I realized something the other day while reflecting on the turning points in my life: For every major time of change, I can think of some person I met who acted as a catalyst for the new direction my life took. Without fail, I saw that I have been influenced by the people I have met far more than anything I've read in books or learned in the classroom. The most recent example for me has been the people I met while staying at Sivananda Ashram in Rishikesh, India. They have a word in Hindi, satsanga. Satsanga is spiritual discussion in the company of the wise and holy. It is considered an essential part of spiritual life, so much so that the entire ashram comes together every morning and every evening for specially scheduled satsanga. I was fortunate enough during my stay to be invited to also join in on two smaller satsanga groups. Swami Sarvamungalananda, Swami Nityananada, Krishna, Allan, Scott, Ananda, and Sharon met every morning to read and discuss the Yoga Vasishta. Swami Atmaswarupananda, Swami Amritarupananda, Scott, and Allan discussed the teachings of Andrew Cohen three nights a week. Because of their influence on my stay, capturing the people I met in Rishikesh is the best way I can share some small piece of my time there.

Swami Muktananda

The towering six foot six inch Swami Muktananda hailed from Canada. His aunt was a disciple of Swami Chidananda, a guru of Sivananda Ashram, and introduced the two when Swami Muktananda was a young child. Swami Chidananda told Swami Muktananda's mother that all of her children had been his disciples in a previous life and so he would teach them in this life also. From very early in life, Swami Muktananda decided that life was nothing but suffering. He considered becoming a priest, but after serving on a mission trip in Haiti, he was unsatisfied by Christianity. Around the age of twenty he had a couple of intense experiences that led him to desire only God. He said that, for him, it was God and God only, and told me that he read in the Bible a passage in which Jesus says that anyone who wishes to follow him must leave behind his mother and father. So he thought to himself, "Well, all right then," and he left to find Swami Chidananda.

The first thing that I noticed about Swami Muktananda, besides his incredible size, was the tremendous atmosphere of peace and happiness that surrounded him. Whenever I would stop by and talk with him, I immediately felt very peaceful and at ease, and at the same time energized and very aware of everything going on around me. Visiting Swami Muktananda became one of my favorite things to do. Once we were sitting in his room, and as the conversation came to a lull, Swami Muktananda closed his eyes. I felt the urge to close mine as well, and for the next thirty minutes I enjoyed the most blissful meditation I have ever experienced. I opened my eyes from it feeling more refreshed and content than if I had just had a full night's sleep.

Sri Swami Brahmananda

Sri Swami Brahmananda was one of the senior monks at Sivananda Ashram and was believed to have achieved full God-realization. In Hindi, when one gets the opportunity to see a God-realized saint, it is called darshan. I had the opportunity to have Swami Brahmananda's darshan on two different occasions. The man was almost like a gravitational force. Peace emanated from him to such an extent that upon approaching his room, one began to feel incredibly tranquil. He sat outside of his room nearly everyday at 4 p.m., and people gathered around just to have the opportunity to sit and meditate in his presence. Sitting near him, one felt an amazing stillness and indescribable peace and clarity of mind. Swami Brahmananda spoke a lot about the spiritual metaphor of sleep. He described the world as a dream in which everything appears real and there seem to be other people, but in reality when we wake up, we find that there was only One experiencing the entire dream.

Swami Atmaswarupananda

More commonly known as Bill Swami, Swami Atmaswarupananda had been in the ashram for over twenty-five years. Previously, Bill Swami was a businessman in Vancouver, Canada. He had a beautiful home nestled in the woods, as well as a wife and family. When he heard a lecture by Swami Chidananda, though, he said that something inside of him responded that could not be denied. So, at the age of forty-eight, he left his life behind, came to India, and hasn't been back to Canada since. He said that his desire for freedom was simply greater than that for a family. He said that it made absolutely no sense to him that he was sitting in an ashram in India; in college, he told me, he would have been voted the guy least likely to do something out of the ordinary. Describing the man who he was, he said, "All I did was complain." Whenever he recounted a spiritual lesson that took him years to learn, he added at the end, "but then I'm a slow learner; I was a businessman."

Bill Swami often told me that for 99% of people, spiritual life is a worldly pursuit. He said this is because each person thinks that he or she as an individual is going to attain something. One of my favorite quotes was something that his guru, Swami Chidananda, said to him: "As long as you think you're Bill Eilers or Bill Swami, you're no different than any Tom, Dick, or Harry." Over and over Bill Swami made me remember that God is the guru and the disciple. "One can't underestimate the power of belief that we do think the individual is going to attain something. Even in saying it's all God, most of us don't believe it that it's the Self realizing the Self," he told me. In discussions with Bill Swami and the evening group, Bill Swami would often remain silent throughout the entire hour. Then, almost without fail, in the last fifteen minutes he would halt whatever debate we were in the midst of, sum the entire argument up, and leave us all with some thought or quote which would blow our minds and send us home rethinking everything we thought we knew.

