Given that we’ll be speaking to Sri Shankara today on An Hour with an Angel, one of the most profound analysts and synthesizers of spiritual truth that ever walked the Earth, in honor of him, I’d like to spend some time looking at what is often called the “ancient wisdom” or “perennial philosophy,” the common ground or substratum of truth that underlies all religion and spirituality.

If we are to create a spiritual fund of knowledge that is truly cross-cultural and universal, then we need to explore what the truth is below all religious and spiritual thoughts and beliefs.

I’ll be giving several statements of the perennial philosophy over the next few days, some from my own speculations and some from those of others.

The Common Ground of Spirituality

The Primacy of the Soul

The first place to start is to note that all living beings are souls that temporarily inhabit bodies or other forms. The different religions use different terms to indicate the soul: Jesus called it the Christ, the savior, the prince of peace, the treasure buried in a field, the pearl of great price, and the mustard seed that grew into a great tree.

Hindus call it the Atman or Self. Buddhists call it the Buddha nature, our original face, our essence, or Big Mind.

The Purpose of Life is to Know Our True Identity

Another matter that all the enlightened sages of all religions might be found to agree on is that the soul lives through countless lives developing the discrimination to know its true nature. Knowing that is the purpose for which all life was created. When we know our true nature, we’ve accomplished the business of life and return to the Source from which we came.

The purpose of life is the same for a human life form as for a non-human, for an inhabitant of Earth or for an inhabitant of another planet. All are engaged in a journey that spans countless lifetimes and takes us from God to God.

God is a Formless, Transcendent Being, which Christians Call the Father and Hindus Brahman

God in its original formlessness is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. God is eternal and unchanging. God is a transcendent being characterized by silence and stillness, consciousness and love. Christians call the One Source and Destination of life the Father and Hindus, Brahman.

When God Descends into Matter, It is Known as the Mother and Shakti by Hindus and the Holy Spirit by Christians

When God enters the dream and builds the world of illusion, it is characterized by sound and movement, but not otherwise. The whole of the world of matter, mater, Mother is created by God with form. This is as true for the realm of the angels and elohim as it is for the realm of humans, animals, plants and minerals. Christians call God with form the Holy Spirit and Hindus call it the Divine Mother and Shakti.

All of Life Progresses Towards Knowledge of Its True Identity by a Process of Spiritual Evolution

All of life assumes form, lives temporary lives, and learns through the assistance of other spirits and the universal laws the truth of its own being. As it does, it progresses from one dimension to another, from one planet to another, and from one realm to another, until it realizes itself by a process of expanding enlightenments and finally returns home to God.

The world is a school of experience in which lessons are taught that expand the individual’s knowledge of itself, moving it from dualistic consciousness to unitive consciousness, and expanding that sense of unity until it encompasses everything that is and everything that is not.

Ultimately There are No Objects, Only One Subject

At the highest level of existence, there are no objects, only one subjective consciousness that is All there is. It is that one subjective consciousness that has individuated itself and lives in manifold forms for the purpose of self-knowledge. The individual develops from an expansion in the sense of Self or “I,” dropping each limited “I” in turn to embrace a more expansive “I” and finally ending up in a consciousness of Self that includes everything.

Enlightenment proceeds by leapfrogging from knowledge of a self to a no-self (or Self), from a Self to a No-Self, etc. The Self is nothing material and hence is not an object but a word that denotes the subject of all experience.

Everything is Constructed of and from Love

Love is the substratum from which everything is made. Love is the attractive force that holds everything together and the dissolutive agent that releases it again into the general ocean of consciousness. This is not discernible as long as separative or dualistic consciousness reigns but when it yields to unitive consciousness the truth of this statement becomes known.

Love is not the emotion we feel, but an umbrageous and immaterial force that fills, moves in, and is co-existent with the formless God.

Again, in honor of Sri Shankara, who recently appeared on An Hour with an Angel, I’d like to give a second cut at a statement of the perennial philosophy, written originally many years ago now.

