The 2012 Story (43 page)

The Perennial Philosophy, the essence of all the multifarious variations on enlightenment, shamanism, religion, and spiritual awakening, cannot be made more succinct and clear. The early appearance of Huxley’s words, some sixty years ago, renders moot 90 percent of the subsequent New Age blathering on spiritual transformation. It’s just window dressing. Huxley’s definitive book
The Perennial Philosophy
appeared in 1945 and established what should have been a central reference point for everything that came later in the human potential movement. Some writers and teachers did pay homage to the Perennial Philosophy, but many did not. It is said that Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato. Likewise, and more lamentably, the New Age movement is largely a series of increasingly bad paraphrasings of Huxley. In fact, since the spiritual marketplace is today driven by personality, the cult of ego, we can observe that Huxley’s clear exposition of the Perennial Philosophy has not only been forgotten but inverted. Instead of meeting the challenge of transformation via self-sacrifice, transcending the ego and awakening the higher wisdom, we flock en masse to see the latest Oprah-approved spiritual entertainer at the local megaplex Event Center.

Nevertheless, throughout the 1950s other standout books appeared that complemented Huxley’s early exposition on the Perennial Philosophy. One of great significance was
The Supreme Identity
by Alan Watts. In his foreword he thanks both Coomaraswamy and French philosopher René Guénon for their work on reviving the Perennial Philosophy. I consider myself lucky to have stumbled across a used paperback of this book at a bookstore in the early days of my quest for knowledge. The Chicago suburbs in 1980 was not exactly a place where you’d expect the perennial wisdom to be found, let alone take root. But by age sixteen I’d already exhausted readings in science, having had my inner Carl Sagan soundly trounced by Fritjof Capra’s
Tao of Physics
. I then began reading of inner realities via Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, so I was well-primed when Watts’s
Supreme Identity
leapt off the bookshelf at me. That was the best $1.50 I’ve ever spent.

The great nondual principle of Vedanta was instilled in me at the time, with all its multifarious ramifications. My own soul was rooted in the world soul. The inner depth-psychology worlds within me were reflected in the outer appearance of nature, including earth processes and astronomical cycles. Symbols were not “signs” but doorways to higher consciousness; entire sets of data were linked in ways not apparent to linear processing. Matter emerged from spirit. Consciousness was not, as Darwinian evolution required, an “epiphenomenon” of material combinations, something that popped out of matter. The subjective and the objective were one in a higher space, a higher state of consciousness that could be directly glimpsed. And at age seventeen, it was; my mind and heart were opened. The conclusions generated through empirical science were of a lower order of reality in comparison to
knowing
in this direct unitary sense. Real understanding could be gained only by looking within. By age eighteen I was a meditating vegetarian doing yoga daily—all things that Midwest suburbia circa 1982 didn’t take kindly to. As for college, I did not, as Mark Twain said, want it to interfere with my education.

In the so-called progressive colleges today, the Perennial Philosophy is not well represented. The evolutionary spirituality of Jesuit scientist and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin has taken center stage. The lingo of quantum physics has been creatively mapped onto Oriental metaphysics in a syncretism as problematic as Madame Blavatsky’s newfangled ancient theosophy. Buzzwords are trademarked as the proprietary New Thing in the hopes of shelf-life stamina and surefire profits. New designer systems promising the integration of science and spirituality put the cart before the horse: Instead of integrating the more limited approach of physics into the larger framework of metaphysics, it appropriates the higher truths of ancient mysticism as the latest findings of science. For example, unlike Fritjof Capra’s groundbreaking
Tao of Physics
, the recent
What the Bleep!
movie neglected to identify its quantum conundrums as the highest truths of ancient nondual Oriental mysticism. Similarly, efforts are made in the marketplace to simplify, rename, and dumb down the profound truths of ancient metaphysics to fit into the narrow confines of modern consciousness and scientific boxes, when the whole point is to help enlarge consciousness to directly perceive those profound integrative truths. The tacit mandate that authors are supposed to follow, to write to a third-grade reading level, is never once indicted for creating and reinforcing that level!

