SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, part III

 

 

 

SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, part III - by Guenther Zuehlsdorf, translation from the original German edition into Portuguese by Huberto Rohden and translated into English by Flavio de Mello.

 

 

 

 

For too long we are living imitating formal things, repeating old routines as meritorious. What should be our guideline it is not any authority nor tradition, but only the Truth itself... "When our thinking seeks unswervingly the truth at any price, and when we are absolutely sincere in this search, ready for any sacrifice - then our spirituality is really religious" (Romain Rolland).

 

 

 

Holding hands with this belief goes further understanding: that the essence of Truth cannot be derived from any didactic manual, from any ecclesiastical dogma, from any dominant tradition; so that no empirical, no objective phenomenon, can make up the core of religiosity. Religion is metaphysics revealed in ethics. And that is why religion is superior to any shape or form, in which can maybe lend, to some extent, its outer garment, but never determine in its intimate nature, nor can be interpreted decisively. "Only the metaphysical content, not the historical encasement is what saves us", writes Fichte, in his book "Anweisung zum seligen Leben" (Guidelines for a blessed Life). And Albert Schweitzer, the great thinker and friend of humanity, says, in his work on the "Historical Jesus", that our Christianity has failed because we put secondly, the ethical will of Christ, and primarily, our historical and scientific speculation of his earthly life.

 

 

 

All values and all the dignity of man rests in his ability to focus on himself. The entire empirical-sensory experience has only one reason to exist when based on the foundation of the spiritual Reality of man. And that is why this Reality is the only constant and permanent factor among the inconstant and impermanent facts of the world. God is spirit, and the nature of the spirit is never revealed to man as clearly as in the experience of the Spirit in his inner self. No indirect and external revelation can give man a consciousness of strength and inner peace so great and permanent as the probing of his own inner depth, as the immediate experience of his own spiritual Reality. Man truly lives only because of the spiritual Reality within; every hour, every minute, whether in faith or in doubt - it is this spiritual Reality to him the most intimate of all intimate things.

 

 

 

And it is not difficult to him to discover this fact - supposed that he really wants to.

 

 

 

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SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, part II

SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, part II - by Guenther Zuehlsdorf, translation from the original German edition into Portuguese by Huberto Rohden and translated into English by Flavio de Mello.

 

 

 

 

To internalize and the deep intuition will eventually convince man that exists within a distinctly knowable Reality, which needs no demonstration of magical character, occult, or miraculous. All occult phenomena always runs towards superstition. The history of religions is, in this sense, the history of lack of human discernment, that always try to materialize spiritual things, worshiping them in shapes and images or wishing to see them as miracles and experiments.

 

 

The more man lacks the consciousness of his essence, the more grows in him the craze of wanting to see miracles and wonders and  to consider them as a means to strengthen his faith. What seems to us a miracle, such as the "supernatural" cure of a disease, it is inexplicable solely on the present state of our experience; but, viewed from a higher perspective, it is entirely natural, effect of our mental capacity or consciousness, which has nothing to do with a supposed power that acts upon us externally. Alexandre Ular, the translator of Lao-Tse, rightly says that the miracles attributed to men transformed into mythological heroes, are always in everywhere the same. Man gives to the hero what he interprets as superhuman: powers that he himself desire; the living resurrect the dead; wild waves are calmed; sick are cured; water is converted into intoxicating liquor. To Lao-Tse, Buddha and Christ are reported the same wonders. So are interpreted as thaumaturge men who came into the world to free us from spiritual blindness and awaken in us, the faculty of the inner vision. So tiny is the confidence that man has in his own inner Reality, this element that rests his life, that he always tries to subordinate this Reality to the needs of his physical life.

 

 

This transposition of consciousness, from the essential centre to the periphery, from the reality of the intimate Being to the illusion of the external facts, resembles an expulsion from paradise.

 

 

From there, man finds himself exposed to various kinds of enslavement; delivered to an incessant here and there of replacements, of material and spiritual aspect, in order to camouflage the sensation of pain of his inner vacuum. Weaves a magic carpet, from the lowest animalism to the highest philosophy; only in rare moments of grace that man can be himself. He does not live his own life, guided by his inner intuition; is guided by external images and theories without account. Goes to the extreme to apply to the spiritual world, the Absolute Reality, the scientific principles of the relative world, eventually being lost in an inextricable mythological labyrinth. Men are, in the words of Ramana Maharishi, often like sleepwalkers, so intent upon the alleged reality of their dreams, that in no way wants to be awakened.

