This morning, as I was looking up Kurt Johnson's article on "Hope for the World" on Contemplative Journal, I discovered a great series of articles by the "Holy Rascal", Rabbi Rami Shapiro.

I haven't yet looked at the other five, but this first one in the series is wonderful, and strongly illustrates the basic themes that are coming together here.

Its original location is here on Contemplative Journal http://contemplativejournal.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=47:what-is-perennial-wisdom?&Itemid=961

And I reposted it here in the Alliance articles: http://interspirit.net/alliance/article.cfm?art=100774

I want to reply in the form of a "dialogue" -- interspersing my comments.

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WHAT IS PERENNIAL WISDOM?
by Rabbi Rami Shapiro

Rabbi Rami: Twenty–five hundred years ago the Indian sage Siddhartha Gotama said, “Don’t believe anything second hand. Don’t believe anything because it’s written in ancient books. Don’t believe anything because ‘everyone’ knows it’s so. Don’t believe anything because the sages proclaim it. Don’t believe anything because of habit. Don’t believe anything arising in your own mind, mistaking imagination for Truth. Don’t believe anything on the authority of your guru or priest. What you yourself feel is true, what you experience and see for yourself, what is helpful to you and others, in this alone believe, and with this alone align your behavior,” (Kalama Sutra, my translation).

With all due respect to both the Buddha and the Monkeys, I’m a believer.

Bruce: I like this assertion. I'm "a believer" too. But I might add that these kinds of statements are often "context dependent". Maybe the Buddha was dealing with a social climate where too many people were blindly following texts they didn't understand, and he wanted to break them of the habit.

A topic we have been discussing here in this Forum lately is the widely vexed issue of whether personal discrimination and experience is sufficient guide to pursue the mysteries of Deep Spirit. Some here strongly argue Yes -- that this "intervening priestcraft" or religious structure or bureaucracy or hierarchy can be usurping and distorting and disempowering. "Don't give your power to these manipulating self-serving bureaucrats", runs the argument. "They are here to keep you subservient". Something like that argument has arisen here in Santa Barbara, out at the convent at La Casa De Maria, where some especially strong-willed and independent-minded nuns tend to resist the authority of Catholic hierarchy. It's a subtle issue. And for me -- very-much respecting their point of view -- it's kinda like saying -- "we can have a great baseball team without any coaches". Some want "A League of their Own" -- and maybe rightfully so. The spiritual path does involve skill. It can be learned. So, the idea for me would be -- don't throw out the idea of coaching. Just get good coaches who don't abuse their position -- and maybe (pretty please) stop insisting that the ladies don't have what it takes to go directly to God...

Rami: I believe because what I have heard makes sense to me. I believe because what I believe appears not in one or two sacred books, but in almost all of them across time and cultures.

Bruce: Yes, I like this "overwhelming statistical correlation" argument. There's a tsunami of evidence -- if you can read it with trusting eyes....

Rami: I believe because what I believe seems to be what sages have taught for millennia in cultures both long dead and still thriving. I believe because what I believe seems to arise in the heart/minds of gurus, rabbis, roshis, pastors, imams, priests, poets, scientists, swamis, and brilliant people of no rank or title over and over again throughout human history. And because it does I trust it. And because I trust it I seek to find it in myself and for myself. This search seems beneficial to me: making me kinder and more just; which in turn makes my search of benefit to others beyond myself. And so it is to this that I align my behavior.

Bruce: Beautiful. Perfect. Brilliant. Thank you.

Rami: Just as a perennial flower cycles through periods of birth, thriving, death, and rebirth, so this wisdom keeps appearing and disappearing in almost every human civilization.

Bruce: Charming analogy -- and not always in the guise of the same flower. Lots of different "colors" --

Rami: And the “this” I am talking about is called the Perennial Philosophy or Perennial Wisdom.I prefer the second term, because it is more concrete. Philosophy means the love (philo) of wisdom (sophia). It isn’t the love of wisdom that we will explore in this series, but wisdom, herself. This wisdom is called “perennial” because, just as a perennial flower cycles through periods of birth, thriving, death, and rebirth, so this wisdom keeps appearing and disappearing in almost every human civilization.

Bruce: Yes. And something I / we ("meus/weus") are doing around here -- is attempting a focused re-drawing of this universal form -- maybe denuding it of language entirely -- as we explore this tantalizing if illusive hypothesis of a "100% geometric definition". A concept like -- "Axis Mundi" -- strictly 100% geometric -- and "integral". Powerfully composite. "A single form or visualization with 1000 moving parts..."

Rami: The Four Points of Perennial Wisdom

I take my understanding of Perennial Wisdom from Aldous Huxley’s introduction to Swami Prabhavananda’s 1944 translation of the Bhagavad Gita. There he lays out what he calls the “four fundamental doctrines” of the Perennial Wisdom:

Bruce: Hmm. Back to Aldous Huxley -- great place to start.

