Spirituality is breaking the link between the mortal and the immortal consciousness. The mortal consciousness is the awareness of time and space through a body and a perceptual sensorial field. The immortal consciousness is nothing that can be described in words.
Divinity does not require humanity’s understanding. It exists because it exists, because it exists. Humanity is terribly limited in its understanding of anything and everything. As long as humanity chooses to avoid divinity, it suffers. But divinity does not. Since it is immortal, pure and perfect, it is beyond suffering. Its self-luminescent light propels itself through infinity without any abrasion.
It is not the part of divinity to go to humanity and to modify itself in any shape, manner or form; rather it is up to humanity to make itself available, accessible, if you will, to divinity. Anything else is a misconception. If you feel it is the responsibility of God to come to you and to work it out, you’re mistaken. Rather, it is your responsibility to go to God and work it out.
You can use extra-logical arguments to say, “Well, we’re all God,” or “There is no God,” or anything you want to, but it doesn’t change how things are. Those are just ideas. So as long as you wish to separate yourself from the immortal consciousness, you will suffer. You will experience the pain of the separation, the lack of luminosity, the abridgement of infinite mind in finite form. Divinity, enlightenment, if you will, sits on top of its mountain and is somewhat bemused by what it sees. It sees itself in another form trying to approach itself or being afraid of itself and running away, or completely unaware. But it is not moved by that at all. What makes enlightenment enlightenment is its dispassion.
In the West they use a term—compassion—to try and bring across a feeling I think that they would like to think enlightenment has. In other words, I think there’s a great amount of plagiarism, if you will, in the scriptures, in the discussions of enlightenment. Because it’s suggested that enlightenment has some tremendous compassion, some driving necessity to help humanity. I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think humanity wishes it was the case, and since it’s humanity that writes the various scriptures, I think it’s a self-reflection, but it has nothing to do with enlightenment. From the point of view of enlightenment, none of this has ever even been. All time and space, all the conditions—that are apparent in the absence of enlightenment—are unreal. It doesn’t matter.
You can sit in your room and think someone should bring you food. And you can sit in your room in your house alone day after day and no one will arrive. No matter how strongly you think that should be the case, unless you go out and find food it’s not going to come to you. That’s up to you. To think that in some way—as people think both in the East and West but more so in the West—that the knowledge that brings freedom from all limitations is in some way supposed to come to you and be at your service is ridiculous.
It is up to you to avail yourself of that knowledge. That knowledge doesn’t need you. It doesn’t care. Since it’s not in this world, it is completely oblivious to your suffering. The idea of a compassionate God was formulated, obviously, by someone who didn’t want to do any work. If you look around you, you’ll see that that’s not how life is. Creatures are born and die. They go through terrible suffering and no one intervenes. Some people get angry—I guess those who don’t want to do anything—and they say, “Well, there is no God because if there was a God, God would stop all the suffering.” Nonsense. God is oblivious to suffering. God is beyond suffering. That’s what makes God God, by definition.
That is to say, we refer to God as the part of being that is beyond suffering. Obviously everything is God, but in our definition we view the part of being that experiences the dualistic consciousness, which brings about suffering, we call that humanity, squirrels, plants, astral beings, whatever it may be. But some people have a very strange idea. They think that in some way that that immortal essence, which we call God—for lack of a better word, or maybe it’s the right word—should in some way come to you and assist you, should answer your prayers. Why, when it exists in perfect ecstasy beyond the dualistic consciousness? It’s totally oblivious to you. It has no interest in your life or your death, it doesn’t matter.
It exists. It is perfect. But it is up to an individual to go on a journey of self-discovery through their own self-effort and discover that, to meld their mind with that perfection and make that perfection their life. Then an individual is beyond suffering because all caring brings about suffering. So how could you ask God to care, because then God would suffer, you see?
