At the advanced stages of his, my, and most spiritual paths, you see, the point is no longer to have exciting “spiritual” experiences, but to embrace all of life.  In my friend’s Tantric cosmology, this is understood as dancing between karma (work with intended consequences) and lila (the random shit which hits the fan whether we like it or not).  In my own nondual-Jewish view, it is the appreciation of God as both yotzer or (former of light) and vorei choshech (creator of darkness).  Holiness is in the shit as well as the shine, the laundry as well as the ecstasy.

At such stages, cultivating pleasant mind and body states, such as those which arise in a good yoga class or good Friday night davening, is actually counterproductive.  It’s crass, vulgar, coarse.  Just as a gourmet appreciates the subtleties of a delicately drizzled sauce, rather than the freight-train effect of one that’s been slathered-on, so too a spiritual adept is more drawn to the slight movements of the sacred inherent in the simplest of gestures, than to the knock-em-dead power of a bang-on-the-pew prayer service.  Not that there isn’t a place for both, but as one progresses, subtlety is all.

Worse yet, cultivating “spiritual” states is — as I’ve written about before in these pages — sometimes prone to error.  If I feel “spiritual” when I light candles, but not when I’m washing dishes, then maybe there’s something special about candles and not dishes — and, by gum, I’ll try to have more of that.  Even more insidiously: if I feel spiritual at the candles and not at the sink, well maybe there’s something about that spiritual feeling that’s better than the non-spiritual feeling — and so, hmm, perhaps the point of spiritual life is to have more of those good feelings and fewer of the boring ones.  From a Tantric, Buddhist, and neo-Hasidic perspective, this is all wrong; the point is not to keep getting high, it’s to extend our consciousness of Ein Sof into everything.

My friend and I, and many other teachers, have seen this error spiral into serious spiritual crisis.  We’ve both found ourselves trapped in an adolescent, kicks-driven form of spirituality, in search of ever more exciting buzzes.  Full-body orgasm’s not enough, shamanic visionquests aren’t enough, mystical union isn’t enough — and so we’ve chased ever more exotic, ego-blasting experiences.  This, of course, is a dead end, and a dangerous one at that.  Of course, there’s always a value in pushing one’s edges.  But when that is reduced to hunting for the next fix, the polarity of spiritual practice has been reversed, from quelling the demands of the ego to fanning their flames. So, there’s a gnawing feeling that we get, sometimes, as we encourage our students to feel the radiance of the Shechinah, or feel energy flowing through the chakras, or whatever. We’re both very good at it.  We can each do “the look,” where the oneness of Being/God really does seem to be beaming through our eyes into those of another.  But it is kind of a parlor trick.  And having gone through the con ourselves, there’s a bit of reluctance in continuing to perpetuate it on others.

Having said all that, I want to defend spiritual vulgarity, as a necessary teaching tool — even the most important one.  Indeed, not only is it a necessary part of the spiritual path, I’m going to make the claim that vulgarity is the only thing that will save the planet, and that understanding this is the only way I’ve learned to make peace with religion’s relentless parade of nonsense.   I realize that my audience here is smaller than usual: I am talking to those of you who have been-there, done-that with regard to experiences that the vast majority of humanity has never even dreamed possible, and who are now a little bewildered by the seeming duplicity of spiritual practice.  Fair enough — I think it’s an important conversation, for myself as much as anyone.

Why Vulgarity?

My first defense is just a reminder of the previous paragraph: most people have never tasted the nectar of spirituality in the first place.  The challenge of being a spiritual teacher or writer is that, while one’s own practice must always move forward, one’s students are often still at square one.  This is how it must be.  Those teachers who have settled into purely pastoral roles and are no longer growing themselves become, in my experience, either very frustrated (one mainstream rabbi I know, caught in just this situation, ended up becoming an alcoholic), or like parodies of themselves, aping spiritual moves which once had vitality, but which now are empty gestures (think, again, of many mainstream rabbis).

I suppose most teachers do this; like professional musicians, they know how to play the songs that people want to hear, and they know how to con the audience into thinking they care about them.  But the only way to punch the clock, night after night, without going crazy is to go through the motions without thinking about them too much.  That is, I suppose, one alternative.

But if one wishes to truly connect with one’s students or congregants, rather than merely appear to do so, then one must keep growing oneself.  Thinking you really know something about God, religion, or the human soul is a big mistake, and it is corrected simply by continuing to practice yourself.  I find myself nauseated thinking of a spiritual teacher who thinks she knows the answers, and has repeated the same ones for decades.  No — all the good ones who I know are themselves growing, changing, evolving.  This is true even for fully enlightened teachers (yes, I know some of them too; no, I am not one of them).  While their own spiritual search has come to a conclusion, they continue to learn about how the one manifests as many, how God dances as us — and how best to communicate that truth to others.

Remember, though, that your edge is not your students’ edge.  Many people who come to a meditation class have never meditated before.  They have busy lives filled with both real and imaginary pressures.  They have no idea that square one is even possible. Second, square one has an important effect.  I understand “spiritual experience” as essentially a change in mind/body state that temporarily lowers the veil of separate self.  This is described in countless ways, most of them so exuberant that they are hard to analyze: “I felt connected to something bigger than myself” “It was as if time stopped, and the only thing in the universe was my baby daughter’s face” “I have no words to describe it” “All my troubles seemed to melt away, and I felt held in an embrace of universal love.”  These are hallmarks of good spiritual experiences — and yes, I’ve felt them myself (all except the baby daughter part… so far).  Along the way, there are also less dramatic but still quite powerful experiences.  “I felt so deeply relaxed, it was as if energy could now flow freely through my body”  “Every time I hear that tune, it’s like it’s coming from an ancient, holy place”  “As my mind became concentrated, I saw how my ego is just a program running in my brain.”  All these can be experienced with just a little bit of practice — a few minutes, a few hours, or, in the case of the concentrated mind, a few days.  They are available to everyone.

And they really are powerful. As I wrote in Rethinking Jewish Spirituality, they show us that it’s possible to get beyond the egoic self, that there is another way of being human.  They give a taste of the light that is so delicious that we are impelled to practice more.  And they can, in themselves, awaken love, wisdom, and compassion in the individual.   If you’ve never had these experiences, please go have them.  Maybe one day you’ll tire of them, but in the meantime, you’ll be transformed.  And if you’re tired of them, teach them to others without irony or hesitation.  This is the important work.

This “importance” is my third point: that if spiritual practice is going to have an effect on the world, vulgar practice is going to lead the way. Early on in my teaching career, I took up teaching meditation because, in all seriousness, I thought it was the only thing that could change the world.  Not vipassana specifically, but spiritual practice generally; I believed, and to some extent still believe, that the only long-term hope for the planet is for human beings to become less selfish and less greedy, and the only way to do that is to get into the gears of the human mind and upgrade them.  By the time most people are three years old, I reasoned, they’ve already been mis-taught by their parents and their culture to want more stuff — and, especially if they’re boys, to compete for that stuff, and take pride in how much better their stuff is than the other boys’.

Even earlier in my career, when I was an environmental lawyer, I thought that law could be the answer.  But now, I think that personal change is necessary as well.  The form of practice can vary, but I still believe that the real work of social and environmental justice is going to happen within the human mind. If that’s true, where the work of spiritual teaching and the work of social justice actually intersect is not in the more esoteric or refined realms, but in what you could call the “retail business” of spirituality: bringing spiritual change to more and more people, usually in somewhat gross ways.  Ultimately, while I personally am interested in the further stages of the spiritual path, and try to write about them in this magazine, as someone concerned about the fate of our planet, I am actually more interested in the initial stages.  I believe that spirituality can bring more and more people over to the good side of the fence — the side with more concern about equality and justice, more respect for the environment, and more pluralism on global and local levels.  And I think spirituality can make people less racist, violent, overly conservative, greedy, and materialistic.But to do that, spiritual teachers need to interact with the not-so-good side of the fence, and cheapen what they are doing in order to reach more people.

Eckhart Tolle, after the huge success of The Power of Now, took a year of silent retreat to discern what should be his next step — not as a matter of a career, but as one of mission.  What he did next was not unveil the next stage of the path, what lies beyond “now,” but rather adjust the way he was teaching, simplify it, and, in a way, translate it into more coarse terms.  The result was A New Earth, worldwide success, and, through Oprah, the largest audience a spiritual teacher has received since perhaps Deepak Chopra.  (Chopra himself is an educated, enlightened nondualist.  His teaching is often quite coarse in presentation — live forever, never age, etc. — but I think he’s really trying to reach the most people with the most light.) Now, for those of us who have been around the spiritual block, A New Earth often reads like a vulgarization of Tolle’s own teaching, which itself is often derivative of other spiritual traditions.  (Tolle does not dispute this; while his own enlightenment experience was sui generis, and while he does not work within a single tradition, he openly borrows from other teachings when they suit his purpose.  Nothing wrong with that!)  Yet I stand in awe of Tolle’s success at reaching a mass audience.  He is giving over very powerful Torah, and he has figured out a container that makes it available to millions of people.  Kol Hakavod.

Let me take this even further.  From the perspective of a yogi, “The Secret” is about as vulgar as it can get.  It, and the Kabbalah Centre, and many other New Age franchises, basically peddles the notion that you can get what you want if you use the right spiritual technology.  This is the exact opposite of spiritual wisdom, which is not about having what you want but wanting what you have.  Sure, in the details, the Law of Attraction also involves a lot of surrender to and trust in the Universe (their capitalization), and it definitely is nondualistic in nature — you are part of everything, and mind is the truth of reality, which is how you can have an effect on what seems to be outside you.  But let’s face it, people are going to these places because they want stuff: a better job, a better relationship, whatever. Even this, I think, is a necessary stage along the way.  The Secret and the Kabbalah Centre teach people that there is a “spiritual” dimension underneath the material one; that what seems is not what is; and that their separate self is not as separate as it appears.  This is important teaching.  Do many people get stuck here, or get off the spirit train entirely when visualization does not cure their lovers of cancer?  Sure.  But could these people really go onto more subtle stages of spiritual practice without first having an entry point that meets them where they are?  I doubt it.

