My Pilgrimage is over now, of that I feel completely clear. The period I spent in Nepal last year (see travel blog here) served in some ways as a replication of the journey in India, which had culminated in 2020 in visits to the high altitude Hindu pilgrimage sites of Gangotri, Badrinath and Kedarnath. I felt then that something important had been achieved, affecting the whole way I felt about myself, and that feeling endured for some time after I had returned to the UK. I feel that whatever had to be achieved was achieved then, be it temporarily. Nepal, culminating in the pilgrimage to Muktinath, therefore represented a replication of that experience, albeit with its own unique visionary insights, as the way I felt after reaching Kedarnath was so specific. I knew then what the experience of moksha – liberation – felt like, or rather recognised it as a place; a place that, importantly, as I understood later, is also itself the Self. This, of course, is that ‘desert place’ spoken of by Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Rūmī (quoted here in ‘My Parting Word’). I have never thought since that somehow I would continue with journeying in the way I saw my year’s Pilgrimage in India, so this stage, which is to say this new period in India and Rishikesh, is about something else.
We’re only human!
A year or more on from when I wrote the earlier explanatory pages under Eastern Theologies and Western Mysticism, are my views essentially the same, or have they changed in any way?
As someone who has had both dual (Dvaitist) and non dual (Advaitist) experiences (1), I still contend that it’s unnecessary and unwise to seek to destroy our individuality while we live, certainly for most of our life, and the ego/personality, which is the means through which we have unique lives and experiences, each one of us being a unique expression of the Self.
I have discussed these ideas quite comprehensively in the section and subsections under Eastern Theologies and Western Mysticism, so I don’t want to repeat what has already been well articulated there. Briefly and in my view however, to simply ‘become God’ whilst you’re alive on earth, certainly in the way it is pursued in many of the esoteric Yoga schools, in in danger of missing the whole point of the experience of being human. And to endeavour to destroy or to thwart the process of ego development when young is simply dangerous and irresponsible, exposing the individual to being taken over by any number of exploitative people, organisations, religions or cults (the examples of these are too numerous to cite, although I have mentioned some in this website); or exposing them to serious mental illness.
Experiencing God
I believe that as individuals we can have very different experiences of God/Self, despite it being evident that these nevertheless can still be ‘classified’ into very similar categories, as Underhill’s authorative work on Mysticism demonstrates. However, a key problem is that, rather inevitably, we can never really know what another person’s experience is. Therefore what is built upon one particular tradition or school following the experiences of the proponents or sages associated with it may not necessarily be the same, or even similar to, another tradition based upon different experiences. You read alot about the many famous Indian saints (Ramakrishna, Sai Baba, Ramana Maharshi, Vivekananda etc), the large followings they attracted, the teachings they expounded, the incarnations they represented, and the experiences they had. I do not for a moment doubt the veracity of these and the fact that some clearly had extraordinary ‘powers’ and were people who had likely achieved Self Realisation, in the classic Advaitist sense, to the fullest. What I do dispute is that their experience is somehow the only valid experience.
People who become disciples of sadgurus and saints generally seek to attain their levels of enlightenment. It is one of the key dynamics in the whole ancient Vedic Guru tradition and many people from, for example, modern Western countries go to India and attach themselves to one of these teachers/traditions with the aim of achieving enlightenment in the same manner. I wouldn’t wish to criticise this and it may be right for many people, but again, I don’t believe it is the only way, or that you necessarily even need to go to other countries and immerse yourself in other cultures or theologies. Carl Jung himself was a great critic and opponent of the trend emerging in even his day, for people from western cultures uncritically to take up with Eastern theologies in the belief that they would somehow achieve a vicarious enlightened state (2).
For me, I have found that a dual tack of Western Mysticism and Eastern theology, has actually proved the most helpful for me, given, as previously mentioned, I have both dual and non dual experiences.
A key problem for me was to establish what the Advaitist experience, as presented in some of the Vedic literature, actually is. When I had my own experiences I was quite unable to situate them within the classic Advaitist tradition of Adi Shankara, as there were no available descriptions, or rather accounts I was able to find, as I have not studied the tradition exhaustively. Certainly you can find descriptions of being in the different stages of meditation, in terms of a sense of dissolution of the individual self or ego and overall oneness with phenomena and infinite consciousness, experienced during the deeper stages, but that is not exactly what I am referring to here. I admit that had I joined one of the classic ashrams teaching Patanjali under the aegis of a formal teacher (more especially if a sadguru), then quite possibly I might have learned this, but, as oft stated here, my personal journey has always been one of that Kaivalya aloneness.
There is certainly evidence that those expounding a strictly non dual experience of Divinity also experienced an essentially dualistic mystical relationship with the Self as ‘other’ too (Tagore; Rūmī; Kabir, Utpala Deva etc). In the Western Mystic tradition however (as also discussed by Underhill), there is no belief that the final stage of the spiritual pathway actually involves the dissolution of the individual self in a way that leaves the only experience as then being identical with the one Self. But given we are dealing with highly esoteric metaphysical theologies, the mere attempt to employ everyday language to describe these mystical states of being will almost inevitably be reductionist. Based upon my own personal experiences, I would concur with the great theologian philosopher Abhinavagupta of the Kashmir Saiva monist school, that both dual and non dual simply represent valid states and means of experience in an overall progressive trajectory of experience (3).