This is where Buddhism differs from Christianity, Christianity as it’s presented to us. Buddhism suggests that simply because you were born in a certain religion, because you were baptized, that has nothing to do with salvation. There are no elect. Everything rests upon your own self-effort, which is the good news because that means you don’t have to wait around for some nebulous God to help you. You can pick yourself up and go do what you want to do, and if you want to remove yourself from the world of suffering, you can. The universe is not seen in Buddhism as some giant machine, some cold mechanism—not at all. Nor is it seen as a big human being that thinks like a big human being.
Most people’s Gods are self-reflective. God just has to be like you. You get concerned so you assume God must get concerned. You get pissed off, so you assume that God must get pissed off. You’re attached to things that you create so you assume that God would be.
God doesn’t care. God is a pure and perfect awareness that has no knowledge of any of this. It’s beyond all of this. You have to elevate yourself to that point and bring your mind into the Godhead, into nirvana, into that perfect and pure radiant knowledge. It will not come to you. It never does. Why should it? It’s oblivious because it’s ecstasy and in its complete self-ecstasy of perfect being-ness, why should it be aware or aroused by your suffering or your joy?
One can stay in the samsara, in mortality, forever. One does—unless through one’s self-effort, one moves one’s ass and does something about it. You can read all the books, think all the thoughts, but unless you start to discipline your consciousness and accept the very simple reality that the infinite mind is oblivious to your suffering, nothing will change. That acceptance is reality. The reality of just what is as opposed to the idealizations.
Idealizations are problematic because they prevent us from acting. If you’re sitting in your room alone and you’re getting more and more hungry and it’s beginning to hurt, but you really think someone’s going to come through for you, you may just sit there and no one will. But if you know no one’s going to come, and if you’re going to eat you’re going to have to move it and get your body up and down the hall and down the stairs and out to where there’s some food, then you’ll move.
False hope implies a Messiah. The very concept of the Messiah is ludicrous. It’s a great misunderstanding, in other words, of what is. Yes, there are beings who reside in the human form and in other forms who have reached complete enlightenment. But to assume that they just come and make an appearance and take care of everything is ridiculous. They simply point the way. They suggest to you that something is doable by their advent on earth. Obviously, if these were human beings and they’ve climbed beyond all the limited states of consciousness, that tells you it can be done. Some might even explain how. But they don’t care. How could they? It’s just part of their operating system to explain how. You would like them to care. You would like to think that, because then you would think, through that caring, they might do something for you and therefore you don’t have to do it yourself. That’s a mistake.
You, as they did, must go through every step of the self-discovery process. You must win the ecstasy. You must win freedom through your self-effort. Otherwise nothing will occur. You can pray incessantly and some being out there might hear you and they might help you a little bit today, but tomorrow you’ll be back on your own. You can beg on the street and somebody might give you some food. But it probably won’t be what you want, it might just get you through. But you have to go out and get a job and make money and make it happen. Otherwise you’re completely dependent upon the charity of others, which is not necessarily what you might like or what you might need.
Therefore, yes, there is help. This is the difference between Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhism. In Hinayana Buddhism, they don’t feel that there’s any help at all. In Mahayana Buddhism, which is tantra, we concede, yes, there’s help. Yes, somebody might give you a handout, but they’ll give it to you today but don’t expect it tomorrow or necessarily ever again, or it could come every day. But you can’t count on it. It never hurts to ask, but you don’t sit around waiting for it to show up. You go do it.
In tantra we believe you can appeal to the Goddess and help may come, but you don’t wait because it might not. You have to do it yourself. And if you’d like to ask, and if that’s an extra, well, great. We don’t feel there’s a prohibition. But certainly it won’t just come. The idea is that the Savior came and simply by the coming of the Savior you’re saved. Nonsense. Human beings wish! If that were the case, we’d live in a perfect world and obviously we don’t. There’s as much tragedy and pain today as there has ever been, no more, no less, in any human life. And if you seek to be unusual and go beyond that, then it will only be accomplished through your self-effort and by following the examples and the methods of those who have successfully done it. Otherwise you’ll just sit in limitation forever. Literally forever, since there’s no end to infinity. Why should it change?
