How To Know God Part 6

Now we are in a better position to understand why Jesus wanted his disciples to be "in the world but not of it." He wanted them to be both detached and engaged-detached in the sense that no one could grab their souls, engaged in the sense that they remained motivated to lead a worthy life. This is the balancing act of stage three, and many people find it hard to manage.

The writer of "The Cloud of Unknowing" says that going within is not the real dilemma, nor is rejection of society and its values. Here is how our writer describes spiritual work: See that you are in no way within yourself. And (to speak briefly) I do not want you to be outside yourself, or above, or behind, or on one side, or on the other.

This leaves only nowhere, and that is where the writer says we should be.

G.o.d can't be contained in the mind; he is nothing compared to our myriad thoughts and ambitions. But there is a tremendous secret to this nothing and nowhere: Who is it that calls it nothing? Surely it is our outer man and not our inner. Our inner man calls it All; for it teaches him to understand all things bodily or spiritual, without any special knowledge of one thing in itself.

This is a remarkable description of how silence works. We aren't talking about the silence of an empty mind-in fact, those who achieve inner silence are also thinking in the ordinary way. But the thought takes place against a background of nonthought. Our writer equates it with knowing something that doesn't have to be studied. The mind is full of a kind of knowing that could speak to us about everything, yet it has no words; therefore we seek this knowingness in the background. At first nothing much seems to exist there; this is the phase of darkness and "the cloud of unknowing." But the hunt is on, and if you keep to your plan, rejecting outward answers over and over, never giving up on your belief that the hidden goal is real, eventually your seeking bears fruit.

During this whole time, your work inside is private, but outer existence has to go on. Thus the balancing act Jesus referred to as being in the world but not of it. Or as we are stating it, being detached and engaged at the same time.

What is my greatest strength? ...

Autonomy.

What is my biggest hurdle? ...

Fatalism.

Having explained how the inner and outer life are meant to be balanced, the question arises, can it actually be done? In stage three a person finds that he is autonomous. By breaking free of social pressures, he can be himself. Yet there is the risk of fatalism, a feeling that being free is just a form of isolation with no hope of influencing others. How can another person, someone not at this stage, understand what it means? The whole thing sounds like a paradox, and once again the writer of "The Cloud of Unknowing" hits it right on the head.

He points out that worldly people (and our own egos) aspire to be everywhere, while G.o.d is nowhere; they want to amount to something, yet G.o.d is nothing. The spiritually dedicated are thus consigned to the margins of society-the most extreme examples being monks and nuns.

Renunciation is almost a requirement, because an inner G.o.d does not conform.

Although every culture values its saints, the danger of turning inward, as far as society is concerned, is obvious. In 1918, long before anyone in England could foresee the importance of Gandhi to the fate of the British empire, the noted scholar Gilbert Murray made a prophetic statement: "Persons in power should be very careful of how they deal with a man who cares nothing for sensual pleasure, nothing for riches, nothing for comfort or praise or promotion, but is simply determined to do what he believes to be right. He is a dangerous and uncomfortable enemy, because his body, which you can always conquer, gives you so little purchase upon his soul."

Purchase means something you can grab on to, and that is what's missing in stage three. Gandhi, because he had renounced the outer trappings, couldn't be grabbed anywhere in the usual places. Those in power couldn't threaten him with losing his job, house, family, or even with imprisonment and death (they tried all of these means anyway). I am not implying that stage three is as far as Gandhi got in his spiritual journey, but he ill.u.s.trates the point: detachment renders the use of power impotent. The G.o.d of peace doesn't validate how good you are by giving you money or status. You validate yourself from within, and this equates with G.o.d's blessing. At this stage of inner growth, the power of going inward is veiled; there is darkness and a cloud of unknowing. Yet somehow the pull toward spirit is real. For all the outer sacrifices, something seems to have been gained. What that something is becomes clear later; at this moment there is a period of adjustment as the person accommodates to a new world so different from that of every day.

Wbat is my greatest temptation? ...

Introversion.

I've taken great pains to show that stage three is not about becoming an introvert. That is the great temptation, especially, for those who misinterpret the words going inward and inner silence. Words have a hard time at the quantum level. We are not talking about silence in the sense of no thought; we aren't talking about the inside of a person as opposed to the outside. But the ego has a fondness for co-opting anything spiritual and turning it to other purposes. Someone who by nature wants to shrink from the world can use as his excuse that spirituality should be inward. Someone who feels pessimistic in general can find comfort in rejecting the whole material world.

