There are two primary positions of understanding, Handed Down Knowledge and Dreaming.
Dreaming is for another topic, but suffice to say that our own small and limited
perceptions, critical though they are, are no match for the accumulated experiences and reflections of whole traditions, or highly gifted people who have absorbed those traditions. I want to look at some of my experiences in this elsewhere, but for the purposes of this arrow, it is necessary to have drawn reference points to the available knowledge of the leading lights of our species - who have all stood where we now stand.
Handed Down Knowledge:
This is all the info we receive from book study or word of mouth. Essentially I’ll deal with the major contenders - people or traditions which have popular currency or good stuff.
Lets dispense with the fatuous ones first.
Christianity.
Basically they believe in ‘Heaven’, whatever that means. The idea is that by being a ‘good boy or girl’ you will get a ‘mansion in heaven’. There is something very urban and socially hierarchical about it all. Rubbish, in fact.
The more serious believe that if they completely offer up their life to Christ, then they will find eternal life in Him. Now this has more substance, and from my perspective, I think these people are on to a good thing, except that absolute surrender and devotion to Christ is not something the average person is capable of. Still let us put to one side in this whole discussion those who claim without substance - if we can’t distinguish and dispense with them we shouldn’t even be in this forum.
The essential casting of ones lot here is bhakti - devotion. If that is your path, then all you have to do is choose your hero, your godhead, and go for it, no holds barred. Being of the jnana path myself, I like to understand and work with intelligence, so it’s not much use to me, although anyone without some measure of bhakti in their heart is a sad case indeed.
Judaism.
Not much on offer here. Hard to even see them as a religion. More of a clan cult. I have not been able to find anything in popular Judaism remotely resembling any serious interest in the afterlife - its all about having babies and being ‘jewish’.
The really serious side of Judaism is in the Kabbalah, but that is a mystical tradition which is somewhat discouraged by mainstream judaism, and as such should be treated on its own.
Islam.
Bunch of rubbish here also I afraid - some crap about the virgins and paradise. Now they also have a separate mystical tradition, Sufism, which they are determined to exterminate.
Popular Taoism.
Another load of crap - all about the ancestors really, and those three bearded men with loads and loads of incense.
Lets get to the more substantial.
Kabbalah.
This has a very detailed hierarchy of stage points. Bit like snakes and ladders. The essential feature is the final pinnacle - Kether - which is very similar to the Hindu ‘Brahman’, and the Toltec ‘Nagual’. The thing here is to make one’s way to Kether - ‘that from which no one returns’. That is the primary purchase on immortality. What happens if you don’t make it in this life? I’m not sure, maybe someone else knows.
Exoteric Taoism.
They have a very serious methodology of attaining the immortal ‘spirit body’. Not sure of the consequences of not getting there, but they are very keen to create this being, so I can only assume that failure is pretty grim.
Sufism.
The northern Sufis are influenced by Tibetan Buddhism, so they are more into jnana, but over all Sufis are bhakti. Still they are serious about it, and require strenuous exercises and complete inner separation from the ‘common road’. Not sure what happens to those who don’t quite make it.
Native/Aboriginal.
These have it all worked out - they usually have a continuous connection between those who are dead and those who are alive, such that they don’t need to do anything as their whole journey is subsumed by the ‘group’ on both sides. This is nonetheless a serious strategy, as it is visceral, and somehow sown up for them. Can’t exactly say if they are fooling themselves, but my suspicion is that they are on to something very clever.
Now I want to examine the real contenders.
Gurdjieff.
He posited a very severe scenario. You either make it to the state of ‘permanence’ or you disappear completely on death - “Do you want to die like a dog?”
I have a lot of sympathy for his views, and have adopted them as a component of my overall strategy. Putting to one side the ‘disappear’ part, the idea of ‘attaining’ permanence I now consider to be a very sane and intelligent approach. Of course he warns sternly of the catastrophe of crystallisation by the wrong means, or of having fatal flaws embedded in that crystallisation.
Rudolf Steiner.
I’m constantly amazed at the neglect of this man by so many. His knowledge is stupendous. He reveals a much more comprehensive scenario, where spirits by nature survive death, and work their way gradually up the ladder of spirit evolution. You can take the faster route, and he gives many techniques for this, or the slower, and he also recognises the goal of entering into the 3rd attention. Nonetheless for the laggards he is much kinder, offering a more Hindu approach of, ‘you’re just giving yourself more pain’ by not getting into the faster evolutionary path.
