2010 by Kösel-Verlag, a division of Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH, Munich, Germany

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1 2010 by Kösel-Verlag, a division of Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH, Munich, Germany Willigis Jäger Timeless Wisdom Das Geheimnis hinter allen spirituellen Wegen (Ewige Weisheit) Ed. by Christa Spannbauer and Ursula Richard 144 pages March 2010 An English sample translation by Helga Horsthemke Table of Content Foreword About Wisdom Proverbs Sophia Perennis Timeless or Eternal Wisdom Acceptance or- Every day is a good day Being fully present in the mundane or- Everything is holy The Sacrament of the present moment or Mindfulness, Mindfulness, Mindfulness The Power of silence or Give up your words Experience of Oneness or God and I are One Rituals or- Celebrating Life Know yourself or- All beings share the same essential nature Spirituality for the 21st century or- A new paradigm is evolving Credo Epilogue An encounter with a wise man Biographical notes Publications

2 The Experience of Oneness or "God and I are One" I would like to begin this chapter by quoting the 14th century Sufi mystic, Hafiz, who said: "I have learned so much about God that I no longer call myself Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Jew. The truth has revealed so much to me that I can no longer call myself any more a man, woman, an angel or even a human soul. Love has totally penetrated me, Hafiz, so deeply that it has transformed me into ash, freeing me from all concepts, images or perceptions that my intellect once comprehended." The mystical experience can be compared to that of a lover, whose love cannot be captured in words. It can only be expressed poetically, in the way we sing of love. That is why many mystics use images of love to express the fullness of the mystical experience. The Christian mystic Johannes Tauler describes it as follows: "The mind probes the depths of the absolute in such a way that it loses any sense of differentiation. It is so at one with sweet divinity that the whole being is permeated by it. As a drop of water loses itself in a vat of wine, so the mind loses itself and there are no longer any distinctions, just a total mysterious stillness and undifferentiated oneness." Mystical paths can be understood as a realization of an all-embracing oneness brought about in an indescribable way in the depths of the absolute. John of the Cross wrote: "I entered in I knew not where and stayed there without knowing and yet transcending all knowledge. I knew nothing of the place where I had entered." We all long for such an experience. However, the question is: how do we get there? This is something that is not attainable through sheer strain or endeavor, but demands an opening-up and peeling back of the deep layers to reach our true being. The path is a search without searching. Meister Eckhart said: "To see God you must be blind." We are always free to open up to the experience. Paradoxically, however, when we seek to achieve it, it vanishes. This dilemma is expressed in the following exchange: the Zen Master Joshu asked his teacher Nansen in a koan: "Should I turn towards the path or not?" Nansen answered: "When you turn towards it, then you turn away from it." Then Joshu asked: "If I do not turn towards it, how can I know that this is the path?" Nansen replied: "The path has nothing to do with knowing or not knowing." Beyond the Boundaries of Ego-consciousness We need to enter into a new dimension, a dimension of the unknown emptiness which is beyond all ego-activity. Anyone who breaks through to a deeper, all-embracing level of consciousness will find new answers and develop a new understanding of life. Only in this dimension, beyond all rational understanding, will we find real meaning and purpose in our lives. Only when we experience what and who we really are a timeless being at one with the essence of all beings will we find answers to the questions of life and death. The real world is timelessly present, but if we perceive ourselves as separate from other beings, then this becomes the price we pay for being incarnated as human. We do not know yet how to deal with our humanity. Our ego has thrown us into isolation. We build fences, laying claim to what is ours. We defend our possessions or seek to take those of others. We have forgotten that we are not separate from each other and that we only have to break free from the self-limiting vision of our ego to experience our unity and oneness with all. We should not be concerned with perpetuating the ego, but should seek to go beyond these boundaries into a space of timelessness and emptiness

