The Seer

When the great Dominican mystic Meister Eckhart was first hailed into court by the heresy-hunters of the Archbishop of Cologne in 1326, one of his sayings they objected to was this famous and mysterious remark: p>

“The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me: my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing and one love.” (From German Sermon No. 12.)

Eckhart replied by citing a famous passage from Saint Augustine about God’s intimacy with us. Not that it did much good, although the objectionable passage did not make it into the final list denounced by the pope’s bull of condemnation two years later and published a year after Eckhart’s death. For in fact, what he was teaching was not heretical, but ancient Christian spirituality.

But the Cologne censors also objected to a similar statement in Sermon 10, which makes the point even clearer if less dramatically:

“The nearness of God and the soul makes no distinction in truth. The same knowing in which God knows Himself is the knowing of every detached spirit, and no other. The soul takes her being immediately from God. Therefore God is nearer to the soul than she is to herself,’ and therefore God is in the ground of the soul with all His Godhead.”

Here again, Eckhart was citing Saint Augustine on the divine intimacy. In another sermon (German Sermon 5b), he put it this way: “God’s ground is my ground and my ground is God’s ground.”

What Eckhart is getting at in all these koan-like passages is that our union with God is so intimate that it is impossible to distinguish the Lover from the Beloved. (The implication must have upset the inquisitors deeply: then why bother to?) For Eckhart, such total union with

God is both the original source of our existence and the final point of our destiny. Still, between our original unity in the eternal womb of the Godhead and our ultimate union with God , the goal of all our questing, the difference made by awareness is all-important.

In German Sermon 68, Eckhart said, beginning again with his favorite passage from Augustine,

” God is closer to me than I am to myself: my being depends on God’s being near me and present to me. So God is also in a stone or a log of wood, only they do not know it. If the wood knew God and realized how close God is to it as the highest angel does, it would be as blissful as the highest angel. And so a human is more blessed than a stone or a piece of wood because she or he is aware of God and knows how close God is. And I am the more blessed, the more I realize this, and I am the less blessed, the less I know this. I am not blessed because God is in me and is near me and because I possess Him, but because I am aware of how close God is to me, and that I know God .”

Eventually, however, Eckhart insists that we must go beyond even this awareness. As long as we are aware of the difference between God and our own selves, between the “I” and the “Thou,” we are not truly one. So Eckhart could say in all sincerity, as he did in Sermon 52, “I pray God to rid me of God.”

Eckhart never confuses God and creatures. But he denies that union with God ultimately admits of any experienced duality of Lover and Beloved.

It is like the ecstasy of lovers gazing into each others’ eyes, oblivious of anything except their love. True intercourse means forgetting any distinction between “your” joy and “my” joy, or love, or being, or presence, or anything else. Such awareness expands even beyond any awareness of “our” into an unimaginable and ineffable dimension of one-ness, what in Hindu teaching is called Sat-chit-ananda – “being-awareness-bliss.”

No wonder that Hindus think of Eckhart as a Hindu, Buddhists think of him as a Buddhist, and Sufis regard him as one of their own. He speaks the mystical language of the world’s greatest lovers, those who really KNOW .

~ Richard Woods , O.P. is a leading authority on Meister Eckhart. He is author of many books including Eckhart’s Way , a study of the life and enlightened understanding of the 14th century German mystic.

“Jesus … was what he was because he knew of himself that: “I and the Father are one,” and not — obviously — because he had accepted Jesus as his Saviour. But, from the beginning, institutional Christianity has hardly contemplated the possibitity that the consciousness of Jesus might be the consciousness of the Christian, that the whole point of the Gospel is that everyone may experience union with God in the same way and to the same degree as Jesus himself. On the contrary, one who says, with Eckhart, that “the eye with which I see God is.the same eye with which God sees me” is condemned as a heretic. … To see the light, it is only necessary to stop dreaming and open the eyes.”

~ From: Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion, by Alan Watts

The Journey is but letting go,
Arriving at the One we know
We are, the One we’ve always been,
The One I AM, the never seen,
The Light.

Customer to optician …

“At first I was a humanist agnostic, then I saw the light!

I became an earnest seeker after truth, then I saw the light!

I became a theist, then I saw that Jesus was the light and became a Christian.

At first I went to the Anglican church, but soon I saw the light and brecame a Baptist.

Then I saw the light, got baptized in the Spirit and became a Pentecostal.

Then I really saw the light and became a charismatic Catholic.

