A Spirituality that Transforms by Ken Wilber

[Guest guest]

A Spirituality that Transforms

by Ken Wilber

Issue 12 / Fall–Winter 1997

The Modern Spiritual Predicament

An Inquiry into the Popularization of East-Meets-West Spirituality

 

Hal Blacker, a contributing editor for What Is Enlightenment?, has

described the topic of this special issue of the magazine in the

following way (although this repeats statements made elsewhere in

this issue, it is nonetheless worth quoting at length, simply because

of its eloquence, straightforwardness, and unerring good sense):

 

We intend to explore a sensitive question, but one which needs to be

addressed—the superficiality that pervades so much of the current

spiritual exploration and discourse in the West, particularly in the

United States. All too often, in the translation of the mystical

traditions from the East (and elsewhere) into the American idiom,

their profound depth is flattened out, their radical demand is

diluted, and their potential for revolutionary transformation is

squelched. How this occurs often seems to be subtle, since the words

of the teachings are often the same. Yet through an apparent sleight

of hand involving, perhaps, their context and therefore ultimately

their meaning, the message of the greatest teachings often seems to

become transmuted from the roar of the fire of liberation into

something more closely resembling the soothing burble of a California

hot tub. While there are exceptions, the radical implications of the

greatest teachings are thereby often lost. We wish to investigate

this dilution of spirituality in the West and inquire into its causes

and consequences.

 

 

I would like to take that statement and unpack its basic points,

commenting on them as best I can, because taken together, those

points highlight the very heart and soul of a crisis in American

spirituality.

 

—K.W.

 

TRANSLATION VS. TRANSFORMATION

In a series of books (e.g., A Sociable God, Up from Eden, and The Eye

of Spirit), I have tried to show that religion itself has always

performed two very important, but very different, functions. One, it

acts as a way of creating meaning for the separate self: it offers

myths and stories and tales and narratives and rituals and revivals

that, taken together, help the separate self make sense of, and

endure, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. This function of

religion does not usually or necessarily change the level of

consciousness in a person; it does not deliver radical

transformation. Nor does it deliver a shattering liberation from the

separate self altogether. Rather, it consoles the self, fortifies the

self, defends the self, promotes the self. As long as the separate

self believes the myths, performs the rituals, mouths the prayers, or

embraces the dogma, then the self, it is fervently believed, will

be " saved " —either now in the glory of being God-saved or Goddess-

favored, or in an afterlife that insures eternal wonderment.

 

But two, religion has also served—in a usually very, very small

minority—the function of radical transformation and liberation. This

function of religion does not fortify the separate self, but utterly

shatters it—not consolation but devastation, not entrenchment but

emptiness, not complacency but explosion, not comfort but revolution—

in short, not a conventional bolstering of consciousness but a

radical transmutation and transformation at the deepest seat of

consciousness itself.

 

There are several different ways that we can state these two

important functions of religion. The first function—that of creating

meaning for the self—is a type of horizontal movement; the second

function—that of transcending the self—is a type of vertical movement

(higher or deeper, depending on your metaphor). The first I have

named " translation, " the second, " transformation. "

 

With translation, the self is simply given a new way to think or feel

about reality. The self is given a new belief—perhaps holistic

instead of atomistic, perhaps forgiveness instead of blame, perhaps

relational instead of analytic. The self then learns to translate its

world and its being in the terms of this new belief or new language

or new paradigm, and this new and enchanting translation acts, at

least temporarily, to alleviate or diminish the terror inherent in

the heart of the separate self.

 

But with transformation, the very process of translation itself is

challenged, witnessed, undermined and eventually dismantled. With

typical translation, the self (or subject) is given a new way to

think about the world (or objects); but with radical transformation,

the self itself is inquired into, looked into, grabbed by its throat

and literally throttled to death.

 

Put it one last way: with horizontal translation—which is by far the

most prevalent, widespread and widely shared function of religion—the

self is, at least temporarily, made happy in its grasping, made

content in its enslavement, made complacent in the face of the

screaming terror that is in fact its innermost condition. With

translation, the self goes sleepy into the world, stumbles numbed and

nearsighted into the nightmare of samsara, is given a map laced with

morphine with which to face the world. And this, indeed, is the

common condition of a religious humanity, precisely the condition

that the radical or transformative spiritual realizers have come to

challenge and to finally undo.

 

For authentic transformation is not a matter of belief but of the

death of the believer; not a matter of translating the world but of

transforming the world; not a matter of finding solace but of finding

infinity on the other side of death. The self is not made content;

the self is made toast.

 

Now, although I have obviously been favoring transformation and

belittling translation, the fact is that, on the whole, both of these

functions are incredibly important and altogether indispensable.

Individuals are not, for the most part, born enlightened. They are

born in a world of sin and suffering, hope and fear, desire and

despair. They are born as a self ready and eager to contract; a self

rife with hunger, thirst, tears and terror. And they begin, quite

early on, to learn various ways to translate their world, to make

sense of it, to give meaning to it, and to defend themselves against

the terror and the torture never lurking far beneath the happy

surface of the separate self.

 

And as much as we, as you and I, might wish to transcend mere

translation and find an authentic transformation, nonetheless

translation itself is an absolutely necessary and crucial function

for the greater part of our lives. Those who cannot translate

adequately, with a fair amount of integrity and accuracy, fall

quickly into severe neurosis or even psychosis: the world ceases to

make sense—the boundaries between the self and the world are not

transcended but instead begin to crumble. This is not breakthrough

but breakdown; not transcendence, but disaster.

 

But at some point in our maturation process, translation itself, no

matter how adequate or confident, simply ceases to console. No new

beliefs, no new paradigm, no new myths, no new ideas, will staunch

the encroaching anguish. Not a new belief for the self, but the

transcendence of the self altogether, is the only path that avails.

