We don"t live in a society that gives credibility to what has been discussed here. Despite all the cliches about making your dreams come true, no one is really taught that success depends on your state of consciousness. Gurus and masters are scarce; the legacy of wisdom has been shelved in books. This means that almost anyone who strives spiritually must become his own guide. Even G.o.d, who is the real guide, becomes known as an aspect of the self. In this context, falling to a lower state of consciousness is felt as a real and present danger, for you risk losing the only relationship that ultimately matters, that between you and yourself. In reality this can never happen, but the shadow of evil still lurks over stage five.
Maslow argued that the whole problem of evil boils down to needs that persist in unconscious form from our past. n.a.z.i Germany was a country devastated by war and economic turmoil in the 1920s. We know from the biographies of Hitler and Stalin that they were abused as children, denied love. Eventually these frustrated needs took the form of cruelty, paranoia, and oppression. Common unhappiness comes from lower needs being unmet; evil comes from all being unmet.
Stage five amplifies our power so much that misusing it would amount to evil. Leaders who have a hypnotic hold over their followers go beyond ordinary persuasion. They have hit upon a source of power that crosses the boundaries of ident.i.ty; in some way the leader actually infiltrates the "I" of his listener. Anyone who has entered stage five deeply fears having that kind of influence, for it amounts to letting one"s own unconscious desires take over. Clarity is lost in the intoxication of power, without the person realizing that a destructive child is playing with the controls of the mind. The evil that results can be traced back to a lower level of awareness, exactly the thing most feared.
What is my life challenge? ...
To align with the Creator.
There is more than one way to arrive at any goal, and not all are sacred.
Jesus was born into a world of magicians and miracles. He by no means invented all the powers that can accomplish things beyond the five senses.
In those episodes where he drives out demons or defeats the sorcerer known as Simon Magus, Jesus draws a line between G.o.d"s way and other ways. Magic is not seen as holy.
In the late nineteenth century a famous English performer named Daniel Dunglas Home developed the amazing ability to walk on air. He could, for example, exit out through a tall window seventy feet off the ground and come back in through the adjoining one. Home performed this feat widely and did not charge or accept fees. Later in life he converted to Catholicism, but was excommunicated when he revealed that he had accomplished his air walk with the aid of "discarnate spirits" using him as their medium.
I offer this anecdote at face value, without comment about how Home accomplished what he did (no definitive debunking was ever done, although skeptics point out that he usually insisted on performing in dimly lit rooms). For ages the distinction between holy and unholy power has been made. Is it valid? If G.o.d is all-encompa.s.sing, does he care how any power is attained?
I would say that the question has to be reframed. If we a.s.sume that our quantum model holds good, then nothing is unholy. Beyond right and wrong, the Creator may permit us to explore anything he himself has allowed to exist.
Yet it wouldn"t be good to attain any level of consciousness that does not bring benefit to yourself, and since you do not know how your soul"s journey has been mapped out, deciding what is good or bad for you shouldn"t be left to your ego. The ego always wants to acc.u.mulate and acquire; it wants to be safe; it hates uncertainty. Yet on the road of evolution there are periods of great uncertainty and even lack of safety.
Therefore the challenge is to align with a higher intention for yourself-G.o.d"s will.
In stage five, although one may be able to make almost any wish come true, the ones that should come true matter more. Here we are guided to increase bliss, love, charity to others, and peaceful existence on the planet. An inner sense of rightness must be cultivated; an inner sense of ego must be diminished. Power never arrives in a vacuum. The larger will that rules events always tries to make itself known. If you align with it, the path through this phase is smooth; if you don"t, there are many ups and downs, and your ability to manifest your desires can run into as many obstacles as it overcomes.
What is my greatest strength? ...
Imagination.
What is my biggest hurdle? ...
Self-importance.
Artists who create with paint or music start with a blank canvas or page; they go inward and an image appears, at first faint but growing. The image carries a feeling with it of wanting to be born. If the inspiration is genuine, this impression never fades. Creator, creation, and the process of creating are fused. I would call this the literal meaning of imagination; it is much more than having a nice idea you would like to carry out.
