Deepak Chopra - "How to Know God: The Soul's Journey Into the Mystery of Mysteries"

How to Know God: The Soul's Journey Into the Mystery of Mysteries

ENDORSEMENTS

"I congratulate Dr. Deepak Chopra for this wonderful book, reaching out to

many, many readers, on the subject of spirituality, but with a scientific

approach. And I absolutely agree with Dr. Chopra's view that 'if we want

to change the world, we have to begin by changing ourselves.' This is the

same message that I have always been conveying."

The Dalai Lama

"The most important book about God for our times. Deepak Chopra is an

amazing combination of William James and Shankara. In this book he has

built for us a magical stairway to ascend to life-changing experience of

the sacred, keeping our scientific outlook and an ever more open heart and

mind."

Robert Thurman, Ph.D.,

professor of religion,

Columbia University

"Deepak Chopra has introduced literally millions of people to the

spiritual path, and for this we should all be profoundly grateful. In How

to Know God, Deepak continues his pioneering outreach, showing that God

consciousness unfolds in a series of stages, each important and remarkable

in itself, yet each getting closer to Source. This is at once a map of

Spirit, and a map of your own deepest Self, for in the last analysis, they

are one and the same."

Ken Wilber, author of

Integral Psychology

"Spiritual health and moral responsibility are two of the most precious

gifts that any leader can offer. Few thinkers have done as much as Deepak

Chopra to allow millions to embrace the project of personal and social

transformation. I agree completely with Dr. Chopra's insight that 'if we

want to change the world, we have to begin by changing ourselves.' In a

world where overcoming poverty, inequality, greed, and cynicism will be

the great human challenges of the twenty-first century, Deepak Chopra

offers life-affirming suggestions for developing a more just and peaceful

society."

Oscar Arias,

president of Costa Rica

(1986-1990), 1987 Nobel Peace

Prize Laureate

"Deepak Chopra has blessed the world by spreading the light of vedic

knowledge and the timeless teachings on nonduality. Vedanta has inspired

and transformed the lives of seekers for thousands of years. However,

every age needs a voice that can articulate ancient Wisdom in a

contemporary framework. Dr. Chopra has given the seekers of self-knowledge

a clear and scientific road map to understand and realize the ultimate

reality. I congratulate him for his brilliant work."

His Holiness Vasudevanand Saraswati,

Jagad Guru Shankracharya of

Jyotirmath World Headquarters

established by Adi Shankara

(sage-philosopher of India

A.D. 686-718)

"This is a profound and accessible exploration of the experience of God,

including an understanding of it in biological and scientific terms. How

to Know God is both fascinating and uplifting."

Andrew Weil, M.D., director of the

Program in Integrative Medicine at

the University of Arizona

"One of the best books ever written about a subject that more people think

about than anything else."

Larry King, host of Larry King Live,

CNN

"A renowned physician and author, Deepak Chopra is undoubtedly one of the

most lucid and inspired philosophers of our times."

Mikhail Gorbachev, president,

Citation of the Medal of the

Presidency of the Italian Republic

awarded by the Pio Manzu

International Scientific Committee

"Deepak Chopra has really done it this time—a brilliant, scholarly yet

lyrical synthesis of neuroscience, quantum physics, personal reminiscence,

Eastern, Western, and spiritual thinking. Dr. Chopra's new theory of seven

stages of understanding God is extremely relevant to the ongoing

transformation in medicine today from the old soul-less paradigm to the

new one with spirituality and emotions occupying center stage. This will

be the Bible of the New Medicine, the scientifically accurate medicine

that will replace the dying reductionist old thinking."

Candace B. Pert, Ph.D., research

professor at Georgetown University

School of Medicine, department

of physiology and biophysics,

Washington, D.C., and author of

Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind

Mind-Body Medicine

"How to Know God should be on the night table of every seeker of truth and

Spirit. Even better, every seeker should keep it with them at all times as

they travel on their soul's journey."

Shirley MacLaine, actress and author

of The Camino and Out on a Limb

"In the tradition not only of William James but especially Carl Gustav

Jung, Deepak Chopra finds the soul where it belongs, an essential element

of being and links spirituality to human needs. In the spirit of Abraham

Maslow's The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, he carries stages of

development/potentiality even beyond self-actualization and peak

experience. Chopra sees the soul as the culmination of an evolution that

enables man to find God. Most importantly, he puts ways of experiencing

God in a development sequence, ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny

spiritually as well as biologically. 'God is a process.' It is appropriate

that Deepak Chopra, who previously dealt with physical health, now

approaches spirituality in a similarly inspired way, since growing

evidence suggests the two may be linked."

George Freeman Solomon, M.D.,

professor of psychiatry and

biobehavioral sciences, emeritus,

University of California, Los Angeles

"Deepak continues to lead us even deeper into the mysteries and joys of

true spirituality."

James Redfield, author of The Celestine

Prophecy and The Secret of Shambhala

"For the thousand years which preceded modernity, the world was G-d

intoxicated. Theology was man's greatest pursuit embraced by the earth's

leading minds. Then along came mind-numbing sound bites about the

deity—'G-d is love,' 'May the Force be with you'—which propelled the

knowledge of G-d back to its infancy. Deepak Chopra's profound and

insightful book inspires us once again to apprehend G-d in all His majesty

and all His glory. Hats off to Deepak for restoring awe and mystery to the

grandest of all subjects."

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of

Kosher Sex and An Intelligent Person's Guide

to Judaism

"Deepak Chopra takes a scientific as well as spiritual approach to the

ultimate mystery of life, giving us a breathtaking and awe-inspiring

version of Divinity and ourselves. After reading How to Know God, you'll

have a much deeper understanding of who you are and your role in the

universe."

Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., author of Seven

Paths to God and A Woman's Journey to God

"Just when I think he can't go any deeper, he does. With How to Know God,

Deepak Chopra makes it clear: we have in our midst a spiritual genius."

Marianne Williamson, author of

Return to Love and Enchanted Love

"This book will be a very challenging book for those who read it as it was

for the adventurous author who wrote it. The philosophical and theological

differences raised by scholars from other traditions make the book even

more inviting for reflection and discussion. I personally found the book

both rewarding and exciting and have enjoyed immensely the serious

discussion it provoked. With this work Dr. Chopra moves his many talents

from the arena of the medical to the realm of the spiritual, and in so

doing 'awakens' our consciousness, which is what spirituality is all about

in the first place."

Father J. Francis Stroud, S.J., executive

director of DeMello Spirituality

Center, Fordham University

"A brilliant mind has created a book which should be read by believers and

nonbelievers. It is a treasure chest of knowledge that everyone should

open and explore regardless of one's belief or faith. The knowledge

presented can change your life."

Bernie S. Siegel, M.D., author

of Love, Medicine and Miracles

and Prescriptions for Living

"Deepak offers a fresh, gorgeous, and illuminating approach to the

perennial quest to know God. This work of wisdom beautifully weaves

religion, quantum physics, and neuroscience in practical, powerful ways to

awaken the reader."

Harold H. Bloomfield, M.D.,

best-selling author of Healing Anxiety

Naturally and Making Peace with Your Past

"This is a very wise book about consciousness and our connection with the

Divine. It is a marvelous advance beyond the morbid, godless messages of

materialistic science. Above all, it is about waking up to who we really

are: infinite, immortal, eternal. No matter what your religious

inclinations may be, you can find affirmation, joy, and fulfillment in

these pages."

Larry Dossey, M.D., author of

Reinventing Medicine and Healing Words

"There is a paradigm shift going on, and Deepak Chopra, M.D., is one of

its most popular and eloquent spokespersons. In this new paradigm,

consciousness, popularly called God, is the ground of all being. Opponents

often ask, So how do I know this consciousness? Certainly my ego is

nothing like you describe! Now Chopra has given a very readable response

in How to Know God. It is not easy to know God, says Chopra correctly,

because God is separated from us by a discontinuity. Chopra explains this

beautifully using quantum physics and relativity theory. But you can know

God with God's Grace, assures Chopra, as he gives many steps to follow. If

you want to investigate Reality or God, especially if you are a beginner,

this book will be of real help."

Amit Goswami, professor, department

of physics, University of Oregon, and

author of The Self-Aware Universe and

Quantum Creativity

"The ultimate how-to book! Brilliant!"

Dean Ornish, M.D., founder and

president of the Preventive Medicine

Research Institute; clinical professor of

medicine, UCSF School of Medicine,

and author of Love & Survival and

Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing

Heart Disease

"Very simply, the most profoundly enlightening book I have ever read. I am

in awe at the depth of feeling on these pages—Astounding—Brilliant—A

course in knowing God, rather than knowing about God."

Wayne W. Dyer

"This book opens the door to the new millennium with a quantum leap into

the world of Infinite creativity. Who is God? Are you God? Can you

experience God directly? In this groundbreaking road map to the ultimate

awakening, Deepak Chopra emerges as the scientist of the inner world. He

shows us step by step how we can meet God face-to-face. This book is a

must for those who are ready to enter the new millennium as blissful,

creative, multi-dimensional beings."

Margot Anand, author of

The Art of Everyday Ecstasy

"In his personal search for spiritual truths, Deepak has discovered

definitions so simple and pure that they can change a life in the blink of

an eye. I promise that there are readers who will need to do nothing more

than open this book at a random page and read any line on which their eye

lights—and that line will rewrite their lives. An extraordinary claim? Try

it for yourself."

Uri Geller, author/paranormalist,

Sonning, England

"It is a cri de coeur by one of the most brilliant minds of our time."

Rustum Roy, Evan Pugh Professor of

the Solid State; professor of science,

technology and society; and professor

of geochemistry; Pennsylvania State

University

"The true gift of How to Know God is that it is about getting to know

ourselves. God is the mirror in which we reveal ourselves to ourselves.

Deepak Chopra shows that we cannot have an angry righteous god without

being governed inwardly and unconsciously by fear. Likewise if we have a

loving god we ourselves have a visionary sense of our own infinite

potential. The legacy of this book is the true legacy of every human life:

the depths to which we have made God in our own hearts."

Richard Moss, M.D., author of Words

That Shine Both Ways, The Second Miracle,

The Black Butterfly, and The I That Is We

"In How to Know God, Deepak Chopra teaches us to recognize our everyday

lives as the raw material of our spiritual evolution. By reclaiming

science as a thread through our spiritual labyrinth, he connects the big

questions of meaning, God, and immortality—once the exclusive province of

theologians and philosophers—with our daily existence. And he does it all

with his infectious sense of awe and wonder."

Arianna Huffington, syndicated

columnist and author of

The Fourth Instinct

"With astonishing insight and breathtaking clarity, Deepak Chopra has here

answered the only question that has ever really mattered. The human race

will remember this time in our history as the moment when the final veil

was lifted from the face of God."

Neale Donald Walsch, author of

Conversations with God

"With childlike awe and wonder, in words of elegant simplicity, Deepak

Chopra invites us to effortlessly discover the mystery of life. Embracing

the challenge in gratitude for every grace-filled moment, readers are

irresistibly drawn to enjoy the fulfillment of Life's all-encompassing

purpose: 'To know, love, and serve God with our whole mind, our whole

soul, our whole heart, and to love our neighbor as ourself.' This work of

love offers an 'in-the-body' transformative experience assessible to all

who choose to accept it."

Sister Judian Breitenbach, Catholic

Order of the Poor Handmaid of Jesus

Christ, The Healing Arts Center on

the River, Mishawaka, Indiana

"This remarkable book, called How to Know God, expresses so profoundly a

universal message of the unity of spiritual ideals. It also generously

offers a glimpse of the 'Divine' which becomes more and more accessible to

readers of all beliefs as the words gradually disclose magic nourishment

to mind, heart and soul. While turning the pages, one by one, cascades of

revelation come flowing out, washing away all preconceived ideas and

dogmatic hindrances which have dominated religious thinking all down the

ages. As all barriers between the material and the spiritual worlds

crumble through the power of the all-pervading light shining into the

heart, the reader is placed face to face with the greatest of all

mysteries, losing thereby the illusion of the self, a process which Deepak

Chopra illustrates with sublime inspiration."

Hidayat Inayat-Khan

Pir-o-Murshid, spiritual head and

representative general,

International Sufi Movement

Also by Deepak Chopra

* * *

Creating HealthThe Way of the Wizard

Return of the RishiOvercoming Addictions

Quantum HealingRaid on the Inarticulate

Perfect HealthThe Path to Love

Unconditional LifeThe Seven Spiritual

Laws for Parents

Ageless Body,

Timeless MindThe Love Poems of Rumi

(edited by Deepak Chopra;

translated by Deepak Chopra

and Fereydoun Kia)

Journey into HealingHealing the Heart

Creating AffluenceEveryday Immortality

Perfect WeightThe Lords of the Light

Restful SleepOn the Shores

of Eternity

The Seven Spiritual

Laws of Success

The Return of Merlin

Boundless Energy

Perfect Digestion

DEEPAK

CHOPRA

Harmony Books/New York

HOW

TO

KNOW

GOD

The Soul's Journey into the

Mystery of Mysteries

FOR HERMS ROMIJN

Copyright © 2000 Deepak Chopra, M.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval

system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Harmony Books,

201 East 50th Street, New York, New York 10022.

Member of the Crown Publishing Group.

Random House, Inc. New York, Toronto,

London, Sydney, Auckland

www.randomhouse.com

HARMONY BOOKS is a registered trademark

and Harmony Books' colophon is a trademark

of Random House, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

Design by Jennifer Ann Daddio

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chopra, Deepak.

How to know God : the soul's journey into the mystery of mysteries

/ Deepak Chopra. — 1st ed.

1. Experience (Religion) 2. God—Knowableness.

3. Spiritual life. 1. Title.

BL53C49 2000

291.4'4—dc2l 99-42777

CIP

ISBN 0-609-60078-8

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

CONTENTS

1. A Real and Useful God1

2. Mystery of Mysteries27

3. Seven Stages of God40

Stage One: God the Protector51

Stage Two: God the Almighty67

Stage Three: God of Peace83

Stage Four: God the Redeemer101

Stage Five: God the Creator118

Stage Six: God of Miracles136

Stage Seven: God of Pure Being—"I Am"158

God Is as We Are180

4. A Manual for Saints190

Spiritual Awakening203

The Mind Field211

5. Strange Powers224

Inspiration and Insight226

Geniuses, Child Prodigies, and Savants230

Memory of Former Lifetimes237

Telepathy and ESP246

Alter Egos (Multiple Personality Syndrome)250

Synchronicity255

Clairvoyance and Prophecy260

6. Contacting God267

A Map of the Soul273

The State of Union288

The Power of Intention298

Endnotes and Further Reading306

In what concerns divine things, belief is not appropriate.

Only certainty will do.

Anything less than certainty is unworthy of God.

—SIMONE WEIL

One

A REAL AND

USEFUL GOD

God has managed the amazing feat of being worshiped and invisible at the

same time. Millions of people might describe him as a white-bearded father

figure sitting on a throne in the sky, but none could claim to be an

eyewitness. Although it doesn't seem possible to offer a single fact about

the Almighty that would hold up in a court of law, somehow the vast

majority of people believe in God—as many as 96 percent, according to some

polls. This reveals a huge gap between belief and what we call everyday

reality. We need to heal this gap.

What would the facts be like if we had them? They would be as follows.

Everything that we experience as material reality is born in an invisible

realm beyond space and time, a realm revealed by science to consist of

energy and information. This invisible source of all that exists is not an

empty void but the womb of creation itself. Something creates and

organizes this energy. It turns the chaos of quantum soup into stars,

galaxies, rain forests, human beings, and our own thoughts, emotions,

memories, and desires. In the pages that lie ahead we will see that it is

not only possible to know this source of existence on an abstract level

but to become intimate and at one with it. When this happens, our horizons

open to new realities. We will have the experience of God.

After centuries of knowing God through faith, we are now ready to

understand divine intelligence directly. In many ways this new knowledge

reinforces what spiritual traditions have already promised. God is

invisible and yet performs all miracles. He is the source of every impulse

of love. Beauty and truth are both children of this God. In the absence of

knowing the infinite source of energy and creativity, life's miseries come

into being. Getting close to God through a true knowing heals the fear of

death, confirms the existence of the soul, and gives ultimate meaning to

life.

Our whole notion of reality has actually been topsy-turvy. Instead of God

being a vast, imaginary projection, he turns out to be the only thing that

is real, and the whole universe, despite its immensity and solidity, is a

projection of God's nature. Those astonishing events we call miracles give

us clues to the workings of this ineffable intelligence. Consider the

following story.

In 1924 an old French villager is walking home. With one eye lost in the

Great War and the other severely damaged by mustard gas in the trenches,

he can barely see. The setting sun is bright, so the old man is completely

unaware of the two youths on bicycles who have wheeled around the corner

and are barreling down on him.

At the moment of impact an angel appears. He takes the lead bicycle by its

two wheels, lifts it a few feet in the air, and sets it down safely on the

grass beside the road. The second bicycle stops short, and the youths

become tremendously excited. "There are two! There are two!" one of them

shouts, meaning that instead of just the old man alone, two figures are

standing in the road. The entire village becomes very worked up, claiming

afterward that the youths were drunk or else they made up this fantastic

tale. As for the old man, when he is asked about it, he says he doesn't

understand the question.

Could we ever come to an answer ourselves? As it happens, the old man was

a priest, Père Jean Lamy, and the appearance of the angel has come down to

us through his own testimony before his death. Lamy, who was saintly and

beloved, seems to be credited with many instances where God sent angels or

other forms of divine aid. Although reluctant to talk about them, his

attitude was matter-of-fact and modest. Because of Lamy's religious

vocation, it is easy to dismiss this incident as a story for the devout.

Skeptics would not be moved.

Yet I am fascinated simply by whether it could have happened, whether we

can open the door and allow helpful angels into our reality, along with

miracles, visions, prophecy, and ultimately that great outsider, God

himself.

We all know that a person can learn about life without religion. If I took

a hundred newborn babies and filmed every moment of their lives from

beginning to end, it wouldn't be possible to predict that the believers in

God will turn out to be happier, wiser, or more successful than the

nonbelievers. Yet the video camera cannot record what is happening below

the surface. Someone who has experienced God may be looking on the entire

world with wonder and joy. Is this experience real? Is it useful to our

lives or just a subjective event, full of meaning to the person having it

but otherwise no more practical than a dream?

One bald fact stands at the beginning of any search for God. He leaves no

footprints in the material world. From the very beginning of religion in

the West, it was obvious that God had some kind of presence, known in

Hebrew as Shekhinah. Sometimes this word is simply translated as "light"

or radiance. Shekhinah formed the halos around angels and the luminous joy

in the face of a saint. It was feminine, even though God, as interpreted

in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is masculine. The significant fact about

Shekhinah was not its gender, however. Since God is infinite, calling the

deity He or She is just a human convention.(*) Much more important was the

notion that if God has a presence, that means he can be experienced.

He can be known. This is a huge point, because in every other way God is

understood to be invisible and untouchable. And unless some small part of

God touches the material world, he will remain inaccessible forever.

We personify God as a convenient way of making him more like ourselves. He

would be a very perverse and cruel human, however, to remain so hidden

from us while demanding our love. What could possibly give us confidence

in any kind of benevolent spiritual Being when thousands of years of

religion have been so stained by bloodshed?

We need a model that is both part of religion yet not bounded by it. The

following simple, three-part scheme fits our common-sense view of God.

Shaped like a reality sandwich, this scheme can be pictured as follows:

God

————— TRANSITION ZONE —————

Material world

The picture is not new in its top and bottom layers, placing God above the

material world and removed from it. God must be separate from us, or else

we would be able to see him here, strolling about as he did in the Book of

Genesis. There, after the seven days of creation, God walked in the garden

of Eden, enjoying his handiwork in the cool of the evening.

Only the middle element of our diagram, called the transition zone, is new

or unusual. A transition zone implies that God and humans meet on common

ground. Somewhere miracles take place, along with holy visions, angels,

enlightenment, and hearing the voice of God. All of these extraordinary

phenomena bridge two worlds: They are real and yet they are not part of a

predictable cause-and-effect. To put it another way, if we stubbornly

cling to material reality as the only way to know anything, skepticism

about God is totally justified. Miracles and angels defy reason, and even

though holy visions may be catalogued time after time, the rational mind

remains defiant, defending its sure grip on the material plane.

"You really think God exists? Well, let's break it down. You're a doctor,

I'm a doctor. Either God is causing these diseases we see every day, or

else he can't do anything to stop them. Which one is the God you want me

to accept?"

This voice is from a skeptical colleague I used to make rounds with in the

hospital, a confirmed atheist.

"I don't want you to accept either one," I would protest.

But he would press the point. "Reality is reality. We don't have to argue

over whether an enzyme or hormone is real, do we? God can't survive any

kind of objective test. But we all know that. Some of us just choose not

to keep on fooling ourselves."

On one level he was right. Materialist arguments against God remain

powerful because they are based on facts, but they fall apart once you

dive deeper than the material world. Dame Julian of Norwich lived in

England in the fourteenth century. Dame Julian asked God directly why he

had created the world. The answer came back to her in ecstatic whispers:

You want to know your lord's meaning in what I have done? Know it well,

love was his meaning. Who reveals it to you? Love. What did he reveal to

you? Love. Why does he reveal it to you? For love.

For Dame Julian God was something to eat, drink, breathe, and see

everywhere, as though she were an infatuated lover. Yet since the divine

was her lover, she was elevated to cosmic heights, where the whole

universe was "a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of

my hand."

When saints go almost mad with rapture, we find their expressions both

baffling and yet very understandable. Although we have all gotten used to

the absence of the sacred, we appreciate that journeys into the transition

zone, the layer closer to God, continue to happen.

The experience of God feels like flying. It feels as if I'm walking above

the ground with such equilibrium that nothing can sway me from my path.

It's like being the eye of the storm. I see without judgment or opinion. I

just watch as everything passes in and out of my awareness like clouds.

(1)

This uplifting experience, which is common to saints and mystics, is the

record of a quantum journey. There are no known physical mechanisms that

trigger it, yet feeling close to God occurs in every age, among all

peoples. We're all capable of going beyond our material bonds, yet we

often fail to value this ability. Although we hear in church or temple or

mosque that God is love, he doesn't seem to exert much passionate

attraction anymore.

I don't believe saints and mystics are really so different from other

human beings. If we look at our reality sandwich, the transition zone

turns out to be subjective: This is where God's presence is felt or seen.

Anything subjective must involve the brain, since it takes millions of

neurons firing together before you can have any experience.

Now our search has narrowed down in a way that looks very promising: God's

presence, his light, becomes real if we can translate it into a response

of the brain, which I will call the "God response." We can get even more

specific. Holy visions and revelations aren't random. They fall into seven

definite events taking place inside the brain. These responses are much

more basic than your beliefs, but they give rise to beliefs. They bridge

from our world to an invisible domain where matter dissolves and spirit

emerges:

1.                  Fight-or-flight response: the response that enables us

to survive in the face of danger. This response is linked to a God who

wants to protect us. He is like a parent who looks out for the safety of a

small child. We turn to this God because we need to survive.

2.                  Reactive response: this is the brain's creation of a

personal identity. Beyond mere survival, everyone pursues the needs of "I,

me, mine." We do this instinctively, and from this response a new God

emerges, one who has power and might, laws and rules. We turn to this God

because we need to achieve, accomplish, and compete.

3.                  Restful awareness response: the brain can be active or

at rest, and this is its response when it wants peace. Rest and activity

alternate in every part of the brain. The divine equivalent is a God who

brings peace, who enables us to find a calm center in the midst of outward

chaos. We turn to this God because we need to feel that the outer world

isn't going to swallow us up in its endless turmoil.

4.                  Intuitive response: the brain looks for information

both inside and out. Outer knowledge is objective, but inner knowledge is

intuitive. No one checks with an expert outside themselves before saying

"I am happy" or "I am in love." We rely on our ability to know ourselves

from the inside out. The God that matches this response is understanding

and forgiving. We need him to validate that our inner world is good.

5.                  Creative response: the human brain can invent new

things and discover new facts. This creative ability apparently comes from

nowhere—the unknown simply gives birth to a new thought. We call this

inspiration, and its mirror is a Creator who made the whole world from

nothing. We turn to him out of our wonder at the beauty and formal

complexity of Nature.

6.                  Visionary response: the brain can directly contact

"the light," a form of pure awareness that feels joyful and blessed. This

contact can be bewildering, because it has no roots in the material world.

It comes as a vision, and the God that matches it is exalted—he delivers

healing and miracles. We need such a God to explain why magic can exist

side by side with ordinary mundane reality.

7.                  Sacred response: the brain was born from a single

fertilized cell that had no brain functions in it, only a speck of life.

Even though a hundred billion neurons developed from that speck, it

remains intact in all its innocence and simplicity. The brain senses this

as its source and origin. To match it, there is a God of pure being, one

who doesn't think but just is. We need him because without a source, our

existence has no foundation at all.

These seven responses, all very real and useful to us in our long journey

as a species, form the unshakable basis of religion. If you compare any

two minds—Moses or Buddha, Jesus or Freud, Saint Francis or Chairman

Mao—each projects a different view of reality with a matching God. No one

can shoehorn God into a single box. We must have a range of vision as vast

as human experience itself. Atheists need their God, who is absent and

nonexistent, while at the other extreme mystics need their God, one of

pure love and light. Only the brain can deliver this vast range of

deities.

You might immediately object that the human mind creates these versions of

God, not just the brain. I absolutely agree—in the long run the mind is

much more primary than the brain in creating all perception. But for now

the brain is our only concrete way of entering the mind. In cartoons a

lightbulb shows up over somebody's head when he has a bright idea; this

isn't so in real life. The mind without the brain is as invisible and

unprovable as God.

Also, you might argue that just because God is seen in a certain way by

us, that doesn't mean he is that way. I don't believe this is black or

white. God's reality doesn't stand apart from our perceptions but is woven

into them. A mother can see her newborn child as wonderful and worthy, and

through her perception that baby grows up to become a wonderful, worthy

person. This is one of the mysteries of love. A subtle give-and-take is

going on at the deepest level between parent and child. In the same way

God seems to grow directly out of our deepest inner values. There is a

similar give-and-take below the level of mere belief. Peel away all the

layers of an onion, and at the center you will find emptiness; peel away

all the layers of a human being, and at the center you will find the seed

of God.

I believe that God has to be known by looking in the mirror.

If you see yourself in fear, barely holding on with survival at stake,

yours is a God of fight or flight.

If you see yourself as capable of power and accomplishment, yours is a God

of the reactive response.

If you see yourself as centered and calm, yours is a God of the restful

awareness response.

If you see yourself as growing and evolving, yours is a God of the

intuitive response.

If you see yourself as someone who makes personal dreams come true, yours

is a God of the creative response.

If you see yourself as capable of working miracles, yours is a God of the

visionary response.

If you see yourself as one with God, yours is a God of the sacred

response.

Although everyone's brain can create countless thoughts—just to take a

number, at ten thoughts a minute, a single brain would conjure up more

than 14,000 thoughts a day, 5 million a year, and 350 million in a

lifetime. To preserve our sanity, the gross majority of these thoughts are

repetitions of past thoughts, mere echoes. The brain is economical in how

it produces a thought. Instead of having millions of ways, it has only a

limited number. Physicists like to say that the universe is really just

"quantum soup" bombarding our senses with billions of bits of data every

minute. This swirling chaos must also be organized into a manageable

number. So the brain, with its seven basic responses, provides more than

sanity and meaning: it provides a whole world. Presiding over this

self-created world is a God who embraces everything, but who also must fit

into the brain's way of working.

In one way or another, when a person says the word God, he is pointing to

a specific response from this list:

Any God who protects us like a father or mother stems from fight or

flight.

Any God who makes laws and rules over society stems from the reactive

response.

Any God who brings inner peace stems from the restful awareness response.

Any God who encourages human beings to reach their full potential stems

from the intuitive response.

Any God who inspires us to explore and discover stems from the creative

response.

Any God who makes miracles stems from the visionary response.

Any God who brings us back into unity with him stems from the sacred

response.

As far as I know, the brain cannot register a deity outside the seven

responses. Why not? Because God is woven into reality, and the brain knows

reality in these limited ways. It may sound as though we're reducing the

Almighty Father, the Primeval Goddess, and the Mystery of Mysteries to a

firestorm of electrical activity in the cerebral cortex—but we aren't

doing that. We are trying to find the basic facts that will make God

possible, real, and useful.

Many people will be sympathetic to this because they long for a God who

fits into their lives. No one can make God enter the everyday world,

however. The real question is whether he might be here already and going

unnoticed. I keep coming back to the transition zone in our "reality

sandwich." Unless you are willing to take your vision there, the presence

of God is too ghostly to be relied upon. Is the brain prepared for such a

journey? Absolutely.

A friend of mine once knew John Lennon very well and continued over the

years to grieve his passing. She is a gifted singer, and one night

recently she had a dream in which he came to her and showed her an image

from the past when they were together. Waking up, she decided to write a

new, very intimate song based on her dream, yet in the cold light of day

she began to have doubts. I came to London for a visit, and she told me

about her indecision.

"After all, it's only a dream, isn't it?" she said. "Maybe I'm foolish to

make too much of it."

At that moment her three-year-old ran into the room and plopped himself

onto a chair in the corner. He happened to land on the remote control for

the television, which came on suddenly. On the screen, amazingly, we saw a

nostalgia program showing John Lennon and my friend smiling at the camera,

caught in the exact moment she had witnessed in her dream. She burst into

tears and got her answer: She would write the song for him.

I believe that this interaction took place in the transition zone. A

message arrived from a deeper place than we usually go. To say that it

came from spirit or God is totally justified, but the brain also played

its part, for this incident began with everyday brain processes—thoughts,

emotions, dreams, doubts—that finally crystallized into inspiration. We

see a perfect example here of our fifth response, the creative response.

Can we truly satisfy the demands of objectivity when it comes to God? A

physicist would recognize our reality sandwich with no difficulty. The

material world has long since dissolved for the great quantum thinkers.

(2) After Einstein made time and space into fluid things that merge into

each other, the traditional universe couldn't hold up. In the reality

sandwich of physics there are also three levels:

Material reality, the world of objects and events

Quantum reality, a transition zone where energy turns into matter

Virtual reality, the place beyond time and space, the origin of the

universe

Here we run into a semantic problem, because the phrase virtual reality is

no longer used the way a physicist would understand it. These words now

commonly mean computer-simulated reality or even, very loosely, any video

game. So I will modify virtual reality and call it the virtual domain, and

to follow suit, quantum reality will have to become the quantum domain.

It isn't just coincidence that these three layers parallel the religious

worldview. The two models have to parallel each other, because they are

both delineated by the brain. Science and religion are not really

opposites but just very different ways of trying to decode the universe.

Both visions contain the material world, which is a given. There has to be

an unseen source of creation, because the cosmos can be traced back only

so far before time and space dissolve. And there has to be a place where

these two opposites meet.

I said before that I don't think mystics are set apart from ordinary

people. They are just better quantum navigators. They journey into the

transition zone closer to God, and while we might visit there for a few

moments of joy, at most a few days, saints and mystics have found the

secret of remaining there far longer. Instead of wondering about the

mystery of life, a saint lives it. Yet even without adequate words to

convey that experience, we find certain similarities from culture to

culture:

·                     The body's heaviness becomes as if weightless.

·                     A sense of floating or looking down from above is

felt.

·                     Breathing becomes lighter, rarefied, more even.

·                     Physical pain or discomfort are much lessened.

·                     A sense of energy streams through the body.

·                     Color and sound are heightened; increased

sensitivity to all senses.

A common phrase for this sensation, which one hears over and over, is

"going into the light." It's a phenomenon not limited to saints. Some or

all of these bodily changes occur to common people. Existence breaks

through its drab routine with a surge of bliss and purity. Some mystics

describe these moments as timeless. Afterward a psychological afterglow

often persists, a peaceful certainty that one has "come home." In this

transition zone that almost reaches God's domain, experience is both inner

and outer.

But what if we could steady our flash of ecstasy and learn to explore this

strange new territory? Then we would discover the same thing revealed to

Dame Julian six hundred years ago: "He is our clothing that wraps us and

winds us about, embraces us and all-encloses us, for love.... Remain in

this, and you shall know more of the same... without end." In other words,

the sacred isn't a feeling, it is a place. The problem is that when you

try to journey there, material reality keeps pulling you back again. The

wondrous moment passes. To remain in the transition zone is extremely

difficult.

Let me bring these abstract terms down to earth. Some of the following

experiences have occurred to all of us:

In the midst of danger, you feel suddenly cared for and protected.

You deeply fear a crisis in your personal life, but when it comes, you

experience a sudden calmness.

A stranger makes you feel a sudden rush of love.

An infant or young child looks into your eyes, and for a second you

believe that an old soul is looking at you.

In the presence of death, you feel the passing of wings.

Looking at the sky, you have a sense of infinite space.

A stunning glimpse of beauty makes you forget for a second who you are.

Whenever you have any such experiences, your brain has responded in an

unusual way; it has responded to God.

If we only knew it, God's most cherished secrets are hidden inside the

human skull—ecstasy, eternal love, grace, and mystery. This doesn't seem

possible at first glance. If you take a scalpel to the brain, you will cut

into soft gray tissue that doesn't respond to the touch. There are lakes

of slow-running water in this quivering terrain and open caves where light

never penetrates. You wouldn't suspect that a soul is hiding here

somewhere, that spirit can find its home in an organ almost as liquid as

red blood cells and as mushy as an unripe banana.

The landscape of the brain is deceptive, however. Every burst of light

that has blinded every saint in history took place here in the darkness.

Every image of God was designed in tissue that appears to be a mass of

congested nerves. So to find a window to God, you have to realize that

your brain is layered into regions that are ruled by different impulses.

The new kingdoms are full of higher thought, poetry, and love, like the

New Testament. The old kingdoms are more primordial, like parts of the Old

Testament. They are ruled by raw emotion, instinct, power, and survival.

In the old kingdoms each of us is a hunter. The ancestral plains of Africa

are buried deep in your cranium, remembered with all their terror and

hunger. Your genes remember leopards that leapt out of trees, and in a

traffic snarl the old brain wants to hunt that leopard, fighting it to the

death. Many doubters have said that God was invented so that these

ferocious instincts can be kept in check. Otherwise our violence would

turn on us and kill us. But I don't believe this. The oldest hunter

lurking in our brains is after bigger prey, God himself. And the motive

isn't to fight or die but to find our speck of joy and truth that nothing

in the world can erase. The one thing we cannot survive is chaos.

We evolved to find God. This is what the lightning storm of the brain's

endless activity is all about. God for us is not a choice but a necessity.

Almost a hundred years ago the great psychologist and philosopher William

James declared that human nature contains a "will to believe" in some

higher power. Personally James didn't know if God existed or whether there

was a world beyond this one. He was almost certain that no proof of God

could be found, but he felt it would deprive human beings of something

profound if belief was stripped away from us. We need the hunt.

God, it turns out, isn't a person; God is a process. Your brain is

hardwired to find God. Until you do, you will not know who you are. There

is a catch, however. Our brains don't lead us automatically to spirit.

Seeking has always been necessary. Some people feel that God is within

reach, or at least within stalking range, while others feel he is totally

absent. (It is curious that 72 percent of respondents in a recent poll

said that they believe in heaven while only 56 percent believe in hell.

This is more than naive optimism; the tendency of life is to point us in

the right direction.)

A seeker always hopes to see the one, true, final God who will settle all

doubts, but instead we hunt for clues. Unable to take in the totality of

God, we get hints from the brain, which is constantly exercising an

amazing ability to insert a glimpse of spirit in the most mundane

situations. To return to a few of those simple examples I gave:

In the midst of danger, you feel suddenly cared for and protected. Spirit

is being revealed through fight or flight.

You deeply fear a crisis in your personal life, but when it comes, you

experience a sudden calmness. Spirit is being revealed through restful

awareness.

A stranger makes you feel a sudden rush of love. Spirit is being revealed

through the visionary response.

An infant or young child looks into your eyes, and for a second you

believe that an old soul is looking at you. Spirit is being revealed

through intuition.

Looking at the sky, you have a sense of infinite space. Spirit is being

revealed through unity.

It is typical of modern life to believe that nature is set up to be random

and chaotic. This is far from true. Life looks meaningless when you have

worn out old responses, old realities, and an old version of God. To bring

God back, we have to follow new, even strange responses wherever they lead

us. As one spiritual teacher wisely put it, "The material world is

infinite, but it is a boring infinity. The really interesting infinity

lies beyond."

* A note on gender: Finding a pronoun for God is not easy. In keeping with

common tradition, this book uses he. But surely God transcends all gender.

I could have rotated three different pronouns—he, she, and it—but that

would not have gotten any nearer to the truth, and it would have made for

very clumsy reading.

GETTING WHAT YOU WANT

The Seven Levels of Fulfillment

God is another name for infinite intelligence. To achieve anything in

life, a piece of this intelligence must be contacted and used. In other

words, God is always there for you. The seven responses of the human brain

are avenues to attain some aspect of God. Each level of fulfillment proves

God's reality at that level.

Level 1 (Fight-or-Flight Response)

You fulfill your life through family, community, a sense of belonging, and

material comforts.

Level 2 (Reactive Response)

You fulfill your life through success, power, influence, status, and other

ego satisfactions.

Level 3 (Restful Awareness Response)

You fulfill your life through peace, centeredness, selfacceptance, and

inner silence.

Level 4 (Intuitive Response)

You fulfill your life through insight, empathy, tolerance, and

forgiveness.

Level 5 (Creative Response)

You fulfill your life through inspiration, expanded creativity in art or

science, and unlimited discovery.

Level 6 (Visionary Response)

You fulfill your life through reverence, compassion, devoted service, and

universal love.

Level 7 (Sacred Response)

You fulfill your life through wholeness and unity with the divine.

It is very important to absorb this notion that spirit involves a constant

process. It isn't a feeling, nor is it a thing you can hold and measure.

In the unfolding of spirit many mysteries begin to make sense. For

instance, consider this famous sentence from the Vedas: "Those who know It

speak of It not, those who speak of It know It not." The mystery here is

tied up in the word It. If It means some kind of revelation, then you may

struggle all your life to join the elite who have had It revealed to them.

Enlightenment turns into something like a secret handshake. But if It

means a real place that one can journey to, there is no need for

frustration. You just find that place, without pointless words. "Don't

talk about it, go!" seems like sensible advice.

A striking example that there is a reachable place beyond material reality

is prayer. Beginning more than twenty years ago, researchers devised

experiments to try to verify whether prayer had any efficacy. Seriously

ill patients in hospitals were divided into groups, some being prayed for

while others were not. In all cases best medical care was still given, yet

it became evident that the prayed-for group seemed to recover better. This

result was all the more astonishing when it was discovered that the person

doing the praying didn't have to know the patient personally, or even know

their names. But only in 1998 did a Duke University team verify to all

skeptics that prayer indeed has such power. (3) The researchers took into

account all manner of variables, including heart rate, blood pressure, and

clinical outcomes; 150 patients who had undergone invasive cardiac

procedures were studied, but none of them knew that they were being prayed

for. Seven religious groups around the world were asked to pray. These

included Buddhists in Nepal, Carmelite nuns in Baltimore, and Virtual

Jerusalem, an organization that grants E-mail requests for prayers to be

written down and inserted into the Wailing Wall. Researchers found that

surgical patients' recovery could be from 50 to 100 percent better if

someone prayed for them.

Even before these "highly intriguing" results, as researchers called them,

the phenomenon of prayer had already gained sudden new popularity, yet the

essential point is often missed. Prayer is a journey in consciousness—it

takes you to a place different from ordinary thought. In this place the

patient is not a stranger, nor is she removed in space. You and she are

joined in a place where the boundaries of the body no longer count. Your

intention to make her well has an effect across the space-time boundary.

In other words, prayer is a quantum event carried out in the brain.

Of all the clues God left for us to find, the greatest is the light, the

Shekhinah. From that clue we can unfold a true picture of the deity. This

is a bold claim, but it is corroborated by the fact that science—our most

credible modern religion—also traces creation back to light. (4) In this

century Einstein and the other pioneers of quantum physics broke through

the barrier of material reality to a new world, and in their awe most had

a mystical experience. They sensed that when light gave up its mysteries,

God's light would be known.

Our vision can't help but be organized around light. The same brain

responses that enable you to see a tree as a tree, instead of as a ghostly

swarm of buzzing atoms, also enable you to experience God. They reach far

beyond organized religion. But we can take any passage from world

scripture and decode it through the brain. It is the mechanism that makes

the scripture real to us. Our brains respond on the same seven levels that

apply to our experience:

1.                  A level of danger, threat, and survival.

2.                  A level of striving, competition, and power.

3.                  A level of peace, calm, and reflection.

4.                  A level of insight, understanding, and forgiveness.

5.                  A level of aspiration, creativity, and discovery.

6.                  A level of reverence, compassion, and love.

7.                  A level of unbounded unity.

Every Bible story teaches something at one or more of these levels (as do

all world scriptures), and in every instance the teaching is attributed to

God. Your brain and the deity are thus fused in order for the world to

make sense. To repeat, the one thing you cannot survive is chaos.

If you believe in a punishing, vengeful God—clearly related to fight or

flight—you won't see the reality of the Buddha's teaching of Nirvana. If

you believe in the God of love envisioned by Jesus—rooted in the visionary

response—you will not see the reality of the Greek myth wherein Saturn,

primal father of the gods, ate all his children. Every version of God is

part mask, part reality. The infinite can only reveal a portion of itself

at any one time. Indeed, we would have all grown up, in the West at least,

calling God "It" except for the linguistic anomaly that Hebrew has no

neuter pronoun. In Sanskrit, the ancient Indians had no such problem and

referred to the infinite deity as both It and That.

The most startling conclusion of our new model is that God is as we are.

The whole universe is as we are, because without the human mind, there

would be only quantum soup, billions of random sensory impressions. Yet

thanks to the mind/brain, we recognize that encoded into the swirling

cosmos are the most valued things in existence: form, meaning, beauty,

truth, love. These are the realities the brain is reaching for when it

reaches for God. He is as real as they are, but just as elusive.

The Seven Levels of Miracles

A miracle is a display of power from beyond the five senses. Although all

miracles take place in the transition zone, they differ from level to

level. In general, miracles become more "supernatural" after the fourth or

fifth brain response, but any miracle involves direct contact with spirit.

Level 1 (Fight-or-Flight Response)

Miracles involve surviving great danger, impossible rescues, a sense of

divine protection.

Example: A mother who runs into a burning house to rescue her child, or

lifts a car with a child trapped underneath

Level 2 (Reactive Response)

Miracles involve incredible achievements and success, control over the

body or mind.

Example: Extreme feats of martial arts, child prodigies with inexplicable

gifts in music or mathematics, the rise of a Napoleon from humble

beginnings to immense power (men of destiny)

Level 3 (Restful Awareness Response)

Miracles involve synchronicity, yogic powers, premonitions, feeling the

presence of God or angels.

Example: Yogis who can change body temperature or heart rate at will,

being visited by someone from far away who has just died, visitation by a

guardian angel

Level 4 (Intuitive Response)

Miracles involve telepathy, ESP, knowledge of past or future lifetimes,

prophetic powers.

Example: Reading someone else's thoughts or aura, psychic predictions,

astral projection to other locations

Level 5 (Creative Response)

Miracles involve divine inspiration, artistic genius, spontaneous

fulfillment of desires (wishes come true).

Example: The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, having a thought that suddenly

manifests, Einstein's insights into time and relativity

Level 6 (Visionary Response)

Miracles involve healing, physical transformations, holy apparitions,

highest degree of supernatural feats.

Example: Walking on water, healing incurable diseases through touch,

direct revelation from the Virgin Mary

Level 7 (Sacred Response)

Miracles involve inner evidence of enlightenment.

Example: Lives of the great prophets and teachers—Buddha, Jesus, Lao-Tze

I am not imagining that every skeptic and atheist reading this book has

suddenly jumped to his feet proclaiming that God is real. This will have

to go by stages. But at least now we have something to hold on to, and it

is something extremely useful. We can explain those mysterious journeys

that mystics have taken into God's reality. Such journeys have always

deeply moved me, and I remember exactly where my fascination began. The

first such voyager I ever heard of was called the Colonel—his story is one

of the seeds of this book. As I retell it, I can feel my mind experiencing

his reality, which passed through so many phases from danger to

compassion, from peace to unity. He will serve as a promise of the

unfolding truth that is possible in any of our lives:

I was ten and my father, a doctor in the Indian army, had moved his family

to Assam. No part of the country is as green and idyllic. Assam is an

Eden, if Eden were covered with tea plantations as far as the eye can see.

I could literally hear a song in my heart as I walked to the high-perched

school on the hill. It must have been the magic of the place that made me

notice an old beggar who used to sit by the road. He was always there

under his tree, dressed in tatters, rarely moving or saying a word. The

village women believed absolutely that this unkempt figure was a saint.

They would sit beside him for hours, praying for a healing (or a new

baby), and my grandmother assured me that our neighbor lady had been cured

of arthritis by walking past him and silently asking for his blessing.

Strangely, everyone called this old beggar "the Colonel." One day I

couldn't control my curiosity and asked why, and my best friend from

school, Oppo, found out for me. Oppo's mother had once been healed by the

Colonel, and Oppo's father, who was a newspaper reporter in town, had a

remarkable tale to tell me:

At the end of World War II, a large force of British troops, the doomed

"forgotten army," had been pinned down or captured by the invading

Japanese in Burma. Because of the unending monsoon rains, the fighting had

been tough and miserable; the treatment received by the prisoners of war

was atrocious. Indians served in the British army, and one of them was a

Bengali doctor named Sengupta.

Sengupta was on the verge of starving in a POW camp when the Japanese

decided to retreat from their position. He didn't know if the British army

had somehow advanced close by, but it didn't matter. Instead of marching

the POWs to a new prison, their captors lined them up and shot each one in

the head at close range with a pistol. This included Sengupta, who was in

some way grateful to die and end his torment. He heard the gun blast at

his temple, and with a jolt of searing pain he fell over. Only this wasn't

the end. By some miracle he regained consciousness several hours later—he

judged the passage of time because night had fallen and the prison camp

was dead quiet.

It took some moments before Sengupta, who felt that he was suffocating,

realized with horror that he had come to under a heavy pile of corpses. In

the rush to abandon camp, no one had checked to see if he was really dead,

and his limp body had been thrown onto the pile with the others. It seemed

like an eternity before Sengupta gathered enough strength to crawl out

into the open air; he staggered to the river and washed himself, trembling

with fear and revulsion. It was obvious that he was alone and that no

Allies were coming to rescue him.

By morning he had made the decision to walk to safety. Deep in a war zone

with no sense of Burmese geography, he could only think to return to

India—and that is what he did. Surviving on fruit, insects, and rain

water, he traveled by night and hid in the jungle by day. The terrain

consisted of hill after hill, and the ground was deep in mud. Although he

passed occasional villages and peasant farms, he didn't dare trust anyone

enough to ask for refuge. He could hear unknown wild animals in the dark

at a time when tigers were still found in Burma, and he stumbled over

snakes that terrified him.

Sengupta's trek took months before he stepped across the border into

Bengal, and eventually the emaciated hero walked into Calcutta, heading

for British army headquarters. He made his report and recounted his

achievement, but the British, far from believing him, immediately had him

arrested. He was put in irons as a probable Japanese spy or collaborator.

Broken emotionally as well as physically, he lay in his dark cell and

contemplated the fate that had taken him from one prison to another.

Somewhere during this period of disgrace, under daily interrogation and a

later court-martial, Sengupta went through a supreme transformation. It

wasn't something he ever spoke about, but the change was startling—in

place of bitterness he gained complete peace, he healed his wounds both

inner and outer (fitting for someone who would turn into a healer of

others) and he stopped struggling, waiting calmly for the inevitable

sentence of the court. Amazingly the inevitable never came. In a sudden

change of heart the British chose to believe that his story was true,

prompted by the immediate end of hostilities when the Americans dropped

the atomic bomb on Japan.

Within a week Sengupta was dragged out of prison, awarded a medal for

valor, and paraded through the streets of Calcutta as a hero. He seemed as

strangely oblivious of the cheers as he had been of the suffering. Leaving

medicine behind, he became a wandering monk. When he finally grew old and

found his resting place under the tree in Assam, he didn't tell anyone his

story. It was the locals who dubbed him the Colonel, perhaps tipped off by

Oppo's father, the newspaper reporter.

Naturally my first, burning question at the age of ten was how a man could

be shot in the head with a pistol at point-blank range and survive. Oppo's

father shrugged. When they were captured, most of the British soldiers

were armed with ammunition made in India. The Japanese executed them with

their own pistols, and no doubt one of the bullets had been defective,

filled with powder but no shot. Anyway, that was the best rational guess.

So much for the miracle.

Today I ask another question that means more to me: How does such extreme

torment, which provides every reason to abandon faith, turn into absolute

faith instead? No one could doubt that the Colonel had arrived at some

kind of saintliness from his ordeal. He made the mystic journey; he hunted

God to the finish. I now realize what a profound miracle the human brain

actually is. It has the capacity to see spiritual reality under any

circumstance. In Sengupta's case, consider what he might have been

overwhelmed by: the terror of death, the possibility of being here one day

and gone the next, the fear that good will never prevail over evil, and

the fragile freedom that could be extinguished by cruel authority.

It is clear, despite the turmoil that makes belief in God harder than

ever, that every level of revelation still exists. Redemption is just

another word for calling on your innate ability to see with the eye of the

soul. Two voices are heard in our heads every day, the one believing in

the dark and the other in the light. Only one reality can be really real.

Our new model, the "reality sandwich," solves this riddle. Sengupta took a

journey into the transition zone where transformation occurs. Here, where

the material world transforms from dense matter into invisible energy; the

mind gets transformed as well.

Sengupta's soul journey passed through fight or flight, restful awareness,

intuition, and vision, eventually finding the courage to live entirely in

the visionary response for the rest of his life. He ensconced himself in a

new way, clothed in love and serenity. The brain discovered that it could

escape the prison of its old reactions, rising to a new, higher level that

it perceived as God.

So now we have the outline for the entire spiritual journey in our hands:

the unfolding of God is a process made possible by the brain's ability to

unfold its own potential. Inherent in each of us is wonder, love,

transformation, and miracles, not just because we crave these things but

because they are our birthright. Our neurons have evolved to make these

higher aspirations real. From the womb of the brain springs a new and

useful God. Or to be precise, seven variations of God (5) which leave a

trail of clues for us to follow every day.

If asked why we should strive to know God, my answer would be selfish: I

want to be a creator. This is the ultimate promise of spirituality, that

you can become the author of your own existence, the maker of personal

destiny. Your brain is already performing this service for you

unconsciously. In the quantum domain your brain chooses the response that

is appropriate at any given moment. The universe is an overwhelming chaos.

It must be interpreted to make sense; it must be decoded. The brain

therefore can't take reality as it is given; one of the seven responses

has to be selected, and the quantum realm is where this decision is made.

To know God, you must consciously participate in making this journey—that

is the purpose of free will. On the surface of life we make much more

trivial choices but pretend that they carry enormous weight. In reality,

you are constantly acting out seven fundamental choices about the kind of

world you recognize:

·                     The choice of fear if you want to struggle and

barely survive.

·                     The choice of power if you want to compete and

achieve.

·                     The choice of inner reflection if you want peace.

·                     The choice to know yourself if you want insight.

·                     The choice to create if you want to discover the

workings of nature.

·                     The choice to love if you want to heal others and

yourself.

·                     The choice to be if you want to appreciate the

infinite scope of God's creation.

I am not arranging these from bad to good, better to best. You are capable

of all these choices; they are hardwired into you. But for many people,

only the first few responses have been activated. Some part of their

brains is dormant, and therefore their view of spirit is extremely

limited. It is no wonder that finding God is called awakening. A fully

awakened brain is the secret to knowing God. In the end, however, the

seventh stage is the goal, the one where pure being allows us to revel in

the infinite creation of God. Here the mystic Jews searching for the

Shekhinah (6) meet the Buddhists in their search for satori, and when they

arrive, the ancient Vedic seers will be waiting in the presence of Shiva,

along with Christ and his Father. This is the place which is both the

beginning and end of a process that is God. In this process things like

spirit, soul, power, and love unfold in a completely new way. Here

certainty can replace doubt, and as the inspired French writer Simone Weil

once wrote about the spiritual quest, "Only certainty will do. Anything

less than certainty is unworthy of God."

Two

MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES

This is the work of the soul that most pleases God.

—THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

The mystery of God wouldn't exist if the world wasn't also a mystery. Some

scientists believe we are closer than ever to a "Theory of Everything," or

TOE, as the physicists dub it. TOE will explain the beginning of the

universe and the end of time, the first and last breaths of cosmic

existence. From quarks to quasars, all will be revealed, as the old

melodramas used to promise. Is there a place for God in this "everything,"

or does the Creator get booted out of his own creation? His fate may be

important, but when it is wrapped up with ours, it becomes all-important.

Consider again the reality sandwich that has served as our model. As we

saw before, it comes in three layers:

Material reality

————— QUANTUM DOMAIN —————

Virtual domain

Anyone could be forgiven for thinking that God is nowhere to be found

here, in fact that all the wonders of the sacred world will become mundane

on the day that the TOE explains it all away.

For centuries humans looked in the mirror of Nature and saw heroes,

wizards, dragons, and holy grails reflected back. The sacred was real, a

source of supreme power, and nothing could exist, from a river to a

thunderclap, without a god to cause it. Today the mirror has clouded. We

have outgrown the need for a thunder god or a hero born on Olympus. What

do we see instead? A society that strip-mines old myths to build a city

like Las Vegas. If you want to meet myth here, you check into a

hotel-casino called Excalibur. The only god is Fortune, the only dragons

to conquer are the slot machines, and most of the time they win.

If it is true, as the poetic sentiment goes, that "One touch of Nature

makes the whole world kin," then one touch of myth makes the whole world

sacred. In a mythless world, something is missing, but do we know what it

is? There are many clues to that answer, scattered around in the sacred

sites of the world. No one can stand before the Great Pyramid of Cheops

(or Khufu, to give him his proper Egyptian name) without feeling the

presence of a power that is absent even in the hugest skyscraper. The

pharaoh once entombed in the depths of this massive structure was a

mortal, but he aspired to be immortal, and he fed that aspiration by

erecting the largest single mass of stone ever piled in one place, even to

this day. He also backed up his ambition with God. Khufu was venerated as

a descendant of the gods and was therefore a god-man himself. Is this a

demonstration that the ego of a king knows no bounds? Certainly. But there

is more here.

Khufu's link to the gods linked his people at the same time. From time

immemorial humans have worried over the same questions: Do I have a soul?

What happens after I die? Is there an afterlife, and will I meet God when

I get there? The Great Pyramid was an answer erected in stone. You can

almost hear the stones crying out, "Now tell me I'm not immortal!"

For a harsh contrast, go back to Las Vegas. What do we see there? Wealth

and ambition to rival the pharaohs, but are the people who cram into these

pleasure domes any more secure about the great questions? Or does a world

without spiritual power force us to seek distraction because underneath,

we do not know the answers at all?

The family of man is bound up in the sacred. We cannot allow it to die

without strangling our blood ties to a deeper reality: that we all come

from one place, that we are on a journey toward a greater good, that our

every act is being weighed from a cosmic perspective. Ordinary reality is

trivial compared to this heritage. The Theory of Everything will be

useless, if not destructive, unless we can use it to keep the sacred

alive.

Fortunately, the most solid, reliable things in existence—a seashell, a

tree branch, a pothole in the middle of the road—partake of God's mystery.

If you believe in a rock, you are automatically believing in God. Let me

explain.

Ordinary reality is only the top layer of our sandwich. The material world

is full of familiar objects that we can see, feel, touch, taste, and

smell. As big objects become very small, shrinking to the size of atoms,

our senses fail us. Theoretically the shrinkage has to stop somewhere,

because no atom is smaller than hydrogen, the first material particle to

be born out of the Big Bang. But in fact an amazing transformation happens

beyond the atom—everything solid disappears. Atoms are composed of

vibrating energy packets that have no solidity at all, no mass or size,

nothing for the senses to see or touch. The Latin word for a packet or

package is quantum, the word chosen to describe one unit of energy inside

the atom, and, as it turned out, a new level of reality.

At the quantum level nothing of the material world is left intact. It is

strange enough to hold up your hand and realize that it is actually, at a

deeper level, invisible vibrations taking place in a void. Even at the

atomic level all objects are revealed as 99.9999 percent empty space. On

its own scale, the distance between a whirling electron and the nucleus it

revolves around is wider than the distance between the earth and the sun.

But you could never capture that electron anyway, since it too breaks down

into energy vibrations that wink in and out of existence millions of times

per second. Therefore the whole universe is a quantum mirage, winking in

and out of existence millions of times per second. At the quantum level

the whole cosmos is like a blinking light. There are no stars or galaxies,

only vibrating energy fields that our senses are too dull and slow to pick

up given the incredible speed at which light and electricity move.

In the animal kingdom some nervous systems are much faster than ours and

others much slower. A snail's neurons pick up signals from the outside

world so slowly, for example, that events any faster than three seconds

would not be perceived. In other words, if a snail was looking at an

apple, and I quickly reached in and snatched it away, the snail would not

be able to detect my hand. It would "see" the apple disappear before its

very eyes. In the same way, quantum flashes are millions of times too

rapid for us to register, so our brains play a trick on us by "seeing"

solid objects that are continuous in time and space, the same way that a

movie seems continuous. A movie consists of twenty-four still pictures

flashing by per second, with twenty-four gaps of blackness as each frame

is taken away and a new one put in its place. But since our brains cannot

perceive forty-eight stop-motion events in one second, the illusion of the

movie is created.

