanatics are also obsessed by other people's purity, opening an endless quest to police human imperfection.

This fate lies in wait for those who get stuck in stage two: They lose sight of the actual goal of spiritual life-to free humans and allow them to live in innocence and love. This loss cannot be repaired until the devotee stops being so concerned with the law. To do that he must find an inner life, which will never happen as long as he is policing his own desires. Vigilance kills all spontaneity in the end. When a person begins to see that life is more than trying to be perfect, the bad old desires rear their heads again. Only this time they are seen as natural, not evil, and the road is open for stage three. It comes as a source of wonder when turning inward breaks the spell of I, me, mine and ends its cravings.

STAGE THREE:.

G.o.d OF PEACE.

(Restful Awareness Response) No one could accuse the earlier G.o.d of stages one or two of being very interested in peace. Whether unleashing floods or inciting warfare, the G.o.d we've seen so far relishes struggle. Yet even such powerful ties as fear and awe begin to fray. "You believe that you were created to serve G.o.d," an Indian guru once pointed out, "but in the end you may discover that G.o.d was created to serve you." The suspicion that this might be true launches stage three, for until now the balance has all been in G.o.d's favor. Obedience to him has mattered far more than our own needs.

The balance begins to shift when we find that we can meet our own needs.

It takes no G.o.d "up there" to bring peace and wisdom, because the cerebral cortex already contains a mechanism for both. When a person stops focusing on outer activity, closes his eyes, and relaxes, brain activity automatically alters. The dominance of alphawave rhythms signals a state of rest that is aware at the same time. The brain is not going to sleep, but it is not thinking, either. Instead there is a new kind of alertness, one that needs no thoughts to fill up the silence. Corresponding changes occur in the body at the same time, as blood pressure and heart rate decrease, accompanied by lessened oxygen consumption.

These various changes do not sound overly impressive when put in technical terms, but the subjective effect can be dramatic. Peace replaces the mind's chaotic activity; inner turmoil ceases. The Psalms declare, "Commune with your own heart on your bed, and be still." And even more explicitly, "Be still and know that I am G.o.d." This is the G.o.d of stage three, who can be described as Detached Calm Offering consolation Undemanding Conciliatory Silent Meditative It hardly seems possible that this nonviolent deity emerged from stage two-and he didn't. Stage three transcends the willful, demanding G.o.d that once prevailed, just as the new brain transcends the old. Only by discovering that peace lies within does the devotee find a place that divine vengeance and retribution cannot touch. In essence the mind is turning inward to experience itself. This forms the basis of contemplation and meditation in every tradition.

The first solid research on the restful awareness response came with the study of mantra meditation (specifically Transcendental Meditation) in the 1960s and 1970s. Until then the West had paid little scientific attention to meditation. It didn't really occur to anyone that if meditation was genuine, some shift in the nervous system must accompany it. Early experiments at the Menninger Foundation had established, however, that some yogis could lower their heart rate and breathing almost to nil.

Physiologically they should have been on the brink of death; instead they reported intense inner peace, bliss, and oneness with G.o.d. Nor was this phenomenon simply a curiosity from the East.

In December 1577 a Spanish monk in the town of Avila was kidnapped in the middle of the night. He was carted off to Toledo, to be thrown into a church prison. His captors were not bandits but his own Carmelite order, against whom he had committed the grave offense of taking the wrong side in a fierce theological dispute. As advisor to a house of Carmelite nuns, he had given them permission to elect their own leader instead of leaving it to the bishop.

From our modern perspective this dispute is all but meaningless. But the monk's superiors were seriously displeased. The monk underwent horrendous torture. His unlit cell "was actually a small cupboard, not high enough for him to stand erect. He was taken each day to the rectory, where he was given bread, water, and sardine sc.r.a.ps on the floor. Then he was subjected to the circular discipline: while he knelt on the ground, the monks walked around him, scouring his bare back with their leather whips. At first a daily occurrence, this was later restricted to Fridays, but he was tortured with such zeal that his shoulders remained crippled for the rest of his life."

The tormented monk has come down to us as a saint, John of the Cross, whose most inspired devotional poetry was written at this exact time.

While imprisoned in his dark cupboard, Saint John cared so little about his ordeal that the only thing he begged for was a pen and paper so he could record his ecstatic inner experiences. He felt a particular joy at communing with G.o.d in a place the world couldn't touch: On a dark, secret night, starving for love and deep in flame, O happy, lucky flight!

unseen I slipped away, my house at last was calm and safe.