Then I really, really saw the light and became an apophatic contemplative.

And now, at last, I see the true light shining directly from God’s throne in heaven and I’ve decided to become a Cistercian monk!!!

Please … I’d like to buy a pair of your strongest wrap-around sun-glasses.”

~ Cartoon

In the dojo (meeting-room) at Gurukula has been a large hand-embroided wall-hanging of the ‘Tree of Life’, that was given to us by our daughter.

The wall-hanging clearly depicts in stylized form, the whole tree — leaves, branches, trunk and even the exposed roots.

What is the hidden meaning of this symbolic tree? What deeper understanding does it offer us?

The way we see it, the leaves are the symbol of our individual identities. There are so many leaves and so many individuals on the tree of life.

If we see ourselves only as a leaf, we tend to live minly for ourselves and experience what could be called, personal love.

But, when as a leaf, we realize we are connected to a particular branch, we may move from an individual identity into a collective identity. This identity unites us with some and separates us from others, just as one branch is separated from another.

At this level, our love becomes collective
love. We live for our collective identity and may even be willing to die for our collective identity.

The trunk is the symbol of the universal mind. All branches and leaves are attached to the trunk, but at the same time it transcends them. Identified with all humankind, our love becomes universal and more like compassion.

The roots, however, are symbolic of Consciousness, Spirit or God. When ‘enlightenment’ happens, there is an unshakable identification with this inner presence or dimension and we experience what could be called, divine or unitive love.

Each of us is a leaf for we are a unique physical being. Each of us is a branch in as much as we belong to a particular nation, culture or tradition. And each of us is the roots in as much as we are one with the divine or absolute … whether we realize it fully or not.

To accept intellectually the truth that we are, right now, each grounded inseparably in and as the divine is one thing, but to actually see It, even briefly, is another thing, and to experience this unitive vision continuously is quite another altogether … and joy unspeakable.

There have always been a few such visionaries in every age whose lives seem to correspond with the whole Tree of Life … including the trunk.

These rare individuals serve the Tree by becoming mediators or conduits between the roots, which represent the unmanifest and the manifest branches and leaves.

The Buddha, Jesus, Shankara and Ramana Mahashi etc. could be described as ‘enlightened beings’, who lived for all humankind. They are the way-showers, the truth-revealers or the connectors, as it were, between the the roots and the leaves /
branches of their time.

We are fortunate to be served by a growing number of contemporary spiritual teachers who are fulfilling much the same function today. These are the teachers we respect and attend to at Gurukula.

No one is outside this Tree and no ideology, religion or belief-system is outside this Tree that is ‘Life’ Itself. There’s only one way, one truth and one life. This is the way of the Tree — ulitmately, there is no ‘other’.

The great transition or shift isn’t about an individual entering into a branch (belief-system) or moving from one branch (belief-system) to another branch (belief-system).It’s an invitation to make the leap in consciousness from leaf to branch to trunk and from there to the roots. Now that’s radical!

• Think about all the things you have to do. Do this as you are going about your day. Go over your to-do list mentally many times a day, especially in the midst of doing something. Then talk about how much you have to do and how busy you are with everyone.

• Keep checking the time, and think about time a lot: how much time something took, how much time something takes, how much time something will take, how much time you have left. Tell yourself you don’t have enough time, or worry that you don’t.

• Constantly evaluate how you’re doing as you go about your day: “Did I do that well enough?” “Could I have done it better or faster?” “How did it compare with last time or with how someone else does it?” “How could or should I do it next time?”

• Say yes to every request from others that comes your way. Believe that you should be able to do it all — everything you think you need to do and everything everyone else wants you to do. Assume that everyone else is juggling all these things perfectly.

• Tell negative stories about life, yourself and your life, and other people: “I can’t do anything right,” “Life is too hard,” “No one will ever love me,” “I will never be happy,” and so on. (What do you tell yourself that causes you to feel unhappy and stressed?)

• Don’t take time to rest or do the things you’d really like to do. Don’t expect or allow yourself to enjoy life — just get things done, as much as you can fit in, in one day! Be efficient. Don’t make happiness, love, or peace a priority. Don’t make your Self a priority, but your goals or everyone else’s needs.

The good news is that all of this stress-creation is happening within your own mind! The reason this is good news is that you don’t have to believe everything that goes through your mind. You can learn to ignore the mind when it is producing thoughts that create stress, and when you do, you will no longer feel stressed. Stress is not caused by life itself, but by what we tell ourselves about life, by how we choose to think and what we choose to believe.