Now speed this up by many powers of ten and you get the trick of the movie

we call real life. You and I exist as flashing photons with a black void

in between each flash—the quantum light show comprises our whole body, our

every thought and wish, and every event we take part in. In other words,

we are being created, over and over again, all the time. Genesis is now

and always has been. Who is behind this never-ending creation? Whose power

of mind or vision is capable of taking the universe away and putting it

back again in a fraction of a second?

The power of creation—whatever it turns out to be—lies even beyond energy,

a force with the ability to turn gaseous clouds of dust into stars and

eventually into DNA. In the terminology of physics, we refer to this

pre-quantum level as virtual. When you go beyond all energy, there is

nothing, a void. Visible light becomes virtual light; real space becomes

virtual space; real time becomes virtual time. In the process, all

properties vanish. Light no longer shines, space covers no distance, time

is eternal. This is the womb of creation, infinitely dynamic and alive.

Words like empty, dark, and cold do not apply to it. The virtual domain is

so inconceivable that only religious language seems to touch it at all.

Today in India a devout believer may greet the dawn with an ancient Vedic

hymn:

In the beginning,

There was neither existence nor nonexistence,

All this world was unmanifest energy...

The One breathed, without breath, by Its own power

Nothing else was there....

RIG-VEDA

In modern terms, this verse tells us that God can only be found in a

virtual state, where all energy is stored before creation. Physics has

struggled hard with this state that comes before time and space, and so

has popular imagination. It may surprise many to learn that the familiar

image of God as a patriarch in a white robe seated on his throne has

little authority, even in Judaic scripture. The image appears only once,

in the Book of Daniel, whereas we are told many times in the books of

Moses that God is without human form.

The best working theory about creation reads as follows: Before the Big

Bang space was unbounded, expanded like an accordion into infinite pleats

or dimensions, while time existed in seed form, an eternal presence

without events and therefore needing no past, present, or future. This

state was utterly void in one sense and utterly full in another. It

contained nothing we could possibly perceive, yet the potential for

everything resided here. As the Vedic seers declared, neither existence

nor nonexistence could be found, since those terms apply only to things

that have a beginning, middle, and end. Physicists often refer to this

state as a singularity: space, time, and the entire material universe were

once contained in a point. A singularity is conceived as the smallest dot

you can imagine, and therefore not a dot at all.

Now if you can imagine that the cosmos exploded into being in a dazzling

flash of light from this one point, you must then go a step further.

Because the pre-creation state has no time, it is still here. The Big Bang

has never happened in the virtual domain, and yet paradoxically all Big

Bangs have happened—no matter how many times the universe expands across

billions of light-years, only to collapse back onto itself and withdraw

back into the void, nothing will change at the virtual level. This is as

close as physics has come to the religious notion of a God who is

omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. Omni means all, and the virtual

state, since it has no boundaries of any kind, is properly called the All.

It isn't surprising that we find it so difficult to speak about the All.

In India seers often referred to it simply as That, or tat in Sanskrit. At

the moment of enlightenment, a person is able to go past the five senses

to perceive the only truth that can be uttered: "I am That, You are That,

and all this is That." The meaning isn't a riddle; it simply states that

behind the veil of creation, the pre-creation state still exists,

enclosing everything.

A physicist friend once stated the same truth in newer words: "You must

realize, Deepak, that time is just a cosmic convenience that keeps

everything from happening all at once. This convenience is needed at the

material level, but not at deeper levels. Therefore if you could see

yourself in your virtual state, all the chaos and swirling galaxies would

make perfect sense. They form one pattern unfolding in perfect symmetry.

Viewed from this perspective, the end point of all creation is now. The

whole cosmos has conspired to create you and me sitting here this very

second."

Nothing is more fascinating than to watch science blurring its edges into

spirit. There are no easier words for the transition zone than "quantum"

and no easier words for God than "virtual." To track down a miracle, one

must go into these domains. Miracles indicate that reality doesn't begin

and end at the material level. "How do I find God?" a young disciple once

asked a famous guru in India. (1) "I can't see any evidence that He is

anywhere around us, and millions of people live very well without him."

"Everything without God happens in space and time. This is the world you

are used to," his guru replied. "Space and time are like a net that has

trapped you, but nets always have holes. Find such a hole and jump through

it. Then God will be obvious." Every religious tradition contains such

loopholes, escape routes into a world beyond ours. In the Gospel of

Thomas, Jesus says that his role in life is to point the disciples away

from the rule of the five senses, which are totally confined to

space-time: (2)

I shall give you what no eye has seen and what no ear has heard and what

no hand has touched and what has never occurred to the human mind.

This promise was certainly carried out whenever Jesus performed any one of

his thirty or so miracles, but it is fascinating to observe that often

they were performed with considerable reluctance, as if they were somehow

beside the point. The real point was to see that our senses aren't

trustworthy at all. The incurable leper only appears that way, the few

loaves and fishes are only an illusion, the storm on the Sea of Galilee

can be calmed by a mere act of will. After healing the leper with his

touch, Jesus sounds particularly impatient with anyone overawed by what he

has done.

Then Jesus dismissed him with this stern warning: "Be sure you say nothing

to anybody. Go and show yourself to the priest, and make the offering laid

down by Moses for your cleansing; that will certify the cure."

Naturally the miraculously healed man couldn't help himself and told

everyone he ran into. Word spread, until Jesus couldn't stay in the town

because of the uproar. Teeming crowds wanted their own miracle; he fled to

the countryside, where they continued to pursue him. Would we also be so

overawed as to miss the larger point? I think so. In India today there is

a well-known woman saint who reputedly cured a leper by touching his

sores. I remember reading too about a guru who used to let anyone into his

house on feast days, holding the laws of hospitality to be sacred. He was

not rich, and his followers were distressed that hundreds of guests would

appear at his door to be fed. The guru only smiled and made a strange

request. "Keep feeding everyone from those buckets of rice and lentils,"

he said, "but first cover them with a cloth." The buckets were covered so

that no one could see into them, and as many times as the ladles were

dipped in, there was always more food to go around. In this way the guru

performed the same miracle as Jesus.

It is easy to be awed by such stories, but is it helpful when we seek to

know facts? From our awe a wealth of superstition, fable, and often false

hope has developed. Yet in the blurring of the quantum and the miraculous,

a single reality is beginning to emerge. Stephen Hawking indicated in his

A Brief History of Time that if the laws of nature were deeply explored,

we would one day know the mind of God. (3) Here he echoed a famous remark

by Einstein: "I want to know how God thinks, everything else is a detail."

Because he was a rare visionary, I hope that Einstein would accept as a

start the following map of how God thinks:

Virtual domain = the field of spirit

Quantum domain = the field of mind

Material reality = the field of physical existence

If you feel secure with these terms, you can clear up mystery after

mystery—literally all the paradoxes of religion start to unravel, and

God's ways make sense for the first time. Let me give an example from the

field of healing:

Some decades ago an Italian army officer was taken on a stretcher to the

shrine of Lourdes. He was suffering from bone cancer in its most advanced

metastasized stage. One hip joint was so ravaged that it had all but

dissolved, and his leg was kept attached only by a splint. The officer had

no desperate expectations of a cure, but he took the holy waters, along

with thousands of other pilgrims who flock to this site. Over the next few

months a careful X-ray record was kept as his cancer was miraculously

healed. This did not just entail the malignancy disappearing: His entire

hip joint regrew. Medical science has no explanation for such a thing, and

the Italian military officer became one of the authenticated healings

attributed to the Virgin Mary at Lourdes. (I believe around seventy of

these have been verified since such claims have been examined by a panel

of doctors adhering to the strictest standards of proof.)

If we refer to our model, this healing involves a unique event: All three

levels of reality were in communication. The soldier's body and his cancer

were on the material level. His prayers were on the quantum level. God's

intervention came from the virtual level. In one sense this seems to make

a miracle seem very cold-blooded and clinical. But in another sense it

makes everything a miracle. And why shouldn't that be so? The fact is that

stars, mountains, monarch butterflies, and a single skin cell all depend

on the same open lines of communication. The flow of reality is miraculous

because invisible emptiness gets transformed into the brilliant orange of

a butterfly's wing or the massive solidity of a mountain without any

effort at all.

This unseen power is sacred and mythic but present all the time. Science

is guilty of trying to explain it away instead of explaining it. A real

Theory of Everything would instruct us in the art of living on all three

levels of reality with equal power and security. Saints strive to get to

that point; it is the true meaning of enlightenment.

This is all to say that God's mystery is the same as the mystery of the

world. The promise made by Jesus, to show what no human mind has ever

conceived, has been fulfilled during our lifetime. Indeed, Niels Bohr, the

great Danish physicist, stated that quantum physics is not only stranger

than we think, it is stranger than we can think. We are brought

face-to-face with one of the mystic's primary beliefs: Whatever can be

thought of has already been created by God and is real somewhere, if not

in this world, then in another.

Religious trappings offend many rigorous scientists, but do we have to

have any? I remember as a young doctor reading about a patient suffering

from terminal cancer who was cured literally by an injection of saline,

ordinary salt water. He had entered the hospital, his body completely

disfigured by swollen malignant lymph nodes. This was in the fifties when

medicine was riding a crest of optimism about finding a cure for cancer

very quickly. Patients were routinely killed or nearly killed with doses

of mustard gas, the same poison used on soldiers in the trenches in World

War I but also the first crude chemotherapy.

This man was desperate to be given the latest wonder treatment, known as

Krebiozen. His doctor despaired of wasting the drug on someone who would

probably be dead before the week was out. But out of pity he arranged for

a single dose of Krebiozen and injected it on a Friday. He left over the

weekend, fully expecting never to see his charge again, but on his return

Monday morning, the patient was jubilant. Every trace of cancer had

vanished; his lymph nodes had returned to normal, and he felt completely

well. Stunned, his doctor released him as cured, knowing full well that a

single dose of Krebiozen could not possibly have made a difference over a

few days.

But the story becomes, if anything, much stranger. After some time had

passed, the patient read in the newspaper that testing on Krebiozen had

proved ineffective. Within a matter of days his cancer returned, and once

again he entered the hospital in a terminal state. His doctor had nothing

to give him, so he resorted to the most drastic of placebos. He told the

man that he would be injected with "new, improved" Krebiozen, while in

reality giving him nothing but saline solution.

Again the man was healed in a matter of days. For the second time, he left

without evidence of cancer in his body. The story doesn't have a happy

ending, because when he later discovered that all hope for Krebiozen was

abandoned, he contracted lymph cancer for the third time, and this time he

died rapidly.

But the essence of the story is that spirit acts by flowing from the

virtual to the quantum to the material level. This is what all miracles

have in common, whether they occur with religious trappings or not. The

crucial importance of religion is not to be discarded, however. Faith in

God is a way of opening the lines of communication beyond the material. So

is prayer or hope. The mind cannot do it simply by thinking. If there is

ever going to be a science of miracles, it begins with intangibles that

are rooted in spirit.

We are only partway toward solving the mystery. Once again I gaze upon the

Great Pyramid of Cheops; only this time I don't see an awesome pile of

sandstone but an idea—several ideas, actually. The first is sheer

spiritual audacity. This pyramid was once entirely sheathed in a layer of

white limestone, because its builders wanted to out-dazzle the sun. That

was the whole point, in fact. Without equality to the sun god, these

audacious ancients would just have been glorified worker ants. This is a

reminder that human beings aspire to be more than human.

The other idea behind the pyramid is wonder. Sacred sites tell us that we

are wondrous creatures who should be doing wondrous works. And you can

still see that here, for it would be more than four thousand years before

another structure encompassed such a volume of space, and that happened on

a flat sandbar on the east coast of Florida.

The Vertical Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center is tall enough

to hold a Saturn V moon rocket upright and has proportions boggling the

mind. Standing as it does on a featureless landscape, you think you are

close to it when you still have a mile to go. But it isn't just the scale

of the thing that awes us. This building is also an idea, the idea that we

will find our origins and our cosmic family. The Greek gods were once our

family, along with the Indian gods and Jehovah of the Book of Genesis. All

were cosmic beings, and we traced our origins back to the beginning of the

cosmos.

Now the giant rockets blast off; one will soon go to gather interstellar

dust, on the off chance that it will contain even one microorganism. If a

single bacterium comes back from deep space, we will have found our own

cosmic seed. It's not a whole family, but it's a beginning. As the old

myths wear out, new ones spring up in our souls. Prometheus brought us

fire, and now these rockets are the fire we send back to the gods. We are

returning the gift and also reaching out. We crave to know that we are

sacred once again. Are we? The answer isn't in the galactic dust but in

ourselves. The deepest levels of the quantum domain are the common ground

where our hands reach out to touch God. When that happens, there is a

double wonder: What we touch is divine, but it is also ourselves.

Before we proceed any further, I want to offer three lists that summarize

where we are. These don't need to be memorized or studied; everything

contained in them will be discussed in clear, simple language as we move

ahead. But this seems like a good place to pause and reflect. Without

using religious terminology, we have discovered a great many facts about

God. They are strange facts perhaps, not easily translated into ordinary

life. There is no doubt, though, that from these seeds a complete vision

of God will blossom.

VIRTUAL DOMAIN = SPIRIT

No energy

No time

Unbounded—every point in space is every other point

Wholeness exists at every point

Infinite silence

Infinite dynamism

Infinitely correlated

Infinite organizing power

Infinite creative potential

Eternal

Unmeasurable

Immortal, beyond birth and death

Acausal

QUANTUM DOMAIN = MIND

Creation manifests.

Energy exists.

Time begins.

Space expands from its source.

Events are uncertain.

Waves and particles alternate with one another.

Only probabilities can be measured.

Cause and effect are fluid.

Birth and death occur at the speed of light.

Information is embedded in energy.

MATERIAL REALITY = VISIBLE UNIVERSE

Events are definite.

Objects have firm boundaries.

Matter dominates over energy.

Three-dimensional

Knowable by the five senses

Time flows in a straight line.

Changeable

Subject to decay

Organisms are born and die.

Predictable

Cause and effect are fixed.

Three

SEVEN STAGES OF GOD

If you don't make yourself equal to God, you can't perceive God.

—ANONYMOUS CHRISTIAN HERETIC,

THIRD CENTURY

Each person is entitled to some version of God that seems real, yet many

versions contradict one another. On a long trip to India a few years ago,

we had stopped the car to look at a family of Himalayan monkeys playing by

the side of the road. Thirty seconds after we got out, a whole band of

monkeys, maybe a hundred strong, descended upon us. While everyone was

snapping photos and throwing bits of fruit and bread, I noticed not far

away an old village woman all by herself, kneeling before a makeshift

shrine under a tree. She was praying to Hanuman, a god in the shape of a

monkey. I realized then that this pack hung around to grab food from the

altar and any handouts they could charm from tourists like us.

What is the difference, I thought, between these chattering, clever

animals, who knew all the tricks to catch our attention, and a god?

Hanuman, who could fly and was known as "son of the wind," once journeyed

to these same Himalayas. When Prince Rama's brother lay dying from a

grievous wound received in battle, the flying monkey-king was sent to

bring back the one special herb that would save his life. Hanuman looked

everywhere but couldn't find the herb, so in frustration he ripped up the

whole mountain where the plant grew and sped it back to lay it at Rama's

feet.

The old woman kneeling at the rickety shrine certainly knew this story

from childhood, but why would she worship a monkey, even a mythic flying

one, and even a king? Her face was as devout as anyone praying to the

queen of heaven or the son of God. Was her prayer going astray because of

whom she prayed to? Was it going anywhere at all?

We are now ready to answer the simplest but most profound question: Who is

God? He cannot just be impersonal—a principle or a level of reality or a

field. We went into the quantum and virtual domains to establish a basis

for the sacred, yet that was only the beginning. In all religions God is

described as infinite and unbounded, which creates a huge problem. An

infinite God is nowhere and everywhere at the same time. He transcends

nature, and therefore you cannot find him. As we said at the outset, one

must assume that God leaves no fingerprints in the material world.

This gives us no choice but to find a substitute for infinity that retains

something of God, enough so that we feel his presence. The Book of Genesis

declares that God created Adam in his own image, but we have been

returning the favor almost since the beginning, fashioning God in our

image over and over again. In India these images include almost every

creature, event, or phenomenon. Lightning can be worshiped as coming from

the god Indra, a rupee coin as a symbol of Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity.

The taxicabs of Delhi and Bombay may be protected by plastic figures of

Ganesh, a cheerfully smiling elephant with a potbelly, dangling from the

rearview mirror. In all these cases, however, there is an understanding

that only one thing is really being worshiped—the self. The same "I" that

gives a person a sense of identity extending beyond the physical body,

expanding to embrace nature, the universe, and ultimately pure spirit.

In the West it would be exotic to worship a monkey god but scandalous to

worship the self. The anecdote is told of an English anthropologist

researching into the beliefs of Hinduism. One day he goes creeping through

the forest and spies an old man dancing in a grove of trees. In ecstasy

the old man embraces their trunks and says, "Lord, how I love you." Then

he falls to the ground and chants, "Blessed are you, my Lord." Jumping to

his feet, he raises his arms to the sky and cries, "I am overjoyed to hear

your voice and see your face."

Unable to stand the spectacle any longer, the anthropologist jumps out of

the bushes. "I must tell you, my good man, that you are quite crazy," he

says.

"Why is that?" the old man asks in confusion.

"Because here you are all alone in the woods, and you think that you're

talking to God," says the anthropologist.

"What do you mean, alone?" the old man replies.

To anyone who worships God as the self, it is obvious that none of us are

alone. The "self" isn't personal ego but a pervasive presence that cannot

be escaped. The East seems to have no difficulties here, but as you go

west, uneasiness mounts. In the third century of the Christian era, an

unknown heretic wrote, "If you don't make yourself equal to God, you can't

perceive God." This belief did not succeed as dogma (the heresy here is of

course that human and divine are not equal in Christianity), but at other

levels it is undeniable.

The God of any religion is only a fragment of God. This has to be true,

because a being who is unbounded has no image, no role to play, no

location either inside or outside the cosmos, whereas religions offer many

images—father, mother, lawgiver, judge, ruler of the universe. There are

seven versions of God, which can be associated with organized faiths. Each

one is a fragment, but so complete as to create a unique world:

Stage one: God the Protector

Stage two: God the Almighty

Stage three: God of Peace

Stage four: God the Redeemer

Stage five: God the Creator

Stage six: God of Miracles

Stage seven: God of Pure Being—"I Am"

Each stage meets a particular human need, which is only natural. In the

face of nature's overwhelming forces, humans needed a God who would

protect them from harm. When they felt that they had broken the law or

committed wrongdoing, people turned to a God who would judge them on the

one hand and redeem their sins on the other. In this way, purely from

self-interest, the project of creating God in our own image proceeded—and

continues to proceed.

Several of these stages, such as Redeemer and Creator, sound familiar from

the Bible, and now that Buddhism has become more popular in the West, the

final stage, where God is experienced as eternal silence and pure being,

is not as foreign as it once would have been. But we are not comparing

religions here; no stage is absolute in its claim to truth. Each one

implies a different relationship, however. If you see yourself as one of

God's children, then his relationship to you will be as a protector or a

maker of rules; this relationship shifts if you see yourself as a

creator—then you start to share some of God's functions. You stand on more

equal ground, until finally, at the stage of "I am," the same pure being

is common to both God and humans. In the progress from stage one to stage

seven, the wide gap between God and his worshipers becomes narrower and

eventually closes. Therefore we can say that we keep creating God in our

image for a reason that is more than vanity; we want to bring him home to

us, to achieve intimacy. Yet whether you see God as an almighty judge who

punishes or as a benign source of inner peace, he isn't exclusively that.

To an atheist, all forms of deity are a false projection, pure and simple.

We attribute human traits to God such as mercy and love, set these traits

upon an altar, and then proceed to pray to them. Every image of God, then,

including the most abstract ones, is completely empty (by abstract I mean

the God of Islam and orthodox Judaism, neither of which is allowed to be

portrayed with a human face). According to the atheist, religion is the

ultimate illusion since we are only worshiping ourselves secondhand.

There are two ways to respond to this accusation. The first is the

argument that an infinite God should be worshiped in all ways; the second

is the argument that God has to be approached in stages, for otherwise one

could never close the huge gap between him and us. I think the second

argument is the more telling one. Unless we can see ourselves in the

mirror, we will never see God there. Consider the list again, and you will

see how God shifts in response to very human situations:

God is a protector to those who see themselves in danger.

God is almighty to those who want power (or lack any way of getting

power).

God brings peace to those who have discovered their own inner world.

God redeems those who are conscious of committing a sin.

God is the creator when we wonder where the world came from.

God is behind miracles when the laws of nature are suddenly revoked

without warning.

God is existence itself—"I Am"—to those who feel ecstasy and a sense of

pure being.

In our search for the one and only one God, we pursue the impossible. The

issue isn't how many Gods exist, but how completely our own needs can be

spiritually fulfilled. When someone asks, "Is there really a God?" the

most legitimate answer is, "Who's asking?" The perceiver is intimately

linked to his perceptions. The fact that we single out traits like mercy

and love, judgment and redemption, shows that we are forced to give God

human attributes, but that is absolutely proper if those traits came from

God in the first place. In other words, a circle connects the human and

the divine. From the virtual level, which is our source, the qualities of

spirit flow until they reach us in the material world. We experience this

flow as our own inner impulses, and this is also appropriate, because for

every stage of God there exists a specific biological response. The brain

is an instrument of the mind, but it is a very convincing one. All that we

really know about the brain is that it creates our perception, our

thinking, and our motor activity. But these are powerful things. On the

material plane, the brain is our only way of registering reality, and

spirit must be filtered through biology.

No one uses the entire brain at once. We select from a range of built-in

mechanisms. There are seven of these, as we saw, that directly relate to

spiritual experience:

1.                  Fight-or-flight response

2.                  Reactive response

3.                  Restful awareness response

4.                  Intuitive response

5.                  Creative response

6.                  Visionary response

7.                  Sacred response

In the opening chapter I gave a thumbnail description of each, but even in

abbreviated form you may have begun to see how much of your own spiritual

life is based on habitual or even unconscious reflex:

Fight or flight is a primitive, atavistic response to protect yourself,

inherited from animals. It energizes the body to meet outside danger and

threat. This is the reflex that sends a mother into a burning house to

save her child.

The reactive response makes us defend our ego and its needs. When we

compete and seek to rise above others, we automatically look out for "me"

as opposed to "the other." This is the reflex that fuels the stock market,

political parties, and religious conflict.

Restful awareness is the first step away from outside forces. This

response brings inner calm in the face of chaos or threats. We turn to it

in prayer and meditation.

The intuitive response calls upon the inner world for more than peace and

calm. We ask inside for answers and solutions. This state is associated

with synchronicity, flashes of insight, and religious awakening.

The creative response breaks free from old patterns. It gives up the known

to explore the unknown. Creativity is synonymous with the flow of

inspiration.

The visionary response embraces a universal "me" in place of the isolated

ego. It looks beyond all boundaries and is not fixed by the laws of nature

that limit earlier stages. Miracles become possible for the first time.

This response guides prophets, seers, and healers.

The sacred response is completely free of all limitations. It is

experienced as pure bliss, pure intelligence, pure being. At this stage,

God is universal and so is the person. This response marks the fully

enlightened of every age.

Each of these is a natural response of the human nervous system, and we

were all born with the ability to experience the entire range. In the face

of danger, a burst of adrenaline creates the overwhelming urge to flee or

to stay and fight. When this response is triggered, all kinds of changes

take place in the physiology, including increased heart rate, ragged

breathing, elevated blood pressure, etc. But if we sit down to meditate,

this isn't the state of the nervous system—far from it. The same

indicators that were elevated in fight or flight are now decreased, and

the subjective feeling is that of peace and calm.

These are well-documented facts medically, but I wish to take a step

further, and it is a startling step. I contend that the brain responds

uniquely in every phase of spiritual life. Scientific research is

incomplete at the higher stages of inner growth, but we know that, where

the spirit leads, the body follows. Faith healers do exist who transcend

medical explanation. Only a few miles from where I was in the Himalayas,

yogis sit in trances for days at a time; others can be buried for a week

in an almost airless box or bring their breathing and heart rates down to

nearly zero. Saints in every religion have been observed to live on little

or no food (many of them declaring that they survive solely on the light

of God). Visions of God have been so credible that their wisdom moved and

guided the lives of millions; extraordinary acts of selflessness and

compassion prove that the mind is not ruled by self-interest alone.

We select a deity based on our interpretation of reality, and that

interpretation is rooted in biology. The ancient Vedic seers put it quite

bluntly: "The world is as we are." To someone living in a world of threat,

the need for fight or flight is absolute. This pertains to a Neanderthal

facing a saber-tooth tiger, a soldier in the trenches in World War I, or a

driver frustrated with road rage on the L.A. freeways. We can match each

biological response, in fact, with a specific self-image:

RESPONSEIDENTITY IS BASED ON...

Fight-or-flight responsePhysical body/physical environment

Reactive responseEgo and personality

Restful awareness responseSilent witness

Intuitive responseThe knower within

Creative responseCo-creator with God

Visionary responseEnlightenment

Sacred responseThe source of all

Looking at the right-hand column, you have a clear outline of the stages

of human growth. The fact that we are born with the potential to go from

simple survival to God-consciousness is the remarkable trait that sets our

nervous systems apart from all other creatures. It is undeniable that

complete inner growth is a tremendous challenge. If you are trapped in

traffic, blood boiling with frustration, higher thoughts are blocked out.

At that moment, under the influence of adrenaline, you identify with being

confined and unable to do anything.

In a different situation, when you are competing for a promotion at work,

you see things from the ego's point of view. Now your anxiety isn't over

survival (which is the root of the fight-or-flight response in animals)

but getting ahead. Once again higher responses are blocked; you would be

ruining your chances if you stopped competing and felt only love for the

other candidates for the job.

Change the response once more, and this viewpoint will also fade away.

When you see a news report about dying children in Africa or a needless

war somewhere far away, you may find yourself wanting to find a creative

solution to the problem or you may just reflect internally on the

pointlessness of suffering. These higher responses are subtler and more

delicate. We also call them more spiritual, but in any situation the brain

is responding from the highest level it can. The deeper mystery, which we

will explore in this part of the book, centers on our ability to rise from

an animal instinct to sainthood. Is this possible for everyone, or is the

potential there only for the tiniest fraction of humanity? We will only

find out by examining what each stage means and how a person rises up the

ladder of inner growth.

Despite the enormous flexibility of the nervous system, we fall into

habits and repeated patterns because of our reliance on old imprints. This

is never more true than with our beliefs. I was once walking down a side

street in the old section of Cairo when a man jumped out of the shadows

and began ranting at some passersby. Not knowing Arabic, I had no idea

what he was preaching, but it was obvious from the vexation and rage in

his face that his sermon had to do with fear of God. In every religion

there is the same streak of fear whenever a person is certain that the

world is dominated by threat, danger, and sin. Yet every religion also

contains the strain of love whenever the world is perceived as abundant,

loving, and nourishing. It is all projection. I am not finding fault here.

We have the right to worship love, mercy, compassion, truth, and justice

on the transcendent level, just as we have the right to fear judgment and

divine rebuke. If you accept that the world is as we are, it is only

logical to accept that God is as we are.

·                     God the protector fits a world of bare survival,

full of physical threats and danger.

·                     God the almighty fits a world of power struggles and

ambition, where fierce competition rules.

·                     A God of peace fits a world of inner solitude where

reflection and contemplation are possible.

·                     God the redeemer fits a world where personal growth

is encouraged and insights prove fruitful.

·                     God the creator fits a world that is constantly

renewing itself, where innovation and discovery are valued.

·                     A God of miracles fits a world that contains

prophets and seers, where spiritual vision is nurtured.

·                     A God of pure being—"I Am"—fits a world that

transcends all boundaries, a world of infinite possibilities.

The wonder is that the human nervous system can operate on so many planes.

We don't just navigate these dimensions, we explore them, meld them

together, and create new worlds around ourselves. If you do not understand

that you are multidimensional, then the whole notion of God runs off the

rails.

I remember as a boy that my mother once prayed for a sign or message from

God—I believe she had had a dream that affected her deeply. One day the

kitchen door was left open, and a large cobra crawled in. When my mother

encountered it, she didn't scream or cry out but fell to her knees in

reverence. To her, this snake was Shiva, and her prayers had been

answered.

Notice how much your response to this incident depends on interpretation.

If you don't believe that Shiva can appear as an animal, it would seem

crazy to revere a cobra, not to mention superstitious and primitive. But

if all of nature expresses God, then we can choose which symbols express

him best. I know one thing: I cannot share anyone else's consciousness. As

much as I love my mother, her response is private and unique. What was a

glorious symbol of God to her may frighten and repulse others. (I can

remember many days sitting in school under the tutelage of Catholic

brothers, wondering why anyone would kneel before the horrifying image of

the crucifixion.)

I was testing these key ideas with a group when a woman objected. "I don't

understand this word projection. Are you saying that we just make God up?"

she asked.

"Yes and no," I replied. "A projection is different from a hallucination,

which has no reality at all. A projection originates inside you, the

observer, and therefore it defines your perception of reality—it is your

take on infinity."

"Which would make God just a comment about me?" she asked.

"God cannot be just about you, but the portion of him that you perceive

must be about you, because you are using your own brain and senses and

memory. Since you are the observer, it is all right to see him through an

image that is meaningful to you."

I thought of St. Paul's most telling line about the role of the observer:

"Now we see as through a glass, darkly." The passage is easier to

understand if we set aside the King James poetry in favor of modern

English:

When I was a child, I spoke and saw things like a child. When I grew up, I

had finished with childish things. Right now, we all see puzzling

reflections, as in a clouded mirror, but then (when we meet God), we shall

see face to face. My knowledge now is partial; then it will be whole, the

way God knows me already.

The standard interpretation is that when we are confined to a physical

body, our perception is dim. Only on the day of judgment, when we meet God

directly, will our perception be pure enough to see who he is and who we

are. But that isn't the only way to interpret the passage. Paul could be

making the point that the observer who is attempting to see who God is

winds up seeing his own reflection. Since there is no way around this

limitation, we have to make the best use of it that we can. Like a child

growing up, we have to evolve toward a more complete vision, until the day

arrives when we can see the whole as God does. Our self-reflections tell

our own story along the way, usually in symbolic form as dreams do—hence

the clouded mirror.

Reality itself may be only a symbol for the workings of God's mind, and in

that case the "primitive" belief—found throughout the ancient and pagan

world—that God exists in every blade of grass, every creature, and even

the earth and sky, may contain the highest truth. Arriving at that truth

is the purpose of spiritual life, and each stage of God takes us on a

journey whose end point is total clarity, a sense of peace that nothing

can disturb.

STAGE ONE:

GOD THE PROTECTOR

(Fight-or-Flight Response)

Neurologists have long divided the brain into old and new. The new brain

is an organ to be proud of. When you have a reasoned thought, it is this

area of gray matter, primarily the cerebral cortex, that comes into play.

Shakespeare was referring to the new brain (and using it) when he had

Hamlet utter, "What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how

infinite in faculties." But Hamlet was also wrapped up in a murder case

that called for vengeance, and as he dug deeper into the sins of his

family, he dug deeper into his own mind. The old brain wanted its due;

this is the part of us that claws for survival and is willing to kill, if

need be, to protect us.

The old brain is reflected in a God who seems not to possess much in the

way of higher functions. He is primordial and largely unforgiving. He

knows who his enemies are; he doesn't come from the school of forgive and

forget. If we list his attributes, which many would trace back to the Old

Testament, the God of stage one is

Vengeful

Capricious

Quick to anger

Jealous

Judgmental—meting out reward and punishment

Unfathomable

Sometimes merciful

This description doesn't only fit Jehovah, who was also loving and

benevolent. Among the Indian gods and on Mount Olympus one encounters the

same willful, dangerous behavior. For God is very dangerous in stage one;

he uses nature to punish even his most favored children through storms,

floods, earthquakes, and disease. The test of the faithful is to see the

good side of such a deity, and overwhelmingly the faithful have. Primitive

man experienced untold threats from the environment; survival was in

question every day. Yet we know that these threats were not destined to

prevail. Overarching was a divine presence that protected human beings,

and despite his frightening temper, God the protector was as necessary to

life as a father is inside a family.

The old brain is stubborn, and so is the old God. No matter how civilized

a person's behavior is, if you dig deep enough (Freud compared this to

unearthing all the layers of an archaeological site) you'll find primitive

responses. We know enough about this region, located at the bottom and

back of the skull and rooted in the limbic system, to see that it acts

much like our stereotype of Jehovah. The old brain isn't logical. It fires

off impulses that destroy logic in favor of strong emotions, instant

reflexes, and a suspicious sense that danger is always around the corner.

The favorite response of the old brain is to lash out in its own defense,

which is why the fight-or-flight response serves as its main trigger.

"I don't care what you're telling us, there's something evil about this

thing. It has a mind of its own. No one's going to stop it." The young

father had been trying to hide his tears, but now his voice was shaking.

"I know it can feel that way," I replied sadly. "But cancer is just a

disease." I looked at him and stopped trying to explain the radiation

treatments for his child. The father was beside himself, talking from pure

fear and anger. "One day she has a headache, nothing to worry about. Now

it has turned into this—whatever it is."

"Astrocytoma—it's a kind of brain tumor. Your daughter's has advanced to

Stage Four, which means it can't be operated on and is growing very fast."

This conversation took place more than a decade ago. The parents were

still in their early thirties, young blue-collar people who had no

experience of this kind of catastrophe. Less than twenty-four hours had

passed since they brought their twelve-year-old girl in. She had been

having dizzy spells with recurring pain behind her eyes. After running a

battery of tests, the presence of a malignancy showed up. Because cancer

grows rapidly in children, the prognosis was likely to be fatal.

"We aren't giving up," I said. "Medical decisions have to be made, and you

both need to help." The parents looked numbed. "We're all praying for

Christina," I said. "Sometimes it's just up to God."

The father's face went dark again. "God? He could have prevented this

whole damn thing. If he's going to let a senseless tragedy happen, why

should we pretend he will make it go away?" I didn't respond, and the

parents stood up to leave. "You just tell them to start with those

treatments. We'll make it through," the father said. He gathered his wife

and they returned to their child's bedside.

Hope failed in this moment of crisis, which means, if we are being totally

honest, that God failed—the God of stage one, who should have protected

his children. In crisis we are all thrown back on a deep sense of physical

danger, and not just in the case of a cancer diagnosis. The loss of a job

can feel like a matter of life and death. People wrangling over a bitter

divorce at times act as if their former spouse has become a mortal enemy.

The fact that the old brain exerts its influence age after age accounts

for the durability of God's role as protector. Our primitive reactions to

danger exist for a reason that is not going to be easily outgrown; the

very structure of the brain guarantees this. The brain triggers the

endocrine system, which injects adrenaline into the bloodstream to force

the body—whatever the higher brain may think—to do its bidding.

Put yourself in the position of an innocent defendant in a lawsuit. A

stranger has brought charges against you, forcing you to appear before a

judge. Despite your duty to act in accordance with the rule of law,

certain primitive feelings will prove inescapable, and they are very Old

Testament in nature:

·                     You will want to get back at your accuser. Jehovah

is vengeful.

·                     You will try to find anything that works to prove

your case. Jehovah is capricious.

·                     You will boil over whenever you think of the

injustice being done to you. Jehovah is quick to anger.

·                     You will want the court to pay attention to you as

much as possible, seeing only your side of things. Jehovah is jealous.

·                     You will want your accuser punished after you are

found innocent. Jehovah is judgmental—he metes out reward and punishment.

·                     You will lie awake at night wondering how this could

have happened to you. Jehovah is unfathomable.

·                     You will be sustained by faith that the court

ultimately won't punish you unjustly. Jehovah is sometimes merciful.

(It's worth repeating that Jehovah is just an illustrative example—one

could have substituted Zeus or Indra.)

Because his role is to protect, the God of stage one fails when the weak

fall prey to illness, tragedy, or violence. He succeeds whenever we escape

danger and survive crisis. In the mood of triumph his devotees feel

chosen. They exult over their enemies and once again feel safe (for a

while) because heaven is on their side.

Reason teaches us that aggression begets retaliation—we know this

undeniably, given the tragic history of war. But there is a wall between

the logic of the new brain, which is based upon reflection, observation,

and the ability to see beyond bare survival, and the logic of the old

brain. The old brain fights first—or runs away—and asks questions later.

Who am I? ...

A survivor.

At each stage the basic question, "Who is God?" immediately raises other

questions. The first of these is "Who am I?" In stage one identity is

based upon the physical body and the environment. Survival is the foremost

consideration here. If we look at biblical history, we find that the

ancient Hebrews could survive in a harsh world much more easily than in a

purposeless one. The hardships of their lives were many—it took

persistent, unending toil to raise crops from the land; enemies abounded;

and being in the middle of a much larger nomadic culture, the Hebrews were

caught up in one migration after another. How could this life of bare

subsistence be reconciled with any sort of benign God?

One solution was to make him a capricious and unpredictable parent. This

role is played out with great dramatic conviction in the Book of Genesis,

which spends far more time over the fall of Adam and Eve than on their

creation.

The first man and woman are the ultimate bad children. The sin they commit

is to disobey God's dictum not to eat of the tree of knowledge. If we

examine this act in symbolic terms, we see a father who is jealous of his

adult prerogatives: he knows best, he holds the power, his word is law. To

maintain this position, it is necessary that the children remain children,

yet they yearn to grow up and have the same knowledge possessed by the

father. Usually that is permissible, but God is the only father who was

never a child himself. This makes him all the more unsympathetic, for his

anger against Adam and Eve is irrational in its harshness. Here is his

condemnation of Eve:

I will increase your labor and your groaning,

and in labor shall you bear children.

You shall be eager for your husband,

and he shall be your master.

Eve has such a reputation as temptress that we forget one thing—she is not

overtly sexual until God makes her so. Being "eager for your husband" is

part of the curse, as is the pain of giving birth. The rest of family life

will have to bear the sentence pronounced upon God's son:

With labor shall you win your food from the earth

all the days of your life.

It will grow thorns and thistles for you,

none but wild plants for you to eat.

You shall gain your bread by the sweat of your brow,

until you return to the ground;

for from it you were taken.

Dust you are, to dust shall you return.

This entire scene, which ends with Adam and Eve driven in shame from

paradise, also divides a family, shattering the intimacy of the preceding

days, when God would walk in Eden and enjoy himself with his children. But

if paradise quickly turned into a faded dream—we are not far from the time

when Cain kills his brother Abel—the lesson sank deep: humans are guilty.

They alone made the world harsh and difficult; on their heads falls the

blame for the agony of childbirth and the backbreaking toil of eking out a

living.

The Genesis story came about two thousand years before Christ and was

written in final form by temple scribes, perhaps a thousand years after it

originated. Women had been subjugated to men long before that, and the

rigors of farming and childbearing are as old as humankind. So to arrive

at the God of stage one, it was necessary to argue back from what already

existed.

When they asked, "Who am I?" the earliest writers of scripture knew that

they were mortals subject to disease and famine. They had seen a huge

percentage of babies die at birth, and many times their mothers perished

as well. These conditions had to have a reason; therefore the family

relationship with God got worked out in terms of sin, disobedience, and

ignorance. Even so, God remained on the scene—he watches over Adam and

Eve, despite the curse put upon them, and after a while he finds enough

virtue in their descendant Noah to save him from the sentence of death

placed upon every other offspring from the original seed family.

Another irony is at work here, however. The only character in the episode

of Eve and the apple who seems to tell the truth is the serpent. He

whispers in Eve's ear that God has forbidden them to eat of the tree of

good and evil because it will give them knowledge and make them equal to

the father. Here are his exact words after Eve informs him that if they

eat of the forbidden fruit, they will die:

Of course you will not die. God knows that as soon as you eat it, your

eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing both good and evil.

The serpent is holding out a world of awareness, independence, and

decision making. All these things follow when you have knowledge. In other

words, the serpent is advising God's children to grow up, and of course

this is a temptation they cannot resist. Who could? (The famed authority

on myth, Joseph Campbell, points out that at this time the wandering

Hebrew tribes had moved into a territory where the prevailing religion was

based on a wise, benign goddess of agriculture whose totem animal was the

snake. In a complete reversal, the priests of Israel made the female the

villain of the piece and her ally a wicked serpent.)

Why would God want to oppose such a natural development in his

children—why didn't he want them to have knowledge? He acts like the worst

of abusive fathers, using fear and terror to keep his offspring in an

infantile state. They never know when he will punish them next—worse than

that, he gives no hope that the original curse will ever be removed. Good

and bad actions are weighed, reward and punishment are handed out from the

judge's bench, yet mankind cannot escape the burden of guilt, no matter

how much virtue your life demonstrates.

Rather than viewing the God of stage one harshly, we need to realize how

realistic he is. Life has been incredibly hard for many people, and deep

psychological wounds are inflicted in family life. We all carry around

memories of how difficult it was to grow up and at any given moment, we

feel the tug of old, childish fears. The survivalist and the guilty child

lurk just beneath the surface. The God of stage one salves these wounds

and gives us a reason to believe that we will survive. At the same time he

fuels our needs. As long as we need a protector, we will cling to the role

of children.

How do I fit in? ...

I cope.

In stage one there is no indication that humans have a favored place in

the cosmos—on the contrary. Natural forces are blind, and their power is

beyond our control. Recently I saw a news report about a small town in

Arkansas flattened by a tornado that struck in the middle of the night.

Those who had survived were awakened by a deafening roar in the darkness

and had the presence of mind to run into their basements. As they surveyed

the wreckage of their lives, the dazed survivors mumbled the same

response: I'm alive only by the grace of God.

They did not consider (nor express out loud) that the same God might have

sent the storm. In crisis people seek ways to cope, and in stage one, God

is a coping mechanism. This holds true wherever survival is in peril. In

the worst ghetto areas ravaged by drugs and street crime, one finds the

most intense faith. Horrible situations stretch our coping skills beyond

their limits—the random death of children gunned down in school would be

an example—and to escape complete despair, people will project beyond

hopelessness, finding solace in a God who wants to protect them.

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

Good is safety, comfort, food, shelter, and family.

Evil is physical threat and abandonment.

An absolute standard of good and evil is something many people crave,

particularly at a time when values seem to be crumbling. In stage one,

good and evil seem to be very clear. Good derives from being safe; evil

derives from being in danger. A good life has physical rewards—food,

clothing, shelter, and a loving family—while if you lead a bad life you

are left alone and abandoned, prey to physical danger. But is the picture

really so clear?

Once again the family drama must be taken into account. Social workers are

well aware that abused children have a strange desire to defend their

parents. Even after years of beatings and emotional cruelty, it can be

nearly impossible to get them to testify to the abuse. Their need for a

protector is too strong—one could say that love and cruelty are so

interwoven that the psyche can't separate them. If you try to remove the

child from the abusive environment, he is deeply afraid that you are

snatching away his source of love. This confusion doesn't end with

adulthood. The old brain has an overriding need for security, which is why

so many abused wives defend their husbands and return to them. Good and

evil become hopelessly confused.

The God of stage one is just as ambiguous. Twenty years ago I read a

poignant fable about a town that was perfect. Everyone in it was healthy

and happy, and the sun always shone on their doorsteps. The only mystery

in the town was that every day a few people walked away, silently and

giving no explanation. No one could figure out why this was happening, yet

the phenomenon didn't end. We finally discover that a single child has

been trapped by his parents in the basement, where he is tortured, out of

sight. Those who walk away know this secret, and for them perfection has

come to an end. The vast majority don't know, or if they do, turn their

heads the other way.

Fables can be read in many ways, but this one says something about our

stage one God. Even if he is worshiped as a benign parent, one who never

inflicted guilt upon us, his goodness is tainted by suffering. A father

who provides with great love and generosity would be considered a good

father, but not if he tortures one child. Anyone who considers himself a

child of God has to consider this problem. Much of the time, as in the

fable, it is papered over. The need for security is too great, and in

addition there is only so much we can cope with at any one time.

How do I find God? ...

Through fear and loving devotion.

If the God of stage one is double-edged, providing with one hand and

punishing with the other, then he cannot be known only one way. Fear and

love both come into play. For every biblical injunction to "love the Lord

thy God with all thy heart, all thy strength, and all thy soul," there is

a counterbalance. The injunction to "fear the Lord" is expressly stated in

all faiths, even the faiths supposedly based on love. (Jesus speaks quite

openly about the evildoers who will be "cast out with wailing and gnashing

of teeth.")

What this means in a deeper sense is that ambivalence is discouraged.

Peace of a sort rules in a family where the children are told simply to

love their parents but also feel secret anger, hatred, and jealousy toward

them. The "official" emotion is only positive. An outsider may call this a

false peace, but to the insider it works. But has negativity really gone

away? It takes a great deal of growing up before one can live with

ambivalence and its constant blending of dark and light, love and

hate—this is the road not taken in stage one.

A friend of mine told me a touching story of the day he grew up, as he saw

it. He was a protected, even coddled child whose parents were very

private. He never saw them disagree; they were careful to draw the

boundary between what the adults in the family discussed between

themselves and what they told the children. This is psychologically

healthy, and my friend remembers an almost idyllic childhood, free of

anxiety and conflict.

Then one day when he was about ten, he woke up late one night to hear loud

noises from downstairs. He felt a chill of fear, certain that some crime

was taking place. After a moment he realized that his parents were having

a loud argument. In great consternation he jumped up and ran downstairs.

When he entered the kitchen he saw the two of them confronting each other.

"Don't you lay a hand on her, or I'll kill you!" he shouted, rushing at

his father. His parents were bewildered and did everything they could to

calm the boy down—there had been no violence, only an angry

disagreement—but even though he eventually grasped the situation,

something deep had changed. He no longer could believe in a perfect world.

The mixture of love and anger, peace and violence, that we all have to

live with had dawned on him. In place of certainty there was now

ambiguity—people he once trusted completely had showed that they possessed

a darker side. By implication the same holds true for each of us and, by

extension, for God.

Everyone must face this conflict, but we resolve it in different ways.

Some children try to preserve innocence by denying that its opposite

exists; they turn into idealists and wishful thinkers. They show a strong

streak of denial when anything "negative" takes place and will remain

anxious until the situation turns "positive" again. Other children take

sides, assigning all the anxiety-provoking traits to a bad parent while

labeling the other as always good. Both of these tactics fall under the

category of coping mechanisms; therefore it comes as no surprise to find

how much they invade religious belief in stage one, which is all about

coping.

The good parent-bad parent solution takes the form of a cosmic battle

between God and Satan. There is abundant proof in the Old Testament that

Jehovah is willful and cruel enough to assume the role of bad parent by

himself. Even a man of titanic righteousness like Moses is deprived in the

end of being able to enter the promised land. No amount of fear and love,

however you mix them, is enough to satisfy this God. His capriciousness

knows no bounds. However, if this portrayal is unacceptable, there must be

an "adversary" (the literal meaning of Satan's name) to take the blame

away from God. Satan appears in the Old Testament as tempter, deceiver,

stealer of souls, and the fallen angel Lucifer, who through pride tried to

usurp God's authority and had to be cast down to hell. You could say that

he is the light gone bad. But never once is he described as an aspect of

God. The division between the two makes for a much simpler story, as it

does for a child who has decided that one parent must be the good one and

the other bad.

The other coping strategy, which involves denying the negative and seeking

always to be positive, is just as common in religion. A lot of harm has to

be overlooked to make God totally benign, yet people manage to do so. In

the family drama, if there is more than one child, interpretations become

fixed. One child will be absolutely sure that no abuse or conflict was

ever present, while another will be just as certain that it was pervasive.

The power of interpretation is linked to consciousness; things can't exist

if you are not conscious of them, no matter how real they may be to

others. In religious terms, some believers are content to love God and

fear him at the same time. This duality in no way involves any

condemnation of the deity. He is still "perfect" (meaning that he is

always right) because those he punishes must be wrong.

In this case faith depends on a value system that is preordained. If some

ill befalls me, I must have committed a sin, even if I didn't have any

awareness of it. My task is to look deep enough until I find the flaw

inside myself, and then I will see the perfect judgment God has rendered.

To someone outside the system, however, it appears that an abused child is

figuring out, through convoluted logic, how to make himself wrong so that

the cruel parent remains right. In stage one, God has to be right. If he

isn't, the world becomes too dangerous to live in.

What's my life challenge? ...

To survive, protect, and maintain.

Every stage of God implies a life challenge, which can be expressed in

terms of highest aspiration. God exists to inspire us, and we express this

through the aspirations we set for ourselves. An aspiration is the limit

of the possible. In stage one, the limit is set by physical circumstances.

If you are surrounded by threats, to survive is a high aspiration. This

would be true in a shipwreck, a war, a famine, or an abusive family.

However, each stage of God must give scope to the whole range of human

abilities; even in the worst situations a person aspires to do more than

cope.

You might think that the next step would be escape. In stage one, however,

escape is blocked by the reality principle. A child can't escape his

family, just as famine victims often can't escape drought. So the mind

turns instead to imitating God, and since God is a protector, we try to

protect the most valuable things in life. Protectors take many forms. Some

are policemen protecting the law, firemen protecting safety, social

workers protecting the helpless. In other words, stage one is the most

social of all the seven worlds we will examine. Here one learns to be

responsible and caring.

The reward for learning to protect others is that in return they give you

their love and respect. Notice how furious the police become if they are

taunted by the very people they are sworn to defend (this occurs in riots,

political demonstrations, and racially divided neighborhoods). The

protector craves respect. He is also inflexible about rules and laws.

Being a guardian, he sees danger everywhere; therefore he is motivated to

keep people in line "for their own good." This is essentially a parental

feeling, and you will find that police officers can be fatherly, in both

the good and bad sense. They may be quick to forgive offenses where the

perpetrator acts humbled and chastised, but they are also prone to

dispensing rough justice when a bad guy shows no remorse. Outright

defiance is the worst response to a protector, who then feels completely

justified in holding you to the letter of the law, just as Jehovah felt

justified in punishing infractions of his law. Divine authority could be

very cruel even to the chosen people, but those outside the law (meaning

anyone with a different religion) deserve no mercy.

What is my greatest strength? ...

Courage.

What is my biggest hurdle? ...

Fear of loss, abandonment.

It isn't hard to figure out what you have to do to survive in a harsh

world—you have to show courage in the face of adversity. The Old Testament

is a world of heroes like Samson and David who fight battles and defeat

enemies. Their victory is proof that God favors them. But as we saw, no

amount of effort will totally appease this God. The courage to fight must

eventually turn into the courage to oppose him.

If we take it back to the family, a vicious circle is involved. If you are

afraid of your father because of his violent and unpredictable temper, the

prospect of facing him head-on will arouse even more fear. Thus the

incentive to keep quiet gets strengthened. Unfortunately, keeping quiet

only makes the fear worse, since it has no release. The only way out is to

overcome the hurdle, which is true at every stage of God. As in the

family, the devotee of a fearful God will not move on to a higher stage

until he says, "I am tired of being afraid. You are not my God if I have

to hide from your anger."

In social terms we see this played out in rebellion against authority. A

policeman who decides to testify against his fellow officers on charges of

corruption walks a fine line. From one perspective he is a traitor, from

another he has found a conscience. Which one is true? It all depends on

where you are heading. Some people have to preserve the system, and since

corruption is inevitable, they must decide how much bad can be stomached

in the name of the common good. Fathers and mothers make such decisions

every day over the bad behavior of their children, just as the police do

over behavior under the law. But others look at the same system and decide

that doing good isn't consistent with breaking the rules you are assigned

to enforce. Parents can't teach truth-telling while at the same time being

liars; policemen can't accept bribes and at the same time arrest crooks.

There is no clear line here. As organized religions demonstrate, it is

possible to live a long time with an angry, jealous, unfair God, even

though he is supposed to be the highest judge. Neither side of the line is

better than the other; ultimately one must learn to live with ambivalence.

The important issue is psychological. How much fear are you willing to

live with? When this hurdle is cleared, when personal integrity is more

important than being accepted within the system, a new stage begins. Thus

the exhilaration felt by many war protesters. To them, demonstrations

against authority mark a new birth of morality that is guided by principle

rather than outside force. Now translate this to an inner war, with one

voice urging rebellion and the other threatening you with punishment for

breaking the law, and you have the core drama of stage one.

What is my greatest temptation? ...

Tyranny.

You would think from the story of Adam and Eve that God's children were

tempted to sin, but to me this is just the official version. The guardian

wants you to obey; therefore he must make disobedience a wrongful act. The

real temptation lies on God's side, just as it does with any protector who

acts in his name. God's temptation is to become a tyrant. Tyranny is

protection that has gone too far. It exists in families where the parents

cannot balance rules with freedom. It exists in systems of law where mercy

has been forgotten.

The desire to rule is so seductive that we don't need to delve very far

into this particular temptation. It is more interesting to ask how it is

ever escaped. The tyrant more often than not has to be deposed, overthrown

by force. In some societies, as in some families, this happens through

violence. The children rebel against authority by killing it; this takes

place symbolically—through reckless teenage behavior with drinking and

driving, for example. But short of violence there is a subtler mechanism

for escaping any temptation, which is to see through the need for it. In

Mafia films the gangsters inevitably run a protection racket. Under the

pretext of keeping harm away from a storekeeper, they sell him insurance

in the form of their protection. But this scheme works only through a lie,

since the violence being held at bay comes from the gangsters

themselves—they are the threat and the insurance. In spiritual terms,

God's protection is valued only by denying that he is also the source of

the threat. In the end, nothing is outside the deity, so asking him to

protect you from storms, famine, disease, and misfortune is the same as

asking the perpetrator.

I was reading a psychiatric case study in which a father was very worried

about his three-year-old daughter. The little girl couldn't sleep well and

suffered from bouts of severe anxiety. The father sat up with her every

night, reading fairy tales to her and trying to offer reassurance.

"I read to her about Little Red Riding Hood and the big bad wolf," he told

the therapist, "and when she gets scared, I tell her that there's nothing

to worry about. I'm here to protect her."

"So you can't understand why she still seems so frightened?" the therapist

remarked.

"Not at all," said the father. "Do I need to be even more reassuring?"

"No, you need to ask yourself why you choose frightening stories when she

is so frightened to begin with."

The answer in this case is that the father was blinded by his need to be

reassuring, a need rooted in his past—he had had an absent father who

wasn't around to calm his child's fears. This is a telling anecdote,

because it poses the central question in stage one: Why did God have to

make such a frightening world? Was it just out of the temptation to

tyrannize us? The answer doesn't lie with God but in our interpretation of

him. To get out of stage one, you must arrive at a new interpretation of

all the issues raised so far—Who is God? What kind of world did he create?

Who am I? How do I fit in? In stage two the basic problem of survival has

been overcome. There is much less need for fear, and for the first time we

see the emerging influence of the new brain. Even so, just as the

reptilian brain is buried inside the skull, not abolished by the cerebrum

or canceled out by higher thought, the God of stage one is a permanent

legacy that everyone confronts before inner growth can be achieved.

STAGE TWO:

GOD THE ALMIGHTY

(Reactive Response)

If stage one is about survival, stage two is about power. There is no

doubt that God has all the power, which he jealously guards. At the

beginning of the scientific era, when the secrets of electricity were

being discovered and the elements charted, many worried that it was

sacrilege to look too closely at how God worked. Power was not only his

but rightfully so. Our place was to obey—a view that makes perfect sense

if you consider heaven the goal of life. Who would endanger his soul just

to know how lightning works?

Freud points out, however, that power is irresistible. It is one of the

primary goods in life, along with money and the love of women (Freud's

worldview was inescapably masculine). If Hamlet's dilemma is rooted in

stage one, the hero of stage two is Macbeth, who finds it convenient to

murder the king, his symbolic father, but then must wrestle with the

demons of ambition. In the first act of Macbeth, when he meets the three

witches on the heath, they predict that more and more power will come to

him, until in the end he is king. But this is more than a prediction.

Power is Macbeth's curse. It inflames his guilt, it forces him to abandon

love; he lives in the shadows of night, sleepless and afraid of being

plotted against; and in the end power drives him mad. The kind of God

implied by the drive to power is dangerous, but he is more civilized than

the God of stage one. In describing this new God we would say that he is

Sovereign

Omnipotent

Just

The answerer of prayers

Impartial

Rational

Organized into rules

Compared to the God of stage one, this version is much more social. He is

worshiped by those who have formed a stable society, one that needs laws

and governance. The Almighty is not so willful as his predecessor; he

still metes out punishment, but you can understand why—the wrongdoer

disobeyed a law, something he knows in advance not to do. Justice is no

longer so rough; the kings and judges who take their power from God do so

with a sense of being righteous. They deserve their power—or so they tell

themselves. As with Macbeth, the wielders of power get caught up in urges

that are all but irresistible.

The drama of power is based on the reactive response, a biological need to

fulfill ego demands. This response has not been studied well; we can

surmise that it is associated with the midbrain, which lies between the

oldest animal structures of the old brain and the rationality of the

cerebral cortex. This is a shadowy region, and for decades no one really

believed that ego—meaning your sense of identity and personality—was

innate. Then studies in infant development by Jerome Kagan and others

began to demonstrate that babies do not simply learn to have a personal

identity. Almost from the moment of birth some newborns are outgoing,

demanding in their needs, bold, and curious about the outside world, while

others are introverted, quiet, undemanding, and shy about exploring their

environment. These traits persist and expand through childhood and in fact

remain for life. This implies that the ego response is built into us.

The ruling dictum of the reactive response is "More for me." Taken too

far, this leads to corruption, since eventually an insatiable appetite

must run into the desires of others. But in biological terms the drive for

more is essential. A newborn infant exhibits a total lack of discipline

and control. Child psychiatrists believe that all boundaries are fluid in

the beginning. The baby is enclosed in a womblike world where the walls,

crib, blanket, and even mother's arms are still part of an

undifferentiated, amorphous entity. To take this blob of sensation and

find out where "I" begins is the first task of growing up.