Anyway, what’s so vulgar about wanting a better relationship and better job?  These are real needs — higher up on Maslow’s hierarchy than food, shelter, and clothing, and thus less actually essential for human survival, but perceived as real nonetheless.  I think there are better ways to respond to them than handing over a pseudoscientific magic wand.  But even the wand is better than Wal-Mart. 

Delivering the Goods

Spiritual teachers still need to promise that you’ll feel good, and deliver the goods.  That’s the only way to translate the truth into the lies of the ego.  And let’s remember that the majority of churches synagogues in America can’t even do that.  They don’t even know there are goods to deliver, or that there might be goods other than coming together as a community, celebrating our religion, and repeating half-believed notions about God or commandments.  For most supposedly religious institutions, the first step is still yet to be taken.  Perhaps spiritual teachers should take a cue from places like the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, which trains mainstream rabbis in basic meditation and spiritual practice, and thus, slowly, transforms American synagogues.  Come to shul, and feel good — and feel “good” in a way you didn’t know you could feel before.  This is important. Wei Wu Wei, the British nondual teacher whose books from the middle of the last century are now gaining a wide audience, said that “in early stages, teaching can only be given via a series of untruths diminishing in inveracity in ratio to the pupil’s apprehension of the falsity of what he is being taught.”  (Ask the Awakened, p. 23)  That takes a little untangling, but it is the essence of the Buddhist doctrine of upaya, skillful means, and, for me, the only way I can make sense of religion as a whole.

A big claim, I know — but it’s one I make seriously.  Religion is full of lies, half-truths, and preposterous claims.  It scares the ego with threats of punishment, tempts our small selves with promises of eternal reward.  And yet, what other way is there to somehow convince the human ego to sample a bit of the light beyond itself?  We’ve evolved, over billions of years, a very useful ability to see ourselves as threatened little selves, whose needs we have to fill by any means necessary.  This is deeply ingrained in each of us, because without it, our ancestors would not have eaten, reproduced, or run away from predators.  That’s how deep the hole is.  So we need something equally powerful to get us out.  Religion may not be the best way to do it — the cure may be worse than the disease.  But at least it works for some people, and if spirituality fulfills its promise, it can deliver the goods of religion without so many of the evils. To do that, though, my yoga-teacher friend and I need to take a nice deep breath, remember how our actions are part of a much larger movement than we can understand, and get right back down there in the vulgar trenches.  I think priests have done this for thousands of years.  And vulgarity is how we’re going to change the world.

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Perhaps you’ve noticed that a lot of the email spam we receive every day has, in very small print, all sorts of nonsense text, together with the usual advertisement for more inches or real estate in Nigeria.  The reason spam is couched in nonsense-text has to do with statistical methods devised by the 18th century English theologian-mathematician Thomas Bayes. Bayesian filters rank each word in an email according to how likely it is to be spam. An email containing nothing but the words "Viagra, mortgage, and porn" will almost certainly be filtered out. But if the email also contains a high number of non-spam words, it can elude such filters.

Until recently, however, I used to read my email in an all-text mail client.  As a result, the nonsense-language had the opposite of its intended effect: I never saw the images advertising Viagra, but did see the text, which in Outlook and similar clients renders invisibly as white text on white background.

The result is often striking poetry. Sometimes it reminds me of Pound, other times of the cut-ups of Burroughs or the experiments of the L*A*N*G*U*A*G*E poets. Once in a while, as with most word salads, the juxtapositions are remarkable. There are times where I even discern a narrative, hidden within the almost opaque text.

The following spam poems are truncated in some cases, but otherwise unedited from the emails I received. You might try reading the text very slowly, one word at a time, as a sort of mental visualization free of conceptual logic. Or try reading it aloud. Or you might, as Burroughs advised, allow your eyes to wander across the textual field and become caught by surprising strings of letters.  Whatever your procedure, I hope you’ll find these poems as captivating as I do. – jm

1. brainwashing targeting postprocessor scum powdered acted boyishness plotting scholastically terming sarcophagus asiatic playthings milker meddled hurrying crept termini adverse exemplar boors crasher terrorist immature plump teaspoon porker expressive boastings hypoactive cradle technocrat schemer bowel messiest scantily menus expected temporary admissible algonquin adrian evens bootlegged seated appleton portmanteau accuser memberships midnight augustine ignorantly booth illegalities poplar crowd scribbles evaluations hunger angora ideolect scorch excreting bookkeeping couching humbling illustrations braved tad metamorphism baxter polariscope exile ignorance acetone plumbago eventuality andorra microstore advisers excessive talkie postorder 2.  abelson crashing scraper metallic seafood praises ethic polarography exciting advantageous huge accuracy populated scoured practicable mien crescent ignorance humanness crayfish ether teethe tensely anglicanism scrambles bounded boring acerbity adulterer beckman humans metabolic scarcely sauce midstream acolytes mayonnaise expounds idolatry adorable adhered scorch alpheratz idiosyncratic accreditation exploit saturday hostility televisors scantiness migrated cotyledon teachers schemers braced bible merriest tautly tasked adagio hungriest expected actual plumed possessional adult plunder exhaustedly expounded meteor poorer sawtooth atreus actuating plummeting credenza correspondents poisoning idiomatic idempotent cravat pollutes boxing accountability expect aches millenarian evolve tech expectedly hued scramble ethnic postgraduate country evicts meaningful poach activator tappet hypothesizing aphrodite testifying scuttled bernhard boost brawl pleasant existent countrymen crackles mightier iconic sauterne midpoints bayesian ache playwrights boldness screened practicing expunged admired countermeasure bluebush terroristic mentally activists boxtop cotton acclaim taxicab telegraphing plundering brainchild bogs albrecht brazing policing ethnography politico sanely ponies practitioners memorabilia imbalances arianism tetrafluoride menstruate bottlers bernard exogamy sane tariff exponentiates scraps exclude barrett telltale pounder adept boyhood militate 3.        bound astarte sarcasm estrange tactic seaport exerting scents memoryless playhouse matriarch courtesies tantalum meditations humiliations bobolinks bouffant corrupted acolytes boldest posthumous teller tar terminology boss tantalizingly textual eunuchs blundered alcoa posts bony booted postoffices technical adults et scalable postlude admixed mill tautologies covenant brave evildoer icings measured alton hypocrisy breachers math husky 4.        talkatively tallness bluntest midsection hutch expressively tad microcomputers tending addle tangible microscope thallophyte examiner courting atalanta covalent baltimorean baird meanly boat hydrology pornographer boca bonder adoptive angelica mendacious telegram aztec aides execrate bermuda excrete baden adorable horsepower cranelike book cracking schoolgirl cotton hyperboloidal tempters beethoven mediocre microword hypothesis exploiter meanings huzzah postmark bootes crisscross screams excite explosive terse seaquake scalded adoptive abramson mercurial taking amoco crawlers pleasant correspond meat acidic accountant critter plutonium posy boletus poets tank boone midshipmen immediacy tame teething bangor

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Recently, on a trip to South Korea, I was moved to tears at a rock formation venerated by Korean shamans.  The place was so holy that the power of it, the energy of it, was immediately apparent and absolutely obvious.  And it moved me to tell a story about irony, idolatry, and nature.

Here’s the irony: for many monotheists, nature-centered spirituality smacks of paganism, and thus idolatry.  But for me, being cut off from nature is idolatry.  When I’m surrounded by the noises of the city, and the incessant lures of consumer capitalism, I become diverted from my true self and my spiritual path. 

I’m not such a puritan as to resist the joys of urban life.  Yet those pleasures evoke, sometimes within minutes, a consumption-based perspective of "what do I want and how can I get it" — the yetzer hara indulged so completely that it becomes invisible, taken for granted.  I define myself in terms of the pleasure or pain that is being provided, and confuse stillness with boredom.  Surrounded by glass and concrete, I lose my connection to my Source, and have to work to get it back.  So, to the extent I still subscribe to monotheism at all, I find it enriched, not compromised, by the spirits in nature my Israelite ancestors sought so hard to erase.

Theoretically, as a nondualist/pantheist/whateverist who thinks that "God is Everything" makes more sense than "God is in Heaven," I shouldn’t be so attracted to nature.  My spiritual practice is oriented towards resting in the simple feeling of being, in naked awareness itself, regardless of what perceptions are occurring.  In theory, I should be as at home in a parking lot as in a meadow; awareness is in both.  "Is" — the way I translate YHVH — is in both.  And yet, I’m not.

Perhaps the pivot here is that, while we often think of nature as a positive quality, as if it is something added to our experience, I want to suggest that nature is, well, our natural state.  It is urban life that is something added to life as it is, something that covers up the natural state.   Our ancestors lived in conditions more immediate with the facts of natural life than all but the most rugged of our contemporary vacations.  Like other animals, humans are connected to the cycles of time and the seasons.  Yet unlike other animals, we have created an artificial world that defies those cycles.  That world, not "nature," is the change.  The artificial world is the idol we erect between ourselves and everything else.

So it’s not that "going into nature" is adding ingredients to the soup of consciousness.  "Going into nature" is subtracting noise.  Maintaining contact with "the simple feeling of being" is easier sometimes than others, and when there is something interposed between the soul and its natural state, and that something is a giant titillation of the selfish inclination, it is more difficult to rest in the omnipresent truth.  Nature does not condition God.  But un-nature tends to block our awareness of Her.

There is, perhaps, even a third irony, which is that I am most able to be monotheistically devotional when I am polytheistically awake.  When God is abstract, I am able to approach God-consciousness with wisdom.  But when God is concrete, and manifest in form, then devotion becomes primary.  When I’m in touch with the various spirits inherent in natural settings, my heart opens, and my religious soul awakens.  The fact that the spirit in question resides in a sacred mountain venerated by shamans might trouble some monotheists, but at this point in my journey, the particular form in which God/dess manifests is much less important than the energy of the manifestation itself.  I am a more ardent Jew — that is to say, a more heart-centered and devotional one — when I am in sacred spaces, regardless of the particular traditions which venerate them.