This 4-point model unfolded here -- reminds me a lot of the "Architecture of the Castle" -- as described in Ken Wilber's review of Carolyn Myss's book on St. Teresa of Avila, "Entering the Castle". We started drawing up a general model of "spiritual psychology" based on this architecture -- essentially a series of concentric rings or layers -- a "mandala" -- with inner and outer layers. In simplest form -- the "inner self" is the eternal, the absolute, the one, the nameless -- the so-called "big self". And the "outer self" is the local, the immediate, the all-too-human, the "little self", the embodied flesh in all its idiosyncratic particularity...

http://interspirit.net/alliance/commentstream.cfm?sec=1&ctype=Forum&cid=100986

Rami: First: the phenomenal world of matter and individualized consciousness—the world of things and animals and men and even gods—is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their beginning, and apart from which they would be non-existent.

Bruce: Yes, the core of the spiritual psychology -- directly connected to the timeless -- embodying it -- and containing all "local selves" -- as Barbara Marx Hubbard might put it, describing this phenomena in her "universal human / local self" terminology....

Rami: Second: human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine Ground by inference; they can also realize its existence by a direct intuition, superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.

Bruce: Ok, this kinda goes to the Buddha's point you raised at the beginning. But let's not pit these elements (book learning vs. direct experience) against one another. Instead, let's see them as constructively complementary -- the one reinforcing the other. Maybe as a "holon", as Ken Wilber might want to suggest...

Rami: Third: man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul. It is possible for a man, if he so desires, to identify himself with the spirit and therefore with the Divine Ground, which is of the same or like nature with the spirit.

Bruce: Right -- this is the essence of this model of spiritual psychology we began to explore. "Man was made in the likeness and image of God" There is some universal template somewhere -- and we are all incarnated as "local instances..."

Rami: Fourth: man's life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground." (Prabhavananda, Swami. Bhagavad Gita. New York: Signet Classics, 2002, pp. 14-15).

Bruce: And yes, we kind of agreed on that point here a few days ago, quoting Vivekananda, when he wrote in the opening words of his anthology "What Religion Is"

"The end of all religions is the realizing of God in the soul. That is the one universal religion".

http://interspirit.net/alliance/forum.cfm?sec=2&groupid=100000&msg=101935

Rami: This is an excellent summary of Perennial Wisdom, but not necessarily the most clear. Here is my version of the same four points:

Bruce: Cool.

Rami: Everything is a Facet of the One Thing

Bruce: Love that. Really. I love this theme of "facets". Actually -- I like "dimensions" -- but facets goes so well with the imagery of jewels....

Rami: Think in terms of white light shining through a prism to reveal the full spectrum of color perceivable by the human eye: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Each of these colors is part of the original whole and cannot be separated from it—turn off the light source and the colors disappear. Now apply this metaphor to the world around and within you. Everything you see, think, feel, imagine, etc. is a part of and never apart from the same Source. We call this Source God, Reality, Brahman, Allah, One, Krishna, the Absolute, the Nondual, etc. The list of names is long, the reality to which they all point is the same.

Bruce: This is great. Very illuminating.

Last summer, I got into the "theory of color" -- and actually built an online color system so I could play around with the dimensionality of color. It turns out that there are many "theories of colors" -- there is no one single dominant explanation.

Here's my color-wheel engine on "Spirit of the Center". You can tweak various color combinations down at the bottom....

http://sharedpurpose.net/color/colors.cfm?tq=579420&login=0

I like this "Munsell" color system, particularly because it has this Axis at the center -- a lot like the model of Axis Mundi / Chakras / Great Chain of Being we are exploring here...

Rami: You are That

Everything is a manifestation of God, everything. That means you. To know God is to know yourself; to know yourself is to know God. The quality of knowing I’m talking about isn’t knowledge about something other than yourself, because you cannot be other than God, the only being there is. Knowing God isn’t knowing through theological speculations about God, it is knowing God directly, the way a ray of sunlight knows the sun. When you know God directly you know God as yourself, but—and this is a huge but—you do not imagine you alone are God. Knowing you are God is knowing everything else is God as well. And knowing that you and everything else are God, is knowing that there is no you or anything else, there is only God.

Bruce: I would love to think that this is exactly what we are doing here -- that we are all "finding each other" in ways that will enable us -- not only to "bond" -- but to bond in the infinite-amplitude white-light current. This -- I think -- is "the mystic destiny of interspiritual community".

Rami: Absolute and Relative, and That Which Embraces Them Both

Bruce: I am fascinated by this relationship between "the absolute" and "the relative". I think what we are trying to do -- is ground the relative in the absolute -- and I think we are discovering how to do it.

Rami: Imagine you are a wave on a vast shoreless sea. Imagine further than you come to realize that you and all the other waves of this sea are in fact nothing other than the sea waving, extending itself in time and space. You are still you—a wave—and yet so much more than you—the sea itself. Knowing yourself as wave is knowing the relative world, the world of seemingly separate beings. Knowing yourself as the sea is knowing the absolute world, the world of the One who is all these seemingly separate waves. But there is still another level of knowing, that is the unlabeled knowing that knows both sea and wave, that knows both the absolute and the relative. This knowing and the knower who knows it cannot be known; it cannot become the known; it cannot become an object. It is the eternal subject, the subject that cannot be made an object of knowing.

Bruce: The Drop / the Ocean -- the generic spiritual holon.... The Infinitely Many embraced and consumed into the One...

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This is getting pretty long. Let's pick this up later. Thanks and Blessings.