 

 

According to this, man should convince himself clearly that no external help can save him, nor even the institutions and authorities regarded as sacred; what redeems man is only what he finds within himself, a true self-knowledge and a total transformation of his consciousness. Too long was the period during which man clung to the belief that a formal creed could produce the inner experience he lacked. Now he  has to recognize that, somehow, is enough to profess a creed by simple obedience, by force of routine or practical convenience. Man should not ever trust what, others before him, lived or investigated; he must plumb to the depths of his own; should develop his own religious consciousness. What completes the really religious man is not the object of his veneration, but rather as his way of thinking and acting; what matters is that his daily experiences rises from the highest comprehension that he is able, in the deep abyss of his being.

 

 

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SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, part I

SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, part I - by Guenther Zuehlsdorf, translation from the original German edition into Portuguese by Huberto Rohden and translated into English by Flavio de Mello.

Any attempt of wanting to express the ABSOLUTE TRUTH through words and images of our language and our mind, reaches only the periphery of the garment of Truth. The true essence of the Infinite Reality transcends all our representations, conditioned by time. Our thoughts, subject to the categories of time, space and influences of cause and effect, are unable to unravel something which is no time, no space and not subject to the influences of this relationship of cause and effect.

This, recognized the wisest of the wise.

---   Lao-Tse designates the Eternal of the Universe as the Unspeakable, the Nameless.

---   From Buddha it is said that he never preached the Truth, because it was within man himself.

---   Christ speaks in parables, analogies, comparisons, and when Pilate asked directly what was the Truth, Jesus became silent, because nobody was able to comprehend truth, not even his own disciples.

---   Sri Ramana Maharishi, the great Hindu seer, said that silence is the only language of Truth, and that our talk interrupts that language. 

However, the Eternal Reality, although it can not be expressed by our usual expedients, it is not far from us; the fact is that we seek through by an erroneous and inefficient manner. The Truth is revealed to us not through forms and images - Truth is a direct and immediate experience. It's not like the experience of a material phenomenon, but as something that transcends the whole experience of the objective world. Or, according to the words of the apostle Paul, "the Truth is silent and hidden, that never any ear heard, nor eye saw, neither have entered into the human heart; but God revealed to those who love him".

Through all religious and spiritual history, man has always tried to "remove the veil"  which hides the Reality; sought, on the level of relative things, traces of the Absolute; tried out to discover in certain ways and experience - as miracles, visions, voices, etc. - manifestations of the supreme Reality. Due to the false concept that he has about the spirit, man showed that he is interested in pseudo-experiences, because he ignores the genuine mystical experience. We can even speak of a transfer or gravitation or balance of the soul, from inside out, in consequence of which man has not directly perceive the answers from within, but projects that experience out in the form of dreams, images, visions and other phenomena. Man confuses his intellectual thoughts with the reality of spiritual experience. The ideologies of his mind appears as a spiritual reality; and the external phenomena are taken as evidence of the spiritual world.

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MEDITATION

MEDITATION - by Huberto Rohden

 

 

 

 

- There is much talk about meditation lately. But meditation is not escapism? It's not to evade from life, instead of facing it boldly?

 

 

- If you understand by meditation isolation, escapism, yes. But meditation is the act of gathering strength, to charge our batteries in order to courageously face life without being defeated by it. Hundreds of people think considering themselves winners, when in fact, they are no more than poor defeated, because lost in material life, but never meet with their own subjects; realized what they are, or should be... but are just stunning vacuities.

 

 

Happiness is only for the one who has found himself.

 

 

Many enjoy, few are happy.

 

 

Meditation is not to think about spiritual things.

 

 

Meditation is self-knowledge - man, know-thyself!

 

 

Meditation means to become temporarily empty from all enslaving illusions of the ego, in order to be plentiful with the liberating truth of the Self.

 

 

Where there is ego-emptiness happens a Cosmo-fullness, and this Cosmo-fullness is what makes man truly happy, dynamically happy.

 

 

My friend, give up the illusion that meditation is passive mysticism, and accept the truth that true meditation is the dynamic realization of human life.

 

 

But... who only spoke or heard about meditation, without the inner experience in meditation, knows nothing about the truth.

 

 

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THE ESSENCE OF CHRIST'S MESSAGE

THE ESSENCE OF CHRIST'S MESSAGE - by Huberto Rohden

 

 

 

- Which is the essence of Christianity?

 

 

- The essence of Christ's message is contained, as he said, in the two commandments of the integral love in God and the universal love of men: "Love the Lord your God with all your soul, mind, heart, and with all your strength - and love your neighbour as yourself - under these two commandments is based the whole law and the prophets".

 

 

The mystical consciousness of the unique fatherhood of God, manifested by the ethical experience of the universal brotherhood of man - this is the quintessence of Christ's message, this is the only Gospel of truth. This is the one and true religion; the rest are illusory and arbitrary theologies.

 

 

 

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