More ardent — and more firmly grounded in what matters.  In my experience, religion denuded of religious experience is likely to have a very short lifespan.  Of course, I know that many people are not interested in spiritual experiences, and do not want to have them.  I didn’t have them myself, until a few years ago.  Ten years ago, if someone had told me they visited a shamanic rock and felt a surge of sacred energy, I would raise my eyebrows and confess that such experiences were not part of my spiritual path.  But because I have trained, investigated, and explored, they are now.  And as a result, I feel closer to, not farther from, the essence of religious life.

My intent is not to pronounce judgment on those who worship an abstract God, or an imaginary father figure derived solely from Scripture.  I have also experienced God in traditional monotheistic ways — as a father figure, concerned with righteousness and integrity — and I appreciate that experience.  But I appreciate it because it is an experience, not because it happens to conform with a text or tradition.  It sits alongside my experiences of Goddess-in-the-form-of-nature-spirit, God-as-emptiness, Spirit-as-eros, and so on.  Thus the last of my ironies is that precisely because I remain a monotheist, I am committed to the holiness of all of these encounters. 

I confess, the spirit of the sacred mountain does not feel to me like the spirit in the ancient tree; they do indeed seem like separate, distinct things, and if I were differently inclined, I might well describe some as sacred, others as profane.  But I am not so inclined.  I want to know the sacred in all of its garbs, recognizing all our concepts and maps as so many attempts to interpret the uninterpretable.  The counter-intuitive and revolutionary proposition of monotheism is that beneath all those forms, there is One Reality.  And to me, the necessary consequence of that proposition is that all religious forms gesture at the truth.  Of course, the interpretations we provide may well lead us astray from monotheism.  But before and beneath those interpretations, there is the experience, and that is where truth resides.

I want to suggest that, today, monotheism needs the paganisms of nature in order to fight the new paganism of commercial capitalism, with its deification of desire and its technologies of satisfaction.  Against the market, God doesn’t stand a chance, unless religion offers a tangible alternative to Mammon — and that means experience.  Indeed, we are seeing in our times a return to non-rational experience, to spirituality, and to personal mystical encounters with the Divine.  This trend is both for better and for worse — all these moves are often couched in fundamentalist religious language, or still more crusader-like zeal.  But if we open the doors to multiple forms and sources of inspiration, monotheistic religion can be radically pluralistic, rather than imperialistic, and, above all, deeply powerful.  Dry religion cannot be felt — but nature religion can.  Let’s open our hearts to the spirits of the rocks and the trees.  They will forgive us our trespasses against them.  We need them.

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For most people-indeed, I’d say for about 95% of people-state change is what it’s all about.  As I’ll describe in a moment, spiritual states have the power to open the mind, nourish the heart, and change the world.  They are, I think, the most important force for social and environmental sustainability on the planet.  And they can be lots of fun, too.  But, states can also become dead-ends, or misconstrued, or actually dangerous.  For every one hippie becoming one with the universe, there are five fundamentalists ossifying their experience into dogmas of hate and ethnocentrism.  So, do the costs outweigh the benefits?  Is there a way to get the good stuff without the bad?  And what lies beyond spiritual states for those of us experienced enough in the spiritual path to have grown weary of them?  Let’s take a look.

1.The Benefits of (Temporary) Transformation

The first value of spiritual states is what might be called their “negative” capacity: you get to see that you are not your “box” of identity, predilections, and mind.   You get a break from being you, and that is really important. This you can experience easily.  Go to a drum circle.  Let go totally, get into the rhythm.  Forget yourself, like hopefully you do during sex.  Lo and behold!  Mind, ego, and all the rest of your personality finally shuts up-and look, you can experience life just fine without it!  Maybe even better, and more alive!  So, states are really useful, if only for that.  Many people never do it, and as I described in an earlier Zeek article, I think that’s part of why so many people seem locked into traditional values, conformity, and narrow thinking.

States also have a “positive” capacity.  There’s something important about those experiences when the walls of self are lowered.  Drum circle ecstasy isn’t just Not-Usual-Me; there’s a glimpse of an oceanic oneness beyond ego, a melting into the Goddess that is deeply profound and important.  This is some of what Gilbert and I experienced on our first retreats: a dissolving into the One, a glimpse of the numinous.  At least as an experience, holiness is real.  All those spiritual weirdos-they’re not nuts.  I don’t know what they’re experiencing (more on that in a minute), but there is an experience, and that experience is really valuable.  And if it gets mixed in with a notion of Shechinah or deities or spirits or whatever, these are useful concepts, even if they are only concepts.  Third, mystical states have a tendency to shift one’s priorities, in useful ways.  You experience this joy and bliss and compassion, and you get a little less obsessed with competition, career, and materialism.  At least for a while.  These states, transient as they are, yield a deeper, wider perspective on life’s “stuff.”  Would we really have as many angry people, hunters, sexual predators, stressed out neurotic nuts, or conservatives if everyone underwent a real state change every Friday night?  I don’t think so.  It wouldn’t save the world, but it would help if we were all a little more calm, and more infused with a joy that doesn’t depend on consumption.

More specifically, genuine spiritual states invariably lead to compassion.  I don’t know why that is; it’s kind of a miracle.  And that compassion leads to all kinds of good things: less selfishness, more justice, less greed, more generosity, less hate, more love.  I can hear my social-justice-obsessed editor clucking her tongue at spiritual narcissism, so let me emphatically state that, in my view, nothing would be better for the global pursuit of social justice than for more and more people to meditate and cultivate compassion on a personal level first.  As I suggested last month, there is just no convincing a conservative that it’s worth caring about some unfortunate marginalized person.  They have to feel it themselves, and that takes changing the heart-and that takes spiritual practice.  I don’t see any other way if what we’re after is durable, systemic change rather than fighting about the cause of the moment.

Finally, states lead to lasting insight.  Experiencing spiritual “highs” can provide a little more perspective on, and a little less thirst for, highs of other kinds, like sex, spirituality, drugs, love, music, food, travel, and other experiences.  Again, I’ve had a very rich and wonderful life filled with all of those, but as anyone can tell you, chasing kicks forever is both puerile, and a little addictive.  Mystical states can provide some of that joy and ecstasy without the side-effects and without all the clinging.  Last month, you may recall, I described some of my own strongest spiritual experiences (“A Jewish Perspective on the Jhanas“.)  They were so intense that afterward, I would  sometimes feel like, this is it, okay?  I have gotten higher than I ever thought it was possible to get.  Okay.  Whew, that was great.  I’ll do it again.  Okay.  Now I’ll do it fifty times over a two month retreat.  Okay.  Now I’m even tired of it.  So what’s next?  What lies beyond “kicks,” even the most sublime ones?  This is very useful: good spiritual highs lead to a better relationship to highs in general.
In fact, states lead to insights of all kinds.  Again drawing on my recent experience, coming out of jhana, insights into dharma, Torah, and Jay’s messy life popped like popcorn.  One time, the “wisdom light” in the third and fourth jhanas healed me of grief over a broken relationship which I’d been carrying around for six months.  Honest-it’s much later now, and the anger and heartbreak is gone, replaced only by a reflective, wistful sadness that feels sweet and appropriate.  Other times, I would exit jhana and instantly see the radical impermanence of all sensations: here one moment, gone the next.  I could poke through any wall of loneliness, anger, or greed.  These insights do last, even though the blissful or content or equanimous states which produced them do not. So, states heal us, they re-orient us, they motivate us, and they teach us.  What could be bad?

2. The Limits of Spiritual States

In fact, the limitations of spiritual states are as perhaps as important as their strengths.  First, what really matters-God, the Unconditioned, Emptiness, Nirvana, call it what you will-is not the state, the bliss, the light, et cetera.  Let me repeat briefly from last month that there’s a tendency that all of us have-but particularly spiritual Jews have-to deify and thus idol-ize certain states.  Oh, that gorgeous warmth of lighting candles.  Oh, we were so high during that drum circle / Kabbalat Shabbat / whatever, that was really mamash it.

But that’s not it.  It is what’s always here; Ein Sof, everything.  If it wasn’t always here, it isn’t it.  Real devekut has only one attachment: Is.  Totally colorless, totally omnipresent, and in fact, if you look closely, the only thing that doesn’t come and go.  There is no state that is it.  This is it; just this.  Not feeling special about this, not feeling relaxed or wise or anything in particular-although sometimes those feelings may arise in the wake of letting go. Just is.  In fact, mistaking a state for It is idolatrous, and the gateway to fundamentalism.  The reason is “fetishizing the trigger,” which I wrote about a few years ago.  Fetishizing the trigger happens when we find a trigger to amazing mystical states, and then mistake the trigger for the state, the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself.  This is the root of fundamentalism: this ritual is holy, that one is not; this religion is right, that one is not.  And it’s the root of the “right-wing hippie” phenomenon in Israel, in which well-meaning neo-Hasidic types get really seriously high off of the holiness of the Land of Israel, and end up hating Arabs and being incredibly ethnocentric.  States are powerful, and that means they can be dangerous.

Even when they’re not dangerous, states can lead to a whole huge pile of suffering when the conditioned state passes and you’re left wondering what the hell went wrong.  Believe me, I’ve spent many months in just that sense of bewilderment.  The answer is actually pretty simple: I mistook something conditioned for the unconditioned.  You just can’t relive those peak experiences after awhile.  I’ve tried.  I’ve tried really hard.  It just leads to suffering.  The only thing you can do, over and over again, is let go.  Let go of everything.  Every desire, every identification, every place your ego is hiding out and saying “I’m this.”  Let go, let go, let go, and keep on falling-because there ain’t no place to land.  Yet this falling, I am here to tell you, is the same as flight. It is also bad, bad news to get addicted to bliss states, as many people do.  It’s a spiritual dead end, a kind of masturbatory spirituality that’s basically not so different from being addicted to drugs.  You get high, you get withdrawal, you get high, you get withdrawal.

It’s kind of tragic, since as I just mentioned one of the many benefits of spiritual highs is that they tend to reduce clinging to getting high.  But sometimes it doesn’t work that way, and one addiction is simply substituted for another.  I’ve met a lot of “spiritual” people who really are just looking for their next fix, and it’s sad.  It is also irresponsible, imbalanced, and even if its less severe forms, can actually increase selfishness-as in, “stop bothering me with your needs!  I’m trying to have a bliss state!”