These opening lines from "Dark Night" describe the escape of the soul from the body, which delivers the poet from pain to joy. But for this to happen, the brain has to find a way to detach inner experience from outer.

In medicine we run across instances where patients seem remarkably immune to pain. In cases of advanced psychosis, someone who has become catatonic is rigid and unresponsive to stimulation. There is no sign of reacting to pain-just as with a patient whose nerves are dead. Chronic schizophrenics have been known to cut themselves with knives or burn their arms with lit cigarettes while showing no awareness of pain.

We cannot simply lump a great poet and saint, however, with the mentally ill. In the case of St. John of the Cross, there was a pressing need to separate from his tormentors. He had to find an escape route, and perhaps that was the psychological trigger for his ecstasy. In his poetry he flees to his secret lover, Christ, who caresses and soothes him in his arms: ... and there my senses vanished in the air.

I lay, forgot my being, and on my love I leaned my face.

All ceased. I left my being, leaving my cares to fade among the lilies far away.

Saint John describes with precisely chosen words the transition from the material level our bodies are trapped in to the quantum level where physical pain and suffering have no bearing. Lying beneath the spiritual beauty of the experience, its basis is the restful awareness response.

To put yourself in a comparable situation, imagine that you are a marathon runner. Marathons test the body's extremes of endurance and pain; at a certain point long-distance runners enter "the zone," a place that transcends physical discomfort.

The runner no longer feels pain as part of his experience. The G.o.d of peace is detached.

The runner's mind stops fighting and struggling. The G.o.d of peace is calm.

The zone makes one feel immune to harm. The G.o.d of peace offers consolation.

Winning and losing are no longer a driving force.

The G.o.d of peace is undemanding.

There is no need to fight; the zone will take care of everything. The G.o.d of peace is conciliatory.

The runner's mind quiets down. The G.o.d of peace is silent.

In the zone one expands beyond the limits of the body, touching the wholeness and oneness of everything. The G.o.d of peace is meditative.

I have heard of professional football players who claim that at a certain point in every game, the game takes over, and they feel as if they are going through the motions of a dance. Instead of using every ounce of will to make it downfield to catch a pa.s.s, they see themselves running ahead and meeting the ball as if destined. The G.o.d of peace isn't found by diving within so much as he rises from within when the time is right.

Who am I? ...

A silent witness.

The G.o.d of stage three is a G.o.d of peace because he shows the way out of struggle. There is no peace in the outer world, which is ruled by struggle. People who attempt to control their environment-I am thinking of perfectionists and others caught up in obsessive behavior-have refused the invitation to find an inner solution.

"I wasn't raised with any feelings about religion," one man told me. "It was a nonissue in my childhood and remained that way for years. I laid out some huge goals for myself, which I intended to accomplish on my own-the important job, the wife and kids, retirement by the age of fifty, all of it."

This man came from considerable wealth, and for him a job wasn't important unless it meant CEO. He achieved that aim; by his midthirties he headed up an equipment-supply company in Chicago. Everything was moving on track until a fateful game of racquetball.

"I wasn't pushing myself or playing harder than usual, but I must have done something because I heard a loud snap, and all at once I was falling over. The whole thing happened in slow motion. I knew at once that I had torn my Achilles tendon-only the strangest thing was happening." Instead of being in excruciating pain, he felt extremely calm and detached. "The whole thing could have been happening to someone else. I lay there while someone called an ambulance, but my mind was floating somewhere beyond."

The sensation at that moment was of a sweet, even blissful calm. The man-we will call him Thomas-had never experienced such a state, and it persisted even when his ankle did start to swell and ache with pain.

During the time Thomas was hospitalized in traction, he noticed that his newfound peace gradually waned. He found himself wondering if he had experienced something spiritual after all, but after some intense scrutiny of scriptures, Thomas couldn't really put his finger on any specific pa.s.sage that corresponded to what had occurred.

It is common for people to break into stage three with this kind of abruptness. In place of an active, excited mind, they find a silent witness. Interpretations differ widely. Some people jump immediately into religion, equating this peace with G.o.d, Christ, or Buddha; others register the whole thing simply as detachment: "I used to be inside the movie," one person explained, "but now I am sitting in the audience watching it."