To think that God is compassionate is a terrible mistake. To think that God is wrathful is equally stupid. God isn’t emotional. You are. To superimpose your emotions on infinity is typically human. But the infinite is made up of light. Light is dispassionate because it perceives life in such a different way than you do that it doesn’t even see what you see. What appears to you as necessity is not necessarily a necessity. Five years of pain from your point of view is nothing to an infinite consciousness that is aware of infinity. Five years is nothing. So why should it be concerned about some being who doesn’t even perceive reality properly—[their] five years of pain, which is nothing in infinity. Why interrupt the ecstasy of perfect awareness by entering into limited awareness?
It’s a mistake to think that anything’s going to change. That’s the message of Buddhism. It’s a mistake to think that things can’t. Buddhism suggests that there is enlightenment. Definitely, it’s there. Even though it’s not perceivable to the mind or senses, it’s there. That there are those who have attained enlightenment, and enlightenment is absolute freedom, and that there are a number of methodical ways, meaning ways with methods to attain enlightenment, and that until one does, one will eat it heavily. It will be extremely unpleasant; the absence of enlightenment itself is pain. There’s only growth, maturation, old age and death forever, in variant forms, in variant universes. And that until one sees this truth and begins to follow the path out, paying no attention to one’s neighbors—it doesn’t matter what anybody else does, you’re only concerned with you, one body, one stomach.
It’s nice if you wish well to others and you hope that they will become enlightened, but it really doesn’t matter. It’s a strictly individual situation. And how can you possibly assist anyone in their enlightenment unless you happen to be enlightened yourself? It’s a joke to think you can help anybody become enlightened until you become fully enlightened. Don’t even waste your time thinking about it. Get real. The only issue is your own enlightenment. Anything else is only an interruption of that process. If you do have a genuine need for some reason to assist others in their enlightenment, the greatest thing you can do is become enlightened as quickly as possible and then you will have something at your disposal—right knowledge to assist those individuals. But otherwise, you’re just being self-indulgent and ridiculous.
A little truth goes a long way. It goes forever. The truth is that you are alone. That you’ve always been alone, and that you’ll always be alone in an infinite series of infinities. And the truth is that at this point in infinity, at this moment, you have become aware of your aloneness, and you have become aware that it is only through your self-effort that that aloneness, that separation, can end. You can wax philosophical, religious, logical, extra-logical, it doesn’t matter. As Joe Friday used to say, “Those are the facts, ma’am, just the facts”.5 If you choose to ignore them, it’s to your disadvantage. Your self-encased fantasies will end in pain. And if you accept that, then the mere acceptance of the reality causes a transmutation. You’re motivated. And then you begin your search.
As long as the pain is not sufficient, there isn’t really motivation. If your life is pleasant enough and you feel no need, then there’s no need. No one can force a person to become enlightened. It’s something that a person seeks because they have come to certain realizations about themselves and how life works. And they see no certainty in living whatsoever. They see that today they’re alive and everything is wonderful, and tomorrow they’ll be dead and alone. Today they’re healthy and happy, tomorrow they’ll be sick and miserable. Today they have ecstasy, tomorrow they’ll have depression. Today everyone loves them and pats them on the back, tomorrow everybody despises them, says terrible things about them, tries to destroy them. There’s no certainty in this world, or in any world. Even the higher astral worlds don’t have certainty because eventually they change, even while they may exist for a number of eternities, eventually they change. They become something other.
The only certainty is dissolution, to step beyond change into the world of perfection, into the eye of God. The practice of Buddhism, the practice of yoga, of unifying one’s consciousness with nirvana, brings an end to all limitations. Not only does it bring an end to pain, but it brings complete ecstasy forever—the ecstasy of the experience of infinity, of infinite light, which has no limitation since it’s infinite.
5. Joe Friday was a police detective in the 1960s television show, “Dragnet.”