The Visceral Response

Chapter The Visceral Response Shortly after 1 moved to northern California in the spring of 1989 with one hundred and fifty students, it began to dawn on me that what I was teaching was not for everybody. My constant emphasis on the necessity to put the call of the spiritual life and its demands above and beyond anything else if one truly wanted to be free in this life, 1 soon found was too great for most seekers. In California, the shocking degree of compromise that has become the status quo in the modern spiritual world hit me like never before. What had been a naive assumption on my part, that most seekers were true seekers—that means clearly understanding the price that had to be paid by any man or woman who wanted to win true spiritual freedom in this life—was soon shattered. The fact that very few seekers and meditators rarely took seriously the possibility of going all the way, made life for one such as myself who teaches nothing else quite chal- lenging. It gradually became clear to me that for the vast majority of seekers, spiritual life provided merely an escape The Visceral Response from ihc mundane, and for others even a form of cnicr- lainmenl. I began to realize thai such a call — the call to go all I he way— fueled by an enthusiastic willingness to give up anything in order to succeed struck far too deep into the solar plexus of many. The call to liberation is an impersonal one. It is a call from the Absolute. A beckoning from the Self to the self. When that call is heard directly, even if only for a split second, uncensored by fear or time, in that second one knows every- thing. One recognizes, even if only for that brief instant, that only that is real and all else false. In that realization comes the understanding that attachment to and investment in that which has been recognized as being false, imperma- nent and unreal is ignorance, and causes bondage, suffering and potentially endless stagnation. But alas, the vision of unending liberation, that vast expanse without beginning or end, poses too great a threat for the majority of seekers who still remain attached to the mirage of selfhood, and who more often than not choose to create the illusion of move- ment through gradually approaching no limitation by slow and always calculated incremental steps. The call to awaken from the Self to the self is absolute by its very nature. How could it he otherwise? Those who are pure of heart, when recognizing this fad, do not object. But those whose investment in this world is still great expe- rience the call of the Absolute as the uhimaic threat to all that has come before and all that ihey hope will be in the An i^nconditumal Rchitionship to Life future. The response to the uncompromising nature of the call from the Absolute in the individual who is still attached to this life is experienced as a deep, visceral NO! As the community of students who had gathered around me gradually began to take on form and structure in order to more efficiently meet the needs of those involved, the mystery of the human condition in all its extreme contradictions became more and more apparent. So much of spiritual life and practice seemed to boil down to being simply that perennial battle between light and darkness, good and evil, heaven and hell. The hellish world of never-ending compromise, where the majority of seekers seemed to be willing to rest for eternity if unchallenged, became recognized as being the status quo of the human condition that had to be taken on wholeheartedly if there was going to be any real chance for a transformation that would be truly revolutionary. Many of my own students, recognizing that a division still existed within them in spite of having experienced a deep penetration into the Absolute, consciously began to embrace a life of renuncia- tion. Endeavoring to face into and come to terms with that division, which was recognized as being the essence of the spiritual predicament, they chose to give up the world for that end alone. The joy experienced when giving spiritual evolution the highest priority is extraordinary. Allowing oneself to The Visceral Response embrace a life without compromise and free from pre- tense is utterly liberating in its depth and singularity. Like none other, it enables the individual to give their full and undivided attention to the destruction of all that is false, wrong and untrue. The individual who has taken the bold step of leaving the world and all the compromise that it represents behind in order to completely and irrevocably destroy the very seeds of that compromise in themselves, when successful often becomes the enemy of the source of that compromise. The source of that compromise is, in the collective/individual mind, a fundamental and deeply existential fear of dissolution, nonexistence and insignifi- cance. It represents an absolute and final loss of freedom for the false and limited notion of self. This fear, which usually remains unconscious and unquestioned, causes the individual to blindly adhere to fixed notions about the nature of reality, including shallow and destructive notions of a personal self that almost always serve to create a world where profound evolution becomes impos- sible and the law of the spirit is one of stagnation. The modern spiritual world is in many ways in a similar condition. In spite of the fact that more and more people seem to be expressing interest in the spiritual dimension of life, the deeper layers of the fundamental attach men i to time and history usually remain largely untouched. Most revealing about the time we are living in is that e\en now. when one dares to consider without reservation the deepest An l^m omh(\omil Relationship to Life implications of the uncompromising call of the Absolute, they often become suspect in the minds of many. But when one not only considers the implications of that call but dares to respond to it unconditionally, thereby stepping outside the collective norm, one is often viewed with sus- picion, fear and sometimes even hatred not only by society at large but also by those who profess deep interest in the spiritual life themselves. It was during those first two years in California that not only discovered how superficial was the degree of seri- ousness of many seekers after Truth, but it was then that

began to realize for the first time how deeply conservative and fearful of real change were many of those spiritual practitioners who, now well into their middle age, had been at it for quite a long time. Several of those who were considered quite radical in their own time now seemed to have settled into an alternative lifestyle that appeared a lot more progressive than closer scrutiny would reveal. It seemed to me that many of the old-timers thought they had already been through it all, and therefore had already taken all the big risks and had learned almost everything there was to know. By then most had become therapists or teach- ers of one kind or another. What was ironic was they were now setting the standard for the masses, many of whom were coming to spiritual life for the first time. But what kind of standard were they setting? They had become the establishment, so to speak, and were at least in my mind The Visceral Response stuck in fixed views and conclusions about what was possible and what was true. This made it almost impossible to question fundamental ideas in any way that threatened the status quo that they had over time collectively estab- lished. This had become more and more apparent to me since 1 began teaching when, to my amazement, many of the old-timers expressed dismay, fear and shock when those who came to me became so inspired that they chose to abandon the world to embrace spiritual life wholeheartedly It was the degree of conviction and the willingness to back it up by taking big risks that seemed to cause the most concern in many who at one time would have been equally thrilled. Indeed several of my students had been Buddhist monks at one time, and interestingly enough when their old friends learned about their newfound degree of convic- tion and enthusiastic willingness to take big risks once again, the response was one of fear, suspicion and doubt. In a time when so many had given up on the real possibility of extraordinary success, their excitement was seen as naive and even dangerous. I was intrigued to find that for many whose youth had been characterized by a deep and seemingly sincere ques- tioning of fundamental values and principles, it seemed now that too much of their adult lives were concerned with the search for satisfying intimacy in sexual/romantic rela- tionships and the striving for niaturily liirough becoming parents. The spiritual status cjuo ol the time we are li\iiii; An ( ^mom\\{\ona\ Rclaiumship to IaJi in shies away from extremes for fear of making the same mistakes that many have made in the recent past— either by becoming too intimately involved with charismatic and too often corrupt spiritual leaders, or by allowing oneself to take the call of the Absolute so seriously that one would begin to neglect more worldly concerns in such a way that would be considered irresponsible. While this is easily understandable, unless one is willing to continue to take big risks until final and irrevocable success has been achieved, the inevitable result will be that like it or not, one will remain in the grips of delusion manifesting itself as the experience of isolation and separation in what is rapidly becoming an overcrowded world. Although many continue to speak passionately about the necessity for radical trans- formation, the unstated law of the land still appears to be every man for himself. When and until the primitive need to live this life for oneself only has been transcended, no truly significant breakthrough has occurred. The Visceral Response