Open Enlightenment

Building a New Tradition: Part 2

Relevant links:

Commune movement

The Farm

Stephen Gaskin

Guru

G.I. Gurdjieff

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The End of Open Enlightenment?

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The 4th Turning

The Buddha turned the Wheel of the Dharma three times:

In the 3rd Century BCE, the Buddha turned the Wheel for the first time and created Theravada, a renunciatory and monastic approach, with an emphasis on the Four Noble Truths and the Three Characteristics.

In the 1st Century CE, the Buddha turned the Wheel for the second time and created Mahayana, the Way of the Bodhisattva, with an emphasis on Emptiness and Compassion.

In the 7th Century CE, the Buddha turned the Wheel for the third time and created Vajrayana, the tantric route to enlightenment, with an emphasis on the essential Buddha-nature of all things.

Over the many centuries since the last turning, the Dharma has spread to the West and the world has undergone globalization. We live in a very different society and culture to the one the Buddha was familiar with almost 2 and half millennia ago, and many of the old ways of living the Dharma are no longer relevant to a human living in the 21st Century.

As a community of spiritual practitioners it is up to us to recognise that we are participating in the turning of the Wheel of the Dharma for a 4th time, as we explore and investigate what it means to live the Dharma in the 21st Century, and seek to answer such questions as:

What is the best way of approaching enlightenment and how do we make the Dharma accessible and relevant?

Is monasticism no longer appropriate or even necessary to seriously engaging with the Dharma?

What role does sexuality and romance play in spiritual development?

How is social media transforming spiritual culture and community?

What would Buddha look like as a millennial, awakened human being?

As part of the 4^th Turning, I’m endeavouring to establish a monthly meeting of like-minded souls in order to discuss all of these questions and much more.

The first group meeting happened on Sunday, 29^th Novemember 2009, at the wonderful Royal Academy of Arts in London. Out of the 15 or so members of the google group, 5 showed up, and what a pleasure it was to meet them!

Rohan of 21awake introduced us to his Hear and Now project, a contemporary and accessible guided meditation scheme for practitioners on the go. An innovative and promising endeavour!

Interest was shown in a weekly satsang/sitting group that I will organise to take place in a fortnight.

Stay tuned for the date/time of the next 4^th Turning meeting, and come and join the revolution! (Alternatively, set up a group in your area!)

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The Dialogue of Eris and Angelos (Part 2)

ANGELOS: What would you like to drink, Eris? I’d suggest something highly caffeinated, because if we continue to pursue the themes we’ve explored so far I’ve a feeling things might get very deep.

ERIS: In that case, Angelos, mine’s a mocha – with extra chocolate. I’ll need a heavy dose of pleasure if you’re going to get mystical on me. Let’s sit over here, at the back, where there’s less chance anyone who knows me might overhear us discussing your spooky trash.

ANGELOS: ‘Spooky trash’? So I’m guessing you’d reject out of hand the idea that there exists something Absolute?

ERIS: Yes. Because it’s impossible. A thing that I experience is defined in some way, so the fact that it’s not an absolute is what makes each thing itself.

ANGELOS: You’d assert that the Absolute does not exist?

ERIS: Yes. Or if it could be said to exist, it would have no relevance to my experience.

ANGELOS: Therefore the Absolute is that which does not exist?

ERIS: Hey, I don’t like the sound of this. I’m not too happy about that ‘is’…

ANGELOS: But would you agree that all things that exist do so in a manner that is distinct, each from the other, and this is what enables us to tell them apart?

ERIS: Of course.

ANGELOS: And that which does not exist does so in a manner which is identical to all other things that do not exist, and it’s this which enables us to distinguish between things that do exist and all those that don’t?

ERIS: No. Because things can ‘not exist’ differently. For instance: dinosaurs do not currently exist, but they once did. Unicorns, on the other hand, never have.

ANGELOS: Agreed. But I’d like to keep our discussion focused on our experience. I want to talk about things existing and not existing according to how they arise within our awareness. Can you go along with me on this?

ERIS: Fine, because what doesn’t exist can’t arise in my awareness. How could it? This is going to be a very short discussion and I’ve hardly sipped my mocha yet.

ANGELOS: Hang on a moment! Although unicorns and dinosaurs can’t arise in our experience, you were able to talk about them just now.