Last revised: 22 July 2011

Spiritual Evolution: The Divine Plan for Life

http://www.angelfire.com/space2/light11/divine1.html

1. Every man, woman, and child on this planet is God. Every man, woman, and child lives forever, through countless physical lives.

Everything known and unknown, everything that is and is not is God. There is nothing that we can see or not see that is not Him (Her, It – God has no gender. I’ll follow the conventional use of sages here and refer to God as a “He”). That being the case you are God and I am God and everyone else is as well. Being God, we’re not capable of being destroyed or ceasing to exist. We’re therefore eternal, though our physical bodies are not.

The “immortality” that such teachers as Jesus spoke of is not immortality of the soul, which is already immortal, but the cessation of the need to be born into a physical body again. As it happens we reincarnate endless times until we reach the point of needing no more to be reborn physically. But that is not the end of spiritual evolution, which continues until we return to God, whence we came, through a virtually endless process of successive enlightenments.

Spiritual evolution means that, not simply the physical body evolves as Darwin said it does, but the spiritual bodies that we also inhabit do as well. We journey through lifetime after lifetime, learning , discriminating, improving our ability to discern the Real from the unreal, until finally we realize the One fully. We have then progressed from unconscious awareness to conscious awareness of our nature as God.

2. The purpose of life is enlightenment. The purpose of life is that God should meet God and, in that meeting, taste His own bliss. For that purpose was all of life made.

God is One without a second. In His highest expression, God is formless and thus encounters no forms and can draw on no tools or technologies. God is alone in the universe of form and beyond. There being no other, there is no one to know God and no means for God to know God. In light of this, to satisfy a desire to know Himself and taste His own bliss, God created life forms and assigned them the task of knowing their true nature, their original identity.

He implanted in them a longing that can only be satisfied by the realization of their identity as God. He created universal laws that aid the individual being in the journey from God into the world and from the world back to God again. Each time a life form realizes its true identity as God, God meets God, and for this meeting was all of life created.

3. All of us have journeyed out from God, by His command, and will be liberated from the cycle of physical birth and death the moment we know that everything in this world, including us, is God. Hindu sages call this level of enlightenment vijnana (perfect wisdom) and sahaja (or natural, permanent) nirvikalpa samadhi.

When all movement in the mind stops, when the spiritual heart (or hridayam) opens and never shuts again, the individual being realizes God in sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi, the stage of liberation from the need to be physically reborn (or mukti). This level has been called vijnana (or perfect wisdom) by some and nirvana (or cessation of movement). But spiritual evolution does not cease here. Only the need to be reborn in this Third Dimension stops. Orders of existence stretch on in an endless vista, through dimension after dimension, universe after universe.

4. The Father created the domain of the Mother (mater, matter) as the setting for our spiritual journey and education. We wander in this material realm lifetime after lifetime, constantly learning.

The first creations in life were what Christians call the Holy Spirit and the Christ or Son and what Hindus call the Divine Mother or Shakti and the Atman. The first is a primal universal creative vibration known as Aum/Amen, the Logos or Word. Known to Solomon as “Wisdom” or Sophia, to Lao-Tzu as the Mother, this level of reality is the Phenomenal world whereas the Father or Brahman is the Formless Transcendental, beyond the Phenomenal world.

The Christ or Atman is “the Father in me” or “Brahman-within-the-individual,” a “fragment” or “spark,” metaphorically speaking, lodged within the body (or bodies), which are created by the Mother. One cannot know the Father without first knowing the Son in a moment of enlightenment. This first sight of the Light grows, with meditation, till one day it becomes the sight of the Father’s Light. The Son is the Father but the Father is greater than the Son. The Father is in me (in the heart of the individual) and I am in the Father (as are all things).

Neither is the Father male nor the Mother female. These designations were conventional teaching devices used by sages of old. There is no cosmic male, strictly speaking, and no cosmic female. The difference being pointed at is the same as the difference between movement (Mother) and rest (Father), sound and silence. Only the Father is not physical or material; everything else, no matter at how sublime or refined a level it exists, can be said to be physical or material when compared to the Father.