Now, again, some perspective.  I was told on one of my first retreats that concentrated mindstates can become narcotic.  I understood, but I wanted them anyway-and I don’t regret it.  Those four or five years of concentration brought on all kinds of insight, compassion, and the other benefits from above.  They were also freaking amazingly awesome and beautiful.  (See “Meditation and Sensuality”)  So, if you’re just starting out: cultivate states!  Just try not to get too attached to them, or think they’re something they’re not.  Love, learn, and let go. But for those of us who have eaten the apple, tasted the forbidden fruit, and been transformed by it-is there anything beyond?  Are we just to go on loving and letting go?  Or is there something beyond the holiest of spiritual states?

3.What’s Beyond States?

There is-but let me take a short detour first to reiterate why for the vast majority of people, states are still the way to go.  Really, where the work of spiritual teaching and the work of social justice actually intersect is not in the more esoteric or refined realms, but in what you could call the “retail business” of spirituality: bringing spiritual change to more and more people, usually in somewhat gross ways.  Ultimately, while I personally am interested in the further stages of the spiritual path, and try to write about them in this magazine, as someone concerned about the fate of our planet, I am actually more interested in the initial stages.  I believe that spirituality can bring more and more people over to the good side of the fence-the side with more concern about equality and justice, more respect for the environment, and more pluralism on global and local levels.  And I think spirituality can make people less racist, violent, overly conservative, greedy, and materialistic. But to do that, spiritual teachers need to interact with the not-so-good side of the fence, and cheapen what they are doing in order to reach more people.

Eckhart Tolle, after the huge success of The Power of Now, took a year of silent retreat to discern what should be his next step-not as a matter of a career, but as one of mission.  What he did next was not unveil the next stage of the path, what lies beyond “now,” but rather adjust the way he was teaching, simplify it, and, in a way, translate it into more coarse terms.  The result was A New Earth, worldwide success, and, through Oprah, the largest audience a spiritual teacher has received since perhaps Deepak Chopra.  (Chopra himself is an educated, enlightened nondualist.  His teaching is often quite coarse in presentation-live forever, never age, etc.-but I think he’s really trying to reach the most people with the most light.) So, to rethink Jewish spirituality does not mean to junk its reliance on spiritual states, because for most Jews, like most people, states are still what is necessary.  We still need to promise that you’ll feel good, and deliver the goods.  And let’s remember that the majority of synagogues in America can’t do even that; they don’t even know there are goods to deliver, or that there might be goods other than coming together as a community, celebrating our religion, and repeating half-believed notions about God or commandments.  For most people, the first step is still yet to be taken.

But if you’ve read this far, I’m guessing you’re not one of those people.  I’m guessing that you’ve had powerful spiritual experiences, and that, like me, you’ve struggled with what to do next: how to integrate them, or have more of them, or perhaps move from “state to stage,” in Ken Wilber’s terms.  This is the real goal, right?  Not to go off on retreat and feel close to God but shiviti adonai l’negdi tamid-to set YHVH (“Is” / Being) before you always.  So for you, what’s the next step?  I’m still very much on this path myself, but here’s what I’ve learned so far.

First, states must be refined and made increasingly subtle, so much so that they approach omnipresence.  The jhanas, which I wrote about previously, are instructive in this regard.  The first jhana is pretty over-the-top, filled with intense rapture.  Then that gets too coarse, and the second jhana takes over, with pleasure and delight and amazing, shimmering light, but without some of the intense concentrated effort.  Eventually even that gets coarse, and the mind moves to the third jhana, with pleasure and bliss, but not rapture and amazement.  And eventually, even the love and bliss of the third jhana gets a bit coarse, and the mind moves into the fourth jhana, which is equanimous, transparent, and so subtle it’s barely there. The first jhana’s coarseness is its strength: without that brute force, it’s very hard to get “in.”  As I write this now, transitioning out of retreat, the fourth jhana has become difficult to sustain-it’s just very subtle.  Likewise with all spiritual states.  At first, we need to get our socks knocked off: some amazing, wild ecstatic prayer service, or an upwelling of love so beautiful it makes us cry.  As we progress, however, what I’ve found is that the states become more subtle-and thus approach ordinary life more and more.  The title of Jack Kornfield’s book After the Ecstasy the Laundry is apt, and the book deals frankly with some of the painful hangover-periods that inevitably come after ecstatic highs.  But the ultimate point is for the laundry itself to be holy, to be good. That does not mean that the laundry provides ecstasy.  Rather, it means that by refining spiritual states, you don’t need ecstasy to feel connected anymore.

I remember after my first few retreats, I would try to re-experience the joy or devekut I felt on retreat.  For a while, it would work, but eventually, I’d get too distracted, and eventually even bored with trying.  Now, however, I’m looking less for a spiritual state than just to let go into “what is.”  It’s tricky, because “let go into ‘what is'” sounds like “relax, feel connected, be holy”-but my point is the opposite: that it’s really just letting go into what is, and being deeply, profoundly okay with that. If you’ve not experienced any of these states and progressions, that must sound rather banal.  But imagine having the sense of okay-ness that you have when you’re snuggling with your lover-just now, snuggling in with the “present moment.”  Not the love, necessarily (though that too may arise), but just the… yes.  This is it.  This really is it.  This is God, this is the point, this emptiness that underlies all of my transitory states of mind… yep, this is it.

The result need not be an aching sense of holiness, or the belief that you can fly.  (Though those too…)  It is mostly a negative capacity rather than a positive one: it’s mostly in the letting go, the relaxing, the un-distracting, the remembering.  Poke your head up out of the huge flock of self-absorbed sheep that all of us collectively are-oh yeah, you’re awake.  Consciousness.  Emptiness.  Even “God,” if you like, though that term is inevitably freighted with associations and expectations.  My God is named “is.”

So, for me, it’s sometimes easiest to just say “is it is?”  Which… it usually is. This is the process of making states so transparent that they slowly turn into stages.  What we’re looking for, “it”, the goal, enlightenment, whatever grows increasingly thin.  The “trigger” is always available.  What you’re looking for is always available-indeed, it’s just your ordinary awareness, if you can believe that.  Remember: if it hasn’t always been here, it isn’t the unconditioned.  And it is, in my experience, slow, gradual, and filled with fits and starts.  But it does seem to be working.  “To see the light in everyone and every thing,” Surya Das told me.  Yes-and not radiant, shining, first-jhana light-but just the ordinary light that is, all the time.  Nothing special-and yet, with enough practice, just as special as that which is most special.

Sorry if that seems paradoxical. Walk the walk, you’ll see what I mean. So, at first we have mundane consciousness, the space of I-me-mine and work and the rest.  Then, we have spiritual states, where those boundaries and demands are relaxed.  And then, we have some notion that the real goal is not any state, but what Wilber calls “the simple freedom of being.”  This is rather like negative theology in our own experience: not this, not that, not this thought, not that idea, not this ego, not that possession.  Ayin is everywhere, but it has taken me, at least, a lot of work to be able to refine consciousness so much that I’m not mistaking it for a pleasant state of mind.

And then, finally, there is the re-embrace of the ordinary itself-but, please, don’t do this too fast.  First, have the states.  Then, refine them away.  And then see that in every ordinary moment, lonely ones and lovely ones, there is the unity of form and emptiness, nirvana and samsara, yesh and ayin.  Don’t rush.  But do move forward. Now, in order to enable this negative capacity, of seeing God without “God”, there are at least four necessary ongoing factors.  First is a regular spiritual practice: meditation, yoga, prayer, reflection, that sort of thing.  You’ve just got to take out the garbage, every day.  You have to interrupt the torrents of thought, to-do lists, plans, senses of self, and so on, because otherwise “letting go” just won’t take.  A lot of times, when I ask “is it is?” I get a response of “yes, but so what?”  This is a good sign that I’m identifying with factors in my mind, such as restlessness or unhappiness.  It’s a good sign to take a nice, deep breath and try to remember that “I” am not restless; restlessness has just arisen.  There is no “I.”  Okay, whew.  Regular spiritual practice maintains the base level of presence of mind necessary to do that. Second, you’ve got to extend the spiritual practice beyond the mat, beyond the mind, and into action.  If it’s all about you, you’re going to get too wrapped up in your feelings, your journey, your states, your shit.  Take some time out of your head and go work in a soup kitchen.  Council somebody who needs help.  Volunteer for a cause you believe in.  Whatever it is, there has to be some measure of spiritual practice in the world-not just to heal the world, but to ensure that spirituality doesn’t dead-end in you.

Third, I think-and some would disagree here-that in addition to awakening, there needs to be some kind of “purification of mind,” to use the Buddhist term.  Theoretically, one can be a fully awakened, enlightened human being and still be a total schmuck.  Enlightenment does not have to do with being a nice person; it’s about seeing through the veil of illusion, knowing all things to be totally conditioned and transitory and thus unclingable.  What’s left depends on how you see the world-it could be God, or Emptiness, or liberation, could be All Mind, or No Mind; doesn’t really matter, the point is what it isn’t, which is any thing.  Now, if that’s true, it doesn’t much matter whether what’s in the mind is peace and love, or sexual desire, or simple obnoxiousness.  It’s all God, right?  This is how many clearly enlightened people still have psychological baggage and other hangups.  For me-and again, not everyone would agree-I think there’s still a lot of delusion that needs to be cleared up in order for it not to eventually block clear seeing.  I still get very, very tied up in the illusion of “I”, in large part because of the way neuroses from my childhood still continue to operate.  They are very hard to see through sometimes.  So, for me at least, the ongoing process of cultivating patience, equanimity, lovingkindness, and other illusory, transitory qualities remains part and parcel of the overall spiritual project, if only so I don’t get jammed.