In stage five the fusing isn"t complete. The greatest artists still suffer pangs of doubt and failure of inspiration. So do co-creators. In particular, there is the danger of trying to take over the process, which severs the alliance with G.o.d. Self-importance can halt progress for a long time. This is easy to trace in artists: reading a biography of Ernest Hemingway, you cringe as the balance of ego and genius tragically shifts.
A writer gifted beyond measure in his thirties, Hemingway describes how his stories wrote themselves, how in magical moments he stood aside from the process and allowed it to happen. In the same mental state, the poet William Blake declared, "My words are mine and yet not mine."
Over the years, this delicacy of awareness departed, and Hemingway descended into a much more ordinary kind of struggle. Immersed in the labor of writing, he churned out ma.s.sive ma.n.u.scripts that were products of confused labor. On the spiritual plane the danger of losing the connection looms for anyone still in the grip of self-importance. Eventually Hemingway succ.u.mbed to failure and self-destruction. The G.o.d of stage five is more forgiving; no one is ever deprived of the evolutionary impulse.
Struggles with self-importance can last a long time, but they always end once the person finds a way to give more of the responsibility back to G.o.d. In other words, the way to power is to give up power. This is the great lesson the ego is confronted with in this phase.
What is my greatest temptation? ...
Solipsism.
The power to make your wishes come true is very real, but it is as much feared as desired. This fear is succinctly stated in the saying "Be careful what you wish for-it might come true." And many people do find themselves feeling ambivalent when they get the dreamed-for job or the dreamed-for wife. I say that this is really a false danger, however; the nature of inner growth is that as you gain more power, you deserve to have it. If something comes true that has its disadvantages, the balance of good and bad reflects your own awareness. This we will discuss in stage six, where actual miracles become possible.
What"s much more dangerous here is solipsism, believing that only your mind is real, while all objects out there in the world are mirages that depend upon you, the perceiver, and without you they would melt away. Some paranoid schizophrenics suffer from precisely this illusion, and will go to any lengths to stay awake, so great is their fear that nodding off will bring the world to an end.
In stage five the temptation is to stay locked in yourself. I mentioned that when desire becomes most efficient, no outer struggle is needed. It is as if G.o.d takes over and things unfold on automatic pilot. But this cannot become an excuse for lethargy. The person still plays his part.
Paradoxically, he may go through the same motions as someone who doesn"t have any awareness of being a co-creator. The difference takes place inside one"s mind. To a co-creator, life has a true flow; things are connected in patterns and rhythms; all details make sense.
When this point of view is alive, all work becomes deeply satisfying. One is no longer obsessed with failure or performance anxiety. More important, the achieved result brings fulfillment. This is lost, however, if you fall into solipsism. The ego, as it takes charge of holding the world together, forgets that creation depends upon grace. Stage five isn"t really measured by how much you can achieve. Someone who achieves close intimacy with G.o.d may choose to accomplish very little. But no matter what is achieved, there is a constant feeling of being blessed. This becomes the object of all desiring, not the outward show.
STAGE SIX:.
G.o.d OF MIRACLES.
(Visionary Response) G.o.d the Creator gave open access to the entire cosmos, including its dark places and secret compartments. To accept his generosity, a person must also be unafraid of his own dark places, and this is rarely the case. Who can see himself purely as a child of light? I once read in an inspirational book the following: This is a recreational universe. Your ability to play in it is limited only by how much you can appreciate. On reading these words it occurred to me that the world"s greatest saints and masters may be simply enjoying themselves. They have the ability to live in the light while the rest of us cannot.
It is hard to imagine yourself as a citizen of the universe, utterly without hindrance and limitation. The Catholic Church recognizes dozens of saints who could levitate, be in two places at once, emit light from their bodies as they prayed, and perform healings. (As late as the 1950s parishioners in Los Angeles testified to seeing their priest rise from the ground when he lost himself in the pa.s.sion of his sermon.) Yet for all their miracles, or because of them, we think of saints as being without fun, loving relationships, s.e.xual impulses. It"s impossible to imagine a saint with money and a good car. Without the right appurtenances-white robe, sandals, a halo of virtue-the enlightened need not apply.
