Two Realities. Sustaining the Vision

Probably the most important challenge across the course of the spiritual journey, is how to live meaningfully in a world where the vast majority of people see only a version of ‘mundane reality’ with little or no symbolic significance and still retain their vision of that higher order or Reality they aspire to, that sustains them and that gives them hope and purpose; living with a foot in each world as it were.

As a child I remember those little pictures that showed one image when you held it one way and a second hidden beneath it when you moved it another. Sustaining two orders of Reality: the mundane worldly, at least enough to allow you to operate within the world you must still perforce live in, and the other of those higher spiritual planes you are moving through requires extraordinary abilities. It is still the case with me that sometimes, under sustained pressure from the world and the difficulty of keeping the higher order vision in mind, I cannot sustain it and collapse back into the other, which is to say ‘mundane reality’. As we progress along the spiritual life course, it is commonplace to dip in and out of these two different orders of reality as suits the occasion. Sometimes it will seem to be about that ‘higher purpose’ wherein life events are symbolic markers for different stages; at other times these life events are just that: things which happen and carry no special import other than what they mean in the world at the time and how the generality of people would see them: sometimes good, sometimes bad, many times simply ambivalent and something to be negotiated at the time. It is of course also true that many people do hold some notion of more esoteric dynamics such as ‘destiny’, ‘karma’, God’s will, things ‘being meant’ and so on, which might be woven into their way of living or drawn upon when no other understanding makes sense.

The problem of sustaining relationships with friends and family across the course of the spiritual journey is that they generally still experience their life, and also relate to what is happening to you in yours, in those purely mundane terms, which rather inevitably means you are held back in that world to understand how they experience their lives and to convey information about your own that makes sense to them. It is not a question of whether you love them or not, but as you progress to the higher spiritual planes it becomes seriously detrimental to your progress, because there comes a time when you must live in that higher order of Reality completely.

Also it is the case that people who have mystical experiences, which is probably not uncommon for those who do embrace the spiritual life and journey, are rather inevitably perceived by the ordinary world order as being mentally unbalanced in some way. Modern biomedicine does not relate in any real way to mysticism and mystical experiences which are classified in the different disease classification manuals as psychosis, forms of schizophrenia¹. Also, in living your life and making decisions about it drawing upon those deeper well springs of instinct mentioned here, can and often does run counter to ‘wordly wisdoms’ in terms of what might be considered sensible, exposing you to unfavourable criticism.

Given that fairy stories are cautionary tales told in allegorical form that provide us with clear directives on how to behave and how to interpret our lived experience, the famous story of Cindarella² actually describes the aforementioned situation very well. Without recounting the entire story, well enough known, her Fairy Godmother provides Cindarella with what she needs to go to the ball, all made from the existing paraphernalia of her ordinary life: the pumpkin becomes a coach, the mice become horses, a rat becomes the coachman and lizards footmen. Her raggedly clothing is turned into a beautiful gown, and so on. But she is cautioned that she must be home by midnight, after which the spell will be broken and everything will return to its original state (excepting, importantly, the glass slippers). It is a description of a magical transformative state which can only endure temporarily. And so too is the higher spiritual vision, at least during the initial stages of the spiritual aspirant’s journey. The aim therefore is to be able to be better established in it to the extent that it doesn’t suddenly relapse into the ordinary mundane reality version of events.

How, then, are we to understand how to see a particular set of experiences or circumstances, to interpret what is being required, given there are no real guide books or dictionaries for the individual entering the more mature stages of this journey? I have spoken earlier about that ‘upwelling’ of wisdoms and insights from the deepest layers of the psyche. You are somehow ‘given to understand’. In this we have a kind of independent verification as it were from that famous medieval English mystic Julian of Norwich, who experienced profound visions during an illness in her youth:

“From the time these things were first revealed I had often wanted to know what was our Lord’s meaning. It was more than fifteen years after [the revelations she had experienced] that I was answered in my spirit’s understanding. ‘You would know our Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well. Love was His meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did He show you? Love. Why did He show it? For love. Hold on to this and you will know and understand love more and more. But you will not know or learn anything else — ever.’ ³ (emphasis added)

 

She talks of ‘in my spirit’s understanding’, which is something kindred to what I describe above. You somehow just ‘know’.

Developing this ‘insight’, how to recognise it properly and trust what it is telling you is part of the early stages of the work, because, as the more mature stages of the journey develop, you must by then have reliable guidance systems in place. You might learn, for example, how to navigate a yacht on a closed body of water like a lake, because when you come to cross an ocean, you must know what you are doing.

These deeper wisdoms and insights come, in fact, from the numinous centre of the psyche – the Self⁴ – and are the more common means of communication with It. Those people who have a more conscious connection with the Self – which is the most basic definition of what a mystic is⁵ – might also experience more direct guidance from It, as in the case of Henry Suso discussed earlier, who had mystical auditory ‘visions’ of the voice of Eternal Wisdom (as he called it) speaking to him; something I also experience myself. My general experience and understanding are however that in the normal ebb and flow of life and daily experience one has to be content with reading the insights and instincts rather than depending always upon this direction communication. It is also very important, in the development of spiritual maturity, that the aspirant does ‘work things out for themselves’ than always being told what to do. It is how you educate children for example.

What I am talking about are really better understood as altered states of consciousness, which is something most people have experienced at different times. Some of the more common experiences include getting ‘high’ taking psychoactive substances for example, including and possibly more especially alcohol. These are impossible to sustain for longer than the psychoactive period, and attempts to prolong them can induce dependency. Many people may experience euphoria and similar and behave in ways unlike their usual personalities during the period of affect. But the experience of living in a higher spiritual plane of reality and seeing the world through that is not something that can be induced in this way, although certain drugs such as ayahuasca appears to induce profound changes to and expansion of the experience of consciousness that those taking it report in similar language.

In such cases, the main problem is that of dependency, because if you require some intermediary to induce a state of altered consciousness, then you will always need it. The natural mystical state is just that, something that is experienced naturally in mystical states. The deeper stages of meditation apparently are not dissimilar, and many practitioners report experiencing profound insights during the deeper stages.

But living in that higher plane of reality where life and the world is experienced largely symbolically is not exactly the same as any of these. I equate it to that aforementioned ‘shining path’, the pathway of Truth.

Featured Image: Mount Kailash courtesy Sahdev Rana