WORK IN PROGRESS

"In practise, the mystics belonging to nearly all the religious traditions coincide to the extent that they can hardly be distinguished. They represent the truth of each of these traditions." Simone Weill

For the last two years or so I have been thinking of writing a book about all the discoveries and learning I have been through in that time. My particular quest has been to plunge deep into the spiritual traditions of the West, to unearth the truth of what is there and maybe understand how we have gone wrong. For so many people in the West who find themselves unable to follow a religion while having a deep sense of the spiritual, the Ways of the East are enormously attractive. Who doesn't know spiritual people who have looked deeply in Buddhism, Hinduism, the Tao etc?

And so we all should. It was where I started. But why do we hate our own spirituality in the West so much? Why do we feel that we cannot find any answers over here? Why do we have to go East? What have we done to make our own traditions so paralysingly unattractive to the Seeker? Go into any esoteric bookshop and you will find hosts of New Age or Eastern texts and statues but far less from the West. Why is this? I found myself asking these questions when I was reading the introduction to THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER, an alchemical Taoist text translated by Richard Wilhelm. The introduction was by Carl Jung (one of my great heroes). In it he praised the genius of the Eastern mind, the wisdom of the text and compared the evolution of the Western Spirit to the Eastern, in many ways unfavourably. Nonetheless he maintained that it would be foolish for a Westerner to feel that he or she could just graft on Eastern philosophies and spiritualities to Western ways of thinking. For Jung, the Western mind had evolved in a different way to the East. There was no question of asking which was better, only that they operated upon different bases and images. Jung maintained that, before we donned the saffron robe or started meditating, we needed first to explore and understand our own spiritual traditions - Christianity, Islam, Judaism etc etc. To this one would have to add Alchemy (which he certainly did!), Hermeticism and Gnosticism, as well as Greek and Latin culture...

I remember thinking 'What on earth did he mean? What Western spirituality? What could possibly compare to the beauty and peace of Eastern thought?'. Like most Westerners with secular backgrounds, I had been brought up to believe that Christianity and Judaism were dead or at least a waste of time. As value systems they were repressive, dry, unmystical and had nothing to offer. The beliefs were ludicrous and simplistic at best or dangerous, misanthropic, misogynist and guilt-laden at worst.

But here was Jung saying something else... And Jung was no fool! So what was he getting at?

This lead to a long process of finding out - a process which hasn't ended yet (nor do I hope it ever will!) which has taken in Kabbalah, Christian Mysticism of every kind and period from the orthodox to the heretical, Sufism and all of the systems above. I have found some of the most inspiring writings and thoughts you can imagine, much of which draws on the same underlying spirituality of the Bagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the Dhammaparda & the Tao Te Jing. The images may not be the same, but the ideas are...

So the idea of writing a book about it all... Well, I'm trying! I'm trying! Naturally, there are the usual obstacles - who am I to write a book on this? I'm not a cardinal or a theologian or even an academic. But I am a thinking, feeling human being and since at the dawn of all religions that was all there was, why shouldn't I, like anyone else, be allowed to express my ideas. It is a tragedy for us now that we cannot read the Old or New Testament without wading through 2000 years of being told what they are saying - and yet this is what the original followers of these Scriptures did. When the Gospel of John emerged, there was nothing between it and its readers except for their own experience - no St Thomas Aquinas, no doctrines emposed upon it, no Augustinian Original Sin overlayed upon it... Just the words and the believers...

So I thought why not give it a go? And why not use this blog to throw a few ideas about? See what people think?

Well, that's what I'm gonna do... So watch these pages for occasional articles/ideas. They won't all be about the Western Ways, some will be about the Eastern Ways. But they will all be based on the idea that, fundamentally, the division between East and West is an illusion, one in which we have colluded. If we can liberate our minds from the idea that all the world's spiritualities evolved independently of each other (which we KNOW they didn't) we might be able to liberate them in such a way as to bring them together into an amazing starburst of ideas and images pointing to a greater Reality of which we are all part and towards which we are all travelling...

Nor will it all be about the book. There will be ideas and anecdotes about lots of other things too. And details of adventures and travels around the world... Just your basic Blog, really...

So watch this space... and let's see what happens... Feel free to contribute!

"Say, then, that you are the perfect day and in you dwells the light that does not fail. For you are the understanding that is drawn forth." Gospel of Truth