Here’s another interesting emailed quotation from Andrew Cohen. I won’t comment on it as there’s no need. If you want to sign up for the emails click Andrew’s name at the foot of the quotation.

A Doubtless Conviction
Fourteen billion years ago, something came from nothing. The energy and intelligence that initiated that explosion is the same energy that is driving this whole process right now. It is what I call the evolutionary impulse or creative principle. And at the leading edge of development, that same evolutionary impulse emerges in human awareness as the spiritual impulse, the urge to become more conscious. It is experienced as the mysterious longing to develop spiritually, the ecstatic compulsion to become more awake and more aware. That impulse is what I call the authentic self. And anybody who experiences this authentic self will realize, upon reflection, that it is a completely different part of the self than the ego. The ego and the authentic self are parallel lines that never meet.

The ego is full of unresolved issues and unfulfilled desires, deeply fearful and ambivalent about the very fact of being alive. But the authentic self is only interested in creating the future. And that part of your self and that part of my self is not self-conscious and is not afraid of life. In the authentic self, there’s not a trace of ambivalence. There’s no hesitation. There’s no doubt. There’s no existential confusion. And it’s not a choice that needs to be made. The authentic self, in you and in me, once we awaken to it, is already completely committed. Absolute conviction is inherent in the nature of the authentic self, and that is why when any one of us awakens to that self, we experience an intoxicating joy and confidence, a fearless passion and pure doubtless conviction about being here and doing things right in order to create a better future. Why? Because we recognize that that is the very reason we are here.

Andrew Cohen

Plotinus, the Neoplatonist, has always been one of my favourite spiritual writers. Here’s a short passage on the soul from his most famous work, The Enneads:

We may treat of the Soul as in the body — whether it be set above it or actually within it — since the association of the two constitutes the one thing called the living organism, the Animate.

Now from this relation, from the Soul using the body as an instrument, it does not follow that the Soul must share the body’s experiences: a man does not himself feel all the experiences of the tools with which he is working.

It may be objected that the Soul must however, have Sense-Perception since its use of its instrument must acquaint it with the external conditions, and such knowledge comes by way of sense. Thus, it will be argued, the eyes are the instrument of seeing, and seeing may bring distress to the soul: hence the Soul may feel sorrow and pain and every other affection that belongs to the body; and from this again will spring desire, the Soul seeking the mending of its instrument.

But, we ask, how, possibly, can these affections pass from body to Soul? Body may communicate qualities or conditions to another body: but — body to Soul? Something happens to A; does that make it happen to B? As long as we have agent and instrument, there are two distinct entities; if the Soul uses the body it is separate from it.

But apart from the philosophical separation how does Soul stand to body?

Clearly there is a combination. And for this several modes are possible. There might be a complete coalescence: Soul might be interwoven through the body: or it might be an Ideal-Form detached or an Ideal-Form in governing contact like a pilot: or there might be part of the Soul detached and another part in contact, the disjoined part being the agent or user, the conjoined part ranking with the instrument or thing used.

In this last case it will be the double task of philosophy to direct this lower Soul towards the higher, the agent, and except in so far as the conjunction is absolutely necessary, to sever the agent from the instrument, the body, so that it need not forever have to act upon or through this inferior.

This is a preliminary review of National Geographic’s new book, The Gospel of Judas, which contains a translation of the recently-discovered manuscript and three scholarly articles written for a general readership.

I have covered the discovery and recent history of the Gospel in another post, so I just want to throw out a few first impression here.

The main point the press picked up on was the way Jesus regards Judas as a friend, someone who enables him to escape from his mortal body and fulfil his mission on Earth.

From the start, I didn’t think that was a well developed point, especially since Judas apparently took 30 silver coins for his pains. Of course, that may well have been a later addition to strengthen the view that Judas was a devil incarnate. But there’s a far more interesting point.

Judas seems to belong to a Gnostic group of Christians known as Sethians. Jesus is also portrayed as one of their number. They believed that only some people contained the “divine spark” that would take them after bodily death to a higher region called the Barbelo. Those who lacked this spiritual element would perish after death.

These ideas are rehearsed in the Gospel of John, the most spiritual of the four New Testament Gospels and the one with the greatest affinity with Gnosticism. In John, there is famous, much-quoted passage:

“Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit.”

There are echoes here of a salvationist philosophy as believed by later groups like the Cathars who were known more as heirs to the Gnostics than Rome.

When Jesus tells Judas that he will destroy the “man who clothes me”, Jesus regards that as a great service, not because of atonement or bodily resurrection, but because it frees him to return to the spiritual realm of Barbelo, where “his generation” live. He and Judas don’t belong to the “human generation” who will perish.