Finally, I think you’ve got to take a good look at your life, and see if it is really conducive to taking the “next step.”  Maybe it just isn’t.  Maybe you’re at a stage in your life where you’re working really hard and building something, and so you need to stay with cultivating really juicy states once a week.  No harm in that.  Or maybe you’re raising a family, and the stress is just too much for subtlety.  This is why monks are monks, and not householders.  In my own life, I’ve shed three entire careers in the last two years, and am working much less-for me, anyway.  I’ve chosen to take large chunks of time out and focus on contemplative work.  I’ve stopped fighting with Jews about how their religion should be, and I’ve cut back on my political writing and work.  And I’ve stopped living in New York City.   These steps have often been painful; I’m a greed type, and I want it all.  But I want one thing more, and that thing requires quiet of mind and body.

So, that’s what I’ve learned.  It is possible and necessary to move beyond spiritual states, but it takes work, the right conditions, and ongoing maintenance.  And to repeat, I am not claiming to have completed this work, or attained anything.   As a final aside, if I were really beyond identifying with my “ego,” I probably wouldn’t be writing at all; the more awake I become, the less I am interested in teaching or writing, and even less in impressing anyone by doing so.  Compassion still motivates me somewhat, but humility counters it: do I really think I am so wise, or that I am saying something that can’t be found elsewhere?  I can imagine many realized beings who see no possible purpose in doing anything or going anywhere except Being itself, except perhaps in direct, compassion-motivated helping of others.  So, if you are reading any book or essay, including this one, you must be getting something less than the totally genuine article.  Beware of anyone who writes or teaches.

At this point in a Zeek essay, I often try to conclude with a poetic image, or a recollection of a spiritual moment at which all the veils dropped away and the nakedness of the Divine was so radiant and cleansing.  Having just finished a jhanas retreat, I have a big satchel of such moments.  But the point of Zen poetry and ritual, as I understand it, is to get beyond all that.  Whatever it is you’re looking at now-that’s the scenery for your enlightenment.  So I’d rather not write any conclusion at all. Get it?  :-)

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Double Check: MacGeekGrl

Header Image: The Devil That You Know by Thomas Hawk.

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– Will Rogers

In high school, all I wanted, but didn’t even know that I wanted, was a magician to suddenly appear in my life and peel back the grey curtain of my existence to reveal a magical, rainbow world underneath.  Now, at 37, I know that world exists — multiple ones, in fact, places of discovery, spiritual awakening, sexual ecstasy, altered consciousness, creativity, emotional connection, diverse experiences, all totally unknown to me when I was younger.  But it took me years to find them.  There were a few intimations in my twenties: a couple of peak experiences, usually with the help of one substance or other; some spiritual highs in my Orthodox Jewish years; and, as the shells began to break, some wonderful times with music, with pot, and at a few rave parties.  Really, though, it didn’t start happening until 2001, when at age thirty, my old life shattered and I felt I had nothing to lose by jumping off the cliff, and either falling or flying or both.

The closest I came: I saw Dead Poets Society at age 17, and was instantly convinced.  Unfortunately, I made two mistakes.  First, I mistook the form for the freedom, thinking that poetry specifically was the point, rather than self-discovery, which would have included coming out, getting beyond my ego’s fears, and other terrifying things.   And second, I followed poetry into a cul-de-sac of early-90s irony and cynicism — a trap from which, even now, I occasionally have trouble escaping.  By the time I got to Columbia, the Allen Ginsbergs had all gone, and in their place were coolness, sophistication, irony… all wastes of time.

There was no Mr. Keating in my teenage life: no teacher, no older peer, not even a friend.  I did my best, but I had no guide, and no internet either.  I was into the Beatles, and read the Beats, but where anything was happening contemporaneously, I had no idea.  And there was a furtiveness to it (another early closet), a shame of being into the 1960s, which for my stood for everything related to creativity, free expression, and living life fully, as opposed to the 1980s, which to me stood for superficiality, football games, and conformity.  I had neither the aptitude nor the interest in what my peers seemed to be doing.  I was a gay kid closeted from himself, so I had no idea what I was supposed to do with girls, except from what I could glean from pop culture and porn, neither of which could substitute for actual desire.  And I was a geek, toward the bottom of the social food chain, but without that blithe ignorance some geeks seem to have.  I knew I was a loser, but there seemed to be no alternative.

Of course, in the late 1980s, there were plenty of countercultures to choose from.  But I either didn’t know about them, or was intimidated by them.  There were a few punks at my school, but they all seemed dangerous and mean.  I didn’t know of any artistic communities near where I lived, and of course if I had, I would have been ludicrously out of place.  So I spent such large chunks of my adolescence editing a computer club newsletter, playing computer games, and being by myself.  Some of that alone-time was really quite creative, and a foreshadowing of the time I’ve spent on solitary retreat more recently.  But I was so alone, and isolated.  I had no idea how to make my life extraordinary.

From this vantage point, there’s a sort of sadness, a wistfulness, looking back on those times lost.  I know that the experiences of those years shaped me into the person I am now, for better as well as for worse, and so I try not to regret.  I try also to be conscious of how this dynamic contributes to potentially destructive patterns now, e.g. indulging the inner child unwisely, chasing after boys, and resisting discipline even when it would help me.

But mostly, I admit, there is regret.  Imagine, if there had just been one person: a boy, maybe, or a teacher, or someone to rip open that junior-high school facade, and tell me the secret that there are whole other worlds out there, don’t waste your time with these people, come with me, and I’ll show you a life so intense, so alive, that they can’t even dream of it. 

For a time, I played the Mr. Keating role myself.  At the summer camp where I worked, I turned the ultimate frisbee team into my own Dead Poets’ Society, complete with scorn for the normals, counterculture values, and even some actual poetry.  And as a Hebrew High School teacher in my 20s, I tried to influence my kids to… what?  To seize the day, I suppose.  To see things differently.  To make fun of the mainstream.  Simple stuff.  Catcher in the Rye stuff.  But stuff that no one told me at the time.

Yet as I tried to show my students the virtues of living out loud, was I seizing the day myself?  I was in law school, albeit for partly noble reasons.  I was deep in the closet, hopelessly and sometimes pathetically in love with straight boys.  And while I was going out and drinking and seeing some shows, none of those things, when I look back on them now, really seem that powerful.  In law school, too, I was lost among the normals, as if college had never happened.  All along, I was being creative: writing, painting, eventually writing music once I taught myself guitar.  Yet none of those had much of an outlet.  One photography show at Yale, and a few poems in literary magazines.  Otherwise, I treated my creativity as a hobby.

It took more traumatic knocks on the head, literally and figuratively, for me to practice what I preached.  A failed longterm relationship with a wonderful woman convinced me that maybe I wasn’t bisexual after all.  Burning Man showed me that I could get physically and emotionally naked without humiliating myself, and that it was possible for me to have those wonderful, intimate conversations that previously I’d only read about in books.  And eventually, meditation and spiritual practice cracked open my soul to possibilities of love I’d never even known about.  It has been a long journey, and it continues.

2.

I realize that the dream of the magician is, in some ways, an adolescent dream.  There’s a reason Dead Poets Society was set in a high school; just "going for it" in some vague sense is, well, a kind of high school/college thing to do.  But I think it’s still an important dream to nourish, for at least two reasons.

First, most people never take that first step.  Today, all these years later, it’s a wonderment to me to see some of my peers all grown up, yet never having begun a spiritual, artistic, philosophical, or just plain hedonistic seizing-the-day journey.  I’m sure their lives are fulfilling, with kids and family and the rest.  But to never have escaped the box you were born into!  To never have seriously questioned it!  It’s hard for me even to remember what those first steps are: questioning authority and conformity, finding that essence inside of yourself, being true to your heart.  This isn’t about being a writer or an artist specifically.  It’s about being an aficianado of life.  Something — and preferably, something rich and transformative.  Jazz, or exotic travel, or S&M.  Something that lets you really live, for God’s sake, rather than just go on, love (hopefully), and reproduce.  This may be an adolescent dream, but if so, many (most?) people are pre-adolescents.

Second, the dream has political import.  Part of seeing that you’re living in a box conditioned by convention, privilege, and unquestioned values is seeing that the box also contains oppression and injustice.  It’s not just vapid; it also despoils and chains and subjugates.  I think failing to "seize the day," individuating, and escaping from expectation is how Republicans are made.  As long as you don’t look too closely, and as long as you’re satisfied with what you’ve got, you prefer not to change how things are.  Most of the oppression is invisible anyway, and injustice happens beneath our notice.  So the system continues.

Maybe that’s what mainstream religion (as opposed to spirituality, radical religion, etc.) is really for.  It props up the householder life, and provides just enough juice, meaning, and reflection for it to be worth living in the first place.  Or who knows, maybe kids really do change everything, and maybe one day I’ll find out.

But right now, I want to live.  To paraphrase Mr. Keating again, my spiritual practice isn’t there to enable me to live a normal life happily; it’s life itself.  I love my writing projects, my queer activism, my lust of life, and my spiritual practice.  I love my weird and unusual life, featuring months of silent meditation and five careers and living in the woods and some pretty far out sensual and spiritual experiences.  There is deep bliss, love, enlightenment, compassion, and holiness on the paths I have chosen. People who’ve never "left" the box can’t see that; they can’t see that there are other goods out there that people might choose to pursue.  This is what distinguishes those who voluntarily choose a householder life from those who slipped right into it without self examination.  And again, I think it has political import.  How can you be deeply pluralistic if you’ve never seen from outside your born-into-it perspective?

It’s certainly not all sweetness and light out here on the limb.  There is loneliness, dependence, and the dangers of narcissism.  There’s not a whole lot of money or power, which for me, raised as I was to be a lawyer-statesman, or at least a lawyer-professor, causes a lot of envy — especially since I actually did go to law school, and now have friends who are rich, successful, powerful, and justifiably respected.  I’ve worked on that, and have come to some peace around it, but it has taken work.  Perhaps worst of all, long-term relationships are notoriously hard to maintain among bohemians, spiritual types, and other misfits; one three-year relationship of mine ended because my partner felt a "heart-pull" to leave, explore, and grow on his own.  These are all understandable and even praiseworthy from a spiritual and self-actualization perspective, but it sure hurt like hell, and it took me about six months to come to accept it without rage or searing pain.