Why is this important? And why is the Perennial Philosophy discarded or scoffed at? It’s important because it identifies the underlying cause of the crisis of the modern world, and it’s scoffed at because modern consciousness is held prisoner by the values of self-serving egoism. Modern consciousness has been flattened into a superficial and materialistic plane which perceives only that narrow domain. There is no depth, there is no vertical transcendence, there is no higher perspective. Such terminology is virtually heretical in the secularized discourse on politics, psychology, sociology, and even religion. Especially religion. Only in marginalized corners of the discourse on human transformation, and notably among Traditionalists (students of the Perennial Philosophy), have these perspectives been kept alive, but they are always in danger of being commodified and subsumed into consumerist culture. (When will the Coomaraswamy action figures appear?) If embraced, they are popularized and diluted, rendered trendy and impotent by the spiritual marketplace.

Traditionalist philosopher René Guénon called this situation “the reign of quantity.”
⁹
The logical consequence of this worldview is, as John Zerzan says, “the twilight of the machines.”
¹⁰
And a twilight it is, for the materialist illusion leads to an unsustainable situation, the fading of delusions of grandeur, an impossible impasse as dangerous as a top-heavy tower built on faulty foundations. The modern world is now having to face the fact that its dream of endless scientific and cultural progress, driven by an endlessly expanding gross national product, is not a dream or ideal at all, but a delusion. Isn’t it odd that the American dream shrinks as the GNP grows? This “myth of progress” is hung upon a linear time-philosophy that is unique to the Western Judeo-Christian mind-set. And this mind-set is held thrall by self-serving egoism. Jungian analyst Monika Wikman said it well:

Ego consciousness goes hand in hand with the linear-time assumption of Western civilization, because the ego cannot accept a time in which it would need to relinquish its sovereignty for the sake of renewal. For it, only half of reality is real. Time doesn’t move in cycles between two complementary extremes; day doesn’t need night and life must deny death. Time is merely the unchanging stage upon which the fulfillment of ego’s bottomless needs are pursued.

It is not possible to encapsulate all the brilliant philosophical insights of Traditionalist writers. The insightful words of Guénon, Coomaraswamy, Marco Pallis, Frithjof Schuon, Joseph Campbell, Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, Huston Smith, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Titus Burckhardt, Lord Northbourne, Kathleen Raine, Stella Kramrisch, Annamarie Schimmel, Whitall Perry, Wolfgang Smith, and Martin Lings have been augmented by new voices such as Estefan Lambert, Timothy Scott, Peter Kingsley, Patrick Laude, and Roger Sworder.
¹²
The Perennial Philosophy also informs the work of popular writers such as Peter Russell. Small publishers such as Fons Vitae, World Wisdom Books, and Sophia Perennis have endeavored, with little expectation of profit, to reprint the old titles and publish new ones in this underappreciated genre. In this chapter the salient points of the Perennial Philosophy will be covered and they will be referenced frequently throughout the rest of the book. As far as I can tell, they offer the only sane explanation of, approach to, and solution for the crisis of the modern world, regardless of whether or not we are comfortable with connecting that crisis with 2012.

We have to be very careful with terminology. What does the phrase “sacred science” mean? Why is such a phrase necessary? First, sacred science revives a sense of awe and reverence for nature, a sacred participation between object and observer. “Normal” science—or shall we say “profane” science in contrast to “sacred” science—assumes the only real part of the universe is the physical domain of matter, forces, and the laws that govern them. Everything in this worldview can be reduced to and explained by these physical laws. Spiritual “realities” are, by this definition, not really real.