5. The Father made the material domain lawful. The most important law for us to know is the Law of Karma, which requires that what we do unto others shall be done unto us.

The material domain is the only domain in which law applies. Law does not apply to the Maker of the law, although He may submit to be governed by the law as in the case of an Avatar. The Mother is the “Voice crying in the Wilderness,” the sound of Aum/Amen echoing throughout the Phenomenal domain as the music of the spheres, which creates, preserves, and transforms all things. The Father is the Wilderness in that no law can bind Him.

The most important law for us to attend to as Third-Dimensional beings is the Law of Karma. The Law of Karma is like guardrails which prevent a vehicle from leaving the road. It keeps the individual soul from going too far to the left or right and ensures that the individual keeps moving forward towards the destined return of the Prodigal Child to God, once it tires of all experiences in the material world.

6. The form of our total journey is a sacred arc, like Jacob’s Ladder, away from and back to God. But, day by day, we also follow a spiritual spiral, returning to the same karmic lessons repeatedly until we learn them.

As Jesus said, we come out from the Father into the world, remain for a while, and then return to the Father in what can be conceived of as an arc. When I had my vision of the purpose of life, in 1987, the form of the individual’s journey out from God and back to God again formed a wide arc or circle.

Nonetheless, the Law of Karma ensures that we return to the same lessons again and again until at last we learn them and this return through successive lifetimes can be seen as a spiral. Thus the shape of life, if you will, can be visualized as a spiraling arc or circular coil. This virtually endless journey is depicted in many religions as a ladder of consciousness or a stairway of existence which we travel down and then up.

7. From one day to the next, we may expand or contract, but all the while we are cosmically drawn back to Him by a sub-sensible, eternal longing, planted there by Him, for Him: a longing for liberation (for more on this, see “The Longing for Liberation”).

The longing for liberation is just one of the design elements built or hardwired into life forms. Most people, experiencing this subsensible tidal yearning, try to fill it with possessions, experiences, relationships, and so on. But God so designed life that nothing will satisfy it except the return to God. We go through life endlessly acquiring, enjoying and casting aside, ever unsatisfied, in an endless cycle of desire. This develops discrimination in us. Gradually we are made aware that nothing but God will satisfy our ineffable thirst and hunger. Then we develop detachment. At that point we cease to be prodigal children and begin our return to the Father, who welcomes us with open arms.

This longing then acts as a homing beacon or magnet on all life forms, no matter how exalted, drawing them ever onwards until they merge again with God. Hence the love in the eyes of saints towards God and the deep devotion of exalted beings, in whom the longing for liberation acts more strongly than in us.

8. In the cosmic Drama, there are three Actors we must realize: God the Father, God the Mother, and God the Child. These are the Transcendental, the Phenomenal, and the Transcendental in the Phenomenal. Christians call them (note the change in order) the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Hindus call them Brahman, Atman, and Shakti. The Formless became two Forms. The One made trillions of forms through the agency of the Two and then mysteriously entered into them. We are required to know that Trinity.

The “Holy Persons” are not persons, but levels of reality. They can be described as the Transcendental, the Phenomenal, and the Transcendental in the Phenomenal. We are the Transcendental in the Phenomenal, sparks of divinity who reside in the womb of the Mother until our divine birth. The Mother educates her children in the school of life until they are ready to be brought to meet the Father.

All religions have a conception of this Holy Trinity, though it may take some digging to correlate terms. We “know” the three levels in successively-higher experiences of enlightenment. We know the Son, Christ, or Atman in the experience of “stream entering” or “spiritual awakening” when the kundalini reaches the fourth or heart chakra.

We know the Mother in an experience of savikalpa samadhi or cosmic consciousness when the kundalini reaches the sixth or brow chakra (and the Third eye opens).

We know the Father first in an experience of kevalya nirvikalpa samadhi when the kundalini reaches the seventh or crown chakra and permanently in an experience of sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi when the energy reaches the spiritual heart or hridayam.