The birth of ego is primitive at first. When an infant touches a hot stove

and draws away in shock, he remembers the pain not only as discomfort but

as something "I" don't want. This sense of ego is so primary that we

forget what it was like not to have it. Was there a time when I saw my

mother smiling down at me and felt that her emotions were mine? Apparently

not—without being able to think or reflect, the seed of ego came into the

world with us. Need, desire, pain, and pleasure were felt as "mine" and

remained that way, only growing in intensity.

Nor do we find any altruistic gods in world mythology. The first

commandment given to Moses is "You shall place no other God before me."

Jehovah survives all competitors in the Old Testament—we don't even

witness much of a contest. But in other systems, such as the Greek and the

Hindu, the war for power is constant, and one gets the sense that Zeus and

Shiva have to keep their eyes open if they want to remain at the top of

the pantheon. The Judaic God is a surprising victor in his emergence from

a small, conquered nation that had ten of its twelve tribes wiped off the

face of the earth by powerful foes, yet the subjugated Hebrews were able

to look beyond their situation. They projected a stable, unshakable God

who could not be touched by any shift of power on earth—the first God

Almighty to survive all challengers.

Jehovah succeeded because he exemplified a world that was fast

evolving—the world of competition and ambition. Raw power is violent,

while the power achieved through ambition is subtle. At the level of

survival, you get the food you need by stealing it from others; sex is

connected with rape or the stealing of women from another tribe. The God

of stage two doesn't condone rape and pillage, however; he has structured

a hierarchical world, one in which you can appeal to the king or the judge

to settle who owns the crops and whose wife is legitimate. The struggle to

bring in laws to replace sheer might divides stage one and stage two,

although there is always the threat of reversion. Power addicts you to

getting what you want, exposes you to the temptation to trample other

people's needs according to the rule that might makes right. To prevent

this we have a new God, an omnipotent judge who threatens even the most

powerful king with retribution if he goes too far.

Who am I? ...

Ego, personality.

Every parent is aware of the phase in a toddler's life associated with the

"terrible twos," when power dawns. The two-year-old who throws tantrums,

coaxes, wheedles, and manipulates any situation to get his way is testing

his ego boundaries. Earlier time was spent mastering basic skills of

bodily coordination, but now the time is ripe for discovering just how far

I, me, mine will get you. Exasperated they might get, good parents do not

stifle this sudden fascination with power. They realize that balance grows

out of excess; without the testing of limits, the ego would either be

cowed into submission or lost in grandiose fantasies.

From its first days, the ego finds that making things go your way isn't

automatic. Parents say no, and more important, have their own lives, which

means that a child cannot usurp every moment of their attention. These are

shocking discoveries, but as a young child adapts to them, he prepares for

the bigger shock ahead—that there are other children who want to grab the

love and attention that used to be yours by right. This contest of

competing egos creates the drama of stage two.

If you know yourself to be competitive and ambitious, it goes without

saying that at some level you have given your allegiance to the God of

this stage. Society rewards these traits so much that we tend to overlook

their roots. Imagine that you and your older brother are both trying out

for the same position on a Little League baseball team. When the time

comes for the coach to make his decision, your feelings are those of a

devotee before God the Almighty:

·                     You have to abide by the coach's decision. The

Almighty is sovereign.

·                     Even if you want to fight back, the adults have all

the power. The Almighty is omnipotent.

·                     You have to believe that playing your best will make

the decision fall in your favor. The Almighty is just.

·                     You can't help but hope that the coach knows how

desperately you want to be on the team. The Almighty answers prayers.

·                     The coach is assumed to know what he is doing and

capable of judging who is better than someone else. The Almighty is

impartial and rational.

·                     You have to study the rules of baseball and abide by

them. It does no good simply to beat your brother up to win a spot on the

team. The Almighty lays down rules and laws.

This psychology is not mere projection; the same kind of thinking conforms

to the way society works. Thus the ego forms a bridge from the family,

where your needs and whims are indulged, to the setting of school, where

rules override your whims and many other children are taken into account.

The ego is always tempted to return to the infant paradise in which food

and love came automatically, without competition. This fantasy comes to

the surface in adults who believe that they deserve everything they have

earned, no matter by what means. When John D. Rockefeller was asked where

his immense wealth came from, he gave the famous reply "God gave it to

me." It is essential in stage two to feel this connection, for otherwise

one would be competing with the Almighty. In Genesis, after God has

created the first man and woman on the sixth day, he says,

Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish

of the sea, the birds of heaven, and every living thing that moves upon

the earth.

When power was handed out, several features were notable. First, it was

handed to both man and woman. This original couple precedes Adam and Eve;

it remains a mystery why the writers of the books of Moses felt called

upon to create human beings a second time, in a more sexist version.

Second, there is no suggestion of aggression or violence. God gives humans

plants to eat, with no suggestion that they are to kill anything for food.

Finally, God looked at his work "and he saw that it was good," implying

that he felt no competitiveness with mankind over who was to rule. In

future ages, keeping the peace would often depend on surrounding a monarch

with the aura of God-given rule. (Macbeth owes his worst troubles not to

the fact that he committed murder but that he seized the crown unlawfully,

against the divine right of kings.)

The fantasy of getting everything for me doesn't often come true, however;

this isn't the time for the meek to inherit the earth. Stage two is

dominated by a God who justifies strength and competition, with no thought

that being a loser is possible.

How do I fit in? ...

I win.

The theme of stage two can be summarized as "Winning is next to

godliness." The Almighty approves of accomplishment. The Protestant work

ethic sealed his approval into dogma. It is a very simple dogma, free of

theological complications. Those who work the hardest will get the

greatest reward. But did this belief actually derive from spiritual

insight, or did people find themselves in a world where work needed to be

done and added God's stamp of approval afterward? Any answer we give would

have to be circular, because the human situation is always being projected

onto God, only to come back as spiritual truth.

In stage one the Fall brings about the curse of having to labor until you

return to the dust from whence you came. For work to be glorified now in

stage two seems contradictory, yet this is exactly how inner growth

proceeds. A certain problem is posed that cannot be solved in an earlier

stage, and then it gets resolved by finding a new way to approach it. In

other words, each stage involves a change of perspective or even a new

worldview.

If we take the Bible as our authority, there is ample evidence to support

the notion that God approves of work, competition, and winning. None of

the kings of Israel is punished for going to war. Joshua could not have

brought down the walls of Jericho with a blast on a ram's horn if God

hadn't aided him. A warrior God sides with David when he fights the

Philistines against impossible odds—in fact, most of the Old Testament

victories require miracles or God's blessing to be achieved.

On the other hand, Jesus is adamantly opposed to war, and in general to

work. He has no consideration for money, even promising (or so the

disciples understood him) that one has only to wait for deliverance, and

this meant deliverance from work, among other things. The Sermon on the

Mount is in favor of letting God handle all earthly needs. One glance

proves the point beyond a doubt:

Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth, where it grows rusty and

moth-eaten, and thieves break in to steal it. Store up treasure in heaven

instead....

No servant can be a slave to two masters.... You cannot serve God and

Mammon [money].

Behold the lilies of the field. They do not toil, nor do they spin

[cloth], yet I tell you, Solomon in all his glory was not attired like one

of them.

This sort of talk was disturbing. In the first place, it undercut the

power of the rich. Jesus explicitly tells a wealthy man who is worried

about the state of his soul that if he doesn't give away his money, he has

no more chance of getting to heaven than a camel of passing through the

eye of a needle—no chance at all.

Even if you ignore the letter of what is being said—society has found

countless ways to serve God and money at the same time—Jesus holds a

completely different view of power than anyone around him. He doesn't

equate power with achievement, work, planning, saving, or accumulation. If

you take away those things, the ego collapses. All are necessary in order

to build wealth, wage war, or divide the strong from the weak. These were

the very goals Jesus did not want to further; therefore his rejection of

power makes perfect sense. He wanted the human wolves to lie down with the

lambs.

However, this poses a huge conflict for we who follow the demands of our

egos, who want to feel that we can be good and win at the same time. Some

sort of work ethic is inevitable in stage two, yet it will always be

haunted by the fear that God doesn't really approve of the things society

rewards so lavishly.

How do I find God? ...

Awe and obedience.

Stage two is much less paralyzed by fear of God than stage one, but the

next closest emotion to fear—awe—is much present. The most primitive God

could strike you dead with a sudden bolt of lightning, leaving the

survivors to guess what you did to offend him. This new God punishes by

the rules. Most of his rules make sense in broad outline; every society

mandates against murder, theft, lying, and coveting property that belongs

to someone else. Yet the Almighty doesn't have to make sense. As the

medieval church fathers declared, God does not have to justify his ways to

man. Eventually this attitude will change, but as long as the deity

inspires awe, the way to him is through blind obedience.

Every stage of God contains hidden questions and doubts. In this case the

hidden question is: Can God really make good on his threats? The Almighty

has to make sure that no one is tempted to find out, which means that he

must exhibit his strength. The righteous must receive tangible rewards,

the wrongdoers must feel his wrath. Psalm 101 affirms that a deal has been

struck between God and the faithful:

I sing of loyalty and justice;

I will raise a psalm to thee, O Lord.

I will follow a wise and blameless course,

whatever may befall me.

I will go about my house in purity of heart....

I will hate disloyalty; I will have none of it.

As part of this loyalty oath, the psalm lists what will not be tolerated:

crooked thoughts, backbiters, the proud and pompous, the wicked in

general.

I remember receiving a lesson in God's power when I was three; My parents

had hired a nurse, or ayah, to take care of me because my mother was

preoccupied with a new baby. My ayah was from Goa, a heavily Christian

part of India with a strong European influence, and her name was Mary da

Silva. Every day Mary took me to the park in my pram. After an hour or so,

she would take me out and place me on the ground. Then she would draw a

circle around me in chalk, telling me in a solemn voice that if I ventured

outside the circle, the goddess Kali would eat my heart and spit out the

blood. Naturally this promise frightened me to death, and I never dared go

anywhere near the boundary.

We are all like cows who will not cross a road that has a metal cattle

guard laid down, for fear that they will catch their hoofs in it. Ranchers

pull a simple trick on the animals by painting the shape of a cattle guard

on the pavement, the mere sight of which will make the cows pull back.

God's laws could be just such a phantom; for fear of hurting ourselves, we

pull away from disobedience, even though we have never experienced divine

punishment in real life. To this end we take ordinary misfortunes such as

illness, bankruptcy, and loss of loved ones, and interpret them coming

from God.

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

Good is getting what you want.

Evil is any obstacle to getting what you want.

Obedience isn't an end unto itself. For obeying God's laws, the worshiper

expects a reward. In stage two this takes the form of getting what you

want. God permits you to fulfill your desires, and he makes you feel

righteous in the bargain. In his role as Almighty, the deity now begins to

answer prayers. In this value system, the rich can clothe themselves in

virtue while the poor are morally suspect an seem shameful. (Lest anyone

assume that this is a biblical tradition or just the fruit of the

Protestant work ethic, in China mercantile success as a measure of

goodness has been going on for centuries. Only the most self-denying sects

of Buddhism have escaped the equation of wealth and God's favor.)

As cut-and-dried as it appears, measuring good and evil according to

rewards has its pitfalls. As every young child finds out to his dismay in

preschool, others want the same things that you do, and sometimes there

isn't enough to go around. Social rules prevent you from grabbing,

hitting, and running away. Therefore the ego has to figure out how to

aggrandize "me" while at the same time being good. Rarely does the

solution emerge as pure honesty and cooperation.

As a result, manipulation is born. The goal of manipulation is to get what

you want but not look bad in the process. If I want your toy and can charm

you into giving it to me, then no one (including my conscience) can accuse

me of stealing. This calculus is very important when you fear guilt, even

more so if you fear that God is watching and keeping tabs. It seems

strange that arch-manipulators are motivated by conscience, yet they are;

the ability to tell right from wrong yet not completely heed the

difference is what separates a manipulator from a criminal or a bully.

Are these simply the kinds of shortcuts we are all tempted to use in order

to get our way? If you turn to the Old Testament, there is no mistaking

that God himself is manipulative. After destroying the world in a flood,

his covenant with Noah blocks him from using totalitarian force.

Thereafter he is subtler—praising those who hew to the law, withdrawing to

show anger, sending an endless string of prophets to attack sin through

preaching that stirs up guilt. We continue to use the same tactics in

society, pressuring conformity to what the majority believe is good while

disguising the evils that are done to the band of wrong-thinkers

(pacifists, radicals, communists, etc.) who refuse to fall into line.

What is my life challenge? ...

Maximum achievement.

Stage two isn't just a matter of naked power. It brings a sense of

optimism to life. The world exists to be explored and conquered. If you

watch a two-year-old as I, me, mine takes over, the sense of delight is

inescapable. Ego gives you strength, although its lessons are often

painful.

The Buddhist doctrine of ego death as a road to enlightenment is something

most people cannot accept. Ego death is based on a good argument, which

goes as follows: the more you center your life on I, me, mine, the more

insecure you will become. The ego believes in acquiring more and more. Its

appetite for pleasure, power, sex, and money is insatiable. But more and

more doesn't make anyone happy. It leads to isolation, since you are

getting your share at the cost of someone else's. It forces you to fear

loss. Even worse, it makes you identify with externals, and that tendency

can only wind up leaving you empty inside. At the deepest level, pleasure

can never be the road to God because you get trapped in the cycle of

duality (seeking pleasure and avoiding pain) while God is beyond all

opposites.

Convincing as the benefits of ego death may sound, few people would

willingly sacrifice the needs of I, me, mine. In stage two this is

particularly true because God gives his blessing to those who achieve.

I was once consulted by a retired executive who was certain he had a

hormone problem. I asked him about his symptoms.

"Where can I begin?" he complained. "I've lost all my energy. Half the

time I don't want to get out of bed in the morning. Hours go by while I

just sit in a chair, feeling gloomy and wondering if life has any point to

it."

On the surface this was a case of depression, probably brought on by the

man's recent retirement. Medically it's well documented that sudden

retirement can be dangerous. Men with no history of heart attack or cancer

can unexpectedly die of these illnesses; one study found that the average

life expectancy of retired executives was only thirty-three months on

average.

I dutifully ran a battery of tests, but as I suspected, there was nothing

wrong with this man's endocrine system. The next time l saw him, I said,

"Would you do something simple for me? Just close your eyes and sit in

silence for ten minutes. Don't look at your watch, I'll keep time for

you."

Although a bit suspicious, he did as I asked. Ten minutes passed, the last

five obviously being hard for him, to judge by his fidgety movements.

Opening his eyes, he exclaimed, "Why did you make me do that? How

pointless could anything be?"

"You were getting pretty restless," I remarked.

"I wanted to jump out of my chair," he said.

"So it doesn't look like our problem is lack of energy." My remark took

him aback, and he looked baffled. "I don't think this is a hormone

problem, metabolism, or depression," I said. "You've spent years

organizing your external life, running a business, directing a large work

force, and all that."

"Right, and I miss all that more than I can tell you," he mourned.

"I understand. And now that you have no external focus, what do you find?

You've paid almost no attention to organizing your inner life. Your

problem isn't lack of energy, it's chaos. Your mind was trained to order

everything around you at the cost of discovering what it would be like to

have internal order."

This man had devoted his life to the values of stage two, and the

challenge he faced now was to expand, not outwardly, but inside. In stage

two the ego is so bent on accomplishment that it ignores the threat of

emptiness. Power for its own sake has no meaning, and the challenge of

acquiring more and more power (along with its symbols in terms of money

and status) still leaves a huge vacuum of meaning. This is why absolute

loyalty is demanded by God at this stage—to keep the faithful from looking

too deeply inside. Let's clarify that this is not an actual demand made by

the Almighty; it is another projection. The retired executive in my

anecdote had a decision to make, whether to begin to cultivate an inner

life or to start up some enterprise that would give him a new external

focus. The course of least resistance would be to gear up a second

business; the harder road would be to heal the disorder of his inner life.

This is the choice that carries everyone from stage two to stage three.

What is my greatest strength? ...

Accomplishment.

What is my biggest hurdle? ...

Guilt, victimization.

Anyone who finds satisfaction in being an accomplished, skilled worker

will find stage two a very tempting place to rest on the spiritual

journey. Often the only ones who break free to a higher stage have had

some drastic failure in their lives. This isn't to say that failure is

spiritually worthy. It carries its own dangers, primarily that you will

see yourself as a victim, which make the chances for spiritual progress

worse than ever. But failure does raise questions about some basic beliefs

in stage two. If you worked hard, why didn't God reward you? Does he lack

the power to bestow good fortune—or has he forgotten you entirely? As long

as such doubts don't arise, the God of stage two is the perfect deity for

a competitive market economy. He has been cynically referred to as the God

of getting and spending. However, there is still the problem of guilt.

"I came from a small town in the Midwest, the only student from my high

school to ever make it to the Ivy League. Getting in was the prize I

valued the most," a friend of mine recalled.

"A month ago I was leaving work at my law firm, on the way to a new

restaurant. I was late, and as it happened, a homeless man had chosen the

doorway of our building to spend the night. He was blocking the door, and

I had to step over his body to get into the cab. Of course I've seen

homeless people before, but this was the first time I literally had to

walk over one.

"I couldn't shake that image the whole time I was riding uptown, and then

I remembered that the first month I was in college, twenty years ago, I

was walking in the part of Boston known as the Combat Zone. It was one

string of bars and adult bookstores after another. I was scared and

intrigued at the same time, but as I was leaving, a stumblebum on the

sidewalk ahead of me went into a seizure. He fell down, and some people

ran to call an ambulance, but I just kept on walking. Twenty years later,

sitting there in the cab, I could feel the old remorse wash over me. I had

been lying to myself, you see. The homeless man in front of my building

wasn't the first time I had walked over somebody."

Despite its external rewards, stage two is associated with the birth of

guilt. This is a form of judgment that requires no all-seeing authority,

except at the beginning. Someone has to lay down the commandments defining

absolute right and wrong. Afterward, the law-abiding will enforce their

own obedience. If you translate the process back to the family, the

origins of guilt can be traced along the same lines. A two-year-old who

tries to steal a cookie is reprimanded by his mother and told that what he

is doing is wrong. Until that point taking a cookie isn't stealing; it is

just following what your ego wants to do.

If the child repeats the same act again, it turns into stealing because he

is breaking a commandment, and in most families some sort of punishment

will follow. Now the child is caught between two forces—the pleasure of

doing what he wants and the pain of being punished. If a conscience is to

develop, these two forces have to be fairly equal. In that case, the child

sets up his own boundaries. He will take a cookie when it is "right"

(permitted by mother) and not take one when it is "wrong" (causes guilt

through a bad conscience.)

Freud called this the development of the superego, our internal rule

maker. Super means above, in that the superego watches over the ego from

above, holding the threat of punishment ever at the ready. Learning to

modify the harshness of the superego can be extremely difficult. Just as

some believers never get to the point of accepting that God might be

willing to bend the rules every once in a while, neurotics have never

learned how to put their conscience in perspective. They feel tremendous

guilt over small infractions; they develop rigid emotional boundaries,

finding it hard to forgive others; self-love remains out of reach. Stage

two brings the comfort of laws clearly set down, but it traps you into

putting too much value on rules and boundaries, to the detriment of inner

growth.

What is my greatest temptation? ...

Addiction.

It's no coincidence that a wealthy and privileged society is so prone to

rampant addictions. (1) Stage two is based on pleasure, and when pleasure

becomes obsessive, the result is addiction. If a source of pleasure is

truly fulfilling, there is a natural cycle that begins with desire and

ends in satiation. Addiction never closes the circle.

Stage two is also power-based, and power is notoriously selfish. When a

doting parent finds it almost impossible to let a coddled child break

free, the excuse may be "I love you too much, I don't want you to grow

up." Yet the unspoken motive is self-centered: I crave pleasure it brings

me to have you remain a child. The God of stage two is jealous of his

power over us because it pleases him. He is addicted to control. And like

human addiction, the implication is that God is not satisfied, no matter

how much control he exerts.

Psychiatrists meet people every day who complain about the emotional

turmoil in their lives and yet are blindly addicted to drama. They cannot

survive outside the dance of love-hate; they create tension, foster

mistrust, and never leave well enough alone. Other addictions are also

based on behavior: the need to have something wrong in your life (or to

create it if it doesn't exist), the obsession over things going wrong—this

is the "what if" addiction—and finally the compulsion to be perfect at all

costs.

This last addiction has taken secular form in people who crave the perfect

family, perfect home, and perfect career. They do not even see the irony

that such "perfection" is dead; it can be bought only at the price of

killing our inborn spontaneity, which by its nature can never be

controlled. There is a corresponding spiritual state, however, that aims

to please God through a life that has no blemish whatever. In the loyalty

oath of Psalm 101, the believer makes promises no one could live up to:

I will set before myself no sordid aim ...

I will reject all crooked thoughts;

I will have no dealing with evil.

Such absolutism itself amounts to an addiction—and it is here in stage two

that fanaticism is born.

The fanatic is caught in a self-contradiction. Whereas an orthodox

believer can feel satisfied if he obeys the law down to the last detail,

the fanatic must purify his very thoughts. Complete control over the mind

is unachievable, but this doesn't prevent him from imposing ever-stricter

vigilance on "crooked thoughts." Fanatics are also obsessed by other

people's purity, opening an endless quest to police human imperfection.

This fate lies in wait for those who get stuck in stage two: They lose

sight of the actual goal of spiritual life—to free humans and allow them

to live in innocence and love. This loss cannot be repaired until the

devotee stops being so concerned with the law. To do that he must find an

inner life, which will never happen as long as he is policing his own

desires. Vigilance kills all spontaneity in the end. When a person begins

to see that life is more than trying to be perfect, the bad old desires

rear their heads again. Only this time they are seen as natural, not evil,

and the road is open for stage three. It comes as a source of wonder when

turning inward breaks the spell of I, me, mine and ends its cravings.

STAGE THREE:

GOD OF PEACE

(Restful Awareness Response)

No one could accuse the earlier God of stages one or two of being very

interested in peace. Whether unleashing floods or inciting warfare, the

God we've seen so far relishes struggle. Yet even such powerful ties as

fear and awe begin to fray. "You believe that you were created to serve

God," an Indian guru once pointed out, "but in the end you may discover

that God was created to serve you." The suspicion that this might be true

launches stage three, for until now the balance has all been in God's

favor. Obedience to him has mattered far more than our own needs.

The balance begins to shift when we find that we can meet our own needs.

It takes no God "up there" to bring peace and wisdom, because the cerebral

cortex already contains a mechanism for both. When a person stops focusing

on outer activity, closes his eyes, and relaxes, brain activity

automatically alters. The dominance of alphawave rhythms signals a state

of rest that is aware at the same time. The brain is not going to sleep,

but it is not thinking, either. Instead there is a new kind of alertness,

one that needs no thoughts to fill up the silence. Corresponding changes

occur in the body at the same time, as blood pressure and heart rate

decrease, accompanied by lessened oxygen consumption.

These various changes do not sound overly impressive when put in technical

terms, but the subjective effect can be dramatic. Peace replaces the

mind's chaotic activity; inner turmoil ceases. The Psalms declare,

"Commune with your own heart on your bed, and be still." And even more

explicitly, "Be still and know that I am God." This is the God of stage

three, who can be described as

Detached

Calm

Offering consolation

Undemanding

Conciliatory

Silent

Meditative

It hardly seems possible that this nonviolent deity emerged from stage

two—and he didn't. Stage three transcends the willful, demanding God that

once prevailed, just as the new brain transcends the old. Only by

discovering that peace lies within does the devotee find a place that

divine vengeance and retribution cannot touch. In essence the mind is

turning inward to experience itself. This forms the basis of contemplation

and meditation in every tradition.

The first solid research on the restful awareness response came with the

study of mantra meditation (specifically Transcendental Meditation) in the

1960s and 1970s. Until then the West had paid little scientific attention

to meditation. It didn't really occur to anyone that if meditation was

genuine, some shift in the nervous system must accompany it. Early

experiments at the Menninger Foundation had established, however, that

some yogis could lower their heart rate and breathing almost to nil.

Physiologically they should have been on the brink of death; instead they

reported intense inner peace, bliss, and oneness with God. Nor was this

phenomenon simply a curiosity from the East.

In December 1577 a Spanish monk in the town of Avila was kidnapped in the

middle of the night. He was carted off to Toledo, to be thrown into a

church prison. His captors were not bandits but his own Carmelite order,

against whom he had committed the grave offense of taking the wrong side

in a fierce theological dispute. As advisor to a house of Carmelite nuns,

he had given them permission to elect their own leader instead of leaving

it to the bishop.

From our modern perspective this dispute is all but meaningless. But the

monk's superiors were seriously displeased. The monk underwent horrendous

torture. His unlit cell "was actually a small cupboard, not high enough

for him to stand erect. He was taken each day to the rectory, where he was

given bread, water, and sardine scraps on the floor. Then he was subjected

to the circular discipline: while he knelt on the ground, the monks walked

around him, scouring his bare back with their leather whips. At first a

daily occurrence, this was later restricted to Fridays, but he was

tortured with such zeal that his shoulders remained crippled for the rest

of his life."

The tormented monk has come down to us as a saint, John of the Cross,

whose most inspired devotional poetry was written at this exact time.

While imprisoned in his dark cupboard, Saint John cared so little about

his ordeal that the only thing he begged for was a pen and paper so he

could record his ecstatic inner experiences. He felt a particular joy at

communing with God in a place the world couldn't touch:

On a dark, secret night,

starving for love and deep in flame,

O happy, lucky flight!

unseen I slipped away,

my house at last was calm and safe.

These opening lines from "Dark Night" describe the escape of the soul from

the body, which delivers the poet from pain to joy. But for this to

happen, the brain has to find a way to detach inner experience from outer.

In medicine we run across instances where patients seem remarkably immune

to pain. In cases of advanced psychosis, someone who has become catatonic

is rigid and unresponsive to stimulation. There is no sign of reacting to

pain—just as with a patient whose nerves are dead. Chronic schizophrenics

have been known to cut themselves with knives or burn their arms with lit

cigarettes while showing no awareness of pain.

We cannot simply lump a great poet and saint, however, with the mentally

ill. In the case of St. John of the Cross, there was a pressing need to

separate from his tormentors. He had to find an escape route, and perhaps

that was the psychological trigger for his ecstasy. In his poetry he flees

to his secret lover, Christ, who caresses and soothes him in his arms:

... and there

my senses vanished in the air.

I lay, forgot my being,

and on my love I leaned my face.

All ceased. I left my being,

leaving my cares to fade

among the lilies far away.

Saint John describes with precisely chosen words the transition from the

material level our bodies are trapped in to the quantum level where

physical pain and suffering have no bearing. Lying beneath the spiritual

beauty of the experience, its basis is the restful awareness response.

To put yourself in a comparable situation, imagine that you are a marathon

runner. Marathons test the body's extremes of endurance and pain; at a

certain point long-distance runners enter "the zone," a place that

transcends physical discomfort.

·                     The runner no longer feels pain as part of his

experience. The God of peace is detached.

·                     The runner's mind stops fighting and struggling. The

God of peace is calm.

·                     The zone makes one feel immune to harm. The God of

peace offers consolation.

·                     Winning and losing are no longer a driving force.

The God of peace is undemanding.

·                     There is no need to fight; the zone will take care

of everything. The God of peace is conciliatory.

·                     The runner's mind quiets down. The God of peace is

silent.

·                     In the zone one expands beyond the limits of the

body, touching the wholeness and oneness of everything. The God of peace

is meditative.

I have heard of professional football players who claim that at a certain

point in every game, the game takes over, and they feel as if they are

going through the motions of a dance. Instead of using every ounce of will

to make it downfield to catch a pass, they see themselves running ahead

and meeting the ball as if destined. The God of peace isn't found by

diving within so much as he rises from within when the time is right.

Who am I? ...

A silent witness.

The God of stage three is a God of peace because he shows the way out of

struggle. There is no peace in the outer world, which is ruled by

struggle. People who attempt to control their environment—I am thinking of

perfectionists and others caught up in obsessive behavior—have refused the

invitation to find an inner solution.

"I wasn't raised with any feelings about religion," one man told me. "It

was a nonissue in my childhood and remained that way for years. I laid out

some huge goals for myself, which I intended to accomplish on my own—the

important job, the wife and kids, retirement by the age of fifty, all of

it."

This man came from considerable wealth, and for him a job wasn't important

unless it meant CEO. He achieved that aim; by his midthirties he headed up

an equipment-supply company in Chicago. Everything was moving on track

until a fateful game of racquetball.

"I wasn't pushing myself or playing harder than usual, but I must have

done something because I heard a loud snap, and all at once I was falling

over. The whole thing happened in slow motion. I knew at once that I had

torn my Achilles tendon—only the strangest thing was happening." Instead

of being in excruciating pain, he felt extremely calm and detached. "The

whole thing could have been happening to someone else. I lay there while

someone called an ambulance, but my mind was floating somewhere beyond."

The sensation at that moment was of a sweet, even blissful calm. The

man—we will call him Thomas—had never experienced such a state, and it

persisted even when his ankle did start to swell and ache with pain.

During the time Thomas was hospitalized in traction, he noticed that his

newfound peace gradually waned. He found himself wondering if he had

experienced something spiritual after all, but after some intense scrutiny

of scriptures, Thomas couldn't really put his finger on any specific

passage that corresponded to what had occurred.

It is common for people to break into stage three with this kind of

abruptness. In place of an active, excited mind, they find a silent

witness. Interpretations differ widely. Some people jump immediately into

religion, equating this peace with God, Christ, or Buddha; others register

the whole thing simply as detachment: "I used to be inside the movie," one

person explained, "but now I am sitting in the audience watching it."

Medically we know that the brain can choose to cancel out awareness of

pain. Until the discovery of endorphins—the brain's own version of

morphine—there was no biological explanation for this self-anesthesia. Yet

endorphins are not enough to account for Saint John's ecstasy or the inner

calm of the man who tore his Achilles tendon. If you examine the body's

painkilling mechanisms, it becomes clear that the brain does not give

itself a simple injection of opiates when pain is present. There are many

situations where pain cannot be overcome at all or only partially, and

sometimes it takes a trick to get the brain to react. If you take people

suffering from intractable pain, a certain number will get relief if you

inject them with saline solution while telling them that it is a powerful

narcotic. The whole area of treatment is psychological—it is a matter of

changing someone's interpretation. One also recalls the famous "show

surgeries" under the Maoist regime, where patients stayed cheerfully awake

during appendectomies, chatting and drinking tea. Their only anesthesia

was provided with acupuncture, yet when attempts were made to duplicate

this feat outside China, results were unreliable at best. The difference

in perception was too great between Eastern belief and Western skepticism.

In between the pain and the brain something must intervene that decides

how much discomfort is going to be felt, and the amazing thing is that

this decision maker can control our body's response totally. The switch

for pain is flicked mentally. It is just as normal to feel no pain as to

feel a great deal. To someone who has entered stage three, the decision

maker is not a mystery. He is the presence of God bringing peace, and the

pain being relieved is more than physical; it includes the pain of the

soul caught in turmoil. By going inward, the devotee has found a way to

stop that pain.

How do I fit in? ...

I remain centered in myself.

A dangerous God was just right for a dangerous world. The God of peace is

no longer dangerous because he has created a world of inner solitude and

reflection. When you go inward, what do you reflect on? The inner world

seems to be a landscape we all know very well. It is filled with thoughts

and memories, desires and wishes. If you focus on these events, which rush

by in the stream of consciousness, the inner world isn't a mystery. It may

be complex, because our thoughts are so varied and come from so many

places, but a mind filled with thought is not an enigma.

Someone who has arrived at stage three is reflecting on something very

different. A therapist would call it the core or center of a person. At

the mind's center there aren't any events. You are simply yourself,

waiting for thoughts to happen. The whole point of "remaining centered" is

that you aren't easily thrown off balance. You remain yourself in the

midst of outer chaos. (One is reminded of the football player who is so

focused that the game starts to play itself while he begins to move to

catch the ball as though preordained.)

In many ways finding your center is the great gift of stage three, and the

God of peace exists to assure his worshiper that there is a place of

refuge from fear and confusion. "Now I shall lie down in peace, and

sleep," says Psalm 4, "for you alone, O Lord, makest me unafraid." The

absence of peace in the world is never far from the minds of the writers

of scripture. Some of the strife is just part of how life is, but much of

it is political. The angels who greet the shepherds with the news of

Christ's birth include the promise of peace on earth and goodwill among

men, reflecting the fact that a messiah's function was to settle the

turbulent history of the chosen people once and for all.

A warrior God didn't solve the problem, nor did laying down countless

laws. The God of peace can't simply dictate an end to strife and struggle.

Either human nature has to change or else it must disclose a new aspect

that transcends violence. In stage three the new aspect is centeredness.

If you find your own inner quiet, the issue of violence is solved, at

least for you personally. A friend of mine who has been deeply influenced

by Buddhism goes even further: he says that if you can find the motionless

point at your core, you are at the center of the whole universe.

"Haven't you noticed driving down the highway that you can pretend not to

be moving? You reverse your point of view, so that you remain still while

the road and the scenery do all the moving. The same trick can be done

when you are out jogging. Everything else is in motion, flowing past you,

but you yourself remain hovering in place." Most of us would find it easy

to pull off this trick, but he sees a greater significance here. "That

still point which never moves is the silent witness. Or at least it's as

close as most of us can get. Once you find it, you realize that you don't

have to be lost in the endless activity going on around you. Seeing

yourself at the center of everything is just as legitimate."

In the East much the same argument has been made. Buddhism, for example,

doesn't believe that personality is real. All the labels we apply to

ourselves are just a flock of different birds that happen to roost on the

same branch. The fact that I am over fifty, Indian, a physician by

training, married with two children, and so forth doesn't describe the

real me. These qualities have chosen to roost together and form the

illusion of an identity. How did they all find the same branch? Buddhism

would say that I pulled them in by attraction and repulsion. In this

lifetime I preferred to be male rather than female, Eastern rather than

Western, married rather than single—and on and on. Choosing to be this

instead of that is totally arbitrary. For each choice, its opposite would

be just as valid. However, because of tendencies from my past (in India we

would say my past lives, but that isn't necessary) I make my particular

choices. I am so bound up in these preferences that I actually think they

are me. My ego looks at the house, the car, the family, the career, the

possessions, and it says, "I am those things."

But in Buddhism, none of it is true. At any moment the birds resting on

the branch can fly away. In fact this will happen when I die. If my soul

survives (the Buddha did not commit himself about what happens after

death) my choices will dissolve in the wind once I give up this body. So

who am I if not all these millions of choices that cling to me like a

glued-on overcoat? I am nothing except the still point of awareness at my

center. Strip away every experience I have ever had and that remains. To

realize this truth is to be free, so Buddhism teaches. Therefore seeing

yourself as a motionless point while driving down the freeway becomes a

valued experience. You are one step closer to finding out who you really

are.

How do I find God? ...

Meditation, silent contemplation.

The fact that stage three is self-centered cannot be denied. The Old

Testament clearly states that the way to peace is through reliance on God

as an outside power. He is the focus of attention, always. Verses on this

point read, "Great peace have they who love your laws" and "You will keep

him in perfect peace whose mind is fixed on you, because he puts his trust

in you." Giving up trust in God and looking instead to yourself could be

very dangerous. It could also be heresy. After the Fall, sin separated man

and God. The deity is "up there" in his heaven, while I am "down here" on

earth, a place of tears and struggle. In this scheme I am permitted to

pray to God, calling out for his help and comfort, but he decides whether

to return the call. It is not for me to try to make the connection

permanent. My imperfection—and the laws of God—forbid it.

A few clues indicate that I can risk a different approach, however. In the

Bible one finds such verses as "Seek ye the kingdom of heaven within." And

the means of going inward, chiefly meditation and silent contemplation,

are not that far removed from prayer. If it is true that "in silence shall

you possess your soul," then how much can God care how I find silence? The

religious arguments become secondary once we realize that a biological

response lies behind restful awareness, no matter what faith we clothe it

in.

The Eastern origins of meditation are undeniable, and in the Hindu

tradition, going inward begins a spiritual quest that will eventually end

in enlightenment. Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard, who played the key role

in popularizing meditation without religion, based his "relaxation

response" on the principles of Transcendental Meditation, minus its

spiritual implications. He removed the mantra, replacing it with any

neutral word that could be repeated mentally while slowly breathing in and

out (he suggested the word one). Others, including myself, have disagreed

with this approach and based our approach on the central value of a mantra

as a means of unfolding deeper spiritual levels inside the mind. To us,

the recited word has to be connected to God.

The spiritual properties of mantras have two bases. Some orthodox Hindus

would say that every mantra is a version of God's name, while others would

claim—and this is very close to quantum physics—that the vibration of the

mantra is the key. The word vibration means the frequency of brain

activity in the cerebral cortex. The mantra forms a feedback loop as the

brain produces the sound, listens to it, and then responds with a deeper

level of attention. Mysticism isn't involved. A person could use any of

the five senses to enter this feedback loop. In the ancient Shiva Sutras,

more than a hundred ways of transcending are described, among them looking

into the blue of the sky and then looking beyond it, seeing the beauty of

a woman and then finding what is behind that beauty. The whole intent is

to go past the senses in order to find their source. (The cliché that

Buddhists stare at their navels is a distortion of the practice of

concentrating the mind on a single point; the navel is imagined as just

such a point. In some traditions it also serves as a focus of energy that

is supposed to have spiritual significance.)

In all cases the source is a finer state of brain activity. The theory is

that mental activity contains its own mechanism for becoming more and more

refined until complete silence is experienced. Silence is considered

important because it is the mind's source; as the mantra grows fainter and

fainter, it eventually fades away altogether. At that point one's

awareness crosses the quantum boundary. For the first time in our stages

of inner growth, the material plane has been left behind; we are now in

the region where spiritual activity commands its own laws.

The argument persists that nothing of this kind is happening, that a brain

learning to calm down may be comforting, but it isn't spiritual. This

objection can be settled by noting that there really is no fundamental

disagreement going on. The cerebral cortex produces thought by using

energy in the form of photons; their interaction takes place on the

quantum level, which means that every thought could be traced back to its

source at a deeper level. There are no "spiritual" thoughts that stand

apart on their own. But ordinary thinking doesn't cross the quantum

frontier, even though it could (as Benson's nonspiritual technique shows).

We are kept on the material level because we pay attention to what the

thought means. Our attention is pulled outward rather than inward.

A mantra, as well as Benson's neutral word one, has little or no meaning

to distract us. Therefore it is an easier vehicle for going inward than

prayer or verbal contemplation (in which one takes an aspect of God to

think about and dwell on).

There is no doubt that people resist the whole notion of God being an

inner phenomenon. The vast majority of the world's faithful are firmly

committed to stages one and two, believing in a God "up there," or at any

rate outside ourselves. And the problem is complicated by the fact that

going inward isn't a revelation; it is just a beginning. The quiet mind

offers no sudden flashes of divine insight. Yet its importance is stated

eloquently in the medieval document known as "The Cloud of Unknowing,"

written anonymously in the fourteenth century. The author tells us that

God, the angels, and all the saints take greatest delight when a person

begins to do inner work. However, none of this is apparent at first:

For when you first begin, you find just a darkness and, as it were, a

cloud of unknowing.... This darkness and this cloud, no matter what you

do, stands between you and your God.

The blockage takes two forms: one cannot see God with the mind's reason

and understanding, nor can he be felt in "the sweetness of your

affection." In other words, God has no presence emotionally or

intellectually. The cloud of unknowing is all we have to go on. The only

solution, the writer informs us, is perseverance. The inner work must

continue. Then a subtle argument is made. The writer informs us that any

thought in the mind separates us from God, because thought sheds light on

its object. The focus of attention is like "the eye of an archer fixed on

the spot he is shooting at." Even though the cloud of unknowing baffles

us, it is actually closer to God than even a thought about God and his

marvelous creation. We are advised to go into a "cloud of forgetting"

about anything other than the silence of the inner world.

For centuries this document has seemed utterly mystical, but it makes

perfect sense once we realize that the restful awareness response, which

contains no thoughts, is being advocated. The writer has delved deeply

enough to find the God of stage three, who is beyond material

considerations. The step he took was a brave one under the weight of

priests, cathedrals, shrines, holy relics, church laws, and all the other

material trappings of medieval religion, but it would be a brave step

today as well, because we are still addicted to the outward life. People

want a God they can see and touch and talk to.

Consider how radical the argument really is, as revealed in the next

section of the book:

In this work it profits little or nothing to think upon the kindness or

worthiness of God, or upon our Lady, or upon the saints and angels in

heaven, or upon heavenly joy.... It is far better to think upon the naked

being of God.

This "naked being" is awareness without content, pure spirit, which

naturally does not unfold itself in a few hours or days. As with any

stage, this is one you enter, then explore. To someone who loves religion,

it can be a bleak place at first, one marked by loss of all the rituals

and comforts of organized faith. The value of stage three lies more in

promise than in fulfillment, because it is a lonely road. The promise is

given by our anonymous writer, who emphasizes over and over that delight

and love will eventually arise out of silence. The inner work is done for

only one purpose—to feel the love of God—and there is no other way to

achieve it.

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

Good is clarity, inner calm, and contact with the self.

Evil is inner turmoil and chaos.

The reader may have gotten this far and wondered how many people ever

evolve to stage three. Looking around the world, one sees tremendous

suffering and struggle. Even in a prosperous society the prevailing belief

system usually promotes the value of work and achievement. "You never get

something for nothing" and "God helps those who help themselves," as the

sayings go.

Every stage of inner growth is hard-won. There is no outside force that

picks you up by the nape of the neck and drops you ahead on the journey.

It is also true that outward circumstances do not determine anyone's

belief system. I remember the widespread shock when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

first arrived in America in the early 1970s when the Cold War was at its

coldest. He was expected to praise the superiority of the West with all

its individual freedoms, compared to the soulless repression he had left

behind in Russia. Even though he had suffered terribly in the Gulag prison

camps for eight years after writing a letter against Stalin, Solzhenitsyn

shocked everyone when he denounced the spiritual emptiness of American

consumerism, and subsequently he could only survive by retreating into the

solitude of the New England woods, as ignored as Thoreau was when he did

the same thing a hundred and fifty years earlier.

This clash of values confronts everyone on the threshold of stage three.

Good and evil are no longer measured by what happens outside oneself, the

compass is turned inward. Good is measured by remaining centered in the

self, which brings clarity and calm. Evil is measured by disturbance to

that clarity; it brings confusion, chaos, and inability to see the truth.

The inner life can never be a common experience. Fifty years ago the

sociologist David Riesman noted that the vast majority are "outer

directed" and the small minority "inner directed." Outer direction comes

from what others think of you. If you are outer directed you crave

approval and shrink from disapproval; you bend to the needs of conformity

and easily absorb the prevailing opinions as your own. Inner direction is

rooted in a stable self that can't be shaken; an inner-directed person is

free of the need for approval; this detachment makes it much easier for

him to question prevailing opinions. Being inner directed doesn't make you

religious, but the religion of the inner directed is stage three.

What is my life challenge? ...

To be engaged and detached at the same time.

Now we are in a better position to understand why Jesus wanted his

disciples to be "in the world but not of it." He wanted them to be both

detached and engaged—detached in the sense that no one could grab their

souls, engaged in the sense that they remained motivated to lead a worthy

life. This is the balancing act of stage three, and many people find it

hard to manage.

The writer of "The Cloud of Unknowing" says that going within is not the

real dilemma, nor is rejection of society and its values. Here is how our

writer describes spiritual work:

See that you are in no way within yourself. And (to speak briefly) I do

not want you to be outside yourself, or above, or behind, or on one side,

or on the other.

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

God can't be contained in the mind; he is nothing compared to our myriad

thoughts and ambitions. But there is a tremendous secret to this nothing

and nowhere:

Who is it that calls it nothing? Surely it is our outer man and not our

inner. Our inner man calls it All; for it teaches him to understand all

things bodily or spiritual, without any special knowledge of one thing in

itself.

This is a remarkable description of how silence works. We aren't talking

about the silence of an empty mind—in fact, those who achieve inner

silence are also thinking in the ordinary way. But the thought takes place

against a background of nonthought. Our writer equates it with knowing

something that doesn't have to be studied. The mind is full of a kind of

knowing that could speak to us about everything, yet it has no words;

therefore we seek this knowingness in the background. At first nothing

much seems to exist there; this is the phase of darkness and "the cloud of

unknowing." But the hunt is on, and if you keep to your plan, rejecting

outward answers over and over, never giving up on your belief that the

hidden goal is real, eventually your seeking bears fruit.

During this whole time, your work inside is private, but outer existence

has to go on. Thus the balancing act Jesus referred to as being in the

world but not of it. Or as we are stating it, being detached and engaged

at the same time.

What is my greatest strength? ...

Autonomy.

What is my biggest hurdle? ...

Fatalism.

Having explained how the inner and outer life are meant to be balanced,

the question arises, can it actually be done? In stage three a person

finds that he is autonomous. By breaking free of social pressures, he can

be himself. Yet there is the risk of fatalism, a feeling that being free

is just a form of isolation with no hope of influencing others. How can

another person, someone not at this stage, understand what it means? The

whole thing sounds like a paradox, and once again the writer of "The Cloud

of Unknowing" hits it right on the head.

He points out that worldly people (and our own egos) aspire to be

everywhere, while God is nowhere; they want to amount to something, yet

God is nothing. The spiritually dedicated are thus consigned to the

margins of society—the most extreme examples being monks and nuns.

Renunciation is almost a requirement, because an inner God does not

conform.

Although every culture values its saints, the danger of turning inward, as

far as society is concerned, is obvious. In 1918, long before anyone in

England could foresee the importance of Gandhi to the fate of the British

empire, the noted scholar Gilbert Murray made a prophetic statement:

"Persons in power should be very careful of how they deal with a man who

cares nothing for sensual pleasure, nothing for riches, nothing for

comfort or praise or promotion, but is simply determined to do what he

believes to be right. He is a dangerous and uncomfortable enemy, because

his body, which you can always conquer, gives you so little purchase upon

his soul."

Purchase means something you can grab on to, and that is what's missing in

stage three. Gandhi, because he had renounced the outer trappings,

couldn't be grabbed anywhere in the usual places. Those in power couldn't

threaten him with losing his job, house, family, or even with imprisonment

and death (they tried all of these means anyway). I am not implying that

stage three is as far as Gandhi got in his spiritual journey, but he

illustrates the point: detachment renders the use of power impotent. The

God of peace doesn't validate how good you are by giving you money or

status. You validate yourself from within, and this equates with God's

blessing. At this stage of inner growth, the power of going inward is

veiled; there is darkness and a cloud of unknowing. Yet somehow the pull

toward spirit is real. For all the outer sacrifices, something seems to

have been gained. What that something is becomes clear later; at this

moment there is a period of adjustment as the person accommodates to a new

world so different from that of every day.

Wbat is my greatest temptation? ...

Introversion.

I've taken great pains to show that stage three is not about becoming an

introvert. That is the great temptation, especially, for those who

misinterpret the words going inward and inner silence. Words have a hard

time at the quantum level. We are not talking about silence in the sense

of no thought; we aren't talking about the inside of a person as opposed

to the outside. But the ego has a fondness for co-opting anything

spiritual and turning it to other purposes. Someone who by nature wants to

shrink from the world can use as his excuse that spirituality should be

inward. Someone who feels pessimistic in general can find comfort in

rejecting the whole material world.

Introversion is not a spiritual state, however. Behind it lie all kinds of

negative assumptions about the value of external life. The introvert is

hiding his light under a bushel basket, the very thing Jesus warns

against. I know one man who describes himself as an internal defector. His

basic attitude is disgust with the world. He thinks all politics are

corrupt, all business greedy, all ambition futile, all personal

attachments a trap. Needless to say, it can be very draining to be around

this man, but he sees himself as a good, indeed almost model Buddhist. His

path of renunciation—as he sees it—really amounts to rejection. The two

are so close that it takes diligence not to mistake them.

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

make a decision that "they" (other people, the world in general) are

unsuitable. The ego has many reasons for such rejection, and many sound

plausible. To be involved in the world is a muddy, sometimes dispiriting

business. On the other hand, the goal of spirituality is inclusive. God

enfolds the whole creation, not just the nice parts. If you start out by

rejecting this or that, how will you end up accepting it? Introversion

rejects everything except those few acceptable bits of experience that

make it through the gates set up by the ego.

True renunciation is quite different. It consists of realizing that there

is reality behind the mask of the material world. The "nothing and

nowhere" of God are real, and in the face of that one's attention is

pulled away from outer rewards. Thus the richest man in the world could be

a renunciate, if he has the proper insights, while a greedy, selfish monk,

no matter how cloistered he may be, could fall very short of renunciation.

In the same way, someone can be extremely active and extroverted; this

doesn't harm the inner search. The whole issue in stage three has to do

with allegiance. Do you give your allegiance finally to the inner world or

the outer? Many challenges come our way on this long journey, and no

matter what answer you give verbally, it will be in the fire of experience

that real answers come.

STAGE FOUR:

GOD THE REDEEMER

(Intuitive Response)

The brain knows how to be active and it knows how to be calm. Why isn't

that the end of it? Where could the mind go once it has found peace within

itself? The higher stages of spirituality seem mysterious when framed this

way, because there is nowhere to go beyond silence. We have to look at

what silence can grow into, which is wisdom.

Psychologists are well aware that wisdom is a real phenomenon. If you pose

a battery of problems to subjects who span a range of ages, the older ones

will predictably give wiser answers than the younger. The posed problem

could be anything: deciding on whether you've been cheated in a business

deal, or how to settle an international incident that could lead to war. A

wiser answer might be to wait and see before acting on impulse, to ask for

advice from several sources, or not to take any assumptions for granted.

It doesn't matter really what the problem is. Wisdom is a perspective

applied to any situation.

Just as stage three sees the birth of a peaceful God, stage four sees the

birth of a wise God. He is willing not to act on his vengeful impulses; he

no longer holds old sins against us; his outlook has gotten beyond right-

and wrongdoing. In the role of God the Redeemer, he begins to take back

all the judgments that weighed down life; therefore his wisdom creates a

sense of being loved and nurtured. In this way the loneliness of the inner

world begins to soften. The qualities of God the Redeemer are all

positive:

Understanding

Tolerant

Forgiving

Nonjudgmental

Inclusive

Accepting

You will notice that none of these qualities is the result of thinking—if

we found them in a person, we would call them qualities of character. The

psychological version of wisdom is inadequate here. To a psychologist,

wisdom is correlated with age and experience, but something much deeper is

involved. Spiritual masters speak of a mysterious faculty known as "second

attention." First attention is concerned with the task at hand, with the

data being brought in by the five senses. It expresses itself as thoughts

and feelings. Second attention is different. It looks beyond the task at

hand, somehow viewing life from a deeper perspective. From this source

wisdom is derived, and the God of stage four appears only when second

attention has been cultivated.

I know an ambitious writer who received a windfall from a book that had

surprised everyone by becoming a best-seller. Elated with the influx of

hundreds of thousands of dollars, he decided to venture it all in a risky

oil leasing company. His friends pointed out that the vast majority of

such opportunities bleed the investors dry before any oil is discovered.

The writer was undeterred, and with no experience whatever, he plunged

into his investment, going so far as to visit the proposed oil wells,

which were dotted throughout Kansas.

I met him again at a publishing event six months later. He sounded

mournful; all his money had gone down the drain. "Everyone is being very

kind about it," he said with embarrassment. "My friends resist their

I-told-you-so impulses. But losing the money isn't really the hardest

part, and it isn't the humiliation, either. What I have to live with is

different. You see, from the very outset, I knew that this investment

would fail. I hadn't the slightest doubt that I was making a terrible

decision, and I walked through each day like a schizophrenic, totally

confident on one level and totally doomed on the other."

This is a dramatic example of the fact that we all inhabit more than one

level of reality at the same time. First attention organizes the surface

of life; second attention organizes the deeper levels. Intuition and

wisdom both grow out of second attention and therefore cannot be compared

to ordinary thinking. Yet this man didn't pay heed to his intuition; he

went ahead with his doomed project, ignoring the unconscious part of

himself that knew in advance what would happen. The God of stage four

enters one's life only after you make friends with the subconscious.

Therapists have an exercise for this, which consists of imagining yourself

in a dark cave. You have entered to find the perfect mentor, who is

waiting for you at the end of a tunnel. You begin to walk toward him,

feeling calm and expectant—the cave is warm and safe. As you get near the

end of the tunnel a room opens up, and you see your mentor with his back

to you. He slowly turns around—this is the point at which you are supposed

to realize who, out of everyone you have ever met, will be facing you.

Whoever it turns out to be, whether your grandfather, a former teacher, or

even a person you don't know, like Einstein or the Dalai Lama, you would

expect certain qualities in your mentor:

·                     A mentor should know who you are and what your

aspirations are. God the Redeemer is understanding.

·                     A mentor should accept you faults and all. God the

Redeemer is tolerant.

·                     When you bring up things that you have never told

anyone because they make you feel guilty and ashamed, a mentor should

absolve that guilt. God the Redeemer is forgiving.

·                     Wise as he is, a mentor should not interfere in your

decisions or brand them wrong. God the Redeemer is nonjudgmental.

·                     A mentor should be able to understand a whole range

of human nature. God the Redeemer is inclusive.

·                     You should feel safe with your mentor and bonded

with him in intimacy. God the Redeemer is accepting.

No gender is implied in the role of mentor (the original Mentor, who

appeared as tutor and guide to the son of Ulysses, took a male shape but

was actually Athena, goddess of wisdom). For the first time, in fact, we

can say that the God of stage four has a bias toward the female. Intuition

and the unconscious have generally been seen as feminine in contrast to

the masculine power of reason. The same division is expressed biologically

as right-brain versus left-brain dominance. The fact that the right brain

oversees music, art, imagination, spatial perception, and perhaps

intuition doesn't mean that the God of stage four lives there, although

the implication is strong. Myths around the world include heroes who speak

directly to gods, and some anthropologists have speculated that just as

the right brain can bypass the left to receive nonverbal, nonrational

insights, so ancient humans could bypass the claims of rationality and

perceive gods, fairies, gnomes, angels, and other beings whose material

existence is much doubted by the left brain.

Today we are more inhibited. Very few people can say that they have talked

with the Virgin Mary, while the rest of us have internalized divine voices

as intuition. A gut feeling is as close to the oracle of Delphi as many

people are going to get. That we can bypass reason to gain insight is

certainly true. Intuition involves no cogitation or working through. Like

lightning, it flashes across the mind, carrying with it a sense of

rightness that defies explanation.

I think the two hemispheres of the brain are likely to be the source of

first and second attention, because "dominant" doesn't mean domineering.

We can all intuit and reason at the same time. Doctors have all met

patients who know in advance whether or not they have cancer, or whether a

surgery will turn out well. In my early practice there was a woman who was

fearful of her husband's life when he was on the verge of entering the

hospital. As it happens, his surgery was minor and in no way threatened

his life.

"I know all that," she insisted, "but it's really his surgeon that worries

me. I just don't have a good feeling about him." Everyone, including her

husband and me, tried to reassure her. Doctor X was a prominent and

skilled surgeon, yet the wife remained fretful.

As it happens, there was a freakish occurrence. In the middle of his

procedure her husband had a rare reaction to the anesthesia. He died on

the table, unable to be revived. I was in shock; the wife was beyond

consolation. She had known what would happen, and yet at the rational

level, she had no basis for halting the surgery. This clash of first and

second attention forms the central drama of stage four. The big question

is how we can learn to trust second attention, since the unconscious has a

reputation for being unreliable, if not dark and menacing. Once you start

identifying with the knower—that part of yourself that is intuitive, wise,

and perfectly at home in the quantum world—then God assumes a new shape.

He turns from all-powerful to all-knowing.

Who am I? ...

The knower within.

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

Self-esteem enters here. At the earlier stages of inner growth, a person

is esteemed who belongs to the group and upholds its values. If the knower

within tries to object, he is stifled. Intuition actually becomes an

enemy, because it has a nasty habit of saying things you aren't supposed

to hear. A soldier sacrificing his life on the front lines can't afford to

think about the barbarity of war and the rightness of pacifism. If his

inner voice says, "What's the point? The enemy is just me in another man's

skin," self-esteem gets torn to shreds.

A person who has arrived at stage four long ago gave up group values. The

enticements of war, competition, the stock market, fame, and wealth have

faded. Being stranded in isolation is not a good fate, however, and so the

knower within comes to the rescue. He provides a new source of self-esteem

based upon things that cannot be known any other way. If you are thrilled

by the following lines from the great Persian mystic Rumi, you definitely

understand how the inner world can be more thrilling than anything

outside:

When I die

I will soar with angels,

And when I die to the angels,

What I shall become

You cannot imagine.

In stage four the emptiness of outward life is rendered irrelevant because

a new voyage has commenced. The wise are not sitting around contemplating

how wise they are; they are flying through space and time, guided on a

soul journey that nothing can impede. The hunger to be alone,

characteristic of anyone in stage four, comes from sheer suspense. The

person cannot wait to find out what comes next in the unfolding of the

soul's drama.

The word redemption conveys only a pale sense of how all-involving this

whole expedition is. There is much more to the knower within than just

being free from sin. Someone who still felt burdened with guilt and shame,

however, would never embark on the voyage. You don't have to be perfect to

try to reach the angels, but you do have to be able to live with yourself

and keep your own company for long stretches of time. A sense of sin

hinders that ability. As a somewhat cynical friend of mine, a

psychiatrist, likes to say, "You will know a lot about human motivation

once you realize one thing: ninety-nine percent of humanity spends

ninety-nine percent of their time trying to avoid painful truths."