And yet, for all that, I don’t think I would trade lives with my peers, if I could.  But the truth is, I can’t.  I tried very hard to live their lives, and failed.  That’s the point of the dream of the magician: I wish that I could have escaped sooner.

There are many alchemies that spring from those years of frustration and pain, some productive, others less so.  Thanks to meditation practice, I have learned to let go of regret.  I was always trying the best I could; it just took me awhile to find my way.  And the loneliness and pain has, obviously, motivated a lot of my spiritual work in the first place.  But I think my favorite of the alchemies of spirituality is how I play the Mr. Keating role today, only this time from the edges of my own experience, and with adults rather than adolescents.  Today, as I teach in spiritual contexts and invite people to explore the edges of their own hearts and minds, I encounter people who are as gray as I was back in 1988.  And I know, because they have told me, that I’ve brought color and light into their lives.  I also encounter people who are already growing and flourishing, and with whom I enjoy a symbiotic relationship, mutually opening, daring, provoking, laughing, and inspiring.  We are each other’s magicians, performing at a kind of carnival, in which I get to grow wiser and kinder, and experience more ecstasy than I’d ever thought possible.

Though I do wonder, sometimes, if the admission ticket could have been bought with a bit less pain. ___________

Images: Where Shall We Go, Reflection and Black Bird (lead image) by David Brooks.

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So what about that “Is“–that sense of devekut, the numinous, the Lover, that I found in the fourth jhana? As I’ve indicated, I didn’t just experience the jhanas as a blissful or contented state, which is how the Buddhist texts described them. I experienced them as holy–which is how the Hindu texts did. I’m not prepared to say that any particular experience was necessarily an experience of God, or an angel, or anything in particular–but I will say that they were extreme encounters with the “numinous.” Moreover, if I were setting out on this practice from a specifically religious perspective, there’s no question that these experiences would be described in terms of visions, mystical union, blessings, even prophecy. Jewishly speaking, they correspond in interesting ways with the states described in some of Abraham Abulafia’s books, and in the Shaarei Tzedek, a text by one of his disciples that is translated in Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. If the jhana practice doesn’t match these mystical states, I don’t know what does. (For more on this, see “Does Mysticism Prove the Existence of God?“) The presence, the light–it is literally bringing tears to my eyes as I write this, because it is so healing, beautiful, gorgeous, holy, and pure. For example, sometimes, during the third and fourth jhanas, there would arise a bright, hot light at the “third eye” spot–basically, where the head part of the Tefillin rests, a correspondence I did not fail to notice, although sometimes it would move up to the crown chakra point. This I will not describe further, except to say that I experienced all kinds of wisdom and insight in connection with this light. If you’ve had similar experiences, hameivin yavin. If not, I’m going to shut up about it anyway for now. Go see for yourself. Now, what’s going on in such experiences? As I see it, there are three options: This is a sacred state, and it’s just ignorant not to see that. Buddhists experience the state but choose not to see it as sacred (my Burmese teacher told me not to get distracted by any of these sensations, and that doing so was dangerous); materialists don’t see it because they are willfully blind. If love is real, this is real. This is purely a mindstate, which perhaps one day we can measure and stimulate artificially. The sensation of “holiness” is purely a sensation. Any claim that this is of anything–whether God or anything else–is reification, and thus delusion. Great that the states healed you and helped you see truth; leave it at that. God is there if you look for Him/Her. My choice, no surprise, is number three. It would be dishonest to sit here and tell you that I did not experience an intense closeness to God in these states, far more than any in prayer, meditation, ecstatic, entheogenic, or energetic work I had done in the past–and again, I’ve done a lot. This is what I experienced, and I don’t want to lie in order to make myself seem sane, credible, or level-headed. But I also don’t want to make any assertions or jump to any conclusions. I just don’t know. And I like resting in that question, because it prevents me from falling into idolatry, fundamentalism, reification, or attachment. As I’ve written about at length in my book Nondual Judaism (coming out next September from Shambhala), I think this word “God” is a kind of naming, a way of relating to “Is” that some people choose to do and other people don’t. Remember, “Ein Sof” does not mean “God”–it means “infinite.” And YHVH doesn’t mean God either–it means, I think, “is.” Asking whether “is” exists is nonsensical. Asking whether “God” exists is a question of naming. Do we choose to experience this moment as You, rather than It? If we do, You appear–quite reliably, the more spiritual practice one does. God is here, right now, I know it. However, it is also possible to choose to experience this moment as It, in which case the personality of God recedes, and is replaced only by a placid, transparent, omnipresent, maybe-aware emptiness. This is also true, right now, and I know it too. I know both of these things because, thank God or karma, I am blessed with these two ways of relating–the secular Buddhist one, and the religious Jewish one. I find both of them incredibly nourishing. On my jhanas retreat, days would go by without God-consciousness. I would surrender to the practice, experience ecstasy, bliss, contentment, and equanimity as factors of mind, and grow very quiet and precise. Other times (especially since the retreat coincided with the Jewish holiday season), the protective, loving, and sometimes erotic natures of God/dess would arise even during quiet concentrated mindstates. Even in the fourth jhana, there was a sense of “I am always here.” At the very least, there was often a sense of gratitude–and “God” was just a name for Who/What I felt grateful toward. So, I really do want to say that everybody is right–partly because I experience both sides myself. As Ken Wilber has described in great length and of great use, it’s a matter of looking, and as Wilber also discusses, it’s really helpful to look from as many perspectives as possible. I don’t think the Buddhists are ignorant because they’re missing the God piece, and I don’t think the Christians are deluded because they’re seeing Christ. I think we approach the mystery with perspectives, expectations, and vocabularies that both shape and interpret those experiences. The wings of the Shechinah are the flapping ears of Ganesh, and both are just a visual impression that should not be reified. Which perspective works best depends on the moment, and your heart. Now, this may not be enough. In a way, the jhanas really undermine some of the foundations of Jewish
spiritual life: if these amazing and holy states can be stimulated purely through concentration, then what do we really mean by “an experience of God”? Is devekut just a mindstate? Isn’t this just the kind of non-religious version of religious experience that Sam Harris, at the end of The End of Faith, says we should institute in place of dogma and religion? If you can “get there” purely with concentration, then what’s the point of all the God stuff–the piety, the worship, and the inevitable attachment to form? Biggest of all: is “God” purely a projection of the mind, a reification of a feeling? And not only that-what if “God” is an unhelpful projection of mind? Several times during retreat, I found myself engaged in what I came to call “pseudo-covenant,” or making neurotic deals with God to please grace me with another mystical encounter. From a Buddhist perspective, this is a really unhelpful delusion, because it prevents the clear seeing of the conditions that actually bring jhana about: concentration, effort, and so on. Even from just a nonsectarian spiritual perspective, though, pseudo-covenant is crazymaking. There’s no end to it–it’s basically a prolonged state of fear and insecurity. Whereas, when the states are seen as simply conditioned states–profound, amazing, life-changing, loving, blissful states, but still just states–calm and clarity prevail. I really don’t know, but I have a few replies–or at least, ways of seeing. First, I come back to a very basic understanding that it’s easier to see the truth at some times than others. This is true in mundane as well as spiritual contexts. Ever have a moment in a relationship when, due to whatever reasons, you suddenly see the truth (for better or for worse) about your partner? Conditions enabled that seeing–a crackling fireplace, a blown responsibility–but the seeing is true nonetheless. Maybe jhana is just an extreme example of that. With the mind blown and the heart open, the numinous just appears–at least to those of us who are looking. Second, let’s remember that sometimes this state appears even when we’re not looking. I didn’t come on this retreat looking for God. I had my intentions, and they were not particularly Jewish ones. In my experience, which I trust but do not defend, which I fall back on but do not proselytize, purely in my experience, without any assertion but with an admission, a confession, a release: God found me. Again, I’m not saying I saw God or spoke to God or anything like that. I’m just saying these are the holiest experiences I’ve ever had, and that if I was inclined to ascribe such labels to them, they would certainly fit. Third, let me return for a moment to the fourth jhana. One of the lessons of that state is how thin it is. It’s extremely subtle, which is why it takes the most concentration to enter, and why it holds so much power for spiritual practice. It is devoid of qualities: it’s not loving like the third jhana, or ecstatic like the first, or delightful like the second. Just pure equanimity. Now, that too is a conditioned phenomenon–but it’s a very
thin one. The “God” that emerges in that state is the nondual God: Is. So we’re not really reifying a mindstate; we’re seeing What Is through different prisms, some of them colored with love or joy, and some entirely colorless. This seems really important, and as I mentioned above, is one of the most important Jewish teachings of jhana. God is not a name for when you feel good. Fourth, I want to really inhabit that “I don’t know” for awhile, and see where it leads: not answering, not knowing, surrendering and letting go to this mystery that is beyond any capacity or concept. Surely this is wisdom. If there is God, nondual or otherwise, surely it’s beyond our capacity to explain. And if there isn’t, but there’s just a vast emptiness when all conditioned phenomena are let go of, well, then it’s exactly the same, isn’t it? Both “God” and “not God” end up in exactly the same place: empty of all concepts, radiant, mysterious, and yet somehow with a tinge of knowing. Finally, I don’t want to get lost in theology, when the point is the experience, whether its religious in nature or not. Let’s assume these are purely conditioned mindstates, whatever the consequences of that assumption may be. Let’s let go of magical thinking, and religious thinking. Great! Now the question is what are they good for, what do they teach, how can they enrich our lives. Sharon Salzberg, following the Buddhist canon, defines the quality of faith as “trusting your own deepest experiences.” Trust, not explicate or define or reify. That seems right to me, and these were certainly some of the deepest I’ve had. Everything is as it was: tables and chairs, loneliness and wisdom. But in my heart, there is now a deep knowledge of love. All images by Harriete Estel Berman.