3 that guides us towards limitless empathy and love. The death of the ego means entering a new form of being where we experience ourselves as the essence of a new creation. Mysticism leads to a boundless awareness. The timeless essence creates forms that exist for a finite period of time. As a form is incarnated, so its time has a beginning. When it vanishes, timelessness is all that remains. The human form is the form of God made living. The divine is contained transiently in us for the period of our human lifespan. We search for permanence but this form has no permanence. Forms come and go and the human being is no exception. The divine is incarnated in a created form and returns to timelessness. What we call God is an eternal event that enters time and then returns to timelessness. To discover this in an entirely new way we must reach out into endlessness ourselves. In mysticism we experience the timelessness of God as the meaning of birth and death is revealed to us. Awakening to our true identity is a process that unfolds and frees us. What we really are starts with our birth but does not end with death. The primary reality manifests itself in multi-faceted forms of which the personal individuality is just one aspect. Just as God is present in all there is, God is present in the human being. Our personal form is an expression of oneness. Our life therefore does not find fulfillment at some stage at the end of time, but is fulfilled in this form, in this present moment. The true meaning of life is neither in what is to come nor in what has been. It is found in the timeless Now. The Here and Now is an epiphany, the divine source made manifest. The one and undividable is the only true reality. What we call God reveals itself as an ebb and flow, through birth and death. This timeless consciousness manifests itself as the unknown, the not yet manifested, the absolute and divine, which rests in pure potentiality or emptiness. This consciousness has no structure, form or movement; it is pure, immediate consciousness, timeless and ever-present and knows no separation. However the unknown and absolute also appears in a specific, concrete form: it manifests itself as our unique personal life. There is a saying in Zen: Emptiness is form and form is emptiness. This is the hagios gamos, the sacred marriage between heaven and earth, between the divine and the human, between emptiness and form. It is made concrete in our unique, human incarnation. We experience true reality as an empty oneness from which all forms come. The word void is often used to describe this. The mystic experiences the void and all forms that derive from it as one. This is nothing less than an all-embracing understanding of the reality of emptiness and form, of divinity and the world of God and humanity. When We Arrive at a State of ONENESS, the Distinction Between You and Me No Longer Exists No absolute or lasting opposites are found once the ultimate reality of oneness is realized. God and the world, the spiritual and material, emptiness and form, are all aspects of the ONE. When the aspect of emptiness appears on its own, it can be experienced as horror vacui: the terror of emptiness. But God is not just one aspect, but always the aspect of form. "The moment God existed, the world was also there," says Meister Eckhart. Just as one cannot have a walking stick with just one end, so emptiness cannot exist on its own. Emptiness is what constitutes reality. It is the uniting force that leads to the experience of oneness with all beings. This reality can be

4 described as neither being nor non-being. It is a nothingness that is a mystery, it is the otherness that Westerners call God. As long as human beings live on the level of ego-consciousness, God will always be experienced as an opposite and will be addressed in the second person, as "you". The mystics, however, know that in the experience of oneness, the distinction between you and me no longer exists. The ultimate reality is non-dualistic. This concept is expressed in the classic Zen text Shinjinmei: "How are you to experience oneness when you are imprisoned in duality? You will never be at peace as long as you have not reached oneness". This oneness is beyond all conceptualization. Teresa of Avila describes it as follows in The Interior Castle: "It is like rain dropping from the heavens into a river or spring; there is nothing but water there and it is impossible to differentiate between the water that comes from the river and that which fell from the heavens. Or it is as if a tiny rivulet enters the sea, from which it will find no way of separating itself. Or imagine a room where there were two large windows through which the light streams in: although the light enters in different places, it all becomes one." The Christian mystic Nicholas of Cusa speaks in this respect of the coincidentia oppositorum, the coincidence of opposites. The person who arrives at ONENESS can no longer say "You". When such a person refers to the I it is no longer this personal I but the ONE. Only in the ONE can we authentically speak of the I. The Zen master Dogen expresses it thus: "A fool looks at himself and sees a stranger, a wise person looks at others and sees himself". The oneness of the I and you is the true reality. "I am the one I love, and the one I love is me," says the Sufi mystic Al-Hallaj. The mystic goes beyond Western dualistic thinking that separates God and the world, the natural and supernatural, the human and the divine. "God and I are one," says Meister Eckhart. God is that innermost part of the human being, the spark of the soul, the whole being. The human person is therefore a reality in which God manifests himself. God experiences himself in the human being. He moves as a human being through this time. There is nothing which God cannot effectively penetrate. God is present directly and completely in every human being. The divine permeates the whole world. The world is the incarnation of God. This realization alerts us to a new dimension. It is an awareness of the unquestionable now, connected with all there is. The absolute mind, the essence of all being, divinity, emptiness these are all names given to the one reality from which we are never separated. This reality is a consciousness that can be referred to as trans-rational or a-rational and at the same time holds full potentiality. This non-dualistic reality is experienced as a state of extraordinary clarity, love and joy and brings enormous freedom. The I recognizes that it is no longer limited to specific circumstances but can experience liberation in any mode of existence. This non-dualistic world in the Here and Now is the goal of the spiritual path where we transcend the ordinary vision of this world. This does not mean opting out of this world, but rather being totally in this world and loving it for what it is. If we succeed in breaking through to this mystical level, we will experience unity and emptiness and this in turn will engender great humility, gratitude and an all-embracing universal love. As a consequence we feel an inner purpose to teach others the path to achieving this state. Empathy and love lie at the core of all real mystical experience, when the I melts in non-duality into unio mystica mystical union. Experiencing oneness with all beings is an experience of a totally different dimension that cannot be critically analyzed or comprehended by the intellect. Anyone who has had this realization will see it as the ultimate reality and nothing can convince such a person otherwise. The experience is seen as a state of an allembracing, mighty event more powerful than anything previously known.