Steiner exemplifies what is called the ‘evolutionary’ spiritual road. India gave rise to the concept of the wheel of samsara, an eternal circle. The object being to get off the wheel, as to be there was endlessly repetitive - it was going nowhere. You may by good effort manoeuvre to a more favourable jump point, but there was not the systemic sense of spiral that exists in the evolutionary road, much admired in the ‘spiritualist’ European. The evolutionary road takes you upwards to a final point of attainment by its very structure - the idea is to stay on the upward spiral, not the downward one.
Hinduism.
This is a mixed bag - Julie found a very informed commentator on Hindus saying they were essentially agnostic. We were surprised at this first but after examining the word, realised it was true. The reason is the core belief in Nirguna Brahman - the essence of the universe as being without attributes, without form, without any handle at all - meaning you can never know, because it is beyond the tools of knowledge. This is very much the farthest reaches of the 3rd attention. Moksha is what it is all about - and in this life, though popularly there are plenty more opportunities.
Stepping back from there is reincarnation, but the most common held views of experts is that this is no succour for us - what we believe ourselves to be, will go completely - it is much more like the fruit/seed from the tree, not the tree itself regrowing.
Buddhism.
They have a fairly strict view that enlightenment as definitive freedom is crucial, and if you waver, you will get another chance - just don’t expect it any time soon, by any stretch of the imagination - it’s a long grim road before you’ll get another chance like you have now.
Toltec.
As revealed by Don Juan, is an all or nothing position. You either throw your complete life into it right now, or the rest is ghost. He, in typical style, says you have one chance, this is it, you grab it now or you may as well go eat chocolate, because that’s all you’ll get baby. This is by far the most terrifying arrangement of the world and our life in it. It comes from examination of the Eagle, and the truth of death. A position of absolute commitment he sells not only on fear but on the ecstatic joy of audacity - hard to beat really.
Summary
All these views of the afterlife have consequences on how we live our life, that is the important thing. It means that if you believe one thing or another, then if you are integrated, that means you change dramatically the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of your daily world to align with your ‘why’. Here are some examples.
There are two main stances. Lenient and Desperado.
Lenient.
If you adopt one of the more lenient stances, then you have a fall back position of some reliability. This has some important consequences.
First the short path is dangerous, and the long road is tedious, so this stance allows you to adopt a medium path, where you live your life but also apply yourself to spiritual practices and attitudes in what time and energy that you are able to make available. This is a safer path because you avoid the knife edge risks of the short path, and you accelerate your overall position in the pack on the longer road.
Second, and more importantly, you have obligations, responsibilities and affections in the world, that are not so easy to toss over for a life in a cave. You have children, parents, family, jobs, health issues, close friends and social commitments. These you are able to continue in, bringing to them the benefits of your more accelerated spiritual practices, but also being able to enjoy them. A very cosy road indeed, unless God strikes you down in some unfortunate fate. These are the paths of Hinduism, Buddhism, Steiner and others.
Desperado.
The second is the stance of the desperado. Gurdjieff and Toltec being two of the most prominent. There is no fall back position. The consequence upon our life of adopting this stance is drastic, and very different to the previous. In short, it separates us from our human world in a deep and irreversible way. On a profound level we say goodbye to everyone we love - our children, family and friends, plus our nation, race and species. From then on if we live with any of these people, we do it in absolute good faith, good will and love, but the underlying bond is broken, and that makes all the difference.
This is the short path, and its purpose is to allow us to spin. If we have any cords to anything, they will not allow us to spin. Also if we have any can'ts and won'ts and would-never’s and want’s and any little preciousness at all, they will also stop the spin. This is the meaning of controlled folly. I have spoken in the past of the deeper significance of this term - it only makes any sense at all when we finally experience true detachment, and that is another story.
Suffice to say, if you adopt this last stance, there are merciless consequences back upon what and how we do and live.
Myself, I have opted for the Short Path - too late to pretend otherwise now. Each person must make their own decision, and then must examine the consequences back upon how they act in their world, or they are phantoms. There are some here who I see belong to the Short Path, but have not realised it - they have time, short but still, they are allowed to see this for themselves if they don’t take so long as to find the door closed when they turn to enter.
What I do ask, is that everyone look with ruthless honesty at their stance. You can’t have everything, you must know what is the posture of your spirit, and give yourself to that - disregard the rest.
Whatever you do, don’t be superficial... think of that in the darkness when you wake in the middle of the night.
Michael Maher 2006