Medically we know that the brain can choose to cancel out awareness of pain. Until the discovery of endorphins-the brain's own version of morphine-there was no biological explanation for this self-anesthesia. Yet endorphins are not enough to account for Saint John's ecstasy or the inner calm of the man who tore his Achilles tendon. If you examine the body's painkilling mechanisms, it becomes clear that the brain does not give itself a simple injection of opiates when pain is present. There are many situations where pain cannot be overcome at all or only partially, and sometimes it takes a trick to get the brain to react. If you take people suffering from intractable pain, a certain number will get relief if you inject them with saline solution while telling them that it is a powerful narcotic. The whole area of treatment is psychological-it is a matter of changing someone's interpretation. One also recalls the famous "show surgeries" under the Maoist regime, where patients stayed cheerfully awake during appendectomies, chatting and drinking tea. Their only anesthesia was provided with acupuncture, yet when attempts were made to duplicate this feat outside China, results were unreliable at best. The difference in perception was too great between Eastern belief and Western skepticism.

In between the pain and the brain something must intervene that decides how much discomfort is going to be felt, and the amazing thing is that this decision maker can control our body's response totally. The switch for pain is flicked mentally. It is just as normal to feel no pain as to feel a great deal. To someone who has entered stage three, the decision maker is not a mystery. He is the presence of G.o.d bringing peace, and the pain being relieved is more than physical; it includes the pain of the soul caught in turmoil. By going inward, the devotee has found a way to stop that pain.

How do I fit in? ...

I remain centered in myself.

A dangerous G.o.d was just right for a dangerous world. The G.o.d of peace is no longer dangerous because he has created a world of inner solitude and reflection. When you go inward, what do you reflect on? The inner world seems to be a landscape we all know very well. It is filled with thoughts and memories, desires and wishes. If you focus on these events, which rush by in the stream of consciousness, the inner world isn't a mystery. It may be complex, because our thoughts are so varied and come from so many places, but a mind filled with thought is not an enigma.

Someone who has arrived at stage three is reflecting on something very different. A therapist would call it the core or center of a person. At the mind's center there aren't any events. You are simply yourself, waiting for thoughts to happen. The whole point of "remaining centered" is that you aren't easily thrown off balance. You remain yourself in the midst of outer chaos. (One is reminded of the football player who is so focused that the game starts to play itself while he begins to move to catch the ball as though preordained.) In many ways finding your center is the great gift of stage three, and the G.o.d of peace exists to a.s.sure his worshiper that there is a place of refuge from fear and confusion. "Now I shall lie down in peace, and sleep," says Psalm 4, "for you alone, O Lord, makest me unafraid." The absence of peace in the world is never far from the minds of the writers of scripture. Some of the strife is just part of how life is, but much of it is political. The angels who greet the shepherds with the news of Christ's birth include the promise of peace on earth and goodwill among men, reflecting the fact that a messiah's function was to settle the turbulent history of the chosen people once and for all.

A warrior G.o.d didn't solve the problem, nor did laying down countless laws. The G.o.d of peace can't simply dictate an end to strife and struggle.

Either human nature has to change or else it must disclose a new aspect that transcends violence. In stage three the new aspect is centeredness.

If you find your own inner quiet, the issue of violence is solved, at least for you personally. A friend of mine who has been deeply influenced by Buddhism goes even further: he says that if you can find the motionless point at your core, you are at the center of the whole universe.

"Haven't you noticed driving down the highway that you can pretend not to be moving? You reverse your point of view, so that you remain still while the road and the scenery do all the moving. The same trick can be done when you are out jogging. Everything else is in motion, flowing past you, but you yourself remain hovering in place." Most of us would find it easy to pull off this trick, but he sees a greater significance here. "That still point which never moves is the silent witness. Or at least it's as close as most of us can get. Once you find it, you realize that you don't have to be lost in the endless activity going on around you. Seeing yourself at the center of everything is just as legitimate."

In the East much the same argument has been made. Buddhism, for example, doesn't believe that personality is real. All the labels we apply to ourselves are just a flock of different birds that happen to roost on the same branch. The fact that I am over fifty, Indian, a physician by training, married with two children, and so forth doesn't describe the real me. These qualities have chosen to roost together and form the illusion of an ident.i.ty. How did they all find the same branch? Buddhism would say that I pulled them in by attraction and repulsion. In this lifetime I preferred to be male rather than female, Eastern rather than Western, married rather than single-and on and on. Choosing to be this instead of that is totally arbitrary. For each choice, its opposite would be just as valid. However, because of tendencies from my past (in India we would say my past lives, but that isn't necessary) I make my particular choices. I am so bound up in these preferences that I actually think they are me. My ego looks at the house, the car, the family, the career, the possessions, and it says, "I am those things."

