The Great Work In the first essay we began to look at the underlying theme of self-directed transformation to a more conscious being, a goal that unites modern psychology, yoga, alchemy and many other wide ranging esoteric traditions. We distinguished the role and interdependence of Knowledge and Being, concluding that transformation involves a change in being, not merely the accumulation of certain knowledge. After highlighting that the default state of man proposed by all esoteric and mystery traditions is one of a divine being trapped in world of illusion, we hypothesised transformation as the ongoing process of awakening, of venturing into ones deepest depths, to experience and fuel our inner spark, with the result being the reduction of mechanical darkness, and the emergence of a consciously liberated being in contact with his shared divine nature. We explored the problems that esoteric traditions have experienced in the past, and the state of the transformative arts today. Finally, we concluded that our cultural elevation of knowledge above being perpetuates dire results for the whole world, a world of many great things, but with little wisdom behind the use of those things. Linked to this, we also touched on the dangers of mistaking the map for the territory, and the ability-humility of the mature spiritual student to discard maps, beliefs and biases whenever they lose relevance to the ever-evolving territory of human experience. In this part of the series, we will further explore the impetus for self-work; the mechanical nature of man and the possibility of liberation. Moving beyond diagnoses, we will look at the various remedies offered throughout these esoteric traditions: the process of attention, awareness, acceptance, and the death-rebirth analysis-synthesis process. After exploring these shared elements, we will very briefly review the united transformational aspirations of Gurdjieff's Fourth Way, Crowley's Magickal training, the art of Yoga, Jung's Individuation and a few other esoteric traditions, to flesh out our proposed similarities. Machine Revolution None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
As any student of mindfulness gradually realises, without dedicated inner exploration and observation, we remain slaves to our own robotry, whilst believing ourselves to be consciously in control and "choosing" what we do. Without inner work on our Being, the Knowledge we absorb and integrate is often wasted because the Being is not sufficiently developed to nurture and apply it. It is akin to building sandcastles on sieves. Transformation is called for! A change in being, a release from the fixed, the habitual. The only stability is in change and change is the only stability. Self-study and exploration lead to personal empowerment, which gradually dissolves out into all aspects of our lives; into friends attitudes, into how people treat us, into the physical world that surrounds us. Self-awareness and the resulting "mastery" effectively defeat ignorance, racism, sexism, premature judgement, violence, mistreatment of others, and all kinds of problems that persist simply because people are fast asleep and do not understand themselves or the messages that they are unconsciously injecting into our co-created reality. People who skip to telling others what they should be doing, and what the world should be doing, without exploring their deeper selves only go on to sow the ugly results of their own un-resolved conflicts into their solutions. In fact, for many people of this disposition, their "solutions" are like a drug to them, to convince themselves that they're "doing something", and eventually to convince everyone else of this. The process becomes psychologically addictive. (I speak as a recovering addict.) If we are to understand the behaviour of others, and of humanity as a whole, we must be able to understand the forces that fuel our own actions. If we wish psychology to grow into anything more than a set of labels and theories, we must intimately know ourselves; all the glory, pain, anguish, suffering, divinity, beauty, splendour, dark and light. Without this foundation in self-knowing, we are simply un-equipped to recognise and understand the wide range of human experiences in others. Our cultures and personalities are self-perpetuating traits created and maintained by virtually all people on a daily basis, and so to understand the co-creative mechanics of groups of people, we must first investigate the mechanics of our individual selves. In terms of practical results, there is no division between self-improvement and "saving the world", because our future is being almost totally scripted by the emergent cultures that stem from our individual levels of understanding. Our world is grooving to the pulse of human consciousness, whether that consciousness is humming at smart or stupid frequencies. Or as Jung saliently put it in an interview: we know so very little of man, and yet man is the origin of all the evil we see around us. What this means is that the