In stage six all of these a.s.sumptions are tested. Full-blown miracles are now possible. Here we accept G.o.d"s invitation to transform material existence, and there is ecstatic joy in that. For example, one of the most charming saintly souls in recent times was a nun of the late Victorian era named Sister Marie of Jesus Crucified, who lived among the Carmelites near Bethlehem. She had been born a poor Arab in the region, one Mariam Baouardy, and worked as a housemaid before taking her vows. (2) Upon entering the convent in 1874 it was discovered that this novice had the alarming habit of suddenly swooping up to the tops of trees, where she flitted from branch to branch like a bird. Some of the twigs she landed on were not strong enough to hold a bird. This feat embarra.s.sed Mariam, since she had no way of predicting or controlling her ecstasies, and on at least one occasion (eight were observed in total), Mariam timidly asked her companion to turn her back and not look.
In her ecstatic state, the "little one," as Mariam was known, sang constantly in praise of G.o.d. The prioress in charge, rather than falling to her knees in awe, ordered Mariam to come back to earth immediately.
At the moment she heard the word "obedience," the ecstatic came down "with a radiant face" and perfect modesty, stopping at several branches to chant "Love!"...
"Why do you rise like this?" the Mother Superior interrogated her.
"The Lamb [Christ] carries me in his hands," Mariam answered. "If I obey quickly, the tree becomes like this," and she put her hand close to the ground.
Somewhere in a remote corner of the world, someone whose name is completely unknown to us is taking flight, I am sure. The fact that skeptics deny the existence of miracles matters not at all. The existence of miracles announces the G.o.d of stage six, who has the following qualities: Transformative Mystical Enlightened Beyond all causes Existing Healing Magical Alchemist Words can convey only a hint of the Being we are talking about. A G.o.d of miracles is buried so deep in the quantum world that even those who have spent years in prayer and meditation may have detected no trace of him.
The material world is set up to do without his presence, which makes the G.o.d of miracles profoundly mystical even by religious standards. Was Jesus exaggerating when he made his most dramatic claim about the powers G.o.d can bestow?
I tell you this: if you have faith no bigger than a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, "Move from here to there," and it will move; nothing will prove impossible for you.
There is an explanation for this promise. The most mystical of the gospels is the Book of John. Consider its description of creation: "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with G.o.d, and the word was G.o.d."
In other parts of the Bible, a writer who wanted to refer to divine wisdom would call it "the word," but here John says "the word is G.o.d." Clearly no ordinary word is implied. Something like the following is meant: Before there was time and s.p.a.ce, a faint vibration existed outside the cosmos.
This vibration had everything contained in it-all universes, all events, all time and s.p.a.ce. This primordial vibration was with G.o.d. As far as we can fathom, it is G.o.d. Divine intelligence was compressed in this "word,"
and when the time came for the universe to be born, the "word" transformed itself into energy and matter.
In stage six, a person returns to the word, in all its primordial power, to discover the source. Behind everything is a vibration-not in the sense of a sound or an energy wave, because those are material, but a "mother vibration" at the virtual level that includes everything. In India the sound of the divine mother took the name om, and it is believed that meditating on this sound will unlock all the mother"s secrets. Perhaps om is the very word John is referring to. No one will know for sure who hasn"t arrived at stage six. But we can imagine it because the greatest miracle workers tend to have disciples, and in all ages disciples say much the same thing about a sacred master: Being in his presence is enough to change your life.
The G.o.d of miracles is transformative.
There is a holy aura about the master that the mind cannot fathom. The G.o.d of miracles is mystical.
A sacred master exhibits higher states of consciousness. The G.o.d of miracles is enlightened.
The master"s actions follow a secret reasoning that sometimes makes no sense to his followers. The G.o.d of miracles is beyond all causes.
The master purifies other people of their imperfections and may be able to cure illness. The G.o.d of miracles is healing.
The master can perform wonders that defy explanation. The G.o.d of miracles is magical.
The master may be interested in esoteric science.
The G.o.d of miracles is an alchemist.