Thinking is nearly always bound to create stress because the voice in our head (also called the e called the egoic mind) is a primarily negative voice and a time tyrant. This voice keeps us tied to it with fears, worries, admonitions, judgments, and commands. It’s a tyrant that, with its constant evaluations and demands, keeps us unhappy.

We all have a similar tyrannical voice in our head, but we don’t have to give it our attention. Instead, we can learn to be very present to whatever we are doing, which is actually very efficient. But more importantly, being present to what we are doing results in enjoyment of life.

When we are present to what we are doing instead of to the voice in our head and its demands and judgments, we feel peace, love, happiness, and contentment. These states are not achieved by following the voice in our head, but by ignoring the voice in our head and simply experiencing life without the mind’s constant commentary. What creates stress? This ongoing mental commentary does. This is a great discovery because it means we have the power to free ourselves from stress once

~ by Gina Lake – from her blog at RadicalHappiness.com

“When your eye is single, your whole body shall
be full of light, having no place dark.” ~ Jesus

How many eyes are you looking out of? Of course other people see two when they look at you, and you see two in the mirror. But how many eyes do you see from your own point of view? In this experiment I am asking you to take another completely fresh look at yourself. Perhaps you have been overlooking something both obvious and wonderful.

My experience is that I am looking out of one eye. In fact, it’s not even an eye — it’s an edgeless, undivided space, a frameless, open window. From this clear window I can at this moment see my desk and computer, and beyond these things my garden. The view out from this edgeless window is of course unique to each person, and always changing. But how could the view in — into this frameless window — be different, or change? There is nothing here to see differently, nothing here to change.

To bring your attention to this clear window, this single eye , hold your hands out in front of you as if they were a pair of glasses you are going to put on. If you wear glasses you can take them off and hold them out instead.

You now have two holes.

Then slowly bring them towards you and put them on.

What happens to the dividing line between the two holes when you put the ‘glasses’ on? Doesn’t it disappear, leaving one undivided, edgeless space you are looking out of?.

Observe the edge of your field of vision. Notice that you can’t look directly at it. Is there a definite edge there, a clear line, or does it fade off?. Into what? Into the void? Into your single, edgeless eye?

This eye goes on and on forever, in every direction. All things are within it.

You can notice your single eye anywhere, anytime. Discover how relaxing it is to be edgeless. Here in this spacious clarity there is no tension at all. What a fantastic resource we have been overlooking.

~ From: Seeing Who You Really Are — A Modern Guide to Your True Identity by Richard Lang.

“And his disciples said to him, ‘On what day will the kingdom come?’ And Jesus replied: ‘It will not come while people watch for it; they will not say ‘Look, here it is!’ or “Look, there it is!’, but the Kingdom of Heaven is spread out over the earth, and people do not see it.’” ~ Gospel of Thomas

‘The Kingdom of Heaven is spread out over the earth, and people do not see it.’ The reason people don’t see it is because they are looking for it. Their attention is focussed on the future, and so they miss the gift of this moment. They are so caught up in the game of asking-questions-and-waiting-for-answers, so busy trying to be a ’somebody’ rather than a ‘nobody’, that they miss the astonishing intimacy that is already here, an intimacy that simply burns up all questions and answers, leaving only the wonder of what is.

The mind just loves to ask questions, because as long as it is asking questions, its continuity is assured: there is a sense of past, future, individuality. There is a person who has questions, and who will eventually find the answers. There is a seeker who, one day, will come to rest. Curious how it’s always ‘one day’…

Do you not think that if there were answers to find, you would have found them by now? Have you not already been given enough answers? Are your bookshelves not full of answers, overflowing with them?

You see, the questioning must continue, because thought must continue. It doesn’t want to give up, it doesn’t want to die. Answers to your questions have been given over and over again, but the mind cannot accept these as the real answers. If it did so, not only would the questions be annihilated, but also the one who asks them. The questioner arises and dissolves with the questions. They depend on each other. Ultimately, they are each other. If the questions go, so does the questioner.

What is the questioner but a bundle of conditioning, a mass of assumptions, collected over the years? The one who asks the questions, and waits for answers, is actually made of the answers that he has collected! So to let go of this knowledge, to let go of the questions and answers, would be to let go of his very self. No wonder we don’t want to stop seeking. The end of seeking is the death of the questioner, the death of the seeker!