ERIS: Of course, because we have signs in our language with which to do so.

ANGELOS: So when you talk about things not existing in different ways, what you’re really talking about is a difference among types of signs. You’re referring to a difference among things that do exist – the signs. But as far as our experience is concerned, unicorns and dinsosaurs are both absent from it in an identical fashion.

ERIS: Well, yes, I suppose so. I still don’t see how this helps your argument, because now you’re admitting that our awareness is defined and limited by our language.

ANGELOS: Only if we choose to limit ourselves to the realm of thoughts and ideas, Eris. The point I was hoping to make is simply that all things that don’t exist manifest their non-existence in the same way – by not being available to experience – whereas all things that do exist manifest uniquely.

ERIS: I’m not sure that ‘manifesting non-existence’ makes much sense, but I would provisionally accept that.

ANGELOS: I don’t like putting it that way either. All I mean is that what doesn’t exist isn’t apparent to our mind and senses except as a sign or idea (which is a representative, not the thing itself) and that this goes for all things that don’t exist. Whereas all things that do exist are apparent, and are all apparently different.

ERIS: Okay. So what? All you’ve done is to echo my assertion that no absolute exists, and nothing that does not exist is available to our experience.

ANGELOS: You’re right. But I want to look at it now from the converse. Namely: that which does not exist, because all things are non-existent in the same way, is therefore intrinsically consistent and whole. And also, that which does not exist does so unchangingly and for all time.

ERIS: Unless it comes into existence at some point in the future.

ANGELOS: You mean that a conception of something non-existent that we once had may at a later time become a reality?

ERIS: Why not?

ANGELOS: Granted. But is our conception identical to the thing that later comes into being?

ERIS: No. It’s not the actual thing, but we’re able to identify it as such.

ANGELOS: So, again, we have to be careful to distinguish between our ideas and thoughts, which exist, and the things of which they are the representatives, which may not exist. As far as our personal awareness is concerned, isn’t it the case that something that does not exist for us will continue not to do so uniformly and for all time?

ERIS: I suppose so. But if it doesn’t exist, forgive me if I don’t make much of a fuss about it!

ANGELOS: Even though it is whole, consistent, and eternally unchanging? Even though that which doesn’t exist fits the criteria of something Absolute which, at the beginning, you said you couldn’t conceive?

ERIS: But what’s the point? It still doesn’t exist, so therefore I’m still unable to experience it – except in the sphere of ideas and language, which – God knows why – you’ve ruled out of our discussion. Yet you still seem happy to go on chatting, and if this discussion isn’t an example of a purely linguistic exercise then I don’t know what is!

ANGELOS: Well, firstly you said you couldn’t conceive of an Absolute, and yet by talking about the nature of that which does not exist we’ve arrived at precisely such a concept.

ERIS: Yet the concept is not the thing – as you yourself admitted.

ANGELOS: Agreed. So what we need to do next is to examine whether that which does not exist can nevertheless enter experience.

ERIS: I can’t wait to hear this! Come on, then.

ANGELOS: Have you ever come across the so-called ‘pointing-out instructions’? They’re derived from eastern religions and are traditionally used for demonstrating to people that the self doesn’t exist.

ERIS: Yes, I’ve read about those. The instructions take you through awareness of every part of the body and you ask yourself: ‘Am I this finger? Am I these eyes?’, and so on.

ANGELOS: That’s one form of it. But you can ask the same question of anything that arises in your experience: ‘Am I these perceptions? These thoughts? This mind?’ What soon becomes apparent is that there is nothing corresponding to a ‘self’ anywhere in our experience. If you’re aware of something, that thing can’t be the thing that has the awareness – it cannot be you. Even the mind that you’re aware of having – it can’t be the same mind that has an awareness of ‘you’. So what is this ‘you’?

ERIS: I’ve done this exercise. If you continue with it for long enough it can make you feel really weird. But something is wrong there, obviously, because even though it ‘logically’ proves there’s no self, I can still feel one. The self must be some kind of deep structure or pattern in the brain; something that’s not available to experience but is constantly there nonetheless.

ANGELOS: The self is unconscious, in other words?

ERIS: Yes.

ANGELOS: But you’re conscious, aren’t you?