best thing anyone can do to transform the world into a more beautiful, alluring, enticing, inclusive, and diverse place all begin with the seeker behind the vision, the eye of the beholder. One must begin with oneself, and remember that freedom cannot be "received", but only personally achieved and experienced through individual struggle. We can lead others to the water hole, but we can never force them to drink. Without helping oneself, without attending to deeper issues of security, identity, and self-expression, fragments of knowledge will only develop within the constraints of our pre-determined personal pathways. Special techniques of self-study are required because a great deal of what we call "thinking" resembles little more than "associative mentation" based on mechanical linguistic structures, in turn linked to emotional and physical imprints. Believing that one "understands" this statement is a long long long way from experiencing one's own mechanical features, and even further from actually doing anything about it. The immediate reaction that we already "understand" this, and whatever further conversation follows in our heads, is often equally conditioned and controlled. Proponents of "positive thinking" think that thought can lead to higher consciousness. This is not possible. Thought is a function of language, which is a conditioned intellectual structure. Thought, whether "positive" or "negative" (it can never exist without dualism) is associative mental reaction. By nature of what it is... it is mechanical, confined, and pre-conscious... Unless self-awareness and some form of unified intent are cultivated, our personal "software" remains equally fixed and restrictive, whether we claim it as "Republican", "capitalist", "anarchist", "nazi", "liberal", "mystic", "punk", "environmentalist" etc. Human psychology underlies and dictates all of these software choices, which is precisely why all esoteric traditions provide practical methods of mapping and penetrating the individual's psyche. Fundamentalism, dogmatism, close-mindedness, irrationality, and violence are not characteristics of any one field, but fundamental self-perpetuating patterns that can arise in any person. Whether you're the Pope, the president, an experienced Yogi, a dedicated seeker, a caring lover: All minds are vulnerable The world generally remains in its current backward state precisely because so few people are aware of their mechanics, and hence act out dangerous speeches, roles and behaviours that they have blindly internalised from schooling, parents, and an oppressive global culture that presents great risks to all living beings. Upon consulting these internal structures, a great plague of premature certainty arises in the average person who has little to no conception of "maybe", let alone an appreciation of what it means to consciously (intelligently) analyse and judge. Thus, the problem with most peoples' understanding of the world and themselves lies not in lack of Knowledge, but in disastrous psychological wiring, a poor quality of Being, which keeps them in conflict other badly wired robots, and the many conflicting selves which reside within the projection they label as "me." Because all minds are vulnerable, countless examples of historical revolutions have morphed into the same authoritarian regimes they fought to disassemble. We often find that they were forcing change from the "outside" before enough people had really understood it on the "inside." Unless we strive to learn and transform on a deeper level, and especially if we have no positive vision to offer, we seem destined only to repeat the mistakes of our forebearers. Revolution without Revelation is Tyranny. Tim Leary or Saul Alinsky
The only revolution that can forge success is a dedicated revolution of the mind because in nearly all respects, the world we see around us is a direct, albeit largely unconscious, co-creation of our minds. Mechanical repressive minds create mechanical repressive cultures, full of mechical repressive customs and tools, which further propagate a mechanical repressive way of living and perceiving. Flexible expressive minds create flexible expressive cultures, full of flexible expressive customs and tools, which further propagate a flexible expressive way of living and perceiving. To trigger change, for herself and hence for everyone, each individual must take her personal stand in the Grand Feedback Loop of self-perpetuating violence, close-mindedness and stupidity. The battle is uphill, but fortunately we have friends and a lot of fun, love, and revelation to experience along the way. Note: if you seem to be lacking fun, please execute these instructions at the next available weekend: purchase 1no. bottle of Vodka, 24no. bottles of beer, 1no. bag of cannabis (choose a size to fit you), acquire 3no. close friends, and proceed to PARTY HARD. Repeat regularly for optimal results. This is the secret initiatory training of modern seekers, to keep their hedonistic center in good working order. It protects