But in Buddhism, none of it is true. At any moment the birds resting on the branch can fly away. In fact this will happen when I die. If my soul survives (the Buddha did not commit himself about what happens after death) my choices will dissolve in the wind once I give up this body. So who am I if not all these millions of choices that cling to me like a glued-on overcoat? I am nothing except the still point of awareness at my center. Strip away every experience I have ever had and that remains. To realize this truth is to be free, so Buddhism teaches. Therefore seeing yourself as a motionless point while driving down the freeway becomes a valued experience. You are one step closer to finding out who you really are.

How do I find G.o.d? ...

Meditation, silent contemplation.

The fact that stage three is self-centered cannot be denied. The Old Testament clearly states that the way to peace is through reliance on G.o.d as an outside power. He is the focus of attention, always. Verses on this point read, "Great peace have they who love your laws" and "You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is fixed on you, because he puts his trust in you." Giving up trust in G.o.d and looking instead to yourself could be very dangerous. It could also be heresy. After the Fall, sin separated man and G.o.d. The deity is "up there" in his heaven, while I am "down here" on earth, a place of tears and struggle. In this scheme I am permitted to pray to G.o.d, calling out for his help and comfort, but he decides whether to return the call. It is not for me to try to make the connection permanent. My imperfection-and the laws of G.o.d-forbid it.

A few clues indicate that I can risk a different approach, however. In the Bible one finds such verses as "Seek ye the kingdom of heaven within." And the means of going inward, chiefly meditation and silent contemplation, are not that far removed from prayer. If it is true that "in silence shall you possess your soul," then how much can G.o.d care how I find silence? The religious arguments become secondary once we realize that a biological response lies behind restful awareness, no matter what faith we clothe it in.

The Eastern origins of meditation are undeniable, and in the Hindu tradition, going inward begins a spiritual quest that will eventually end in enlightenment. Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard, who played the key role in popularizing meditation without religion, based his "relaxation response" on the principles of Transcendental Meditation, minus its spiritual implications. He removed the mantra, replacing it with any neutral word that could be repeated mentally while slowly breathing in and out (he suggested the word one). Others, including myself, have disagreed with this approach and based our approach on the central value of a mantra as a means of unfolding deeper spiritual levels inside the mind. To us, the recited word has to be connected to G.o.d.

The spiritual properties of mantras have two bases. Some orthodox Hindus would say that every mantra is a version of G.o.d's name, while others would claim-and this is very close to quantum physics-that the vibration of the mantra is the key. The word vibration means the frequency of brain activity in the cerebral cortex. The mantra forms a feedback loop as the brain produces the sound, listens to it, and then responds with a deeper level of attention. Mysticism isn't involved. A person could use any of the five senses to enter this feedback loop. In the ancient Shiva Sutras, more than a hundred ways of transcending are described, among them looking into the blue of the sky and then looking beyond it, seeing the beauty of a woman and then finding what is behind that beauty. The whole intent is to go past the senses in order to find their source. (The cliche that Buddhists stare at their navels is a distortion of the practice of concentrating the mind on a single point; the navel is imagined as just such a point. In some traditions it also serves as a focus of energy that is supposed to have spiritual significance.) In all cases the source is a finer state of brain activity. The theory is that mental activity contains its own mechanism for becoming more and more refined until complete silence is experienced. Silence is considered important because it is the mind's source; as the mantra grows fainter and fainter, it eventually fades away altogether. At that point one's awareness crosses the quantum boundary. For the first time in our stages of inner growth, the material plane has been left behind; we are now in the region where spiritual activity commands its own laws.

The argument persists that nothing of this kind is happening, that a brain learning to calm down may be comforting, but it isn't spiritual. This objection can be settled by noting that there really is no fundamental disagreement going on. The cerebral cortex produces thought by using energy in the form of photons; their interaction takes place on the quantum level, which means that every thought could be traced back to its source at a deeper level. There are no "spiritual" thoughts that stand apart on their own. But ordinary thinking doesn't cross the quantum frontier, even though it could (as Benson's nonspiritual technique shows).

We are kept on the material level because we pay attention to what the thought means. Our attention is pulled outward rather than inward.

A mantra, as well as Benson's neutral word one, has little or no meaning to distract us. Therefore it is an easier vehicle for going inward than prayer or verbal contemplation (in which one takes an aspect of G.o.d to think about and dwell on).