Introversion is not a spiritual state, however. Behind it lie all kinds of negative a.s.sumptions about the value of external life. The introvert is hiding his light under a bushel basket, the very thing Jesus warns against. I know one man who describes himself as an internal defector. His basic att.i.tude is disgust with the world. He thinks all politics are corrupt, all business greedy, all ambition futile, all personal attachments a trap. Needless to say, it can be very draining to be around this man, but he sees himself as a good, indeed almost model Buddhist. His path of renunciation-as he sees it-really amounts to rejection. The two are so close that it takes diligence not to mistake them.

The telling difference is that rejection involves a great deal of ego. "I"

make a decision that "they" (other people, the world in general) are unsuitable. The ego has many reasons for such rejection, and many sound plausible. To be involved in the world is a muddy, sometimes dispiriting business. On the other hand, the goal of spirituality is inclusive. G.o.d enfolds the whole creation, not just the nice parts. If you start out by rejecting this or that, how will you end up accepting it? Introversion rejects everything except those few acceptable bits of experience that make it through the gates set up by the ego.

True renunciation is quite different. It consists of realizing that there is reality behind the mask of the material world. The "nothing and nowhere" of G.o.d are real, and in the face of that one's attention is pulled away from outer rewards. Thus the richest man in the world could be a renunciate, if he has the proper insights, while a greedy, selfish monk, no matter how cloistered he may be, could fall very short of renunciation.

In the same way, someone can be extremely active and extroverted; this doesn't harm the inner search. The whole issue in stage three has to do with allegiance. Do you give your allegiance finally to the inner world or the outer? Many challenges come our way on this long journey, and no matter what answer you give verbally, it will be in the fire of experience that real answers come.

STAGE FOUR:.

G.o.d THE REDEEMER.

(Intuitive Response) The brain knows how to be active and it knows how to be calm. Why isn't that the end of it? Where could the mind go once it has found peace within itself? The higher stages of spirituality seem mysterious when framed this way, because there is nowhere to go beyond silence. We have to look at what silence can grow into, which is wisdom.

Psychologists are well aware that wisdom is a real phenomenon. If you pose a battery of problems to subjects who span a range of ages, the older ones will predictably give wiser answers than the younger. The posed problem could be anything: deciding on whether you've been cheated in a business deal, or how to settle an international incident that could lead to war. A wiser answer might be to wait and see before acting on impulse, to ask for advice from several sources, or not to take any a.s.sumptions for granted.

It doesn't matter really what the problem is. Wisdom is a perspective applied to any situation.

Just as stage three sees the birth of a peaceful G.o.d, stage four sees the birth of a wise G.o.d. He is willing not to act on his vengeful impulses; he no longer holds old sins against us; his outlook has gotten beyond right- and wrongdoing. In the role of G.o.d the Redeemer, he begins to take back all the judgments that weighed down life; therefore his wisdom creates a sense of being loved and nurtured. In this way the loneliness of the inner world begins to soften. The qualities of G.o.d the Redeemer are all positive: Understanding Tolerant Forgiving Nonjudgmental Inclusive Accepting You will notice that none of these qualities is the result of thinking-if we found them in a person, we would call them qualities of character. The psychological version of wisdom is inadequate here. To a psychologist, wisdom is correlated with age and experience, but something much deeper is involved. Spiritual masters speak of a mysterious faculty known as "second attention." First attention is concerned with the task at hand, with the data being brought in by the five senses. It expresses itself as thoughts and feelings. Second attention is different. It looks beyond the task at hand, somehow viewing life from a deeper perspective. From this source wisdom is derived, and the G.o.d of stage four appears only when second attention has been cultivated.

I know an ambitious writer who received a windfall from a book that had surprised everyone by becoming a best-seller. Elated with the influx of hundreds of thousands of dollars, he decided to venture it all in a risky oil leasing company. His friends pointed out that the vast majority of such opportunities bleed the investors dry before any oil is discovered.