Those who spend their time in other ways can seem mysterious. The knower

within has little to do with the five senses; it doesn't care how

rationality looks at a situation. The knower just knows. This mystery is

the subject of a famous Zen parable: A young monk goes to his master, the

abbot of the monastery, saying, "I must know the meaning of life. Will you

tell it to me, sir?"

The master, who was famed for his skill in calligraphy, picks up his brush

and swiftly writes the word Attention on a piece of paper. The disciple

waits, but nothing more happens. "Sir, I am determined to sit here until

you tell me the meaning of life," he repeats.

He sits down, and after a moment the master picks up his brush and again

writes the word Attention on the paper.

"I don't understand," the disciple protests. "It is said that you have

attained the highest enlightenment. I am very eager to learn. Won't you

tell me your secret?" But for the third time the master has nothing to

say, only dipping his brush in the black ink and writing the word

Attention. The young monk's impatience turns to discouragement.

"So you have nothing to teach me?" he says mournfully. "If only I knew

where to go. I have been seeking for so long." He gets up and leaves. The

old master follows him with a compassionate look as he takes his brush and

with a single stroke writes the word Attention.

This little story loses its Zen-ness once you grasp that the master is

talking about second attention. He can't answer the disciple's earnest

questions because there are no answers at the level of first attention.

The disciple could also have no idea of the excitement felt by the master,

because from the outside there is no sign. We made the same point by

observing that God leaves no traces in the material world. In stage four

you find yourself fascinated with God, not because you need protection or

comfort, but because you are a hunter after his quarry. The chase is all

the more challenging when the prey leaves no tracks in the snow.

How do I fit in? ...

I understand.

In stage three the inner world evidences little activity. Ships don't sail

in a dead calm. They rest and wait. The inner world comes alive in stage

four, where calmness and peace turn into something much more useful. One

begins to understand how reality works, and human nature starts to unfold

its secrets. Here are some examples:

There are no victims.

Everything is well ordered; things happen as they should.

Random events are guided by a higher wisdom.

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

Nothing happens without a reason.

Let's call this a package of insight, centered on the question of why

things turn out the way they do. It's a profound question. We all ask it,

but we tend to ask in passing. Our passion is not to figure out the

workings of fate. If some things seem preordained while others are

accidental, so be it. In stage four, however, fate becomes a pressing

issue. The person has experienced enough instances when "an invisible

hand" must be at work. The instances may be small, but there is no turning

away from them.

Recently I fumbled on the computer and lost a large chunk of very

important work. I could hardly sleep that night, and the only remedy was a

piece of software that might rescue my lost chapters, if they could be

rescued at all. It was agonizing waiting for overnight delivery, which of

course wasn't on time. I picked up the phone and had dialed the express

company when a neighbor knocked at the door. "I think this must be for

you," he said, holding out the package, which he had noticed while walking

across our yard. It had arrived at the wrong entrance to the house, an old

sealed-off door, and the deliveryman hadn't been able to ring the bell

since we don't have one back there.

Besides getting to me just at the moment I was about to create a bit of

chaos over the phone, the package was found by someone who had never

unexpectedly dropped by before. How did all these ingredients, albeit tiny

ones, happen to coincide?

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

After paying enough attention (always the key word) you begin to see that

events form patterns; you see that they also hold lessons or messages or

signs—the outer world somehow is trying to communicate—and then you see

that these outer events are actually symbols for inner events. (In my

case, the inner event was an angry tension that I wanted to be saved

from.) The ripples flow out from the center, getting wider and wider,

until you begin to see that the "invisible hand" has a mind behind it, as

well as great wisdom in what it does.

The conclusion of this little package of insight is that there are no

victims. Wise people often say this, but when they declare that all is

wisely and justly ordered, their listeners remain baffled. What about

wars, fires, random murders, aircraft disasters, despotism, gangsters, and

on and on? All of these imply victims and often cruel victimizers, too.

How could the poet Browning have the audacity to claim that God is in his

heaven and all's right with the world? He found out from God himself, but

it was a God not to be met until stage four.

Here is a good place to ask what the inner knower actually knows. As we

commonly define it, knowledge is experience that has been recorded in

memory. No one would know that water boils at 100 degrees Centigrade

unless there was memory of this. So the wise must have much more

experience than the rest of us, or else they were born with more brain

capacity. But is that really the case? After a divorce a person may lament

that as early as the honeymoon it was obvious that the marriage wouldn't

work out. Yet somehow only hindsight shows the importance of that

intuition. How much is reliable to begin with?

Only the wise seem to know. Wisdom consists of being comfortable with

certainty and uncertainty. In stage four life is spontaneous, yet it has a

plan; events come as a surprise, yet they have an inexorable logic.

Strangely, wisdom often arrives only after thinking is over. Instead of

turning a situation over from every angle, one arrives at a point where

simplicity dawns. In the presence of a wise person one can feel an

interior calm, alive and breathing its own atmosphere, that needs no

outside validation. The ups and downs of existence are all one. The New

Testament calls this "the peace that passes understanding," because it

goes beyond thinking—no amount of mental churning will get you there.

How do I find God? ...

Self-acceptance.

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

"Doubt is the dry rot of faith," as one Indian saint has said. No one can

get very far in stage four if there is self-doubt, because the self is all

there is to rely on. Outside support has lost its reassurance. In ordinary

life, such a loss is dreaded. The outcast, the man without a country, and

the traitor are roles no one wants to play. I have sat in a movie theater

and heard dozens of people break into sobs when the Elephant Man is being

hounded through a train station by a curious mob. His hideous head masked

in a canvas bag, he is finally cornered and turns on his pursuers to cry

in anguish, "I am not an animal, I am a human being!"

This is our own unconscious speaking its deepest fear. There is an element

of freakishness to all outsiders, because we define normality by being

accepted. In stage four, however, all moorings are loosed. "I was once

almost engaged to this woman," a friend who had spent some years in a

monastic setting told me. "It was a long time ago, and I had no kind of

experience in this area. One night we were sitting in the dark on the

sofa. Her head was nestled on my chest, and I felt so close to her that I

said, 'You know, as much as I love you, I think I love humanity just as

much.'

"She sat up with a horrified look on her face. 'Don't you realize that's

the worst thing you can say to me?' she exclaimed. And I didn't. We broke

up soon afterward, and yet I still don't truly understand why she was so

disturbed."

Two worldviews had collided at that moment. To the woman, her lover's

words were a betrayal, because she looked to him for support; by choosing

to love her instead of someone else, he made her more complete; he added

to her identity with outside validation. The man felt the opposite—in his

eyes, including humanity in his love made her greater. At bottom, he

didn't understand the kind of support she needed. He wanted to experience

a state where all love is included in one love. Such an aim is hard to

achieve, and most people don't even see its value (not for themselves, at

least—they might value it in Saint Francis or a bodhisattva). Since

infancy we have all gained security from having one mother, one father,

our own friends, one spouse, a family of our own; this sense of attachment

reflects a lifelong need for support.

In stage four the whole support structure melts away—the person is left to

get support internally, from the self. Self-acceptance becomes the way to

God. Not that an inner voice coos reassuring words, or that a new

spiritual family is sought out. When Jesus says to his followers that they

must die, he is referring to a state of inner detachment. It isn't a cold,

heartless detachment but a kind of expansion that no longer needs to

distinguish between me and you, yours and mine, what I want and what you

want. Such dualities make perfect sense to the ego, yet in stage four the

goal is to get beyond boundaries. If that involves giving up the old

support systems, the person willingly pays the price. The soul journey is

guided by an inner passion that demands its own fulfillment.

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

Good is clarity, seeing the truth.

Evil is blindness, denying the truth.

From the outside someone in stage four seems to have opted out. With no

social bonds left, there is really no social role, either. The band of

misfits that gathers on the fringes of every culture is composed of

madmen, seers, sages, psychics, poets, and visionaries. Which is which

cannot be distinguished easily, and the fact that all seem to be getting a

free ride irks many people. Socrates was condemned to death simply for

being wise—the authorities called it "corrupting the city's youth" and

following "novel religious beliefs"—and throughout history the same story

has played out over and over. The deepest insights are usually not

socially acceptable; therefore they are seen as insane, heretical, or

criminal.

In stage four good and evil are still contrasted, but with much less

harshness than before. Good is clarity of mind, which brings the ability

to see the truth. Evil is blindness or ignorance, which makes the truth

impossible to see. In both cases we are speaking about self-centered

qualities. The person accepts responsibility for defining "the truth" as

he or she sees it. But that raises another accusation. What if the truth

is simply whatever is convenient? Perhaps stealing a loaf of bread becomes

right because "my truth" is that I am hungry. This sort of situational

ethics isn't the real issue, however. In stage four the truth is much more

elusive and even mystical. It contains a kind of spiritual purity

difficult to define. When Jesus taught his followers that "the truth will

set you free," he didn't mean a certain set of facts or dogmas but

revealed truth. In modern language we might come up with a different

translation: seek the knower within, and it will set you free.

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

Goodness means remaining true to your quest, evil is being drawn away from

it. In the case of Socrates, even a sentence of death left him impervious.

When offered an escape route across the sea if he would sneak out of

Athens in the company of his friends, he refused. Their idea of evil—dying

at the hands of a corrupt court—was not his. His evil would have been to

betray himself. No one could comprehend why he wasn't afraid of death.

Surrounded by tearful, frustrated pupils, he explained that death was an

inevitable outcome. He was like a man who had calmly taken every step

toward the edge of a cliff, knowing exactly where he was headed. Now that

he had come to the jumping-off point, why should the last step cause any

fear? This is really a perfect example of stage four reasoning. The quest

has a purpose, and one sees it to the end. By drinking his cup of hemlock,

Socrates died a traitor to the state who had upheld a total commitment to

himself: this was a gesture of ultimate goodness.

What is my life challenge? ...

To go beyond duality.

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

Sin is a stubborn issue. Because no one was perfect in childhood, we all

carry the imprints of guilt and shame. Even in cultures that do not have a

legend of the Fall, with its inheritance of original sin, guilt remains.

The question is whether it is inherent. That is, did we do something to

deserve feeling guilty, or is human nature created that way?

Sin can be defined as a wrong that leaves an impression. Wrong deeds that

you forget have no consequence, along with those that were

inadvertent—leaving a pot boiling unattended that catches fire is

accidental, not sinful. In the East any act that leaves an impression is

called karma; this is a much broader definition than sin and it includes

no moral blame. People often speak of bad karma, concentrating on the

aspect of wrong; but in its purest form, karma can be right or wrong and

still leave an imprint.

The importance of this distinction becomes clear in stage four, because as

right and wrong become less severe, the desire arises to be free of both.

It would make little sense to have this aim before stage four. A

tremendous amount of effort is expended in earlier stages trying to be

good. God punishes those who aren't, and what he doesn't accomplish, a

guilty conscience will. But the God of stage four, intent on redemption,

sees sinners and saints in the same light, and all actions as equal. This

valuation is scandalous. Society exists to draw the line between right and

wrong, not to erase it. When Jesus associated with lepers and outcasts,

when he neglected religious observances and pared the hundreds of Jewish

laws down to two (put no other gods before God and love your neighbor as

yourself), the good people around him assumed he was either crazy or

criminal.

In actuality, he was extremely responsible. In one phrase—"As you sow, so

shall you reap"—Jesus stated the law of karma quite succinctly. He had no

intention of getting away with wrongdoing but instead pointed to a higher

spiritual rule: your actions today define your future tomorrow. Regardless

of whether an act is deemed good or bad, this higher rule can't be

sidestepped. Those who think it can have not looked deep enough. By stage

four there is enough insight to realize that all past actions have a way

of coming home to roost. This dynamic turns out to be more important than

identifying sin.

What, then, would forgiveness of sin amount to? How do you redeem your

soul? Finding the answer is the life challenge of this stage. A redeemed

soul sees itself as new and unblemished. To reach this state of innocence

would be impossible according to the law of karma, for the cycle of sowing

and reaping never ends. (Unlike sin, karma grips us even in the case of

accidents and inadvertent mistakes—regardless of circumstances, an action

is an action and has consequences.)

The problem is further complicated by the fact that each person performs

millions of actions in a lifetime, and these overlap on all levels.

Emotions and intentions are both tied in. Is a man virtuous who gives

money to the poor out of a selfish desire to save his soul? Is it right to

marry a woman who is carrying your baby even if you don't love her? The

parsing of good from bad becomes extremely complicated, and the doctrine

of karma makes the calculation harder rather than easier, because the mind

can always find some tiny detail that was overlooked previously.

It can take a lifetime to solve this riddle, but in theory at least the

answer is simple: you redeem your soul by turning to God. A redemptive God

is the only being in the cosmos exempt from karma (or sin). Or to be more

accurate, God transcends karma because he alone isn't in the cosmos. A

person in stage four has no interest in praying for a miraculous delivery

from all his past evils; what he wants is a way to get outside the cosmos

as well. In other words, he wants the rule of "As you sow, so shall you

reap" repealed.

How can that possibly happen? Clearly no one can repeal the law of cause

and effect. In the East, using the terminology of karma, they say that

evil acts pursue a soul across time and space until the debt is paid. Even

death cannot abolish a karmic debt; this only happens by becoming a victim

of the same evil you committed or by working off bad imprints through good

ones.

At the level of second attention, however, this cycle is irrelevant. One

doesn't need to repeal the law of karma at all. Despite all the activity

on the surface of life, a speck of awareness inside is not touched. The

instant they wake up in the morning, a saint and a sinner are in the same

place. They both feel themselves to be alive and aware. This place stands

outside reward and punishment. It knows no duality; therefore in stage

four your challenge is to find this place, hold on to it, and live there.

When you have accomplished this task, duality is gone. You are free from

all bondage of good or bad actions. In Christian terms, your soul is

redeemed and returned to innocence.

What is my greatest strength? ...

Insight.

What is my biggest hurdle? ...

Delusion.

I said earlier that in stage four all the moorings are cut loose. Now we

know why. The inner quest is all about undoing attachments. These do not

come free all at once, nor is every attachment equal. It is entirely

normal to arrive at profound insights about yourself and still feel as

ashamed or guilty as a little child over certain things. The soul is like

a ragged army on the march. Some aspects push ahead; others lag behind.

The reason for this is again karmic: not all our past actions leave equal

imprints. Some people are haunted for life by incidents from their past

that are seemingly small. I know a man who has had to fire hundreds of

employees, reorganize businesses that eventually went under, and in

various ways decide the fate of many people. His decisions caused grief

and complaints every time, no matter how well intentioned they were. He

sleeps undisturbed by any of that, while in his heart of hearts he cannot

forgive himself for not being at his mother's bedside when she died. The

thought of having left so much unsaid makes him guilty every day. He knows

at some level that his love for his mother is felt by her, but that

doesn't heal the guilty wound.

Because of its intense subjectivity, stage four requires new tactics. No

one outside yourself can offer absolution. To get past an obstacle

requires your own insight; if you can't get past it, you keep fighting off

delusion until you do. In this man's case, his delusion is that he is bad

for not being with his mother (he had in fact no choice, since his trip

home was delayed beyond his control); the insight is that his genuine love

doesn't have to have an outward show. But beyond these particulars, there

is only one insight and one delusion in stage four. The insight is that

everything is all right; the delusion is that we have made unforgivable

mistakes. The reason that everything is all right goes back to redemption;

in the eyes of God, all souls are innocent. The same reason tells us that

we are deluded to keep holding on to past mistakes. They cannot blemish

our souls, and their residual effect, in terms of guilt, shame, and

payback, will be washed away in good time.

What is my greatest temptation? ...

Deception.

This is meant both in terms of self-deception and deceiving others. Every

stage of inner growth contains more freedom than the one before. Breaking

free from sin is a great accomplishment in stage four, but the price of

redemption is constant vigilance. It is hard to keep examining yourself

all of the time. A voice inside often urges you to be easier on yourself,

take things as they are, act the way everyone else does. To follow this

advice would make existence much more pleasant. Socrates could have

apologized for offending the morals of Athens; he could have preached the

accepted wisdom instead of his own. But to fall into this easy way amounts

to deception, because the inner march of wisdom cannot be stopped. (Plato

put it eloquently: "Once lit, the flame of truth will never go out.")

Unless you are willing to deceive yourself into believing otherwise, a

person in stage four really is free of outside values.

How long this temptation lasts varies with each person. In myth one is

redeemed instantly by a merciful God when in fact it is a long process

with many turnings. "I think my soul is like one of those squirrels in the

park," someone once remarked to me. "When you try to feed a squirrel, he

won't take the peanut from your hand in one go. He darts toward you, then

he loses his nerve and darts away. The slightest gesture scares him off,

and only after a few feints will he get up the nerve to reach out for what

he wants." The parallel is exact. At some level everyone wants to be rid

of guilt. As Rumi says in one aphorism, "Outside all notions of right and

wrong there is a field—will you meet me there?" However much you want to,

it isn't possible to dash toward this place. Our old imprints are very

strong; guilt and shame arise as a reminder that it takes more than an act

of will to escape notions of right and wrong. The process has to continue

without deception. You can't fool your sense of being imperfect or

sinful—choose your terms—in the hope that the slate can be wiped clean

once and for all. There is a lot of work to do in the form of meditation,

self-reflection, taking responsibility. You have to act on the truth as it

occurs to you. Every step forward must be tested, and the temptation to go

backward persists until the very end. Whatever is involved in total

self-acceptance has to be met. The triumph of stage four turns out to be a

paradox in the end. At the very point when you see that you are all right,

that you need never worry about good and evil again, the realization dawns

that you never did wrong to begin with. Redemption returns the soul to a

sense of innocence that never actually went away. Or to put it more

simply, the whole process of being true to yourself brings as its reward a

higher level of awareness. At this level, the issues of duality have been

left behind, and when that happens, the subjective feeling is one of being

redeemed.

STAGE FIVE:

GOD THE CREATOR

(Creative Response)

There is a level of creativity that goes far beyond anything we have

discussed so far. It dawns when intuition becomes so powerful it must

break out into the environment. This "super-intuition" controls events and

makes wishes come true, as though an artist is working not in paint and

canvas but in the raw material of life. The following example from my own

life began in mundane circumstances that grew more and more amazing:

Some months ago I was in my office looking over a project that needed some

cover art, but I knew no professional illustrators. As soon as I had the

thought "I wonder whom I can find?" the phone rang. It was my grown

daughter, Mallika, calling from India, and when I mentioned my problem,

she immediately suggested an Irish artist named Suzanne Malcolm (not her

real name). Neither of us had any idea where she lived. I hung up and

thought nothing more about it, until that afternoon when a publisher

friend called from London. On the off chance, I asked if he knew Suzanne

Malcolm, but he didn't. An hour later he found himself at a cocktail party

when the person next to him got a call on his cellular phone. He put it to

his ear and said, "Suzanne?"

My publisher friend gave in to a sudden impulse. "Could that possibly be

Suzanne Malcolm you're talking to?" he asked. Astonishingly, it was. My

friend took down her telephone number and also asked her to call me. By

this time—we are still on the same day—I had flown to Los Angeles for a

scheduled lecture. I was early, however, so I pulled my rental car over to

the curb; I had no idea exactly where I was. Checking my messages on the

cell phone, I found one from Suzanne Malcolm. This was good news, and I

dialed the number she had left me.

"Hello?" a woman's voice answered.

"Suzanne," I said, introducing myself, "I was wondering whether you could

fly over from Dublin. I think I have an art assignment for you."

"Well, actually, I'm not in Ireland at the moment. I'm in Los Angeles."

"Really? Where are you staying?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," she replied. "Oh yes, it's 3312 Dominic." I looked outside

the car window and felt a shudder pass through me—I was parked directly in

front of her house.

How unwittingly we fall into God's reach. This example clearly goes beyond

intuition, because no one involved in the story had any. It amounts to

more than synchronicity, since this wasn't just a chance encounter that

turned out to be significant. What can we call it when a string of events

begins with a faint intention, only to be orchestrated across two

continents, several time zones, and the random lives of four people?

The answer is creativity. The mind field, being beyond time and space, can

manipulate them for its own use. Usually its workings are not exposed to

view. We don't observe how the wheels of fate turn—until stage five, that

is. Now the time has come when fate no longer has to be hidden from view.

This happens when a person gives up all notions of accident, coincidence,

and random events, and instead claims responsibility for each and every

incident, however trivial. Events no longer happen "out there" but are

guided by one's own intentions. Stage five joins the individual to God in

a partnership as co-creators. When you are ready to form this alliance,

the God you meet has these qualities:

Unlimited creative potential

Control over space and time

Abundant

Open

Generous

Willing to be known

Inspired

This is the most intimate God we have projected so far, because of a

quality that is the key to stage five: openness. God the Creator is

willing to share his power with his creation. His abundance and generosity

follow from his openness. The Creator is much vaster than any previous

God, and our minds have to grasp just what it means to have all of time

and space at our disposal.

When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, it immediately created a sense

of shame in them. This first moment of self-consciousness caused them to

hide from God, and to some extent we have been hiding ever since. In other

words, the conviction of sin has deprived us of our own creativity, which

could parallel if not equal God's. Getting back to the source has been a

constant theme ever since the first stage. In stage five, at long last,

there is no trace of original sin, no imperfection to atone for.

To return to my first example, the fact that I found my illustrator

doesn't mean that I arrived at stage five. The crucial question is over

the role I played. If I see myself outside the process, then I am not a

co-creator. Lazarus, after being raised from the dead, was incredibly

astonished, but he didn't raise anyone himself, nor did he claim to be his

own miracle worker. To be in alliance with God, you must uphold your side

of the partnership, which involves some very specific beliefs:

You have to see yourself at the center of the creative process.

You have to accept responsibility for all outcomes.

You have to recognize that all thoughts have consequences, even the most

minor.

You have to identify with a larger self than the one living here and now

in this limited physical body.

Many people on the spiritual path willingly accept one or more of these

beliefs, but the deciding factor is whether you live them out. One

prerequisite is years of meditation, contemplation, or prayer; another is

doing a great deal of inner work to remove self-doubt and beliefs about

one's imperfection. Above all, this is a stage of power, and that implies

getting straight about whether you deserve to wield it. People in stage

five are usually inward and private, but they all know that their

intentions count. Things happen because they want them to, no matter

whether the results feel good or bad and irrespective of whether or not

they bring any obvious benefit. Behind their screen of privacy, these

people are not necessarily grand, rich, or famous. They are overjoyed,

however, by knowing that God is sharing his creative genius with them.

Brain research sheds little light on what mechanism is involved here. It

is surmised that when people are in a creative state, the cerebral cortex

first establishes restful awareness. Creativity exhibits the alpha rhythms

of relaxation; subjectively the person feels open and receptive. Unlike

other periods of relaxation, this state is on the lookout for something—a

stroke of inspiration—and when it occurs a spike of activity is registered

by the mind as a moment of "Eureka!" Famous artists and inventors all

testify to this experience, and in their work it can have profound

implications. A eureka isn't ordinary thinking. Truly creative people tend

to introduce a question into their minds and then wait for the solution to

arrive—hence the necessity of going into a relaxed mode.

What is the brain doing for those hours or days before the creative

solution appears? We have no idea. While incubating a great theoretical

breakthrough, Einstein's brain exhibits the same mundane activity as

anyone else's.

Yet it is undeniable that the mind is doing something highly unusual,

particularly if we extend creativity beyond what an Einstein or

Michelangelo does. If creativity means carving your own destiny out of

space-time, it would be fruitless to look for evidence on the material

level. We are speaking of quantum creativity here. For quite a while I

have put aside our quantum model because I wanted to portray God from a

more human, personal standpoint. As soon as we start approaching the

miraculous, however, the quantum world has to return; there is no other

viable way to explain such powers.

"There are no miracles," an Indian master once remarked, "unless you look

at all of life as a miracle." He meant something quite specific here. The

world seems to be a given, not the product of a miracle, whereas turning

water into wine seems absolutely miraculous. The two fuse, however, at the

quantum level. If I look outside my window I can see an old gnarled oak

standing between myself and the ocean. Is that tree simply there, a given

object in the landscape? Not at all. To a neutrino, which can pass through

the entire earth in a few millionths of a second, solid objects are as

vaporous as fog. My nervous system must create an oak tree from the fog of

quantum data. Everything about that tree is malleable. To a proton, which

takes billions of years to be born and then decay, the life of an old oak

is less than a split second. To a mayfly, with its life span of one day,

the oak tree is literally eternal. To a Druid priest, the tree would be

sacred, the home of forest deities, and therefore a tremendous source of

power. To a logger it is just a day's work.

Take any quality the tree might have, and it changes according to the

perceiver. Now consider the environment of the tree. Every quality

possessed by the air, the sea, the earth, and the sun are equally under my

control. In a catatonic state, I would see nothing that I see now. In a

state of religious inspiration, colors, smells, and sounds might be

acutely sharp. This is more than a subjective shift. To perceive the

world, my brain must convert virtual photons into sensory information.

Having covered this area already, I will just emphasize the most important

point: there is no tree "out there." No sights, sounds, textures, tastes,

or smells exist without a brain to create them. We are so accustomed to

accepting the world as a given that we overlook our creative role in it,

but one can imagine a sightless world—it is the one that blind cave fish

inhabit. Since their environment contains no photons of visible light,

eyes aren't needed. This isn't a loss to them; it is just a choice not

taken. Likewise, when one person is able to create outcomes in his life

while another person merely experiences random events, the difference is a

choice not taken.

So many of us limit our choices that we look upon higher creativity as

miraculous, but it isn't. In your mind's eye, see a scene from your

childhood. Most people can do this easily, putting themselves back at the

beach with their families, for example. With a vivid enough imagination,

you can even get absorbed in the scene, feeling the sun's heat and

brightness, letting the surf surge over your body. There is no essential

difference between doing this in your mind and actually going to the beach

in person. In both cases the brain is shaping virtual photons into a

pattern of experience. When Jesus turned water into wine, he used the same

ability, only he obliterated the arbitrary line between imaginary results

and real ones.

In stage five a person flirts with crossing that line. This is not yet the

phase for complete miracles like levitation or raising the dead. Here one

takes the role of apprentice, willing to peer into the master's box of

secrets yet not quite a master oneself. In other words, there is still a

small separation between the individual mind and its source at the virtual

level. Imagining yourself in stage five is much like being the most

privileged pupil of Mozart or Leonardo da Vinci. To be accepted as an

artist in the master's eyes, the following relationship would have to

develop:

·                     You need to trust that your teacher really is a

great master. God the Creator has unlimited creative potential.

·                     You expect the master to be able to work confidently

in his chosen medium. God the Creator uses the medium of reality itself:

he controls time and space.

·                     You want your master to have a great deal to teach.

God the Creator is abundant and generous.

·                     The master shouldn't be so lost in himself that he

isn't approachable. God the Creator is open.

·                     You don't want the master to hold back his real

knowledge. God the Creator is willing to be known.

·                     You want the master to transcend mechanical ability

and tap into the source of genius. God the Creator is inspired.

At earlier stages of inner growth, it would seem blasphemous, or at the

very least impudent, to undertake this kind of relationship. Earlier

stages did not desire or permit such intimacy. But by stage five, a person

realizes that God is not a being with desires. Since he has no

preferences, everything is permitted. The inhibitions that hold us

back—and this holds true at every level of growth—exist inside ourselves.

Because he is infinite and therefore all-inclusive, God sees all choices

with the same eye—his vision includes no judgment. When a person realizes

this, God suddenly opens his deepest secrets, not because God changed his

mind but because our perspective has.

Who am I? ...

God's co-creator.

The master-apprentice metaphor stretches only so far. God is never to be

met in person, and he doesn't announce what he has to teach. The entire

process is internal. As a co-creator, however, you are expected to do more

than just live and have random desires, as most people do. A co-creator

takes a certain orientation toward his desires. This doesn't mean

controlling or manipulating what you wish for. Those are choices made at

the ego level. In stage five, the process is about becoming the author of

your own life; some have called it writing your destiny script. How is

that done?

First of all, one has to see the difference between before and after.

Before you become the author of your own life, you feel inadequate and

powerless. Unforeseen things happen all the time. Every day presents some

kind of obstacle, large or small. Indeed there may be massive confusion

about what you want in the first place. If you are operating from a place

of conflict and confusion, outside circumstances seem to have the upper

hand.

By contrast, after you assume authorship of your own life, outcomes are

never in doubt. No matter what happens to you, each event has a place and

a meaning. You see that your spiritual journey makes sense, even down to

the smallest details. It isn't that your ego wakes up every morning and

arranges your day. Events still unfold unpredictably, yet at the moment

they occur, you know that you are adequate to meet them. No question

arises that doesn't have its own answer somewhere inside it. The adventure

is to uncover the creative solutions that most appeal to you. Like an

author who can make any world he chooses on the page, you gain authorship

based on your own inclinations, with no outside help and no second

opinions.

Stage five isn't the last phase, since we haven't crossed the line into

miracles. You can tell if you are in stage five by the way you get what

you want. If you rely almost entirely on an internal process, then you

are, with a minimum of effort, a co-creator of reality.

How do I fit in? ...

I intend.

If we get down to specifics, the act of creation is reducible to one

ingredient: intention. In stage five you don't have to master esoteric

techniques; there are no magic tricks to making a thought come true, no

secrets of miracle-working. You just intend a thing and it happens. When

highly successful people are interviewed, many times they repeat the same

formula: "I had a dream and I stuck with it, because I was certain that it

would come true." This attitude is a symptom—one might say the symptom—of

co-creation. Of course, there is a great deal of work to be done to arrive

at any great accomplishment, but in stage five the end result is

preordained, and therefore the work itself isn't primary. It's just what

you need to do to get to the goal. In fact, many famous achievers testify

that the astonishing events of their careers seemed to be happening on

automatic, or as if to someone else standing outside themselves. Whatever

it feels like, intention lies at the heart of the process.

To break this down into specific behavior, the following qualities can be

seen in people who have mastered the art of intention:

1.                  They are not attached to the past or how things should

turn out.

2.                  They adapt quickly to errors and mistakes.

3.                  They have good antennae and are alert to tiny signals.

4.                  They have a good connection between mind and body.

5.                  They have no trouble embracing uncertainty and

ambiguity.

6.                  They remain patient about the outcome to their

desires, trusting the universe to bring results.

7.                  They make karmic connections and are able to see the

meaning in chance events.

These qualities also answer the earlier question of what good comes from

inner silence. The good is creative. In these seven qualities some huge

life lessons are embedded. One could write a book about this list alone,

but here is a brief synopsis: Making any idea come to life always involves

intention. If you have a flash of genius, that flash remains inside your

head until it materializes. So the important issue is how it gets

materialized. There are efficient ways and inefficient ways. The most

efficient way is shown to us by the mind itself. If I ask you to think of

an elephant, the image just appears in your head, and even though millions

of neurons had to coordinate this image, using chemical and

electromagnetic energy, you remain aloof from that. As far as you are

concerned, the intention and the outcome are one; all intervening steps

remain invisible.

Now consider a larger intention, such as the intention to go to medical

school. Between having this idea initially and fulfilling it are many

steps, and these are not internal at all: raising tuition money, passing

exams, gaining admission, etc. Yet, just like the image of the elephant,

each of these steps depends upon brain operations being invisibly

coordinated. You think, move, and act using intention. In stage five this

automatic pilot is extended to the outer world. That is, you expect the

entire process of becoming a doctor to unfold with the least effort,

unhindered by obstacles. The boundary between "in here" and "out there" is

softened. All events take place in the mind field first and then exhibit

their outward manifestation.

Having realized this fact, your behavior is now free to follow the seven

principles outlined in our list. You can be detached from how things are

going to work out because you have left it to the cosmos. Past success and

failure don't matter since each intention is computed afresh, without

regard for old conditioning. You are able to be patient about each step,

given that timing is worked out perfectly on another level. Over the

months and years of getting to be a doctor, you remain a silent witness as

pieces of the process fall into place. Even as you go through action, the

"doing" of it remains impersonal. On the ego level you may feel

disappointment that event A occurred instead of event B, which you

expected, but at a deeper level you know that B happened for a better

reason. When that reason reveals itself, you make the karmic connection.

Since no one is perfect, you will still make mistakes, but you adapt to

these quickly; there is no need for stubbornness since after all you are

not in charge of how things work out—your chief responsibility was to have

the intention in the first place. (Skeptics might wonder what prevents you

from intending the perfect murder or embezzling a million dollars, but the

universe tends to support what is best for you, not just what your whims

dictate.)

Finally, as any intention unfolds, you aren't just passively riding along

like a passenger on a train. Your role is to remain as sensitive and alert

as possible. The turning points in life arrive as small signals at first;

these only amplify when you choose to follow them. So being vigilant about

tiny clues is a major part of spiritual evolution. God always speaks in

silence, but sometimes the silence is louder than at other times.

How do I find God? ...

Inspiration.

I often hear people quote Joseph Campbell's advice to "follow your bliss."

But how exactly is this done? I might get bliss from eating chocolate

cake, but if I follow that, the results would be uncomfortable after a

while; greedy, selfish, abusive, controlling, and addicted people could

mistakenly believe that they are following their bliss, too. In stage five

bliss becomes better defined as inspiration. Rather than having intentions

that originate with your ego, you feel that you are called to do something

highly meaningful. Self-gratification is still intense, but it is no

longer narrow (in the way that having an orgasm or eating in a great

restaurant is). The sense of being outside yourself is often present and,

as God takes over, the fruition of your desires feels blissful—whereas the

fulfillment of ego desires often surprises us by feeling very flat: ask

anyone how they feel six months after winning the lottery.

To be inspired is a high state of attainment. Four decades ago, the

psychologist Abraham Maslow first spoke of peak experiences, his

terminology for a breakthrough into expanded consciousness. A peak

experience shares many qualities with inspiration, including feelings of

bliss and being outside oneself. Peak experiences have been reported atop

Mount Everest, but they also might arrive in the ecstasy of music making,

falling in love, or winning an important victory. The conscious mind

receives a supercharged burst from the unconscious, and even though this

may happen only once in a lifetime, that feeling of empowerment can

influence the course of events for many years.

By contrast, ever since Freud uncovered the basis of neurosis, psychology

has insisted that human nature is freighted with violence and repression.

The unconscious was not a region close to God but a dark, murky terrain.

Our worst instincts thus became normalized, overlaid with better instincts

such as love and peacefulness, but never to be escaped. Maslow felt

differently, that it was not normal to be violent or evil in any way.

Although Maslow theorized that peak experiences gave glimpses of the real

norms of the psyche, it was nearly impossible to prove that anyone lived

at a peak for any length of time. Out of the whole population, Maslow and

like-minded researchers could barely find 5 percent who even temporarily

made such a transition. When they did, remarkable things happened. Such

individuals felt as a normal experience that they were safe, confident,

full of esteem for themselves and others, deeply appreciative of what life

brought to them, and constantly in a state of wonder that the world could

remain so fresh and alive every day, year in and year out.

This handful of people were labeled "self-actualized" and then more or

less forgotten. The norm did not get redefined. This wasn't a failure of

insight. To redefine human nature in such positive terms seemed

unrealistic. Freud had already laid down as law that human nature contains

hidden tendencies that break out like caged monsters to overwhelm us but

are always present beneath the surface.

Maslow himself, believing with all his heart that human nature is

trustworthy and capable of great inner growth, had to admit that

tremendous obstacles stand in our way. Most people are too needy to grow,

because as long as our needs are frustrated, we spend most of our time

being driven to fulfill them. Need comes in four levels, Maslow said: the

first is physical, the need to feed and clothe ourselves; next comes the

need for safety, followed by the need to be loved, and finally by the need

for self-esteem. A huge amount of inner work is devoted to these basic

requirements of life. Maslow taught that needs are stacked up, one above

the other, into a hierarchy. Only at the top of the pyramid does a person

get the chance to feel self-actualized.

By this measure most of spiritual life is wishful thinking. When someone

turns to God in order to feel safe or to be loved, need is the real

motivation. In any event, God doesn't intervene to rectify the situation.

To be driven by need is just how life works. To bring back the sacred, it

must accomplish something that love, security, self-esteem, or good

fortune cannot. This is where inspiration comes in, because when we are

inspired, we don't act from need at all. Inspiration, as the Bible says,

is an act of grace, a blessing.

In stage five this sense of being blessed begins to spread beyond a

particular moment. You don't have to be spiritually advanced to feel

triumphant when you reach the top of Everest or win the Nobel Prize.

Spiritual advancement shows up when the small things carry a share of

blessing, too. As Walt Whitman wrote, "A morning glory at my window

satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books." (This is a poet who

scandalized his readers by declaring that the smell of his armpits was

more holy than any church.) Someone in stage five sees grace in all

things.

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

Good is higher consciousness.

Evil is lower consciousness.

"For me, a new phase began in a very trivial way," a woman once told me.

"I was in a hotel room sitting next to the window. My plans for the day

had been ruined by heavy rains that had moved in overnight, and I was a

little glum. Down the block I could see a skyscraper looming up, when all

at once I thought, 'It would be nice to see a patch of sun on that

building. I've probably never had a more trivial idea in my life.

"All at once, in the midst of a downpour, the clouds parted, and a

brilliant shaft of sunlight landed right where I was looking. It paused

for a moment, as if to say, 'Okay, do you get it?' and then the gray

closed back in. I wasn't shaken; oddly enough I wasn't even surprised, but

that tiny incident had a huge impact on me. I began to believe that my

thoughts were connected to outer reality."

Once attained, this connection becomes the most valuable thing in a

person's existence, and losing it becomes one's worst fear. In stage five

the fall from grace becomes a personal threat. Is such a fear groundless?

Yes and no. It is inevitable that no one in stage five can make every wish

come true, and bad things, in terms of pain and failure, continue to

occur. This stokes the fear. Many people who have attained tremendous

success find themselves spinning out of control, losing their center and

no longer relying on the inner assurance that is needed at every level of

awareness. Outward pressures are sometimes to blame, or inner demons may

rise to the surface. In any case, stage five is not a magic haven.

On the other hand, these setbacks are only temporary. The ego has

forgotten that a learning process is involved. When things don't go right,

failure is not the issue, much less evil. Being a co-creator implies

complete mastery, and during apprenticeship that hasn't yet been attained.

We don't live in a society that gives credibility to what has been

discussed here. Despite all the clichés 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 God, 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. Nazi 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 identity; 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 God'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 God is all-encompassing, does he care how any power

is attained?

I would say that the question has to be reframed. If we assume 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 accumulate 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—God'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 God. 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 massive manuscripts 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 succumbed to failure and self-destruction. The God 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

God. 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 God 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 God

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:

GOD OF MIRACLES

(Visionary Response)

God 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 passion of his sermon.)

Yet for all their miracles, or because of them, we think of saints as

being without fun, loving relationships, sexual 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 assumptions are tested. Full-blown miracles are

now possible. Here we accept God'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 embarrassed 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 God. 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 God 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 God 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

God of miracles profoundly mystical even by religious standards. Was Jesus

exaggerating when he made his most dramatic claim about the powers God 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 God, and the word was God."

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 God." Clearly no

ordinary word is implied. Something like the following is meant: Before

there was time and space, a faint vibration existed outside the cosmos.

This vibration had everything contained in it—all universes, all events,

all time and space. This primordial vibration was with God. As far as we

can fathom, it is God. 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 God of miracles is transformative.

·                     There is a holy aura about the master that the mind

cannot fathom. The God of miracles is mystical.

·                     A sacred master exhibits higher states of

consciousness. The God of miracles is enlightened.

·                     The master's actions follow a secret reasoning that

sometimes makes no sense to his followers. The God of miracles is beyond

all causes.

·                     The master purifies other people of their

imperfections and may be able to cure illness. The God of miracles is

healing.

·                     The master can perform wonders that defy

explanation. The God of miracles is magical.

·                     The master may be interested in esoteric science.

The God 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 God 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 bloody 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 cluster 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 bumpy—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 identity 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 God 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 God 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 God can cure you?" From the larger

perspective, no one has the power to keep God 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

documentation 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 hepatitis 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 hepatitis soared.

A few months ago he turned to an energy healer in India, who passed his

hands over my cousin's liver to extract the disease entity. 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 practitioner 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 practitioner 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 God'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 passed, 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 God. 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 God, 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 reassurance that one

could believe, at that moment, in a "mother energy" inherent in the

universe.

In stage six all gods and goddesses 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 God 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. "God is going to pay

your bills!"

No one could claim that stage six alone reveals God's love. But the

analogy to magnetism works well here. A compass needle exposed to the

earth's weak magnetic field trembles toward north; it does this

unerringly, but if you shake the compass 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 God's force is immensely powerful.

When this occurs, nothing can pull the mind away from love. Love as a

personal emotion is transmuted into a cosmic energy. Rumi puts it

beautifully:

Oh God

I have discovered love!

How marvelous, how good, how beautiful it is!...

I offer my salutation

To the spirit of passion that aroused and excited this whole universe

And all it contains.

Rumi believes that every atom in creation dances in a passion for God,

such is a stage six awareness. It takes a quantum leap in consciousness to

love God all the time, yet when the leap is finally made, there is really

no God 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 God? ...

Grace.

In stage six it is no longer necessary to seek God, just as we do not have

to seek gravity. God is inescapable and constant. Sometimes he is felt

with ecstasy, but just as often there can be pain, anguish, and confusion.

This mixture of feelings reminds us that two entities are coming into

conjunction. One is spirit, the other is body. The body can perceive

spirit only through the nervous system. As the intensity of God increases,

the nervous system is overwhelmed by it. There is no choice but to adapt,

yet adaptation can cause sensations of intense burning, tremors,

blackouts, and fainting, along with fear and semipsychotic states. It is

still quite common to come across medical "explanations" of saintly

visions as epileptic seizures, for example, and the blinding light of holy

visions as a by-product of severe migraines. How do we know that this

isn't true?

One obvious rebuttal is that migraines and epilepsy aren't inspiring. They

do not bring wisdom and insight, whereas saints appear to be pure examples

of grace at work. One thinks of the Polish mystic, Father Maximilian

Kolbe, a saintly figure who died under the Nazis at Auschwitz. (3)

Although emaciated and a longtime sufferer from tuberculosis, Kolbe gave

away most of his meager rations to other prisoners. When utterly parched

with thirst, he was offered a contraband cup of tea by a doctor also

imprisoned in the camp, but refused to take it because the other inmates

had nothing to drink. Without complaint, Father Maximilian endured

incessant beatings and torture. In the end, he was present when another

prisoner was condemned to die of starvation in an underground vault. Kolbe

volunteered to take the man's place. When the crypt was opened some days

later, everyone had perished but he, and he was killed with a lethal

injection.

In his own eyes Kolbe was not a martyr. A few fellow prisoners, and even

some Nazis, gave firsthand accounts of the state of grace he occupied. A

Jewish survivor testified under oath that Father Maximilian emanated light

when he prayed at night. (This account is seconded by several others in

the years before the priest was arrested.) In demeanor he was simple and

humble. When asked how he could endure with such gentleness the treatment

he was receiving at the hands of the Nazis, he said only that evil must be

met with love.

Few saint stories are more moving than this one, which leaves us feeling

that grace might be superhuman. In one sense it is, in that God's presence

overcomes the most intense conditions of pain and suffering. In another

sense, though, grace offers constant support in everyday life. There is no

way to tell, as we work through each stage of inner growth, whether we are

actually doing anything through our own will. An Indian master was once

asked, "When we strive to reach higher states of consciousness, are we

really doing anything or is it just happening to us?"

"It could be seen either way," he replied. "You are doing your part, but

the real motivation comes from outside you. If you wanted to be strictly

accurate, it is all happening to you."

If God is like a force field in stage six, grace is his magnetic pull.

Grace adapts itself to each person. We make our choices, some of which are

good for us, some bad, and then grace shapes the results. To express this

another way, each of us does things that have unexpected consequences. Our

foresight is limited; therefore our actions are always subject to

blindness about what will happen next.

The word karma includes both the action and the unpredictable results.

Five people can make a fortune, yet for each one the money creates

different consequences, which can range from misery to contentment. The

same holds true for any action. Why isn't karma mechanical? Why doesn't

action A always lead to result B? The law of karma is often compared to

simple cause and effect, using the analogy of billiard balls being hit

with a cue stick. The angles and bounces in a billiard game are very

complex, but a skilled player can compute his shot in advance with extreme

accuracy, thereby predicting the path of a ball even after it has left his

control.

If karma were mechanical, the same would hold for our actions. We would

plan them out, let them go, and be sure of a certain result. Theoretically

nothing prevents this. In actuality we are stymied by the sheer complexity

of what needs to be calculated. Everyone performs millions of actions

every day—strictly speaking, every thought is a karma, along with every

breath, every bite of food, etc.—so the billiard game in this case has a

nearly infinite number of balls. But something unfathomable is at work

here: grace.

With his supreme intelligence, God has no trouble calculating an infinite

number of billiard balls or an infinite number of karmas. This mechanical

operation could be as easily performed by a supercomputer. Yet God also

loves his creation and wants to be joined with it as intimately as

possible, so he throws into his calculation the following special

instruction: Let all of a person's actions bounce and collide any way they

have to, but leave a clue that spirit is watching.

When you feel you have been touched by grace, that is your clue that God

exists and cares about what happens to you. I know a middle-aged man, now

the owner of his own computer firm, whose entrepreneurial streak first

surfaced when he was twenty. Unfortunately, at that time it took the form

of smuggling drugs across the Caribbean in a light plane.

"I only made one trip before I was detained by the customs officials and

almost arrested. As it happens, I didn't have any cargo left on board. But

they never found out why, and that is an amazing story," he says. "I was

flying out of the Bahamas when we encountered dense cloud cover. I dipped

down to escape it, but the fog went down to ground level. Somehow in all

this maneuvering, my partner and I lost our bearings. We wasted time

trying to get back on course, growing more and more worried. The Caribbean

is a great deal of ocean and only a few small places to land.

"We began to run out of fuel and panic set in. My partner started

shouting, and we jettisoned all our extra gas cans, then the cargo, and

finally our luggage in an attempt to get lighter. The fog didn't lift, and

I could tell that my co-pilot was frozen with fear. He was sure that we

were going to die. At that moment, I had the unearthly certainty that we

weren't.

"I looked to my left, and a hole opened in the fog. I could see a tiny

island beneath my wing tip, and on it a short dirt landing strip. I dove

the plane through as the clouds closed up again, and we landed, only to

have five customs officials converge on us half an hour later. But the

whole time of our interrogation, I heard an inner voice that told me my

life had been saved for a reason. I didn't become religious in any

conventional sense, but this was something I never doubted again."

Whether operating on the level of a saint or a criminal, grace is the

ingredient that saves karma from being heartlessly mechanical. Grace is

thus linked to free will. A billiard ball must follow its assigned

trajectory, and a thief who commits robbery a hundred times would seem to

be just as set on his course. But even though his karma is set, at any

given moment he has the opportunity to stop and mend his ways. Grace can

take the form of a simple thought, "Maybe I should quit," or it can be an

overwhelming transformation like the one endured by Saint Paul on the road

to Damascus when the divine light blinded him and struck him from his

horse. In either case, the impulse to move toward spirit is the result of

grace.

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

Good is a cosmic force.

Evil is another aspect of the same force.

It is so difficult to be good that eventually a person must give up. This

is a realization that arrives in stage six. Being good seems easy at

first, when it is a simple matter of obeying the rules and staying out of

trouble. It becomes harder after conscience enters in, because our

conscience is often at odds with desire. This is the phase, familiar to

every three-year-old, when one voice inside whispers "Do it!" while

another says, "Better not." In Christianity this struggle is predestined

to end with the victory of good, since God is more powerful than Satan,

but in Hinduism the forces of light and darkness will battle eternally,

the balance of power shifting in cycles that last thousands of years.

If Hinduism is right, then trying to resist evil is ultimately pointless.

The demons (called asuras in Sanskrit) never give up. They can't, in fact,

since they are built into the structure of nature, where death and decay

are inevitable. As the Indian sages see it, the universe depends as much

on death as it does on life. "People fear dying without thinking," one

master remarked. "If you got your fantasy of living forever, you would be

condemning yourself to eternal senility." Because the body breaks down

over time, and even the galaxies are heading toward "heat death" when the

stars burn out their supply of energy, the universe must contain a

mechanism for renewal. Death is the escape route it has devised.

In stage six a person is visionary enough to see this. He still retains a

conception of good. It is the force of evolution that lies behind birth,

growth, love, truth, and beauty. He also retains a conception of evil. It

is the force that opposes evolution—we would call it entropy—leading to

decomposition, dissolution, inertia, and "sin" (in the special sense of

any action that doesn't help a person's evolution). However, to the

visionary these are two sides of the same force. God created both because

both are needed; God is in the evil as much as in the good.

One should emphasize that this isn't an ethical viewpoint. You can't argue

against it by saying, "Look at this atrocity and that horror. Don't tell

me God is there." Every stage of inner growth is an interpretation, and

each interpretation is valid. If you see victims of crimes and

heartrending injustice, that is real for you, but the saint, even as he

brings untold compassion to such people, may not see victims at all. I am

reluctant to go too deeply into this, because the grip of victimization is

so powerful. To tell the abused and the abuser that they are locked in the

same dance is hard to get across—ask any therapist who works with battered

women.

I think there is no doubt, however, that the saint sees the sinner inside

himself, just as the saint accepts evil as calmly as any other occurrence.

It is reported by eyewitnesses that when Father Maximilian was being

injected with poison by the Nazis, he used his last ounce of strength to

bare his arm willingly to the needle. During those terrible days when he

was trapped in a crypt with other prisoners, the concentration camp guards

were astonished by the atmosphere of peace created around the Franciscan

monk. This story does not mitigate the evil of Nazism, which has to be

countered at its own level. But the working out of the soul stands apart,

and at some point the dance of good and evil becomes one.

What is my life challenge? ...

To attain liberation.

When stage six dawns, the purpose of life changes. Instead of striving for

goodness and virtue, the person aims to escape bondage. I don't mean

escape by dying and going to heaven, although that interpretation

certainly is valid for those who hold it. The real escape of stage six is

karmic. Karma is infinite and ongoing. Cause and effect never ends; its

entanglement is so overwhelming that you could not end even a portion of

your personal karma. But God's force field, as we have been calling it,

exerts an attraction to pull the soul out of the range of karma. Cause and

effect will not be destroyed. The most enlightened saint still has a

physical body subject to decay and death; he still eats, drinks, and

sleeps. However, all of this energy gets used in a different way.

"If you spent every moment turning every thought and action to good," an

Indian master told his disciples, "you would be just as far from

enlightenment as someone who used every moment for evil." Surprising as

this sounds, for we all equate goodness and God, the force of goodness is

still karmic. Good deeds have their own rewards, just as bad deeds do.

What if you don't want any reward at all but just to be free? This is the

state Buddhists call nirvana, much misunderstood when it is translated as

"oblivion."

Nirvana is the release from karmic influences, the end of the dance of

opposites. The visionary response enables you to see that wanting A or B

is always going to lead to its opposite. If I am born wealthy, I may be

delighted at first. I can fulfill any desire and follow any whim. But

eventually boredom sets in; I will grow restless, and in many cases my

life will be burdened by the heavy responsibility of managing my wealth.

So as I toss in bed, worried about all these irksome things, I will begin

to think how nice it is to be poor. The poor have little to lose; they are

free of duties on corporate boards and charities.

However long it takes, according to Buddhism, my mind will eventually

desire the opposite of what I have. The karmic pendulum swings until it

reaches the extreme of poverty, and then it will pull me back toward

wealth again. Since only God is free from cause and effect, to want

nirvana means that you want to attain God-realization. In the earlier

stages of growth this ambition would be impossible, and most religions

condemn it as blasphemy. Nirvana isn't moral. Good and evil don't count

anymore, once they are seen as the two faces of the same duality. For the

sake of keeping society together, religions hold it as a duty to respect

goodness and abhor evil. Hence a paradox: the person who wants to be

liberated is acting against God. Many devout Christians find themselves

utterly baffled by Eastern spirituality because they cannot resolve this

paradox. How can God want us to be good and yet want us to go beyond good?

The answer takes place entirely in consciousness. Saints in every culture

turn out to be exemplars of goodness, shining with virtue. But the

Bhaghavad-Gita informs us that there are no outward signs of

enlightenment, which means that saints do not have to obey any

conventional standards of behavior. In India there exists the "left-hand

path" to God. On this path a devotee shuns conventional virtue and

goodness. Sexual abstinence is often replaced with sexual indulgence

(usually in a highly ritualized way). One might give up a loving home to

live in a graveyard; some tantric devotees go so far as to sleep with

corpses and eat the most repulsive decayed food. In other cases the

left-hand path is not so extreme, but it is always different from orthodox

religious observance.

The left-hand path may seem like the dark side of spirituality, totally

deluded in its barbarity and insanity—certainly Christian missionaries to

India had no problem holding that interpretation. They shuddered to look

upon Kali with her necklace of skulls and blood dripping from her fangs.

What kind of mother was this? But the left-hand way is thousands of years

old, its origins in sacred texts that exhibit as much wisdom as any in the

world. They state that God cannot be confined in any way. His infinite

grace encompasses death and decay; he is in the corpse as well as the

newborn baby. For some (very few) people, to see this truth isn't enough;

they want to experience it. And God will not deny them. In the West our

abhorrence of the left-hand path doesn't need to be challenged. Cultures

each go their own way. I wonder, though, what went through Socrates' mind

as he drank the cup of hemlock. It is possible, since he willed his own

death by refusing to escape the court's sentence, that the poison was

sweet to him. And Father Maximilian may have felt bliss when the fatal

needle went into his arm. In stage six the alchemy of turning evil into a

blessing is a mystery that is solved by longing for liberation.

What is my greatest strength? ...

Holiness.

What is my biggest hurdle? ...

False idealism.

Skeptics often point out that gullibility increases the more someone needs

a miracle. Since miracles are required to prove that a saint is real (at

least in Catholicism), there is a tremendous temptation to make one up. In

stage six little room is left for any kind of wrongdoing, but in the tiny

crevice that is left, a person could lose the distinction between holiness

and false idealism. Let me give an example.

In 1531, a native Indian in Mexico was walking on foot toward the

settlement of the Spanish conquerors near Mexico City when a beautiful

lady appeared to him on the summit of a hill. She gave him a message to

take to the bishop and offered her blessing. In awe, the Indian, whose

name comes down to us as Juan Diego, did as he was told. When he recounted

his vision, the bishop was skeptical, but then one of the most delicate of

Christian miracles occurred. Juan Diego opened his rough-woven cloak and

out spilled beautiful red roses. At that moment he and the wonder-struck

bishop observed that a painting of the Virgin Mother had appeared inside

his cloak, which now hangs in a magnificent basilica in Hidalgo, outside

Mexico City, on the spot where the miracle of Guadalupe occurred.

As with the Shroud of Turin, skeptics have wanted to run tests on this

miraculous image to see if it was painted by human hands. They point out

how conveniently this apparition of the Virgin Mary appeared, just when

the Spanish were most zealous to convert Indians. (The miracle did lead to

mass conversions.) On the face of it, one might say that any event that

helped end the slaughter of the Native Americans was a kind of miracle.

Yet lost somewhere in history is this distinction between holiness and

false idealism.

Holiness is what makes a miracle miraculous; more is needed than simply

defying the laws of nature. Illusionists can do that when they throw

knives blindfolded or saw a woman in half. As long as you don't know the

secret, the illusion is a miracle. In this section I have been speculating

on how miracles work, but the deeper secret is why they are holy. The

saint isn't a magician. He transforms more than lead into gold; a saint

transforms the stuff of the soul. His attitude is one of simplicity and

purity. The first American to be canonized as a saint was Frances Cabrini.

When she was still an impoverished nun in Italy, Mother Cabrini was

praying when another sister broke into her room without knocking.

To her astonishment, the room was filled with a soft radiance. The sister

was speechless, but Mother Cabrini remarked offhandedly, "This isn't

anything. Just ignore it and go on with what you were doing." From that

day on, the saint made sure that her privacy was securely kept, and the

only clue for outsiders was a faint light that occasionally crept out

underneath her door. It is a mark of the true miracle worker to be

comfortable with God's power. Holiness is marked by a selfless innocence—I

would like to think that even if the image at Guadalupe is a forgery, at

least the roses were real. Trying to be holy is not innocent. It may be

well intentioned, but in stage six idealism has no place; only the real

thing will do. J. Krishnamurti, during his more than sixty years of

spiritual teaching, used to point out something very interesting about

happiness. "If you are feeling very happy," he said, "you don't have to

speak about it. Happiness is its own thing and needs no words; it doesn't

even need to be thought about. But the instant you start to say, 'I am

happy,' this innocence is lost. You have created a gap, however small,

between yourself and the genuine feeling. So do not think that when you

speak of God, you are near him. Your words have created the gap that you

must cross to get back to him, and you will never cross it with your

mind."

Idealism is born of the mind. In stage six the saint may sing about God

and even speak about him, but the holy relationship is so private that

nothing can break in on it.

What is my greatest temptation? ...

Martyrdom.

Are saints tempted to turn into martyrs? In the third century we are told

that there was an epidemic of martyrdom in the Roman empire. At that time

Christianity was not recognized as an official religion but seen as a

cult, which could be prosecuted under the law. (Oddly, it wasn't the

worship of Jesus that offended the courts but the fact that Christianity

was too new to be lawful.) Those who would not sacrifice to the emperor as

a god were sentenced to death, and eager Christians gave up their lives in

the arena as proof of their faith.

Traditionally it is held that the martyrs were legion and that they played

a huge part in converting the pagan world. Spectators could not believe

their eyes when they saw Christians smiling and singing hymns as the lion

tore them to pieces. The spectacle shook their confidence in the old gods

and helped pave the way for the final victory of the new religion in 313,

when it became the official faith of the empire. But tradition strays from

the facts in two ways. First, the number of martyrs was probably much

smaller than once believed. Most Christians willingly escaped the death

sentence by such stratagems as sending a servant to sacrifice to the

emperor in their place. Second, one large segment of the faith did not

believe in martyrdom. The so-called Gnostics held that God existed

entirely within oneself. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were all aspects of

consciousness. Therefore holiness was everywhere, in every person, and the

emperor could be as divine as anyone else.