These qualities don"t tell us, however, about the inner workings of a saint"s mind. What brain mechanism, if any, gives visions of G.o.d and makes miracles possible? All we really have is scattered clues. Some researchers have speculated that the two hemispheres of the brain become completely balanced in higher states of consciousness. A yogic tradition holds that the breath also becomes balanced; instead of favoring one nostril, a person finds that a soft, faint breath rhythm flows from both. Another speculation holds that the brain becomes more "coherent," meaning that the wave patterns that are usually jumbled and disconnected fall in synch, rather like the synchronized beating of millions of heart cells during normal cardiac rhythm. But such coherence has been rarely spotted and is open to dispute.
So what we are left with is an elusive brain function that I will call the visionary response. It is marked by the ability to change energy states outside the body, causing objects and events to be transformed. As vague as that sounds, to someone in stage six, miracles are as easy as any other mental process. No brain researcher has come within miles of describing the necessary shift that must be achieved to perform a miracle.
Once you admit the existence of the visionary response, it is fascinating to learn how important symbols and images are. Healing, for example, is never the same from one culture to the next. In our culture the human heart is seen as a machine-the old ticker-that wears out over time. We fix it through mechanical repairs, as one might a worn-out clock. So when we find out that widowers have a high incidence of sudden death from heart attacks, the fact that sadness can kill doesn"t compute very well. Not many sad machines die.
In certain regions of the Amazon, the body is considered an extension of the jungle. In this environment ants are carriers of bad things-toxins, poisons, rotted food, etc. According to an account by a visiting anthropologist, a villager once came to the local medicine man with a swollen abscess in his jaw due to a rotting tooth. The medicine man tied a string around it, and immediately a troop of large ants emerged from the man"s mouth and marched down the string. They carried away the poison, and the villager recovered without having his tooth extracted.
Symbols aside, how did this healing work? One is reminded of the psychic surgeons of the Philippines, who seem to penetrate a patient"s body with their hands and pull out all manner of b.l.o.o.d.y tissue, none of it anything that would be seen inside a body at autopsy. In many cases patients report that they can actually feel the surgeon"s fingers, and dramatic recoveries have been reported.
In quantum terms we can offer an explanation for what medicine men are accomplishing on the outskirts of the miraculous. The medicine man is not using hypnosis, but at the same time he isn"t operating on the physical plane, either. As we know from our quantum model, any object can be reduced to packets of energy. Up to now, however, our consciousness could not change these invisible patterns of photons except in a very limited way. We can imagine a healthy body, for example, but that image doesn"t keep us from getting sick. The medicine man turns a mental image into physical reality-in fact, this is what all miracle workers do. At the quantum level they "see" a new result, and in that vision the new result emerges.
A power struggle ensues, and the medicine man must be more powerful than his patient in order to make any kind of permanent change in his condition. What he is trying to alter are the energy patterns that have become distorted, thus causing the disease. A rotten tooth, a tumor, or a detached retina are all a cl.u.s.ter of photons, a warped image made of light.
The key question is not whether a medicine man is real or fake but how powerful his consciousness is, for he alone makes the patient enter into altered reality with him, along with any nearby observers. I have to emphasize "nearby" because this is a field effect, and just as a magnet can attract iron only at a certain distance, the miracle worker has a limited range of ability. It is even said that having too many people in the room can defeat the phenomenon. The lump of consciousness that they form is too large to handle, like a lump of iron too large for a magnet to pull.
When the Virgin Mary appeared near Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, a huge crowd estimated at seventy thousand gathered for the apparition, which had been promised to three local peasant children. Those closest to the children reported that the sun whirled in the sky and dove toward the earth in a rainbow radiance, but others farther away saw only a bright light, and at a greater distance nothing at all was witnessed. The children themselves fell to their knees and talked with Mary herself.
When the wonder is over, the observer leaves the miracle worker"s sphere of influence. The field effect no longer works, so everyone recaptures his normal state of awareness. The transition can be b.u.mpy-some people faint or feel dizzy. The miraculous world fades, giving rise to a sense of vagueness over what actually happened. At the level of ordinary life, the events remain baffling, hence the widespread skepticism over holy apparitions, psychic surgeons, and jungle medicine men. But the visionary response describes another level of consciousness where energy patterns are shifting with every thought. The fact that these shifts change the outer world is amazing to us but natural to the person in stage six.
Who am I? ...
Enlightened awareness.