The writer was undeterred, and with no experience whatever, he plunged into his investment, going so far as to visit the proposed oil wells, which were dotted throughout Kansas.

I met him again at a publishing event six months later. He sounded mournful; all his money had gone down the drain. "Everyone is being very kind about it," he said with embarra.s.sment. "My friends resist their I-told-you-so impulses. But losing the money isn't really the hardest part, and it isn't the humiliation, either. What I have to live with is different. You see, from the very outset, I knew that this investment would fail. I hadn't the slightest doubt that I was making a terrible decision, and I walked through each day like a schizophrenic, totally confident on one level and totally doomed on the other."

This is a dramatic example of the fact that we all inhabit more than one level of reality at the same time. First attention organizes the surface of life; second attention organizes the deeper levels. Intuition and wisdom both grow out of second attention and therefore cannot be compared to ordinary thinking. Yet this man didn't pay heed to his intuition; he went ahead with his doomed project, ignoring the unconscious part of himself that knew in advance what would happen. The G.o.d of stage four enters one's life only after you make friends with the subconscious.

Therapists have an exercise for this, which consists of imagining yourself in a dark cave. You have entered to find the perfect mentor, who is waiting for you at the end of a tunnel. You begin to walk toward him, feeling calm and expectant-the cave is warm and safe. As you get near the end of the tunnel a room opens up, and you see your mentor with his back to you. He slowly turns around-this is the point at which you are supposed to realize who, out of everyone you have ever met, will be facing you.

Whoever it turns out to be, whether your grandfather, a former teacher, or even a person you don't know, like Einstein or the Dalai Lama, you would expect certain qualities in your mentor: A mentor should know who you are and what your aspirations are. G.o.d the Redeemer is understanding.

A mentor should accept you faults and all. G.o.d the Redeemer is tolerant.

When you bring up things that you have never told anyone because they make you feel guilty and ashamed, a mentor should absolve that guilt. G.o.d the Redeemer is forgiving.

Wise as he is, a mentor should not interfere in your decisions or brand them wrong. G.o.d the Redeemer is nonjudgmental.

A mentor should be able to understand a whole range of human nature. G.o.d the Redeemer is inclusive.

You should feel safe with your mentor and bonded with him in intimacy. G.o.d the Redeemer is accepting.

No gender is implied in the role of mentor (the original Mentor, who appeared as tutor and guide to the son of Ulysses, took a male shape but was actually Athena, G.o.ddess of wisdom). For the first time, in fact, we can say that the G.o.d of stage four has a bias toward the female. Intuition and the unconscious have generally been seen as feminine in contrast to the masculine power of reason. The same division is expressed biologically as right-brain versus left-brain dominance. The fact that the right brain oversees music, art, imagination, spatial perception, and perhaps intuition doesn't mean that the G.o.d of stage four lives there, although the implication is strong. Myths around the world include heroes who speak directly to G.o.ds, and some anthropologists have speculated that just as the right brain can bypa.s.s the left to receive nonverbal, nonrational insights, so ancient humans could bypa.s.s the claims of rationality and perceive G.o.ds, fairies, gnomes, angels, and other beings whose material existence is much doubted by the left brain.

Today we are more inhibited. Very few people can say that they have talked with the Virgin Mary, while the rest of us have internalized divine voices as intuition. A gut feeling is as close to the oracle of Delphi as many people are going to get. That we can bypa.s.s reason to gain insight is certainly true. Intuition involves no cogitation or working through. Like lightning, it flashes across the mind, carrying with it a sense of rightness that defies explanation.

I think the two hemispheres of the brain are likely to be the source of first and second attention, because "dominant" doesn't mean domineering.

We can all intuit and reason at the same time. Doctors have all met patients who know in advance whether or not they have cancer, or whether a surgery will turn out well. In my early practice there was a woman who was fearful of her husband's life when he was on the verge of entering the hospital. As it happens, his surgery was minor and in no way threatened his life.

"I know all that," she insisted, "but it's really his surgeon that worries me. I just don't have a good feeling about him." Everyone, including her husband and me, tried to rea.s.sure her. Doctor X was a prominent and skilled surgeon, yet the wife remained fretful.