against common ailments such as "dull occultist" and "pleasure-deprived seeker." Other recommended tools: good music, good movies, members of the opposite sex. Killing yourself to Live Despite the conflicted ramblings of philosophers on abstract notions of free will, we find that the conclusions among the esoteric community bear a surprisingly similarity. In their eyes, free will does not come down to a simple yes or no conclusion, but a possibility or potential. In other words, free will is attainable. The consensus is that man in his default state experiences only brief glimpses of conscious will, amongst hours, days and years of pre-programmed responses, triggered and controlled by external stimuli. Anyone who dedicates to self-study will come to a very real understanding of this; a feeling and sensing of it, as opposed to a mere conceptual comprehension. The ongoing process of liberation from robotry, the inner discrimination, transformation, and consequent unification required, is no easy task, and requires courage, compassion, and discipline. It must take place through a change in being, not just the accumulation of new knowledge. Here we look to the esoteric lineages, both old and new, for practical instructions in the art of self-realisation. What we find is a common regime of self-work based in awareness, sincerity, acceptance, compassion, detachment, death, creation, and unification. To simplify even further, the process takes shape in two key stages:
Gurdjieff summed it up succintly: "A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake." To arrive even at the start line is a difficult task, because the realisation that must occur is the almost total extent to which one has been brainwashed and robotised. All were clear on this point: "...his [G.'s] favourite statement was that, if a man in prison was at any time to have a chance of escape, then he must first of all realize that he is in a prison. So long as he fails to realise this, so long as he thinks he is free, he has no chance whatever. No one can help or liberate him by force, against his will, in opposition to his wishes." (Ouspensky) "IT IS possible to get out of the trap. But to get out of a prison, you must first admit to being in a prison." (Wilhelm Reich) "The man who realizes his ignorance has taken the first step toward knowledge." (Max Heindel) "One cannot evolve from one's robothood until one realizes how totally one has been robotized." (Tim Leary)  Consequently, various "death-rebirth" rites, of varying power and effect, are found in virtually all mystical and spiritual traditions. Unlike the crude brainwashing undertaken by various social institutions, these re-programming rites allow for a more conscious death. See the previously quoted section on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, where Leary clarifies that "it is the death and rebirth of the ego that has been described, not only the body." Following this, Leary concludes: Here then is the key to a mystery which has been passed down for over 2,500 years - the consciousness-expansion experience - the pre-mortem death and rebirth rite. The Vedic sages knew the secret; the Eleusian initiates knew it; the Tantrics knew it. In all their esoteric writings they whisper the message: it is possible to cut beyond ego-consciousness... The G. man again: All religions speak about death during this life on earth. Death must come before rebirth. But what must die? False confidence in one's own knowledge, self-love and egoism. Our egoism must be broken. We must realize that we are very complicated machines, and so this process of breaking is bound to be a long and difficult task. As G. indicates, and as I'll emphasise here, this death-rebirth process is precisely that, a process, not (except perhaps in a very few historical cases) a one-off explosive event. One does not completely die and, hey presto!, re-emerge as a demigod; we don't work, "awaken", and then spend the rest of our life dancing in the heavens, surrounded by virgins and thunderbolts. Our deeper mechanics are simply too vast and complicated to be comprehended in one glimpse, or even one decade! Were this definitive glimpse possible, it would likely trigger a catastrophic information overload for most people. One has move at a sensible pace, with a constant open-ness. The first experiences of awakening, illumination, or gnosis, are often just the beginning of a life-long adventure. Every day, hour, and second is a death, and every consequent moment a potential rebirth. The quality of our wisdom depends on what we do about this: whether we take personal responsibility for liberating ourselves, or whether we sit around acting like Cosmic Schmucks, whilst fantasising and dreaming about better things. The death-rebirth of transformation is a recognition that the only stability lies in change, and that the process of liberating ourselves from ignorance is a life-long endeavour, with occasional intense revelations and insights, depending on our dedication, compassion, and luck. Perhaps