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The jhanas are states of heightened concentration that have been cultivated by Hindus and Buddhists for just under three thousand years. They are altered states, full of bliss and, I would say, holiness, and they play a central role in the Buddha’s Eightfold Path (“right concentration”). Recently, I completed two months of silent meditation retreat devoted to the jhana practice. I went with certain intentions and expectations, which I’ll discuss in a moment, but the experience was more profound and more religious than I expected. After a few introductory notes, I will describe my experiences of the jhanic states and describe what I believe to be their significance for Jewish theology and spirituality. As far as I know, such a project has not been attempted before. 1.         What I did, and why I did it I wish to make three introductory notes. First, I want to explain why I undertook this rigorous practice, which involved sitting still for extended periods of time (usually, 90 to 120 minutes), and spending the entire day doing nothing but observing the sensations of the breath at the nostrils, even while walking, eating, et cetera. I had three reasons, and discovered two additional ones during the retreat. First, my real goal is liberation from the delusions of ego and the clinging nature of the mind: to learn to let go of clinging. On the Theravada Buddhist path, liberation comes from insight: directly seeing and knowing that all phenomena are empty of substance, impermanent, and fruitless to cling to. Insight, in turn, depends on concentration; you’ve got to get really quiet to see these characteristics clearly. So I went to learn concentration skills as a kind of prerequisite for a four-month retreat that I am on now, as this article is published. Second, I went because jhana itself helps insight. Distractions and hindrances are suppressed in jhana, and the experience is deeply purifying and refreshing; one emerges with an extremely sharp, clear, and quiet mind, ready to do the rigorous, moment-to-moment noticing that leads to insight. Third and finally, I did this practice because I was curious about jhana itself. On earlier retreats, I experienced what many meditators experience when their minds become concentrated: deep contentment, bless, gratitude, love, and awe at the beauty and miraculousness of ordinary life. Jhanas are like those concentrated mindstates squared, amplified, distilled — and I wanted to see what they were like. Along the way, I discovered two additional purposes to the practice. One is the deep “purification of mind” that is required to enter jhana: you really have to see and let go of all of your stuff, which in my case included a lot of grief, confusion, loneliness, ego, expectation, and just plain chatter. Every moment is an opportunity to let go of all this stuff, and I had a number of extremely powerful openings that perhaps I’ll write about some other day. In addition, the jhanas were themselves a powerful lesson in letting go. They are like everything I had dreamed about from the moment I became interested in spirituality as a young adult. Imagine your greatest dreams fulfilled, in oceans of light, bliss, love, and mystical union. Now imagine that you have to let them go. This is the lesson: that even the greatest of states arise and pass. You can’t hold onto anything conditioned, even the dearest and most precious experiences imaginable. This insight alone was surely worth the price of admission. The type of practice-what I did My second prefatory note concerns the type of practice I did. There are different schools of thought among Buddhist teachers as to what constitutes a jhana and how to cultivate it. Some hold that discursive thought and perception of the outside world must completely stop for a jhana to be truly taking place. In this model, a jhana is a totally absorbed state of mind; the meditator is only aware of the object of meditation (more on that in a moment), and nothing else. Even the passage of time is not noticed in such an absorbed state. Other teachers, however, will say that a jhana has commenced as soon as its factors are in place and an obviously altered state of mind has arisen. My own practice was a hybrid of these two approaches. I studied with perhaps the Buddhist world’s leading expert on jhana practice, who holds the more strict view. Yet after a full month of rigorous concentration, I was unable to achieve total absorption as his practice demanded. I would enter clearly altered states, but would still be aware of strong bodily sensations and the sense of time. Therefore, after one month, I switched to the more moderate approach, which I had learned earlier. I still cultivated the jhana in the “strict” method: I concentrated on the sensation of breath at the nostrils until the mind formed a mental image of the breath — a white cloudy light called a nimitta. The nimitta would then become my exclusive focus of concentration. But I proceeded through the first four jhanas even though the absorption was not total. My experiences, as profound and powerful as they are, should thus be understood as only partial in nature. I am a beginner — some might say a failure — not a teacher and not an expert in these practices. (For detailed description of jhanic states and practice, please read Shaila Catherine’s Focused and Fearless, the best contemporary book on the jhanas. The best online resource is my teacher Leigh Brasington‘s website, where you can learn more about the stricter approach.) Jhanas are better That said, my third and final prefatory note is that I actually do have a fair amount of experience with mystical states, and these blow all those experiences out of the water. With the possible exception of ayahuasca, I have never encountered anything like this — and I have spent many years meditating, davening, doing energy work, and engaging in a wonderfully wide range of ecstatic and contemplative practices. Without being too arrogant about it (which would be an ironic reversal of the point of spiritual practice!), I think I know whereof I speak.
When I described some of my experiences to a friend, she remarked that they sounded similar to what Elizabeth Gilbert describes in her book Eat, Pray, Love. I had precisely the experiences Gilbert describes on my first meditation retreats, six years ago. They are world-shattering, mind-altering, and profound. They provide a direct experience of what generations of mystics have described in glowing mystical terms. I do not wish to minimize them, and have described them in these pages in the past (“You Are God in Drag,” “What the World Is“). But the jhanas were far, far more powerful and more profound — perhaps an order of magnitude more. They’re like the qualities of those earlier experiences, well, concentrated, refined, and distilled. If what Gilbert, and I in those earlier essays, described is like a lovely Hershey’s Kiss, the jhanas are like a rich, hot molten chocolate cake. Get it? 2.            Mikvas of light With those provisos out of the way, I will now describe my experiences of each of the four basic jhanas. (There are actually eight jhanas, but the other four are less essential to insight practice. Moreover, while I had some limited experiences with them, they require their own essay.) While the descriptions that follow may seem hyperbolic and overblown, I assure you that I am deliberately understating and underdescribing the experiences. Every writer who describes the jhanas does this. I don’t want to condition your experience by telling you too much, and I don’t want to heighten your expectations should you undertake jhana practice yourself (which I hope you will). First Jhana The first jhana is like the “big wow,” an awesome peak experience that arises after the mind has finally settled on the object of concentration with focused, sustained, one-pointed attention. Bodily or emotional rapture called piti may arise, suffusing the body with bliss or filling the mind with awe–sometimes the feeling is more “gross” and embodied, other times more subtle and purely mental. In my experience, the nimitta would become radiant, awesome, and beautiful, and grow to fill my entire field of vision, and surround my body; the experience was like a glowing, energetic light surrounding and cocooning my whole being. It’s quite captivating. There is also a sense of seclusion–of finally being safe from the chattering mind. From my Jewish spiritual perspective, this was like holiness as the big amazing awesomeness, full of mysterium tremendum and radical amazement. It’s Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon. Like many mystics, I’ll use erotic analogies as well; the first jhana is like having sex, before orgasm: panting, arousing, ah–ahh—ahh— that sort of thing. Eventually, though, the first jhana begins to feel like too much effort. You have to work to keep it up. This is its advantage–if you didn’t work, you wouldn’t get in–but eventually, after anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour or more (my longest was one hour), the mind gets tired of ecstasy, excitement, and bliss and moves naturally onto the second jhana. The transition between jhanas is always from gross to subtle: the more gross factors drop off, revealing the more subtle ones underneath. In the case of first-to-second, the factors of applied and sustained thought drop, and the other factors–rapture, joy, and one-pointedness of mind–reveal themselves more. Usually this “drop” is conscious; after a few weeks of practice, I would feel a kind of mental itchiness when it was time to move on, and would consciously resolve to let the factors drop and the others predominate. A few times, though, the drop happened automatically; the mind would just bail out. Eventually, the four jhanas are kind of like four rooms in a house that you’ve come to know; you don’t even have to make the resolve clearly, because you know the territory, and can recognize it and adjust quite naturally. Second Jhana
In the second jhana, the feeling tone shifts to joy–“drenched in delight” in Shaila Catherine’s words. Effort drops away, and the mind rests one-pointed on its focus. I experienced the second jhana as being like swimming in a mikva of light–in my journal one time, I wrote that when the nimitta expands, it is a “waterfall of shimmering light that fills your body with joy.” Again, sometimes this was a semi-bodily sensation, other times purely mental. There was often a bright light in my eyes as well–more on that below–and sometimes a deep sense of healing. This is it, you’re here, you can trust and let go. The sexual analogy here is to the time of orgasm itself–not the first moment, but the longer period of time if, like me, you like really long and drawn-out orgasmic states. It’s like that gorgeous sexual feeling of letting go: not ah-ah-ah, but ahhhhhh. Sometimes it really felt as if the light were kissing me, penetrating me, filling me. This is God as lover; the fascinans, the erotic partner envisioned and embodied by mystics. It’s really something. Believe it or not, the mind eventually finds all this ecstasy, even without effort, a little gross. Piti becomes too showy; it’s almost exhausting. Now, when I was first learning the jhanas, I would spend several days with each one before moving on. Part of this was to really nail down the jhana; the Buddha said that someone who moves on too fast is like a foolish cow wandering from pasture to pasture. But another part was that it took me a while to get disenchanted with these states. For several days, I couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful than the second jhana. But eventually, disenchantment sets in–once again, an insight that is, itself, worth the price of admission. Eventually, the mind gets disenchanted with anything. So the grosser factor of rapture drops away, leaving behind only joy and one-pointedness. Third Jhana If the second jhana is like an orgasm with God, the third jhana is like resting comfortably on the breast of the Goddess; its dominant sensation is contentment. Here, the love is less erotic and more familial; it’s like being cradled by your mother–that kind of “ahh.” The light I experienced was golden, radiant, and warm. Many times, I cried and felt healed. Other times, I was still and concentrated. And sometimes, I felt like a little boy sitting by the window, with sunshine streaming in. In the third jhana, piti is relinquished, and sukha, joy, becomes predominant. Sukha is quieter and more subtle than piti, it’s less embodied, and more like an emotional, intellectual joy with a honey-like embodied component. Meditators know sukha from whenever the mind in concentrated and everything just feels lovely. The mind is content. What could ever be wrong with the world? Of course, sukha is so lovely that we naturally cling to it, which means we suffer when it’s gone — that’s what’s wrong. But for me, I spent about three years cultivating sukha, thinking it was enlightenment, and being devastated when, a few days after retreat, it seemed to disappear. Fourth Jhana Finally, there is the fourth jhana–the real point of it all, it sometimes seems. In the fourth jhana, even joy passes away. The experience is totally neutral: just “Ah,” as in “Ah, I see.” And yet, it somehow–just is. I can’t quite describe it; there’s a powerful sense of equanimity, a closeness to the object, and not much else. Somehow, this state is the most beautiful at all, even though it is totally colorless, bliss-less. The erotic flavor is not even post-orgasmic; it’s post-post. The mind is clear, the restlessness is gone. It doesn’t feel good anymore, but in some deep profound way, it feels extremely good and peaceful that it’s not even necessary to feel good. This is not the Shechinah, not awe, not love; it’s just YHVH–Is. It’s a love beyond love; satisfaction without joy or even contentment. For me, the fourth jhana is really the point, because it leads to one of the deep insights of the jhanas: that God is not in the fire, or the earthquake, or the flood. There’s a tendency that all of us have–but particularly spiritual Jews have–to deify and thus idol-ize certain states. Oh, that gorgeous warmth of lighting candles. Oh, we were so high during that drum circle / Kabbalat Shabbat / whatever, that was reall,y mamash, it. But that’s not it. It is what’s always here; Ein Sof, everything. If it wasn’t always here, it isn’t it. Even the fourth jhana isn’t it–it’s a state, with equanimity and focus that are conditioned, and thus pass away after a time. You can’t cling to it either. Real devekut has only one attachment: Is. Totally colorless, totally omnipresent, and in fact, if you look closely, the only thing that doesn’t come and go. Ramana Maharshi said, “Let come what comes, let go what goes. See what remains.” That is the essence of enlightenment right there, I’m telling you. The way leads nowhere. There is no state that is it. This is it; just this. Not feeling special about this, not feeling relaxed or wise or anything in particular–although sometimes those feelings may arise in the wake of letting go. Just is. Now, does that mean that mystical states — including the jhanas themselves — are without value? No; not at all. By fulfilling this spiritual seeker’s wildest dreams of joy and rapture, the jhanas point to the limitations of states, chiefly their transient nature. And next month, I’ll describe in some detail the benefits as well as the limitations of spiritual states of all kinds, mundane to marvelous. First, though, I want to focus on a different question: God. Essay will continue.