As it happens, there was a freakish occurrence. In the middle of his procedure her husband had a rare reaction to the anesthesia. He died on the table, unable to be revived. I was in shock; the wife was beyond consolation. She had known what would happen, and yet at the rational level, she had no basis for halting the surgery. This clash of first and second attention forms the central drama of stage four. The big question is how we can learn to trust second attention, since the unconscious has a reputation for being unreliable, if not dark and menacing. Once you start identifying with the knower-that part of yourself that is intuitive, wise, and perfectly at home in the quantum world-then G.o.d a.s.sumes a new shape.

He turns from all-powerful to all-knowing.

Who am I? ...

The knower within.

You will never trust your intuition until you identify with it.

Self-esteem enters here. At the earlier stages of inner growth, a person is esteemed who belongs to the group and upholds its values. If the knower within tries to object, he is stifled. Intuition actually becomes an enemy, because it has a nasty habit of saying things you aren't supposed to hear. A soldier sacrificing his life on the front lines can't afford to think about the barbarity of war and the rightness of pacifism. If his inner voice says, "What's the point? The enemy is just me in another man's skin," self-esteem gets torn to shreds.

A person who has arrived at stage four long ago gave up group values. The enticements of war, compet.i.tion, the stock market, fame, and wealth have faded. Being stranded in isolation is not a good fate, however, and so the knower within comes to the rescue. He provides a new source of self-esteem based upon things that cannot be known any other way. If you are thrilled by the following lines from the great Persian mystic Rumi, you definitely understand how the inner world can be more thrilling than anything outside: When I die I will soar with angels, And when I die to the angels, What I shall become You cannot imagine.

In stage four the emptiness of outward life is rendered irrelevant because a new voyage has commenced. The wise are not sitting around contemplating how wise they are; they are flying through s.p.a.ce and time, guided on a soul journey that nothing can impede. The hunger to be alone, characteristic of anyone in stage four, comes from sheer suspense. The person cannot wait to find out what comes next in the unfolding of the soul's drama.

The word redemption conveys only a pale sense of how all-involving this whole expedition is. There is much more to the knower within than just being free from sin. Someone who still felt burdened with guilt and shame, however, would never embark on the voyage. You don't have to be perfect to try to reach the angels, but you do have to be able to live with yourself and keep your own company for long stretches of time. A sense of sin hinders that ability. As a somewhat cynical friend of mine, a psychiatrist, likes to say, "You will know a lot about human motivation once you realize one thing: ninety-nine percent of humanity spends ninety-nine percent of their time trying to avoid painful truths."

Those who spend their time in other ways can seem mysterious. The knower within has little to do with the five senses; it doesn't care how rationality looks at a situation. The knower just knows. This mystery is the subject of a famous Zen parable: A young monk goes to his master, the abbot of the monastery, saying, "I must know the meaning of life. Will you tell it to me, sir?"

The master, who was famed for his skill in calligraphy, picks up his brush and swiftly writes the word Attention on a piece of paper. The disciple waits, but nothing more happens. "Sir, I am determined to sit here until you tell me the meaning of life," he repeats.

He sits down, and after a moment the master picks up his brush and again writes the word Attention on the paper.

"I don't understand," the disciple protests. "It is said that you have attained the highest enlightenment. I am very eager to learn. Won't you tell me your secret?" But for the third time the master has nothing to say, only dipping his brush in the black ink and writing the word Attention. The young monk's impatience turns to discouragement.

"So you have nothing to teach me?" he says mournfully. "If only I knew where to go. I have been seeking for so long." He gets up and leaves. The old master follows him with a compa.s.sionate look as he takes his brush and with a single stroke writes the word Attention.

This little story loses its Zen-ness once you grasp that the master is talking about second attention. He can't answer the disciple's earnest questions because there are no answers at the level of first attention.

The disciple could also have no idea of the excitement felt by the master, because from the outside there is no sign. We made the same point by observing that G.o.d leaves no traces in the material world. In stage four you find yourself fascinated with G.o.d, not because you need protection or comfort, but because you are a hunter after his quarry. The chase is all the more challenging when the prey leaves no tracks in the snow.

How do I fit in? ...

I understand.

In stage three the inner world evidences little activity. Ships don't sail in a dead calm. They rest and wait. The inner world comes alive in stage four, where calmness and peace turn into something much more useful. One begins to understand how reality works, and human nature starts to unfold its secrets. Here are some examples: There are no victims.