the original death-rebirth rite, ancestor to all transformative traditions, was the shamanic sickness. From many records, it appears that this process was initiated through painful physical or emotional stress; the initiate did not "choose" to become a shaman until he realised his calling, and then went on to be taught what was necessary. Today many people still experience an intense psychospiritual crisis before a particularly important revelation-transformation. Stan Grof recently wrote a profound essay on this topic, discussing how modern medicine commonly misdiagnoses such crises, suppressing their deeper messages: One of the most important implications of the research of holotropic states is the realization that many of the conditions, which are currently diagnosed as psychotic and indiscriminately treated by suppressive medication, are actually difficult stages of a radical personality transformation and of spiritual opening. If they are correctly understood and supported, these psychospiritual crises can result in emotional and psychosomatic healing, remarkable psychological transformation, and consciousness evolution (Grof and Grof 1989, 1990). The transformative process of consciousness evolution is surely the greatest expression and adventure anyone can embark upon, but as already mentioned it's not for the majority, and there are many dark nights to struggle through along the way. The evolutionary journey itself can never be realistically planned (only consciously initiated), and can never be pain-free. Consider the metamorphosis of a caterpillar: the first cells of the emerging butterfly in the cocoon are initially recognised as a threat by the old immune system! As the cells arrive faster and begin to link up, the caterpillars immune system is overwhelmed and breaks down. The body begins to disintegrate. The butterfly cells then mature and begin transforming the dying body into the growing butterfly. The breakdown of the caterpillar's old system is essential for the breakthrough of the new butterfly. Yet, in reality the caterpillar neither dies nor disintegrates, for from the beginning its hidden purpose was to transform and be reborn as the butterfly! The caterpillar's immune system must fight the new imaginal cells until they are mature enough to take over. If the caterpillar does not fight, the imaginal cells will take control before they mature, and the organism as a whole will die out. This analogy applies perfectly to the process of self-work. The caterpillar within us, the pre-programmed responses, emotional traumas and biological buffers are generally there for absolutely rational reasons - to protect us, from threats internal and external, just as the butterfly must begin its life in the protective layers of the cocoon to survive. Buffers should kick up a fuss when we probe them, otherwise they are not doing their biological job - to protect against a perceived fear. Therefore, to move beyond these conditioned limits, we must peel back our unconscious cocoon, whilst strengthening our conscious wings. The death-rebirth rite has representations throughout virtually all religious, spiritual and esoteric traditions: The category life-death-rebirth deity also known as a "dying-and-rising" or "Resurrection" deity is a convenient means of classifying the many divinities in world mythology or religion who are born, suffer death, an eclipse, or other death-like experience, pass a phase in the underworld among the dead, and are subsequently reborn, in either a literal or symbolic sense.
For a particularly interesting formulation of life-death-rebirth matrix, and it's all pervading reach, see Thelemapedia's article on the magical formula IAO. Analysis and Synthesis The process of death and rebirth has many other analogies in myth and substance. It is often applied to intellectual growth, whereby the conceptual mind must first "destroy" and dissect various ideas before they can be understood, purified, and then re-united. In terms of self-development, we must first view ourselves honestly, using the intellect to pull apart and identify our many conflicting patterns of behaviour, before we can re-arrange and re-unite them. This universal process of division and unification is well represented in one of fundamental Tarot trumps, The Lovers.  