Swami Amritarupananda

Bill Swami's daughter Susan, otherwise known as Swami Amritarupananda, joined him in coming to the ashram. She met Swami Chidananda at age ten and left Canada to come to the ashram at thirty. She expressed to me that she had already had some sense that God was the only thing worth living for, but, like her father, the decision was something of a gut reaction. She said that something told her, "If I'm serious about God, I must do this."

Swami Bodhichitananda

Swami Bodhichitananda embodied the dedicated, "no matter what" spiritual seeker. As an architecture student at North Carolina State University, he came across some sort of spiritual book and became so inspired that he almost immediately dropped out of school to pursue God. First, he found a teacher of the Bahai faith in Boone, North Carolina. However, the teacher did not share Swami Bodhichitananda's belief in reincarnation, so he was forced to look elsewhere. Traveling to Phoenix, he tried to live a normal life for a while and get away from the spiritual. However, he had little success. He told me that he would live in a park under a tree trying to meditate for a while and then give up and try to live a "normal" life. Next, he traveled to San Diego where he found the Self-Realization ashram in north San Diego. Here he settled down for a while and became a monk. Nonetheless, he said that he still had a little doubt on a personal level about this ashram. Finally, he read some books by Swami Chidananda and Swami Sivananda and at last found the same connection with these men as the others at the Self-Realization ashram seemed to have with their guru.

They advised him to come to India in 1991. He said he didn't want to, but felt that he had to come. The very first time he met Swami Chidananda in person, he asked him if he could stay at the Sivananda Ashram, and Swami Chidananda accepted him.

Swami Bodhichitananda made me feel very at home. Over tea, I interviewed him for much of the afternoon. Whenever I saw him around the ashram he would remind me that I was welcome to stop by any time.

At the end of our first evening discussion, I started the long walk back across the river to the other side of town to the Ved Niketan Ashram where I was staying. It was about a twenty-five-minute walk, and I was eager to get started because it was windy and getting cold. I was joined on my walk by Allan and another young man whose name was Daniel Stein, but who was known around the ashram as Haridas. I assumed they would walk me to the gate of the Sivananda Ashram and we would part ways there. However, I watched in amazement as Allan and Haridas proceeded to walk with me across the windy, brutally cold bridge and to the gate of where I was staying, on the other side of town. What really amazed me, though, was that these walks became a nightly occurrence. I tried to tell Allan and Haridas that, while I appreciated their company, they really didn't have to walk an hour out of their way so late at night just to see me home safely. They only laughed, though, and said it was no problem. Thus it proceeded on a nightly basis; we would make the long walk together discussing the ups and downs, highs and lows of the spiritual life while shivering the entire way. At the end of every night I felt so content that I was convinced that there must be nothing better or more powerful in life than satsanga—the company of the wise and spiritual discussion with the holy.

Chuck Eesley is a junior at Duke University majoring in holistic living.

In Search of E-Transcendence (top)
Jonathan Horowitz

If the internet is of no other use to the contemporary spiritual seeker, it certainly serves to impress upon us the sheer volume of thoughts, opinions, assistance, nonsense, propaganda, and flat-out insanity that issues forth from the minds of so many inspired individuals. When you decide to seek truth, inspiration, or intellectual engagement by clicking on to the Internet, you will undoubtedly be swamped with volumes of information provided by sometimes wise, sometimes hostile, always questionable sources. When you exit the world of experience and enter this land of information, you have only your wits to protect you . . .

You begin by heading to your favorite spirituality links page. There's always a lot of intriguing stuff there. As you look at the list of links—sites for Christians, Buddhists, New-Agers, atheists, rationalists, romantics, and the occasional freelance seeker—you take a moment to reflect on how lucky you are to have a tool like the Internet. You think about how most of the exceedingly inquisitive people in history only really had immediate exposure to one culture, one religious tradition, or one well-espoused philosophy, and how those who found themselves dissatisfied or merely curious would have to leave home and roam about, looking for gurus and books and pilgrimage sites, when all you have to do is click your mouse and be greeted by a wealth of spiritual knowledge from myriad generous sources.