Everything is well ordered; things happen as they should.

Random events are guided by a higher wisdom.

Chaos is an illusion; there is total order to all events.

Nothing happens without a reason.

Let's call this a package of insight, centered on the question of why things turn out the way they do. It's a profound question. We all ask it, but we tend to ask in pa.s.sing. Our pa.s.sion is not to figure out the workings of fate. If some things seem preordained while others are accidental, so be it. In stage four, however, fate becomes a pressing issue. The person has experienced enough instances when "an invisible hand" must be at work. The instances may be small, but there is no turning away from them.

Recently I fumbled on the computer and lost a large chunk of very important work. I could hardly sleep that night, and the only remedy was a piece of software that might rescue my lost chapters, if they could be rescued at all. It was agonizing waiting for overnight delivery, which of course wasn't on time. I picked up the phone and had dialed the express company when a neighbor knocked at the door. "I think this must be for you," he said, holding out the package, which he had noticed while walking across our yard. It had arrived at the wrong entrance to the house, an old sealed-off door, and the deliveryman hadn't been able to ring the bell since we don't have one back there.

Besides getting to me just at the moment I was about to create a bit of chaos over the phone, the package was found by someone who had never unexpectedly dropped by before. How did all these ingredients, albeit tiny ones, happen to coincide?

In stage four you will not rest easy until you understand the answer.

After paying enough attention (always the key word) you begin to see that events form patterns; you see that they also hold lessons or messages or signs-the outer world somehow is trying to communicate-and then you see that these outer events are actually symbols for inner events. (In my case, the inner event was an angry tension that I wanted to be saved from.) The ripples flow out from the center, getting wider and wider, until you begin to see that the "invisible hand" has a mind behind it, as well as great wisdom in what it does.

The conclusion of this little package of insight is that there are no victims. Wise people often say this, but when they declare that all is wisely and justly ordered, their listeners remain baffled. What about wars, fires, random murders, aircraft disasters, despotism, gangsters, and on and on? All of these imply victims and often cruel victimizers, too.

How could the poet Browning have the audacity to claim that G.o.d is in his heaven and all's right with the world? He found out from G.o.d himself, but it was a G.o.d not to be met until stage four.

Here is a good place to ask what the inner knower actually knows. As we commonly define it, knowledge is experience that has been recorded in memory. No one would know that water boils at 100 degrees Centigrade unless there was memory of this. So the wise must have much more experience than the rest of us, or else they were born with more brain capacity. But is that really the case? After a divorce a person may lament that as early as the honeymoon it was obvious that the marriage wouldn't work out. Yet somehow only hindsight shows the importance of that intuition. How much is reliable to begin with?

Only the wise seem to know. Wisdom consists of being comfortable with certainty and uncertainty. In stage four life is spontaneous, yet it has a plan; events come as a surprise, yet they have an inexorable logic.

Strangely, wisdom often arrives only after thinking is over. Instead of turning a situation over from every angle, one arrives at a point where simplicity dawns. In the presence of a wise person one can feel an interior calm, alive and breathing its own atmosphere, that needs no outside validation. The ups and downs of existence are all one. The New Testament calls this "the peace that pa.s.ses understanding," because it goes beyond thinking-no amount of mental churning will get you there.

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

Self-acceptance.

The inner world has its storms, but much more terrible are its doubts.

"Doubt is the dry rot of faith," as one Indian saint has said. No one can get very far in stage four if there is self-doubt, because the self is all there is to rely on. Outside support has lost its rea.s.surance. In ordinary life, such a loss is dreaded. The outcast, the man without a country, and the traitor are roles no one wants to play. I have sat in a movie theater and heard dozens of people break into sobs when the Elephant Man is being hounded through a train station by a curious mob. His hideous head masked in a canvas bag, he is finally cornered and turns on his pursuers to cry in anguish, "I am not an animal, I am a human being!"

This is our own unconscious speaking its deepest fear. There is an element of freakishness to all outsiders, because we define normality by being accepted. In stage four, however, all moorings are loosed. "I was once almost engaged to this woman," a friend who had spent some years in a monastic setting told me. "It was a long time ago, and I had no kind of experience in this area. One night we were sitting in the dark on the sofa. Her head was nestled on my chest, and I felt so close to her that I said, 'You know, as much as I love you, I think I love humanity just as much.'