This version is taken from Crowley's Thoth deck. In the accompanying Book of Thoth he writes. ...the framework of the card is therefore the Arch of Swords, beneath which the Royal Marriage takes place. The Sword is primarily an engine of division. In the intellectual world - which is the world of the Sword suit - it represents analysis. This card and Atu XIV [Art] together compose the comprehensive alchemical maxim: Solve et coagula. Crowley mentions alchemy, which offers one of the best (and oldest) examples of analysis and synthesis. Many Westerners are now familiar, thanks to Jung and others, with the idea that the alchemical process of transmuting lead into gold can be seen as a psychological metaphor for the transformation of consciousness. This process is said to take place through seven stages. (See also Gurdjieff's Law of Seven, the importance of the Octave throughout mathematical, philosophical and esoteric traditions, and Leary's potent manifestation of this law in his 8 circuit model of consciousness.) I won't go into the details of these stages here, but Google knows plenty of good articles on the topic for anyone willing to do a little research. When I first came across the talk of death-rebirth and admitting ones slavery before escaping it, I ignored a lot of it: "that sounds way too messy; I just need to learn the right stuff, I can hold on to what I want. Maybe I've already died and been reborn! I'm sure I realised I was robot a few months ago..." If you perservere, there is fortunately no escape: at some point you will find that the only thing in your way is "you." A bout of confusion turns to anguish, to suffering, to surrender, to release. Part of the machine melts down. It is not a nice experience, and results only emerge after the meltdown, as new structures and a new awareness take over the old roles. We, like our civilisations, tend to accumulate and consume until we become repetitive, fixed, rigid. This continues until the tension is too much, and hence the only smart thing to do is let the structure collapse and re-emerge. The destruction is the first stage in the larger dance of creation. The process continues over and over... When the individual's behavior and consciousness get hooked to a routine sequence of external actions, he is a dead robot, and it is time for him to die and be reborn. Time to "drop out," "turn on," and "tune in." This period of robotization is called the Kali Yuga, the Age of Strife and Empire... (Leary) At the present time, this analogy can also be applied on a much larger scale: our society appears to be approaching the death that precedes rebirth. Tools for Transformation In speaking of evolution is it necessary to understand from the outset that no mechanical evolution is possible. The evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness. And 'consciousness' cannot evolve unconsciously. The evolution of man is the evolution of his will, and 'will' cannot evolve involuntarily. The evolution of man is the evolution of his power of doing, and 'doing' cannot be the result of things which 'happen.' Dr. Gurdjieff
To transmute the theory of conscious transformation into practice, the individual requires tools from those traditions that have specialised in such knowledge. The first step is to choose a map! It's important to have some kind of map to follow, to chart your progress against, to self-relate, to re-frame, to view ourselves in a new light, whether that map be Leary's 8 circuit model, the foundations of yoga, Jung's psychological theories or the mythologems of Gnosticism. It's common for most people today to investigate many maps and develop their own personal understanding of the underlying process. A map facilitates the unifying process, by allowing us to record and relate to all our functions and behaviours; to weave a unifying web (Will) behind all these initially rogue selves and intentions. Another important point is that if you want to acheive something, you should dress up for it! Prepare yourself, make a big deal of it. If it's just an individual session in meditation or something similar, light a candle or burn some incense. Do something that signals to "you" that normal waking consciousness is going to be interrupted for the time being whilst work on a different level takes places. Many rituals/costumes/accessories in various schools of self-work exist to serve this function, to construct a temporary "temple" where the individual calms and focuses herself in the pursuit of a fixed goal. A common practice performed by most magicians before beginning work is a banishing ritual. For most people, money is the only way to get their attention. As Gurdjieff put it "people do not value a thing if they do not pay for it." Most people only pay attention when they pay money: in other words, they not value what it is easily come by. One value in all this "dressing up" is to unite the Will and use the energy of the emotions to tackle this quest, during which the individual eventually realises the value of everything around her, all the time. A stronger form of self-motivation then develops; a flexible, permeative, and open approach to all experiences. How does one begin transformation? By initiating change. But to change, one must first understand what one is changing. Without this, the whole process is delusion.  