Feeling fortunate, and a little smug, you begin by clicking onto a familiar site, one of those sites that brings together articles from all different traditions. After all, there is something to be learned from everybody, right? Your attention is grabbed by a link for some page that claims to rate spiritual teachers. That seems interesting; you never really hear about people rating spiritual teachers. If these people are enlightened, they really must know it all, so why would you rate them? But then you realize that it makes sense to rate them, because if they teach different things, then some of them must be better or more knowledgeable than others. At that point, you pause and scratch your head, realizing that you may have been grasping at a naïve assumption about those who claim to be knowledgeable or enlightened (namely, that they are). Funny, you think. Perhaps you should be a bit more skeptical.

So, you go to that link, and you see the name of your favorite spiritual/philosophical author, a guy who has written books that really shook you up, knocked your socks off, made you feel hopeful and excited. Eager to hear more about the book you liked, you read what the website has to say about the author—and you find out that it's not so friendly. Apparently the author of this website has noticed a bunch of flaws in your guy's argument that you had overlooked. You feel glad to have read about it, knowing it's better to have more information, but deep down you're slightly resentful that the positive message you had told your friends about turns out to be not so unadulterated. Not to mention that you are a little disappointed at yourself for not realizing those flaws on your own.

So you decide to see if your favorite author has written a response to this guy's website. But, as you try to search for his response, you get distracted by another site, this one by a guy who claims that both your favorite author and his detractor are way off the mark. Irked yet fascinated, you press on, sampling this new opinion, and it sounds really convincing to you—until this new author reveals his unwavering conviction that all nonbelievers are bound for the pits of hell. Wait—what? This can't be right. Or can it?

This overload of conflicting information is beginning to make your head spin. But even worse, your stable belief system begins to totter as you see all the subtle weaknesses in its foundation. Perhaps you should rethink things a bit. Resolved to figure this Truth stuff out, you press on and read more, trying to use those critical-thinking skills you believed you had bought in college, but in your effort to play the part of the detached, unbiased, and healthily skeptical arbiter, you find yourself unable to refute even the most ridiculous of arguments. You were sure just an hour ago that the Earth was billions of years old, but you were also "sure" of a bunch of other things that you are now questioning, and here you see a quote from a scientist, a PhD no less, who says the Earth's only been around for 10,000 years. You were sure that true liberation had something to do with meditation, but here's an article by a well-known Buddhist explaining how meditation is utterly useless. You were sure the author of that really deep and touching book you read was an enlightened master, perhaps a modern-day saint, but here he is listed on a website about cult leaders. You begin to search in vain for your reasons for believing, for your statement of faith, but you find that it sounds strangely small in the face of all that chaotic opposition. So you follow links and try to verify sources, but you simply can't process all those words and all those opinions at once.

Left with no other choice, you begin to doubt the validity of the words that flash on your screen. After all, these are not printed words. These words lack the sturdy authority they might have on the pages of books, the implicit legitimacy conferred by black ink on pressed wood. Despite this doubt, you read these digital words fervently, shuffling them across the screen as rapidly as you can, so that you can move on to the next opinion, the next message. After reading so many words from so many sources, you are strongly tempted to believe that these are all the voices of idiots. And with mounting frustration, you realize that these are not just benign idiots, whose misinformation may be resignedly ignored—like the idiots giving the weather reports, or running the government. No, these idiots, these faceless authors whom you will never meet, who span the spectrum from fruitcake to cynic, who opine endlessly about all things spiritual and mundane, must be regarded as harmful idiots, fighting with one another about the nature of the reality to which your life belongs. Still, you read on in weary and helpless disbelief.

At this point, you begin to lose your nerve. You had thought your little on-line spiritual inquiry session would make you feel like the host of some Sunday afternoon high-brow discussion show on PBS. You thought you'd invite a few well-respected, well-educated parties—a PhD and a Minister, and maybe a syndicated columnist or two—and you all would sit down and have an involved, and perhaps delightfully contentious, discussion of Truth, God, and What Not, each participant respectfully voicing his opinion in turn. And in the end, you, the moderator, would thank each member for his or her valued input, and you would end the program with your thoughtfully constructed views on spirituality perhaps adjusted, corrected by a degree or two. But instead of playing MacNeil or Lehrer, you find yourself guest-hosting some spiritual episode of Jerry Springer, and your guests are unkempt and rowdy. They shout at each other about how They Really Know, and when the bigger, louder guests start swinging around their heavy opinions, you've got no choice but to duck and go to a commercial break!

So you turn off the computer, and you sit quietly in the familiar confines of your room, feeling suddenly uneasy and slightly frightened about all that spirituality stuff. And you realize that all the ideas you had about God, about life, about the much-mentioned search for Truth, are nothing but ideas, and half-formed, ill-considered ideas at that. And then you realize why 99.9% of the world is content not looking and not knowing, and you wonder if maybe it isn't better off that way, because suffering in stupidity might just be better than spinning off into uncertainty, a victim of your own well-intended curiosity.