"She sat up with a horrified look on her face. 'Don't you realize that's the worst thing you can say to me?' she exclaimed. And I didn't. We broke up soon afterward, and yet I still don't truly understand why she was so disturbed."

Two worldviews had collided at that moment. To the woman, her lover's words were a betrayal, because she looked to him for support; by choosing to love her instead of someone else, he made her more complete; he added to her ident.i.ty with outside validation. The man felt the opposite-in his eyes, including humanity in his love made her greater. At bottom, he didn't understand the kind of support she needed. He wanted to experience a state where all love is included in one love. Such an aim is hard to achieve, and most people don't even see its value (not for themselves, at least-they might value it in Saint Francis or a bodhisattva). Since infancy we have all gained security from having one mother, one father, our own friends, one spouse, a family of our own; this sense of attachment reflects a lifelong need for support.

In stage four the whole support structure melts away-the person is left to get support internally, from the self. Self-acceptance becomes the way to G.o.d. Not that an inner voice coos rea.s.suring words, or that a new spiritual family is sought out. When Jesus says to his followers that they must die, he is referring to a state of inner detachment. It isn't a cold, heartless detachment but a kind of expansion that no longer needs to distinguish between me and you, yours and mine, what I want and what you want. Such dualities make perfect sense to the ego, yet in stage four the goal is to get beyond boundaries. If that involves giving up the old support systems, the person willingly pays the price. The soul journey is guided by an inner pa.s.sion that demands its own fulfillment.

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

Good is clarity, seeing the truth.

Evil is blindness, denying the truth.

From the outside someone in stage four seems to have opted out. With no social bonds left, there is really no social role, either. The band of misfits that gathers on the fringes of every culture is composed of madmen, seers, sages, psychics, poets, and visionaries. Which is which cannot be distinguished easily, and the fact that all seem to be getting a free ride irks many people. Socrates was condemned to death simply for being wise-the authorities called it "corrupting the city's youth" and following "novel religious beliefs"-and throughout history the same story has played out over and over. The deepest insights are usually not socially acceptable; therefore they are seen as insane, heretical, or criminal.

In stage four good and evil are still contrasted, but with much less harshness than before. Good is clarity of mind, which brings the ability to see the truth. Evil is blindness or ignorance, which makes the truth impossible to see. In both cases we are speaking about self-centered qualities. The person accepts responsibility for defining "the truth" as he or she sees it. But that raises another accusation. What if the truth is simply whatever is convenient? Perhaps stealing a loaf of bread becomes right because "my truth" is that I am hungry. This sort of situational ethics isn't the real issue, however. In stage four the truth is much more elusive and even mystical. It contains a kind of spiritual purity difficult to define. When Jesus taught his followers that "the truth will set you free," he didn't mean a certain set of facts or dogmas but revealed truth. In modern language we might come up with a different translation: seek the knower within, and it will set you free.

In other words, the truth becomes a quest from which no one can deter you.

Goodness means remaining true to your quest, evil is being drawn away from it. In the case of Socrates, even a sentence of death left him impervious.

When offered an escape route across the sea if he would sneak out of Athens in the company of his friends, he refused. Their idea of evil-dying at the hands of a corrupt court-was not his. His evil would have been to betray himself. No one could comprehend why he wasn't afraid of death.

Surrounded by tearful, frustrated pupils, he explained that death was an inevitable outcome. He was like a man who had calmly taken every step toward the edge of a cliff, knowing exactly where he was headed. Now that he had come to the jumping-off point, why should the last step cause any fear? This is really a perfect example of stage four reasoning. The quest has a purpose, and one sees it to the end. By drinking his cup of hemlock, Socrates died a traitor to the state who had upheld a total commitment to himself: this was a gesture of ultimate goodness.

What is my life challenge? ...

To go beyond duality.

I have saved the topic of sin until we understood the inner world better.

Sin is a stubborn issue. Because no one was perfect in childhood, we all carry the imprints of guilt and shame. Even in cultures that do not have a legend of the Fall, with its inheritance of original sin, guilt remains.

The question is whether it is inherent. That is, did we do something to deserve feeling guilty, or is human nature created that way?