ERIS: So it seems, although there are philosophers around these days who deny that it’s so simple.

ANGELOS: So if Eris’s ‘self’ is unconscious, but Eris is conscious, then Eris and herself are unalike.

ERIS: Consciousness is the greatest mystery of modern science. If I knew the answer do you think I’d be sitting here with you?

ANGELOS: What if the logic of the pointing-out instructions were correct and ‘modern science’ were asking the wrong questions? What if the self truly doesn’t exist, as seems to be the case when we take the time to investigate?

ERIS: Why does my experience tell me it does, then?

ANGELOS: If we experience a self, yet the investigation of it reveals it cannot exist, then your earlier argument that we cannot experience what does not exist is simply an assumption. Each time we experience the self we are actually experiencing something that cannot exist.

ERIS: Not necessarily. It could be just a misperception.

ANGELOS: Misperception is when one thing that is known is mistaken for another. A rook is mistaken for a crow, perhaps, or a pattern in the bark of a tree is taken for a face. But in our case, what is this self that we have mistaken for some other thing?

ERIS: It’s… – I don’t know! It’s just the self; it’s self-evident!

ANGELOS: My point is that it can’t be said we’re ‘misperceiving’ something if we can’t even state what that thing is we suppose is being misperceived.

ERIS: None of this is new to me, Angelos. I know that if we look deep into the nature of anything we find that our grounds for supposing it to exist are baseless. This is called deconstructionism and, on this point at least, modern philosophy and the Eastern traditions have much in common.

ANGELOS: I know the sort of philosophers you mean, Eris. If they have so much in common with Buddhism – as you suggest – and if they’ve realised that nothing possesses intrinsic being, do these philosophers declare themselves enlightened, like the Buddha did?

ERIS: Certainly not! That would be a claim of absolute truth, whereas our contemporary philosophers have demonstrated there’s no such thing. Instead, it’s our language, our social practices and habits of perception that lend things the appearance of intrinsic existence.

ANGELOS: We considered how the criteria for absolute truth matches the criteria of that which doesn’t exist, in that both are prefectly consistent and eternal. To grasp the groundlessness of everything – I suggested – is therefore to grasp nothingness. The claim of enlightenment therefore arises from a realisation of nothingness. It’s not a pretension to any specific knowledge, since that would be something and would not meet the criteria of absolute truth. Yet our contemporary philosophers imply that the ‘groundlessness’ of all things is grapsed through acquiring specific knowledge of lingustic and cultural conventions. Haven’t they contradicted themselves, then, by asserting that there are ‘grounds’ for this supposed ‘groundlessness’?

ERIS: Surely you’re not going to claim that language and culture are unimportant?

ANGELOS: Certainly not. But the very fact that are so important demonstrates that our philosophers haven’t at all grapsed the ‘groundlessness’ of things. What they have grasped is not nothingness, but on the contrary something very salient.

ERIS: Yet without this understanding of the forces that determine our perception and history we’re at the mercy of prejudice and ignorance. You might not consider postmodernism as an equivalent to ‘enlightenment’, but it’s good enough for me! Anyone who rests smugly on a notion of absolute truth will fall victim to their own prejudice by supposing that what seems true to them applies to everyone. And believing that the truth of all things is ‘nothingness’ is tantamount to nihilism.

ANGELOS: If I said that ‘nothingness’ were the truth of everything, then I’d be making something of my nothing. But it’s more subtle than that, Eris. The absolute can’t merely stand in opposition to the relative; the type of nothingness I’m talking about isn’t simply the ‘opposite’ of something. If it were, it would be defined in relation to something, in which case it would itself be relative and not absolute – nor nothing, for that matter. The truly absolute is the negation of something, but it must also be engaged in negating itself.

ERIS: Sounds like a mouthful of philosophical verbiage to me!

ANGELOS: No. It’s completely practical. Enlightenment is an engagement with this self-negating absolute. Meditation and other spiritual exercises involve the practitioner in the negation of self, therefore bringing the practitioner into line with the nature of the absolute itself, and over time this results in a realisation that the self and the absolute are actually one and the same. Deconstructionism, on the other hand, is completely different. For starters, it never steps from the realm of ideas into experience. And it never obliges us to change ourselves through self-negation in the way that is required to align ourselves with the absolute. Which is probably why you only tend to hear it coming from the mouths of academics.