The Christ or Atman is often called the “Self,” which leads us to say that we cannot know God until we become knowers of the Self. Translated that means we cannot have the experience of seventh-chakra enlightenment until we have the experience of fourth-chakra enlightenment. Therefore know Thyself. Meditate on the Self that is known and it will become the knowledge of God. All of Jesus’s parables about the treasure buried in a field, the pearl of great price, the mustard seed, and the measure of meal concern this journey of enlightenment.

Knowledge of these three levels of Reality is required of all beings before they graduate from humannness.. Their knowledge represents a progressive accomplishment. There is not simply one enlightenment or one level of enlightenment, but many. And beyond humannness there are also many further gradations of life.

9. Everyone will reach Him – some in the morning; some in the afternoon; and some in the evening. Experiences will vary, but all will eventually know God.

No one will fail to return to God. Even the very small number who choose such evil that they are liquidated can be said to return to God. For all the rest, they journey at varying speeds to enlightenment. I’m led to believe that God does not worry about the time it takes us to return. There is no dishonor at taking more time than our neighbor. Moreover, different beings are created at different times. Those who are reaching enlightenment when we do not may have been created earlier than we. Those people who reach enlightenment without rigorous discipline probably practiced rigorous discipline in other lives. Others are already enlightened and return in an unenlightened condition to serve by demonstrating what spiritual practice looks like.

10. Every genuine path will work. God plays all roles and observes all actions. He has become many; next to Him, there is none.

There is no religion or spiritual practice that is invalid, if genuine and sincerely followed. Some cults and orders may have dark purposes but the spiritual experiences of all genuine masters, translated into religious teachings (if rendered and maintained purely) are all acceptable in God’s eyes. There is only one God. The God of the Christians is the God of the Muslims and God of the Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Taoists, Sufis, etc. God is One but His names are many. Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God. The Lord is One, without a second. There is none else besides God.

Some will see Light; others will see a “form” of God; still others may have an intuitive sense of knowing. All genuine paths sincerely followed lead to God. God, through the Mother, designed the many paths to suit the various tastes of seekers, but all are efficacious. There is no ground to say that one religion or path is superior to another. There is nothing that supports the belief that the earnest followers of one religion will reach God and the earnest followers of another will not. God is on no side and on all sides.

11. In His love, He is universal, impartial, and supreme. What He wills must happen. He decreed this Drama for His own Pleasure. Each time someone knows its Self — “Oh Thou I!” — God meets God!

God loves all life forms – human, non-human, subhuman, superhuman. He makes no distinction among life forms. His Will must prevail. All is happening within His Being. He created the drama or lila for His own pleasure, a game of blind man’s bluff (or buff), in which God plays all roles and is the object of the search as well as the searcher and the search. Only God can realize God. Whenever anyone realizes God, that one simply realizes itself and the Self that it realizes is God.

I could now relax my grip on the rudder

Back when the Divine Mother confirmed that the level of enlightenment associated with Ascension was indeed sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi, she asked me to promise to explain the matter to readers and I did. (1)

When I asked Sri Shankara to confirm two matters on An Hour with an Angelthis week, (2) I told myself that it would be advisable to explain those two matters to readers as well. But let me work my way up to them please.

Sri Shankara acknowledges that he and all the other masters are returning in the name of unity and reunification. He says:

“My purpose, as you know, is unity. Now, that is going to be a theme of all the masters. So let me be clear about this. There is not one master that returns … that does not come with a theme of unification.” (3)

You can see more and more of the returning masters saying that they’re here to serve the cause of unity. Next week on An Hour with an Angel, we’ll hear from the new Buddha, who also is here to serve it. And certainly the Lord Maitreya said it as well. (4)

I’ve called the cause of the reunification of the world’s religions “cross-cultural spirituality” and have done as much as I could to promote it. (5) Leibniz, Huxley and others have called it the Perennial Philosophy. (6) Helena Blavatsky called it Theosophy and Annie Beasant, referring to the same body of knowledge, called it the Ancient Wisdom. (7)

For me, the relationship that holds the key to the reunification of the world’s religions is this: What Christians call the Father, Son and Holy Ghost = What Hindus call Brahman, Atman and Shakti. These three terms refer not to persons (except in the divine sense) but to levels of reality, each with their own level of enlightenment (within Third Dimensionality).