First one must See NOTE: This section is a rough overview of the science of transformation, not a practical guide. The purpose here is to summarise and highlight the much aligned diagnoses and cures of these traditions, not to practically instruct anyone who wishes to embark upon the actual work. One must investigate for oneself and "do" the work of a particular system to understand and experience results. The individuals situation must be seen and accepted before conscious change can begin. This is why nearly all systems of self-work begin with some form self-observation before trying to alter the mechanics of the individual. Despite it's short coverage in this essay, this process of observation and remembering is a massive task; with each step one finds further layers and further insights that would have been incomprehensible at the beginning. At each stage, the game board re-arranges itself. If we are persistant in these efforts, the next stage is to "detach" and not "identify" with the fixed chatter-patterns of our normal waking consciousness. We see them as they are: mechanical responses, and we develop the difficult ability of letting them slip by without "becoming them." This again is a long and difficult process. This rough plan of action is found in many diverse systems, occult, magic(k)al, esoteric, and spiritual, as they all understand and share a common concern for de-mechanisation and transformation to a more conscious being. They speak of it in many different ways, whether it be taming the ego, illumination of the darkness, awakening from sleep, making the unconscious conscious, re-writing our neurological programming etc., but when we look closer at the methods, we discover similarities in both diagnoses and cure: G.I. Gurdjieff said that man can achieve "Consciousness" only through exploring himself and creating unity (or "will") amongst the internal mental chaos that characterises the normal person. To achieve this Gurdjieff prescribes an intense regime of self-remembering and self-observation, along with education in the laws of the World, which are intimately linked to the laws of Man, as "Man is an Image of the World." Persistance in this training provides a more realistic notion of Will; an individual who has control over his Physical, Emotional and Conceptual centers, and can unite them to truly "do" something. The Fourth Way is often alikened to Sufism, and many people have labelled Gurdjieff's work as primarily Sufic. Without becoming involved in this complex discussion, we can look to a modern Sufi and find the same transformative message; in this case, it is spoken by Idres Shah, in his book The Commanding Self. It is only since the nineteen-fifties, with the discovery of the far-reaching effects of conditioning, brain-washing and attitude-engineering, that the subjective nature of virtually all approaches to knowledge has been perceived to the degree to which the Sufis, for centuries, have tried to establish. The Sufis have always taught: 'Examine your assumptions; avoid mechanicality; distinguish faith from fixation.' Aleister Crowley, despite his endlessly interesting fall-out with Gurdjieff, speaks along the same lines, constantly emphasising the importance of Will in the development of magickal ability. Without training, vigilance, and a practical understanding of one's machine, the individual is still dominated by many hypocritical intentions which remain largely unaware of eachother, and which disrupt her focus, taking her on a ride whenever external circumstances provide the bait: The majority of the people in this world are ataxic; they cannot coordinate their mental muscles to make a purposed movement. They have no real will, only a set of wishes, many of which contradict others. The victim wobbles from one to the other (and it is no less wobbling because the movements may occasionally be very violent) and at the end of life the movements cancel each other out. Nothing has been achieved...
Book IV, Part 2: The Wand
A Thelemic site comments: Crowley, like most spiritual teachers, recognized that one's Will is generally buried beneath a thick layer of what can be called Individual Ego-the conscious sense of "I" that feels separate from the Universe and is a complex mix of beliefs, values, and norms derived from socialization and various life experiences. A Thelemite is therefore one who seeks to break through her "programming" in order to reconnect with the secret self, thereby becoming aware of her true, unfiltered nature. This process is called the Great Work. Crowley's sublime definition of Magick emphasises the value of unified will, calling it The Science and Art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will. This is not particularly far from Gurdjieff's central idea of obtaining Consciousness, and the ability "to do". Despite the overlaps in these teachings, Crowley was a student of Yoga, and thus favoured Patanjali's 8 limbs of Yoga as a full course in self-development and attainment of will. In Crowley's Book IV Part 1, and the later 8 Lectures on Yoga, he explains that the yogic physical practices of asana and pranayama are used to first quiet and then create rhythm in the body. Following success in controlling the body, the higher practices of pratyahara and dharana initiate battle royale with the mind which, until long and difficult mental work is undertaken, remains a raging tempest of thoughts and desires that jump, scream, talk and shout whenever they get a chance. Dharana works on the success of pratyahara and trains the mind to focus entirely on one object, to cultivate the very powerful ability of un-interrupted attention, which eventually leads to other results beyond this essay. Due to Crowley's wide-ranging influence, and shared transformational aims of all esoteric practice, most magical organisations also work towards the same ends of re-programming and creating unity/intent/will in the new initiate. Phil Hine, a modern Chaos Magician, writes in Ovenready Chaos (available online here) that Magick is surprisingly simple, offering:
He also defines one of the main goals of Chaos Magick as Deconditioning: The Chaos paradigm proposes that one of the primary tasks of the aspiring magician is to thoroughly decondition hirself from the mesh of beliefs, attitudes and fictions about self, society, and the world. Our ego is a fiction of stable self-hood which maintains itself by perpetuating the distinctions of 'what I am/what I am not, what I like/what I don't like', beliefs about ones politics, religion, gender preference, degree of free will, race, subculture etc all help maintain a stable sense of self, whilst the little ways in which we pull against this very stability allows us to feel as though we are unique individuals. Using deconditioning exercises, we can start to widen the cracks in our consensual reality which hopefully, enables us to become less attached to our beliefs and egofictions, and thus able to discard or modify them when appropriate. Magick, like many other modern esoteric traditions, incorporates and borrows extensively from the methods and philosophies of much old transformative systems such as Yoga and Egyptian mysticism. Israel Regardie, in an interview with the late Christopher Hyatt, said that the relatively modern Golden Dawn system of magick is very similar to Mayahana Buddhism. (As an interesting side-note, he also mentions that Hindu systems are more "sweet and light," whereas Tibetan and Western systems of esotericism are much more "tough-minded.") Crowley's take on Yoga was certainly one of the most tough-minded and challenging, but beneath the surface the philosophy of the yogic traditions are very much in agreement with his, especially in general diagnoses (mechanicality) and cure (transformation) for modern man. In The Heart of Yoga, T.K.V. Desikachar, son of Sri T. Krishnamacharya (who taught Indra Devi and B.K.S. Iyengar in their youth), outlines the foundations of Yoga practice, based on Patanjali's Yoga Sutra: How does our perception work? We often determine that we have seen a situation "correctly" and act according to that perception. In reality, however, we have deceived ourselves, and our actions may thus bring misfortune to ourselves or others. The Heart of Yoga, pg. 10
Thus in the basic "philosophy" of yoga, behind the illusionary Oriental mask that many people project upon it, we find the diagnoses of man common to all esoteric traditions; a being ruled by habit and false perception, unfortunately with little or no awareness of the fact. Desikachar goes on to comment that avidya itself is nearly always hidden from us, and that we have more chance of recognising it through identifying its branches:
As long as these patterns dominate our thinking, we remain in a state of incorrect sleeping misapprehension. One goal of yoga is thus to recognise these patterns of avidya and reduce them so that our perception becomes more like a mirror. Desikachar also comments that: We notice avidya more by its absence than its presence. When we see something correctly there is a profound peace inside us - we feel no tension, no unrest, no agitation. For instance, when I am conscious of speaking slowly I sense that there is a spring from which quietness comes, and vidya, clear understanding, is within me. Yoga works on reducing avidya, slowly altering the patterns of mind and body, so that there is less cloudiness and more clarity. Returning to the Yoga Sutra, Desikachar talks of the three tools used in ascending the ladder of yoga:
Desikachar offers three main definitions of yoga: 1) yoga as the movement from one point to another, higher one, 2) yoga as the bringing together, the unifying of two things, and 3) yoga as action with undivided, uninterrupted attention. These definitions have one thing in common, and it is their allegiance to transformation and change: "That which was impossible becomes possible; that which was unattainable becomes attainable; that which was invisible can be seen." When it comes to Western apprehension of Eastern esoteric traditions such as Yoga, we often return Carl Jung who dedicated so much of his time to analysis and synthesis of Eastern understanding. One of Jung's biggest contributions was his extensive Foreword to D.T. Suzuki's An Introduction to Zen Buddhism. In it he sketches various links between the goals of psychotherapy and Zen Buddhism, initially venturing that enlightenment (satori) "embraces an insight into the nature of the Self, and that it is an emancipation of