For this and other heresies, the Gnostics were despised and persecuted as

soon as the Christian bishops came to power. By wiping them out, the early

church installed martyrdom as one of the highest paths to God. Dying for

the faith became exalted as imitation of Christ. It must also have set a

symbolic pattern in place, for we find such gentle souls as Saint Francis

of Assisi enduring the terrible anguish of stigmata. This is the

phenomenon whereby one personally undergoes crucifixion by bleeding from

the palms and feet like Christ on the cross.

I am not denigrating martyrdom here, only pointing out that stage six is

not the end of the journey, not quite yet. As long as suffering holds any

temptation, there is some hint of sin, and in that arises the last tiny

separation between God and the devotee. The ego retains enough power to

say that "I" am proving my holiness to God. In the next stage there will

be nothing left to prove and therefore no "I" at all. Getting to that

point is the last struggle of the saint. From the outside, we can't quite

imagine what it must be like. The wonder of performing miracles should

bring enough happiness; to have God inside you must be the highest joy.

Yet it isn't. By the smallest hair there is a distance to go. Amazingly,

in that fraction of distance an entire world will be created.

STAGE SEVEN:

GOD OF PURE BEING—"I AM"

(Sacred Response)

There is a God who can only be experienced by going beyond experience.

Down below us, the river was as pure as green crystal. The mountain road

was winding, so much that I didn't look at the water despite its beauty,

for fear of missing our landmark—a door on the side of the cliff. Unlikely

though it was, that's what we were told to look for. But what cliff? The

Ganges cuts a roaring gorge a hundred miles from its source in the

Himalayas, and cliffs were everywhere.

"Wait, I think that's it!" someone cried from the backseat. The last bend

in the road had swung us close to the edge of the canyon. Peering over it,

one could just spy a narrow dirt trail leading—it was true—to a door in

the cliff. We pulled onto the shoulder of the road and the five of us

jumped out, scrambling down the trail to find whoever had the key. We had

been told to look for an old saint, a bearded ascetic who had lived here

for many years. At the end of the track was a rickety hut but no saint

inside it, only a teenage monk who politely said that his master wouldn't

be available for hours. What about the key? He shook his head. Then we saw

that the door to the holy cave was so rotted that the lock had fallen off.

Could we go inside, then? He shrugged. "Why not?"

The door was not only unlocked but falling off its hinges. I pulled it

open with a creak; inside was a tunnel. We snaked in a line through the

darkness, and the tunnel got lower and narrower, like a mine shaft. It

seemed to go on for a hundred yards before opening out into a proper cave

where you could stand up straight again. We had no lights with us, and

only the faintest glimmer of sunlight still penetrated from the outside

world.

The teenage monk had exacted a promise of total silence once we entered

the cave. Meditation had taken place here for several thousand years, ever

since the great sage Vasishtha had stopped by in legendary times. You

could feel it immediately. Vasishtha was the tutor to Prince Rama, an

awesome duty considering that Rama was a god.

So here we were, not just in a sacred place but in a holy of holies. I

have the misfortune of generally missing out on holiness. Many of India's

saints strike me with less than wonder, and I have sat through a number of

mystical initiations—such as the one where a woman saint opened the sacred

spot on the top of my skull to let a stream of air blow out from the

crown—without feeling a thing. In this cave, however, I felt that the

world was disappearing. After a moment I could hardly remember the winding

road above the Ganges; a few minutes more on the cold stone floor with

eyes closed, and our whole holiday trip faded away.

This was a good place to meet the God of stage seven, who is known when

all else is forgotten. Each person is tied to the world by a thousand

invisible threads of mental activity—time, place, identity, and all past

experiences. In the dark I began to lose more of these threads. Could I go

far enough to forget myself? "Everything about you is a fragment," a guru

told his disciples. "Your mind accumulates these fragments from moment to

moment. When you think you know something, you refer only to some scrap of

the past. Can such a mind ever know the whole? Obviously not."

The God of stage seven is holistic—he encompasses everything. To know him,

you would have to possess a mind to match. One day on a walk the

philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was kicked unconscious by a horse, and

when he came to he found himself in a strange state; it seemed as if the

world had no boundaries and he was a speck of consciousness floating in a

vast ocean. This "oceanic feeling"—a phrase also used by Freud—was

impersonal; Rousseau felt fused with everything—the earth, the sky,

everyone around him. He felt ecstatic and free in that state, which

quickly passed and yet left a strong impression that haunted him for the

rest of his life.

In Vasishtha's cave, individuals have sought the same feeling for

millennia, and so was I. This involved nothing I was consciously doing. It

was more like a memory lapse. Everyone's mind is like an automated wake-up

device in a hotel, which never stops sending its reminders. Mine churns

with a thousand scraps of memory related to who I am. Some are about my

family or my job, others are about the car and the house, the plane

tickets, the luggage, the half-empty gas tank—the whole tapestry of life

that somehow doesn't add up to a whole.

As my mind revolves and buzzes with this data, it keeps assuring me that I

am real. Why do I need this assurance? No one asks this question as long

as the world is with us. We blend into the scenery and accept its reality.

But put anyone in Vasishtha's cave and the bits and pieces of identity

will stop coming up so much. The glitter of memory ceases its dazzling

flicker and then you cut to the chase ... which is?

Nothing. A void with no activity. God.

To find God in an empty room—to find the ultimate God in an empty room—is

the experience that miracle workers sacrifice all their powers for. In

place of the highest ecstasy, one gets emptiness. The God of stage seven

is so intangible that he can be defined by no qualities. Nothing remains

to hold on to. In the ancient Indian tradition, they define this aspect of

spirit only by negation. In stage seven God is

Unborn

Undying

Unchanging

Unmoving

Unmanifest

Immeasurable

Invisible

Intangible

Infinite

This God cannot be thought of even as a great light, and therefore to many

Westerners he may seem like death. But "lifeless" isn't one of the

negatives that describe him. The empty void contains the potential for all

life and all experience. The one positive quality that can be attached to

God in stage seven is existence, or pure being. No matter how blank the

void gets, it still exists, and that is enough to give birth to the

universe.

The mystery of stage seven is that nothingness can mask infinity. If we

had jumped to this stage at the outset, proving the reality of such a God

would not have been possible. You have to climb the spiritual ladder from

one rung to the next. Now that we are high enough to view the whole

landscape, it's time to kick the ladder away. No support at all, not even

the mind, is needed.

For stage seven to be real, there must be a corresponding response in the

brain. Subjectively we know that there is, because in every age people

report the experience of unity, in which the observer collapses into the

observed. In cases of autism a patient may blend so completely into the

world that he has to cling to a tree to make sure that it exists; the poet

Wordsworth had just this experience as a child. He referred to "spots of

time" in which an unearthly sensation made him feel suspended in

immortality. In those moments he still existed, but not as a creature of

time and place.

Brain researchers have caught epileptic seizures on their scans, another

instance where patients report unearthly feelings and losing identity. But

such examples do not account for the sacred response, as I will call it.

Altered brain waves and subjective reports do not capture the mind's

ability to comprehend wholeness. Objectively this state goes beyond

miracles in that the person does nothing to affect reality except look at

it, yet in that looking the laws of nature shift more profoundly than in

miracles.

Let me hasten to give an example. Recently a paranormal investigator named

Marilyn Schlitz wanted to test if anything like second sight was real.

Schlitz chose the phenomenon of just turning around to discover that you

were being watched from behind, which she called "covert observation." She

took a group of subjects and looked at them through a video camera in

another room. By turning the camera off and on, she could test whether

each person was aware of being watched, even with the observer not

physically present. Rather than relying upon subjective guesses, she used

an instrument resembling a lie detector; it measured even the faintest

changes in the skin's response to electrical current.

The experiment was a success—up to two-thirds of the subjects showed

changes in skin conductivity while being observed from a distance. Schlitz

announced the success of her experiment, only to find that another

researcher who tried to duplicate it failed miserably. He used exactly the

same methods, but in his laboratory almost no one responded with second

sight; they couldn't tell the difference between being watched and not

being watched. Schlitz was baffled but confident enough to invite the

second researcher to come to her lab. The two of them ran the experiment

again, choosing subjects at the last moment to ensure that there was no

tampering.

Again Schlitz obtained her results, but when she consulted her colleague,

he had obtained nothing. This was an extraordinary moment. How could two

people run the same objective test with such dramatically different

results? The only viable answer, as Schlitz saw it, must lie in the

researcher himself. The outcome depended on who you are. As far as I know,

this is as close as anyone has come to verifying that observer and

observation can collapse into one. This fusion lies at the heart of the

sacred response, because in unity all separation ends.

We have other clues to the reality of this response, some negative and

some positive. The negative clues center on the "shyness syndrome," in

which strange phenomena refuse to be photographed. Everything from ghosts

to the bending of keys to UFO abductions are attested to by people who

have no trouble passing lie-detector tests, yet when the time comes to

photograph these phenomena, they don't show up. Positive clues come from

experiments like the classic ones performed at the Princeton engineering

department in the 1970s, where subjects were asked to stare at a machine

that randomly spit out zeros and ones (known as a random number

generator). Their task was to use their minds to sway the machine to

generate more ones than zeros, or vice versa. No one touched the machine

or changed its software program.

The results were surprising. Using nothing but focused attention, most

people could in fact significantly influence the outcome. Instead of

spewing out exactly equal numbers of zeros and ones, the machine skewed 5

percent or more away from randomness. The reason that Schlitz's test goes

even further is that she wanted a random trial in the interest of being

unbiased, but she got skewed results anyway, depending on who was running

the test.

The sacred response is the last step in this direction. It supports the

notion that there is no observer separate from the observation. Everything

around us is the product of who we are. In stage seven you no longer

project God; you project everything, which is the same as being in the

movie, outside the move, and the movie itself. In unity consciousness no

separation is left. We no longer create God in our image, not even the

faintest image of a holy ghost.

Who am I? ...

The source.

A person who reaches stage seven is so free of attachment that if you ask,

"Who are you?" the only answer is: "I am." This is the very answer that

Jehovah gave Moses in the book of Exodus when he spoke from the burning

bush. Moses was herding sheep on the side of a mountain when God appeared.

He was awestruck but also troubled that no one would believe him about

talking with God. If Moses was going to be a holy messenger, at least he

needed God's name, but when asked what it was, God replied, "I am that I

am."

To equate God with existence seems to strip him of power and majesty and

knowledge. But our quantum model tells us otherwise. At the virtual level

there is no energy, time, or space. This apparent void, however, is the

source of everything measurable as energy, time, and space, just as a

blank mind is the source of all thoughts. Sir Isaac Newton believed that

the universe was literally God's blank mind, and all of the stars and

galaxies were his thoughts.

If God has a home, it has to be in the void. Otherwise he would be

limited. Can we really know such a boundless deity? In stage seven two

impossible things must converge. The person has to be reduced to the

merest point, a speck of identity closing the last minuscule gap between

himself and God. At the same time, just when separation is healed, the

tiny point has to expand to infinity. The mystics describe this as "the

One becomes All." To put it into scientific terms, when you cross into the

quantum zone, space-time collapses into itself. The tiniest thing in

existence merges with the greatest; point and infinity are equal.

If you can get the skeptical mind to believe in this state (which isn't

easy) the obvious question is "So what?" The process really does sound

like dying, because no matter how you approach it, one must give up the

known world to attain stage seven. The miracle worker in stage six is

already detached, but he retains inner joy and whatever faint intentions

that motivate him to perform his miracles. In stage seven there is no joy,

compassion, light, or truth. The end of the chase is the ultimate gamble.

You don't play for all or nothing; you play for all and nothing.

The problem with models is that they are always inadequate; they select a

portion of reality and leave the rest behind. How do you find a model for

All and Nothing? The Chinese called it the Tao, meaning the offstage

presence that gives the world life, shape, purpose, and flow. Rumi uses

the same image:

There is someone who looks after us

From behind the curtain.

In truth we are not here

This is our shadow.

In stage seven you go behind the screen and join whoever is there. This is

the source. The spiritual journey takes you to the place where you began

as a soul, a mere point of consciousness, naked and undressed of

qualities. This source is yourself. "I am" is what you can say to describe

it, just as God did. To imagine what it feels like in stage seven, be with

me in Vasishtha's cave. As I forgot everything else, I didn't forget to

be. In that unattached state there is nothing to hold on to as a label or

description:

·                     You don't think about time. A God of pure being is

unborn and undying.

·                     You have no desire to pursue anything. A God of pure

being is unchanging.

·                     Stillness envelops you. A God of pure being is

unmoving.

·                     Nothing in your mind comes to the surface. A God of

pure being is unmanifest.

·                     You can't locate yourself with the five senses. A

God of pure being is invisible and intangible.

·                     You seem to be nowhere and everywhere at once. A God

of pure being is infinite.

Common sense tells us that if you take away all qualities, nothing is

left, and nothing doesn't seem very useful. Even when people can be talked

into giving up pleasure because, as the Buddha argued, it is always tied

to pain, most Westerners go away and take up pleasure again. The argument

for stage seven has to be made in more persuasive ways. First of all, no

one forces this final realization upon you. Second, it doesn't wipe out

ordinary existence—you still eat, drink, walk, and act out desires. But

now the desires do not belong to anyone; they are remnants of who you used

to be. So who did you use to be?

The answer is karma. Until you become pure being, your identity is wrapped

up in a cycle of desires that lead to actions, every action leaves an

impression, and impressions give rise to new desires. (When the potato

chip commercial says, "Bet you can't eat just one," the mechanism of

desire-action-impression is at work.) This cycle is the classic

interpretation of karma. Everyone is caught up in it, for the simple

reason that we all desire things. What is wrong with that? The great sages

point out that nothing is wrong with karma except that it isn't real. If

you watch a puppy chasing its tail, you see pure karma. The puppy is

absorbed, but it isn't getting anywhere. The tail is always just out of

reach, and even if the animal snaps it in his jaws, the pain will make him

let go again, starting the chase all over. Karma means always wanting more

of what won't get you anywhere in the first place. In stage seven you

realize this and no longer chase after phantoms. Now you end up at the

source, which is pure being.

How do I fit in? ...

I am.

Once the adventure of soul-searching is over, things calm down. The state

of "I am" forgoes pain and pleasure. Because all desire is centered on

pain and pleasure, it comes as a surprise to find out that what I wanted

all along was just to be. There are many kinds of worthwhile lives to

lead. Is it worthwhile to lead the life of "I am"? In stage seven you

include all the previous stages. Therefore you can live any way you want.

By analogy, think of the world as a movie that includes everything; you

cannot tell in any way that it is a movie; therefore, everyone behaves as

if the scenario is real.

If you suddenly woke up and realized that nothing around you was real,

what would you do? First of all, certain things would happen

involuntarily. You wouldn't be able to take other people's dramas

seriously. The smallest irritants and the greatest tragedies, a pebble in

your shoe and World War II, become equally unreal. Your detachment might

set you apart, but you could keep it to yourself.

Motivation would also vanish, because there's nothing to achieve in a

dreamworld. Poverty is as good as a million dollars when it's all play

money. Emotional attachments would also drop away, since no one's

personality is real anymore. After you consider all these changes, not

much choice is left. The end of illusion is the end of experience as we

know it. What do you receive in exchange? Only reality, pure and

unvarnished.

In India they tell a fable about this: There was once a great devotee of

Vishnu who prayed night and day to see his God. One night his wish was

granted and Vishnu appeared to him. Falling on his knees, the devotee

cried out, "I will do anything for you, my Lord, just ask."

"How about a drink of water?" Vishnu replied.

Although surprised by the request, the devotee immediately ran to the

river as fast as his legs could carry him. When he got there and knelt to

dip up some water, he saw a beautiful woman standing on an island in the

middle of the river. The devotee fell madly in love on the spot. He

grabbed a boat and rowed over to her. She responded to him, and the two

were married. They had children in a house on the island; the devotee grew

rich and old plying his trade as a merchant. Many years later, a typhoon

came along and devastated the island. The merchant was swept away in the

storm. He nearly drowned but regained consciousness on the very spot where

he had once begged to see God. His whole life, including his house, wife,

and children, seemed never to have happened.

Suddenly he looked over his shoulder, only to see Vishnu standing there in

all his radiance.

"Well," Vishnu said, "did you find me a glass of water?"

The moral of the story is that you shouldn't pay so much attention to the

movie. In stage seven there is a shift of balance; one starts to notice

the unchanging much more than the changing. In the Sermon on the Mount

Jesus called this "storing up treasure in heaven." But again analogies

fail. Stage seven isn't a prize or reward for making right choices; it is

the realization of what you always have been. If someone asks "Who are

you?" every answer is misleading except "I am"—which means that we are all

misled, even the miracle workers. We are the victims of mistaken identity.

Our time has been spent projecting versions of reality, including versions

of God, that are inadequate.

How do I find God? ...

By transcending.

Whatever it takes to get beyond illusion and back to reality, it's a bumpy

landing when you get there. In fact, those few yogis and sages who have

spoken about entering stage seven report that their first reaction was one

of total loss. The comfort of illusion was stripped away. These are people

who had reveled in ecstasy, miracles, deep insight, and intimacy with God.

Yet those experiences too were misleading. Leaving all of it behind, at a

deeper level they now knew that something good had happened. Like

sloughing off an old skin, they transcended to a new life and a new level

of existence because the old life had simply withered.

Transcending is going beyond. In spiritual terms it also means growing up.

"When I was no longer a child, I put aside childish things," writes Saint

Paul. By analogy, even karma can be outgrown and put aside. Here is the

argument for that: Two ultimate realities vie for our approval. One is

karma, the reality of actions and desires. Karma is played out in the

material world, forcing us to run on the same treadmill over and over. The

other reality that claims to be ultimate has no action in it; it just is.

This reality is exemplified by the open, detached, peaceful state of deep

meditation. Few people accept it, and those who do generally stay outside

society as renunciates and ascetics.

However, to see yourself caught between two choices is false. "Ultimate

reality" means the one and only; the winner swallows up the loser. So if

you put your money on the loser, you have made a mistake that will cost

you dearly. Eventually you will see that you have bought shadow for

substance; your desires were ghostly wisps leading you down wrong paths.

As one Vedic master put it, "The world of karma is infinite, but you will

discover that it is a boring infinity. The other infinity is never

boring."

The reason, then, to return to the source derives from self-interest. I

don't want to be bored; I don't want to come to the end of the chase and

wind up empty-handed. Here all metaphors and analogies end, because just

as a dream gets exposed as illusion when you wake up, so Being eventually

unmasks karma. Strip away the unreal and by definition all that remains

must be real. The soul's journey isn't a game, a chase, or a gamble. It

follows a predetermined course toward the moment of waking up.

Along the way tiny moments of waking up foreshadow the final event. I

might be able to illustrate this through a story. When I was ten our

family lived in the hill station of Shillong, within reach of the

Himalayas, and my father had an aide called Baba Sahib who cleaned his

shoes and washed his clothes. Baba was a Muslim and a strong believer in

the supernatural. Whenever he went down to the dhobi ghat, or wash place

by the river, he pounded the clothes next to a cemetery. Baba was certain

that ghosts inhabited the place and proved it by hanging the wet clothes

on the gravestones. If they dried in less than half an hour, Baba knew

that a ghost would be seen in the cemetery that night.

To prove it, he sneaked me out of the house and told me a story about a

mother and child who were the primary haunters, both dying young under

tragic circumstances. The two of us sat among the graves for two hours, I

grew sleepy and afraid at the same time, but as we were leaving, Baba

pointed in the distance.

"See—see there?" he cried.

And I did see—two pale apparitions floated above one of the gravestones. I

rushed home in great excitement and told no one. After a day the secret

was too hard to keep, so I told the safest person in the house, my

grandmother. "Do you think I just imagined it?" I asked, hoping she would

either confirm my vision or be amazed by it.

"What does it matter?" she said with a shrug. "The whole universe is

imagined. Your ghosts are just as real as that."

At its source, the cosmos is equally real and unreal. The only way I have

of knowing anything is through the neurons firing in my brain, and

although they might take me to such a fine degree of perception that I

could see every photon inside my cortex, at that point the cortex

dissolves into photons as well. So the observer and the thing he is trying

to observe merge, which is exactly how the chase after God also ends.

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

Good is the union of all opposites.

Evil no longer exists.

The shadow of evil stalks behind goodness up to the last moment. Only when

it is totally absorbed into unity does the threat of evil end once and for

all. The story of Jesus reaches its poignant climax in the garden of

Gethsemane, when he prays that the cup be taken from his hands. He knows

that the Romans are going to capture and kill him, and the prospect gives

rise to a terrible moment of doubt. It is one of the loneliest and most

wrenching moments in the New Testament—and it is utterly imaginary.

The text itself tells us that Jesus had walked apart from everyone else

and that his disciples had fallen asleep. Therefore no one could have

overheard what he said, particularly if he was praying. I think that this

last temptation was projected onto him by writers of the gospel. Why?

Because they couldn't conceive of his situation except through their own.

They viewed Christ across a gap, the same gap that keeps us from imagining

how all fear, temptation, sin, evil, and imperfection could be

transcended. Yet this is what happens in stage seven.

Religions have a hard time being funny, and in the Middle Ages people

didn't see much humor in the soul's journey. They were too aware of death,

disease, Satan's temptations, and the many woes in this vale of tears. The

church underscored these horrors, and about the only escape was on

holidays when a rough plank stage was erected outside the cathedral. Upon

it miracle plays were performed, and then Satan wasn't so frightening

because he could be played as a clown. The same people who trembled at the

prospect of sin now witnessed the devil taking pratfalls. In those

moments, the church was teaching a new lesson: evil itself must be

redeemed. History comes to an end here on earth when Satan is accepted

back into heaven; then the triumph of God becomes complete.

On the personal level, you can't afford to have the last laugh until stage

seven. As long as the mind is caught up in choices, some are going to turn

out worse than others. We all equate pain with evil, and as a sensation,

pain doesn't end; it is part of our biological inheritance. The only way

to get beyond it is to transcend, and that is accomplished by attaining a

higher point of view. In stage seven all versions of the world are seen as

projections, and a projection is nothing more than a point of view that

has come to life. The highest point of view, then, would encompass

anything that happens, without preference and without rejection.

I was starkly confronted by this possibility on two occasions when evil

stood on my doorstep. The first occurred in the early 1970s when I was a

struggling resident living in a seedy part of Boston. My wife had gone

out, leaving me in charge of our infant daughter. It was getting late when

the door to our apartment flew open, and a very big, menacing man strode

in. He didn't say anything. My head swiveled around, and before I was even

aware that he was carrying a baseball bat, I jumped up and grabbed it.

Neither of us spoke. In less than a second I had swung the bat and hit him

on the head, knocking him unconscious. A few seconds later my heart was

pounding with adrenaline, but at the instant I acted, I wasn't myself—the

action didn't belong to me.

Naturally a great deal of turmoil resulted, and when the police arrived it

was quickly discovered that the man was a released felon with a history of

assault and suspected murder. I had acted perfectly correctly, even though

at a conscious level I have a strong commitment to nonviolence.

But the story isn't complete. Two years ago I had just finished a lecture

in a southern city and happened to exit from the hall by a back door into

an alley. This looked like the shortest route back to my hotel, but

waiting for me were three gang youths. One pulled a gun and held it to my

temple. When he demanded my wallet, I suddenly knew what to say.

"Look, I can give you my bills but not my credit cards," I told him in a

calm voice, holding out the money. "You don't want to shoot me over two

hundred dollars. That would be murder, and it will follow you the rest of

your life. So just drop your weapon and go, okay?"

It amazed me to be saying these words; it was as though I were standing

there watching myself. The youth's hand was shaking, and the three of them

looked undecided. All at once I shouted, "Go!" at the top of my lungs. The

gun fell at my feet, and the three of them ran away.

Two scenes of evil, two different reactions. I offer them as evidence that

something inside us already transcends the present situation. Where we see

the play of opposites, our inner awareness takes every moment as unique. I

haven't told quite the whole story about the second incident. In my

bargaining, I also promised the youths that I would not tell the police,

and I never did. One act of potential violence was met with violence, the

other with pacifism. I can't explain my choices except to say that they

weren't chosen. The actions performed themselves. Justice was served in

both cases, acted out from beyond my limited point of view. In stage seven

a person realizes that it isn't up to us to balance the scales; if we hand

our choices over to God, we are free to act as the impulse moves us,

knowing its source is divine unity.

What is my life challenge? ...

To be myself.

Nothing would seem easier than to be yourself, but people complain

endlessly about how hard it is. When you are little your parents won't let

you be yourself. They have different ideas about eating the whole

chocolate cake or drawing on the walls with crayons. Later on teachers

keep you from being yourself. Then teenage peer pressure takes over, and

finally, once society has imposed its demands, freedom is more restricted

still. Alone on a desert island you might be able to be yourself, only

guilt and shame would pursue you even there. The inheritance of repression

is inescapable.

The whole problem is one of boundaries and resistance. Someone imposes a

limit on you, and you resist it in order to break free. Thus "being

myself" becomes a relative thing. Unless someone tells me what I can't do,

I have nothing to push against. By implication, my life would be

shapeless. I would follow one whim after another, which itself is a kind

of prison. To have a hundred wives and a feast on the table isn't being

yourself, it is being your desires.

In stage seven the problem comes to an end as boundaries and resistance

both melt. To be in unity, you cannot have limitations. You are wholeness;

that is what fills your perception. Choice A and choice B are equal in

your eyes. When this is true, desire can flow where it will. Sometimes you

get to eat the whole cake, have the hundred wives, and walk on the grass.

But being deprived of these fulfillments is just as good. I am not my

desires. Being myself no longer has the slightest outside reference.

Doesn't this deprive me of choice? Both yes and no. In stage seven there

are still preferences. A person will want to dress and talk a certain way;

there may even be decided likes and dislikes. Yet these are karmic

holdovers from the past. Because I speak English and Hindi, come from a

doctor's family, do a lot of traveling, and write books, those influences

could well persist into stage seven. But they would recede into the

background, turning into the wallpaper of my real existence, which is

simply to be.

How would I be able to tell that such a state is real? The skeptic who

looks at stage seven would claim that unity is just a form of

self-deception. All this talk about All and Nothing doesn't erase the

necessities of this world, and in fact the greatest mystics do preserve

the trappings of ordinary life. The problem of self-deception seems

trickier still when you realize that the ego, in its need to continue as

the center of all activity, has no trouble pretending to gain

enlightenment.

One is reminded of the story of the saffron monk: A young man in India

used to attend a discussion group with his friends. They considered

themselves to be serious seekers, and their discussions ran to esoteric

subjects about the soul, the existence of afterlife, and so on.

One night the talk grew very heated and the young man stepped outside for

some air. When he returned to the room, he saw a monk in saffron robes

sitting off to the side. No one else in the room seemed to notice this.

The young man took his place, saying nothing. The arguments continued in

loud voices, but still the monk sat silently and no one took any notice.

It was after midnight when the young man got up to go; to his surprise the

saffron monk got up and followed. For the entire walk home in the

moonlight the monk kept him company, and when the young man woke up the

next morning, the monk was waiting by the bed in the young mans room.

Perhaps because he was so spiritual, this vision didn't frighten the young

man or make him fear for his sanity. He was delighted to have the peaceful

presence of the monk around him. For the next week they remained constant

companions, despite the fact that no one else saw anything. Eventually the

young man had to tell his story to someone; he chose the teacher J.

Krishnamurti (from whose writings I got the story).

"First of all, this vision means everything to me," the young man began.

"But I'm not the kind of person who needs symbols and images to worship. I

reject religion—only Buddhism ever interested me because of its purity,

but even there I didn't find enough to make me want to follow it."

"I understand," Krishnamurti said. "So what is your question?"

"I want to know if this figure is real or just a figment of my mind. I

have to know the truth."

"You said it has brought you a great deal of meaning?"

The young man grew enthusiastic. "I have undergone a profound

transformation. I feel joyful and at peace."

"Is the monk with you now?" Krishnamurti asked. The young man nodded, but

hesitantly.

"To be quite honest," he said, "the monk is starting to fade. He is not so

vivid as at first."

"Are you afraid of losing him?"

Anxiety showed in the young man's face. "What do you mean? I came here

wanting the truth, but I don't want you to take him away. Don't you

realize how this vision has consumed me? In order to have peace and joy, I

think about this vision, and they come to me."

Krishnamurti replied, "Living in the past, however pleasant and uplifting,

prevents the experience of what is. The mind finds it difficult not to

live in a thousand yesterdays. Take this figure you cherish. The memory of

it inspires you, delights you, and gives you a sense of release. But it is

only the dead inspiring the living."

The young man looked crestfallen and glum. "So it wasn't real after all?"

"The mind is complicated," said Krishnamurti. "It gets conditioned by the

past and by how it would like things to be. Does it really matter if this

figure is real or projected?"

"No," the young man admitted. "It only matters that it has shown me so

much."

"Has it? It didn't reveal to you the working of your own mind, and you

became a prisoner of your experience. If I may say so, this vision brought

fear into your life because you were afraid to lose it. Greed also came in

because you wanted to hoard the experience. Thus you lost the one thing

this vision might have brought you: self-knowledge. Without that, every

experience is an illusion."

I find this a beautiful and moving tale, worth recounting at length.

Before stage seven the full value of being yourself isn't known.

Experience can be shaped to bring great inspiration. But in the end this

isn't enough. Every divine image remains an image; every vision tempts us

to hold on to it. To be really free, there is no option except to be

yourself. You are the living center around which every event happens, yet

no event is so important that you willingly give yourself up to it. By

being yourself you open the door to what is, the never-ending play of

cosmic intelligence curving back to know itself again and again. In this

way life remains fresh and fulfills its need to renew itself at every

moment.

What is my greatest strength? ...

Unity.

What is my biggest hurdle? ...

Duality.

Like every other stage, this one must ripen. Many people have had flashes

of unity, but that isn't the same as living there permanently. A flash of

unity can feel like bleeding into the scenery, but unlike autism, which

can make a child lose the boundary of identity, the experience is

positive—the self expands and achieves a higher vision. Instead of needing

to intuit anything, you simply are that thing. Stage seven brings the

ultimate form of empathy.

The opposite of unity is duality. Currently two dominant versions of

reality are believed by almost everyone. Version one: there is only the

material world, and nothing can be real that doesn't obey physical laws.

Version two: two realities exist, the earthly and the divine.

Version one is called the secular view, and even religious people adopt it

for everyday use. Yet total belief in materialism, as we have seen, has

become unacceptable for a host of reasons. It cannot explain credible,

witnessed miracles, near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, the

testimony of millions of people who have had answered prayers, and most

convincing of all, the discovery of the quantum world, which doesn't obey

any ordinary physical laws.

The second version of reality is less rigid. It allows for spiritual

experience and miracles, which exist on the fringes of the material world.

At this moment someone is hearing the voice of God, witnessing the Virgin

Mary, or going into the light. These experiences still leave the material

world intact and essentially untouched. You can have God and a Mercedes at

the same time, each on its own level. In other words, there is duality.

Many religions, Christianity being a prime example, declare that God sits

in heaven, unapproachable except by faith, prayer, death, or the

intervention of saints. Yet this dualism falls apart once we heal the

divisions between body, mind, and spirit. Duality is another word for

separation, and in the state of separation, many illusions crop up. Steam

and ice, sunlight and electricity, bone and blood are examples of things

that seem totally different until you know the laws of transformation,

which turn one form into another. This holds true for body and soul as

well. In separation they cannot be more different, until you find the laws

that transform invisible, immortal, uncreated spirit into flesh.

In India there has been a strong nondual tradition for thousands of years,

known as Vedanta. The word literally means "the end of the Vedas," the

point where no sacred texts can help you anymore, where teaching stops and

awareness dawns. "How do you know God is real?" a disciple once asked his

guru.

The guru replied, "I look around and see the natural order of creation.

There is tremendous beauty in the simplest things. One feels alive and

awake before the infinite majesty of the cosmos, and the deeper one looks,

the more astounding this creation is. What more is needed?"

"But none of that proves anything," the disciple protested.

The guru shook his head. "You only say that because you aren't truly

looking. If you could see a mountain or a rain cloud for one minute

without your doubts blocking the way, the evidence of God would be

revealed instantly."

"Then tell me what is revealed," the disciple insisted. "After all, I have

the same eyes as you."

"Something simple, undivided, unborn, eternal, solid as stone, boundless,

independent, invulnerable, blissful, and all-knowing," the guru replied.

The disciple felt a rush of despair. "You see all that? Then I will give

up, for I can't possibly learn to perceive such a wonder."

"No, you are wrong," the guru said. "We all see eternity in every

direction, but we choose to cut it into bits and pieces of time and space.

There is one quality of the All that should give you hope. It wants to

share."

If the divine mind wants to share itself with us and we are willing to

accept, then the stage is set for unity. The main tenet of Vedanta is

extremely simple—duality is too weak to stand forever. Take any sin or

delusion, and in time it will come to an end. Take any pleasure, and in

time it will start to pall. Take any depth of sleep, and in time you have

to wake up. In Vedanta they say that the only real thing is eternal bliss

consciousness (sat chit ananda). These words promise that the timeless

waits for me when the temporary expires, bliss outlives pleasure, and

being awake comes after sleep. In that simplicity the whole notion of

duality collapses, revealing the unity behind all illusion.

What is my greatest temptation? ...

Beyond temptation.

You can't be tempted when you have it all. It is even better when they

can't take it away from you. Vedanta is expressed in a famous saying, "I

am That, You are That, and All this is That." When the ancient sages refer

to "That," they are referring to an invisible but quite real power. It is

the power of existence. You have it forever when you can say, "I am that

power, you are that power, and everything around us is that power." Other

words like grace, godhead, the light, alpha and omega work just as

well—yet none of them equals the experience, which is very personal and

totally universal at the same time.

The sage Vasishtha was one of the first human beings to realize that we

experience only the world we filter through our minds. Whatever I can

imagine is a product of my life experience so far, and that is the tiniest

fragment of what I could know. As Vasishtha himself wrote:

Infinite worlds come and go

in the vast expanse of consciousness,

like motes of dust dancing in a beam of light.

This is a reminder that if the material world is just a product of my

awareness, so is heaven. I have every right, therefore, to try to know the

mind of God. A journey that begins in mystery and silence ends with

myself.

In the holy cave I visited above the Ganges, only at the last moment did I

get a hint that someone else was sharing the place with us. Our group was

lost in the vast silence that blossomed there. It had become evident

without a doubt that God existed, not as a person but as an infinite

intelligence moving at infinite speed through infinite dimensions, a

creator modern physics could come to terms with as well. But at that

moment none of us had any thoughts. We got up to go, and in the dimness we

sensed that we weren't alone. Peering into the gloom, we made out the

faint shape of another person who had been there all the time—it was the

old saint who couldn't meet us with the key when we arrived. Sitting in

lotus position, he hadn't stirred when we entered and didn't stir now.

We left quietly, and as we emerged into the blinding daylight, what we had

shared started to fade. My mind began churning again. Words that first

sounded like harsh cymbal clashes became normal within a few minutes. The

usual distractions grabbed hold. But some flavor of that cave remained

with me for weeks in the form of a quiet certainty that nothing was ever

going to go wrong again. This is not nearly the same as being unborn,

eternal, hard as stone, boundless, invulnerable, blissful, and

all-knowing. Yet I am closer to it, nearer to the source. For once my mind

jumped off the ledge of everyday life and landed in a good place, where

struggle isn't necessary, I opened the door on the side of eternity. Now I

can fully appreciate Rumi's words:

When I die I shall soar with angels,

And when I die to the angels, what I shall become,

You cannot imagine.

GOD IS AS WE ARE

WHO IS GOD?

Stage One: Fight-or-Flight Response: God the Protector

Vengeful

Capricious

Quick to anger

Jealous

Judgmental—meting out reward and punishment

Unfathomable

Sometimes merciful

Stage Two: Reactive Response: God the Almighty

Sovereign

Omnipotent

Just

Answerer of prayers

Impartial

Rational

Organized into rules

Stage Three: Restful Awareness Response: God of Peace

Detached

Calm

Offering consolation

Undemanding

Conciliatory

Silent

Meditative

Stage Four: Intuitive Response: God the Redeemer

Understanding

Tolerant

Forgiving

Nonjudgmental

Inclusive

Accepting

Stage Five: Creative Response: God the Creator

Unlimited creative potential

Control over space and time

Abundant

Open

Generous

Willing to be known

Inspired

Stage Six: Visionary Response: God of Miracles

Transformative

Mystical

Enlightened

Beyond all causes

Existing

Healing

Magical

Alchemist

Stage Seven: Sacred Response: God of Pure Being—"I Am"

Unborn

Undying

Unchanging

Unmoving

Unmanifest

Immeasurable

Invisible

Intangible

Infinite

WHAT KIND OF WORLD DID GOD CREATE?

Stage 1: Fight-or-Flight Response: World of bare survival

Stage 2: Reactive Response: World of competition and ambition

Stage 3: Restful Awareness Response: World of inner solitude,

self-sufficiency

Stage 4: Intuitive Response: World of insight, personal growth

Stage 5: Creative Response: World of art, invention, discovery

Stage 6: Visionary Response: World of prophets, sages, and seers

Stage 7: Sacred Response: Transcendent world

WHO AM I?

Stage 1: Fight-or-Flight Response: A survivor

Stage 2: Reactive Response: Ego, personality

Stage 3: Restful Awareness Response: Silent witness

Stage 4: Intuitive Response: Knower within

Stage 5: Creative Response: Co-creator

Stage 6: Visionary Response: Enlightened awareness

Stage 7: Sacred Response: The source

HOW DO I FIT IN?

Stage 1: Fight-or-Flight Response: I cope.

Stage 2: Reactive Response: I win.

Stage 3: Restful Awareness Response: I stay centered.

Stage 4: Intuitive Response: I understand.

Stage 5: Creative Response: I intend.

Stage 6: Visionary Response: I love.

Stage 7: Sacred Response: I am.

HOW DO I FIND GOD?

Stage 1: Fight-or-Flight Response: Fear, loving devotion

Stage 2: Reactive Response: Awe, obedience

Stage 3: Restful Awareness Response: Meditation, silent contemplation

Stage 4: Intuitive Response: Self-acceptance

Stage 5: Creative Response: Inspiration

Stage 6: Visionary Response: Grace

Stage 7: Sacred Response: By transcending

WHAT IS THE NATURE OF GOOD AND EVIL?

Stage 1: Fight-or-Flight Response

Good is safety, comfort, food, shelter and family.

Evil is physical threat and abandonment.

Stage 2: Reactive Response

Good is getting what you want.

Evil is any obstacle to getting what you want.

Stage 3: Restful Awareness Response

Good is clarity, inner calm, and contact with the self.

Evil is inner turmoil and chaos.

Stage 4: Intuitive Response

Good is clarity, seeing the truth.

Evil is blindness, denying the truth.

Stage 5: Creative Response

Good is higher consciousness.

Evil is lower consciousness.

Stage 6: Visionary Response

Good is a cosmic force.

Evil is another aspect of the same force.

Stage 7: Sacred Response

Good is the union of all opposites.

Evil no longer exists.

WHAT IS MY LIFE CHALLENGE?

Stage 1: Fight-or-Flight Response: To survive, protect, and maintain

Stage 2: Reactive Response: Maximum achievement

Stage 3: Restful Awareness Response: To be engaged and detached

Stage 4: Intuitive Response: To go beyond duality

Stage 5: Creative Response: To align with the Creator

Stage 6: Visionary Response: To attain liberation

Stage 7: Sacred Response: To be myself

WHAT IS MY GREATEST STRENGTH?

Stage 1: Fight-or-Flight Response: Courage

Stage 2: Reactive Response: Accomplishment

Stage 3: Restful Awareness Response: Autonomy

Stage 4: Intuitive Response: Insight

Stage 5: Creative Response: Imagination

Stage 6: Visionary Response: Holiness

Stage 7: Sacred Response: Unity

WHAT IS MY BIGGEST HURDLE?

Stage 1: Fight-or-Flight Response: Fear of loss, abandonment

Stage 2: Reactive Response: Guilt, victimization

Stage 3: Restful Awareness Response: Fatalism

Stage 4: Intuitive Response: Delusion

Stage 5: Creative Response: Self-importance

Stage 6: Visionary Response: False idealism

Stage 7: Sacred Response: Duality

WHAT IS MY GREATEST TEMPTATION?

Stage 1: Fight-or-Flight Response: Tyranny

Stage 2: Reactive Response: Addiction

Stage 3: Restful Awareness Response: Introversion

Stage 4: Intuitive Response: Deception

Stage 5: Creative Response: Solipsism

Stage 6: Visionary Response: Martyrdom

Stage 7: Sacred Response: Beyond temptation

GETTING WHAT YOU WANT

The Seven Levels of Fulfillment

God is another name for infinite intelligence. To achieve anything in

life, a piece of this intelligence must be contacted and used. In other

words, God is always there for you. The seven responses of the human brain

are avenues to attain some aspect of God. Each level of fulfillment proves

God's reality at that level.

Level 1 (Fight-or-Flight Response)

You fulfill your life through family, community, a sense of belonging, and

material comforts.

Level 2 (Reactive Response)

You fulfill your life through success, power, influence, status, and other

ego satisfactions.

Level 3 (Restful Awareness Response)

You fulfill your life through peace, centeredness, selfacceptance, and

inner silence.

Level 4 (Intuitive Response)

You fulfill your life through insight, empathy, tolerance, and

forgiveness.

Level 5 (Creative Response)

You fulfill your life through inspiration, expanded creativity in art or

science, and unlimited discovery.

Level 6 (Visionary Response)

You fulfill your life through reverence, compassion, devoted service, and

universal love.

Level 7 (Sacred Response)

You fulfill your life through wholeness and unity with the divine.

The Seven Levels of Miracles

A miracle is a display of power from beyond the five senses. Although all

miracles take place in the transition zone, they differ from level to

level. In general, miracles become more "supernatural" after the fourth or

fifth brain response, but any miracle involves direct contact with spirit.

Level 1 (Fight-or-Flight Response)

Miracles involve surviving great danger, impossible rescues, a sense of

divine protection.

Example: A mother who runs into a burning house to rescue her child, or

lifts a car with a child trapped underneath

Level 2 (Reactive Response)

Miracles involve incredible achievements and success, control over the

body or mind.

Example: Extreme feats of martial arts, child prodigies with inexplicable

gifts in music or mathematics, the rise of a Napoleon from humble

beginnings to immense power (men of destiny)

Level 3 (Restful Awareness Response)

Miracles involve synchronicity, yogic powers, premonitions, feeling the

presence of God or angels.

Example: Yogis who can change body temperature or heart rate at will,

being visited by someone from far away who has just died, visitation by a

guardian angel

Level 4 (Intuitive Response)

Miracles involve telepathy, ESP, knowledge of past or future lifetimes,

prophetic powers.

Example: Reading someone else's thoughts or aura, psychic predictions,

astral projection to other locations

Level 5 (Creative Response)

Miracles involve divine inspiration, artistic genius, spontaneous

fulfillment of desires (wishes come true).

Example: The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, having a thought that suddenly

manifests, Einstein's insights into time and relativity

Level 6 (Visionary Response)

Miracles involve healing, physical transformations, holy apparitions,

highest degree of supernatural feats.

Example: Walking on water, healing incurable diseases through touch,

direct revelation from the Virgin Mary

Level 7 (Sacred Response)

Miracles involve inner evidence of enlightenment.

Example: Lives of the great prophets and teachers—Buddha, Jesus, Lao-Tze

Four

A MANUAL FOR SAINTS

We are like newborn children,

Our power is the power to grow.

—RABINDRANATH TAGORE

When you read about the seven stages, it becomes clear that religions vary

wildly on how to know God. Each has marked out a separate path whose steps

are fixed—often rigidly fixed—in dogma. I have steered clear of dogma,

knowing full well that Christians do not automatically accept an Eastern

belief such as karma, just as Hindus and Buddhists do not accept a Western

belief like Judgment Day. If there is one God, there still cannot be one

path. Yet no matter which path you walk, two things are necessary. The

first is a vision of the goal; the second is trust that you have the inner

resources to get there.

To prove that there is a reachable goal, every religious tradition has

saints. Saints are spiritual achievers. They exhibit deep love and

devotion, but saints are more than saintly. You and I might show

forgiveness toward an enemy because we know that it is the right thing to

do, or because it raises our sense of inner worth—at the very least we

believe God approves of forgiveness. When a saint forgives, she can't help

herself, her love is an outflowing of her nature. And since saints begin

life the same as the rest of us, developing a natural sense of love,

forgiveness, and compassion represents a huge accomplishment. It isn't

simply a gift, which is why we are justified in saying that saints must be

great achievers. They are the Einsteins of consciousness. Not only have

they reached the spiritual goals set forth by their religion, but they

prove to the rest of us that the resources exist for getting there

ourselves.

This implies that the saint is laying out a map of the future. Mother

Teresa and Saint Francis are me, but a me that hasn't yet emerged. The

saints of Buddhism, who are called bodhisattvas, are sometimes portrayed

looking over their shoulders and beckoning with a smile, as if to say, "I

am going over the threshold. Don't you want to follow?"

It makes sense to accept their invitation, not just by showing love and

compassion, but by heeding the principles that uphold the soul's journey.

These principles would be found in any manual for saints because they hold

true from stage one to stage seven. Such a manual doesn't exist, but if it

did, the following realizations would be right at its core:

Evolution cannot be stopped; spiritual growth is assured.

Action is always noticed by God; nothing goes unheeded.

There is no reliable guide to behavior outside your own heart and mind.

Reality changes at dfferent stages of growth.

At some level everyone knows the highest truth.

Everyone is doing the best they can from their own level of consciousness.

Suffering is temporary, enlightenment is forever.

Where do these realizations come from? How do we know they are true? They

certainly don't come from society or any outward experience. They come

from paying attention to the countless clues left by spirit. No two people

see God in the same way, because no two people are at the exact same stage

of waking up. Yet in those moments when the five senses give way to deeper

intuition, each of us gets a glimpse of reality, and as our minds process

some remarkable event or insight, reality delivers a scrap of truth.

"Just before college I went to the New York World's Fair," an older friend

of mine likes to remember. "And they had this ride I will never forget. It

was a long tunnel that had a movie projected inside it. As you rode along,

the images of the movie rushed by at high speed, surrounding you with all

kinds of futuristic things, but when you got to the end, you realized that

the conveyor belt had traveled only fifty feet in real distance. I thought

this was fantastically significant, because my life has been like that. On

a daily basis I can walk past thousands of people on the street, think

myriads of thoughts, go anywhere in my imagination. But how much closer

have I gotten to my soul? Maybe an inch, maybe less. The outer show is

very different from the inner journey."

To judge by the outer show, everyone's life moves rapidly, if chaotically,

through scene after scene. Yet you might never suspect that there even was

an inner journey. Saints prove that there is. Having arrived at the goal,

they can look back and say that just beneath the surface, human life has a

pattern, a rising arc. In stage one the possibility of knowing God is dim,

unlikely, a mere shadow of a possibility. In stage two, as threats and

fears subside, the possibilities become more interesting and plausible. In

stage three they become intriguing, something you find it worthwhile to

contemplate and perhaps even test out. In stage four tentative testing

turns more decisive—you actually begin to risk making choices that defy

the ego's expectations (to use a wonderful phrase I ran across, you begin

to live as if God really matters). In stage five you have done enough

testing; now you want to play. You feel assured in your spiritual choices.

In stage six you acquire mastery over the spiritual domain, which lets you

enjoy incredible freedom in the material domain, a freedom never dreamed

of earlier. In stage seven there are no more choices to be made. The saint

merges into the God he reveres, and the whole universe operates

automatically according to the same principles that were once so

irrelevant to the struggle of trying to survive.

If I read in the New Testament that it is right to love your enemy, how

does that apply to the thief who tried to rob me in my house or the mugger

attacking me in the street? I may pay lip service to forgiving the

criminal, but at a deeper level I will react according to my true state of

consciousness. I might hate and fear him, or I might want to do everything

possible to prevent similar crimes from happening—these are typical

reactions in stages one and two. I might pay more attention to my inner

agitation and then realize that the crime was born out of the wrongdoer's

fear and pain—now we are at stages three and four. As consciousness rises

I begin to see that my own inner drama projected the whole scenario in

which I played the part of victim, leading to the realization that the

criminal and I are two parts of the same karma—insights gained in stages

five and six. At this point true forgiveness is available to me. I have

linked the teaching of Jesus with my own soul. All that remains is stage

seven, where the criminal is an aspect of myself that I can bless and

release to God.

Every event in your life falls somewhere on this scale of reactions, and

the overall pattern is a rising arc. The road to sainthood begins in

ordinary circumstances with ordinary situations. There is no shorter path

to God. Because we all have egos, we fantasize that we will simply leap to

the top of the mountain where the halos are handed out, but this never

happens. Inner life is too complex, too full of contradictions. An Arctic

explorer can tell from his map when he has arrived at the pole, but in

spiritual exploration the map shifts with every step you take. "You need

to realize that there is no fixed 'me' who is looking for enlightenment,"

a guru told his disciples. "You have no fixed identity—that is just a

fiction made up by your ego. In truth there is a different experiencer for

every experience." Because each of us is a lover one moment and a child

the next, a seeker stubbornly clinging to old habits, free and yet

captive, curious and yet apathetic, secure and frightened at the same

time, the spiritual journey is never a straight line. Goals have a way of

changing; in fact, they must change, given that stage one melts into stage

two just when you think you have arrived at God. In turn stage two will

melt away when the time comes.

Which brings us back to the same question, "Where do I go from here?" Let

me take the first two principles of a saint and demonstrate how the rising

arc applies to you. In each stage I will adopt the voice of someone who is

trying to come to terms with the principle.

Evolution cannot be stopped; spiritual growth is assured.

Stage One (Fight-or-flight response): "This whole idea makes no sense.

There are lots of evil people who couldn't care less about their souls. My

own life is all ups and downs. I take two steps backward for every step

forward. I have no idea why misfortunes and failure occur; I pray to God

that they don't and leave it to him."

Stage Two (Reactive response): "My life keeps getting better as long as I

work hard and stay up to speed. This makes me optimistic, and I interpret

evolution as progress. Since childhood I have increased in confidence and

skill, so definitely I am progressing—but I'm not so sure that applies to

the people who haven't caught on to how to succeed. They need God more

than I do. Inner growth is secondary to success."

Stage Three (Restful awareness response): "I'm not that pulled into

outward events anymore, and I think they aren't that real. They are more

like symbols of what I hold inside. Since childhood my inner world has

grown stabler, more comforting and secure. It seems that evolution takes

place near my heart, and I try to obey my inner impulses, even when they

don't bring me more money, status, or power. Something deeper is moving

forward."

Stage Four (Intuitive response): "I've stopped believing that my ego knows

what's good for me. It never made me fulfilled, no matter how often I made

choices on behalf of 'I, me, mine'. You have to go deeper inside to make

your choices, and I've found that at the intuitive level, I know what is

right—or at least I'm getting there. Too many things have happened that

can't be explained in the old way. I am part of a mystery, flowing toward

an unknown destination. That is what fascinates me now."

Stage Five (Creative response): "Somewhere along the line, I broke free. I

am who I want to be, doing what I want to do. How did I get to this place?

It didn't happen through struggle and strife. Somehow a deep current swept

me along and brought me here. If that is evolution, then I believe in it,

although as yet I can't tell you precisely who God is or what my soul

looks like. It is enough to trust the process."

Stage Six (Visionary response): "My soul is calling me every hour of every

day. I now realize that this has always been true, but only now do I

notice it so completely, so clearly. It's unbearable to turn away from the

light, which is the source of my ecstasy. Every time I pray, I am aware

that God is with me, because if only I had been awake earlier, I would

have seen that any other possibility is false."

Stage Seven (Sacred response): "Evolution is all. Every atom in the

universe is guided by a perfection standing outside time and space.

Nothing is amiss. Death itself is part of eternal progress, and so is

evil. I know, because I am that life force, that endless river. I am its

source and its destination, its flow and the obstacles that hinder the

flow. I carry a few memories of my old life, most especially this one: I

remember the day that God, the Cosmic Mother, embraced me and invited me

to join her dance."

In abbreviated form, we've just accounted for many of the spiritual

turning points that shake people out of their old beliefs. Truth has many

faces, and when you see a new one, your level of consciousness rises. We

have also illustrated two more of the saints' principles: Everyone is

doing the best they can from their own level of awareness, and reality

keeps changing as your consciousness changes. The rising arc of spirit

isn't always so obvious. It gets obscured all the time. We don't think

about sainthood when corporate downsizing threatens our jobs or when the

divorce papers are served. But at dramatic moments the soul drops clues

into our laps, and then we have the choice to pay attention or not. Your

soul will always be in communication with you, and over time you will heed

what it says.

The spiritual journey is 99 percent repetition, because we are all

conditioned to obey ego needs, to cling to old habits. We have our ways of

doing things, most of them totally dependent on the past. Sheer inertia

would defeat the soul were it not for its magnetic pull. That is why it is

useful to cooperate in your own awakening—your enemy is not evil but lack

of attention. The various practices known as prayer, meditation,

contemplation, and yoga have been highly valued over the centuries because

they sharpen attention and make it easier not to miss the clues to

spiritual reality.

A spiritual person is a good listener for silent voices, a sharp observer

of invisible objects. These traits are more important than trying to act

in a way that God would reward with a gold star. The second principle of

the saints can be dramatized like the first, through the inner voice that

plays its beliefs over and over in your head until you move on to a new

belief, bringing with it a new voice.

Action is always noticed by God; nothing goes unheeded.

Stage One (Fight-or-flight response): "Maybe God sees the fall of a

sparrow, but you couldn't tell it by me. If I didn't do my part to fit in,

I would be alone and forgotten. The cherished feelings I have for my

family are what holds my life together, because these few people care that

I exist. Events are random, treacherous things that can happen at any

moment. I never forget that. After I die, I will just be a memory, or if I

am lucky I will then find out if God knows who I am. My faith tells me

that he does."

Stage Two (Reactive response): "Everything comes with a price. If you

waste your time and energy, life doesn't give you much back. But since I

know how to organize my life, I can bring life's rewards my way.

Everything I do has a point; my driving ambition is to make each moment

count. When the time comes to rest, I will look around with satisfaction

at what I've made of myself. I don't have time to think about what comes

next, but in scary moments I wonder if God will get me for the bad things

I had to do."

Stage Three (Restful awareness response): "I wonder if things are as

random as they appear. I've seen evil rewarded and good punished. Yet at

other times an underlying purpose seems to raise its head. I need to think

about all this because the answers I get from society are too confused and

conflicted. It just may be true that someone up there knows everything; I

feel it in my bones."

Stage Four (Intuitive response): "I could swear that someone is reading my

mind. If I think of something, it seems to happen, or at least there are a

lot of unexplained coincidences. I've learned to go with these signals,

wherever they come from. I am the master of my own choices. Sometimes I

make mistakes, but even those I can witness with calm acceptance."

Stage Five (Creative response): "Things work out because they are meant

to. Otherwise the world would be a churning cauldron, and it isn't.

Everywhere I look I see patterns and symbols; there is incredible beauty

and order. There are times when this complexity intoxicates me. I just

can't believe so much potential exists—I have the heart of an artist but

the soul of a wizard. Who knows what kind of power I will one day wield."

Stage Six (Visionary response): "The world has a heart, and that heart is

love. In the midst of all struggle, I see that God is watching. He doesn't

interfere, but he doesn't lose track, either. He brings a solution to fit

every problem, a reaction that suits every action. How he does this is a

mystery, but nothing is more real. There is grace in the fall of a leaf.

Our deeds are weighed in the balance by a loving Creator who never judges

or punishes."

Stage Seven (Sacred response): "Action and reaction are one, and always

have been. As events spin from the web of time, I see no difference

between the action and the one who performs it. The ego used to believe

that there was an 'I' who had to oversee and control. This 'I' is only an

illusion. No action could ever be lost or overlooked in the fabric of

unity."

* * *

These viewpoints look very different on the surface, yet the same

principle is being unfolded in a rising arc. In other words, a secret

spiritual path underlies the apparent randomness of everyday existence.

"All of reality is a symbol for spirit," the Sufis say. Or, to recall

Rumi's beautiful phrase, "I come from Elsewhere, and though I do not know

where that is, I am certain to return there in the end." Only in stage six

does the saint realize that his soul's unfolding was always taking place.

Until clarity dawns, a certain amount of confusion is always present.

Everyone receives the same signals from God. The impulse to behave in the

highest spiritual way comes to us from beyond our five senses. We refuse

to believe that we are connected. But in truth when love is called for,

each person tries to display perfect love; when compassion is called for,

each person tries to display perfect compassion. This holds for the

criminal, the saint, the businessman, the dictator, the factory worker.

The message is pure; the filter is impure.

The saint sees that we are all hooked into the same level of infinite

intelligence, creativity, and love. God and your soul are in perfect

communication. The message breaks down for reasons we have been detailing

at length: ego needs, distortions of perception, lack of self-worth, and

all kinds of traumas and wounds that defeat our best intentions. If lumped

together, these impurities are called avidya in the Indian tradition, a

Sanskrit word that breaks down into two components, the root word for

"not" and the root word for "knowing." By not knowing who we are, by not

knowing what God is, by not knowing how to connect with the soul, we fall

into sin and ignorance. In everyday usage, avidya is sometimes called both

sin and ignorance, but these pejorative terms hide the essence of the

truth, which is that all such obstacles exist in consciousness and can be

cleared away.