They could be described as the Transcendent (the Father, Brahman), the Phenomenal (the Holy Ghost, Shakti, the Divine Mother) and the Transcendent within the Phenomenal (the Son, the Christ, the Atman, the Self). I’ve discussed the three elsewhere, at some length, and don’t wish to do that again here. (8)

By “Transcendent” I mean that which transcends the material world, the world of matter,mater, Mother. By “Phenomenal,” I mean the world of matter.

What I wish to do here is to underline that these three levels of reality are known to all sages, but called by different names. Lao Tzu knew the Mother and called the Father “the Way.” (9) Buddha called the Father the “not-born” and our “common essence.” (10) I’m prepared to argue that his name for the Mother was Dharma. She is the universal law.

We could work our way through the sages of other religions finding the names they used for the three levels of reality. In that way we could link up the world’s religions and render their sayings equivalent.

Now I mentioned a second threesome: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Why? Well, I used to conduct unofficial research while in India asking people who the equivalent was of the Christian Trinity and they would respond with what is called in Hinduism the Trimurthy (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva).

I’d reply that the Trimurthy was not the equivalent. (These next comments are meant specifically for Indians rather than the rest of the world.)

The Trimurthy is a subset of Shakti. One has to realize that Shakti or “energy” is the active phase of the passive Father, Brahman. And by the same token each of the members of the Trimurthy is itself a subphase of Shakti.

Given that Shakti or “energy” is a sine wave known as Aum, then Brahma is the energetic phase of that sine wave (Akar) associated with creation, or rajas. Vishnu is is the energetic phase of that sine wave (Ukar) associated with preservation, or sattwa. And Shiva is the energetic phase of that sine wave (Makar) associated with transformation, or thamas. I apologize if my western readers don’t understand what I just said.

Now I know that asking Hindus to accept what I just said may require a tremendous amount of adjustment, but adjustment of this kind is being asked of all religions at this time. It’s the price of the reconciliation and reunification of the world’s religions, or more specifically of spirituality.

It’ll take a tremendous amount of adjustment for Christians as well to accept that, when Jesus said “I am the truth, the way and the life,” he was not speaking about himself as Jesus, but of the Self, the Christ, the Atman. If Jesus wasn’t speaking as Jesus, then where is the foundation for saying only the followers of Jesus will be saved? It’s no longer there.

We’ll all need to adjust in the time ahead if we want to release the truth from its metaphorical packaging.

You heard Sri Shankara say that both these conjectures were correct. (11) Hearing him say that was for me the culmination of research that had been underway since 1977.

But leaving that aside, I now can say with greater certainty that these two relationships contain, I believe, the key to reunifying the world’s religions.

Father, Son and Holy Ghost = Brahman, Atman and Shakti, ≠ Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

Given that we’re all going to be involved in the work of creating world unity, perhaps I can share more of the impact on me of reaching this stage of having Adi Shankara corroborate this relationship. I’ve felt jubilant but very weary as a result of reaching it. It was as if I had gained the farther shore, at least in my spiritual research, and could now relax my grip on the rudder.

I felt the same way when the Divine Mother acknowledged that sahaja was the level of enlightenment associated with Ascension. At last a critical piece of research had been confirmed. All else is built upon the foundation of key points like these. And there are not many people in the world I can share these matters with. Most people I share them with stare at me with blank incomprehension.

So this is my expansion on the exchange that happened, this time with Sri Shankara. I report this simply because you also may be finding yourself in work of a similar nature in the incredible times ahead of us.

Footnotes

(1) See “The Divine Mother: Come to Me as I Come to You – Part ½,” Oct. 17, 2012, athttp://goldenageofgaia.com/2012/10/the-divine-mother-come-to-me-as-i-come-to-you-part-12/. See also “Archangel Michael: Detailed Instructions for Dec. 21, 2012 and After,” athttp://goldenageofgaia.com/2012/12/archangel-michael-detailed-instructions-for-dec-21-2012-and-after/.