This is a very different strand of Christianity, unknown to those who follow what was written by Rome and its apologists. The more information we discover, the more we see a darker and far more spiritual side to Christianity than is generally accepted today.

Books like Holy Blood, Holy Grail and its offshoot, The Da Vinci Code are only reflecting incompletely this new knowledge, which has still to be fully expounded and assimilated into our culture

This post is going to be a bit contentious, but I believe it to be worth it.

I’m going to suggest that an updated version of Buddhism — and other spiritual paths — is urgently needed if they are to be accessible to 21st-century people. As a start, I suggest that “bodhisattvas” are renamed “Nirvaneans”, and “Living Buddhas”, “Posthumans”.

“Nirvanic experience” should also be regarded as accessible to the many and as a normal part of “growing up”, not some fabled Pure Land only visible to the ancients. Until we change our terminology and show that Nirvana is as true for us today as it was for Gautama Siddhartha 2500 years ago, living spirituality will remain the preserve of fossilized religions and charlatans.

With this in mind let’s take a look at one of the great Buddhist scriptures :

The Flower Garland (Avatamsaka) Sutra of Hua Yen Buddhism has had a great influence on the development of Zen. It brims with stunning insights into the nature of reality and is known for its magical, cascading descriptions which numb the senses and tumble us into Enlightenment by the sheer exuberance of it all. Buddha Lands without end, reflecting in jewels without end, come flashing out from the pages of these exotic volumes. No scriptural work comes closer to the wild dance of life itself than the immense, final volume of the Avatamsaka Sutra.

“Avatamsaka” refers to the garland of flowers around the neck of the Universal Buddha, whose concentration is said to summon up the spectre of the world.

The sutra presents the flowing patterns of life as the immoveable concentration of the Buddha, or Awakened Mind. There is thus a completely unhindered interpenetration between the Absolute principle, call it what you will, and the normal life that we lead from day to day.

These nirvanically-realized principles are not readily accessible to materialistic moderns who rely heavily on intellectual solutions to daily problems and challenges. Hua Yen Buddhism can be difficult at times but, like all of Buddhism, the doctrine dissolves into “seeing”, a concentrated, continuous awareness of the ocean of being, or Buddha-nature. In the final book of the Flower Garland Sutra, the monk Sagaramegha explains his doctrine of the universal eye by which he maintains his awareness at all times of the unborn Buddha-mind, represented by consciousness within and space without, here depicted as the ocean:

“Son, I have been living here in Sagaramukha (Ocean-
Door) for twelve years, having focused my mind on the
ocean and kept it present in my awareness, reflecting
on the measureless vastness of the great ocean, its
pure clarity, its unfathomable depth, its gradual
deepening, its variety of deposits of precious
substances, the measurelessness of its body of water,
its infinity, its being the dwelling place of various
immense creatures … and how it neither increases nor
decreases. I think: is there anything else in the
world as vast as the great ocean, as broad, as
measureless, as deep, as various?”

The book expounds the Hua Yen vision of the world as the vast state of concentration of the Buddha. All objects and happenings in the world are his teachings for sentient beings, and their lives are their means of practice. The Buddha is raised to the status of an all-embracing cosmic principle, the one consciousness behind all things. Gautama, the historical Buddha, participates as Vairocana Buddha, reality itself.

Despite his constant presence before all beings, however, he is only recognized by Posthumans. Ordinary mortals fail to identify his “body” which is the functioning of the world, their everday reality realm. As it’s put in the “Great Treatise” of the Taoist I Ching, “The kind man discovers it and calls it kind. The wise man discovers it and calls it wise. The people use it day by day and are not aware of it, for the way of the superior man is rare.” Again, “It possesses everything in complete abundance : this is its great field of action. It renews everything daily : this is its glorious power.”

The Flower Garland sutra is concerned with “clarifying the eye of unobstructed knowledge” in ordinary people. The means for this are twofold : the great guiding principle of the Buddha himself, fully revealed in his world — this is the path of the quick-witted, and the way of “enlightening beings”, the bodhisattvas (Nirvaneans), who return to the world of birth and death to bring all creatures to enlightened Posthumanity. The imperative for human beings is to develop the “ocean reflection” through nirvanic experiences, whereby reality can be seen directly at all times.

“The universally good always fills the universe
With various bodies flowing everywhere,
With concentration, psychic powers, skill and strength,
In a universal voice teaching extensively without hindrance.”

All our ancient religions have been distorted out of all recognition with time. Until we reassess them with an authentic “nirvanic eye”, they will become increasingly inaccessible to the majority, and the playground of fanatics.