It’s inevitable that the mind must continue to ask questions and wait for answers, for its very existence is at stake! So the great search goes on: “One day I will be liberated! One day I will be free!”

Why not today? Why not now? If not now, when?

What answers are you waiting for? What questions are you asking? For how much longer will you seek the Kingdom?

Perhaps eventually the futility of the seeking will be seen through, and then maybe you will burst out laughing when you see the ridiculous knots that you have tied yourself up in, trying to be free, trying to be liberated. Yes, there’s plenty of laughter when the dream of individuality and the struggle to be free from it all is seen through — indeed, there’s very little to be serious about then!

‘The Kingdom of Heaven is spread out over the earth, and yet people do not see it.’ Even that — even our ignorance of the Kingdom, even our search for the Kingdom — even that is part of the Kingdom.

There’s nothing that the Kingdom is not. It embraces everything. Everything.

~ From: The Wonder of Being: Awakening to an Intimacy Beyond Words, by Jeff Foster

“And his disciples said to him, ‘On what day will the kingdom come?’ And Jesus replied: ‘It will not come while people watch for it; they will not say ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘Look, there it is!’, but the Kingdom of Heaven is spread out over the earth, and people do not see it.’” ~ Gospel of Thomas

‘The Kingdom of Heaven is spread out over the earth, and people do not see it.’ The reason people don’t see it is because they are looking for it. Their attention is focussed on the future, and so they miss the gift of this moment. They are so caught up in the game of asking-questions-and-waiting-for-answers, so busy trying to be a ’somebody’ rather than a ‘nobody’, that they miss the astonishing intimacy that is already here, an intimacy that simply burns up all questions and answers, leaving only the wonder of what is.

The mind just loves to ask questions, because as long as it is asking questions, its continuity is assured: there is a sense of past, future, individuality. There is a person who has questions, and who will eventually find the answers. There is a seeker who, one day, will come to rest. Curious how it’s always ‘one day’…

Do you not think that if there were answers to find, you would have found them by now? Have you not already been given enough answers? Are your bookshelves not full of answers, overflowing with them?

You see, the questioning must continue, because thought must continue. It doesn’t want to give up, it doesn’t want to die. Answers to your questions have been given over and over again, but the mind cannot accept these as the real answers. If it did so, not only would the questions be annihilated, but also the one who asks them. The questioner arises and dissolves with the questions. They depend on each other. Ultimately, they are each other. If the questions go, so does the questioner.

What is the questioner but a bundle of conditioning, a mass of assumptions, collected over the years? The one who asks the questions, and waits for answers, is actually made of the answers that he has collected! So to let go of this knowledge, to let go of the questions and answers, would be to let go of his very self. No wonder we don’t want to stop seeking. The end of seeking is the death of the questioner, the death of the seeker!

It’s inevitable that the mind must continue to ask questions and wait for answers, for its very existence is at stake! So the great search goes on: “One day I will be liberated! One day I will be free!”

Why not today? Why not now? If not now, when?

What answers are you waiting for? What questions are you asking? For how much longer will you seek the Kingdom?

Perhaps eventually the futility of the seeking will be seen through, and then maybe you will burst out laughing when you see the ridiculous knots that you have tied yourself up in, trying to be free, trying to be liberated. Yes, there’s plenty of laughter when the dream of individuality and the struggle to be free from it all is seen through — indeed, there’s very little to be serious about then!

‘The Kingdom of Heaven is spread out over the earth, and yet people do not see it.’ Even that — even our ignorance of the Kingdom, even our search for the Kingdom — even that is part of the Kingdom.

There’s nothing that the Kingdom is not. It embraces everything. Everything.

~ From: The Wonder of Being: Awakening to an Intimacy Beyond Words, by Jeff Foster

“Life is a mystery. A mystery so awesome, that we insulate ourselves from its intensity. To numb our fear of the unknown we de-sensitise ourselves to the miracle of living. We perpetuate the nonchalant lie that we know who we are and what life is. Yet behind this preposterous bluff the Mystery remains unchanging, waiting for us to remember to wonder. It is waiting in a shaft of sunlight, in the thought of death, in the intoxication of new love, in the joy of childbirth or the shock of loss. One minute we are going about our business as if life were nothing special and the next we are face to face with profound, unfathomable breathtaking Mystery. This is both the origin and consummation of the spiritual quest.”

~ From: Jesus and The Goddess, by Tim Freke & Pete Gandy