What's the one thing you can do today to grow in spirit? Stop defining

yourself. Don't accept any thought that begins "I am this or that." You

are not this or that. You are beyond definition, and therefore any attempt

to say "I am X" is wrong. You are in passage. You are in the process of

redefining yourself every day. Aid that process, and you cannot help but

leap forward on the path.

If you take a clear look at yourself, you will find that your mind is more

like a swarm of bees than like an arrow shooting straight for the goal. A

swarm of bees can travel from point A to point B, just like an arrow, but

it does so in a vague, swirling, fuzzy way. Thus we hold in our minds all

kinds of shifting attitudes, many of which contradict each other. Our love

is bound up with hatred, our trust with suspicion, our altruism with

selfishness. Because this is so, the only clear path to God is a path of

constant self-awareness. You must see through your own mask if you want to

take it off.

Avidya is hard to pierce. It takes a lot of attention to look in the

mirror, because our masks do not stop looking back at us. But if you take

any issue facing you, your present attitudes will be a clue to your deeper

beliefs, and belief is where the real change must occur. A belief lies

close to the soul. It is like a microchip that keeps sending out the same

signal over and over, making the same interpretation of reality until you

are ready to pull out the old chip and install a new one. The following

pages explore this in greater detail.

MASKING THE SOUL

Our attitudes hide deeper spiritual beliefs, and when we see through them,

beliefs can be changed.

Mask: atheist, cynic, or failed seeker

Attitude: Doubt, resistance, ironical detachment, in the habit of

mistrust. Fall-back emotion (*) is anxiety.

Belief: God cannot be proved; if he exists he has no power over the

material world; I am alone, my fear of emptiness is my chief reason to

keep seeking.

Mask: leader, achiever, or skeptic

Attitude: Certainty, confidence, self-reliance, in the habit of demanding

rational explanations. Fall-back emotion is anger or obstinacy.

Belief: I am in control of my life, not God; if he demands surrender I

will ignore him; secretly I believe that my own power is greater than his.

Mask: thinker or dreamer

Attitude: Reflective, conciliatory, calm, in the habit of assessing

situations emotionally. Fall-back emotion is depression or resignation.

Belief: God hints at his presence inside me; I will get the message once I

stop falling into confusion; God favors inward-looking action more than

outward action.

Mask: idealist or liberator

Attitude: Self-aware, nonjudgmental, willing to be an iconoclast or to

defy normal expectations. Fall-back emotion is detachment.

Belief: God doesn't think I am wrong or sinful; I can only accept him to

the degree I accept myself; forgiveness is real.

Mask: artist, adventurer, or explorer

Attitude: Playful, emotionally resilient, eager to try anything new,

tendency to be highly sensitive. Fall-back emotion is fantasy

(self-absorption).

Belief: God has made a recreational universe; I am safe following my

creative impulses; I am approved of by God.

Mask: prophet or redeemer

Attitude: Humble, deeply forgiving and accepting of others, awed by

mystery, able to see to the depth of any person or situation. Fall-back

emotion is love.

Belief: There are no miracles until you see that all of life is a miracle;

God works through me, my greatest joy is service to him.

Mask: no mask

Attitude: Immersion in bliss, wisdom, and peace, with no personal

attitudes—the viewpoint is universal. Fall-back emotion is compassion.

Belief: No personal beliefs; every action and word comes directly from the

divine source; a certainty that being human is a blessed state.

The above serves to show how pervasively we are influenced by our state of

awareness. Every emotion or attitude has a spiritual meaning, despite the

fact that society doesn't acknowledge this. In society's eyes, events

become spiritual only in church or during times of crisis and transition.

But the soul journey is a constant in everyone's life. Your typical

attitudes, along with the emotions you cannot shake, indicate in a subtle

way that spiritual issues are churning at a deeper level. Even the saint

and the redeemer are wearing a mask, however thin, that doesn't yet let

them see the totality of the self. A set of attitudes may fit you so well

that you apply them almost all the time. This is the mark of someone who

moves very slowly on the path, such as the confirmed skeptic who remains

doubtful about all spiritual issues, from the existence of God to the

possibility of an afterlife. People who cling firmly to skepticism are

likely to deny that they have any fear of emptiness and abandonment, yet

ultimately they have more of these issues than anyone else—the mask is

just highly deceptive.

In the same vein, highly successful people who owe their achievements to

struggle and competitiveness tend to wear the mask of self-confidence and

not to look at the hidden beliefs that would put them in defiance of God.

Even if they "believe in" God, they act on personal power, and if

seriously confronted with the possibility of surrender, they reject it

outright. Between will and surrender, there is no choice for them.

What is the mark of someone who moves very quickly on the path? It may

seem to be a paradox, but the more turbulent you are inside, the faster

you are moving. Ferment is good. Not buying into your own story is good.

Krishnamurti used to say that discontent was the flame of the seeker.

Meher Baba, an Indian master aligned with Sufism, taught that the only

prerequisite for waking up was total disillusionment. Why? Because the

whole notion that you are a fixed entity is a great illusion, and the

sooner you see how varied and complex you are, the sooner you will drop

the masks of your ego.

There is no standing still in nature; creatures either move forward or

die. Seeing how a flower blooms, goes to seed, and sacrifices itself to

bring new life, we wonder if our souls fall into the same cycle. Do we

rise and fall, going through an endless round of birth and death? Or is

there a tendency to keep moving closer to God, despite the many obstacles

and setbacks that befall us along the way? Speaking personally, this is an

important question for my behavior today, since I can choose to obey my

ego drives or my higher ideals. Ninety-nine percent of humanity has a

story they believe in, and nothing shakes them from their story. Saints

remind us to choose the ideal over the egotistical, and when being

selfish, greedy, and ambitious is just too tempting, the saints don't

condemn us. "Come to me," Rumi implores, "even if you have broken your

vows a thousand times." The soul can't be hindered by outward action. No

one makes the soul journey faster or slower than anyone else. Time doesn't

count at the level of the soul. What counts is perception. When you

perceive that awakening is inevitable, the magnetic pull of the soul will

keep changing you.

You and I are nothing but saints in the making. We can exhibit whatever

behavior we want, but life flows upward from the roots, not downward from

the branches. On a spiritual basis, being good is never wrong. But in

terms of sheer effectiveness—which means trying to wake up with the fewest

delays, obstacles, and backsliding—adopting the right belief is much more

powerful. As the first principle says, evolution cannot be stopped. With

this belief in mind, you have a basis for forgiving any wrongdoing,

letting go of the past, and giving yourself a second chance at anything

where you failed the first time around. There is no fall from grace, only

a very long furlough. In the end there is only one reliable guide: Find

your place on the rising arc and keep moving.

* A fall-back emotion is a coping response. It arises when you cannot

resolve inner tension or a crisis. It also reflects a sense of connection

or separation from God.

SPIRITUAL AWAKENING

If asked what separates a spiritual person from a skeptic, I would not say

that the answer is belief in God. It is clarity. Millions of believers

still strive to be "saved," whether they are Christians, Muslims, or of

any other faith. They actively seek a clear perception of God that will

affect them personally. When does this become possible? Do we have to wait

for stage six, the stage of the saint, or any particular stage at all?

Stripped of religious coloration, being saved is the same as awakening in

consciousness, a perceptual leap that makes God real instead of doubtful.

Here is a striking example.

A young man in his twenties named Bede Griffiths had been going through a

period of deep doubt and depression. Being religious, he sought solace in

a church, where he prayed without success. One day during service he heard

the line "Open my eyes that I may see the wondrous things of Thy law" from

the 113th Psalm. Deeply moved, the young man felt his melancholy lift

away, and he had the overwhelming sense that his prayers had been answered

by divine intervention. He walked outside onto the London streets, and

later described the experience in the following words:

When I went outside, I found that the world about me no longer oppressed

me as it had done. The hard casing of exterior reality seemed to have been

broken through, and everything disclosed its inner being. The buses in the

streets seemed to have lost their solidity and were glowing with light. I

hardly felt the ground as I trod ... I was like a bird that has broken the

shell of its egg and finds itself in a new world; like a child that has

forced its way out of the womb and sees the light of day for the first

time. (1)

Time and again in such awakenings there is an insistence that outer things

have dramatically changed, whereas to other observers they haven't. But

this doesn't mean that going into the light, seeing the face of God, or

whatever other name we wish to give to the experience is false. The

observer isn't separate from outer reality. The photons firing in the

brain are exactly the same as photons organized into "real" objects. So

inner and outer vision are not separate. The mystical branch of Islam

known as Sufism declares that all light, inner and outer, is but one

light. This is something people find hard to accept, because the duality

of inner versus outer, real versus unreal, objective versus subjective has

been drilled into us since birth. To get past this dualism, we have to

return to our three levels of existence:

When light is visible and organized into concrete objects, reality is

material.

When light contains feeling, thought, and intelligence, reality is

quantum.

When light is completely unmanifest, with no qualities anyone can measure,

reality is virtual.

In place of the old dualism that insists upon keeping our inner and outer

life apart, we can restore the light to its wholeness. One can think of a

photon as the archetype of all energy that is blossoming out from nothing

and nowhere to something and somewhere: the bridge for mystical awakenings

is light as it moves from virtual to material existence.

In this scheme one traditional belief gets reversed. The virtual domain,

unlike heaven, is our source rather than our destination after death. When

physicists declare that the cosmos once had ten or more dimensions, all

but four of which collapsed back where they came from, the virtual state

is where they went.

This is so difficult to conceptualize that a simple analogy might help:

let's say that you are thinking in words and then shift to humming a tune

in your head. This shift to music brings in completely different laws of

nature than the laws that govern words. Yet you can move from one

dimension to the other quite easily. The musical dimension is always

there, even though you may not be contacting it. In the same way, other

dimensions exist outside the cosmos, but we do not access their laws, and

if we tried, we would have to give up our own. This is why your body and

mind could not survive passage through a black hole or travel beyond the

speed of light.

In order for a packet of energy to appear, to be seen by the eyes as

photons, it doesn't suddenly jump into material existence. Between the

void and visible light, between darkness and things you can see and touch,

there is the quantum layer. This level is accessible to our brains, which

are quantum machines that create thought by manipulating energy into

intricate patterns. At this level light dawns as awareness of something,

rather than simply being awareness in its pure state. This is the place

where Einstein looked for God's mind—he was searching for religious

insight without the unscientific subjectivity that would have doomed his

theories to rejection by his peers. (It is fascinating to follow the

mystical journeys of great physicists like Einstein, Schrödinger, and

Pauli, because as they arrived, awestruck before the mystery of creation,

they had to cover their trails, so to speak, to avoid any accusation that

they were mere mystics and not scientists. In the case of Einstein and

Pauli, the taint of being too receptive to religious concepts finally did

cast a shadow over their later work.)

To an experimental physicist, a photon is a quantum of light. This might

only be of technical interest were it not for the fact that quantum

physics holds the key to even greater secrets. We know nothing directly

about energy in its virtual state—this is essentially inaccessible to any

measuring instrument. But one way to understand the virtual domain is as

the space between subatomic particles, called the virtual field. A

subatomic particle isn't a thing hanging out in space like a baseball

drifting over home plate, but a disturbance in the field. The disturbance

takes place as a quantum event, sometimes pictured as a wave. There is a

spiritual parallel to this in the Vedas, where the sages declare that the

undisturbed state of consciousness is bliss, the disturbed state is the

world.

Throughout the universe, the photon is the most basic unit of

electromagnetic energy. Every single thing you can perceive is actually a

swirling cloud of energy. At the moment of the Big Bang the universe

exploded with energy that now forms everything in existence, and buried

somewhere under the skin of every object or event, the primordial light

still burns. Being the essence of transformation, primordial light isn't

always the same shape or form billions of years later. A granite cliff is

solid, hard, flintlike light; an impulse of love is sweet, emotional

light; the firing of a neuron is an instant flash of invisible light. Yet

as dissimilar as they appear, when broken down to their most basic

components, all things derive from the same primal stuff.

Without the quantum level of reality there could be no cosmos, and it is

here that order and symmetry, the keys to life, first appeared. But few

eminent physicists besides Einstein have ventured to explore the

possibility that the quantum level is a transition to God. So it is

necessary to consider other thinkers. In the last century in India there

was a revered saint, Sri Ramakrishna, who held the post of priest in a

large, wealthy temple outside Calcutta. It was his duty to place offerings

every day before the statue of Kali, one of the guises of the divine

mother, the Goddess.

Having done this day after day, Ramakrishna became very devoted to the

divine mother. Then one day a change occurred: "It was suddenly revealed

to me," he says, "that not just the statue but everything in the room was

made of pure spirit. The bowl, the utensils, the floor and ceiling were

all manifestations of the same thing. When I realized this, I began to act

like someone insane. I began throwing flowers everywhere and worshiping

everything. Worship, worship, worship in all directions."

This is what I would call an overlap of levels. Ramakrishna didn't go into

a trance or leave his senses behind—the material level of the world was

still visible, but something finer suddenly penetrated and permeated it.

This permeation came from the virtual level, which can't be registered by

the five senses. There is nothing to see, hear, touch, taste, or smell.

However, our brains are designed to assign a time and place to everything;

therefore the invisible levels get merged into the visible, as if the

flower or the statue or the holy water has become infused with spirit

before our eyes.

An awakening can be very confusing if the brain suddenly has to make sense

of impulses not of this world. New feelings arise. Perhaps the most

uncanny feeling is that of pure awareness: one is awake, alive, but

without thoughts, and free from the limitations of the body. The closest

most of us come to this feeling is the first minute when we wake up in the

morning or the last before we fall asleep. There is awareness here, but no

content, no rush of thoughts in the brain, and if you pay close enough

attention, even the sense of identity is blanked out—you feel yourself

being present, yet you aren't aware of any specifics such as your name,

address, occupation, age, daily concerns, or relationships. At the instant

you wake up, just before all the particulars of your situation flood back

once more, you could be a child again and your familiar home could be

anyplace in the world.

One would assume that this is just a passing feeling. Yet the experience

of pure awareness lies at the heart of religious awakening. The only

region of nature that enjoys total freedom is heaven, as religious people

might call it. In physics the equivalent would be the virtual level of

reality. Not that this is a blessed place where souls enjoy the company of

angels—such a concept is totally foreign to physical science, but the

resemblance is based on a shift in the rules or laws of nature.

Heaven is imagined as a place free from the bonds of earthly life where

gravity no longer holds down the body. In heaven there are no cares or

attachments. Eternal joy is the soul's constant state. Without having to

imagine them, all these qualities can be traced back to the experience of

waking up. The great difference between this experience and heaven is that

the virtual domain isn't outside us; one doesn't "go" there either in body

or soul. One may look forward to dying and achieving heaven as a reward,

but it is more in tune with virtual reality to find it now. How? A famous

anecdote in India tells of the ascetic who goes to the mountaintop to

become enlightened. He fasts and prays constantly; he gives up all worldly

desires in favor of meditation.

His renunciation goes on for many years until the day when he realizes he

has finally arrived. No matter where he looks, he senses only the

unbounded bliss of pure awareness, without attachment of any kind.

Overjoyed, he rushes down into the village below to tell everyone, and as

he is going along, he runs into a crowd of drunken revelers. Quietly he

tries to thread his way through, but one drunk after another bumps him and

makes a crude remark. Finally the ascetic can't stand it and cries, "Get

out of my way!" At that instant he stops, turns around, and goes back to

the mountain.

This anecdote is about how easily we are fooled into thinking that we can

escape our own anger and frailty, but the larger point is that using the

personality to get to the absolute is a contradiction.

Certain parts of ourselves are designed to live in this world of time. It

takes resolve and purpose to succeed in loosening our bonds enough so that

pure awareness feels totally comfortable, and in the face of conflicts we

instinctively fall back on anger, as we fall back on stubbornness,

self-centeredness, righteous certainty, and so forth. Yet at another level

we do not even possess these qualities, much less feel tied to them.

Religious seeking, whatever form it takes, tries to regain that unattached

level.

Seen in this context, some of the most mysterious writings of saints and

sages become very clear. Consider this Chinese poem from Li Po, written in

the eighth century:

You ask why I seclude myself here in my little forest hut?

I just smile and say nothing, listening to the quiet in my soul.

This peacefulness lives in another world

That no one owns.

What we can now see in these words is a change of perspective that is

always here, right with us, as a possibility. With the loss of time comes

a complete absence of ordinary identity. The personality that I feel

myself to be dissolves beyond the material level, and with that, I lose

the need for the landmarks that I have gathered since birth.

Awakening is at the root of the world's religions. It unites prophets,

messiahs, and saints into a privileged elite. That awakening can be

recounted through wondrous stories such as that of the young prince

Siddhartha, before he became the Buddha, being transported from his palace

on a flying white horse supported by angels at each hoof. Such legends

convey the tremendous effect of waking up to a new level of reality. That

this reality arose in the mind sounds too abstract and prosaic. There

needs to be a more dramatic event, such as a heaven that suddenly opens

up, or divine messengers who descend from on high.

Most people outside the faith of Islam are unaware of the moment when the

prophet Muhammad was awakened. (2) It took place at night in a cave

outside the city of Mecca. Muhammad was forty, a merchant of no memorable

distinction; in fact almost nothing is known of his life beforehand. On

this night, however, the angel Gabriel appeared in a blaze of light and

said, "Recite!"

Amazed and baffled, Muhammad could only ask, "Recite what?" To which the

angel replied, "Recite in the name of the Lord the creator" and then

delivered the gift of prophecy that enabled Muhammad to know the word of

God. This event occurred in the year 610 and is revered in Islam as the

Night of Qadr (which means glory or power). But the actual text of the

Koran was not assembled until more than thirty years later, after the

Prophet's death. Since Muhammad could neither read nor write, his account

of events is not recorded. All the suras, or chapters, of the Koran, which

vary widely in length from three lines to thirty pages, were gathered by a

committee that interviewed those remaining devotees who had heard Muhammad

speak, as well as from scraps of written text from the same sources.

It is a specific tradition that insists that the angel Gabriel arrived as

a physical presence, just as tradition insists that Jesus confronted Satan

in the wilderness or that the future Buddha flew from his palace.

(Muhammad would also be accorded a flight on a magical horse, when he was

granted a tour of all the levels of heaven. Although one can visit the

Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and view the place where the journey began,

including the hoofprint left in stone by the horse's heavenward leap, this

legend was born from a single line in the Koran that speaks of the Prophet

going from his home in Mecca to a far temple.)

These legends are now articles of faith, and for anyone to speculate that

Muhammad might not have seen an angel or that Satan did not literally

offer Jesus kingship over the earth would be risking blasphemy. However,

it isn't necessary to believe or disbelieve the literal version of the

Night of Qadr or the forty days in the wilderness. The essential point is

that our minds can open to the sudden inrush of light.

THE MIND FIELD

"Light" as used in scriptures always stands for awareness, whether or not

physical light is actually seen. Christians regard Jesus as "the light of

the world" because of his state of higher consciousness, and the word

"light" is a synonym for a whole range of things, from inspiration and

holiness to embodied spirit and God's essence. Versions of the same

imagery are applied by followers of Buddha and Muhammad, of course, even

though each religion makes claims of uniqueness for its founder. The

disputes among religions are almost always over exclusive claims that only

their founder entered the light, or that his place before God is highest.

Awareness, though, is a common heritage, even a cosmic heritage if we

accept the existence of mind at the quantum and virtual level. When asked

what the experience of God feels like, people's responses, different as

they may be, all converge on a shift into higher awareness.

I am proposing that no one is alive who hasn't taken just such a journey.

The "way," whether it is used in the Christian sense of a path or the

Taoist sense of the hidden stream of life, means following the light. None

of us could even be here without having roots where light is born, in the

quantum domain. To understand this fully, however, we have to modify our

picture of the world from a reality sandwich with three layers into

something more dynamic—a flow chart.

Material

————— QUANTUM —————

Virtual

Reality is constantly flowing from the virtual level to the quantum to the

material. In mystical terms, this constant movement is called "the river

of life," because to the mystic everything begins in the mind of God

before it appears on the surface as an event or object. But the river is

more than a metaphor. With every thought, memory, and desire we take a

journey upriver, from our invisible source to our material destination.

One day I was sitting quietly, preparing for meditation, when I happened

to see an old, faintly familiar face in my mind's eye. After a moment I

realized who it was, a patient from twenty years ago. He was a diabetic,

and every week I would call him at home to adjust his insulin levels.

As I closed my eyes, I had the faint thought, "I wonder what his name

was?" No more than that, just a faint thought. I meditated for an hour,

and as I opened my eyes again, a name suddenly came to mind, along with a

telephone number. It seemed so improbable that I had recalled them that I

went directly to the phone and dialed. The voice at the other end was in

fact my old patient Raoul.

Raoul's telephone number hadn't changed in all that time, yet my brain had

certainly been changing. Therein lies a mystery. Brain cells are not

constant. We are born with about half the complement of neurons found in

an adult brain; the rest develop between six months and two years of age.

Each neuron is connected to every other through billions of threads that

branch out into thousands of tendrils per cell, forming a vast network.

These tendrils, known as dendrites, sprout at the end of the cell like a

tree trunk sprouting branches (the word dendrite comes from the Greek word

for tree).

Although it sounds fixed and stable, this network is constantly shifting.

And even if a neuron could remain the same, growing no new branches, the

signals streaming down the dendrites are never the same from moment to

moment. Electrical impulses surge everywhere, shifting as we think new

thoughts; our brains are like a telephone system with a thousand calls

taking place every second. The main difference is that the cable lines of

our nervous system are unstable, constantly changing their molecules with

every moment of experience—both inner and outer. The wires are notoriously

nonstationary, since they are made not of copper but of fluid fats, water,

electrolytes, and the electrical charges running through them. Having a

single thought is more complex than sorting out one message from all the

telephone calls in the world. While we are managing that feat

electrically, the brain also surges with chemical messages. One dendrite

isn't strung into another; there is always a tiny gap between them. Across

this gap, known as a synapse, each message must find a way to cross;

otherwise the neurons would be isolated and unable to communicate.

Electricity doesn't jump across the gap—the voltages are much too tiny to

accomplish this. Instead, certain chemicals are emitted on one side of the

synapse and received on the other. These chemicals, called

neurotransmitters, include dopamine and serotonin.

Amid these chaotic swirls of chemicals and electrons, no one has ever

found a memory. Memories are fixed. For me to recall Raoul's face, I have

to retrieve it intact, not in bits and pieces. Where do I go to do that?

Certainly not into the firestorm of the brain. No single neuron in my

brain has survived intact for twenty years. Like migrating birds,

molecules of fat, protein, and sugar have drifted through my neurons,

adding to them and leaving again after a time.

Even though we can identify the memory centers of the brain, no one has

ever proved that memory is stored there. We assume it is, but how? To

store a memory in a neuron is like storing a memory in water. (In fact,

the brain is so fluid that if homogenized it would have the same water

content as a bowl of oatmeal. Your blood is actually more filled with

solid content than your cerebrum.) The notion that we store memory the way

a computer stores it, by imprinting microchips with bits of information,

is not supported by the evidence; when neurologists try to prove it, they

soon hit a wall.

It is the same wall that Einstein and the other founders of quantum

physics broke through. A neuron is a poor receptacle for memory because,

at bottom, its molecules are not solid; they are patterns of invisible

energy grouped into the appearance of particles. These energy packets

themselves survive only on the quantum level; go deeper still, into the

virtual level, and the patterns dissolve; the energy vanishes into ghostly

vibrations and then into nothing. Can memory be stored in nothing?

The answer is yes. When I remembered my old patient's face, I took a

journey into nothing, searching for him nowhere. I used my brain to make

this journey, or at least to begin it. But it wasn't my brain that

recalled his telephone number, any more than my radio contains the music I

hear in my car.

I mentioned already that the virtual domain has no time, space, or energy.

This turns out to be immensely important when it comes to memory. No one

doubts that the brain uses energy. It burns food as calories, subsisting

on glucose, a simple sugar that gets broken down to accommodate the

brain's complex activities. But as atoms of food are mined for their

energy and this energy gets converted into thought, none of it is

channeled into memory. It doesn't take food to store the image of where

you were ten years ago on your birthday or what you did yesterday after

work.

Nor does it seem to take energy to remember these things. Going back to my

example, I didn't consciously try to retrieve anything from my memories. I

was meditating, and after an hour a name and a telephone number came to

me. Was my brain working on the problem all that time? Currently no one

has an answer. Our popular belief is that the brain functions like a

Macintosh built from organic matter (one researcher has called it "a

computer made of meat," a disturbing but unforgettable phrase). It is my

belief that the brain is the last stop downriver, the end point of

impulses that begin on the virtual level, flow through the quantum level,

and wind up as flashes of electricity along the trunks and branches of our

neurons.

When you remember anything, you move from world to world, maintaining the

illusion that you are still here among familiar sights and sounds.

Sometimes the connections are faulty—I might have come up with the wrong

name or telephone number. Without understanding this journey, however,

there is not much hope of undertaking the spiritual journey back to God,

because both routes are the same.

The advent of CT scans and MRIs has afforded us a glimpse into the brain

as a place where energy is constantly being generated. But the brain and

the mind are different. Sometimes brain surgery has to be performed with

the patient awake, conscious, and able to answer questions. If you are

talking to such a patient and ask him to lift his arm, he obeys like

anyone else, even though a section of his skull has been removed, exposing

the cerebral cortex to open air. Now take an electrode and stimulate part

of the motor cortex so that the same arm suddenly moves. The action is

exactly the same as when you asked the patient to perform this action.

However, there is one huge difference. In the first instance if you ask

what has happened, the patient will respond, "I moved my arm." In the

second instance if you ask what happened, the patient will respond, "My

arm moved."

Despite the external similarity (the arm moved), the first act involved

will and desire; a mysterious entity called "I" did the work, not simply

the brain. Such an experiment was actually performed by the pioneering

Canadian brain surgeon Wilder Penfield, which led him to conclude that our

minds and our brains are not at all the same. (3) Today we can expand on

the ways in which the two seem to diverge:

·                     You ask me my name, and I give it to you with a

flash of activity in my cerebral cortex. But it takes no brain activity

for me to know my name.

·                     At the store I choose whether to buy vanilla or

chocolate ice cream. As I think about the choice, my brain is working, but

the chooser—the person who decides between A or B—is nowhere to be found

in the brain.

·                     You and I are looking at a Picasso painting. I say I

like it, you say you don't. It takes brain activity for us to express our

opinions, but the difference in taste isn't an activity.

·                     I am sitting on an airplane worrying about what to

say in my lecture when we land. I fall asleep and begin to doze. When I

wake up, I know exactly what I want to talk about. This shift from worry

to certainty was not a measurable brain event, since in sleep I did no

conscious thinking.

·                     You are sitting on the sofa reading when all at once

the name of an old friend pops into your mind. The next instant, you hear

the phone ring and it is your friend calling. It took brain activity to

recall the name, but no brain mechanism could time the coincidence.

·                     You meet a stranger at a party and in a moment of

instant attraction you know that this is the person you will marry. In

time you do, and it is revealed that he had exactly the same feeling for

you. The brain may account for all the hormonal attractions, even the

mental and emotional impulses that make each of you "right" for the other.

It cannot possibly account for your simultaneous certainty, however.

When Penfield began his work in the 1930s, science had not yet firmly

decided that the mind was just a ghost created by neurons. By the 1970s it

was obvious to him that many experts "would, no doubt, silence me before I

began to discuss the mind and the brain, if they could. They declare that

since the mind, by its very nature, cannot have a position in space, there

is only one phenomenon to be considered, namely, the brain." Nonetheless,

Penfield (along with Sir John Eccles, an equally audacious brain

researcher in Britain) asked an obvious question. Where in the brain can

you find any mechanism that possesses intuition, creativity, insight,

imagination, understanding, intent, knowing, will, decision, or spirit?

Indeed all the higher functions of the brain still cannot create the

qualities that make us most human. Are we supposed to dismiss them as

illusion or postpone discussion until someone discovers genes for the

soul?

Among his many observations, Penfield noted that the brain retains memory

even while dormant. Patients recover from severe states of coma still

knowing such things as language, as well as their own life history. Under

deep anesthesia, about 1 percent of surgical patients report that they

could hear what the surgeons were saying around them and can even recall

details of what transpired during the procedure. Therefore, even though he

didn't know how it worked, Penfield speculated that the mind must have its

own energy source. Somehow it also gets energy from the brain—when the

brain dies or loses function, as in a stroke, certain or all mental

operations are cut off. But energy inside the brain isn't enough to

explain how the mind survives traumas.

A brain totally deprived of oxygen for up to four minutes (longer if the

body is very cold) can still recover complete mental functioning. During

that interval of deprivation, the machinery of the brain shuts down. Under

deep anesthesia, there are practically no higher brain waves at all,

making it impossible for the cerebral cortex to accomplish anything so

complex as remembering what a surgeon is saying. The fact that the mind

can survive brain trauma and function under anesthesia points very

strongly to the separate existence of the mind. In simplest terms,

Penfield came to the conclusion that "it is the mind which experiences and

it is the brain which records the experience." He concluded that the mind

must be a kind of invisible energy field that includes the brain, perhaps

even controls it. In place of energy field, I believe we should say

"information field," because the brain clearly processes information that

is flowing and related to all that exists.

As soon as one uses the term field, a step has been taken into the realm

of quantum reality. The brain is a thing with material structures like a

cortex and a limbic system. A field is not a thing. The magnetic field of

the earth exerts a pull over every iron particle, causing it to move this

way or that, yet nothing visible or tangible is doing the moving. In the

same way the mind causes the brain to move this way or that. Think of the

word aardvark. Then think of the word Rangoon. The first word contains its

own sound and meaning, paralleled in the brain by a specific pattern of

waves. The second word is also defined by its unique patterns. Therefore,

to go from one word to the other requires a radical shift involving

millions of neurons. Who makes this shift? The first pattern has to be

totally dissolved in order to bring up the second; there is no transition

between them that serves as a link. Aardvark is wiped out (including your

mental picture of a giant anteaterà so that Rangoon can take its place

(including your image of its place on the map and whatever you know of

Burmese history). In between is only an empty gap, like the black space

between two images in a movie.

Yet somehow this gap, which has no brain activity at all, manages to

organize millions of neurons. It knows the difference between an aardvark

and Rangoon without your having to think about the difference—in fact, you

don't have to will yourself to organize even one brain cell into the

incredibly intricate pattern necessary to produce a word. It all happens

automatically, without expenditure of energy—brain energy, that is.

Another kind of energy may exist in the gap. Eccles made the famous

statement that "God is in the gap." What he meant was that the empty

spaces of the brain, the tiny synapses between two nerve endings, must be

the home of higher mind because it could not be found in the material

stuff of the brain.

Our minds are a vital tool in the search for God. We trust the mind and

listen to it; we follow its impulses; we rely on its accuracy. Far more

than this, however, the mind interprets the world for us, gives it

meaning. To a depressed person the sight of a glowing Tahitian sunset

mirrors his sadness, while to someone else the same signals to the retina

may invoke wonder and joy. As Penfield would say, the brain is recording

the sunset, but only the mind can experience it. As we search for God, we

want our interpretations to rise even higher than our minds can take us,

so that we might understand birth and death, good and evil, heaven and

hell. When this understanding extends to spirit, two invisible fields,

mind and soul, need to be connected if we are to have any confidence in

them.

God requires the most delicate response of the mind. If the mind is

troubled or unrefined, the journey back to God cannot be successfully

made. Many factors come into play here, but in terms of the mind/brain

connection, Valerie Hunt, a researcher with degrees in both psychology and

physiology, has made some important connections, recounted in her 1989

book, Infinite Mind. (4) After hooking subjects up to EEGs, she determined

that certain brain wave patterns can be associated with higher spiritual

experiences. This finding extends earlier research, now three decades old,

which established that going into deep meditation alters the patterns of

alpha waves in the brain, along with heartbeat, respiration, and blood

pressure.

But Dr. Hunt was further interested in why people do not have spiritual

experiences. In doing so, she took the step of supposing that we should

all be naturally connected to the totality of the mind's field of energy

and information, just as we are all connected to the parts that involve

thinking. It is a simple but profound assumption. Why do we block spirit

out?

"The problem is always fear of the intense emotions that occur at the

mystical level," Hunt asserts, "experiences so real and profound that we

cannot easily comprehend or accept them.... Another way to describe our

blocks is to say that we don't want to change our priorities, nor our

beliefs about ourselves and God." The mind field, it seems, is a mine

field. (5)

This spiritual "stuckness" is not just a limitation of the brain.

Researchers before Hunt have documented that if the right temporal lobe is

deprived of oxygen for a few moments, its activity begins to heighten,

thus creating the illusion of "going into the light." The same floating

feeling, the sensation of being outside the body, feelings of ecstasy and

otherworldliness, even visions of departed souls and angels beckoning one

into the light—all these phenomena can be imitated through oxygen

deprivation, or by whirling subjects in a large centrifuge of the kind

used to train astronauts for the experience of intense gravitational

forces. Yet inducing the experience isn't the same as having it; there is

no spiritual meaning to centrifugal force or oxygen loss, while people who

have experienced near-death episodes (not to mention yogis and saints who

have grown used to living in the light) report profound spiritual changes.

If the brain normally filters out an entire range of experience, as we

know it does, perhaps our crudest access to higher dimensions is

unfortunately through damage or deprivation. The brain has to adjust

itself to any higher experience. It takes brain waves to turn the

whirling, chaotic energy of the quantum soup into recognizable images and

thoughts. Hunt makes the point that if you measure the brain activity of

someone who is willing to have a spiritual experience, who isn't stuck or

blocked, the patterns are very different from someone who is blocked.

Going beyond her EEG measurements, Hunt has correlated five states of

psychological stuckness that shut out spirituality. All are rooted in some

initial experience—a brush with God—that the person cannot integrate into

the sense of self that already existed. The five blocked experiences are

as follows:

1.                  The experience of a God-like energy or presence.

2.                  Suddenly comprehending past, present, and future as

one.

3.                  Gaining the power to heal.

4.                  Unanswered prayers in the midst of a "good" life—the

experience of being forsaken by God.

5.                  Sensory overload to the nervous system when "the

light" enters.

Although related, these are distinct experiences, and when any befall a

person, there is often a sense of shock and dismay, despite the fact that

something positive may be happening.

One could reasonably claim that Christianity itself might not have

survived if Saul had not been blinded by the light on the road to

Damascus, when Jesus uttered the words "Why do you persecute me?" But this

overwhelming experience included some of the obstacles listed above.

Saul's entire belief structure was challenged. His sudden exposure to God

as a full-blown reality had to be integrated, and this provoked tremendous

struggle within. The sensory overload of the experience caused physical

blindness for a number of days. The Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree,

determined to break free of the binding influence of the mind, was

volunteering for the same inner struggle. What is common to any spiritual

breakthrough is that strong opposition is never far away. For example,

Neurotic defenses such as "I am unworthy" or "I have low self-esteem" are

triggered.

Anxiety that an evil or satanic force is at work arises; these may he

expressed as fear of insanity or the belief that delusions are being

caused from the outside.

The self vainly tries to hold together along its old patterns, fearing

change as a form of death.

The absence of a sign from God, such as a voice or vision, makes the

experience seem unreal, detached from this world.

The habit of being in duality, of seeing past, present, and future as

separate states, does not want to be broken down.

All in all, the mind's journey back to God can have serious repercussions

just in terms of the brain adapting to a new mode of perception. This was

made clear to me by an accident that recently befell a close friend.

Unaccustomed to working out at the gym, he strained on one machine and

injured his right foot. Over the next few days he began to feel increasing

pain whenever he put any weight on that foot, until after a few weeks he

could hardly walk a block without having to sit down. On medical

examination it was found that he had a common ailment known as planar

fascitis, in which the connecting tissue between the heel and the front of

the foot have been stretched or torn. The condition can sometimes be

improved through specific exercises; severe cases can require surgery,

which isn't always successful.

My friend, a stoic type, decided to tough out the pain and made only

sporadic attempts to do the required exercises. In time he found it so

difficult to walk, however, that in desperation he sought out a Chinese

healer. "I went to his office, which was just a small room in the back of

a kung fu studio. He was a short man in his fifties who gave no evidence

of being mystical or spiritual, or in any way gifted in healing. But his

treatment was remarkable," my friend recalls.

"After gently feeling my foot, he stood up and made a few signs in the air

behind my spine. He never actually touched me, and when I asked what he

was doing, he said simply that he was turning some switches in my energy

field. He did this for a minute or so and then asked me to stand up. I

did, and there was no sensation of pain, not the slightest. You have to

remember that I had limped in, barely able to walk.

"In complete amazement I asked him what he had done. He told me that the

body was an image projected by the mind, and in a state of health the mind

keeps this image intact and balanced. However, injury and pain can cause

us to withdraw our attention from the affected spot. In that case, the

body image starts to deteriorate; its energy patterns become impaired,

unhealthy. So the healer restores the correct pattern—this is done

instantly, on the spot—after which the patient's own mind takes

responsibility for maintaining it that way.

"I stood up on the foot and walked around, just to be sure that I wasn't

fooling myself. As I was doing this, the healer told me casually that I

could be trained to do the same sort of work. 'Really?' I said. What would

it take to be able to accomplish something like this? He answered, 'You

only have to discard the belief that it is impossible.'"

To this day my friend has had no recurrence of pain, which is remarkable

enough. But here is the spiritual moral of the story: This healing did not

change my friend's life. His assumptions about his body remained intact—he

didn't begin to see it as a ghostly image or a mask for hidden energies.

Belief is incredibly powerful; it can imprint the brain so deeply that

even the most remarkable experience doesn't bring any breakthrough into a

new reality. My friend's old beliefs were nudged aside slightly, but that

is all. One impossible event was not enough to overcome spiritual

stuckness. (Christ's reluctance to perform miracles seemed to be based on

a similar realization.)

As a child I felt left out spiritually because I would never meet Buddha

or Krishna, and my eyes would never see someone raised from the dead or

water turned to wine. Now I realize that it isn't the miracle that creates

the believer. Instead, we are all believers. We believe that the illusion

of the material world is completely real. That belief is our only prison.

It prevents us from making the journey into the unknown. To date, after

many centuries of saints, sages, and seers, only a few individuals can

open to radical change in their belief system, while most cannot. Even so,

our beliefs must eventually shift to conform to reality, since in the

quantum world, belief creates reality. As we will see, our true home is

the light, and our true role is to create endlessly from the infinite

storehouse of possibilities located at the virtual level.

Five

STRANGE POWERS

... for all things are possible with God.

—MARK 10:27

"I'm the kind of person the church would call lost. Growing up, I didn't

have much faith in myself or anything else. If anybody had asked whether I

believed in God, I would have said, 'Why should I? He doesn't believe in

me.'"

A twenty-four-year-old medical technician was talking about his

working-class childhood. In his family, the mother was a devout Catholic,

the father a casual believer who stayed home on Sunday while the children

were dragged off to Mass.

"Once when I was thirteen, my father and I were walking through downtown

Boston, and we passed a street beggar. The guy held out his hand without

saying anything. I noticed my father give him a dirty look. We kept

walking. In a faint voice behind us the beggar mumbled, 'God bless you.'

My father got very angry. 'There's faith for you,' he said sarcastically.

'I work for thirty years and that guy doesn't lift a finger to help

himself. Every night he leaves it to Providence whether he gets to eat or

have a place to sleep. Faith doesn't get much greater than that.'"

The story illustrates how religious faith clashes head-on with the

necessities of life. If there are two realities competing for our

allegiance, the material and the spiritual, why should we abandon the

material? A cynical Arabic saying advises, "Trust in God but tie up your

camels." And since God doesn't interfere to bring even the bare

necessities to millions of poor people, disbelief makes sense.

Yet disbelief doesn't seem to work, either. There are mysterious phenomena

that can be explained only in terms of an invisible domain that is our

source in the sacred. It is the home of our intelligence and our sense of

order in the universe. To prove that such a place exists, we look to a

vast range of anomalies on the fringes of ordinary events. These include

religious awakening and "going into the light," which we have already

covered, but also the following:

Inspiration and insight

Geniuses, child prodigies, and savants

Memory of former lifetimes

Telepathy and ESP

Alter egos (multiple personality syndrome)

Synchronicity

Clairvoyance and prophecy

Diverse as they are, these fringe phenomena all take us beyond our present

knowledge of the brain into the regions of the "mind field" that are

closest to God. The brain is a receiver of mind, like a radio receiving

signals from a faraway source. If a battery-operated radio were dropped

from the sky into the midst of a primitive society, its members might wind

up worshiping it, because there would be no one who would understand about

how music and voices could be emitted from this mystical box.

Right now the brain also resembles a mystical box. We utilize it in very

chaotic ways, however, which is why the ultimate signals—the ones sent by

God—often pass unnoticed. After sixty years of exploring the paranormal,

and many years of experiencing music, genius, insight, and inspiration,

there are still many spiritual connections yet to be made. We will be

working on those connections in the following sections, and as we do it

will become clearer that quantum reality—the zone of miracles—is a place

very nearby.

INSPIRATION AND INSIGHT

If the brain produces thoughts, and these are the result of stored

information inside our neurons, how does anyone ever have a new idea? Why

aren't we constantly combining and recombining old information? New

thoughts come to us from the mind, not the brain. The most original new

thoughts are called inspired; on the personal level seeing something new

about yourself is called an insight. When you feel inspired, more than

ordinary thinking is involved. There is a sense of being uplifted, of

suddenly breaking through. Old boundaries fall away, and one feels, if

only for a moment, a rush of liberation. If the inspiration is powerful

enough, one's whole life can be changed. There are insights so potent that

years of patterned behavior can change in an instant.

Let's look more closely at how insight works, because it is very revealing

about the mind. A woman who was in therapy showed up at her psychiatrist's

office in a state of outrage. She declared that her best friend, Maxine,

had committed a terrible personal betrayal. When asked how, she told this

story: the two of them were in the last year of law school and had

belonged to the same study group. A serious and competitive person, the

woman had done everything to help Maxine, providing extensive notes,

catching lectures that her friend couldn't attend, and even going so far

as to bring food to the group if study hours ran late into the night.

In other words, she considered herself a model of support. The time for

finals came, and the two friends spent many hours outside the group

preparing for all the possible areas to be covered. During the exam the

woman was distressed to find that she was unprepared in one key area. She

had forgotten to study an important Supreme Court case, and she missed all

the questions devoted to it. She consoled herself with the feeling that at

least she could share her misery with her best friend. But when grades

were posted, Maxine had done much better than she had, and when asked how

this happened, the friend casually dropped that she had studied that

particular case on her own.

"All right," the therapist said, "I see all that, but why are you so

outraged?"

"You have to ask?" the woman protested. "She betrayed me. She was supposed

to be my best friend. I've done everything for her, bent over backward to

get her through law school. Now look what she has done."

"Did she do it intentionally?" the therapist asked. "Or was she just

looking out for herself? Maybe she meant to tell you, but then she

forgot."

The woman set her jaw. "That's not the way you treat a best friend," she

maintained. "Maxine obviously doesn't care what happens to me."

If you look beneath the surface, you'll find two deeper layers to this

incident. The first layer is psychological and was addressed by the

therapist. He didn't see a simple falling-out between friends. His patient

was exhibiting all the signs of a severe control defense. Being a

perfectionist, taking care of other people's needs even when not asked,

taking charge of situations on the assumption that others cannot look out

for themselves, and implicitly wanting to be thanked for one's trouble—all

these are glaring signs. But how could this insight be transferred from

therapist to patient?

"You think Maxine betrayed you," the psychiatrist said. "But actually she

is the normal one here. It is perfectly normal to look out for oneself.

She had no obligation to share every detail of her study habits with you."

The woman was astonished to hear this and very resistant to it. "You are

taking her side?" she asked in bewilderment. "But what about me?"

"It is you I am concerned with. What you haven't been able to see is that

there is a piece of reality you can't face. All this help and concern you

showed toward Maxine is fine, but it serves to keep you defended from what

you can't accept."

"And what is that?"

"Listen carefully," the therapist replied. "Other people have a right to

reject you, and there is nothing you can do about it."

The woman sat back, perplexed and upset. The words had been heard, but

they hadn't really sunk in. She hesitated on the brink of insight. From

her perspective, her actions were those of a betrayed saint. The

alternative would be to see herself in a new light, as someone who for

years had been "taking care" of others in an attempt to make sure that no

one, absolutely no one, ever rejected her.

As it happened, she took the leap: the insight was accepted. Ahead lay

several months of anguish as pent-up fear and grief poured out. The

defense of her old behavior was gone, and now the hidden energies trapped

so long inside could find release.

Earlier I mentioned that there was a second layer to this story, which is

spiritual. Insight is one thing, but the impulse to find it is another.

Must we accept that this was a random event in this woman's life? Or did a

deeper layer of her self provide a situation that opened a door? I believe

that life events do not unfold randomly; our materialistic worldview may

insist that they do, but all of us have reflected on turning points in our

lives and seen, sometimes with bafflement or wonder, that lessons came our

way at exactly the time we needed them.

In a word, some hidden intelligence seems to know when and how to

transform us, often when we least expect it. By its nature, inspiration is

transforming—it brings in spirit—and no model of the brain has come close

to explaining how a cluster of neurons could transform itself. One school

of neurology is predicated on the notion that the human brain is a

computer of enormous ability, but computers don't wake up one morning and

decide to have a new attitude toward life. Nor do they have moments of

spiritual awakening, whereas human beings experience them all the time.

Computers don't find any idea suddenly meaningful. For them every download

of data is the same, a collection of zeros and ones arranged in a coded

language. Yesterday's E-mail is no less significant than the New

Testament, and no more.

Inspiration is the perfect example of how the invisible level of reality

works. Whatever is needed is provided. A person may not be prepared to

accept the insight, and therefore a chance for transformation will be

missed. But that isn't the essential point. The mind is greater than any

individual. Your mind isn't a computer; it is a living intelligence, and

it evolves, which is why fresh insight is needed.

In the primitive stages of evolution, life became more complex

physically—green algae made the leap to becoming plants, for example, by

developing a more complex ability to use sunlight. Higher evolution takes

place in the mind, as when an Einstein is produced, for example. But the

leap from algae to plants was a leap of intelligence, a moment of

inspiration, just as much as the discovery of relativity. Unlike the

brain, the mind can take leaps; it breaks through old limitations and

glories in feeling free.

At every level, to be inspired is a step toward greater liberation, and

liberation is a choice. Cells that evolved into plants, flowers, and trees

moved ahead of blue-green algae, but at the same time, the lower level of

evolution continued to exist as long as it served the environment.

At the moment of insight, there is an "aha!" that opens up new

possibilities. At the moment the Buddha was enlightened, there was no

further reason for any form of violence or suffering among humankind.

Buddha saw that suffering and evil are rooted in a mistake about how life

works. He saw that the endless struggle to achieve pleasure and avoid pain

would never end as long as we were attached to our ego needs. The ego's

selfishness and insecurity would never heal by themselves; there would

always be another battle to fight.

This insight came to Gautama under the Bodhi tree, just as it came to

Jesus in the desert when he struggled with Satan (one could say the same

of any great master or teacher). The fact that the mass of humanity still

dwells in ignorance, giving rise to all kinds of suffering, goes back to

levels of awareness. In the domain of the mind there is both freedom and

attachment; we make the choice which to attune to. Each person sets his

own boundaries and breaks through them when the evolutionary impulse is

felt.

We've all met people whose problems are completely unnecessary, yet they

lack the insight to find the solution. Try to give them this insight, hand

it to them on a platter, and still they won't take it. Insight and

inspiration must be sought and then allowed to dawn. As our spiritual

masters indicate, this is the kind of knowledge you must tune into.

Inspiration teaches us that transformation must begin with trust that a

higher intelligence exists and knows how to contact us.

GENIUSES, CHILD PRODIGIES, AND SAVANTS

Brain research has little to say about genius that is very convincing.

Statistically we know that geniuses are rare and unpredictable; they are

predominantly born in ordinary families, and their own offspring are

rarely of exceptional intelligence. This leads us to believe that genius

derives from a unique combination of genes—it is somehow encoded from

birth in a very few children.

Under autopsy the cerebral cortex of geniuses is only rarely found to be

exceptional. (In June 1999, headlines were created by the news that

Einstein's brain, preserved for almost half a century after his death, was

indeed abnormal. A center that is connected to mathematical ability and

spatial perception known as the inferior parietal lobe was found to be 15

percent wider than normal in Einstein's case. Is this proof of genius?

Hardly, but there is an almost universal craving to think that geniuses

are "different." I would argue that our brains are wired by our minds to

begin with, and it is the genius of Einstein's mind, not the radio

apparatus under the skull that received its signals, that is fascinating.)

If DNA does not endow geniuses with special structures in their gray

matter, then how do genes play a part? After all, unless a gene gives rise

to a physical expression, it has no way to influence us. You cannot turn

an ordinary brain into a genius's brain, either, and in fact the

electrical patterns exhibited when a genius is thinking are not

dramatically different from my brain waves when I add up my checkbook.

In our new model genius would be defined as something nonphysical: the

ability to activate unmanifest levels of the mind much more efficiently

than usual. Contrary to the popular assumption that geniuses think all the

time, their minds are in fact quieter and clearer than normal. This

clarity may be narrow, however. Geniuses can be plagued by the same mental

obstacles as the rest of us, only they have achieved one or more open

channels back to the mind field.

Mozart, for example, had difficulty managing the simplest financial

affairs; his emotional life was torn between two women; feelings about his

father filled his unconscious with suppressed anger and resentment. But

the channel of music was so open that Mozart could compose freely from the

age of four onward, and in his prime had little difficulty seeing whole

pages of a score in his head at once.

Genius is beyond ordinary thought and learning—we could call it continuous

inspiration. The same process is involved in a burst of inspiration, but a

genius has these bursts longer and with more ease than the rest of us.

This brings up an important point: you can only access the mind field at

your own comfort level. Your brain and nervous system become fine-tuned to

who you are. If you are a civil engineer, your brain becomes accustomed to

schematic diagrams, tensile stresses, and so forth. Should you suddenly

begin to receive musical inspiration on the order of Mozart, your personal

world would be thrown into chaos.

In California a stockbroker who had no interest in art began to paint

canvases of bright-colored ellipses, often in yellow or purple. He

startled his friends by beginning to wear clothes in the same bright hues.

Emotionally distant from his children as they grew up, he suddenly became

more affectionate toward them and seemed less stressed than he had been

for years. All of these developments were somehow linked to a change in

his visual perception, which caused objects to catch his eye as they never

had before. At times a color might be intensely pleasurable in a way he

had never experienced, while other colors were intensely painful or caused

him to feel sick.

His fascination with color led to a deepening desire to paint; this

passion grew so dominant that he retired from his profession to devote

himself to his art. As events progressed, however, a darker side emerged

to his transformation from broker to amateur Picasso: his memory began to

fail, accompanied by the onset of compulsive behaviors such as searching

obsessively for lost coins on the street. He became erratically angry and

had fits of depression. When these symptoms blossomed into impaired speech

and further loss of memory, a UCLA neurologist named Bruce Miller

diagnosed a specific rare disease, an early dementia or senility brought

on by the gradual destruction of the frontal lobes of the brain.

As a rule patients with dementia do not develop anything positive or

life-enhancing from their disorder. But Miller found that in

frontotemporal dementia (FTD) a significant number of patients gain sudden

talent in music, photography, art, and other creative areas. Although FTD

had been known for a hundred years, this particular aspect, which remains

mysterious, was a new discovery. (1)

The blossoming of talent is always temporary. The brain's deterioration

worsens gradually over time until complete mental derangement results. In

the stockbroker's case, his art improved for several years. His early

fascination with bright colors developed into complex designs—intricately

detailed flowers, birds, and animals emerged and were sold at gallery

prices. A single-minded obsessive talent was born from the ashes of a

declining brain.

This phenomenon is not unprecedented. Famously ill geniuses include

Dostoevsky, afflicted with epilepsy, and Van Gogh, who suffered from an

undiagnosed disorder that could have been schizophrenia, epilepsy, or the

ravages of advanced alcoholism. Although they never gained fame, certain

chronic schizophrenics have painted canvases in which faces peer out at us

with distorted, horrific, yet fascinating expressions; sometimes these are

accompanied by obsessive attention to tiny details, spiderwebs of lines

woven by fixated minds. Yet in the vast majority of cases the balancing

act between art and madness eventually tips over into chaos; the beautiful

patterns become scrambled, frantic jigsaws as the disease overwhelms the

art.

Some psychiatrists have concluded that insanity has the power to incite

creativity, but in the case of dementia, there is such disastrous

deterioration of the cortex itself that one wonders where any gift could

be coming from. Somehow genius, and in rare instances disease, produces

wonders of art by opening the brain to regions of awareness unknown in

"normal" life.

Child prodigies are at the extreme end of genius. Einstein was not a child

prodigy, which means that he didn't have fully formed mathematical skill

from the age of ten or younger. His genius was more attuned to an overall

vision, not to technical details. Yet some genius is totally formed at

birth, it seems, and there is no material explanation for it.

All our current models of the brain indicate that it is unformed at birth

and needs experience to mature. If you bandage a kitten's eyes as soon as

it is born and leave the blindfold on for just a few weeks, its brain will

not have the experience of light. Without that, the visual centers cannot

develop, and the kitten will be blind for life. If you don't expose a

newborn baby to language, it will never learn to speak. There is even

evidence that early deprivation of love and nurturing will leave a

lifelong void that later experience cannot fill, or only with great

difficulty. In all these cases the experience flowing in from the outer

environment shapes the so-called hardwiring of the cerebral cortex. The

primitive, unformed network of neurons that a newborn brings into this

world isn't like a computer's wiring. Neurons need to interact with all

kinds of stimuli before they can form the infinitely ordered, flexible,

and efficient network of a mature brain.

According to this model, it should be impossible for the Russian pianist

Evgeny Kissin, the most famous musical prodigy of the present generation

(he is now nearly thirty), to have displayed musical ability almost at

birth. And yet his mother, who took her baby to market in Moscow as she

stood in line for food, vividly recalls that her one-year-old hummed Bach

inventions in perfect pitch as the other mothers stared in disbelief. And

as soon as Evgeny could toddle, he made his way to the family piano and

began to pick out the same Bach exercises that he had heard his older

sister practicing. These were just the first signs exhibited by a child

prodigy who was composing music at six and performing both Chopin piano

concertos in a single concert at the age of thirteen—a prodigious feat

even for an accomplished virtuoso.

A child's unformed brain could not accomplish these feats. Normal

development consists of month after month of random experimentation on a

child's part, testing one ability after another until the desirable skills

(walking, talking, feeding oneself, toilet training) gradually emerge from

the undesirable ones (wetting the bed, making mumbling sounds, crawling on

hands and knees). There may be a musical gene that might enable one person

to carry a tune while another is tone deaf, but a gene alone can't

coordinate all the incredible gifts of a child prodigy. It takes a trained

mind to decisively develop one ability out of raw experience. We have to

remember that the infant brain must somehow take its stock of 100 billion

neurons, all intricately layered but not exposed as yet to the first

sight, sound, desire, wish, fantasy, dream, frustration, or fulfillment,

and with this soup of raw cells make networks and connections that will

last a lifetime. It is astonishing to think that prodigies are doing all

that while also developing their one, laserlike talent.

And that is where the unmanifest domain helps us, because a prodigy

doesn't come out of nowhere; he is formed by invisible intelligence that

has somehow (no one knows exactly) decided to speed up the learning

process far beyond the normal pace, leaving nothing to chance, not even

the environment. Kissin's family happened to own a piano, but musical

geniuses have been born in families with no musical background, and math

prodigies regularly appear in nonscientific settings. Somehow or other,

they still unerringly find their gift. Mind shapes brain, not the other

way around. The intelligence that courses through you is turning you into

what you are going to be.

Rarely super-prodigies emerge whose abilities are not confined to a single

talent but encompass all mental activity; these children are estimated to

fall within the top one-quarter of 1 percent of IQs measured worldwide. A

current example is a boy who could recite the alphabet before he was a

year old; by eighteen months he could read and memorize books. His mind

proved to be omnivorous for knowledge, leading him to complete grades one

through twelve by the time he was eight. "I knew my child would surpass me

intellectually," his mother was quoted as saying. "I just didn't know it

would happen when he was six."

Prodigies are not the most inexplicable sort of genius, however; that

honor belongs to idiot savants, people with severe mental defects who

exhibit extraordinary abilities at the same time. An idiot savant isn't a

complete genius. Usually a single clear channel has been opened to a deep

level of the mind field, but with corresponding weakness in other areas. A

savant may be able to instantly multiply long numbers, to name the day of

the week for any date thousands of years forward or backward in time, or

even to calculate square roots beyond the ability of mainframe computers.

At the same time, however, such a person may not be able to pick out the

right change for the bus or to learn simple reading skills.

Among currently living savants there is one who can recall any license

plate number, going back a dozen years. Another has mastery of fifteen

foreign languages, including good to excellent knowledge of some of the

world's most difficult tongues, including Finnish, Welsh, Hindi, and

Mandarin Chinese. A native speaker of English, this particular savant once

got lost on the streets of Paris and was found hours later cheerfully

translating between two groups of tourists, one Greek, the other German.

On his own, however, he was not mentally capable of finding his way back

to his nearby hotel. This particular savant can also read writing held

upside down or sideways.

Only recently has medicine put a name to this mysterious phenomenon, which

is now called "autistic savant syndrome." As the name implies, usually

savants are autistic, prone to extreme introversion and

obsessive-compulsive behavior; the syndrome is five times more likely to

strike males than females. Researchers have been able to pinpoint certain

brain anomalies, especially left-hemisphere damage, which causes the right

hemisphere to compensate with extraordinary abilities. The right brain

dominates in music, art, and unconscious calculating abilities, all of

which are common among savants. (Why there is no such compensation among

other autistic children is not known.)