(2) Steve: Let me ask you two questions that you don’t need to take a long time to answer. I’ll ask them both at the same time. And the first is, is what Hindus call Brahman, Atman and Shakti the same as what Christians call the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? And the second is, what is the connection between what Hindus call Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, and the gunas or the cosmic forces of rajas, sattwa and tamas?

Sri Shankara: I can answer this very quickly. There are no differences. (“Sri Shankara: Everywhere You Look Will be a Monsoon of Love,” June 26, 2013, athttp://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/06/sri-shankara-everywhere-you-look-will-be-a-monsoon-of-love/.

(3) Loc. cit.

(4) “Maitreya: I am Among Many who Return to Walk Among You,” June 4, 2013, athttp://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/06/maitreya-i-am-among-many-who-return-to-walk-among-you/.

(5) See “Cross-Cultural Spirituality” at http://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/cross-cultural-spirituality/.

(6) See “The Perennial Philosophy” at http://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/back-to-the-basics-2/the-perennial-philosophy/.

(7) Wisdom is a name used by Moses, Solomon, Isaiah and others to indicate the Divine Mother. Blavatsky and Besant use the term “Theosophy” (the wisdom of God) for the “Ancient Wisdom” but it’s really another way of saying “the Divine Mother.” Here’s Solomon on the subject:

“Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.” (Proverbs 9:1.)

“Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding.
For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold.
She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.
Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour.
Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.
She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.” (Proverbs 3: 13-18.)

(8) See Footnote 3.

(9) “It began with a matrix:
The world had a mother.” (Lao-Tzu, The Way of Life. The Tao Te Ching. trans. R.B. Blakney. New York, etc.: Avon, 1975, 105.)

“Nameless indeed is the source of creation,
But things have a mother and she has a name.” (Lao-Tzu, WOL, 53.)

(10) “Monks, there is a not-born, a not-become, a not-made, a not-compounded. Monks, if that unborn, not-become, not-made, not-compounded were not, there would be apparent no escape from this, here, that is born, become, made, compounded.” (The Buddha in Trevor Ling, The Buddha’s Philosophy of Man. Early Indian Buddhist Dialogues. London, etc.: Dent, 1981, xiii.)

“There is but one common essence.” (The Buddha in Dwight Goddard, A Buddhist Bible. Boston: Beacon Press, 1966; c1938, 283.)

The Soul Is Never Tired
Written by Jafree Ozwald
www.EnlightenedBeings.com

"When you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing, then the
Supreme State will come to you uninvited and unexpected." ~ Nisargadatta

An infinite source of energy is all around you right now. You may not be aware of it, because you may be paying attention to your mind and all the other super important things it's focusing upon. Yet, there is a source of divine powerful conscious intelligent electric energy here that they call our Soul, and when you have full access to it you can create ANYTHING you want in your life! First you must be willing to stop leaking your energy by following all the 60,000 thoughts passing through your head each day, and simply be present to this inexhaustible connection that is within your innermost being. It's ironic that one could so easily miss experiencing this great power inside, as this divine energy is closer to us than our next thought, breath and heartbeat. Yet, if we try to find our Soul using the mind, it simply won't work. We will overlook it because the mind is too small, logical and narrow to truly comprehend and contain this vast multi-dimensional spiritual energy.

Your Soul can only be found by surrendering the mind. When you open yourself to having a deeply intimate and personal connection to the greatest loving healing forgiving and accepting energy you can imagine, then your Soul connection comes rushing in. It's not that the Soul could ever leave you. It is always here now, connected to the all the energy, intelligence and consciousness throughout the Universe. It is always plugged into an infinite source of love and creativity. Your Soul lives in a palace of peace, abundance and true happiness about everything, for this eternal energy is the very foundation of it's core. Once we let go of the mind completely, we see our suffering goes away with it, and we feel this infinite connection to an energy that has no end to it.