5 The Process of Transformation Begins with the Individual A person s experience of oneness with the divine leads them into cosmic consciousness. The realization of the divine is a cosmic all-embracing realization and at the same time, a recognition of the true self. The time is ripe for us human beings to discover and explore our new purpose as co-creators. Seeing ourselves and our personal lives as embedded in the cosmic inter-related harmony leads to a totally new view of anthropology and an integral understanding of the world. The evolution of our species is dependent upon this new-found realization. The process of transformation begins with the individual and only when the individual changes will the world change. Each individual person is unique, like a single stitch in a great cosmic tapestry. None of us, not one single form, is expendable. Meister Eckhart dares to say: "I am the reason why God is God. If I were not, God would not be God." This means that we have to reach out to a totally new understanding of evolution and a totally new vision of the unique purpose of our humanity within the evolutionary process. When the individual changes, it will always influence the whole. The point then is to awaken the new potential in the individual to enable a different vision of the world and a different anthropological understanding of the self. Only then can we change politics, economics and society at large, arriving at a new world order. Until now, we believed that we humans were separated by time and space. According to the old paradigm, the brain was seen as the seat of the mind, while intelligence was found in the nervous system. We now know that the consciousness is not confined in the body but stretches as widely as the cosmos. It is eternal even if it expresses itself in a localized form. The whole universe is made up of this field of consciousness. We are immersed in it and therefore are connected with all the structures that exist in it. Wisdom Leads to Social and Socio-Political Responsibility. The future of humanity lies in the discovery of this timeless wisdom, Sophia perennis. People who live according to this new vision in our society are still in a minority. Nonetheless, much depends on this minority for uncovering the deeper layers of consciousness, so that this experience can permeate society. Sophia perennis, timeless wisdom, is a revolutionary concept because it does not allow us to be content to accept the status quo. It is the steadfast pure fountainhead of all religions and therefore of society. It goes beyond all religious and social limitations. In this wisdom is the healing principle for political, social and economic disagreement. The rediscovery of Sophia perennis challenges the individual to a change of consciousness and is also particularly relevant to society. Sophia perennis acknowledges and supports social values and forms a decisive criterion for communal living. It brings about a balance between the needs of the individual and those of the wider global community. It lays down a normative basis for community. The separation that a human being experiences is only an illusion; all differentiations are simply facets of the oneness of all. Our lives cannot be divided into spiritual and material. From the experience of oneness arise the ethical skills to meet the challenges of life in a pluralistic society. We can only move beyond a fragmented existence if we grasp the interdependence of all beings. Our integral spirituality does not recognize a division between spirit and matter. It is a much more holistic experience that does not exclude any aspect of life. What is important is the transformative process in the depths of our

6 consciousness that awakens the peaceful inner potential that has been suppressed and excluded by our personality structures. Timeless wisdom, understood in this way is not a private undertaking, but inevitably leads to ethical and socio-political responsibility. It gets to the roots of conflicts on our planet and uproots suppression, corruption and war, all of which are based on egocentricity. This creates a system that leads to suffering in humanity, whether within our financial markets, in a profit-oriented economy or our entrenched religious or party political allegiances. The time has come for us to recognize that the systems and structures we have created are the source of injustice and suffering. Only if we surrender ourselves to a fundamentally new reorientation can change occur. The way out of chaos is through a change within each individual. The real concern is to become more fully human, more alive, to live more passionately and engage as human within the framework of the global community. The love for life is a true indication of the spiritual path; it leads to a holistic vision of the world which embraces all the dimensions of the human being the body, the psyche and intellect. This vision overcomes differences between families, communities and nations. The goal of the spiritual path is to experience ourselves as ONE. "I follow the religion of love wherever this caravan leads me, for love is my religion and faith." Ibn Arabi "If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal". 1 Corinthians 13:1

Sounds of Love Series. Mysticism and Reason

Sounds of Love Series. Mysticism and Reason Sounds of Love Series Mysticism and Reason I am going to talk about mysticism and reason. Sometimes people talk about intuition and reason, about the irrational and the rational, but to put a juxtaposition