ERIS: Postmodernism leads us into engagement with cultural forces and institutions. I’d say it engages with the world far more deeply than sitting on a cushion with your eyes shut and pretending you don’t exist.

ANGELOS: I see your point. But ethical consequences certainly arise from a realisation of the absolute. Yet that’s a topic for another time.

ERIS: You’re not trying to side-step the issue, are you Angelos?

ANGELOS: I’d just assumed you’d probably had enough for one day.

ERIS: I’d be fascinated to hear how you suppose that believing in an absolute nothingness makes you a better person.

ANGELOS: You’re such hard work, Eris.

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The Dialogue of Eris and Angelos

ANGELOS: Hello, Eris. I should’ve known I’d find you here. This is a great occult bookshop. They’ve got everything, haven’t they? Are you researching something specific?

ERIS: You know what I’m like, Angelos. I’m looking up some references for the latest paper I’ve written on the history of occultism since Aleister Crowley.

ANGELOS: Sounds interesting.

ERIS: Not as interesting as what I’ve heard about you. Someone told me you’d fallen in with a religious crowd and had turned all mystical.

ANGELOS: Well, kind of. You could say the work I’ve been doing recently has been an exploration of how mysticism sits with contemporary magick. One of the problems with chaos magic, when it appeared in the late seventies, is that it has left out the dimension of spiritual practice and development.

ERIS: Yes. Recently I’ve heard people on the magick scene using the term ‘results mysticism’ – which is quite a striking idea.

ANGELOS: Well, that wasn’t us, but yes. However, one of the ways in which we’ve gained results from mysticism is through the realisation that magical and esoteric traditions (if they are genuinely that, because many of them aren’t) are all pushing towards the same goal – namely, The Great Work, which in the eastern traditions is known as enlightenment.

ERIS: Woah – hang on there, Angelos! This idea that all traditions lead to the same goal is one that I have tremendous difficulties with. Each tradition presents a point of view that is socially determined. You know that, surely? Each is a product of the language used by a social group, and other cultural factors besides.

ANGELOS: Do you have to be anywhere in the next hour, Eris? I’m asking, because it’s probably going to take me a while to explain why we need to move on from ideas like that.

ERIS: Move on? That’s a little presumptuous! You have my full attention, Angelos. I only hope the rumours I’ve heard about you aren’t true.

ANGELOS: I’m touched by your concern. But consider this, Eris: if the esoteric traditions are purely socially determined and therefore incommensurate, then in what do you suppose lies the fundamental difference between ‘The Great Work’ in the western tradition and ‘enlightenment’ in the Eastern?

ERIS: Well, it seems to me quite clear. The Buddhist seeks the annihilation of the self (yes, I accept that that’s simplistically phrased, but this isn’t my main point) whereas, in the western tradition, the magician works through successive states of awareness, with the assistance of the Holy Guardian Angel. The Great Work aims toward the knowledge and conversation of the angel, and then union with it. Clearly these aims are not commensurate at all.

ANGELOS: I appreciate that they may not appear so on the surface. Yet in our explorations and practise we’ve discovered that the higher grades of the A∴A∴, which Crowley represented on the Tree of Life as Magister Templi (Binah), Magus (Chokmah) and Ipsissimus (Kether) are mappable with surprising consistency onto the stages of awakening described in the Theravada Buddhist model: sottapana (‘stream-enterer’), anagami (‘never-returner’) and arahat.

ERIS: But this shouldn’t surprise us, Angelos, because Crowley was influenced by the Buddhist model and incorporated it into his own.

ANGELOS: So couldn’t we say he incorporated the Buddhist model because he found it corresponded with his own experience so well? You’re right that my friends and I may have re-invented the wheel, but it’s not our aim to find new models, simply models that work. Should it trouble us, as long as our re-invented wheel takes us where we want to go?

ERIS: Yes, I think it should, because the idea that there is somewhere to go and that it’s the same place for everyone regardless of tradition is itself an idea that arose at a particular moment in history. It came from Helena Blavatsky, if you’d like to know. Before her, it was not generally supposed at all that different paths led to the same place.