But, it doesn't last.

And perhaps it's only because you've turned off the computer and averted your eyes from the Jumbotron screen that flashes "YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!" that you begin to collect yourself. And at that moment, flustered and betrayed by the weakness of your own head, you admit to yourself that you really don't know.

And you are absolutely shocked.

But only momentarily, because you soon realize that that's the point. You don't know anything at all. And your stunningly honest realization of your own ignorance lasts about a half second, until you realize that you know that you don't know anything. But you could, if you thought a little harder.

And in that instant, you've lost it.

And you feel secure enough to turn the computer back on, settle back in your chair, and resume your search for truth.

Jonathan Horowitz is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill majoring in psychology.

Thinking Happens: A Personal Encounter With Thinking (top)
Michael Gore

"...the mind common to the universe is disclosed to the individual through his own nature."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

On a mild, sunny autumn afternoon, as I stroll back toward my house from a walk about the neighborhood, I notice an unusual hodgepodge of colored objects heaped up in the yard in front of the house. On the bottom of this puzzling jumble of colors rests a rectangular red and yellow piece. Stacked upon it sits a pale green something, also rectangular in shape, with a white appendage projecting upward near one end. Finally, lumped precariously upon this roosts a bright, shiny crimson item. As I draw near the yard, gawking at this unusual configuration, Joe, my three year old son, dashes around the corner of the house and catches sight of me approaching. He chatters excitedly at me and points at the confusion of things. At the same moment, I abruptly recognize that the conglomeration in the yard consists of the following: the red and yellow object on the bottom is a large plastic car; the pale green thing perched upon the first, I identify as a push toy with a handle at one end to hang onto; on top of these balances Joe's brightly gleaming red toy fire engine. "Well," I ask myself, "what could this be all about?" As if in answer, Joe jabbers eagerly, "Look Daddy, I made a building out of my trucks!" Mystery solved. But...thinking happened. Between the initial incomprehensible observation of the pile of colored objects and the realization of what I am actually perceiving, thinking happened.

Well, so what? Thinking happens all the time, apparently, within everyone. This insight is not especially penetrating or perceptive. As a matter of fact, I would not have given it a second thought if, roughly three years ago, I had not stumbled across a book by Rudolf Steiner entitled Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path. To assert that Steiner's book bowled me over would be a considerable understatement. Over the course of the past three years, as I struggled with the content of Steiner's book I found it, at various times: incomprehensible and transparent; illuminating and frustrating; plodding and dull or surprising and penetrating. These various responses to the book reflect my proficiency at comprehending the book's internal structure and multifaceted inquiry rather than the actual nature of the book itself. One does not simply sit down and read this book; rather, it must be lived with, taken into the self and wrangled with. It requires struggle of the deepest sort. It necessitates that I revitalize the book's content within myself and experience directly the text's meaning. The book lives, and bids me to let it unfold and increase within my soul. Its meaning is not abstract or intellectual but organic; it yields ever deepening insight as understanding ripens.

A few days after Joe transformed his trucks into a skyscraper, I decide to take a walk through a small wooded area in a nearby park. The weather has turned. A brisk wind blusters through the shading trees. The sun's brilliance illuminates a radiate blue sky. The chill air obliges me to turn up the collar of my coat to hinder the swirling wind from stealing down the back of my neck. With each blowing gust a cloud of leaves twists and turns in brightly colored cascades to the ground, rendering a vivid witness that autumn has indeed arrived. Bustling through the dry, crisp leaves covering the ground, I commence kicking my feet high into the air, hoisting up a mess of leaves that catch on the wind and whirl about my head. I create quite a ruckus as I crash noisily along. Catching a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye, I turn about in the nick of time and observe a squirrel rush anxiously away before my clamorous approach and scamper up a nearby tree. Upon reaching the safety of the branches, it leans down to look at me, launching into an indignant chattering while strutting angrily about on the branch, evidently severely miffed at my intrusion.

As I smile up at the distraught squirrel busily denouncing the very fact of my existence, a question comes to mind: "What actually happened here?" I squat down with my back pressed against the rough bark of the tree. A shivery slap by the gusting wind coerces me to slide around the tree's trunk, placing it between myself and the force of the wind. So, what actually happened here? The concrete event is clear enough. I walked boisterously through the dry leaves of the woods, inducing an alarming hubbub, at least from the squirrel's perspective. Startled and seriously vexed by my stomping and kicking about, the squirrel abandoned whatever activity it had been pursuing and headed for the hills (or in this case the trees). Aside from the fact that I rained down perdition on the distressed squirrel's parade, where am I in the midst of this event? How do I know what happened? How do I arrive at the conclusion that my deeds, or so it would seem judging by the squirrel's behavior, ruined the squirrel's day?

