Transcending Death |
Here are four items written by William T Hathaway. His first book, “A World of Hurt”, won a Rinehart Foundation Award. His new one, Wellsprings: A Fable of Consciousness, concerns the environmental crisis. Hathaway’s most recent title, “Radical Peace”, gives voice to a loosely united network of war resisters, deserters, and peace activists, and the actions they have personally taken to end war, and create a peaceful society. We found the chapter we have seen to be a riveting, well-told story. For more about that book, please direct your browser to media.trineday.com/radicalpeace/ Hathaway was a Fulbright professor of creative writing at universities in Germany, where he currently lives. A full selection of his writing is available at www.peacewriter.org. The first item on The Zoo Fence by William Hathaway is a consideration of death, why we fear it and why we needn’t. To jump to this article now, please click here. The second is a report of a visit to an ashram built by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the central point of India, known as the Brahmasthan, about 60 kilometers northeast of Jabalpur. In the Vedic tradition, brahmasthan marks the central point of any location, including, for example, a home, a building, or, in this instance, a geographical area like India. It is said that from this central point, energy flows toward and into the entirety around it. To jump to this article now, please click here. The third item is a brief consideration of the Vedic tradition articulating the indelible interrelationship of the Creator and creation, the idea that God on the one hand, and you and me and everyone and everything else on the other hand, share a Single, Self-Same Identity. This perspective is perhaps most succinctly expressed in the Vedantic mantra Tat Tvam Asi, meaning “thou art That”. To jump to this article now, please click here. The fourth item offered here consists of excerpts from WELLSPRINGS: A Fable of Consciousness, a novel by William T. Hathaway published by John Hunt Publishing. An additional selection from this novel is posted at http://www.cosmicegg-books.com/books/wellsprings. William T. Hathaway’s other books include “A World of Hurt” (Rinehart Foundation Award), “CD-Ring”, “Summer Snow”, and “Radical Peace: People Refusing War”. A full selection of his writing is available at www.peacewriter.org The author describes this book thusly, “The time is 2026. The earth’s ecosystem has broken down under human abuse. Water supplies are shrinking. Rain is rare, and North America is gripped in the Great Drought with crops withering and forests dying. In the midst of environmental and social collapse, an old woman and a young man set out to heal nature and reactivate the cycle of flow by using techniques of higher consciousness. But the corporations that control the remaining water lash out to stop them. “In the novel water is analogous to consciousness. People are out of contact with their own inner wellsprings of consciousness, so their lives are withering. And their ignorant actions have driven the earth's water deep underground, so nature is withering. Human life and the earth's life are trapped in suffering. The story shows the two main characters evolving their consciousness to a level where they can sense the water and restore its natural flow for humanity and the earth. A blend of adventure, ecology, and mystic wisdom, WELLSPRINGS: A Fable of Consciousness is a frightening but hopeful look into a future that is looming closer every day. “It’s also a love story, which is of course also good for our consciousness. “The book begins with the narrator, Bob, getting ready to leave his hometown in California after graduating from high school.” To read these excerpts, please click here. |
Death. The very word casts a pall of doom. Why is it so upsetting to us? Perhaps because it conflicts with two different ways in which we know the world. We know intuitively we are immortal beings, an essence deep within us is eternal. Our sense perceptions, though, tell us we die and cease to exist. We see that the person we knew is gone. The body lying there is not them at all. Where are they? Where are we going to be when we die? How can an immortal being cease to exist? This contradiction between two kinds of knowing creates an epistemological crisis in us. What is really true? This contradiction is bridged when we reach the state of samadhi while meditating (my experience has been through Transcendental Meditation). In samadhi our brain waves, breath rate, and blood chemistry change, and we enter a fourth state of consciousness distinct from waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. Our thoughts fall away, our mind becomes silent, and we transcend, go beyond, our everyday relative self. We leave all that behind, analogous to dying, and leaving the body, and we shift into the transcendental Self, the field of consciousness that manifests and animates the universe. As our individual ego fades, we merge with this unified field where everything becomes one. But paradoxically we’re still us; we don’t disappear into it. Instead we experience this field as the interface between God and the universe, God and us, filled with divine love, energy, and intelligence. But we experience it usually for only a few moments; it’s too overwhelming for us to stay longer. We think How wonderful! and are pulled out into the relative again, back into thoughts and boundaries. But our minds have been infused with some of the qualities of that field, and we bring those into our activity, making our life more energetic and enjoyable. The divine energy of transcendental consciousness heals our nervous system of stresses, or karma, that we’ve accumulated in the past. As we progress through many experiences of leaving the small self, and merging with the big Self but still maintaining an individual identity, this state of samadhi becomes familiar to us, and we can stay there longer. We no longer fear death. We understand that just as we join with the transcendental field in meditation, and then return from it again, we join with it in death, rest awhile, and then return in a new body filled with desires to experience relative life. But once all our desires are fulfilled, and we are clear of karma, have achieved the state of enlightenment, we don’t take another body. We stay there with God. Why go anywhere? |
