A common theme running through them is pointing to total annihilation

spiritual lit Chris Dierkes

I don't read spiritual literature much in life anymore. I read the Bible or hear it proclaimed often to be sure. But traditional mystical literature. The only ones I really pay whatever little focus I do to the matter to anymore are Aurobindo, Da, Cohen, and my favorite Christian realizers, St. Teresa of the Little Flower and Hadewijch of Brabant (13th century). A common theme running through them I find is pointing to total annihilation, going some sense beyond traditional awakening....what Da calls the 6th Stage of Life. The Sixth Stage is otherwise known as sahaj samadhi--eyes open samadhi. This is the Samadhi of the Heart Sutra: All form is empty, emptiness is not other than form. Or Ramana: Atman is Brahman. The World is an Illusion. Brahma is the World.

Or Eckhart: "In my breakthrough I realize God(head) and I are one." Beyond that is bhava samadhi--the samadhi of purification and fire. In a way after the language of oneness common in sahaj samadhi, there is a renewed language of duality: Da--Absolute Relation, Hadewijch--the language of apocalypticism, Aurobindo--the Vedic tradition of the Godhead as Personal.

The language of sacrifice and being unmoved by any experience, resting in nothing, in nothing, in nothing more. This path is beyond Relative and Absolute. It is not achieved through strategy as Da would say; it can only be given by grace. Relative and Absolute makes sense as a pair when one is moving from unenlightened to enlightened. But this is beyond enlightenment. Cohen's teaching has opened for my vistas into intersubjectivity, evolutionary context, and the authentic self, but it is still a set of conditions and strategic in its way. Which is fine. It is relatively so much better (the identity, the teaching that is) than the rest.

For Aurobindo it wasn't just awakening to the Psychic Being (Authentic Self, Soul) but also the devotion of the Lord that went with that. Where can we go Lord, you have the words of Eternal life? Asked Peter. And then what? What do I do? Who I am with? When the choices are traditions like my own that focus on the self-sense almost wholly and argue over social political moral sexual matters, totally lost in stage debates OR the Eastern path in this continent of the Guru, the devotees often disconnected from the world, holding naive unexamined political-social views, states over stages and the replay of child, parent, sibling dynamics. A path I see as unworkable. Where do I go when these streams coalesce and flow together in a harmonious manner but any such claim is divisive to the other? Not the individual me but the streams. posted by CJ Smith @ 2:38 PM Tuesday, March 13, 2007 Indistinct Union: Christianity, Integral Philosophy, and Politics