Somewhere in all of this, thinking happened, and I missed it. I set off to find thinking, endeavoring to keep in mind some of the salient indications given by Steiner in Intuitive Thinking. What does thinking do? Thinking forms concepts about that which I observe. What I observe—the leaves blowing in the wind, the frightened squirrel, the tree it scrambles up at my approach—appear as given. (But even here, in this immediate laying hold of the "things" composing my present environment, a conceptual element also obtains. The thinking is, however, unconscious. If this were not the case, the perceptual world would consist only of a confusion of shapes and colors.). They remain outside of me over there and do not require my participation in order to be there. I merely observe them. Steiner calls these percepts and writes that "...it is not the process of observation but the object of observation that {is} designate{d} with this name (4.14)." In other words, percepts are what I observe. A feeling or an idea denotes a percept as practically as the tree I rest against, or the squirrel continuing to prattle on reproachfully over my head. To gain some insight into these percepts, to understand my observations, I must think about them. Through my thinking about observations made, I bring forth a series of conceptual connections that, in turn, allow me to take in and comprehend my observations. I think back to my encounter with the squirrel. I recognized my role in its flight up the tree precisely because I directed attention to the squirrel's actions and thought about them. I cannot discover the relationship between my close shave with the squirrel and its retreat without resorting to concepts. I begin to search for the immediately obvious concepts employed through my observation and thinking. First, I heeded a "sensory stimulus": the spectacle of the "squirrel" bolting frenziedly up the "tree." This sight kindled curiosity and I speculated about the "cause." Certainly, the "effect" of the squirrel's "flight" resulted from something. That something, rather obviously, must bear a special relationship to my riotous advance upon the squirrel. I promptly distinguish also "self-awareness" (my "I-ness"); "noise"; the squirrel's "awareness of my presence"; "fright" and "fleeing." So I conclude: I scared the squirrel and he ran up the tree. Observation alone could in no way render a complete understanding of what I regarded. Without the additional, deepening dimension of thinking, I cannot secure insight, or knowledge into, what I witness. Thinking presents the means through which the appearance of things metamorphoses into significance.

Thus, percept and concept belong together, like a horse and carriage (also, by the way, percepts comprehended only through thinking). I employ thinking in every encounter with the world round about me. Through thinking, I achieve an understanding of that which confronts me. Whether an assemblage of colored thingamajigs gathered haphazardly in the front yard, or an intimidated squirrel heading for higher ground, thinking moves through the observation of the phenomenon, endowing the percepts with meaning. In this manner, I come to know my environment and find my way about within it. In this rush of inner activity, I offer only sporadic attention to my thinking as thinking. Steiner writes that "...the first observation that we make about thinking is that it is the unobserved element of our normal spiritual life (3.12)." That thinking happens I cannot dispute. That I seldom, if ever, pay much attention to thinking happening within me, I also cannot dispute. Thinking tends to remain behind the scenes, hidden and unnoticed. Paying attention to thinking, observing the activity of thinking happening as I observe leaves gusting about in the wind is, Steiner contends, an extraordinary thing to do. Thinking displays a peculiar quality in that, as an inner activity, I direct it not to me as an individual thinking, but to the observed object. My consideration directs itself toward that which I consider and not toward that which generates my ability to consider in the first place, i.e. thinking. In my encounter with the squirrel, I initiated the process of thinking by concentrating attentiveness toward the scurrying rush of its mad dash through the leaves. I saw it accelerating at breakneck speed away from me. This prompted me to ask, "Whoa, does this squirrel have an issue with me?" I determined to think about the squirrel. Had I paid no attention to its impetuous scurrying about, I would not have thought about it. So whether contemplating an object, a feeling, or an idea, I train attention toward the object, feeling or idea and not in the direction of my own activity. Steiner writes that "...when I think, I do not look at my thinking, which I myself am producing, but at the object of thinking, which I am not producing (3.13)."