the conscious from the illusory conception of self," and later talking of "a break-through of a consciousness limited to the ego-form in the form of the non-ego-like self." Jung goes on to relate this process of satori to a release of the ego; a reduction of the self-perpetuating habitual deception that Yoga identifies as avidya. Continuing to explore satori and its relation to Western mystical practices, Jung writes that: In India it was Yoga and in China Buddhism which supplied the motive power for these attempts to wrest oneself from the bonds of a certain state of consciousness which was felt to be incomplete. As far as Western mysticism is concerned, its texts are full of instructions as to how man can and must release himself from the "I-ness" of his consciousness, so that through the knowledge of his being he may raise himself above it and reach the inward (godlike) man... An Introduction to Zen Buddhism, pg. 17
Koans are often used in Zen Buddhism, misleading and teasing the intellect (Gurdjieff's & Jung's Thinking center, Leary's Time-binding Semantic circuit, Sagan's Human brain etc.), until it collapses and higher contemplative faculties take lead - "centers" of intelligence which participate with deep reality in a much more direct experiental fashion, usually beyond words and logic. Smoking good pot often produces a similar reaction; an immediate triggering of higher centers that force us to see things as we have never seen them before, on a wordless level of sensory bliss and being. Jung translates this process into his own symbol-set, hypothesising that the collapse of normal limited consciousness opens the gateway to the deeper unconscious, wherefore the archetypes of the collective unconscious are free to manifest themselves to the consciousness of the individual. (In Leary's terminology, this is an experience of the Collective Neurogenetic Circuit, similar in many ways to Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields) This process, the expansion or surrender of normal consciousness to allow the entrance of deeper psychic forces from the unconscious, and their consequent integration, forms the crux of Jung's concept of Individuation. Of course, as in all such traditions, Jung emphasised that honesty and inner sincerity must come first, by facing and accepting one's Shadow. The result is a potent esoteric doctrine, aligned with many other traditions in diagnoses (mechanicality, lack of wholeness) and cure (inner discrimination, re-birth, transformation, unification): Jung believed that a human being is inwardly whole, but that most of us have lost touch with important parts of our selves. Through listening to the messages of our dreams and waking imagination, we can contact and reintegrate our different parts. The goal of life is individuation, the process of coming to know, giving expression to, and harmonizing the various components of the psyche. If we realize our uniqueness, we can undertake a process of individuation and tap into our true self. Each human being has a specific nature and calling which is uniquely his or her own, and unless these are fulfilled through a union of conscious and unconscious, the person can become sick. Putting these insights aside for now, why was it that Jung, a Western psychoanalyist, was so successful in his exposition of these subjects? What made him able to understand and synthesise the waves of wisdom common to alchemy, Gnosticism, Buddhism, and psychology? Jung himself answers this in the same Zen Buddhism introduction: The only movement within our culture which partly has, and partly should have, some understanding of these aspirations [for such enlightenment] is psychotherapy. It is therefore not a matter of chance that this foreword is written by a psychotherapist.... Taken basically, psychotherapy is a dialectic relationship between the doctor and the patient.... The goal is transformation.... Suzuki & Jung, 1948, p. 25
We will finish this essay with a poignant quote from Alan Watts, confirming many of our suspicions: If we look deeply into such ways of life as Buddhism and Taoism, Vedanta and Yoga, we do not find either philosophy or religion as these are understood in the West. We find something more nearly resembling psychotherapy.... The main resemblance between these Eastern ways of life and Western psychotherapy is in the concern of both with bringing about changes of consciousness, changes in our ways of feeling our own existence and our relation to human society and the natural world. The psychotherapist has, for the most part, been interested in changing the consciousness of peculiarly disturbed individuals. The disciplines of Buddhism and Taoism are, however, concerned with changing the consciousness of normal, socially adjusted people. Watts, 1975, pp. 3-4.
In the next part of the series: Gnosticism and gnosis; the divine spark; the symbolic message; the blind ruler; intentions without implementations - religion is doing; afterword; recommended reading. Read Transformation Part III now. |
Back to top.