ANGELOS: It still isn’t, as far as I can see. Eris, I wouldn’t impose on anyone that they should follow any path to anything. I’m skeptical of this view that no one had this idea before Blavatsky, but I want to avoid an argument over the historical precedence of ideas. What’s more striking is that it seems to me this is where you situate your notion of truth – in the circumstances of the origin of ideas. You’re talking like a historian! This is very odd to me, because we both practise magick, and surely you would not suggest this historical approach is necessary to practise magick successfully. If any practice yields a useful result, it’s not due to the circumstances of its origin, is it?

ERIS: Angelos, Truth (with a capital ‘T’) is something I would be at pains not to situate anywhere! As I said earlier, that which appears to us as truth is the product of socially-constructed cultural processes. Consider: science does not require a notion of truth in order to arrive at its findings. A neurologist, for instance, demonstrates that certain types of stimulation of the brain result in particular states or experiences without any recourse to their supposed ‘truth’ or ‘validity’ or ‘significance’. These states simply are. How they are interpreted by the person that experiences them – as ‘God’ perhaps, or a vision of an angel – is another question entirely. If you, on the other hand, assert that there is Truth, then you are going to have to explain in more detail what you consider it to be.

ANGELOS: Well, it’s ineffable and absolute.

ERIS: Beyond human experience, then?

ANGELOS: No, because it requires human consciousness in order for us to be aware of it. In fact, it arises only from our experience of it.

ERIS: But do you not see how this leads to awful problems? For instance: if you have no direct experience of the Holocaust, let’s say, then you’re asserting it’s not ‘true’; it didn’t happen.

ANGELOS: Come on, Eris! Give me some credit! The truth of the Holocaust lies in the experience of others, but their experience can enter into mine through my reading (for example) and their testimony. I’m not advocating solipsism here. And besides, a social-constructivist view doesn’t deal with this problem any better. Yet is it really a problem? Consider: where’s the sense in accusing an isolated tribe living in the Peruvian jungle of ‘holocaust denial’ if they should have the temerity to claim they know nothing of it?

ERIS: Yet you’re unable to say anything substantial about this absolute truth of yours, which – on the basis of only subjective evidence – you continue to assert.

ANGELOS: Because talking about it isn’t point. If truth lies in our experience of it, then it lies with experience and not words nor ideas. This is why it doesn’t matter in a wider sense what tradition or means of experiencing truth we chose to follow. For instance, our group has been comparing notes very closely with Buddhist practitioners, and we’re able to talk to each other across our respective traditions very easily, so long as we remain focused on the specific details of our practice and its experiential results.

ERIS: And as I said before, this is completely unsurprising because Crowley’s model was derived from Buddhism. You won’t be taken seriously by any of the authorities in these fields if you insist on a notion of absolute truth (which you still refuse to define) or your view that self-evident differences between the traditions are not significant.

ANGELOS: Eris, I’m astonished at how you can be satisfied by a notion of truth – or in your own terminology perhaps I ought to call it ‘a dominant view’ – that depends entirely on consensus. I look around this bookshop and I can see works by Crowley, Steiner, Blavatsky, etc., and I wonder at your concern that my views might place me ‘beyond the pale’ of academic orthodoxy because surely all of these writers received similar criticism in their life-time for holding similar views on truth to mine? I find it strange that you value these writers only from a historical perspective, rather than for what is to be gained from engaging in the practices they taught.

ERIS: But I do engage in those practices.

ANGELOS: You’ve sought the Knowledge and Communication of the Holy Guardian Angel?

ERIS: Yes.

ANGELOS: And you were successful?

ERIS: Yes. I experienced all kinds of visions, synchronicities and deep states of trance.

ANGELOS: And you experienced these as the actual presence of your angel?

ERIS: Well, yes and no. I experienced them as the angel, because that was what I had chosen to believe in at the time – what I had chosen to interpret these experiences as. But simultaneously I was aware that there were any number of ways in which these experiences could be interpreted, and if I’d chosen to follow a different tradition they would’ve taken on a different significance.

ANGELOS: You were using your belief as a tool, then, as a means of influencing your experiences?