To spend so long here in India in what is known as the Yoga capital of the world, where many of the more established traditional ashrams teach Advaitist Yoga traditions based upon the sutras of Patanjali and other key works, it might seem strange that I relate to it all so poorly. I observe it all from a distant perspective. During my year’s Pilgrimage between 2019 and 2020, I built my practice around the veneration of Shiva and made many pujas to Shiva (and other Divine representations) rather in the classic bhakti and strictly dualistic Saiva Siddhanta tradition, whilst fully acknowledging that I had never internalised these representations sufficiently for them to shape or define my beliefs. My experience of God/Self has always been of the Ultimate Source, the Totality (Singularity), the Supreme Self without name or form, known in Eastern theologies as Parabrahman, Paramatman, Parashiva, or the even earlier Purusha (Spirit/Cosmic Person), but nevertheless still with an absolute sense of having a personal Self.
In his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, It is what Swami Prabhupada of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness calls ‘the Supreme Personality of Godhead’ which he maintains through Its own choice will make Itself known to you (as also stated in the Katha Upanishad 4). Moreover, it is only through achieving a direct apprehension of and connection with It that you can ever fully attain moksha, ultimate liberation, although doubtless the anatman (no self) traditions of Buddhism, who disavow belief in or experience of a separate Self, would dispute this.
As oft stated here, the twin guides of my life, more especially in later years, have been the Bhagavad Gita and teachings of Jesus, which may seem to many as being mutually exclusive in that one derives from the Christian western tradition and the other from India, albeit both being approximately of an age. Yet at core they are essentially saying much the same thing and offer much the same advice about how to pursue a spiritual life and the qualities needed for it, the principal being love, truth and self sacrifice. For me they have also provided a critical balance between western and eastern theologies, so that neither one has pulled me too much one way, in much the way that the Western Mystic and the Eastern Yogic traditions have too.
The real work of Yoga
Here in places like Rishikesh, the yoga tradition, by which I mean physical yoga with meditation and breath work (pranayama) is the order and the vast majority of people coming here are coming for this and to take advantage of the different yoga teacher training courses that the town is particularly known for. I haven’t undertaken a formal survey or study though, so I cannot offer more than what my general impression of the situation is having lived here.
For myself, I have no interest in the physical practice of yoga, and only occasionally engage with it, although I certainly concur that it would likely be beneficial. I have practiced meditation on and off across many years, but wouldn’t count myself as being a very competent meditator and I am rarely able to engage the deeper meditative states you hear described. All my experience of the Self and the associated visionary insights and revelations, which are essentially of a mystical nature, are mediated differently for me, albeit when I am in ‘deep places inside myself’. Therefore I do not believe that the physical practices of yoga alone, which were originally developed in the early Saiva Tantric schools over a thousand years ago as part of an integrated system to support Self Realisation, when used as a sole methodology for practising Yoga, are really necessary, certainly not for everyone. Finally I would contend that the experience of the Self is, ultimately, a mystery. I find the idea that experience of It can somehow be manipulated via any methodology difficult to believe; it suggests that the Self Itself doesn’t have It’s own agency.
For me, the most critical requirement relevant to true yoga practice and the one I have regularly stressed throughout this website, is self awareness and self honesty: working with yourself using your life experiences as a mirror, to become aware of your conditionings and becoming liberated from the tyranny of what are called ‘samskaras’ in yogic parlance, which is to say the power conditionings have to make you experience yourself and the world in particular ways. This is allied to what is called the ‘buddhi intellect’, a keen power of detached discernment, so that you always know exactly what it is you are dealing with and its various permutations. This is generally known as ‘jnana yoga’ and through it one is able to see how our lives, and the way we experience ourselves in these lives, are actually transient social constructs, without any actual foundation in any permanent order of Reality. This, for me, is the true work of yoga and without it, not all the complicated postures or breath work will save you, however beneficial they may be for mind and body.
Reading many of the accounts of different mystics through the ages, it is clear that none of them engaged in these practices either, yet all had deep, meaningful and enriching experiences with God/Self with whom they had evolved relationships of extraordinary intimacy. They do not speak of seeking to experience themselves as being identical with God, but of eventually achieving a merger with It (as in the symbolism of the mystical marriage) in the condition known as the Unitive Life. And it is always considered ultimately a mystery, something beyond intellectual understanding, that as humans, at source, although we are ‘of God’, we are also distinct, what in one of the several Eastern Vedantic schools is termed Achintya Bheda Abheda: ‘inconceivable oneness and difference’ (5). That might seem like hedging your bets, but I think is a more truthful acknowledgement that our limitations as humans in a sense defined world will inevitably mean that the majority of people without mystical pretensions will only ever have a relatively simple and limited comprehension of what is, and ultimately always will be, a mystery.
Rishikesh (May) with revisions made in Cochin (June) 2022
1. https://elizabethcurrie.info/dualism-and-the-bhakti-movement, and https://elizabethcurrie.info/mysticism-a-personal-view/
2. See relevant quotes under ‘Eastern Theologies and Western Mysticism: competing or complementary pathways?’
3. For further information on the Non Dual Siva Tantra theologies and a presentation of the main points of divergence with Advaita Vedanta, as critiqued by Abhinavagupta for example, read the following:
Christopher D. Wallis. 2013. Tantra Illuminated THE PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY, AND PRACTICE OF A TIMELESS TRADITION (Second Edition) with illustrations by Ekabhūmi Ellik. MATTAMAYŪRA PRESS.
Mark S.G. Dyczkowski. 1987. The Doctrine of Vibration. An analysis of the doctrines and practices of Kashmir Shaivism. Suny Press
4. Katha Upanishad Part Two verse 23. Different translations vary only marginally here.
5. For more information see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achintya_Bheda_Abheda
Image of honeysuckle flowers from: https://plantcaretoday.com/grow-honeysuckle.html