There is no doubt that people resist the whole notion of G.o.d being an inner phenomenon. The vast majority of the world's faithful are firmly committed to stages one and two, believing in a G.o.d "up there," or at any rate outside ourselves. And the problem is complicated by the fact that going inward isn't a revelation; it is just a beginning. The quiet mind offers no sudden flashes of divine insight. Yet its importance is stated eloquently in the medieval doc.u.ment known as "The Cloud of Unknowing,"

written anonymously in the fourteenth century. The author tells us that G.o.d, the angels, and all the saints take greatest delight when a person begins to do inner work. However, none of this is apparent at first: For when you first begin, you find just a darkness and, as it were, a cloud of unknowing.... This darkness and this cloud, no matter what you do, stands between you and your G.o.d.

The blockage takes two forms: one cannot see G.o.d with the mind's reason and understanding, nor can he be felt in "the sweetness of your affection." In other words, G.o.d has no presence emotionally or intellectually. The cloud of unknowing is all we have to go on. The only solution, the writer informs us, is perseverance. The inner work must continue. Then a subtle argument is made. The writer informs us that any thought in the mind separates us from G.o.d, because thought sheds light on its object. The focus of attention is like "the eye of an archer fixed on the spot he is shooting at." Even though the cloud of unknowing baffles us, it is actually closer to G.o.d than even a thought about G.o.d and his marvelous creation. We are advised to go into a "cloud of forgetting"

about anything other than the silence of the inner world.

For centuries this doc.u.ment has seemed utterly mystical, but it makes perfect sense once we realize that the restful awareness response, which contains no thoughts, is being advocated. The writer has delved deeply enough to find the G.o.d of stage three, who is beyond material considerations. The step he took was a brave one under the weight of priests, cathedrals, shrines, holy relics, church laws, and all the other material trappings of medieval religion, but it would be a brave step today as well, because we are still addicted to the outward life. People want a G.o.d they can see and touch and talk to.

Consider how radical the argument really is, as revealed in the next section of the book: In this work it profits little or nothing to think upon the kindness or worthiness of G.o.d, or upon our Lady, or upon the saints and angels in heaven, or upon heavenly joy.... It is far better to think upon the naked being of G.o.d.

This "naked being" is awareness without content, pure spirit, which naturally does not unfold itself in a few hours or days. As with any stage, this is one you enter, then explore. To someone who loves religion, it can be a bleak place at first, one marked by loss of all the rituals and comforts of organized faith. The value of stage three lies more in promise than in fulfillment, because it is a lonely road. The promise is given by our anonymous writer, who emphasizes over and over that delight and love will eventually arise out of silence. The inner work is done for only one purpose-to feel the love of G.o.d-and there is no other way to achieve it.

What is the nature of good and evil? ...

Good is clarity, inner calm, and contact with the self.

Evil is inner turmoil and chaos.

The reader may have gotten this far and wondered how many people ever evolve to stage three. Looking around the world, one sees tremendous suffering and struggle. Even in a prosperous society the prevailing belief system usually promotes the value of work and achievement. "You never get something for nothing" and "G.o.d helps those who help themselves," as the sayings go.

Every stage of inner growth is hard-won. There is no outside force that picks you up by the nape of the neck and drops you ahead on the journey.

It is also true that outward circ.u.mstances do not determine anyone's belief system. I remember the widespread shock when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn first arrived in America in the early 1970s when the Cold War was at its coldest. He was expected to praise the superiority of the West with all its individual freedoms, compared to the soulless repression he had left behind in Russia. Even though he had suffered terribly in the Gulag prison camps for eight years after writing a letter against Stalin, Solzhenitsyn shocked everyone when he denounced the spiritual emptiness of American consumerism, and subsequently he could only survive by retreating into the solitude of the New England woods, as ignored as Th.o.r.eau was when he did the same thing a hundred and fifty years earlier.

This clash of values confronts everyone on the threshold of stage three.

Good and evil are no longer measured by what happens outside oneself, the compa.s.s is turned inward. Good is measured by remaining centered in the self, which brings clarity and calm. Evil is measured by disturbance to that clarity; it brings confusion, chaos, and inability to see the truth.

The inner life can never be a common experience. Fifty years ago the sociologist David Riesman noted that the vast majority are "outer directed" and the small minority "inner directed." Outer direction comes from what others think of you. If you are outer directed you crave approval and shrink from disapproval; you bend to the needs of conformity and easily absorb the prevailing opinions as your own. Inner direction is rooted in a stable self that can't be shaken; an inner-directed person is free of the need for approval; this detachment makes it much easier for him to question prevailing opinions. Being inner directed doesn't make you religious, but the religion of the inner directed is stage three.

What is my life challenge? ...

To be engaged and detached at the same time.