Yet does this fully account for such a bizarre mixture of genius and

mental deficiency? (2) For one thing, mastery of foreign languages would

be a left-brain activity, so the theory that the right hemisphere is

compensating for left-brain damage doesn't always hold true. More

important, there is no known mechanism by which a deficient brain that

cannot organize simple reasoning abilities should suddenly develop

supernormal ones. Instead we might speculate that the idiot savant is like

a reckless explorer. Some impulse has led him to cross certain frontiers

far ahead of normal minds, while at the same time not paying attention to

basic necessities.

One savant was almost helpless as a child, a victim of severe retardation,

cerebral palsy, and blindness. He was kept in an orphanage at birth until

his adoption by a compassionate couple. Not until the age of fourteen was

it discovered that he was a musical prodigy. One night his parents awoke

to hear someone playing the Tchaikovsky first piano concerto downstairs in

the middle of the night. They were astonished to find that it was their

adopted son, who had never been exposed to a piano and was far too

retarded to take music lessons. Once his savantism emerged, however, he

could play any piece of piano music, however complex, after hearing it

only once, a feat beyond even a trained professional. Yet this same young

man could not manage the simple tasks of cooking, buying clothes, or

holding a job.

Such wide disparities are examples of imbalance, not just on the material

level but on the level where one's inner life gets organized. The

unmanifest domain is beyond time, and yet one of its responsibilities is

to organize the world over time. When a rose progresses from winter to

spring, it could not survive by releasing the chemicals that would make it

go dormant when the genes for blossoming are required. A rose is attuned

to the rhythm of the seasons, responding to the slightest changes in

daylight and temperature, the angle of the sun, and the moisture in the

soil.

We are more fortunate than a rose, since we are not a prisoner of the

seasons, but in another sense we are much less fortunate, because we can

misuse our freedom of choice and turn to self-destructive behavior. The

idiot savant has somehow made some drastic choices inside his mind, and

although the intelligence of nature does not snatch away the gift of

genius, it does not erase the wrong decisions, either. Our own lives obey

the same principle—it is common for anyone to have mastered one aspect of

life, such as earning money, while being very poor at another, such as

maintaining a loving relationship. In all cases of imbalance, events will

be organized to bring the weak parts into focus, even though it is still

our own choice whether or not to follow where nature wants to lead us. All

these examples of genius, even though they have no obvious spiritual

lesson to teach, point to the possibility that the mind can organize an

infinite number of ingredients. God's mind feels very close at this point.

We are not there yet, but genius is like a window into infinite

possibilities.

MEMORY OF FORMER LIFETIMES

Who were you before you were you? The possibility of an afterlife is

widely argued in the West, but the existence of a before-life is just as

likely. If you believe only in an afterlife, you are restricted to a very

limited, dualistic view of time. There is only "here" and "after." But if

life is continuous, if the soul never stops making its journey, a

completely different worldview opens up.

As part of our medical training in India, every young doctor was sent to a

village posting, which was the equivalent of doing public health service.

Rural India exists exactly as it did in centuries past, and after the

urban culture of New Delhi, the shock of village life feels like time

travel. One day in my mud dispensary patients began running outside for no

reason. I stepped outside to find that a crowd had gathered around a

little girl standing barefoot in the dusty road. She was four or five, and

apparently she had appeared from nowhere. Her name, she said, was Neela.

It's a common enough name in northern India, but after a few moments the

little girl began calling one or two of the villagers by name, people she

had never met before. She was gathered up in someone's arms and carried

into a nearby house; on the way, however, she pointed to this dwelling and

that and made remarks as if she knew them.

Within an hour her frantic parents showed up. They had stopped by the side

of the main road in their car, and while unpacking for lunch, the mother

noticed that Neela had wandered off. There was a tearful reunion with the

little girl. Then the questions began: How had Neela walked the long

distance, more than a mile, from the roadside stopping point to the

village? How had her parents known to look for her there?

The answer was very strange and yet very Indian. Neela, it turned out, was

not her real name, but Gita. As soon as she learned to talk, Gita had kept

pointing to herself and saying, "Neela, Neela."

Naturally everyone believed that Gita was a reincarnation. The locals

considered the matter, and it wasn't long before someone remembered

another Neela, a little girl who had died young on one of the surrounding

farms. Someone would have run off to fetch the family who lived there, but

Gita's parents became quite nervous. Despite protests, they grabbed up

their daughter and sped away in the car. Gita cried as they took her away,

staring out the back window as the vehicle receded in a cloud of dust. To

my knowledge she never returned.

Many similar incidents of overlapping lifetimes crop up, and not just in

the East. Some years back it made news when the search for a reincarnated

high Tibetan lama took a delegation of priests to Spain. There a small

Catholic baby was identified as a likely candidate. How do boundaries of

birth and death become so thin? People who spend time with geniuses and

prodigies often find them unearthly, somehow preternatural, as if a very

old soul has been confined to a new body and yet brings in experience far

beyond what that body could have known. It is easy to credit that some

kind of former life is casting its influence on the present. Speaking of

his own experience, one musical prodigy stated, "It is as if I am playing

from outside my own consciousness. The music comes through me. I am the

conduit, not the source."

Does the same effect apply to all of us? Reincarnation is a contentious

subject; the Eastern world has adopted it for thousands of years, while

the Judeo-Christian tradition has only flirted with the concept and for

the most part rejected it. During the Middle Ages belief in earlier lives

amounted to heresy.

The unmanifest domain allows us to see this issue a different way. We can

frame the notion of former lives as one of awareness. To be aware means

that you can activate either a small or a large part of your mind. Some

people are keenly aware of their deeper motives, their subconscious

emotions, or their creative ability, while other people are closed off.

Seers and sages activate deep regions, seeing into human nature as it

applies far beyond their own lives. A humble monk in a cave in the

Himalayas may be capable of peering into my soul far more clearly than I

can (I have had this experience, in fact). So it would seem that the mind

isn't limited by experience—all of us have had moments when we know much

more than we should.

There is much evidence that the mind is not confined by time and space.

Because the brain is located inside the head, we assume that the mind is

as well, looking out at the world like a prisoner in a tower. When you

say, "I've got this idea running through my head," you operate from this

assumption. But awareness is more than ideas and much more even than brain

function. I can remember sitting on a bed in a cheap motel watching a

crime scene on television. I was twenty-four, it was my first night in

America, and the violence I saw on the eleven o'clock news was shockingly

new to me. I leaned forward, watching the gunshot victims being carted on

gurneys into a local hospital. Suddenly my stomach turned over.

They were going to the hospital where I was supposed to report the next

day. The emergency room that was scrambling to remove bullets and crack

open chests to massage stopped hearts would be my workplace in twelve

hours. I had an unreal feeling as I saw myself being swept into all this

American mayhem. The blood staining the sidewalk would soon be on my

hands; I would be saving patients who might be policemen or murderers.

I was very emotional at that moment, caught between fascination and dread,

and emotions create strong memories. I can feel and see the scene vividly

anytime I want to. Is the memory inside my head? If so, then how is it

that you are experiencing it as you read this page? Some version of my

memory, however faint, has transferred itself to you. You saw an image,

you felt a feeling. How did an event supposedly trapped inside my skull

get inside yours without passing through something in between?

The brilliant British biologist and researcher in evolutionary theory

Rupert Sheldrake has devised extremely clever experiments that turn on

this very riddle. For example, he gave English-speaking children several

groups of Japanese words and asked them which ones were poetry. Even

though they knew not a word of Japanese, the children could pick out the

verses with remarkable accuracy, as if they heard the difference between

ordinary sentences, or even nonsense syllables, and delicate haikus. How

did this knowledge get into their heads? Is it floating in the air or

available through a planetary mind that we all share?

Just as a quantum of energy can leap between two points without crossing

the space in between, so apparently can a thought. A field of awareness

flows in, around, and through each of us. Some of this awareness is

localized. We say "my" memory and "my" thoughts, but that isn't the whole

story. A neuron can't claim "this is my idea" until millions of cells have

come together to form each image or thought. Their ability to communicate

doesn't require them to touch. Millions of heart cells that keep the same

cardiac rhythm do not touch, either. The coordination of brain or heart

depends on an invisible electrical field whose minute charges establish

patterns among billions of tiny individual cells. A heart in which the

electrical field becomes jumbled begins to writhe in agony as each cell

loses contact with the others; the effect is like a bag of worms pulsing

violently until the heart deprives itself of oxygen to the point of death.

(This is known as fibrillation, one symptom of a heart attack.)

Awareness seems to be an even more subtle field, not only invisible but

needing no energy. When you picked up my old memory, no electrical or

magnetic current passed between us. The simple act of recognizing a friend

on the street contains a similar mystery. When you see a familiar face,

your brain doesn't run through its catalog of all known faces to arrive at

who your friend is. A computer would have to do that, consuming energy as

it did so. But your brain doesn't scan its entire memory bank when it sees

a strange or a familiar face—what we call recognition takes place

instantly, at a deeper level of awareness.

Awareness does need chemical links. In your immune system a T cell

floating past an invading virus recognizes it and goes on the attack. It

recognizes the enemy according to the chemical coding on the outside of

the germ, which has to match another coding on the outside of the T cell

before any kind of alert is sent via messenger molecules throughout the

body. A few cold viruses or pneumococci are enough to put billions of

immune cells on alert. However, such a chemical explanation of immunity

fails to solve some basic issues. Why does a T cell let in the AIDS virus

without fighting it?

The answer given by virologists focuses on the outside coating of the HIV

virus, a deceptive code of molecules that disguises itself in such a way

that it can sneak past the corresponding coding on the outside of the T

cell—rather like a guerilla warrior using underground tactics instead of a

frontal assault. If this is so, how did HIV learn to do this? Chemicals

are neutral; they have no awareness built into them. Therefore to a

chemical it is insignificant whether the HIV virus or the T cell survives.

Yet to the cells that is all-important. This leads us to ask how a cell

learns to reproduce in the first place. DNA is composed of simple sugars

and bits of protein that never divide or reproduce, no matter how many

billions of years they exist. What step caused these simple molecules to

get together, arrange themselves in a pattern with billions of tiny

segments, and all of a sudden learn to divide?

One plausible answer is that an invisible organizing principle is at work.

The need for life to reproduce itself is fundamental; the need for

chemicals to reproduce themselves is nil. So even at this most basic

level, we see certain qualities of awareness—recognition, memory,

self-preservation, and identity—coming into play. Now add the element of

time. It isn't enough for DNA just to reproduce itself randomly; that is

the behavior of cancer, which reproduces without regard and eventually

engulfs its host, leading to its own death.

To form a baby, a single fertilized cell must be a master of timing. Every

organ of the body exists in seed form within a single strand of DNA, yet

to emerge correctly, they must take their turn. For the first days and

weeks, an embryo is called a zygote or seed; it is an undifferentiated

mass of similar cells. But very soon one cell starts to give off chemicals

unique to itself. Even though the mother cells are identical, some of the

offspring know, for example, that they are meant to be brain cells. As

such, they need to specialize, growing into far different shapes than

muscle or bone cells. This they do with amazing precision, but in addition

they send out signals to attract other proto-brain cells. Like attracts

like, and as brain cells float toward each other, they cross paths with

proto-heart, proto-kidney, and proto-stomach cells, none of them getting

in the way or causing a confusion of identity.

This spectacle is far more astonishing than the eye can see. Visibly there

is nothing but a soup of cells swimming around and forming patterns. Yet

think of it: a baby brain cell somehow knows who it is going to be in

advance. For many weeks a neuron is developing its structure, not yet

mature but no longer undifferentiated, either. How does it keep track of

its purpose in life with so many billions of signals being sent all around

it? This is as mysterious a question as asking how a T cell first learned

to recognize an enemy before meeting one. Memory, learning, and identity

precede matter; they govern matter. If a cluster of brain cells misses

even one beat, if a cerebral cell floats up to its assigned layer of the

brain but gets slightly clogged in traffic, bunching up instead of

spreading out into an even layering, the result is that the baby will be

born with dyslexia. How did such a mishap occur, given that brains have

been evolving for tens of millions of years, whereas reading a book is at

most three thousand years old? It would have made no difference to a

Neanderthal brain whether the word God looked like the word dog, yet a

newborn neuron has been able to avoid that mistake for eons in advance of

the invention of language.

I conclude that the field of awareness is our true home, and that

awareness contains the secrets of evolution, not the body or even DNA.

This shared home is "the light" spoken of by mystics; it is the potential

for life and intelligence, and it is life and intelligence once they

appear. Your mind is one focus of this cosmic awareness, but it doesn't

belong to you like a possession. Just as your body is held together by

inner awareness, there is a flow of awareness outside you. If you consider

for a moment, you can catalog many common experiences that require you to

be outside your brain. Have you ever felt that someone is watching you

behind your back, only to turn around and find that in fact someone is

there? We've all finished a friend's sentence or exclaimed, "I was

thinking the same thing!" on the heels of another person's thought.

A woman told me about standing on the Pacific shore in Oregon worrying

about her dying father. She looked up at the sunset and saw his face in

her mind, while his voice distinctly said, "Forgive me." Later that night

the woman called her sister, and it turned out that she had had the same

vision and heard the same words. As an exercise I sometimes encourage a

group of people to try to go beyond their limited perception—I call this

"going into your virtual body." Each person sits with eyes closed and

gives himself permission to travel anywhere the impulse wants to go. The

images that come to mind don't have to be judged, only accepted and

allowed to flow. One woman, who was single and living with her boyfriend,

saw him cleaning out the closet at home, startling only because he had

never done such a thing. The image was vivid, as if she were right there

with him, and apparently she was, because when she called home, he had a

surprise for her—he had completely cleaned and rearranged her closet so

that she could get at her things more easily.

Now let's return to the original question: Who were you before you were

you? Even though we all identify with a very limited slice of time and

space, equating "me" with one body and one mind, in reality you also live

outside yourself in the field of awareness. The Vedic seers say, "The real

you cannot be squeezed into the volume of a body or the span of a

lifetime." Just as reality flows from the virtual to the quantum to the

material level, so do you. Whether we call this reincarnation or not

almost doesn't matter. The package of body and mind that came before is a

stranger to you now, and the one that might arise after your death is

equally alien. But on a deeper level, millions of seeds have already been

planted. Some are the thoughts you will have tomorrow or the actions you

will follow a decade from now. Time is flexible at the quantum level and

nonexistent at the virtual level. As we watch these seeds sprouting in the

fertile field of time and space, awareness wakes up to itself. This is how

a single fertilized cell learns to become a brain—it wakes up to itself,

not on the chemical level but on the level of awareness.

Perhaps you are a single cell among millions too, each cell being a

lifetime. It was said that the Buddha closed his eyes for a few minutes

and experienced ninety-nine thousand incarnations. If this is not

breathtaking enough, we are told that he experienced every minute of them;

births, deaths, and time itself expanded in a few minutes of silence. Such

an amazing ability to control time lies not only with the enlightened. If

you weren't a master of time already, you would be an amorphous glob of

cells like the sea cucumber; you might have entered a world where puberty

could come at any moment and kidney cells could fuse into spleens, or

where the first pollen of hay fever season might kill half the population.

Now imagine that expanded awareness is normal. Time and space could just

be convenient concepts that hold true in the material world but dissolve

gradually as you approach the quantum level. This is what I believe

reincarnation is about. Former lives fall into the unexplored territory of

expanded awareness. It isn't absolutely necessary to decide whether they

are "real" or not. Concrete verification that I was a Nepalese soldier at

the time of the Emperor Ashoka is never going to come my way. But if I

find myself extremely attracted to that period, if I start to read about

Ashoka and his conversion to Buddhism, and if my empathy is so strong that

I cannot help but adopt some of those principles, we can truthfully say

that a wider range of life has influenced my mind. In a very real sense,

the terms former life and expanded life are the same thing.

All of the quantum and virtual levels are open to us all the time. To

navigate them completely is impossible; they open up to us according to

our own needs and abilities. But no part is intentionally closed off.

Although we normally look no deeper than the personal domain, to look

deeper is always possible. It is more normal to learn from the past than

not to, and people who shut out their former lives—if we want to use that

terminology—are shutting out lessons that give this present lifetime its

purpose and meaning. For someone who has absorbed these lessons fully,

there is no need to go beyond this lifetime, and yet such visitations are

still part of the natural order of things.

Finally, the fact that we are not confined to our physical body and mind

gives us reason to believe in the existence of a cosmic intelligence that

permeates life—and brings us close to the mind of God. But since we are

talking about a quantum phenomenon, it isn't correct to say that God has

been found, the way you would find a lost book where you forgot to look

for it. A woman who had read some of my earlier writings on quantum

reality had become excited and then went enthusiastically to her minister.

He listened somewhat grimly while she poured out her bubbling happiness

over these new spiritual ideas. When she was finished, he said curtly,

"Call this man up and ask him if God is inside all of us."

Obediently she tracked down my number and called. In a hesitant voice she

asked the question, and I said, "Yes, according to the quantum model, God

is inside all of us."

She couldn't disguise her disappointment. "Oh dear, that's exactly what my

minister said you would say." And then she hung up, crestfallen that the

acceptable God, the one who looks over us from heaven, had been

undermined. Only afterward did I realize that I had been carelessly

trapped, for my answer wasn't right. In the quantum model there is no

inside or outside. God is no more in us than he is anywhere else—he is

simply not locatable. To say that we go within to meditate, to pray, or to

find God is really just a convention. The timeless place where God exists

can't be reduced to an address. Our exploration into former lifetimes

indicates that the same may be true of us as well.

TELEPATHY AND ESP

The ability to know what another person is thinking, whether you call it

mind reading or extrasensory perception, also occupies a shadowy middle

ground between popular belief and science. In the laboratory,

psychologists have discovered that some individuals are much more skillful

at this than others. Subject A, when placed in a separate room staring at

a series of picture cards, can sometimes transmit these mental images with

surprising accuracy to another room where subject B is trying to receive

them. Yet science has more or less stopped there. Various underground

experiments were conducted by defense agencies during the Cold War to see

if spies might be able to send messages or images by telepathy to a cohort

across the Iron Curtain, but these attempts were never reliable. On the

other hand, they were not complete failures, either.

ESP has hindered investigation because it isn't clear that there really is

a sender and a receiver. The blurring of two minds or the sharing of one

thought is just as likely an explanation. We spoke about the fuzzy

boundaries of time and space, and the boundary of personality is just as

fuzzy. Are you really separate from me, or is this a convenient illusion

we maintain so that life can proceed in a certain predictable way?

Old married couples often seem to merge in both personality and thought.

Twins can have uncanny similarities in the way their lives unfold.

Extensive studies of identical twins, however, show that no stereotype

covers all cases. At one extreme, a pair of identical twins can be so

completely merged that they never live apart and, when questioned, speak

with one voice and apparently think with one mind. In the unfortunate

instance that one twin dies prematurely, the other mourns for life. At the

other end of the spectrum, a pair of identical twins can be almost total

strangers, sharing no experiences or thoughts. Many studies have been

conducted of twins separated at birth and raised apart by totally

different sets of parents. Generally in these cases the twins still

exhibit about a 50 percent strong resemblance in behavior and thought

patterns. When reunited, they also can form strong bonds, and then it is

likely that some kind of mental sharing, whether it is ESP or not, will

take place. Even when the empathy is intense, though, the twins do not

divide into a sender of thought and a receiver.

What this implies is that in the mind field, any boundary can be tenuous.

If necessary, your mind can merge and communicate with another mind. A

thought that, properly speaking, should belong to one of you becomes a

joint experience. Why would such a merging be necessary? No one can really

answer that precisely—in general, momentous events will act as a trigger,

causing a spouse to intuit her dying partner's last wishes or one twin to

know that his brother had suddenly been struck by lightning. The twin to

whom this actually happened felt the shock of the lightning passing

through his own body at the instant his sibling was killed. (To further

underline the point in a bizarre way, after writing this example down, I

met a lawyer who was pulled from an afternoon meeting by a wrenching pain

in his abdomen. He had never had such an experience and departed home

immediately. When he got there the police were waiting with tragic news.

His mother had been stabbed and killed by an act of random violence at

exactly the moment he had felt the pain. By what mysterious stroke of

synchronous timing were mother, son, and murderer tied in a karmic dance?)

But some ESP is totally trivial and inconsequential, too, as when we phone

someone and hear, "I was just thinking about you." The real fascination

lies deeper. We all assume that we are the authors of our thoughts. They

don't simply appear as messages in our heads; we actively think them. But

ESP tends to contradict this assumption. If two people vividly share the

same thought, it may be that neither one is the author; there is simply

the simultaneous reception of an idea. We can cite instances where two

philosophers or scientists had the identical inspiration without knowing

each other. The simultaneous invention of the calculus by Leibniz and

Newton is one famous example.

In Hollywood identical story lines arrive in clusters, so that millions

wind up being spent on competing asteroid collision plots or volcano

epics. The U.S. Patent Office gets bombarded by nearly identical

inventions. We often say that an idea is "in the air," and this may be

literally true, in that the unmanifest may unfold certain insights or

revelations on a broad scale. This is particularly true on the collective

level, where an entire society may be gripped with enthusiasm for

revolution or social change. There doesn't have to be a sender or receiver

in these cases, even though a prominent speaker of the new thought usually

appears. We just say that a society is ripe for change when in fact a much

more subtle process—the attunement of millions of individuals to a

collective mind field—is taking place.

In a fascinating experiment, mothers who breast-fed their infants were

separated from them and given no information about their babies'

activities. Even though miles away, many mothers started to lactate at

exactly the same moment that their babies began crying and demanding milk.

Two intimately connected minds can be united at the level of awareness.

You may have cried out for help or solace from someone miles away, and

sometimes they respond by showing up or calling. In wartime it is not

uncommon for parents to know with certainty the exact moment that a son is

killed on the battlefield.

Awareness doesn't have to be human; it seems to pervade all lifeforms. In

a forest where trees are being heavily foraged by animals, individual

trees can protect themselves with a chemical defense. They start to exude

indigestible tars into their leaves before they are even touched—having

been warned by neighboring trees via chemical signals in the air or

through their roots. In a similar act of communal awareness, the cells of

a sea cucumber are arranged to give a mouth and digestive tract to this

primitive animal, which is little more than a giant feeding tube. You can

puree a sea cucumber in a blender, pour the solution of brine and cells

into a bucket, and after a while the entire animal will regroup itself

from the unformed biological sludge.

These are all examples of awareness as a field beyond the body. These

examples help us to shift away from a strictly private, isolated mind to a

universal, shared mind whose body is the universe. Isolation is a material

fact but not a quantum fact. The boundaries dividing "me" and "you" are

much thinner than we realize. There is reason to believe that personal

identity is just another convenience, useful for everyday living but

ultimately too flimsy to be taken as real. I believe this is implied in

the scriptural phrases "children of God" and "created in his image."

Insofar as we are children of our parents, personality is simply

continuing itself. One generation teaches the next how to obey the rules

of limited identity. But in a multilayered reality, there has to be

another father/mother for our extended identity, and this is the role we

assign to God. We have not yet proved that there is such a divine parent,

but it seems undeniable that our cosmic identity is real.

ALTER EGOS (MULTIPLE

PERSONALITY SYNDROME)

In spiritual literature the body is sometimes called the vehicle of the

soul, which is another way of saying that the invisible part dresses

itself in visible clothing. Actually, the body is just as spiritual as the

soul; both are expressions of the same awareness. As it unfolds into

manifestation, the field of mind has to assume form, and form isn't

simple—it takes thousands of processes to organize a single amoeba, much

less a human body. Therefore, the flow of intelligence must obey laws that

are set in place at the deepest level.

Where one law ends, another begins, and between them a boundary is set as

a division. For example, a skin cell in the middle level of the epidermis

lives its life, dividing, breathing, and feeding, but as it is pushed

closer to the surface, it begins to harden gradually, and by the time it

arrives in contact with the air, its exterior is toughened enough to

withstand contact with the environment. However, in this process the cell

also dies, to be sloughed off and make way for the next generation of

epidermal cells.

The same proteins that will lead to the end of a cell's life serve to

protect the body as a whole. How did the body learn this sacrificial act

of altruism? When white cells become engorged with invading bacteria, they

die in that service as well. An overarching awareness realizes what is

good for the whole and can therefore sacrifice a small part.

One law never applies to all; even life and death are apportioned out in

small, precise steps. Every cell in your body, as it evolved in the

embryo, obeyed a host of different rules as it matured. The original

fertilized ovum split into some cells in the stomach that survive only a

few days, while others in the brain may last a lifetime. The same DNA that

willingly destroys itself in a skin cell fights for survival in a sperm

cell, whose frantic rush to fertilize an egg has been evident as long as

plants and animals have existed.

Now we are faced with a paradox, for awareness seems to be capable of

infinite organization. It is both inside us and outside; it fights to live

and yet rushes to die; it organizes itself into an incredibly complex

whole yet is subdivided into almost infinite tiny compartments. This

organization becomes noticeable mostly when it breaks down, such as when

the laws that govern cell division, or mitosis, become deranged and a

cancer cell wildly divides without limit. In this case the cell is acting

for its own survival, feeling that it must reproduce at maximum rate, much

as locusts breed out of control into plagues. Ultimately a plague dies out

because it exceeds the amount of food available, and a cancer cell

ultimately dies because it kills the host body. This outcome is obvious

and would be communicated to the cancer cell if it were in contact with

the body's basic intelligence, yet somehow this natural connection has

been broken.

In psychological terms, a similar thing happens with alter egos or its

clinical extreme, multiple personality syndrome. Alter egos are formed

under psychological pressure. The stress that one personality cannot

contain spills over into another. If I feel unfairly treated at work, I

may have a dream in which I am a lion tamer whipping a big cat to do my

will, and these may be symbols of the stress I'm not able to handle when

I'm awake. The dream's interpretation may not be open to me, so I may not

be aware that the lion is my boss or that my fear of him is being acted

out here.

The person suffering from multiple personalities is in much the same

situation, but the lion tamer exists in waking state. The negative

energies of hatred, fear, child abuse, self-doubt, humiliation, and so

forth get played out as if they belonged to someone else. These other

personalities are trapped within one body, but they are separate enough to

pretend that they aren't.

At the unmanifest level, each of us is many people; you can define this in

terms of lifetimes, but that isn't necessary. When you read a novel with a

fascinating character in it, you subtly blend into that figure, allowing a

boundary of awareness to melt temporarily so that you can have the

experience of being inside someone else's skin. If you come from a family

where certain striking events are discussed for years, it becomes hard to

remember whether these strong memories really belong to you or were piped

into your mind. I know a man whose parents lost their home to fire when he

was two years old, and he cannot recall if he saw the house burn down or

sees it only with secondhand vividness. Emotionally he feels the same

trauma as if he had been there, but he could have absorbed his parents'

emotions of shock and loss.

Normally our alter egos are shadowy, and the ability to rejoin our "real"

personality is overtly ours to control. We know that we aren't Scarlett

O'Hara or Ebenezer Scrooge, yet we allow the willing suspension of

disbelief to take over for a brief hour or so. Some characters are so

overpowering that you may fall under their influence for a much longer

time. Neurosis is often marked by this kind of long-range influence, where

an inner child with all its weakness and fearfulness continues to preside

inside an adult personality.

If your boundaries are too thin, however, you cannot control this act of

becoming another character. The extreme state of this is alter egos.

From the perspective of the mind field, if an alter ego is strong enough,

it can actually change the body to conform to it. Striking cases are on

record in which one personality is menopausal, for example, while the

others aren't, or where each of the alter egos has its own menstrual

cycle. In other cases a single personality may be diabetic or allergic to

pollen while the others show no signs of these disorders. The patient can

be in the throes of a severe asthma attack when a new personality enters

the scene, and at that instant all evidence of asthma will disappear. The

diabetic personality may be insulin dependent and yet revert to normal

blood sugar levels during the times when other personalities appear.

This phenomenon, as I see it, cannot be explained as brain function. The

brain adapts itself in our childhood, so that what we know, what we have

experienced, what we like and dislike are all formative. A person who

violently dislikes insects will jump at the sight of a spider without

having to think consciously about it. To claim that the brain could form

different reactions for a dozen personalities is not credible; it would

defy everything we know about childhood development. Alter egos must come

from a region beyond personal experience; they are like voluntary

incarnations—or partial incarnations—activated from the storehouse of the

mind field.

This alone doesn't make an alter ego unnatural. A great actor also

activates his portrayal of Hamlet by going to the unmanifest. We say that

he is bringing his character to life, as opposed to lesser actors who only

imitate. The school of acting known as Method consists of going inward and

finding emotional memories powerful enough to convince the audience that

they are real, that one is actually feeling Hamlet's guilt on stage before

our eyes. Someone afflicted with alter egos is like a master of Method who

doesn't realize that he is acting. He has no fixed core, no central

perspective that is not acting; he therefore can't see that the illusion

is an illusion.

"Why do you insist that my normal self is unreal?" a disciple once

complained to his master.

"Why not put it the other way?" the master replied. "What makes you think

you are real?"

"It's obvious," said the disciple. "I think and feel and act. I know

myself for who I am, with all my habits, my likes and dislikes."

"Yes, but what do you really know?" the master insisted. "Did you have

your habits when you were asleep?"

"Of course not. I am unconscious when I am asleep."

"Perhaps you are unconscious now."

"No, right now I am awake."

"Really?" The master smiled. "Can you remember everything that happened to

you yesterday? Or even what you were thinking an hour ago? Isn't your

self-awareness very selective, amounting to just a partial memory? And

then there are your dreams, which you lose as soon as you wake up. Not to

mention that your habits and preferences are always changing, and even

when you do seem stable, don't your emotions often betray you? An insult

from a passing stranger can completely throw you off balance, or the news

that someone close to you has died. Isn't there also the problem of being

lost in wishes, false hopes, and various mental illusions?"

The disciple looked baffled. "All this may be true, sir, but none of it

makes me unreal. Perhaps I am just very confused."

The master shook his head. "If so, then everyone is just as confused. The

truth is that what we call a person is constantly in flux. There are long

stretches of forgotten time, not to mention our lapse of consciousness

when we sleep. Memory is faulty, and only the mind's craving for

continuity keeps alive the illusion that 'I' is constant. 'I' is never

constant. For every experience there is a different experiencer."

"I am beginning to see what you mean," the disciple said with considerably

more humbleness. "Although you make it seem that nothing can be trusted."

"Nothing about the changing personality can be trusted," said the master.

"But there is more to life than experience. Things come and go—feelings,

events, achievements. Pleasure is inevitably followed by pain. Success is

bound up with failure. Yet behind all this show of change, something

remains aware at all times. Find out what that awareness is and you will

have what can be trusted. This is the way out of illusion."

In a society where we do not cultivate spiritual relationships, this kind

of lesson is hard to learn. We continue to foster our alter egos, the many

experiencers who are born with every experience. From the virtual

perspective, however, our lives are therefore spent in illusion, because

in reality we are not really limited by time and space, nor by this one

body and mind. To discover our true nature involves a process of growth,

and part of that growth is to deal with conflicts inside boundaries. If

you have anxiety, you aren't supposed to shuffle it off onto another ego

but deal with it within the limits of yourself. Multiple personality

syndrome is therefore a strategy that works in the short run, because the

separate egos usually have no idea of what the others are going through,

but in the long run the person isn't anybody whole, just a collection of

floating, disorganized fragments.

Multiple personality doesn't have to be so disordered. We are all multiple

personalities in that we switch from one role to another every day. I

shift my identity among personas called father, son, brother, husband,

professional. In fact, our inner dialogue is always based on the roles we

are playing. If I think about a patient, the role of doctor becomes my

internal reference point; if I think about my son, the internal reference

point shifts automatically to father. This is not a disordered process;

indeed people who cannot shift roles, who always have to be the authority

or the boss, for example, even when that is not appropriate, suffer from

an inability to express their multiple personalities.

But the real "I" is neither doctor nor father nor any of my roles. "I"

exists beyond and then manifests as father or doctor or son with the

flicker of intention. To be grounded in this "I" is to be an alert witness

to the roles we assume. This alert witness, because it exists in the

virtual realm, approaches the mind of God. It may even be a part of God,

for we assign to God the role of cosmic witness, the creator who looks on

his creation with an all-knowing gaze. We don't yet know what that gaze

means. We haven't yet addressed the issue of whether God is judging us.

But at least we have gone beyond the illusion of our ever-shifting ego,

and any step closer to the witness is moving closer to the divine.

SYNCHRONICITY

Time is not neutral. We say that it flows, and flow implies a direction,

as well as a place where the journey ends. To the human mind, time has

always flowed toward us. We are the end point of all those billions of

years of evolution. God laid out time for us, as he continues to lay out

each person's life so that it has a purpose to its unfolding. Such at

least was the old belief, but to hold that God, a timeless being, sits

outside the universe and plans the ticktock of creation is no longer

tenable.

We assume instead that randomness rules. Science has offered chaos theory

to demonstrate that disorder lies at the heart of nature. As we have

already seen, every object can be reduced to a swirl of energy that has no

more pattern than a swirl of tobacco smoke puffed into the air. The

scientific worldview tells us that events are not organized by any kind of

outside force. A coincidence says otherwise; it is like a momentary

reprieve from chaos. When two strangers meet and discover by chance that

they have the same name or phone number, when someone decides at the last

minute not to board a jet that later crashes, or when any train of events

takes place that is exactly what is needed to reach an outcome, it seems

as though more than simple coincidence is at work. Jung invented the term

synchronicity to cover these "meaningful coincidences," and the term has

stuck even though it doesn't cast much light on the mystery. What outside

force can organize time in such a way that two things meet, like the

Titanic and the iceberg, with such a sense of fatefulness?

My own life has been touched often by synchronicity, so much so that now I

get on an airplane expecting the passenger in the next seat to be

surprisingly important to me, either just the voice I need to hear to

solve a problem or a missing link in a transaction that needs to come

together. (One time a staff consultant called me on the cell phone with

enthusiastic plans for manufacturing a new and healthier line of herbal

teas. I was running late to a plane, so I couldn't talk, and the proposal

at that moment seemed far-fetched and rather impractical. The flight

attendant guided me into the last remaining seat on a totally booked

flight, and as if by design, the stranger next to me was a wholesaler in

herbal teas.)

Therefore my thoughts on this matter are highly personal: I believe that

all coincidences are messages from the unmanifest—they are like angels

without wings, so to speak, sudden interruptions of superficial life by a

deeper layer. On the scientific side, however, I also suspect that there

are no coincidences at all. Synchronicity is built into us at the genetic

level, but our conscious minds choose to ignore this fact. We do not admit

that our lives are balanced on the knife-edge of time.

In a way no one has satisfactorily explained, our DNA is both in time and

outside it. It is in time because all bodily processes are subject to

cycles and rhythms, yet DNA is much more isolated than other chemicals

anywhere in the body. Like a queen bee in her chamber, your DNA remains

insulated within the cell's nucleus, and 99 percent of your genetic

material lies dormant or inactive until it needs to uncoil and divide to

create a mirror image of itself. Inactive DNA is chemically inert, and

here is where time becomes more ambiguous. How does an inert chemical

decide to wake up, and when?

For a child to lose her baby teeth and replace them with adult ones, DNA

has to know a great deal about the passage of time. The same holds true

for any process—the maturing of the immune system, learning to walk and

talk, the long gestation of a fetus in the womb—that must take place on

schedule. Death itself may be a genetic response coded into our cells with

a hidden timetable, the theory being that our ancestors could not have

afforded to live too long. A tribe of mostly young, child-bearing members

would be able to fight and gather food better than one burdened by

excessive numbers of old people. DNA could take care of that dilemma by

programming its own decline and demise, as grass does with the first

frost, guaranteeing the survival of the species at the cost of the

individual.

Such speculation, however fascinating, begs the main question. How does

DNA have any sense of time? It lives in a purely chemical world,

surrounded by molecules that float by. It is certainly true that every

cell maintains incredibly complex sequencing of chemical reactions—the

marvel is that a cell can breathe, feed itself, excrete wastes, divide,

and heal while living on death row, since a sentence of death is hanging

over each cell all the time. This sentence is imposed by the fact that a

cell cannot store reserves of oxygen and nutrients. It depends entirely on

what flows into it. Cells stand at the forefront of life, storing no more

than three seconds' worth of food and air; they cannot wait on late

deliveries; lapses in efficiency would be instantly fatal.

Researchers can isolate those enzymes or peptides that carry the messages

needed to trigger any given process in a cell, or to end it. This doesn't

really tell us who decided to send the messages in the first place or how

thousands of signals manage to stay so precisely coordinated. Ultimately,

all messages are sent by DNA to itself.

Looking outside our bodies, one can assume that DNA had to evolve in a

random world. Even at this very moment the assault on your body from the

environment remains unpredictable. Cosmic rays penetrate your cells

randomly, a bombardment that can potentially damage your genes. Random

cell mutations occur as the result of mischance or accident, and your DNA

has no guarantee that food, water, and temperature will be predictable,

not to mention the sudden inrush of new toxins and pollutants of every

kind.

Imagine ancestral strands of DNA trying to survive in conditions far

worse, as a young Earth convulsed through extremes of hot and cold in an

atmosphere electrically charged with storms and filled with methane gas.

Somehow DNA not only survived conditions that would have killed us in a

matter of days or hours, but it evolved in such a way that when this

hostile environment changed to a more benign one, our genes were prepared

for that as well.

Except for the rotation of the planet and the change of seasons, DNA

wasn't exposed to a world of precise timing. Yet one has to conclude that

when DNA took the immense step of learning to reproduce itself, a mastery

of time came along. As strange as it sounds, bits of nucleic acid learned

to read a watch down to thousandths of a second, and no amount of trauma

from the outside world has made a dent in that ability. DNA's mastery of

time is woven into the texture of life itself.

Having seen this, the leap into synchronicity is not far. We only need to

add the subjective ingredient: time has been ordered to benefit me, not

just for my genes. Have you ever been stuck on some problem and turned on

the television, only to have the next words coming out of it suddenly

offer you a solution? A friend of mine was stepping onto a bus one day,

wondering if he should heed the advice of a certain spiritual teacher,

when the man ahead of him in line turned around and without any prompting

said, "Trust him." These messages come from a level of mind that knows

life as a whole, and ultimately we would have to say that we are really

communicating with ourselves—the whole is talking to its parts.

Synchronicity steps outside the brain and works from a larger perspective.

Eliminating mind from the equation won't work because the only alternative

is chance. In the mid-1980s, a man in Canada won the national lottery two

years in a row. Since we know how many tickets were sold, the odds against

this happening by chance can be precisely computed, and the answer is

trillions and trillions to one—the exact number was said to be greater

than the known stars in the universe. One reason Jung invented a new word

for these meaningful coincidences is that the normal rational way of

explaining them turned out to be too unwieldy. If I sit next to a stranger

on a plane who is looking for a certain book idea to publish and that

happens to be the very idea I am working on, the explanation of

statistical probability does not apply.

Although not easy to calculate, the odds of most synchronous events are

preposterous. Anytime two people meet and discover that they have the same

name or phone number, the odds are millions to one against their

encounter. Yet this occasionally happens, and the simple explanation—that

they were meant to meet—makes more sense than random numbers, but it isn't

scientific. In spiritual reality, however, literally everything happens

because it is meant to. The world is a meaningful place; everyone is

working out their own lives' purpose. At synchronous moments, you get a

peek at just how connected your life is, how completely woven into the

infinite tapestry of existence.

In the future, as spirit is given more credibility, I think the term

synchronicity will become outmoded; our descendants will take for granted

that all events are organized into patterns. Like our DNA, we have always

flowed with the river of time and sat on the banks observing it

simultaneously. It is only outside time that we can view our own deepest

intelligence, because in the thick of things, time captures our attention

and pulls us into its web. When we consider that we might be weaving the

web, but from another level of reality, the possibility opens that God is

sharing this task with us. We are building the argument that every aspect

of creation requires us to be a co-creator, and this notion makes intimacy

with God more and more likely.

CLAIRVOYANCE AND PROPHECY

The quantum world is a place of blurry edges and uncertain outcomes. As we

have seen, the things that seem so well defined in the material world turn

into shadowy phantoms the deeper we go into the unmanifest domain. Time is

no exception, and at a certain level of reality it hardly exists. When the

boundary of time dissolves completely, it is possible to experience a kind

of mental time travel called clairvoyance, or the ability to see into the

future.

The brain cannot construct the clairvoyant state, as far as we know, since

its visual centers are preoccupied with present sensations. Dreams are a

kind of false vision, in that they are not really happening before our

eyes yet appear to be. The clairvoyant is also experiencing an "unreal"

visual state, yet the inner vision happens to come true. How, then, can a

purely internal firing of neurons match events that have not come to pass?

In my experience those who consider themselves clairvoyant are not all

gifted with the same abilities. Inner vision can be clear or blurred; it

can come and go, which makes it often unreliable; and its accuracy is

always open to question, since no one knows to what extent the future is

predetermined or open to change. A young friend of mine fell in love with

a woman who, though fond of him, did not return his strong feelings. He

became convinced, however, that she was his soul mate. He despaired of

ever turning her feelings around and went to a psychic to find out if his

soul-mate theory was true. The psychic came up with a startling number of

accurate details. She assured him that she saw a woman named Tara with

long brown hair who was going to art school. She further saw that the two

of them would soon be living together; Tara's feelings would change, and

as she recognized their deep spiritual bond it would become possible for

the two to marry. This future vision, which included two children and a

move to Los Angeles, delighted my friend, because it precisely fit his own

vision of what the future should be.

And that was the problem. Even though the psychic had tuned in to

something deep in my friend's awareness, the pictures in her vision didn't

come true. Far from being reassured, Tara was made very uncomfortable by

the revelation that she was destined to wed a man whom she considered no

more than a good friend. She withdrew from him, eventually finding her own

boyfriend and moving in with him during summer vacation. The connection of

two soul mates was never realized.

Yet I know of other clairvoyants who do not seem to be misled by the hopes

of their clients. They seem able to divide the wishful image from the

actual event that will transpire, giving accurate images of a future mate

or the outcome of a lawsuit, down to the exact timing of a judge's

rulings. This accuracy gives serious pause, because as much as we might

want to know the future, a preordained outcome renders all our striving

insignificant. (To a skeptic who discredits clairvoyance, the problem is

moot, naturally.)

What would make us believe that clairvoyance is genuine? How is it

different from other subjective illusions like dreams and hallucinations?

For one thing, dreams typically contain material that was already present

inside the person's memory. The symbols of a dream may be mysterious at

first glance, but since dreams are wholly drawn from past experience, like

old wine in new bottles, they are subject to interpretation. A

clairvoyant, however, sees something new. But dreams and clairvoyance do

have one strong link: they seem to depend on a person's belief or the

belief system of a whole society.

This implies that there is more than one way for the future to flow into

the present. It can send messages ahead or keep itself completely veiled;

it can choose those who will see and those who will be blind. Much more

than we realize, our own awareness may be creating the boundaries of past,

present, and future. In other words, we may be choosing not to be

clairvoyant so that our belief in a hidden future is confirmed. When

Cassandra foresaw the fall of Troy in the Iliad, her vision might have

been believed, since the belief system of the ancient world included

clairvoyant knowledge. (As it happened, the gods had cursed her always to

be right and yet never to be believed; we call such a person a Cassandra

to this day.)

In quantum terms, one cannot be certain about the line between

hallucinations and reality. There are no definite events, no river of time

that flows from past to present to future. What exists in its place is a

rich matrix of possible outcomes. There are infinite choices within every

event, and we determine which select few are going to manifest. At the

depths of the mind field, where all things exist in seed form as virtual

events, it hardly matters which ones eventually sprout. They are no more

real than the seeds that didn't.

The most famous expression of this concept is the paradox of Schrödinger's

cat, named after one of the founders of quantum physics. Schrödinger was

trying to imagine how matter behaves when it begins to disappear into

energy. He imagined a clever and rather sadistic mechanism, a box that

holds a cat inside, hidden from view. A trigger in the box will release a

poison to kill the cat if it is hit by a single electron. An electron is

shot at the box in such a way that it can only go through two slits—if it

takes a path through the left slit, the cat will survive; through the

right, the cat will be killed. But since this is the quantum world, things

are not well defined, and there is no way to tell which slit the electron

chooses. Until the observer looks, the electron has chosen both slits

equally.

In this paradox the observer will know what path the electron took only by

opening the box and seeing if the cat is alive or dead. Until that moment,

both choices are valid, which means—and here is the startling part—that

the cat is alive and dead at the same time. Opening the box determines its

fate, because it takes an observer to cause the electron to have a defined

place in space and time. Without the observer's act, there is no defined

outcome.

For decades the paradox of Schrödinger's cat has been taken to be a clever

mental trick, since physicists do not believe that quantum uncertainty

exists beyond the level of electrons and photons. But the clairvoyant

seems to indicate otherwise. In his vision, the future has two

locations—here and later. He can choose which one to participate in simply

by using the same power of observation that the physicist uses with an

electron.

Those of us who accept a simpler world, in which the future has only one

location—later—are showing a personal preference; we are not obeying an

iron law. The usefulness of time is that it keeps all the seeds of future

events from sprouting at once. Time dictates that first one thing happens

and then the next, without overlap. You cannot be a child and an adult

simultaneously—except through clairvoyance. Then the leaking of one event

into the next is allowed. All of us have had "gut feelings" that tell us

when some situation will not turn out well. In these instances we have

called upon a diluted form of clairvoyance that affords a clue to what

will happen next.

Is clairvoyance useful or not? Should one try to develop it or ignore it

out of respect for the boundaries of time? Here no fixed answer can be

given. Our DNA has to be clairvoyant; we could not survive if our genes

did not know the future; the unfolding of an embryo in the womb, as it

evolves from a single cell to billions, requires that DNA precisely

foresees when neurons, heart cells, muscle tissue, and every other

specialized mutation needs to develop. If neurons grew on the wrong day,

the day when fingers needed to emerge, for example, havoc would result. So

that first fertilized ovum contains a map of the future imprinted in

invisible ink.

Other situations are not so clear. In general, the highest purpose of

clairvoyance may be to give us a glimpse into the mind of God, because a

divine mind could not be constrained by time and does not recognize past,

present, or future. If you decide to soften the boundary of time, you must

take responsibility for all that comes with such a decision. Science

fiction is rife with stories of reckless time travelers who found disaster

when they broke into the future or the past. At the very least, one runs

the risk of getting present time and vision time hopelessly confused. The

spiritual masters keep teaching us that living in the present moment is

the ideal, if only we can reach it. The Jewish philosopher Philo, who was

a follower of Plato, writes: "'Today' means boundless and inexhaustible

eternity. Periods of months and years and of time in general are ideas of

man, who calculates by number; but the true name of eternity is Today."

This is the ultimate mystery of clairvoyance—any moment, whether now or

later, is a doorway into the same eternity.

I believe that prophets live in this expanded space as well, and although

we tend to fixate on their ability to foresee events, their truly

spiritual function is to see beyond time. An ability to transcend time

isn't mystical; every culture has specific beliefs about this. In India,

prophecy has been organized into a detailed system of astrology called

Jyotish (the name is rooted in the Sanskrit word jyoti, which means

"light"). Prediction of the future literally means examining what the

light has to say, and the ultimate astrologer is a visionary who bypasses

all charts to peer directly into the light of the future.

We can begin to understand how this works only by our knowledge of quantum

reality, for there all light is born. Time and space are interchangeable

at the quantum level. Where a particle will be and when it will be there

are bound up together. In this way energy is not separate from space-time.

They form one tapestry. The astrologer goes a step further. He breaks the

entire cosmos down into specific kinds of energy as they apply to human

existence. In Jyotish certain planets are generally beneficial in their

energies (such as Jupiter and Venus), while others are generally harmful

(such as Mars and the Sun).

As these energies interact, enormously complex patterns emerge. Jyotish

can generate sixteen separate charts for each person, involving the most

minute motions of planets; time can be subdivided into fractions of a

second to arrive at specific predictions about a person's future. And

since each degree of change in the heavenly bodies creates a new frequency

of energy, the astrologer must memorize several thousand individual

patterns between any two or three planets—these arrangements are called

yogas, literally the "yoking" of stars.

To its proponents Jyotish is a quantum science, because what is seen on

the material level—the rotation of planets in their orbits—disguises a

deeper scheme. In the deeper scheme, every atom and molecule is connected.

By exchanging energy, each point in the universe is whispering to every

other point. In this case, however, energy contains information. Imagine a

line of people passing a secret by whispering it from person to person

down the line. If each person whispered gibberish, there would be no

information being passed along, only raw energy. But if there is a secret

being spoken, the same energy becomes meaningful. It binds the group

together through shared knowledge, and this invisible bond, even when

unspoken, can be extremely powerful. Jyotish considers the universe to be

secretly bound in Just this way; every exchange of energy contains some

clue to future events.

The concept of information embedded in energy isn't totally alien outside

astrology. To a physicist information is pervasive throughout nature. The

specific frequencies that make infrared light different from ultraviolet,

or gamma rays different from radio waves, all form a kind of cosmic code.

Human beings tune in to this code and use it for our own purposes—it is

the information embedded in energy that allows us to build electrical

generators, infrared lamps, radio beacons, and so forth. Without that

coded information, the universe would be a random vibration, a quantum

soup of alphabet letters but no words.

Jyotish asserts that the information coded into energy has human

significance. In other words, the future is spelled out in light. Photons

actually speak to the astrologer, forming exact patterns that will emerge

eventually as events in time. An ancient master of astrology named Brighu

gave startling proof of this. Thousands of years ago he sat down to write

charts that would predict the lives of people in the future, those not yet

born. But even more amazing, he set down only the charts of people who

would actually show up in the future to get a reading. If I were to go to

Benares and visit a Brighu reader, as one is called, the test of his

authenticity would be that my chart would be waiting for me, detailed down

to the minute that I crossed the doorstep.

Boundaries are all made in consciousness and dissolved in consciousness.

To be able to cross the boundary of time or to speak the language of light

tells us that even our most basic assumptions are open to choice.

Awareness is all. The present moment is so valued by spiritual masters

because it is the place where awareness can be focused. The past and the

future are distractions, pulling us into an abstract mental state that

will never be alive. You cannot dive deep into an illusion, but it may

turn out, once awareness is willing to expand, that you can dive

infinitely into this moment. The present has been called "the eternal now"

because it refreshes itself without end. With this realization, the door

to wisdom is opened, despite all our current fears that wisdom has

withered or is somehow a thing of the past. The past is actually the enemy

of wisdom. Any kind of linear thinking is doomed to remain trapped on the

surface of life. But if we experience our minds as multidimensional, we

get closer to God's mind, which is all-dimensional.

Six

CONTACTING GOD

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it

will be opened to you.

—MATTHEW 7:7

Knowing God would be impossible if he didn't want to be known. There is

nothing to prevent every stage of spirituality from being a delusion. The

saint who speaks to God may be suffering from a lesion of the right

temporal lobe. On the other hand, a convinced atheist may be shutting out

messages from God every day.

Our quantum model tells us three ways that God is already contacting us:

1.                  He exists at a level of reality beyond the five senses

that is the source of our being. Since we are quantum creatures, we

participate in God all the time without acknowledging it.

2.                  He is sending us messages or clues into the physical

world. We've called this the flow of reality.

3.                  He is attracting notice through "second attention,"

the deepest intuitive part of our brains, which most people ignore.

These three ways to know God are based on the facts accumulated in our

search so far. We've built the plane and we know the theory of flight—what

remains is to take off.

God seems to be sending us messages from outside time and space. Some of

these spiritual clues are faint, but some are very dramatic. One of the

most recent healings at Lourdes happened to a young Irishman afflicted

with multiple sclerosis. He arrived late at the shrine, after the holy

waters were closed to the public for the day. His only access to Lourdes

was to wait outside the walls and listen to the vesper services before

sunset.

Disappointed, he was taken back to his hotel in a wheelchair. Sitting

alone in his room, he suddenly felt a change. His body grew warm and as he

lay down on the bed, a bolt of light shot up his spine, causing him to

writhe from its intensity; he lost consciousness. But when he awoke, he

could walk, and all signs of his MS had vanished. He returned home healed.

I think there is no doubt, given the thousands of people who have had such

experiences, that this is the "light of God," revered in every sacred

tradition. The light fascinates us because God enters our world in few

other ways that are as tangible.

In research polls, up to half of Americans say that they have experienced

some form of light that they couldn't explain, either internally or as an

external aura or halo. About a third of Americans say that they are "born

again," which we can interpret as a spiritual awakening of some kind. One

of the most famous of modern Indian saints was Sri Aurobindo, a Bengali

who attended Cambridge around the turn of the century before entering the

holy life back in India. Aurobindo's own awakening began the instant he

set foot on native soil, when an almost electric shock awakened him to the

truth of higher consciousness. He later speculated that all human beings

are on the road to enlightenment via a process of mental evolution. (The

late Jonas Salk devoted many years to a similar theory that human beings

were about to make the transition from biological evolution, which

perfected our physical structure, to "metabiological" evolution, which

would perfect our spirit.)

A form of "supra-consciousness," as Aurobindo termed it, is gradually

descending upon us, beginning with the higher centers of awareness, those

that cause us to intuit God's existence, then making its way down until

our very cells are transformed. According to Aurobindo, God can send

"arrows of light" into our world, but these go in only one direction. We

can receive them as impulses of inspiration, yet our thoughts cannot

retrace their path.

To get back to the source of God's messages, we would have to use second

attention, our ability to know something without any physical information.

Intuition and prophecy involve second attention. So does the saint's

insight into God and the controlled experiment in which people know that

they are being watched from another room. Jesus speaks about his Father as

if possessing intimate knowledge, and this too derives from second

attention at its most developed level. Significantly, when we hear the

sayings of Jesus, such as "Know the truth and the truth shall set you

free," our minds respond. It is as if second attention in us is sleepy but

willing to wake up. This accounts for much of the fascination that all

sages and seers hold for ordinary people.

For the moment I am going to set aside the conventional ways to find God,

such as prayer, contemplation, faith, good works, and virtue. This isn't

to discount them, but certain stark facts have to be recognized. Many

believers use all these means to know God and come up empty-handed. When

they seem to work, they are inconsistent—some prayers are answered while

others go completely unheeded, faith can work miracles but sometimes it

can't. Most important, the conventional paths to God have not abolished

atheism. However powerful a subjective experience may be, since it cannot

be shared, person A is outside the inner world of person B. The process is

shut in a private, self-enclosed cocoon.

Before describing how second attention—the key to picking up the spiritual

messages sent by God—can be developed, we have to rid ourselves of

self-delusion. Stripped down to its essentials, by seeking to know God we

run into the same problem we do when we seek to know what lies outside the

universe. It is the problem of defining objective reality. By definition

the universe contains everything, so the rational mind might assume that

nothing lies outside it. The rational mind would be wrong. Theorists can

construct perfectly plausible versions of other dimensions. In one model

our universe is just a bubble on the outside of an expanding

super-universe with ten or more dimensions that our senses can't perceive.

Perhaps one of them is the home of angels? Reason can neither prove nor

disprove the possibility, but it can get tantalizingly close.

Without ever seeing into this other world, we can observe black holes and

quasars, which are the nearest thing to windows on the edge of infinity.

As light and energy get sucked into a black hole, they disappear from our

cosmos. This implies that they are going somewhere; therefore they might

also return to us via "white holes" or acts of creation like the Big Bang.

God is not this knowable, however. There is no black hole that sucks you

into his world, unless it is death. The great fascination of near-death

experiences is that people return convinced that they have entered the

divine presence, but the information they bring back is limited. Most

report a white light that bathed them in love and peace, but a small

minority say it burns with the torment of hell rather than the rapture of

heaven and that the being who beckons at the end of the tunnel isn't

benign but evil. Moreover, near-death experiences can be duplicated

artificially through oxygen deprivation to the brain, as we mentioned

before. In these cases the same white light often appears, so perhaps it

is just an artifact of the cerebrum as it begins to suffocate.

We need better proof that God wants to be found in his cosmic hiding

place. Then the whole development of second attention will fall into place

as the truest approach to the domain of spirit.

To know God personally, you must penetrate a boundary that physicists call

"the event horizon," a line that divides reality sharply in half. On this

side lies anything that remains within the speed of light; on the other

side is anything faster than the speed of light. Einstein was among the

first theorists to propose that the speed of light is connected to

space-time in a crucial way. The speed of light is absolute; it is like a

wall that no object can crash through. As we approach the wall, time slows

down, mass increases, and space becomes curved. If you try to crash

through, weird things happen to prevent you from doing so.

For example, any light that passes too near a black hole gets pulled into

its field of gravity. Black holes are the remnants of old stars that

collapsed onto themselves when they ran out of fuel. Aging stars are

already too dense for us to imagine—a single teaspoon of matter inside one

may be millions of times heavier than the whole earth. As this stellar

fuel collapses it can get out of control, like a runaway train. In some

instances the momentum is irreversible, and even light cannot escape from

the star's force field. In that case there is only blackness—a black

hole—that engulfs any passing object. If a photon of light tries to go

around a black hole, it will start to curve in the hole's direction until

it falls in.

This is where Einstein's absolute wall meets its match. The photon is

traveling as fast as anything can go, so it isn't possible for a black

hole to make it go any faster. On the other hand, a photon has to go

faster if it wants to escape the clutches of the black hole's immense

gravity. At the exact meeting point where the photon and the black hole

are equal, everything becomes weird. To an outside observer, the photon

falls into the back hole forever, frozen in time. Inside the black hole,

however, the photon has already been devoured, in less than a hundred

microseconds. Both versions are true. One is seen from the world of light,

the other from the world beyond light. To use Heisenberg's phrase, an

"uncertainty principle" holds true at this level of nature—event A and

event B both exist together, even though they are opposites. This

borderline of uncertainty is the event horizon, the exact margin dividing

reality in half between the certain and the uncertain, the known and the

unknown.