Only through the accomplishment of thinking can I distinguish the manner in which my actions and those of the squirrel belong together. I assign attention toward the percept and think about it; but with no conscious awareness that I do so. Nonetheless, thinking responds to my inner prompting and furnishes understanding, a context and a meaning for that which I consider. I know the world because I think. Whether I acknowledge the role thinking plays in my coming to terms with the nature of the world and my self does not appear to be of any great concern to thinking. Thinking responds to my every whim, fantasy, imagination and train of thought without querying me with respect to the intention. Unless I consciously choose to divert attention toward thinking happening, it arises and passes away unknown to me in its totality. It happens and is gone. I go on about my business wholly blinded to the extraordinary nature of what transpired. Thinking happened; but its full reality passes by unsuspected and unobserved. To this curious characteristic of thinking I now tender my attention.

I am freezing! The wind whips gustily about my meager haven against the tree trunk. The time arrives to head for home. Looking up at the squirrel perched in the branches overhead, now to all appearances brooding mournfully upon my continued presence, I resolve to release it from the enforced captivity my hunkering under its tree provokes. Taking leave, I pull my coat tight about my shivering body and hunch up my shoulders for warmth. Arriving at the house, I determine that I am not yet ready to let go of these reflections on thinking. I brew up a steaming cup of coffee and pour in a generous helping of cream, warming my hands on the cup. Clomping noisily up the stairs and entering my bedroom, I kick off shoes and pull off socks. Folding my legs under I cozy down into the deep cushions of a fat overstuffed chair with broad, wooden arms, take a hearty warming sip of coffee and, now, prepare to tangle once again with thinking.

Thinking, as the familiar adage contends, is as plain as the nose on my face. So how come I missed the mark of thinking for so long? Although I utilize thinking continually, I rarely discern the essential role it exercises in understanding. In ordinary unconscious thinking activity, I co-mingle two discreet activities, observation and thinking. My thinking, always present, consolidates percept and concept. But I disregard thinking through failing to pay it any mind. When I do incline to observe thinking, I do not change the observational process; I merely endeavor to regard what I previously overlooked. Given all this, observing thinking differs from my observation of the squirrel. When I observe thinking, what I observe arises from the same source as that which observes. I do not alternate my attention between outer percept and inner process (thinking). Percept and process are identical. My common, ordinary thinking exhibits a continual motion between external object and inner concept. But when observing thinking as thinking, thinking reflects upon itself. Nothing exterior to thinking abides within the contemplation. Thinking alone, of all that I experience and know, is whole and entire to itself.

With no forewarning, a new thought intrudes into the midst of these considerations. It does not express itself as an idea among ideas to be considered. Instead, it steps forcefully onto center stage as a sublime declaration concerning the nature of thinking. The thought declares: Thinking is selfless in its relationship with human beings. What in the world can this be all about? Thinking is selfless in its relationship with human beings! A nagging thought plucks at the back of my mind. This assertion hints at something, something I should appreciate. I set forth wondering about this statement. The light bulbs burst on. A rush of thoughts cascades through my mind. My heart races and I cannot catch my breath. Everything, in a flash, screeches to a halt. My mind, calm and quiet, contemplates the realization that stands revealed. I see; and I know! I get to my feet, intending to retrieve some books from a nearby bookcase. Unfortunately, my feet, tucked up under my body for too long, have fallen dead asleep. Stinging shoots through my feet and lower legs as I hobble to the bookcase, secure the books, and gingerly hop back to the chair. I stretch out my legs, hoping to diminish the ten thousand tingles pricking my feet like pins. I flip through one of the books, a copy of The New Testament, until I reach the thirteenth chapter of Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. I commence reading, substituting "thinking" for "love" in Paul's text. With some artful editing, I arrive at the following:

{Thinking} is patient and kind. {Thinking} envies no one, is never boastful, never conceited, never rude; {thinking} is never selfish, never quick to take offense. {Thinking} keeps no score of wrongs, takes no pleasure in the sins of others, but delights in the truth. There is nothing {thinking} cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, its endurance.... When I was a child I spoke like a child, thought like a child, reasoned like a child; but when I grew up I finished with childish things. At present we see only puzzling reflections in a mirror, but one day we shall see face to face. My knowledge now is partial; then it will be whole, like God's knowledge of me.

As these words progress through my mind, I sit, quietly astounded.