The phrase “sacred science” is necessary in order to highlight the idea that, from the viewpoint of an underlying spiritual center, historical “progress” is a devolution. Modern science and secular pop culture offer a profane and desacralized worldview. Earlier humanity saw the universe animated by living and conscious beings occupying many levels in a multidimensional ecology that was ultimately unified by the principle of the center-origin. Modern science identifies this previous modality as inferior and superstitious. But let’s revisit this and take a careful look at the assumptions underlying these judgments, and the consequent implications for cultures that believe one versus the other. Ancient cultures living under the guidance of sacred sciences did well enough to recognize the physical surface of appearances, which is the sole concern of modern science. But it also went beyond the veil of appearances to recognize and embrace other modes of knowing and being—not simply what we would call intuition and feeling, but parallel, coexisting ontological domains: the plant kingdom, mineral kingdom, elemental beings underlying physical transformational processes (such as fire). These domains were incorporated into the daily worldview, what we might call a depth-psychological folk wisdom that provided meaningful participation in an ultimately unfathomable and beautifully mysterious cosmos.

The universe is a multidimensional place. Likewise, the human mind is multidimensional and integrates sensory data with perceptions from what in traditional sacred sciences are referred to as spiritual faculties. For example, in ancient Tibetan teachings (which is the perfect example of an ancient sacred science), there are five levels of the human being, each of which corresponds to energy centers residing along the spine called
chakras
. These five levels process increasingly subtle information from the physical environment as they ascend upward (earth, water, air, fire, space). Above them, two more chakras exist. The sixth is associated with the so-called third eye. When this center, or subtle sense faculty, is opened, consciousness is able to transcend, or integrate, dualities. Conflict generated by the interplay of dualities in the world can be “seen through.” People in this mode tend to not became entangled and limited by identifying themselves with only half of reality. There are plenty of people in the world today who can access this level of consciousness, though it is not a perspective that factors into the values of modern politics and trans-national economies. Many ancient cultures were informed, in their philosophies and religions, by this nondual perception of the world.

A sacred science acknowledges the highest level of consciousness (the subtlest level) as the most real, while a profane science denies that level’s relevance and validity because it belongs to a nonmaterial domain. Profane science will say it is ambiguous because it is “subjective.” Here we find another distinction between profane science and sacred science (or Perennial Philosophy): Modern science is inverted in relation to sacred science. In the profane desacralized view of modern science, physical matter is the most real, the only part of the universe that can be analyzed and tested with consistent results. In a sacred science the subtler higher levels of consciousness are more real. This is not a matter of one opinion versus another opinion; it is a question of a more complete cosmology (a more sophisticated ontological understanding of reality) versus a less complete cosmology that is true only within a relatively narrow subsection of the big picture. Science values and hones in on precision, whereas sacred science zooms out for the big picture, with com prehensiveness (and comprehension) as the goal. The more subtle and spiritualized that consciousness gets, the more it can embrace and interpenetrate lower levels, denser domains, of the universe. In this way, a comprehensive grasp of the whole can be realized.

On a scale of progressive rarefication from material to spiritual, Tibetan and Hindu sacred science identifies five sheaths or levels of human consciousness. Lama Anagorika Govinda explained this doctrine in his profound book
Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism
. In this scenario, the five levels of consciousness crystallize around our innermost core, the Divine Ground, which is itself immaterial. Each successive sheath is denser than the last. From highest to lowest the five levels are: the inspiration body, the depth-consciousness body, the thought body, the pranic (breath) body, and finally the physical body. The inspiration body is nourished by joy, or ecstasy. It is the subtlest of the sheaths and therefore penetrates all the others. In other words, the sheaths are not separate levels, building consecutively around a solid nucleus, but rather have the nature of interpenetrating forms of energy. The densest, like large pebbles in a sand sifter, cannot occupy the same space as the subtler levels. So, too, the limited worldview of science, informed and defined by the faculties of physical sense perception, cannot penetrate into the subtle domains perceived with the subtle faculties. In fact, the subtle faculties are likely to be obscured by the exclusive focus of the grosser faculties on material sense perception. Not so the other way around, however. When the consciousness shifts to awaken the inner faculties of subtle sense perception, the outer world doesn’t simply disappear. Why? Because the inner sense perceptions embrace the data received by lower physical impressions, but places them in a larger, more inclusive, context. This is, essentially, what sacred science offers to a world hoodwinked by profane science—a larger, whole, perspective. As long as we identify ourselves with denser aspects of our totality, then we are subject to the laws of matter.