Any place where knowledge stops there is also an event horizon. The brain

can't explore beyond where photons go. There is no perception without

juggling photons around. If my cat or dog was staring right at God, it

would do me no good because I don't share their nervous systems. A nervous

system is just a machine for sensing photons. Depending on what model you

have, your pattern of photons is different from that produced by other

models. The mind may cross the event horizon in theory, using intellectual

speculation and advanced mathematics, but this is like Alice jumping down

the rabbit hole. When Kierkegaard made his famous remark that God is known

only through a leap of faith, he was referring to a spiritual rabbit hole.

What lies beyond the event horizon? It could be a new universe with

intelligent life in it; it could be a tea party of gods and goddesses; or

it could be a chaos of squashed dimensions tumbling like twisted sheets in

a dryer.

Thus ends the whole search for God. Or does it? Strangely enough, lots of

things lie beyond the event horizon that turn out to be useful. Quantum

physics dips across the border all the time, only it can't stay there very

long. When a particle accelerator bombards two atoms, causing a subatomic

particle to jump out of its hiding place for a few millionths of a second,

the event horizon has been crossed. Something that was unknowable by the

five senses suddenly jumps into our world. Combining this with various

"thought experiments," science inched its way toward nuclear power,

transistors, and (if we look into the future) advanced computer memory and

time travel. Already a beam of light has been made to move from one

location to another in a Cal Tech laboratory without crossing the space in

between, which is a form of primitive time travel. We are learning little

by little to be at home across the event horizon.

A skeptic may argue (quite fiercely) that I am distorting the event

horizon beyond its literal meaning. If you throw a pebble into a black

hole, it will seem to freeze in place forever, utterly defying physical

laws of motion, but does that mean God is eternal? No—the event horizon is

not accepted by science as the limit of mind. It is intriguing that the

Buddha once shut his eyes for a moment and upon opening them declared that

he had experienced ninety-nine thousand past incarnations, but this

example of time travel could be imaginary. What we do know is that God

can't be on this side of the event horizon. Since the Big Bang, light has

been traveling for about ten to fifteen billion years. If a telescope is

pointed in any direction, it cannot receive light older than that;

therefore an entity farther away must remain invisible. This doesn't mean

there is no existence beyond fifteen billion years. Strangely enough,

certain faraway objects appear to be emitting radiation that is older than

the universe, a fact cosmologists are unable to comprehend. If the human

brain contains its own event horizon (the limit of photons to organize

themselves as thought) and so does the cosmos, we must cross over to find

the home of spirit.

A MAP OF THE SOUL

In the dead of night I was awakened by the sound of screaming. Groggy as I

was, I knew it must be coming from somewhere in the house, and my heart

was pounding before I could sit up. Then someone flicked on the light

above my bed.

"Come, get dressed, we have to leave," a half-familiar voice said. I

didn't move. It took a moment before I had enough presence of mind to

realize that it wasn't a scream I had heard but a wail.

"Come on," the voice repeated, this time more urgently. Strong arms picked

me up and carried me out of the room. I was seven, and our neighbor in

Bombay had come for me, but he didn't tell me why. Instead the warm

dampness of tropical air caressed over my face until we reached his house,

where I was put to bed again.

This was the night my grandfather died. We called him Bauji, and he was

famous for getting on the rooftop with his old military bugle, blasting

the neighbors awake on the morning I was born. He died without warning at

3 A.M. The wailing came from the servants and women of the house. It was

their way of beginning the long process that makes death acceptable, but

that wasn't a help to me. I had a reaction common to young children; I

refused to believe what had happened. Just that day my grandfather had

been jubilant. His son, my father, had been admitted into the Royal

College of Physicians in London, a rare achievement for a native-born

Indian in those days just after World War II. The minute he got the

telegram, Grandfather swept me and my younger brother into his old black

sedan and rushed us to not one but two movies (a Jerry Lewis movie and

then Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves). He had heaped so much candy and toys

on us that my brother, Sanjiv, started to cry from sheer stress.

Yet within a day my grandfather was a cloud of ashes thrown into the river

at the holy city of Hardwar—I refused to accept that. How could he be

gone, who hardly a day before was sitting next to me in the dark laughing

at All Baba's antics?

A new and painful act in the family drama then ensued. My parents, who had

left us out of their care during my father's last phase of medical study,

rushed back to India. There was lingering guilt that Grandfather had died

of a heart attack, because ironically cardiology was my father's

specialization. And my brother Sanjiv got very ill, suffering from a skin

malady that seemed to have no origin except the shock of recent events.

Now I understand that we were all worrying about my grandfather's soul. We

wondered where it had gone; we worried if it had suffered; deep down we

might have been wondering if such a thing as the soul even existed. Such

questions, in one form or another, have been hard for me to escape. The

soul is the carrier that takes us beyond; it is the essence connecting us

to God. But what do these words really mean?

In the ancient Vedas it says that the part of us that doesn't believe in

death will never die. This simple definition of the soul is not a bad one.

It accurately describes everyone's secret belief that death may be real

for some but not for us. Psychologists are impatient with this feeling of

personal immortality. They claim that we use it to defend ourselves

against the inescapable fact that one day we will die. But what if the

opposite is true? What if feeling immortal and beyond death is the most

real thing about us?

To prove this point one way or another, we need facts, just as we needed

them about God. The soul is as mysterious as God, and we have just as few

reliable facts about it. I would offer that the first fact about the soul

is that it is not really as personal as people believe. The soul doesn't

feel or move; it doesn't travel with you as you go about your life, nor

does it endure birth, decay, and death. This is just a way of saying that

the soul stands apart from ordinary experience. Since it also has no

shape, getting a mental picture of the soul isn't possible.

Instead, the soul is really a junction point between time and the

timeless. (1) It faces in both directions. When I experience myself in the

world, I am not experiencing my soul, yet it is somewhere on the

periphery. There is no doubt that we sense its presence, however vaguely.

But it would be a mistake to think that the soul and the person are the

same. My grandfather was an old man with thinning hair, prone to

enthusiasm and fierce in his love for us. I have powerful memories of him,

yet all his qualities and all my memories have nothing to do with his

soul. Those qualities died with him; his soul did not. So the soul is like

a carrier of the essence, but what is that essence like? If I can't

experience my soul as an emotion, if everything I know about myself since

birth is separate from my soul, it must not be a material thing.

In other words, the soul begins at the quantum level, which makes sense

since the quantum level is also our doorway to God. To go through this

door isn't something we choose; participation is mandatory. In India the

soul has two parts. One is called Jiva, which corresponds to the

individual soul making its long journey through many lifetimes until it

reaches full realization of God. When a child is taught that being good

means your soul will go to heaven, it is Jiva that we are talking about.

Jiva is involved in action. It is affected by our good and bad acts; it

rules our conscience, and all the seeds of karma are planted inside it.

The kind of person you turn out to be is rooted in Jiva, and the kind of

life you make for yourself will change Jiva day by day.

The second half of the soul, called Atman, does not accompany us on any

journey. It is pure spirit, made of the same essence as God. Atman cannot

change in any way. It never reaches God because it never left in the first

place. No matter how good or bad your life, your Atman remains constant;

in fact, the worst criminal and the holiest saint have the same quality of

soul when it is this aspect that is in question. There is no good

approximation for Atman in the West, and many people might wonder why the

soul has to be divided in this way.

The answer lies at the virtual level, for we have seen that all the

familiar qualities of life, such as time, space, energy, and matter,

gradually fade into a shadowy existence until they disappear. But this

disappearance leaves something intact—spirit itself. Jiva lives at the

quantum level, Atman at the virtual. So the faintest, subtlest trace of

"me" that can be detected at the quantum level is Jiva, and once it

disappears, pure spirit remains—that is Atman. The distinction between

them is absolutely necessary, for otherwise the path back to God would

break down.

You need Jiva to remember who you are personally. You need Atman to

remember yourself as pure spirit.

You need Jiva to have a reason to act, think, wish, and dream. You need

Atman for the peace beyond all action.

You need Jiva to journey through time and space. You need Atman to live in

the timeless.

You need Jiva to preserve personality and identity. You need Atman to

become universal, beyond identity.

As you can see, even though they are melded together as "soul," these two

aspects are exact opposites in many ways. Such is the paradox of the soul

that it manages to accommodate itself to our world of time, thought, and

action while dwelling eternally in the spiritual world. The soul must be

half-human, half-divine in order to give us a way to retain our identity

during all the prayer, meditation, seeking, and other spiritual work that

is involved in finding God, and yet the soul must have a divine aspect

that embodies the goal of all seeking.

On the material level I am not aware of my Atman. I walk and talk and

think without any consciousness that my source lies much deeper. But at

the soul level I am totally aware of who I am. The soul level is a very

strange place, because it gives rise to all activity without being active

itself. Think about that carefully. As I travel around from here to there,

my soul doesn't move, because at the quantum level the field just ripples

and vibrates—it doesn't change location from A to B. I am born, grow old,

and die—these events have tremendous significance for my body and mind.

Yet at the quantum level nothing is born, grows old, or dies. There is no

such thing as an old photon. We can get some clues to this riddle from a

common device, a television set. When you see a TV character walking from

left to right on the screen, your brain registers a false impression.

Nothing on that screen, not a single electron, has actually moved from

left to right. With a magnifying glass you would see that the only

activity taking place is the flickering of phosphors on the surface of the

cathode-ray tube. If phosphor A is to the left of phosphor B, its flicker

can be timed so that just as it goes off, phosphor B lights up. This trick

makes it look as if something has moved from left to right, just as

twinkling Christmas lights seem to circle around the tree.

Now let's apply the same trick to ourselves. When I get out of my chair

and walk across the room, my body seems to be moving, but in fact nothing

of the sort is happening at the quantum level. Instead, a series of

virtual particles is flickering in and out to create the illusion of

motion. This is such an important point that I want to give several more

examples. Go to the beach where ocean waves are crashing on the shore. If

you wade out and put a cork on the water, your senses tell you that it

will be carried along by the waves—but it isn't. The cork stays in place,

bobbing up and down as the waves pass along. The water is also just moving

up and down. It is the same water that hits the shore, not new water

carried from miles away. The wave motion takes place only at the energy

level, creating the illusion that the water is getting nearer to the

shore. Now the examples get more mysterious: When two magnets are drawn to

each other, what pulls them together is the magnetic field. But the field

itself doesn't move. All over the world compass needles are wiggling, but

the earth's magnetic poles aren't. How does a nonmoving field make a

needle or two heavy pieces of iron move? Again it is an illusion—at the

quantum level, virtual photons, acting as carriers of the magnetic force,

flicker in and out, and because they do this in sequence, the appearance

of motion is created.

Let's assume that we can accept the fact that you and I are not moving,

either. To a quantum physicist, our bodies are just objects, like any

other. A ball thrown across the room isn't moving, only winking in and out

of existence at an incredibly fast speed at different locations, and we

are no different. But here the mystery deepens. When the ball disappears

for a nanosecond, only to reappear just the tiniest bit to the left or

right, why didn't it disintegrate? After all, it was completely absent for

a while, and there is no reason why its old shape and size and color

shouldn't simply dissolve. Quantum physics can even calculate the odds

that it won't reappear, that instead of a ball flying across the room, a

bowl of pink Jell-O will suddenly appear. What keeps things together?

If we go back to the television, the answer is obvious. The characters

walking across the screen are just phantoms, but they are organized

phantoms. Their image is fixed on film or videotape, their motions are

planned and worked out. In other words, there is intelligence behind the

illusion. This presiding intelligence keeps the random flickers of photons

from being truly random; it creates forms from formless electrical

charges. For it turns out that not just the motion of a TV image is

illusion, so is its color and shape. So is its voice, if the character

happens to speak. No matter what quality you look for, it can be broken

down to pulses of energy, and these pulsations have meaning only because a

hidden director has created it.

This is essentially the argument for the soul. It holds reality together;

it is my offscreen director, my presiding intelligence. I can think, talk,

work, love, and dream, all because of the soul, yet the soul doesn't do

any of these things. It is me, yet I would never recognize it if we came

face-to-face. Everything that makes the difference between life and death

must cross into this world via the soul. Today I sat down to see if I

could list all the invisible events happening at the soul level, and the

results inspire a deep awe at the "soul work" (which the medieval church

called psychomachia) going on with every breath:

Infinity is becoming finite.

The unmoving is starting to move.

The universe is shrinking to a location inside you.

Eternity is taking on the appearance of time.

Uncertainty is becoming certain.

The undefined is becoming definite.

That which has no cause is starting the chain of cause and effect.

Transcendence is coming down to earth.

The divine is taking on a body.

Randomness is turning into patterns.

The immortal is pretending to be born.

Reality is putting on the mask of illusion.

You share this soul work with God. He can be defined in infinite ways, but

one version of God is that he is a process. The process involves bringing

life into being. Science has its story about how life originated two

billion years ago from a soup of organic chemicals. This soup, probably

contained in the earth's ancient oceans, was struck by lightning and began

to boil into primitive self-reproducing nucleic acids, from which the long

chain of evolution proceeded. But from the spiritual viewpoint, life is

being created all the time through the kind of soul work just listed.

There is more to life than raw creation. The soul, as every religious

tradition has insisted, exists to bring an end to suffering. The same

cannot be said about any other aspect of ourselves. The mind, ego, and

emotions cause as much pain as pleasure; they can throw us into turmoil

and confusion despite all our efforts to reach clarity and peace. The soul

has been assigned the unique function of working only for what is most

evolutionary in each person's life. It couldn't accomplish this end by

turning the infinite into the finite, the timeless into time, and so

forth—these processes have no human value until we add another ingredient,

the dispelling of suffering.

Someone who is attuned to the soul begins to perceive that a subtle

guidance is at work. The soul is silent; therefore it cannot compete with

the contentious voices heard in the mind. You can spend years overshadowed

by anger, fear, greed, ambition, and all the other distractions of inner

life, but none of that activity touches Atman. The soul has its own

project in mind. The Vedas describe this project in terms of the five

kleshas, or causes of human suffering. They are:

1.                  Ignorance about the nature of reality

2.                  Identification with the ego

3.                  Attraction toward objects of desire

4.                  Repulsion from objects of desire

5.                  Fear of death

The great sages and seers who laid out this scheme of suffering all

emphasize that all five causes boil down to one—the very first. When a

person forgets that he has a soul, that his source is rooted in eternal

Being, separation results, and from separation all other pain and

suffering follows.

But for these ancient formulations to have any usefulness today, we have

to update them. I think a modern restatement would go something like this:

1.                  A person thinks that only material existence is real

and thus becomes totally ignorant of the source, which is quantum and

virtual. He accepts the illusion of time and space. When this happens,

contact with the source is lost. The voice of the soul begins to grow

fainter and fainter.

2.                  Drifting in separation, the person seeks desperately

for something to cling to. Life cannot abide Being without a foundation;

therefore the mind creates an entity known as the ego. This "I" is the

same as the personality. It is constructed from all kinds of experiences,

and as these become all-important, the "I" and its needs have to be

defended at all costs.

3.                  The ego has many needs, and so it begins to value the

fulfillment of those needs. The whole world becomes a means to make the

ego stronger, more important, and more secure. To that end, it pulls all

kinds of objects toward itself: food, shelter, clothing, money, etc.

4.                  For a time this strategy seems to work. Although it

never becomes truly secure, the ego finds that life can be filled up by

acquiring more and more. No one can gain complete control over the

environment, however; therefore the ego has to spend a great deal of time

avoiding pain and danger. As attractive as certain things are, others are

equally repulsive.

5.                  Caught in a whirlwind of seeking pleasure and avoiding

pain, the person achieves many goals. The years pass, and separation does

not even seem to be a problem anymore. However, there is an end to all

this acquiring, all this experience for the sake of experience. Over it

all looms the certainty that life will end. Fear of death becomes a source

of suffering because death is the undeniable reminder that the ego's

strategy for survival never solved the original problem—ignorance about

how things really work.

If it is true that the five kleshas are still at work—and who could deny

that they are?—then the influence of the soul is crucial.

Each klesha has its own momentum. We all know the powerful addiction of

money, power, career, and ego needs of every type. This momentum has kept

suffering alive despite the enormous changes in human existence from age

to age. Against this momentum the soul provides a means of solving every

cause of pain:

1.                  Ignorance of reality is solved by delving deeper into

the mind. Awareness dives deeper than the material level to find its

roots.

2.                  Identification with ego is solved by learning to

identify with these deeper levels.

3.                  and 4. Attraction to outside objects—and repulsion

from them—is solved by valuing the inner life above all.

5.                  Fear of death is solved when the soul is experienced

directly, since the soul is never born and never dies.

As with the five causes of suffering, the five solutions all grow from the

first one. If you explore the true nature of reality, all pain will

eventually come to an end. In some form or other, religious teachings

state this truth over and over. There is no way around the fact that it

sounds abstract, yet this is the reality of how the soul operates. Your

soul deals in abstractions like eternity and infinity so that you won't

have to. It converts an inconceivable world into one that we can grasp and

understand. Like a car's transmission, which takes the whirling motion of

the engine and transforms it into the forward velocity that gets you where

you want to go, the soul makes it possible for your life to move forward.

Eternity doesn't need to breathe; infinity doesn't need to find a job. But

you need those things and more—you need to eat, work, love, and raise

children—and these are made possible through the soul. Without it, there

would only be quantum soup, a formless swirl of energy and particles.

Now let's see if we can test this new conception of the soul against

tradition. Even though we are accustomed to using religious language about

the soul, its duties are useful, not poetic. This fact has been hard to

realize because the word soul has been used loosely to mean a person's

deepest emotions, his heart, his highest aspirations, as well as more

arcane things like the Holy Ghost. In the Bible, where the word soul is

used hundreds of times, we find that it goes through every struggle of

life. In the Old Testament we hear a lot about the peril of the soul.

Satan wants to grab it, the enemies of Israel want to destroy it, famine

and illness make the soul heavy, and always there is the plea—this is

heard over and over in the Psalms—for God to give balm and solace to the

soul. Jehovah is fickle, however, and he can seem to betray even those

souls offered up to him: the Book of Job begins with God and the devil

gambling with the soul of a righteous man "who feared God and set his face

against wrongdoing." For no other reason than to test him, God allows

Satan to inflict any harm he wishes against Job except to "touch his

person." Job's travails with sickness, poverty, family misfortune, and

social rejection describe a condition of suffering that was familiar to

the Hebrews and later to the Christians; the fact that God never again

speaks in the Bible is an ominous after-note: the soul has been left to

survive its tests alone.

The New Testament continues the same drama but more in terms of salvation

and redemption. Since Jesus offers an explicit promise of an afterlife,

going to heaven is the goal of the soul, and escaping damnation is its

greatest challenge. In all this turmoil, one senses that the soul travels

through life undergoing every anxiety felt by the person. It isn't aloof

or apart but very much down here in the mud of battle. The paradox is that

throughout this highly emotional involvement, no biblical writer ever

defines what the soul is. As a result, the word remains as diffuse in the

end as it was at the outset. If I say to you, "My soul was touched" or "I

mean this from the bottom of my soul" or "That person has a lot of soul,"

nothing specific is being conveyed.

I would venture that the sacred masters, whatever religion they are

associated with, were trying to be quite specific. In their awareness the

soul meant something much like what we have been describing—a connection

between the world of the five senses and a world of inconceivable things

like eternity, infinity, omniscience, grace, and every other quality of

the unmanifest.

Parables are basically coded stories about the soul and its function. In

other words, they take an abstraction like "the unmoving starts to move"

or "the immortal pretends to be born" and expresses it in language that is

more understandable. Some parables are so simple that we hardly realize

their spiritual meaning—every child has heard about the six blind men and

the elephant. Each blind man grabs a different part of the beast. The

blind man who grabs the leg says, "An elephant is very like a tree." The

one who grabs the trunk says, "An elephant is very like a snake." The one

who grabs the tail says, "An elephant is very like a rope," and so forth.

Originally the story had to do with the five senses and the mind being

unable to grasp the nature of God, the moral being that divine reality was

too vast to be understood by thought, sight, sound, touch, or taste. Other

interpretations hold that the blind men are the branches of Vedic

philosophy, which in all their specialized learning cannot grasp the

wholeness of Brahman, the One and All.

Jesus told thirty-nine parables, and these are easier to connect with the

soul, largely because he delivered the morals himself. The first one is in

the fifth book of Matthew:

You are light for all the world. A town that stands on a hill cannot be

hidden. When a lamp is lit, it isn't put under a bushel basket but on the

stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. And you, like the

lamp, must shed light among all men, so that when they see the good you

do, they may give praise to your Father in heaven.

On the surface this parable is so simple that it hardly needs to be

interpreted. The phrase "don't hide your light under a bushel basket"

means that virtue should be seen so it can have a good effect. But the

word light has a deeper meaning spiritually, in the sense of awakened

awareness, and therefore this is also a parable about the soul. Jesus is

saying that like a lamp hidden under a basket, the body hides the soul. He

tells the disciples not to let this happen but to allow the soul's

awareness to manifest itself. In other words, live from the soul level if

you expect other people to believe that you are connected to God, for when

they see that you are, they will believe it of themselves as well.

Any of the other famous parables, whether about the mustard seed or the

prodigal son or the servant who buries his talents, are equally

multidimensional. The actors in them can be seen as aspects of the soul.

In fact, these vignettes are so effective and colorful that the soul gets

overlooked. The same happens in real life. It is very hard to realize that

our origin, our source, is not of this world. Here I am with all my

qualities. People see me and hear me; they believe in my existence. Yet my

reality is paper-thin at the quantum level, where there is no sound,

sight, texture, color, or anything else recognizable. The soul is the

junction point between my virtual self and my physical self. It is the

organizing intelligence that keeps me intact. This is an exceptional feat,

given that every atom of my body is pure empty space with flashes of

energy passing through it for no more than a few millionths of a second.

Reality is truly sneaking up on us from nowhere and catching us off guard

at every second. (In a beautiful aphorism the great Bengali poet Tagore

says, "Life is only the perpetual surprise that I exist.") It is

unsettling to confront the fact that none of my cherished qualities are

real, yet it is a fact. Let us say that I like the color blue, feel happy,

and value my personal freedom. These are three disparate qualities about

me. But when I get in my car and drive across town, does the color blue

move with me? When I take a bath, does my happiness get wet? When I go to

bed, does my personal freedom go to sleep?

It was just this sort of questioning that made the ancient sages realize

that we must possess a soul. There is something intangible and undefined

about us that yet gets born into this world as a visible, defined

creation. In the Bhagavad-Gita this aspect is called the "inward dweller"

and it is said that fire cannot burn it, water cannot make it wet, wind

cannot blow it away, and a sword cannot cut it in two. For all the poetry

in that expression, the fact of the soul appears to be undeniable, for

stripped of all religious connotations, the essence of each person cannot

be reduced to matter or thoughts or any fixed quality.

If you try to do without the soul, you wind up with a handful of nothing.

To underscore this, I need to bring back the concept of the field. A

magnet attracts iron because it creates a magnetic field around itself. As

we saw before, the field doesn't move, yet the iron does. If you tried to

locate the exact point where the unmoving field touches the moving iron,

where would you be? The answer is that you would be at the point of

uncertainty. A very definite object, a piece of iron, is interacting with

a completely undefined thing, a field. The two get closer and closer. The

iron starts out as a solid lump of matter with weight and motion. The

field starts out with no solidity or motion, or any other material

qualities. They approach, and of course neither one wants to give up its

nature. The field wants to remain boundless, timeless, and undefined. The

iron wants to remain exactly the opposite. Inevitably, they meet as

strangers, barely shaking hands, suspicious of each other. This is the

famous region of uncertainty defined by Heisenberg, where the defined

world meets the undefined field. What can you say about it? Only that it

connects two very different worlds without living in either.

At this point of uncertainty, a photon may shoot out of a star to travel

across the universe, yet nothing really travels. Only a certain charge

flickers into existence, passes its energy to another charge, and

disappears again. It's the same trick as the television seeming to be

populated by living people. Only in this case the trick isn't just a

trick. It is as real as anything gets. Or to put it another way, as unreal

as anything gets. There is a Zen story about two disciples who are looking

at a flag fluttering in the breeze. "See that?" one says. "No one can

doubt that the flag is moving." The other disagrees, "No, it is the wind

moving. The flag has no motion of its own."

They continue this debate until the master comes along, and he says, "You

are both wrong. Only consciousness is moving." This is the kind of tale

that often gets repeated as the answer to a Zen riddle, but which no one

really understands. Now we are in a position to see the point. The flag

stands for any material object that seems to move, the wind is the

invisible field or force that creates that motion, but in the deeper

reality, neither is moving. Only consciousness—which means intelligence—is

at work, here and in all things.

It is profound to realize that my true self is not rooted in time and

space. Virtual reality is my source, and like a light wave my body flows

out of it, but the source doesn't go anywhere. Therefore my connection to

that source doesn't go anywhere, either. Thus the soul is part of me, but

not any part my senses will ever detect. No religious claim is being made

here; these are stubborn quantum facts. I have never left my source; it is

always with me. The famous detachment of great sages comes from knowing

full well that they are not confined by any fixed definition. Tagore has a

beautiful way of expressing this:

When I was born and saw the light

I was no stranger in this world—

Something inscrutable, shapeless, and without words

Appeared in the form of my mother.

So when I die, the same unknown will appear again

As ever known to me....

GATANJALI

The metaphor of birth is totally appropriate, because the timeless doesn't

just turn into time. Something entirely new is born. Infinity doesn't

merely shrink until it becomes small and manageable—numberless dimensions

give birth to just three or four. What you call your soul manages this

birth, not once but thousands of times per second. I call this concept

"genesis now." There can never be a single genesis, since virtual reality

would just swallow everything back up again. Super-gravity, like an

immense yawning black hole, has an insatiable appetite. It wants to devour

time and make it timeless; it wants to engulf matter and energy to return

them to virtual photons.

Why isn't the whole world swallowed up? Because creation insists on

happening. Life can't be stopped, even by the infinite forces arrayed

against it. Genesis now is the ongoing project that is behind all your

actions. Soul work never stops. Attempting to put yourself in a box,

defining yourself by labels and qualities until you are a finished product

once and for all, is as false as trying to put God in a box. The great

spiritual traditions have been trying to tell us this with all their

teachings. We otherwise would forget that the constant churning of

eternity, infinity, and immortality is all that is happening.

There is nothing else. This alone makes us real.

THE STATE OF UNION

Believe it or not, we find ourselves very close to the soul now. We have

whittled away the scientific objections to God by placing him outside the

reach of measurement. This means that a person's subjective experience of

God can't be challenged—at the quantum level, objectivity and subjectivity

merge into each other. The point of merger is the soul; therefore knowing

God comes down to this: like a photon nearing a black hole, your mind hits

a wall as it tries to think about the soul. The soul is comfortable with

uncertainty; it accepts that you can be two places at once (time and

eternity); it observes cosmic intelligence at work and is not bothered

that the creative force is outside the universe. We have a simple picture

of the situation, then:

The mind is creeping closer and closer to the soul, which sits on the edge

of God's world, at the event horizon. The gap of separation is wide when

there is no perception of spirit; it grows smaller as the mind figures out

what is happening. Eventually the two will get so close that mind and soul

have no choice but to merge. When that happens, the resemblance to a black

hole is striking. To the mind, it will be as if falling into God's world

lasts forever, an eternity in bliss consciousness. From God's side, the

merging takes place in a split second; indeed, if we stand completely in

God's world, where time has no meaning, the whole process never even

occurred. The mind was part of the soul all along, only without knowing

it.

One could rightfully claim that the words of Jesus, "Ask and you will

receive, knock and the door will open," are an iron law. The instant that

your mind pays any attention to the soul, it is pulled toward it, with the

inevitable result that all separation will close. Subjectively this

journey toward the soul (a better phrase than journey of the soul) is

perceived as the seven stages that we have already covered. But

objectively, the process is much more like a particle of light crossing

the event horizon.

The fact that our minds can register this journey is astonishing, because

the whole time that it is happening, ordinary thought and perception

continue. Two shoppers pushing grocery carts are doing the same thing in

the material world, but one could be having an epiphany. The word ecstasy

derives from Greek roots that mean to stand apart or outside—this is the

role of second attention, to stand outside material life and witness the

dawn of ecstasy. If you regard the soul as a kind of force field steadily

pulling the mind toward it, every one of the seven stages can be described

as the closing of separation:

Stage One:I am in such separation that I sense deep fear inside.

Stage Two:I don't feel so separate; I am gaining a sense of power.

Stage Three:Something larger than me is drawing near; I feel much

more peaceful.

Stage Four:I am beginning to intuit what that larger thing is—it

must be God.

Stage Five:My actions and thoughts are drawing on God's force field,

as if we are both involved in everything.

Stage Six:God and I are almost together now, I feel no separation;

my mind is God's mind.

Stage Seven:I see no difference between myself and God.

In ancient India this closing of the gap was described as yoga or union

(the same Sanskrit root gave us the verb "to yoke"). Because the Indian

sages had thousands of years to analyze it, the entire process of joining

with the soul was turned into a science. Yoga precedes Hinduism, which is

a particular religion, and at its inception, the practices of Yoga were

intended to be universal. The ancient sages had at their disposal the

power to witness their own spiritual evolution, which boiled down to

watching the mind approach the soul. What they discovered can be stated in

a few cardinal points:

·                     Evolution takes place inside. It isn't a matter of

pilgrimages, observances, and obeying religious rules. No codes of conduct

can alter the fact that every mind is on a soul journey.

·                     Evolution is automatic. In the larger view, the soul

is always pulling at us. Its force field is inescapable.

·                     A person is required to pay attention. Since the

journey to the soul happens only in awareness, if you block out awareness

you impede your progress; if you pay attention, you build up momentum.

·                     The final goal is inevitable. No one can resist the

soul forever. Saints and sinners are on the same road.

·                     It is better to cooperate than to resist. The soul

is the source of truth and love. If you try to avoid it, those things will

not increase in your life. If you cooperate, your life will be organized

with the help of infinite power and intelligence as it flows from God.

·                     External action still counts. Action is a physical

process linked to the mind; the two cannot be separated, so even though

this is a journey of the mind, outer activity either helps or detracts.

None of these statements is startling (or particularly Indian). The fact

that Yoga was later identified with extremely esoteric practices is

secondary. Because it started out as a neutral way of describing the

reality of spiritual awakening, Yoga is no less and no more objective than

our quantum model; in both cases one is concerned with how ordinary

reality alters the closer one gets to the event horizon. This might be a

good place to mention, for those who do not already know, that the

physical exercises gathered under the name of Hatha Yoga constitute the

smallest part of a huge body of understanding; they are not necessary on

the spiritual journey, yet they are highly useful to those who feel

attracted in that direction.

If you accept that Yoga is accurate in its description, then any aspect of

life can be filtered through it. Let me take the issue of identity and

view it in terms of initial separation that gradually becomes a state of

union:

IDENTITY

Stage One:I am small and insignificant, stranded on the vast expanse

of Nature. I hope I can survive.

Stage Two:I can do more than survive; I can compete and fulfill more

of my needs.

Stage Three:I am peaceful inside. My inner world is beginning to

satisfy me more than outward things.

Stage Four:I am self-sufficient. Things may not always go my way,

but that doesn't shake me anymore.

Stage Five:I have discovered how to manifest my desires from within.

My inner world turned out to have power.

Stage Six:Six: I am at the center of an immense scheme of Power and

intelligence that emanates from God.

Stage Seven:I am.

You can accurately graph a person's spiritual growth on this scale alone.

The ego moves from an isolated, helpless state to a realization that it

might have power; then it looks for where the power comes from, at first

deciding that it must be external, in the form of money and status, but in

time realizing that the source of power is internal. More time passes and

the difference between inner and outer power dissolves. All of reality is

perceived as having one source; in the end, you are that source. Let's try

another issue, that of faith:

FAITH

Stage One:Faith is a matter of survival, If I don't pray to God, he

can destroy me.

Stage Two:I'm beginning to have faith in myself. I pray to God to

help me get what I want.

Stage Three:Faith brings me peace. I pray that life should be free

from turmoil and distress.

Stage Four:I have faith that inner knowledge will uphold me. I pray

for more insight into God's ways.

Stage Five:Faith tells me that God will support my every desire. I

pray that I am worthy of his faith in me.

Stage Six:Faith can move mountains. I pray to be God's instrument of

transformation.

Stage Seven:Faith melts into universal being. When I pray, I find

that I am praying to myself.

Notice how strikingly different the same word is in each stage. When

people say that they have faith or that they believe in prayer, you cannot

be certain what they mean without more understanding. This accounts for

why there is such wild divergence of opinion about whether God listens to

prayers and answers them. In relative terms, it all depends on your level

of consciousness. At lower levels the thoughts behind a prayer may be too

diffuse to create a result. As separation closes, the gap between prayer

and result is closed, too; every prayer is answered. At the level of

miracles prayer has the power to alter outward events. Finally, in the

state of unity consciousness, there is no need for prayer. Your every

thought comes from the soul; therefore you would only be praying to

yourself.

A boundary is the same as a horizon. If you attempt to walk around the

world, the horizon is the farthest boundary of your sight, yet it keeps

advancing ahead of you as you move. The spiritual equivalent is stated

eloquently in a verse from the mystical Catholic monk Thomas Merton:

The Lord travels in all directions at once.

The Lord arrives from all directions at once.

Wherever we are, we find that He has just departed. Wherever we go, we

find that He has just arrived before us.

In literal terms this verse states two things. One we already know: God is

elusive because he exists in the domain of uncertainty, where time and

space aren't fixed. The other is that God is always perceived within

boundaries. We get only a limited idea of him, and that limited idea keeps

shifting. There is no cure for this misperception until the final stage of

unity; until then, the gap of separation keeps causing the mind to think

it knows God when only partial knowledge is available. In shorthand form,

here are the horizons that limit our vision in the seven stages:

Stage One: Horizon of Fear

I provide for the necessities and look out for myself. But when I get

anxious, I feel lost. Only God knows why bad things happen in this world.

Bounded by anxiety, insecurity, dependency.

Stage Two: Horizon of Control

I exert power and relish competition as a way of fulfilling my ambitions.

But when things get beyond my control, I am totally frustrated. Only God

knows why things don't work out the way I plan.

Bounded by guilt, duty, victimization.

Stage Three: Horizon of Fatalism

I'm at peace with myself and know what is happening with me inside. But I

lose my center when nothing makes sense anymore. Only God knows why

destiny can be so cruel and capricious.

Bounded by karma, introversion, lack of power.

Stage Four: Horizon of Self-deception

I navigate through the world with much more intuition and insight than

most people. But I can be misled by my inner voice at times. Only God

knows why my intuition deceives me just when I need it most.

Bounded by hidden secrets, past conditioning, ego needs.

Stage Five: Horizon of Fantasy

My inner world is rich with new discoveries, and I have enough awareness

to see that my thoughts come true. But some of my deepest wishes stay on

the level of unreachable fantasies. Only God knows why this happens.

Bounded by self-absorption, grandiosity, playing God.

Stage Six: Horizon of Identity

My whole life is devoted to service, and I can be selfless in the face of

great demands from others. But sometimes the suffering of humanity makes

me want to escape this world. Only God knows why I can't lose myself in

him all the time.

Bounded by thought, personal ego, traces of old conditioning.

Stage Seven: Infinity—No Horizon

I see no difference between my mind and the mind in all things. My

identity is one with all people. Only God knows that I am merged into him

in all dimensions at all times.

Boundless.

Perhaps this is the most telling "chart" of all, because we identify so

completely with our boundaries. The horizon is fluid, however. Each stage

breaks the boundaries of the one that came before. To someone in stage

two, where guilt serves to keep the ego from going mad with power, the

absence of guilt doesn't seem possible. It would be a sure sign that stage

three is looming should the person successfully find real forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a mark of stage three, and those who arrive there have

pushed their projection of God just a little further.

Society tends to cluster, like seeking like. At a party of psychiatrists,

everyone believes in insight; at a party of entrepreneurs, everybody

believes in success. This makes it hard to accept that God's values are

any different. We all know marriages where both spouses are sure that the

world is a certain way, whether it be dangerous, unsafe, abundant, benign,

or blessed. Is this a form of organized deception? Yes and no. Although

your boundaries define you, that shouldn't be taken as negative; every

stage of inner growth allows you the opportunity to see things that are

hard to see. Projection is inevitable and very powerful.

The boundaries of belief are true event horizons, because the mind can't

go beyond them, even though to an outsider the boundaries don't exist. A

fundamentalist Christian may be unable to conceive of divorce without

believing that he will be thrown outside God's grace, just as an Orthodox

Jew would find it inconceivable to break kosher laws or a Muslim to allow

his wife to walk outside with her face uncovered. A stage one

interpretation of Christ, if it reflects fear, would center on the times

he warns of sinners "cast into the outer darkness with wailing and

gnashing of teeth." A stage one interpretation of Allah centers on the

Koran's promise that one sin against God's laws is enough to deserve

eternal damnation.

These beliefs defy reason, and that is their purpose. Religions have

always feared the end of faith. (Recently some Protestant sects attempted

to remove all references in the liturgy to original sin and human

imperfection, but they failed, even among liberal theologians. The winning

argument was that only God is perfect and we should never forget it.)

Obedience holds the religious world together and makes redemption

possible. For God to have his place, human beings must know theirs.

In every stage the essential point is the same: You believe that God is

holding you back for some reason. As long as you are in that stage, you

will wrestle with what the reason is; this forms the core of your personal

drama. In truth you are projecting all boundaries; this becomes obvious

when you see that other people have boundaries totally different from

yours.

The end of separation is preordained. Eventually there is no more need for

boundaries. The event horizon gets pushed as far as the mind will go, and

after that God must take over. The word mystical is used carelessly to

describe many different things, but I would say that in any stage of inner

growth, whatever lies outside your boundaries is mystical to you. The

famous cargo cult among the Trobrian islanders in the Pacific derived

their religion when Allied planes dropped supplies from the sky during

World War II. Being unable to comprehend what an airplane is, the

islanders built straw effigies of them and prayed for their return. What

was ordinary technology to us was across the event horizon for them.

Even when you find yourself stagnated in fixed beliefs, the possibility of

closing the gap is always present. Every morning you have a new

opportunity to know God. Your starting point may be one of fear and guilt,

or it may be one of expanded awareness—that is all relative. According to

our three ways of finding God, no one is ever trapped without hope:

1.                  We can always cross the horizon to a new reality.

2.                  Clues are left to tell us how to grow.

3.                  Second attention enables us to read these clues.

The saint is equal to the sinner in this regard. Both are guided by God

from across the gap.

THE POWER OF INTENTION

The aim of spirituality is to learn to cooperate with God. Most of us have

been raised to do the opposite. Our skills and abilities come from first

attention and not second. As a result, our issues tend to center on the

lower stages, where fear and neediness, however much we deny them, take

their toll. In these early stages the ego asserts its needs with great

force—money, security, sex, and power make huge claims on everyone in

society. It is important to realize that God doesn't judge against these

things—when people feel that they owe their success to God, they are

right. When wrongdoing goes unpunished and good deeds are ignored, God

smiles on both. There is only one reality, which is spiritual, and nothing

lies outside God's mind. We tap into the source of creativity and

intelligence with every thought.

What makes a life spiritual, then?

The difference is entirely one of intention. I began this book by saying

that two people could be followed around from birth to death with a

camera, and there would be no external way to show which one believed in

God. This fact remains true. Unless you become a recluse or enter a

monastery, your social role is irrelevant to how spiritual you are.

Everything depends on intention. If someone uses kind words but intends to

snub you, the intention cuts through. The most expensive gift cannot make

up for lack of love. We know instinctively when intentions come from an

honest place or a place of deception.

In spiritual life, intention includes will and purpose, aspiration and

highest vision. If you set your intention toward God, spirit grows. If you

set your intention toward material existence, that will grow instead. Once

you plant the seed of an intention, your soul's journey unfolds

automatically. Here are the basic intentions that mark a spiritual life,

stated in terms of what a person wants to achieve:

·                     I want to feel God's presence. This intention is

rooted in the discomfort of being isolated and separate. When God is

absent, the underlying feeling of loneliness cannot be escaped. You can

mask it by developing friendships and family ties. Ultimately, however,

each of us needs to feel a sense of inner fullness and peace. We want to

be satisfied within ourselves, no matter if we are alone or in a crowd.

·                     I want God to aid and support me. God's presence

brings with it the qualities of spirit. At the source, every quality—love,

intelligence, truth, organizing ability, creativity becomes infinite. The

growth of these things in your life is a sign that you are approaching

closer to your soul.

·                     I want to feel connected to the whole. The soul's

journey takes a person from a fragmented state to a state of wholeness.

This is felt as being more connected. Events around you start to weave

into a pattern. Small details fit together instead of being scattered and

random.

·                     I want my life to have meaning. Existence feels

empty in separation, and this gets healed only by moving into unity with

God. Instead of turning outward to find your purpose, you feel that just

being here, as you are, fulfills the highest purpose in creation.

·                     I want to be free of restrictions. Inner freedom is

greatly compromised when fear is present, and fear is a natural outcome of

separation. As you move closer to your soul, the old boundaries and

defenses start to melt away. Instead of being wary about the future, you

flow with the river of life, awaiting the day when no boundaries of any

kind hold you back.

If these basic intentions are present inside you, God takes the

responsibility for carrying them out. Everything else you do is secondary.

Someone who is in the grip of fear, for example, cannot move beyond stage

one, despite good deeds, a secure home life, and positive thinking. We all

attempt to mask our limitations with false attitudes; it is only human

nature to try to appear better than we are, especially in our own eyes.

But once you set your intention in the right direction, self-deception is

rendered irrelevant. You will still have to face your ego needs; you will

still continue to play out your personal dramas. This activity takes place

on the stage of first attention; offstage, spirit has its own devices—your

intention is like a blueprint handed to God, which he carries to

completion in his own fashion. Sometimes he uses a miracle; sometimes he

just makes sure you don't miss the plane to New York. The fact that

anything can happen is the beauty and surprise of the spiritual life.

Strangely, people who feel extremely powerful and successful often set the

worst intentions in motion, as far as spiritual growth is concerned. Here

are some typical intentions that have nothing to do with finding God:

I want to win.

I want to prove myself by taking risks.

I want to have power over others.

I want to make the rules. I want to be in control.

I want to do it all my way.

These intentions should sound very familiar since they are repeated ad

nauseam in popular fiction, advertising, and the media. They all center on

ego needs, and as long as your real intentions come from that level, your

life will follow suit. Such is the fate of living in a mirror universe.

One meets hundreds of people who mistake their own intentions because

their egos have taken complete control. Some of the most powerful figures

in the world are spiritually quite naive. If intention is left to the ego,

great things can be accomplished, but these are minuscule compared to what

can be achieved with infinite intelligence and organizing power at your

disposal. God is on the side of abundance. It is a great misfortune that

the spiritual life has earned a reputation for being poor, reclusive, and

ascetic. God is also on the side of increased happiness. The shadow of the

martyr has fallen over spirituality with dire results. In general, to be

spiritual in these times means going it alone, far more than in the past.

In a society with misguided conceptions of God and no tradition of

masters, you are responsible for setting your own intentions.

Here are the ground rules that have proved effective for me personally and

which I feel will work for many people:

1.                  Know your intentions. Look at the list of spiritual

intentions above and make sure that you understand how important they are.

Your destiny is to move in the direction of your soul, but the fuel that

makes destiny move is intention. Intend for yourself that the gap of

separation gets closed just a little more each day. Don't let your false

intentions remain masked. Root them out and work on the anger and fear

that keep you attached to them. False intentions take the form of guilty

desires: I want someone else to fail, I want to get even, I want to see

bad people punished, I want to take away something not my own. False

intentions can be elusive; you will notice their existence by the feeling

tone connected with them, a feeling of fear, greed, rage, hopelessness,

and weakness. Sense the feeling first, refuse to buy into it, and then

remain aware until you find the intention lurking beneath.

2.                  Set your intentions high. Aim to be a saint and a

miracle worker. Why not? The same laws of nature operate for everyone. If

you know that the goal of inner growth is to acquire mastery, then ask for

that mastery as soon as possible. Once you ask, don't strain to work

wonders, but don't deny them to yourself, either. The beginning of mastery

is vision; see the miracles around you and that will make it easier for

greater miracles to grow.

3.                  See yourself in the light. The ego keeps its grip by

making us feel needy and powerless. From this sense of lack grows the

enormous hunger to acquire everything in sight. Money, power, sex, and

pleasure are supposed to fill up the lack, but they never do. You can

escape this whole package of illusion if you see yourself not in a shadow

fighting to get to God but as in the light from the first moment. The only

difference between you and a saint is that your light is small and a

saint's is great. This difference pales in comparison to the similarity:

you are both of the light. The irony of near-death experiences is that

when people come back to report how rapturously they felt bathed in a

blinding light, they overlook that the light was there all along. It is

the self.

4.                  See everyone else in the light. The cheapest way to

feel good about yourself is by feeling superior to others. From this dark

seed grows every manner of judgment. Getting out of judgment is vital, and

to plant that seed, you have to stop dividing others into categories of

good and bad. Everyone lives in the same light. A simple formula may help

here. When you are tempted to judge another person, no matter how

obviously they deserve it, remind yourself that everyone is doing the best

he can from his own level of consciousness.

5.                  Reinforce your intentions every day. On the surface,

the obstacles against spirit are enormous. Everyday life is a kind of

swirling chaos, and the ego is entrenched in its demands. You cannot rely

on one good intention to carry you through. It takes discipline to remind

yourself, day in and day out, of your own spiritual purpose. For some

people it helps to write down their intentions; for others periods of

regular meditation and prayer are useful. It isn't good enough to repeat

your intentions to yourself on the run. Find your center, look closely at

yourself, and do not let go of your intention until it feels centered

inside yourself.

6.                  Learn to forgive yourself. The ego has a way of

co-opting spirit and pretending that everything is going well. Thus we all

fall into traps of selfishness and delusion when least expected. The

chance remark that wounds someone else, the careless lie, the irresistible

urge to cheat are universal. Forgive yourself for being where you are. To

be honestly a creature of stage two, driven by ambition and haunted by

guilt, is more spiritual than pretending to be a saint. Apply to yourself

the same dictum as to others: You are doing the best you can from your own

level of consciousness. (I like to remember one master's definition of the

perfect disciple: "One who is always stumbling but never falls.")

7.                  Learn to let go. The paradox of being spiritual is

that you are always wrong and always right at the same time. You are right

to try to know God in every way you can, but you are wrong to think that

things won't change tomorrow. Life is change; you must be prepared to let

go of today's beliefs, thoughts, and actions no matter how spiritual they

make you feel. Every stage of inner growth is a good life. Each is

nurtured by God. Only your second attention will know when it is time to

move on, and when you know, don't hesitate to let go of the past.

8.                  Revere what is holy. Our society teaches us to be

skeptical of the sacred. The usual attitude toward miracles is a bemused

caution; few people spend much time delving into the world's great wealth

of scriptures. But every saint is your future, and every master is

reaching over his shoulder to look at you, waiting for you to join him.

The human representatives of God constitute an infinite treasure. Dipping

into this treasure will help to open your heart. At just the moment when

your soul wants to blossom, the words of a saint or sage may be the right

fertilizer.

9.                  Allow God to take over. When all is said and done,

either spirit has power or it doesn't. If there is only one reality,

nothing in the material world stands outside God; this means that if you

want something, spirit can provide it. Deciding what part you need to do

and what part God will do is delicate. It also changes from stage to

stage. You have to know yourself in this regard; no one else can tell you

what to do. Most people are addicted to worry, control, overmanagement,

and lack of faith. On a daily basis, resist the temptation to follow these

tendencies. Don't listen to the voice that says you have to be in charge,

that things aren't going to work out, that constant vigilance is the only

way to get anything done. This voice is right because you listen to it too

much. It won't be right if you let spirit try a new way. Be willing to

experiment. Your intention is the most powerful tool at your disposal.

Intend that everything will work out as it should, then let go and see if

clues come your way. Let opportunities and openings come your way. Your

deepest intelligence knows much more about what is good for you than you

do. See if its voice is speaking to you. Maybe the outcome you are trying

to force so hard isn't ultimately as good for you as the outcome that

naturally comes your way. If you could give 1 percent of your life over to

God every day, you would be the most enlightened person in the world in

three months—keep that in mind and surrender something, anything, on a

daily basis.

10.              Embrace the unknown. You are not who you think you are.

Since birth your identity has depended on very limited experience. Over

the years you formed likes and dislikes; you learned to accept certain

limits. A hoard of objects acquired over time serves to prop up a fragile

sense of fulfillment. None of this is the real you. Yet no one can

instantly substitute the real for the false. It takes a process of

discovery. Because it is painful to strip away so many layers of illusion,

you have to let the unwinding of the soul take place according to its own

rhythm and timing. Your overall attitude should be that the unknown is

awaiting you, an unknown that has nothing to do with the "I" you already

know. Some people reach the edge of illusion only at the moment of death,

and then with a long look backward, one lifetime seems incredibly short

and transient.

Around 1890 a Blackfoot Indian chief was dying. His name was Isapwo

Muksika Crowfoot, and he whispered these words into the ear of a

missionary father:

What is life?

It is the flash of a firefly in the night,

It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time,

It is the little shadow that runs across the grass

And loses itself in the sunset.

The part of us that we know already is the part that flickers out all too

fast. Far better to seize this time and become timeless. When you feel a

new impulse, an uplifting thought, an insight that you have never acted

upon before, embrace the unknown. Cherish it as tenderly as a newborn

baby. The unknown is the only thing that truly cares about the fate of

your soul; therefore it would be good to revere it as much as you revere

holiness. God lives in the unknown, and when you can embrace it fully, you

will be home free.

ENDNOTES AND

FURTHER READING

I drew from three vast areas of material for this book: religion, quantum

physics, and neuroscience. Each contains its own mysteries and complexity.

As I wove them together, I realized that many new doors were opening. The

following notes are intended as a guide to readers who might wish to walk

through some of these doors. I have favored imaginative readings here in

the belief that there is more adventure in speculation than in

conventional thinking. But I also feel that today's speculation will

become accepted wisdom in the near future, and I invite the reader to join

me in that belief.

If any one thinker inspired me to write this book, it was the noted Dutch

neuroscientist Herms Romijn, who has offered a beautiful synthesis of

spiritual and scientific thought in his long article "About the Origins of

Consciousness: A New Multidisciplinary Perspective on the Relationship

Between Brain and Mind" (Amsterdam: Akademie van Weterschapen, June 23,

1997, 100: 1-2, pp. 181-267). In this remarkable work, Romijn argues that

conventional models for the brain fall far short of explaining the mind's

basic operations, particularly memory. After testing the leading theories

of mind against one another, Romijn favors a combination of quantum theory

and ancient Vedanta, which together are the only way we can conceive of a

universal mind that serves as the source for our own thoughts. With deep

gratitude to him for his breakthrough speculations, I must also point out

that Romijn does not make any religious arguments—the expansion of his

ideas into the domain of God are purely my own.

ONE. A REAL AND USEFUL GOD

1. A number of short answers to the question "What does the experience of

God feel like?" can be found in Jonathan Robinson, Bridges to Heaven

(Walpole, N.H.: Stillpoint Publishing, 1994), pp. 54-62. Responses were

all provided by spiritual writers and teachers.

2. The beginning of "spiritual physics" is complex, and because quantum

theory has now expanded into at least forty different and often

conflicting interpretations, the whole subject remains extremely thorny. I

first attempted to unravel the basic ideas in Quantum Healing (New York:

Bantam Books, 1989), but for more technical resources, I can lead the

reader to several books that have made a deep impression on me over the

past decade. They are all classics in one way or another and recognized as

starting points into the quantum maze.

David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London: Routledge and Kegan

Paul, 1980).

Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (Boston: Shambhala Press, 1991).

Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind (New York: Penguin USA, 1991).

Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).

Fred Alan Wolf, Star Wave: Mind Consciousness and Quantum Physics (New

York: Macmillan, 1984).

Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters (New York: Bantam Books, 1980).

The best collection of original writings from great physicists on

metaphysical matters was edited by Ken Wilber, Quantum Questions (Boston:

Shambhala Press, 1984). Wilber went on to publish authoritative books

about mysticism and physics that combine compassion and great depth of

knowledge. A good appreciation of his insights can be gained from one of

his earliest books and one of his most recent: Eye to Eye (Garden City,

N.Y: Anchor Books, 1983) and Eye of the Spirit (Boston: Shambhala Press,

1997).

3. The Duke project, formally known as the Monitoring and Actualization of

Noetic Training, presented its findings in fall 1998 to the American Heart

Association.

4. Readers will vary widely in how much quantum theory they'll wish to

read about. For an introduction to the paradox of how light behaves,

nothing is wittier or more palatable for the layman than a series of

freshman physics lectures given by the late Nobel laureate Richard P.

Feynman: Six Easy Pieces (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1995). Big Bang theory

changes so rapidly that it is difficult to find an up-to-date treatment

outside the pages of the journals Nature and Scientific American. I have

relied upon Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam

Doubleday Dell, 1988), now ten years old but still reliable in the

essentials on how time and space came into existence.

5. An eye-opening book on the many conflicting aspects of Jehovah, as he

careens through the turmoil of the Old Testament, is Jack Miles, God: A

Biography (New York: Vintage Books, 1995). For a large compendium of

modern spiritual writings, the reader is referred to Lucinda Vardey, ed.,

God in All Worlds (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).

6. I am referring to students and devotees of Kabbalah. An introductory

explanation of Shekhinah can be found in David S. Ariel, What Do Jews

Believe? (New York: Shocken Books, 1995), pp. 22-23ff.

TWO. MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES

1. Although there are thousands of written scriptures in the Indian

tradition, much of the wisdom is passed down from master to disciple. The

most inspiring modern example of this relationship, in my experience, can

be found in Sudhakar S. Dikshit, I Am That (Durham: Acorn Press, 1973).

But the reader is also referred to the many books centering on other

notable voices of Vedanta, such as Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Aurobindo, Ramana

Maharishi, Paramahansa Yogananda, J. Krishnamurti, and Maharishi Mahesh

Yogi, to name some of the best-known exponents in the West of a

five-thousand-year-old tradition.

2. For the most literal translation of Christ's words I have relied upon

the New English Bible translation, except for some instances where the

King James version was inescapable, having become part of our language.

For scriptural quotations outside the recognized gospels, see Ricky Alan

Mayotte, The Complete Jesus (South Royalton, Vt.: Steerforth Press, 1997).

I should also point out that all interpretations of Christ's words in this

book are my own and not derived from any sect or authority.

3. Hawking himself does not deal in the connections between spirituality

and quantum physics. The latest and best summary of those connections is

made in Paul Davies, The Mind of God (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992).

In this follow-up to his classic God and the New Physics, Davies deals

with the central issue of whether an intelligent creator is consistent

with modern cosmology.

THREE. SEVEN STAGES OF GOD

1. An excellent discussion of addictions from the social and personality

level can be found in Angelus Arrien, The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths

of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer and Visionary (San Francisco: Harper San

Francisco: 1993), which I have adapted to fit my spiritual argument.

2. Sister Marie's miraculous feats are recounted in Patricia Treece, The

Sanctified Body (Liguori, Mo.: Triumph Books, 1993), pp. 276-80. This is

the most reliable, detailed account of miracle-working in the Catholic

church over the past century.

3. The deeply moving story of Father Maximilian is in Treece, Sanctified

Body, pp. 140-43. She has also written a complete biography, A Man for

Others (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982).

FOUR. A MANUAL FOR SAINTS

1. Griffith's experience is recounted in full in Vardey, ed., God in All

Worlds, p. 88.

2. My version of the night of Qadr is derived from Thomas W. Lippman,

Understanding Islam (New York: Penguin/Meridian, 1995), pp. 38-39.

3. Some of the first and best arguments for the "mind field" were made in

Penfield's The Mystery of the Mind (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press, 1975).

4. Fascinating connections are made between brain function and spiritual

experiences in Valerie V. Hunt, Infinite Mind (Malibu, Calif: Malibu

Publishing, 1996).

5. I am making a strong argument for the notion that mind is not localized

in the brain but extends like a force field beyond space and time. To make

this argument, I have relied upon the most eloquent thinker on

nonlocalized mind, Rupert Sheldrake. His major work to date is The

Presence of the Past (New York: Times Books, 1988), but readers will be

drawn to his more informal conversations on science and spirituality in

Michael Fox and Rupert Sheldrake, Natural Grace (New York: Doubleday,

1996).

Sheldrake is unique in offering ingenious experiments that would prove the

existence of the mind field (he refers to it as the field of

morphogenesis). The most recent proposals, which invite the reader to

participate, appear in his book Seven Experiments That Could Change the

World (New York: Riverhead Books, 1995).

FIVE. STRANGE POWERS

1. Dr. Bruce L. Miller reported his findings in the April 1998 issue of

the journal Neurology.

2. The best popular writing on this mystery is still found in Oliver

Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1987). Connections between spiritual awakening and brain disease

have been speculated about for a long time but never proven. A striking

modern example, however, can be found in Suzanne Segal, Collision With the

Infinite (San Diego: Blue Dove Press, 1996).

SIX. CONTACTING GOD

1. Credible attempts to explain the soul in scientific terms are rare. The

best is found in Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1989).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Deepak Chopra has written twenty-five books, which have been translated

into thirty-five languages. He is also the author of more than one hundred

audio- and videotape series, including five critically acclaimed programs

on public television. In 1999 Time magazine selected Dr. Chopra as one of

the Top 100 Icons and Heroes of the Century, describing him as "the

poet-prophet of alternative medicine." Dr. Chopra currently serves as CEO

and founder of The Chopra Center for Well Being in La Jolla, California.

(For information regarding The Chopra Center for Well Being, call

888-424-6772 or visit the Web site at www.chopra.com.)

If you have enjoyed this book and would like the opportunity to explore

higher realms of consciousness and have a more direct experience of

divinity, you may do so interactively at Deepak Chopra's new Web site,

www.mypotential.com.