All images by Harriete Estel Berman.

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Row,row, row your boat Gently down the stream. Merrily,merrily, merrily, merrily Life is but a dream. -Anonymous

1.         Doubt

For many of us, when we hear of nonduality, the idea that everything is One, we feel a resonance inside, a sense of rightness. But maybe that’s all there is, a neurosis, not a stirring of truth or consciousness. The very notion of nonduality seems old to me, as if I knew it even before I had heard about  it, twenty years ago now, sitting in a class: tat tvam asi, you are that.  It hit me then, it hits me now.  I’ve met people who are hit even harder than me, people who  eventually lose the sense of separate self. They become utterly, totally, without a doubt convinced that the mind-body process which, for most of us, dictates our wants, needs, joys, pains — that this is merely a phenomenon.  For them, reality is  “perfect brilliant stillness” (Carse). All words are just words, and thus misleading, but also somehow gesturing toward the truth that this is all a dream.

But what if this ontological sense is just a feeling, just a neuron firing (or misfiring) in a mechanistic brain? To some, whether nonduality is the real or not perhaps doesn’t matter.  The sages function fully in the normal world; they eat, love, make love, work.  They are not in asylums.  And, they do not suffer.  So, if they are deluded, is this not a desirable delusion?  Of course, if this is delusion, then the very word “holy” must be delusion.  And God… an even coarser projection of desire.  And, for that matter, love, and the rest of the values we intuit from the movements of the soul.  Nonduality: what a sham!  Well, suppose it is. Look what happens: as soon as the sham is seen, and the pretension is relinquished — “progress” is made, because it’s progress away from aggrandizement, away from being right or being enlightened or being anything at all.  And toward: nothing.  Don’t know, got no idea, have no business talking about it, writing about it, teaching, who would know anyway, just the knowing which isn’t knowing.  The more belief systems are questioned, the better!  As Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche is reported to have said, “disappointment will become your greatest ally.”  If you’re still hoping for nonduality to cohere, to make your life better, to make you happier, you’re still clinging to some form of what Trungpa called spiritual materialism, the attempt to acquire something or gain something through spiritual practice.  Better for it all to be for nought.  Surrender even the hope of progress, and progress will happen on its own.

2.         Fear

But what about the other extreme — not that nonduality is a dream, but that everything else is?  Does nonduality necessitate the view that “this is but a dream” and, thus, a rupture between before enlightenment and afterward?  Most Nondual Jews have a more gradualist approach; like some Tantrics, they say you can have it both ways, living in both yesh and ayin.  Most Advaitins say you can’t.  Maybe it’s a question of lifestyle: how invested you want to be in this world.

The nondual Jews were more normative, more world-maintaining.  So they speak more of ratzo v’shov, “running and returning,” of an oscillation between mochin d’gadlut, when all is seen from God’s point of view and when, in R. Aharon’s words, there is absolutely no difference between pre-creation and post-, and mochin d’katnut, the rest of the time, in which we are in relative mind and striving to be ethical and happy human beings.  For Judaism, unlike traditional Advaita and especially its modern expositors (Nisargadatta, his student Ramesh Balsekar, and Westerners such as Wei Wu Wei, Tony Parsons, David Carse, Jeff Foster, and others), it is not a matter of black and white.  While enlightenment qua consciousness/nondual Reality is by definition always present, the traditional nondual Jewish sources suggest that “we” — that is, our perceived “selves” — move in and out of it.  Most Advaitin sources suggest that once liberation happens, enlightened consciousness never again confuses itself with the apparent small self.   Who’s right?  I don’t know! Then again, maybe our understanding of the Jewish sources are incomplete.  There are stories about the sages up in the mountains, or caves; the ones who don’t write books.  Or the Kotzker, who suddenly shut himself in his room and never emerged again. Who knows, for every world-affirming Tantric Jewish nondualist, perhaps there have been a dozen renouncing ones.  We’d never know; they probably wouldn’t tell. Personally, the notion that “this is but a dream” resonates with something inside.  And that awakens fear.  I feel unready.  From this side of the enlightenment divide, it seems impossible to distinguish between the enlightened and madness.  Perhaps “ego-death” is really a psychotic event.  I know people whose consciousness is enlightened (not really theirs, of course), who understand that enlightenment in the stark, before-and-after-sense, and who live happy, full lives in the world.  Most are in helping professions — doctors, teachers — suggesting that, indeed, compassion wins out over the ego’s desire for more.  Some are kind, others are not.  They are not insane, and in fact, not as crazy as garden-variety “spiritual” folk often are.  And yet, the fear is there. Perhaps it is indeed the ego fighting for itself.  Maybe enlightenment truly does disrupt the patterns of ego, and so the ego reacts with fear.  Certainly, when there seems to be seeing from the other side, once-cherished and yearned-for objects on this side seem a little laughable.  Leering beautiful boys either faking or channeling eros, either way just pulling strings with the pretension of something more.  A charade of politics, with nobler and less noble impulses dueling it out, trying to find a way to sell themselves, groping toward some approximate understanding of circumstances.  What, then, of the worldly dreams I have cherished since youth?  The ego must sense this danger to the status quo of appearance, which this mind-body loves, at times.

3.            Ignorance

So, two poles.  Perhaps the notion of nonduality is just an ego wanting to be happy, finding a brain buzz that makes it feel happy, going for it, then reifying it.  But then, didn’t we just see a moment ago that nonduality destroys the ego, and the ego fears it? The ego just wants to be happy; nonduality is more than that.  The fear now is perversely attractive, as proof: “I’m not doing it to feel good; it’s traumatic, it’s devastating.” Maybe the both-and view, the Tantric view, the nondual Jewish view, is too comforting.  You don’t have to give anything up, don’t have to make a choice.  You can be enlightened and in the world.  Maybe this is the ego making a desperate last stand to save itself.  Once during a shamanic ceremony, I had a death experience; moving toward the light, being drawn to it.  I felt pulled back by my love for my partner, my youth, my desire to create in the world.  “Not yet,” I thought.  Now, with that relationship over and with more sadness and less desire,  I feel less pulled back.  Am I being prepared for a greater divestment?  Or is that, too, an ego story, a narrative that gives a sense of meaning and importance to what is merely unfortunate, or random?

Once the door to both-and is opened, the ego is quite good at forgetting the ayin, at perpetuating itself, distracting itself, finding other thought-forms to immerse itself in; entire discourses, really, which utterly take over the mind.  Who has time for nonduality when discussing constructions of religion and sexuality in American political discourse?  What is the relevance of the “dream” when there are logistics to take care of, the “real world,” and relatives and friends pursuing lives of relationship and community, which all this seems apart from.  The mind, as Reb Zalman said, is like tofu; it takes the flavor of what it marinates in.  And when it marinates in the mundane, there is not even a memory of what lies beneath.  Or within.

Or the truth of what’s on the surface. Is the clinging to conventional reality fear, or sanity?  Is it keeping us grounded or holding us back?  Is it the nondual embrace of essence and manifestation, or is it indecision, the terror of letting go?  I can’t say. But at least, if you doubt, doubt everything.  Look into the eyes of the Dalai Lama, and doubt that he is any more correct than the most crass of pop stars.  Look into the eyes of generations of enlightened beings beyond him, sages, rabbis, and find their gazes, and suppose that they are all deluded.  Not just because they fetishize the triggers of their spiritual experiences; no, you must doubt rigorously, and reduce all the experiences themselves to neurological events — but then again, only provisionally.  If doubt is be truthful, it must never make an assertion, even a negative one.  It must undermine its own foundations.  It must not be a prop of the ego, for the ego too must be doubted.

Doubt it all: God, no God, Big Mind, existence, love, money, self, non-self, everything.  Do not retain anything: not comparing oneself to others, not the hope that life itself is worthwhile, not the merest iota of value.  And in this doubting, in this rigorous, thoroughgoing rejection of every possible meaning, in this burning away of significance, lies the ultimate defeat of the self, the ultimate victory of what transcends it, the triumph of surrender.  I don’t know; I don’t know; I don’t know.  I can’t say, I can’t tell you, I have no idea.  And when the failure is utter, what’s left is the real. Who knows?  Yes, Who knows.

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