An assertion of Steiner's in Intuitive Thinking comes to mind: "To observe thinking is to live, during the observation, immediately within the weaving of a self-supporting spiritual entity (9.2)." Thinking proceeds from the spiritual world; the conjoining of thinking and self adheres to the self a spiritual being. How can I actualize the substance of Steiner's assertion? By repeatedly observing thinking. Thinking is infinitely patient. It gives of itself fully and completely without regard to the use that I, or others, put it to. I may use thinking as a means of attaining knowledge of the spiritual world, as Steiner demonstrated. But I may also use thinking to inflict immense pain and suffering upon the world around me. Thinking gives of itself selflessly. Thinking, it seems, manifests an abiding trust in human beings. Thinking hopes that, through inner expression and enlargement, the human family will turn its attention away from childish and destructive uses of thinking and begin instead to marvel at the astounding spiritual vistas thinking awaits to unfold within everyone. Thinking is long-suffering. It willingly endures our present inattention and abuse, hoping, trusting in our spiritual potential. Thinking waits in expectation of what I, all human beings, are not yet but possess the capacity to become. Thinking acts out of love. I open the other book retrieved from the bookcase, How To Know Higher Worlds, and read:

We realize that thoughts are not mere shadow pictures and that hidden beings speak to us through thoughts. Out of the silence something begins to speak to us. Previously we could hear speech only with our ears, but now words resound in our souls. An inner speech, an inner word, is disclosed to us. The first time we experience this we feel supremely blessed (1.30).

Thinking's deed within the human soul unveils the movement of love in the world. Thinking speaks to the soul; but what word does it declare?

I pause for a moment. A stinging sensation provokes me to glance at my hands, now wrapped around the coffee cup. The knuckles, white and rigid; the fingers, inflexible and aching, give me pause. It appears that I am a little tense. I unwrap my hands from around the cup, gingerly flex the fingers, and place them on the solid wood of the chair arms. I wonder if this might be how the squirrel felt, teetering on the branch over my head. My hands tremble where they lay on the arms of the chair. I take a slow, deep breath and slowly release it. An ever-increasing crescendo of astonishment builds gradually. In Intuitive Thinking, Steiner writes: "I should never say that my individual subject thinks; rather, it lives by the grace of thinking (4.7)." I live, I assert my energetic and essential essence, through the grace of thinking. When I direct observation upon my self, I am presented with a being; my self. Through thinking observation, I am wholly within my self. Only through thinking happening within me can I identify myself as a self! If I could not think, I could not know "I am." This presents a prodigious gift to the human family; the aggregate wonder of human creativity, the endless, unique assortment of individualities that I come upon as daily my life expands, manifests the grace-filled gift of thinking. I suffer an abiding sense of awe as the full intention of this realization opens within my thought-world. In its loving self-giving, thinking instances that which I strive to achieve by means of the activity of thinking! The Word thinking expounds within the soul: "Not I, but Christ in me," as St. Paul so splendidly proclaimed. Thinking, in its inner relationship with the human family, manifests the nature of the Christ! The instrument (thinking) expresses the aim (the Christ). Encountering thinking, as described by Steiner, evolves into an encounter with the Christ impulse.

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Several months after this inaugural glimpse into thinking's being, I came across the following remark by Steiner in a lecture entitled "The Mystery of Golgotha":

...if as modern initiates, we fill ourselves with Christ, who makes his life manifest in the mystery of Golgotha, if we understand Paul's words, "Not I, but Christ in me," in their deepest sense,...then we can penetrate nature with our thoughts. In as much as we usually have dead thoughts nature becomes a grave for us. Yet, if with these dead thoughts, accompanied by Christ in the sense of the words, "Not I, but Christ in me," we approach the minerals, the animals, the world of stars, clouds, mountains, and streams, then we experience in modern initiation...that thought arises from nature.... {I}f we let Christ accompany us, if we carry our dead thoughts in the presence of Christ into the world of the stars, into the world of the sun, of the moon, of the clouds, mountains, rivers, minerals, plants, and animals, into the whole physical world of man, then in our vision of nature everything comes alive. As if from a grave, from all beings in nature, the living spirit, the Holy Spirit, arises, the one who heals and awakens us from death.

Thinking, in deference to the Christ, offers to human beings its self, unconditionally. Thinking offers to humanity the avenue by which the pathways into the spiritual world can be discovered. But thinking asks this also if I hope to fare forth into the world of the spirits. Thinking asks that I put behind the glittering illusions of distraction that clamor to divert and distort my self-understanding and insights. I must grow beyond the age of childish diversions. The time advances, and arrives, when I must put the world of glamour and dissipation behind and turn my face resolutely toward that for which thinking hopes in me. At present, I remain a conundrum to myself. I see only shadowy intimations of the fullness I may yet express. Through the selfless, Christ-like manifestation of thinking happening, I shall yet, one day, witness face to face the resplendent beauty of the province of the spiritual world. That beauty is already present here; there is nowhere else I need to travel. Within the breath and depth of the inner realm of concepts, present but hidden within the glories of the physical earth and the seemingly endless cosmos, the spiritual realm stretches down into the here and now, approaching me with unveiled face. I am the blinded one: the perplexed, puzzled and bewildered one. God knows my face. If I choose to stand upon the foundation given, that of thinking, I can, through time and trail, lift off the ceiling and see through the walls of this self-imposed exile. "My knowledge now is partial; then it will be whole, like God's knowledge of me."