Your Soul has no beginning and no end, and so it cannot enter a state where it could lack energy. Since it has an infinite supply of life energy bubbling up from it's core, the Soul can never be tired. The Soul doesn't know what it feels like to be lacking anything, as it's always connecting to a direct spiritual line of inexhaustible divine energy. Any form of tiredness or suffering that we experience in life is because we are living in the mind. We have believed in certain concepts about who we are, who we are not, and have forgotten that we are truly this eternal Soul.

If we look inside our mind, we'll see that we have been fed misguided information along the path, and educated by society to believe that we are this body that one day will die. We have not been taught by the world to believe we are eternal beings. If everyone truly believed this, there would never be another argument, struggle or war on this planet. We would know only peace of being an infinite energy. If you spend enough time alone in silence, and look deep enough inside yourself, you will one day realize that you truly are not this body nor this mind. It won't come from the intellect, it will come from a deeper place inside. You'll watch your thoughts passing through the brain and notice your feelings arising in the body, yet you will know that who you are is the eternal experiencer who is always in this moment, having some type of life experience.

Once we stop becoming so identified with the mind and body, we create space to experience ourselves as the Soul which is connecting to an infinite source of energy. The problem is that the mind tends to strongly believe in certain thoughts and then the body FEELS those thoughts to be reality. The mind watches a movie of a violent scene and the body starts to tense up, contract it's muscles and prepare for the perceived battle. The body is always reacting to the mind with specific sensations, gestures and emotions. The mind has simply become too involved with the being identified as the body, so we believe that we are those sensations and nothing more. Even though we know deep down that every experience in life will soon pass, the mind gets identified with every thought and experience... until it is truly liberated. This is what self-realization is all about. When we realize the truth of who we are, this eternal being who is never attached, never over-identified, never suffers, and can never die, then we are free. From this place it's easy to see how ridiculous it is to get over-identified with anything of this world, and we stop the mind's identification habit in it's tracks.

"It is the most beautiful moment in one's life when there is neither confusion nor certainty. One simply is a mirror reflecting that which is. With no direction to go anywhere, with no idea of doing something, with no future - just utterly in the moment, tremendously in the moment." ~Osho

To truly transcend the mind, a soft loving vigilant awareness is the key. When we can consistently return to the realization that we are the source of pure awareness, that which is untouched and untainted by everything, then our Soul starts flooding it's eternal source of amazing energy through our body. When the mind and it's belief systems are no longer the priority, they stop obscuring the view of the Soul who is standing on the peak of the mountain, and we discover that we always were this eternal being. This knowing is what instigates a deep spiritually liberating experience inside.

What's interesting about the mind is that it can be quite stubborn, and will attempt to pull you back into it's temporal time bound challenged reality again and again and again. Whenever you try to transcend the mind with using the mind, the mind will resist. This resistance is to be expected and welcomed as it will force you to become stronger and force you to go deeper in your realization of your real Soul Nature. With practice relaxing into it, there will come a day when the mind will surrender and give up it's relentless tiresome attempt of being right. You'll find one early afternoon that you truly are free. The mind will have accepted that you truly are an infinite spiritual being having an occasional human experience, instead of a limited time bound being having an occasional spiritual experience.

The long gruesome internal struggle with the mind is essential if we deem our freedom from is worthy and valuable. The caterpillar who is about to leave the cocoon must wiggle, squirm and work hard before it's wings are strong enough to support it's ability to fly. The newly planted banyan tree seed must be buried deep in the dark cold dirt, suppressed by the gravity of the heavy damp earth, in order for it to crack it's shell and sprout up to reach the first light of the Sun. The birth of every human baby undergoes a tremendous amount of exertion, which forces it to boost it's antibodies and immune system so that it can handle the toxic elements of this world and survive. You'll find that within every birth in life there is some form of struggle, and it is within this struggle that a deeper connection to spirit is created, which is exactly what every being needs to survive.