ERIS: Yes – but surely you know this as well as I do. We both practise magick, and so we both accept – I imagine – that this is how magick works. Our reality is determined by our perception, and our perception in turn is shaped by our belief. Most of the time, our belief is unconscious or involuntary, and thus we can become prisoners of our own reality. Magick helps set us free from this.

ANGELOS: You mean, of course, it frees us because it enables us to intervene in the process by which our belief shapes our perception? I’m certainly in agreement with you on that!

ERIS: Yes. I choose a particular way of seeing things, and therefore my so-called ‘reality’ lines-up in that way, determined by my way of seeing. But if you agree with this, why do you insist on there being ‘Truth’, with that ludicrous capital T, when you’ve now admitted that what we call reality is after all a matter of belief?

ANGELOS: You’ve never directly perceived truth, then?

ERIS: No. But, as I’ve said, I’ve sometimes chosen to believe that certain things were true, with the conscious intention of changing my reality. So you’re telling me, now, that you have directly perceived it?

ANGELOS: No, I haven’t. Because truth is apprehended through knowledge, and knowledge is neither belief nor perception. It is outside either of those.

ERIS: That sounds like mystical word-play! If this Truth of yours can’t appear, how do you know it exists?

ANGELOS: Because we can know it. And this is not mystical at all, Eris, but in fact very ordinary. Consider: if we had to perceive something in order to know it, then how would we ever be able to plan for situations that weren’t immediately present to our awareness, or even hold abstract concepts in our minds?

ERIS: Then this truth of yours is simply your belief. Don’t you see? If it can’t be perceived, as you admit it can’t, then how else would you describe your clinging onto something that can’t be seen or spoken about, and which, therefore, has no discernible effect upon anyone, unless – like you – they choose to believe in it?

ANGELOS: Because it lies beyond perception. Up to this point we’re in agreement, it seems to me, and we are both happy to call ourselves magicians. Only it also seems to me that in being a magician it’s necessary to step beyond perception and into knowledge, if one wants to connect with that realm of absolute truth that is the aim of The Great Work.

ERIS: I understand what you’re saying, Angelos. However, that which is supposedly beyond perception cannot be perceived or experienced, and therefore can only be an object of supposition or belief. How can it be otherwise?

ANGELOS: You said a while back that we can become prisoners in our reality, because that reality is made of perceptions and beliefs?

ERIS: Yes. Unless we choose among our beliefs carefully.

ANGELOS: Or we choose to see beyond them altogether. Because isn’t our notion of what perception is merely derived also from our perception?

ERIS: Yes. And our reality is therefore malleable to a degree, because of that.

ANGELOS: Then what if our perception of our perceptions were inaccurate? What if, in actuality, our consciousness were arranged in such a way that what you described as ‘beyond perception’ were not really so, but only appeared as such due to a mistaken and involuntary belief about the nature of ourselves?

ERIS: Then I would ask how you could have possibly arrived at this knowledge, which – according to the circumstances you propose – would be impossible for us to arrive at.

ANGELOS: But it wouldn’t be impossible, not if we adopted as a practice the habit of making our perception the object of itself, and at the same time took care to protect this practice against influence from our mundane beliefs, on the one hand, nor allowed the results of our practice to solidify into anything we mistook for a concrete ‘reality’ on the other.

ERIS: I can see where you’re trying to take this! It sounds like the Buddhist technique of ‘insight’ meditation. But I can’t see how it bears any resemblance to the western magical tradition and the Holy Guardian Angel.

ANGELOS: The basic practice is the same in all traditions and it leads to an identical result. The ‘angel’ is another term for that ‘true self’ which I described as hidden from us by our habitual beliefs. This ‘true self’ is what the Buddhists term ‘no-self’, a deeper, actual level of consciousness that sees ‘beyond perception’ because it’s not limited by the way that our habitual false beliefs shape our everyday idea of what ‘self’ is.

ERIS: This still sounds to me simply a point of view. It’s the regurgitation of the ‘perennial philosophy’; it’s simply Blavatsky all over again.

ANGELOS: Come on, Eris. Let’s get out of this dusty bookshop and go and get a coffee somewhere. Without leaving behind ideas and turning around instead to examine whom you suppose is having them, it’s unlikely things will appear to you any other way.

ERIS: You’ve got a lot of work to do to convince me, Angelos. But if you’re buying, I might be persuaded to listen some more.

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