Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity—a total embrace of the entire Kosmos—a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?
– Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, 42-3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber
Imagine if, the very day Buddha attained his enlightenment, he was taken out and hanged precisely because of his realization. and if any of his followers claimed to have the same realization, they were also hanged. Speaking for myself, I would find this something of a disincentive to practice.
But that's exactly what happened with Jesus of Nazareth. "Why do you stone me?" he asks at one point. "Is it for good deeds?" And the crowd responds, "No, it is because you, being a man, make yourself out to be God." The individual Atman is not allowed to realize that it is one with Brahman. "I and my Father are One"-among other complicated factors that realization got this gentleman crucified.
The reasons for this are involved, but the fact remains: as soon as any spiritual practitioner began to get too close to the realization that Atman and Brahman are one-that one's own mind is intrinsically one with primordial Spirit-then frighteningly severe repercussions usually followed.
Of course there were wonderful currents of Neoplatonic and other very high teachings operating in the background (and underground) in the West, but wherever the Church had political influence-and it dominated the Western scene for a thousand years-if you stepped over that line between Atman and Brahman, you were in very dangerous waters. St. John of the Cross and his friend St. Teresa of Avila stepped over the line, but couched their journeys in such careful and pious language they pulled it off, barely. Meister Eckhart stepped over the line, a little too boldly, and had his teachings officially condemned, which meant he wouldn't fry in hell but his words apparently would. Giordano Bruno stepped way over the line, and was burned at the stake. This is a typical pattern.
> You say the reasons are complicated, and I'm sure they are, but could you briefly mention a few?
Well, I'll give you one, which is perhaps the most interesting. The early history of the Church was dominated by traveling "pneumatics," those in whom "spirit was alive." Their spirituality was based largely on direct experience, a type of Christ consciousness, we might suppose ("Let this consciousness be in you which was in Christ Jesus"). We might charitably say that the nirmanakaya physical body] of each pneumatic realized the dharmakaya [absolute body] of Christ via the sambhogakaya [body of bliss] of the transformative fire of the Holy Ghost-not to put too fine a point on it. But they were clearly alive to some very real, very direct experiences.
But over a several hundred year span, with the codification of the Canon and the Apostle's Creed, a series of necessary beliefs replaced actual experience. The Church slowly switched from the pneumatics to the ekklesia, the ecclesastic assembly of Christ, and the governor of the ekklesia was the local bishop, who possessed "right dogma," and not the pneumatic or prophet, who might possess spirit but couldn't be "controlled." The Church was no longer defined as the assembly of realizers but as the assembly of bishops.
With Tertullian the relationship becomes almost legal, and with Cyprian spirituality actually is bound to the legal office of the Church. You could become a priest merely by ordination, not by awakening. A priest was no longer holy (sanctus) if he was personally awakened or enlightened or sanctified, but if he held the office. Likewise, you could become "saved" not by waking up yourself, but merely by taking the legal sacraments. As Cyprian put it, "He who does not have the Church as Mother cannot have God as Father."
Well, that puts a damper on it, what? Salvation now belonged to the lawyers. And the lawyers said, basically, we will allow that one megadude became fully one with God, but that's it! No more of that pure Oneness crap.
> But why?
This part of it was simple, raw, political power. Because, you know, the unsettling thing about direct mystical experience is that it has a nasty habit of going straight from Spirit to you, thus bypassing the middleman, namely, the bishop, not to mention the middleman's collection plate. This is the same reason the oil companies do not like solar power, if you get my drift.
And so, anybody who had a direct pipeline to God was thus pronounced guilty not only of religious heresy, or the violation of the legal codes of the Church, for which you could have your heavenly soul eternally damned, but also of political treason, for which you could have your earthly body separated into several sections.
For all these reasons, the summum bonum of spiritual awareness-the supreme identity of Atman and Brahman, or ordinary mind and intrinsic spirit-was officially taboo in the West for a thousand years, more or less. All the wonderful currents that you mention, from Neoplatonism to Hermeticism, were definitely present but severely marginalized, to put it mildly. And thus the West produced an extraordinary number of subtle-level (or sambhogakaya) mystics, who only claimed that the soul and God can share a union; but very few causal (dharmakaya) and very few nondual (svabhavikakaya) mystics, who went further and claimed not just a union but a supreme identity of soul and God in pure Godhead, just that claim got you toasted.
> As for some of these more profound currents that became marginalized, what is the relationship between Plato's concept of "remembering" and enlightenment? Ever since I read the Meno I've thought there was one. But I couldn't quite figure out what it was.
Yes, I think there is a very direct relationship. If we make the assumption, pretty safe with this crowd, that every sentient being has buddhamind, and if we agree that with enlightenment we are not attaining this mind but simply acknowledging or recognizing it, then it amounts to the same thing if we say that enlightenment is the remembering of buddhamind, or the direct recognition or re-cognition of pure Emptiness.
In other words, we can't attain buddhanature any more than we can attain our feet. We can simply look down and notice that we have feet; we can remember that we have them. It sometimes helps, if we think that we do not have feet, to have somebody come along and point to them. A Zen Master will be glad to help. When you earnestly say, "I don't have any feet," the Master, wearing these big Dr. Martens boots, will bring them stomping down on your feet and see who yells out loud, "No feet, eh?"
These "pointing out instructions" do not point to something that we do not have and need to acquire; they point to something that is fully, totally, completely present right now, but we have perhaps forgotten. Enlightenment in the most basic sense is this simple remembering, re-cognizing, or simply noticing our feet-that is, noticing that this simple, clear, everpresent awareness is primordial purity just as it is. In that sense, it is definitely a simple remembering.
> And you think Plato was actually involved in that type of recognition?
Oh, I think so. It becomes extremely obvious in the succeeding Neoplatonic teachers; in these areas, the apples rarely fall far from the tree. Plato himself says that we were once whole, but a "failure to remember"-amnesis-allows us to fall from that wholeness. And we will "recover" from our fragmentation when we remember who and what we really are. Plato is very specific. I'll read this: "It is not something that can be put into words like other branches of learning: only after long partnership in a [contemplative community] devoted to this very thing does truth flash upon the soul, like a flame kindled by a leaping spark." Sudden illumination. He then adds, and this is very important: "No treatise by me concerning it exists or ever will exist."
> Purely wordless.
Yes, I think so. Very like, "A special transmission outside the scriptures; Not dependent upon words or letters; Direct pointing to the mind; Seeing into one's Nature and recognizing buddhahood." We have to be a little careful with quick and easy comparisons, but again, if all sentient beings possess buddhamind, and if you are not yet going to be crucified for remembering it, then it is likely enough that souls of such caliber as Parmenides and Plato and Plotinus would remember who and what they are in suchness. And yes, it very much is a simply remembering, like looking in the mirror and going "Oh!" As Philosophia said to Boethius in his distress, "You have forgotten who you are."
http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2059