My invitation for you this week is to notice where you are struggling most in your life and welcome that experience fully. Become the caterpillar growing your wings. Don't try to avoid, control or resist what you're going through for there is a deeper lesson inside it for you. No matter whether it's the biggest mental, emotional or physical challenge you've ever had, say "Thank You" to it and dive into the experience and through to the other side. If it gets too intense, just step back from it a bit and take a full body breath, and then notice what emotions the mind has become identified with. You'll soon improve your ability to face anything hiding inside you, no matter how dark or depressing it may be.

(Continued from Part 2.)

I’d like to conclude our look at the Perennial Philosophy with three views of it: that of the religious organizer Annie Besant, the Master Hilarion, and the scholar Aldous Huxley.

Annie Besant

This Divine Wisdom is spoken of as the Wisdom, the Gnosis, the Theosophia, and some, in different ages of the world, have so desired to emphasize their belief in this unity of religions that they have preferred the eclectic name of Theosophist to any narrower designation. (1)

The main spiritual verities of religion may be summarized thus:

i. [There is] one eternal infinite cognizable real Existence.

ii. From That, the manifested God [unfolds] from unity to duality, from duality to trinity.

iii. From the manifested Trinity many spiritual Intelligences [guide] the cosmic order.

iv. Man [is] a reflection of the manifested God and therefore a trinity fundamentally, his inner real self being eternal, one with the Self of the universe.

v. His evolution [proceeds] by repeated incarnations, into which he is drawn by desire, and from which he is set free by knowledge and sacrifice, becoming divine in potency as he had ever been divine in latency. (2)

The Master Hilarion

The soul of a man is immortal, and its future is the future of a thing whose growth and splendor have no limit.

The principle which gives life dwells in us and without us, is undying and eternally beneficent, is not heard or seen or smelt, but is perceived by the man who desires perception.

Each man is his own absolute lawgiver, the dispenser of glory or gloom to himself, the decreer of his life, his reward, his punishment. (3)

Aldous Huxley

Philosophia perennis — the phrase was coined by Leibniz; but the thing — the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being — the thing is immemorial and universal.

Rudminents of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditionary lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions. A version of this Highest Common Factor in all preceding and subsequent theologies was first committed to writing more than twenty-five centuries ago, and since that time the inexhaustible theme has been treated again and again, from the standpoint of every religious tradition and in all the principle languages of Asia and Europe. (3)

In Vedanta and Hebrew prophecy, in the Tao Teh King and the Platonic dialogues, in the Gospel according to St. John and Mahayana theology, in Plotinus and the Areopagite, among the Persian Sufis and the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance — the Perennial Philosophy has spoken almost all the languages of Asia and Europe and has made use of the terminology and traditions of every one of the higher religions. …

The records left by those who have known [the pure state described by the Perennial Philosophy] make it abundantly clear that all of them, whether Hindu, Buddhist, Hebrew, Taoist, Christian or Mohammedan, were attempting to describe the same essentially indescribable Fact. (4)

At the core of the Perennial Philosophy we find four fundamental doctrines.

First: the phenomenal world of matter and of individualized consciousness — the world of things and animals and men and even gods — is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being, and apart from which they would be nonexistent.

Second: human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine Ground by inference; they can also realize its existence by a direct intuition, superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.

Third: man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul. It is possible for a man, if he so desires, to identify himself with the spirit and therefore with the Divine Ground, which is of the same or like nature with the spirit.

Fourth: man’s life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so to come to intuitive knowledge of the Divine Ground. (6)

Footnotes

(1) Annie Besant, Esoteric Christianity. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1953; c1901, 6.

(2) Besant, The Ancient Wisdom. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972; c1897 5-6.

(3) The Master Hilarion, channelling through Mabel Collins, The Idyll of the White Lotus. Wheaton, IL: Re Quest, 1974; c1952, 114.

(4) Aldous Huxley in The Perennial Philosophy. New York, etc.: Harper and Row, 1970; c1944, vii.

(5) Huxley, “Introduction” to Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans.,Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 11-2.