We have come a long way with the question "Who am I?" Starting with the physical body in stage one and steadily moving to less physical planes, now we arrive at nothing but awareness. "I" am not even the mind, only the light. My ident.i.ty floats in a quantum fog as photons wink in and out of existence. Observing these shifting patterns, I feel no attachment to any of them. They come and go; I am not even troubled by having no permanent home. It is enough to be bathed in the light.
Of the million ways you could define enlightenment, identifying with the light is a good one. Miracle workers do more than access energy patterns.
As the Vedas say, "This isn"t knowledge you learn; it"s knowledge you turn into." Jesus spoke in parables but could easily have been literal when he declared to his disciples, "You are the light of the world."
At any given moment, it is impossible to compute how many human beings have turned into miracle workers. According to mystical Judaism, thirty-six pure souls, known as the Lamed Vov, hold the world together, keeping G.o.d from destroying the sinners who offend him. Some sects in India reduce this number to seven enlightened masters at any one time.
However, we are also told in the Old Testament that G.o.d would spare Sodom and Gomorrah if fifty righteous men could be found, only to whittle the number down to one (Lot, whose wife was turned into a pillar of salt-but the cities were destroyed anyway). By implication, if you aspire to join any of these groups, your chances are slim. Is it plausible to hold out for enlightenment?
The vast majority of people have said no by their actions if not their words. It should be pointed out that miracle-working is accessible before sainthood. When you see any image in your brain, you are shifting reality.
A mental image is faint and quickly fades away, but no matter. The critical operation behind a miracle is one that you can perform. The difference between you and a miracle worker is that you do not create a strong enough force field to make your mental image project itself onto the outer world.
Even so, if you come into the force field of a greater soul, your reality can shift quickly. I heard an interesting account about a Western-trained doctor who had traveled into the depths of the Colombian rain forest.
While climbing the slippery rock face beside a waterfall, he lost his footing and took a severe fall. His back was injured to the extent that he couldn"t walk. The expedition was a hundred miles from the nearest town, and there were no phones or electricity.
For several days he rested in a small village, hoping that he might get free enough of pain to make it out on his own, but his condition worsened as the injured tissue became more inflamed. In desperation he finally agreed to allow a tribal shaman to work on him. The shaman came in and began to enter a trance, taking hallucinogenic herbs and chanting for several hours. In the middle of the ritual, the injured doctor found himself dozing and drifting off. When he awoke the shaman was gone, and so was his back pain. To his astonishment, he could stand up and walk as if nothing untoward had occurred.
"I have no idea how this happened," he recounted, "but I wonder about one thing. I had reached the point of total desperation before I permitted them to call this medicine man in. I didn"t believe in him, but at least I was willing not to disbelieve."
I think that this man closed the gulf between himself and the healer in a significant way. He permitted the shaman to go into the light without resistance. Some faith healers will often precede the laying on of hands by asking, "Do you believe that G.o.d can cure you?" From the larger perspective, no one has the power to keep G.o.d out totally. We can only open or close our acceptance of the light. It helps to create a process that will gently create more willingness to be open. No matter what doc.u.mentation is offered for miracles, many people will say, "But have you seen one yourself?" I have come as close as I need to, just recently, in fact. I have a cousin, a veteran of combat in Kashmir, who was struck with a virulent case of hepat.i.tis C a few years ago. We are a family of doctors, and he received every sort of treatment, including interferon, but to no avail. His platelet counts dropped alarmingly and his viral count from the hepat.i.tis soared.
A few months ago he turned to an energy healer in India, who pa.s.sed his hands over my cousin"s liver to extract the disease ent.i.ty. In a short time, his platelet counts were back to normal, his viral count had subsided, and there were no symptoms of any disease. To me this is a miracle. It seems to be a teachable one as well. You can take most people in our society and school them successfully in the art of "healing touch,"
which requires a pract.i.tioner to run her hands over the body a few inches over the skin to feel where there are energy hot spots (detected as a patch of warm air over that region). The pract.i.tioner then moves this excess energy to dispel it, and in many cases some healing is achieved, usually in the form of more rapid recovery than from conventional treatments.