References

• Steiner, Rudolf. How To Know Higher Worlds Hudson, NY: The Anthroposophic Press, 1994
• Steiner, Rudolf. Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path Hudson, NY: The Anthroposophic Press, 1995
• Steiner, Rudolf. "The Mystery of Golgotha" The Mystery of the Trinity and The Mission of the Spirit Hudson, NY: The Anthroposophic Press, 1991
• The Revised English Bible Cambridge, England: Oxford University and Cambridge University Press, 1989

Michael Gore has been a student of spirituality, particularly Christian mystical, since his late teens and is currently employed in the dementia care unit of a retirement community.

Knowledge, Power and Enlightenment (top)
Andrew Cohen

Part One
The attainment of genuine enlightenment is rare at any time in human history and the significance of its presence cannot be overestimated. The word "enlightenment" points to that which is miraculous. Its attainment represents a penetration into the profound depth of human consciousness through which the ultimate source of being itself becomes accessible. That ultimate source of being is undivided fullness that is empty of time, empty of space, empty of location and empty of mind. The conscious experience of this source is absolute knowing that is entirely free from objects, memory and time. In this knowing there is only knowing. In this knowing there is ceaseless recognition of absolute unqualified perfection. Abiding in that perfection always is liberation from time, space, location and mind.

Abiding in the perfection of enlightenment, from the point of view of the mind, means to remain in a state of not knowing the mind. When a human being is able to remain always in a state of not knowing the mind, they will be free from the mind. It is possible to be free from the mind only when one has discovered unequivocally the ultimate source of being and is choicelessly resting there. Choicelessly resting is the result of a doubtless recognition that the ultimate source of being is truth absolute. Doubtlessness is the freedom to abide fearlessly in that state of not knowing the mind always. That means that a human being has won final liberation from the mind, which alone allows them to fully embrace the totality of what it means to be alive.

The totality of what it means to be alive can be fully experienced only when a human being is resting in that state of not knowing the mind, because in that state of not knowing the mind, the knowledge of perfection is the very ground of all conscious experience. When the knowledge of perfection is the ground of all conscious experience, the relationship with the world of time, space, location and mind is transformed. Indeed, the relationship with the world of time, space, location and mind is transformed in such a way that that perfection becomes the very source of mind itself. In fact, it is the ability to cognize and express that perfection that is the manifestation of the miracle of enlightenment in a world that is locked into the prison of time, space, location and mind.

Part Two
The ability to cognize and express perfection means that time, space, location and mind are no longer seen as a prison, but are now recognized to be the very ground on which that perfection, which is the expression of the ultimate source of being, can become manifest. That perfection will become manifest only to the degree that a human being is able to sustain that state of not knowing the mind. Indeed, the degree to which a human being is able to sustain that state of not knowing the mind is the degree to which the mind itself will be enlightened by the ultimate source of being, and thereby express the perfection that is its nature.

Finally, the ability to express that perfection transcends mere cognition, but points toward something even greater, which is the fact that that state of not knowing the mind literally affects the world of time, space, location and mind as consequence. In the end, it is the degree to which the mind itself has become enlightened that determines to what degree that perfection will affect the world of time, space, location and mind as consequence.

Part Three
Unless the individual is abiding at least 51% in that state of not knowing the mind, it will be impossible to effect any degree of perfection, which is the true expression of the ultimate source of being, in the world of time, space, location and mind. In the same way, the degree to which the individual is able to abide beyond at least 51% in that state of not knowing the mind determines to what degree that perfection will be expressed as consequence in the world of time, space, location and mind. This fact is subtle and its profound significance could easily be missed. It points to a dimension of perception that demands enormous humility and emptiness of self. Because this means that the ability of a human being to express that perfection that is the ultimate source of being as consequence depends not upon the power of mind, in and of itself, nor the individual's ability to cognize and organize information, but in fact is solely determined by where the individual ultimately abides—within or beyond the mind. This truth is so important, and indeed, unless one is able to grasp its enormous significance, it is unlikely that one will be able to avoid succumbing to the overwhelming temptation of power that knowledge, not in submission to perfect emptiness, offers us.

Andrew Cohen has been a teacher of enlightenment since 1986. He is the author of numerous books on spiritual life, including Embracing Heaven and Earth, Enlightenment Is a Secret and Freedom Has No History, and founder of the award-winning magazine What Is Enlightenment?

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