I recently visited the ashram that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi built at the central point of India, the Brahmasthan. Two thousand Vedic pandits live there, meditating and performing ceremonies. I’ve been doing Transcendental Meditation for many years and have had wonderful results in my active life — clearer thinking, less stress, more energy — but I’ve had very few experiences while meditating. A couple of times a year I might have a moment when the thoughts thin out enough for me to sense there is a field of silence underlying them. Very rarely I’ve glimpsed a bit of glow coming from that underlying field. I treasure these few moments. In my first program in the yogic flying hall I felt deep silence as soon as I started meditating. And it didn’t go away as it always had before. It lasted, and it glowed. When I started the sutras, I gradually became aware that the silence had an energy to it, an inner dynamism. As I went on, joy began radiating from it like sunlight. When I started yogic flying, I could sense this whole field was alive, filled with divine Beings. There was Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesh, and others whose names I didn’t know. There was Maharishi, Guru Dev, and Shankara. As I made great leaps, they told me, “We are bringing you up! We are bringing you up!” They were raising me into the air, but like cosmic parents they were also raising me into the full adulthood of higher consciousness. And amazingly enough, as good parents, they loved me. I could perceive that they weren’t dwelling only in the transcendent but were permeating the whole atmosphere of the Brahmasthan. Then they weren’t just permeating the place but also permeating me. Then they were me. At this, I was totally enveloped in divine love. I was divine love. The unity of creation became a living reality. I had heard this statement before, but now it was no longer abstract. It was me. And this is going on all the time in full glory whether I’m perceiving it or not. For the next four weeks I didn’t perceive it at all, just my usual mantra and thoughts, sutra and thoughts. Then at the end of the final Vedic chanting ceremony of my visit, I felt a sensation in the area of my heart. It was Maharishi! He was suddenly there, as if he’d just popped in. Then I realized he had been there all along, but I had only now become aware of him, as when a statue is unveiled and you can finally see it. This was no statue though, but a living presence. I remembered the section of the puja that describes the guru as “ever-dwelling in the lotus of my heart”. I could see this wasn’t a figure of speech but a statement of fact. Devotion poured from me to him, and I basked in his approval. People were leaving the hall, and as I stood up, his presence expanded to become like a hollow tube running from the top of my head to the base of my spine. My awareness was centered inside the tube, and I was perceiving everything from this inner core of silence. This is my Brahmasthan, I suddenly knew. People too have Brahmasthans, a transcendental center out of which activity manifests. I started walking, but I wasn’t walking. I ate a prasad banana, but I wasn’t eating. Walking was happening and eating was happening, but I wasn’t doing them. I was observing it all like a king on a throne enjoying the activity of my kingdom but not involved in it, totally free within myself. This is delightful, I thought, but what is it? This is the Self, Maharishi explained. The one great Self that enlivens the universe. You are in the Self now, and that is separate from activity. That sounds like enlightenment, cosmic consciousness, I thought. Yes, Maharishi told me. Just a glimpse of what awaits you. Gradually the glimpse faded, and my real identity became overshadowed by relative activity. Now that I’ve had these experiences, though, I know my deeper reality, and I’ll never be the same again. Editor’s notes:
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The statement “You are God” seems an absurd and presumptuous blasphemy, so it needs to be clarified. According to the Vedic tradition and panentheism, it’s not just you who are God; all of us are God. And it’s not just all of us who are God; everything is God. God is the universe in synergy, the whole that is more than the sum of its parts. This contradicts mainstream Western theology, which is based on a split between creator and creature. According to this view, God made the universe with us in it, and is now observing our behavior, rewarding us or punishing us based on our obedience to His rules. The religions of the East and the mystic traditions of the West have a different view: God became the universe, manifested it, is it. Rather than observing the universe, God lives it. The universe is God’s active side, engaged in time, space, and matter. God is more than the universe, but there is nothing in it that isn’t God. But if it’s true that we are God, why are we in such an ungodly mess? Because our unity with God is a living reality only in a higher state of consciousness. Reality, as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi said, is different in different states of consciousness. Ordinarily, we experience three state of consciousness: deep sleep, dreaming, or waking. Each has its own reality with distinctive physiological parameters of brain waves, blood chemistry, and metabolic rate. Waking state is the realm of duality. Here we are bound in the relativity of time, space, and matter, so we perceive separations between ourselves and others. In waking state the idea that we are God is nonsensical. It contradicts our perceptions. But it’s possible to experience a fourth state of consciousness that has its own reality and physiology. It’s called transcendental consciousness because it’s beyond the other three, existing at a more fundamental level. Here the duality and materiality of waking state are only surface conditions. The deeper underlying reality is unity, where the separations fade and everything, including matter, is experienced as one unified field of consciousness. Here your individual thinking mind merges with the mind of God. You’re no longer just a part of God. You transcend the boundaries of your small self, and expand into the one great Self, the divine spirit animating the universe. All separations between you and God disappear, and you become One. In transcendental consciousness you really are God, and you really are experiencing a sacred life. The most effective method I’ve found for achieving this state on a regular basis is Transcendental Meditation (TM). But even with TM, it’s usually a fleeting experience. In transcendental consciousness the mind is without thoughts. It reaches the source of thought, where it becomes pure Being — alert and aware but without an object of awareness, consciousness experiencing itself. This state is so blissful, so all-encompassing, so divine, that we think, How wonderful! And as soon as we have that thought, we’re no longer there. But as we come out, we bring some of the energy, intelligence, and joy of this unified field back into our waking state of consciousness, where it enriches our life. And ironically, one of the ways it enriches it is by giving us a deeper appreciation of our separateness from God. The sense of separation we experience in waking state is a great aid to devotion. It’s easier to love something external to us, even if this externality is only partially true. Each experience of transcendental consciousness also heals our nervous system of stresses we’ve accumulated in the past. It is these stresses, or karma, that make our mind unable to stay in that state while we’re thinking and acting. Once those stresses are gone, which usually takes many years, we function in that state permanently. This is enlightenment, the height of human development in which our unity with God is a living reality, not just a concept. Then we live a sacred life, permanently perceiving the truth of the Veda: I am the Divine, You are the Divine, All this is the Divine. Editor’s note: In this context, compare “I and the Father are One” (John 10:30) and Ibn ’Arabi “Whoso Knoweth Himself”. See also TZF’s “The Simple Way” |