Are there really warm patches over the diseased portions of our bodies? If so, why should that make any difference in a patient"s recovery? The answer depends on the fact that the basis of healing isn"t material but quantum. Things are real in the quantum world if you make them real, and that is done by manipulating light. With care and patience, anyone can be taught to do that; healing touch is only one mode. If we formed a school for teaching nurses how to get streams of jungle ants to emerge from a sick person"s mouth, some pupils would be decidedly talented at it.
Likewise, any miracle may be within reach, if only we begin to alter our conception of who we are and how our minds work.
How do I fit in?...
I love.
When he realizes that he is bathed in light, the feeling that comes over a miracle worker is one of intense love. This is because he is absorbing the qualities of spirit that the light contains. When Jesus said "I am the light," he meant "I"m totally in G.o.d"s force field." In India people from every walk of life are eager to put themselves in a saint"s force field, which is called darshan, a Sanskrit word that means to be in someone"s sight. A few years ago I went for darshan at the home of a woman saint outside Bombay known to her followers simply as Mother.
Her home was tiny, a brick bungalow in a small village. I was escorted upstairs to an even tinier sitting room where she was waiting on a sofa by the window. Her attendant, an older woman, waved me silently to a chair.
Mother herself, dressed in a gold sari and with large, expressive eyes, appeared to be around thirty. We all sat quietly. The warm drizzle outside turned to tropical rain; no other sound made itself felt. Time pa.s.sed, and I began to notice a wonderful sweetness in the room, which made my mind very peaceful. My eyes closed, but I was aware that Mother was looking at me. After half an hour, her attendant quietly asked if I had any questions to ask.
"Feel free," she said. "After all, you are talking to G.o.d. Whatever you ask she will take care of."
I didn"t find this startling. In India when a person reaches a state of consciousness that is completely intimate with G.o.d, he or she is respectfully referred to in this way. But I had no questions. I could feel without a doubt that this young woman was creating an atmosphere of her own that was very tender and loving. It offered such rea.s.surance that one could believe, at that moment, in a "mother energy" inherent in the universe.
In stage six all G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses are aspects of oneself expressed as fine energy states. I am not declaring myself a devotee when I say that Mother could make these energies felt. The only real surprise is that she could do this for a stranger, since we all feel the mother energy as children around our own mothers. In India it is well known that darshan isn"t the same with every saint. Some saints have a presence that is almost trancelike; others create a flavor like honey or the fragrance of flowers. The "darshan junkies" who spend hours in the presence of holy people can recite which shakti, or power, is felt around one saint or the next. And it is believed that these flavors of G.o.d can be absorbed by visitors like water by a sponge.
The most touching moment with Mother came as I was leaving. Her attendant showed me to the door and sent me away with a remark in broken English.
"Now you have no more troubles," she said cheerfully. "G.o.d is going to pay your bills!"
No one could claim that stage six alone reveals G.o.d"s love. But the a.n.a.logy to magnetism works well here. A compa.s.s needle exposed to the earth"s weak magnetic field trembles toward north; it does this unerringly, but if you shake the compa.s.s the needle wavers. Hold it close to a huge electromagnet, however, and the needle will lock into place without wavering.
Likewise, we are all in the force field of love, but in early stages of spiritual growth, its power is weak. We waver and can easily be thrown off in other directions. Conflicted emotions are at play, but more important, our perception of love is blocked. Only after years of cleaning out the inner blockages of repression, doubt, negative emotions, and old conditioning does a person realize that G.o.d"s force is immensely powerful.
When this occurs, nothing can pull the mind away from love. Love as a personal emotion is trans.m.u.ted into a cosmic energy. Rumi puts it beautifully: Oh G.o.d I have discovered love!
How marvelous, how good, how beautiful it is!...
I offer my salutation To the spirit of pa.s.sion that aroused and excited this whole universe And all it contains.
Rumi believes that every atom in creation dances in a pa.s.sion for G.o.d, such is a stage six awareness. It takes a quantum leap in consciousness to love G.o.d all the time, yet when the leap is finally made, there is really no G.o.d to love, not as a separate object. The fusion of the worshiper and what he worships is nearly complete. But that is enough to animate everything in creation. "This is the love," Rumi declares, "that brings our body to life."
How do I find G.o.d? ...