What is the most important information I learned in my years of reading?

Thursday afternoon, during a physical therapy session for some aches and pains, the therapist asked what I did during the day. Being introverted, I responded with a short answer: “Read”. “Read what?” he asked. Slightly longer response: “Oh, about spirituality, religion, consciousness.” Probing further: “How long have you been reading about those subjects?” Answer: “Thirty-plus years.” Further: “What’s the most important information you learned?”

Lying on a table, consciously breathing in and out while doing exercises, wasn’t the best time to contemplate the most important information I had learned in thirty years of reading and taking notes. I rambled something about The Tibetan Book of the Dead and what a Hindu woman had told Morgan Freeman in a video titled The Story of God. In essence she said she viewed truth as the trunk of a tree and all the different religions as branches.

Driving home I wondered how I would have answered the question had I been asked when I wasn’t doing physical therapy and the purpose hadn’t been to distract me from the exercises.

I would probably have started by saying that I have refined my focus to Buddhism, the Kabbalah, and Amit Goswami’s perspective on the quantum theory and how he relates consciousness and religion. For me, Buddhism is the mental aspect, Kabbalah is the heart, and Goswami is the scientific. The exoteric aspects are the branches of the tree; the esoteric is the trunk.

When I combine the three areas of study, I arrive at what I see as the purpose of this world—to embody the highest qualities of ethics and morality while on earth.

Call them the Buddhist Eightfold Path: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration,

or the 613 mitzvot which are the commandments that God gave to the Jewish people in the Torah, or the seven Noahide Laws for the Jewish and non-Jewish,

or Goswami’s archetypes which are abundance, power, love, goodness, truth, beauty, justice, wholeness, and self,

or the Fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control,

When I study Buddhism, I think my way to the esoteric trunk of the tree with lots of memorization and visualization. I recall the Four Nobel Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Heart Sutra, the bardos in The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and visualize the five-buddha mandala.

When I study the Kabbalah from the Chabad perspective, my heart opens to “the ultimate purpose of creation [which] is to create a dwelling place for G-d in this world.”

And then Goswami who looks at all this scientifically but, basically, arrives at the same conclusion. Everything is consciousness, and the spiritual wisdom traditions discovered this as ideals to live by that come to us through intuition.

Had I been asked the question in another situation I suppose that’s what I would have said or even reduced it further: we are here to embody the highest qualities that I believe we intuit from the still point in the heart. We all really know why we are here. Our daily struggle is between the soul and the ego. As Paramahansa Yogananda wrote, “Who will win the day?”

After reading, rereading and editing the above, I continued thinking about another part of the answer. Why is it so difficult for us to embody these universal qualities?

I have found that answer in different places: Jacob Needleman’s book Why Can’t We Be Good, Newton’s Third Law of Motion which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, the writing of Rabbi Ashlag, the Fourth Way of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, among others. When we focus on two forces, they are in opposition to one another—think of New Year’s Resolutions. A third force is necessary.

The situation now, as I see it, is that the present third force is rooted in the mythic level of religion, the exoteric branches of the tree, and the greed of materialism. Thinking about Ken Wilber’s levels of consciousness, a majority of people in the world remain at the mythic level and, until that level rises to the rational and integral levels, there is no unifying third force—only two forces in opposition which lead to anger, aggression, hatred and war.

After reading, rereading and editing the newly-added section above, I continued thinking about another part of the answer which will have to wait for another entry.

Tags: Buddhism, Consciousness, Kabbalah, Religion, spirituality