That's actually an outstanding point Amore, especially about Satan giving us preachers who in turn fog our mind about who we really are and what we really and truly do actually possess! Tomorrow I am going to be giving a speech/sermon at the Unitarian Universalist church and what I am using of Alan Watts really perfectly dove tails with this.
, Shambala, 2018, (pp. 85-91)and part of my speech, if you will allow me to share a little bit of it. I promise it will inspire!
What then, is a truly deep feeling of salvation? Insofar as this question can be answered at all, perhaps it is best to consider one of the greatest doctrines in all religion in terms of a state of mind.
For this purpose the best choice is probably the Hindu or Vedanta conception of Brahman, because this is at once the simplest and the most subtle of doctrines – subtle just because it is so simple. The same doctrine is found in other systems, but Vedanta gives it the best philosophical expression.
It is that all possible things, events, thoughts and qualities are aspects of a single reality, which is sometimes called the Self of the Universe. In themselves these many aspects have no reality; they are real only in that each one of them is a manifestation of Brahman or the Self.
To put it another way, the true self of any given thing is Brahman and not something that belongs exclusively to the thing in question. Each individual is therefore an aspect of Brahman, and no two aspects are the same.
But man’s self is much more than what he considers to be his ego or his personality called John Smith or William Jones or Sally Denton. The ego is a device or trick (maya) employed so that Brahman may manifest itself, and man’s innermost self is therefore identical with the Self of all things. Thus if anyone wants to know what Brahman is he has just to look around, to think, to act, to be aware, to live, for all that is known by the sense, thought in the mind, or felt in the heart is Brahman.
In other systems of thought Brahman has many other names – Tao in Chinese, and mystics the world over find similar meaning in the words God, Allah, Infinite, Life, Elan Vital, the Absolute, or whatever other term may be used.
In fact, the intuition of the One Reality is the essence of all mystical religion, but few people understand clearly what it is to feel this intuition in oneself. We are, perhaps, more apt to think of this idea as just a metaphysical speculation, a more or les reasonable theory about the fundamental structure of life. Someday, we think, it might be possible for us to delve down into the deepest recesses of our souls, lay our fingers on this mysterious universal essence and avail ourselves of its tremendous powers. This, however, does not seem quite right. For one thing, it is not to be found only in the deepest recesses of our souls, and for another thing, the word essence makes it sound as if it were highly refined, somewhat gaseous or electric and wholly formless potency that somehow dwells inside of things. But in relation to Brahman there is neither inside nor outside; sometimes it is called the principle of nonduality because nothing else exists beside it and nothing is excluded from it.
It is to be found on the surface as much as in the depths and in the finite as much as in the infinite, for it has wisely been said that “there is nothing infinite apart from finite things.”
Thus it can be neither lost not found and you cannot avail yourself of its powers any more than you can dispense with them, for all these conceptions of having and not having, of gain and loss, finite and infinite, belong to the principle of duality. Every dualism is exclusive; it is this and not that, that and not this. But Brahman as the One Reality is all-inclusive, for the Upanishads say:
It is made of consciousness and mind: It is made of life and vision. It is made of the earth and of the waters; it is made of air and space; It is made of light and darkness; It is made of desire and peace. It is made of anger and love; it is made of virtue and vice; It is made of all that is near; It is made of all that is afar; It is made of all.
What, then, is nonduality in terms of a state of mind? How does the mystic who has realized his identity with the One Reality think and feel? Does his consciousness expand from out of his body and enter into all other things, so that he sees with others eyes and thinks with others brains? Only figuratively, for the Self which is in him and in all others does not necessarily communicate to the physical brain of John Smith, mystic, what is seen by the eyes of Pei-Wang, construction worker, on the other side of the earth. I do not believe that spiritual illumination is to be understood in quite this sensational way.
We shall answer the question sufficiently if we can discover what is a nondualistic state of mind. Does it mean a mind in so intense a state of concentration that it contains only one thought? Strictly speaking, the mind never contains more than one thought at a time; such is the nature of thinking.
But if spirituality means thinking only and always of one particular thing, then other things are excluded and this is still duality. Does it mean, then, a mind which is thinking of everything at once? Even if this were possible, it would exclude the convenient faculty of thinking of one thing at a time and would still be dualistic. Clearly these two interpretations are absurd, but there is another way of approach.
Spiritual illumination is often described as absolute freedom of the soul, and we have seen that the One Reality is all-inclusive. Is the mind of the mystic singularly free and all inclusive? If so, it would seem that his spirituality does not depend on thinking any kind of special thoughts, on having a particular feeling ever in the background of his soul. He is free to think of anything and nothing, to love and to fear, to be joyful or sad, to set his mind on philosophy or on the trivial concerns of the world; he is free to be both a sage and a fool, to feel both compassion and anger, to experience both bliss and agony.
And in all this he never breaks his identity with the One Reality – God, Whose service is perfect freedom. For he knows that in whatever direction he goes and in whichever of these many opposites he is engaged, he is still in perfect harmony with the One that includes all directions and all opposites. In this sense, serving God is just living; it is not a question of the way in which you live, because all ways are included in God. To understand this is to wake up to your freedom to be alive.
But is that ALL? Is it possible that spirituality can be anything so absurdly simple? It seems to mean that to attain spirituality you have to just go on living as you have always lived; all life being God, and kind of life is spiritual. You say that if the idea were not so ludicrous it would be exceedingly dangerous. First we might remind ourselves of a saying of the Chinese sage Lau Tzu:
When the wise man hears of the Tao, he puts it into practice… When the fool hears of it, he laughs at it. Indeed it would not be worthy to be called the Tao if he did not laugh at it.
The idea that any kind of life is spiritual is a terrible blow to man’s pride; from the spiritual point of view it puts us on the same level as stones, vegetables, worms, and beetles; it makes the righteous man no nearer to salvation than the criminal and the sage no nearer than the lunatic. Thus if all else about the idea is folly, it is at least a powerful antidote to spiritual pride and self-reward for being a good boy. Indeed, it is not something which you can GET at all, however fierce your efforts, however great your learning and however tireless your virtue is. In the spiritual world there is no top and bottom of the class. Here all men and women are equal and whatever they do can go neither up nor down. The only difference between sage or mystic and ordinary, unenlightened man is that the one realizes his identity with God or Brahman, whereas the other does not. But the lack or realization does not alter the fact.
How, then, does one attain this realization? Is it just a matter of going on living as one has lived before, knowing that one is free to do just exactly as one likes? Beware of the false freedom of doing as you like; to be really free you must also be free to do as you don’t like, for if you are only free to do as you like you are still tied up in dualism, being bound by your own whims.
A better way of attaining realization is to let yourself be free to be ignorant, for fools are also one with God. If you strive to attain realization and try to make yourself God, you simply become an intense egotist. But if you allow yourself freedom to be yourself, you will discover that God is not what you have to BECOME, but what you ARE – in spite of yourself. For have we not heard it said a thousand times that God is always found in humble places?
The Tao, said Lao Tzu, is like water; it seeks the lowly level which men abhor. And while we are busy trying to add cubits to our stature so that we may reach up to heaven, we forget that we are getting no nearer to it and no further away. For the Kingdom of heaven is within you.