Dear Gail:
The subject is “spiritual problems.” There are a number of problems which you must look for in the spiritual journey, and which can be overcome provided one takes the right approach to them. They are hardly unusual in their nature, but generally are those which one must face during his travels in seeking knowledge elsewhere.
We are fortunate to have ancestors who found answers to the spiritual problems posed for man. They are: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euripides, Zeno the Stoic, Euclid, Thucydides, Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Hosea, Micah, David, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Confucius, Lao-Tse, Zoroaster, Gautama, Mohammed, St. Francis, St. Teresa, Thomas Aquinas, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Erasmus, Darwin, John Stuart Mill, Jefferson, and hundreds of others. These can be called the champions of liberators of the mind and spirit of mankind.
Among the problems of spirituality are: (1) The Existence of God; (2) The appearance of a Guru for the seeker; (3) From whence came evil if we didn’t get it from God the good? (4) How much effect does Karma work in the minute acts of man; (5) Who is to tell one exactly what the will of God might be? (6) How can the mind conceive the desire for a good thing to be an evil in and of itself? (7) How does one die daily and yet live; (8) The way idealism affects the drive of the spirit; (9) The nature of spiritual energies; (10) How does priori knowledge exist as spiritual knowledge; (11) The limitations of knowledge, and (12) The limitations of the spiritual force (positive) in the lower worlds.
These are not quite as major as the problem in which the seeker finds himself upon entering the path to the Absolute.
It seems that all hell breaks loose, and this is the great puzzle for everybody who thinks the pathway of God should be easy, and without the problems which do exist. It makes one think that Satan has let loose his demons to torment and bring his former follower back into his fold. The medieval saints and mystics believed they were fighting Satan and his demons in hell, and in a sense they were. But what they were really battling was the reactive mind, the engram and the aberration which must be overcome before one can rise higher on the path of the spiritual. This isn’t easy — but you will have trouble provided you try to make sense with a clergyman or a religionist for they have one stock answer:
“We must suffer in this life,” or “The Will of God is mysterious,” and another is “God knows what to do.”
What this amounts to is a matter of depth psychology, yet it is the first step on the spiritual path. The seeker can get rid of these engrams, aberrations (see letters on reactive mind and depth psychology) but it must be done by someone who knows the art of breaking him free from these problems, or through a professional in the field of psychology. An aberration or engram can be centuries old in the individual’s mind, or Jivatma — and if the latter, it is harder to erase than mind problems. But some masters undertake the relieving of these tensions. Somewhere in my notes I have a discourse on this spiritual problem.
So many times the individual will panic when this starts happening to him, but there is nothing to be frightened about.
Whatever problem it is, it is going to come to the forefront and be with the individual in sharp contrast to what it was previously. The reason being that the more the Jivatma becomes purified, the tougher it becomes for the individual to live with the outer world. He sees and thinks in clearer light, he sees life in a completely new light, and for a period
cannot understand why mankind pursues its destructive path.
If the individual has a temper, then his anger becomes more apparent until he realizes that it is holding him back, so his second problem now becomes Self-Control. And here I come back to the major basic problem of all spiritual problems which is DESIRE!
One must separate himself from desire, and have an attitude of non-attachment. Buddha explained very patiently to his own followers that desire was the cause of all pain. So you see if you are desiring something, you are attached to that desire, and I can safely say that you’ll never have it. (Look at the article on Yang and Yin). But when you are willing to give up your desire and attachment on that object, it most likely will pursue you instead of you pursuing it. Whenever one fails to oppose any attack upon himself he is usually freed of the assault. I am saying all this again, in a different way from what has been written you previously — but it is important for this is the major problem of the traveler on the path.
A good example of this is the story of St. Anthony of the Desert, who fought the good fight nightly against the Demons.
It would do you well to get the biography of this master-saint in the library for reading on this point. What he was fighting were his own illusions, arising out of his engrams: that which was appearing in his universe. Example, the other night I had a vision of the world splitting down the center, but realized it was of my own making in my own universe; for a moment it was frightening. But had I not known, it could have driven me off into the deep end. This is what most saints, travelers on the path, mystics, etc., are struggling against only they feel that God is tempting them, or the Devil is working to frighten them back into accepting his rule. In a sense the latter is true for since we live in a negative universe, under the rule of Kal Naranjan (kal meaning negative and Naranjan the ruler of this
universe) we are subjected to the negative forces and maya or illusionary forms which might appear at anytime. This force doesn’t want its peoples to leave its world and go into the spiritual and will fight against this, but if one is persistent he can force his way through this.
This is why Love is the basic element taught to the followers of the spiritual path. It is the safest way for the traveler to follow. He is not apt to get into trouble by scrapping with anything physical or invisible should he practice the art of non-resistance, love or good-will toward all things, including himself. Naturally self-forgiveness enters into this and if one doesn’t practice self-discipline then he cannot move very far along the path. If one errs he cannot accept guilt; for if he is guilty then he must practice self-forgiveness, but he must be really self-forgiving and not be shifting blame. I remember an old editor who said this to me when I’d made enough mistakes for the day. “Your mistakes were made today. Tomorrow we start a new day, and if there are mistakes they will be new mistakes.”
I am going to take up the various problems of spirituality which were named earlier and discuss them with whatever space is felt necessary to do so. Some will be a full letter and others much shorter in space. Most of them are the general problems which are always in front of whoever enters on the path of the spiritual goal. The yardstick can be applied against the behavior of others as well as against yourself. Be kind to yourself in applying it, yet be merciless in standing off and taking a good look. But above all, please do not be too analytical of yourself, for this is the easiest way to fall into the trap of maya.
More later.
Paul
88. Existence of God