 

Still, the number of individuals who are ready for such a path is,

always has been, and likely always will be, a very small minority.

For most people, any sort of religious belief will fall instead into

the category of consolation: it will be a new horizontal translation

that fashions some sort of meaning in the midst of the monstrous

world. And religion has always served, for the most part, this first

function, and served it well.

 

I therefore also use the word " legitimacy " to describe this first

function (the horizontal translation and creation of meaning for the

separate self). And much of religion's important service is to

provide legitimacy to the self—legitimacy to its beliefs, its

paradigms, its worldviews and its way in the world. This function of

religion to provide a legitimacy for the self and its beliefs—no

matter how temporary, relative, nontransformative, or illusory—has

nonetheless been the single greatest and most important function of

the world's religious traditions. The capacity of a religion to

provide horizontal meaning, legitimacy and sanction for the self and

its beliefs—that function of religion has historically been the

single greatest " social glue " that any culture has.

 

And one does not tamper easily, or lightly, with the basic glue that

holds societies together. Because more often than not, when that glue

dissolves—when that translation dissolves—the result, as we were

saying, is not breakthrough but breakdown, not liberation but social

chaos. (We will return to this crucial point in a moment.)

 

Where translative religion offers legitimacy, transformative religion

offers authenticity. For those few individuals who are ready—that is,

sick with the suffering of the separate self, and no longer able to

embrace the legitimate worldview—a transformative opening to true

authenticity, true enlightenment, true liberation, calls more and

more insistently. And, depending upon your capacity for suffering,

you will sooner or later answer the call of authenticity, of

transformation, of liberation on the lost horizon of infinity.

 

Transformative spirituality does not seek to bolster or legitimate

any present worldview at all, but rather to provide true authenticity

by shattering what the world takes as legitimate. Legitimate

consciousness is sanctioned by the consensus, adopted by the herd

mentality, embraced by the culture and the counterculture both,

promoted by the separate self as the way to make sense of this world.

But authentic consciousness quickly shakes all of that off its back,

and settles instead into a glance that sees only a radiant infinity

in the heart of all souls and breathes into its lungs only the

atmosphere of an eternity too simple to believe.

 

Transformative spirituality, authentic spirituality, is therefore

revolutionary. It does not legitimate the world, it breaks the world;

it does not console the world, it shatters it. And it does not render

the self content, it renders it undone.

 

And those facts lead to several conclusions.

 

WHO ACTUALLY WANTS TO TRANSFORM?

It is a fairly common belief that the East is simply awash in

transformative and authentic spirituality, but that the West—both

historically and in today's " New Age " —has nothing much more than

various types of horizontal, translative, merely legitimate and

therefore tepid spirituality. And while there is some truth to that,

the actual situation is much gloomier, for both the East and the West

alike.

 

First, although it is generally true that the East has produced a

greater number of authentic realizers, nonetheless, the actual

percentage of the Eastern population that is engaged in authentic

transformative spirituality is, and always has been, pitifully small.

I once asked Katigiri Roshi, with whom I had my first breakthrough

(hopefully, not a breakdown), how many truly great Ch'an and Zen

masters there have historically been. Without hesitating, he

said, " Maybe one thousand altogether. " I asked another Zen master how

many truly enlightened—deeply enlightened—Japanese Zen masters there

were alive today, and he said, " Not more than a dozen. "

 

Let us simply assume, for the sake of argument, that those are

vaguely accurate answers. Run the numbers. Even if we say there were

only one billion Chinese over the course of its history (an extremely

low estimate), that still means that only one thousand out of one

billion had graduated into an authentic, transformative spirituality.

For those of you without a calculator, that's 0.0000001 of the total

population.

 

And that means, unmistakably, that the rest of the population were

(and are) involved in, at best, various types of horizontal,

translative, merely legitimate religion: they were involved in

magical practices, mythical beliefs, egoic petitionary prayer,

magical rituals, and so on—in other words, translative ways to give

meaning to the separate self, a translative function that was, as we

were saying, the major social glue of the Chinese (and all other)

cultures to date.

 

Thus, without in any way belittling the truly stunning contributions

of the glorious Eastern traditions, the point is fairly

straightforward: radical transformative spirituality is extremely

rare, anywhere in history, and anywhere in the world. (The numbers

for the West are even more depressing. I rest my case.)

 

So, although we can very rightly lament the very small number of

individuals in the West who are today involved in a truly authentic

and radically transformative spiritual realization, let us not make

the false argument of claiming that it has otherwise been

dramatically different in earlier times or in different cultures. It

has on occasion been a little better than we see here, now, in the

West, but the fact remains: authentic spirituality is an incredibly

rare bird, anywhere, at any time, at any place. So let us start from

the unarguable fact that vertical, transformative, authentic

spirituality is one of the most precious jewels in the entire human

tradition—precisely because, like all precious jewels, it is

incredibly rare.

 

Second, even though you and I might deeply believe that the most

important function we can perform is to offer authentic

transformative spirituality, the fact is, much of what we have to do,

in our capacity to bring decent spirituality into the world, is

actually to offer more benign and helpful modes of translation. In

other words, even if we ourselves are practicing, or offering,

authentic transformative spirituality, nonetheless much of what we

must first do is provide most people with a more adequate way to

translate their condition. We must start with helpful translations

before we can effectively offer authentic transformations.

 

The reason is that if translation is too quickly, or too abruptly, or

too ineptly taken away from an individual (or a culture), the result,

once again, is not breakthrough but breakdown, not release but

collapse. Let me give two quick examples here.

 

When Ch & #65533;gyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a great (though controversial)

Tibetan master, first came to this country, he was renowned for

always saying, when asked the meaning of Vajrayana, " There is only

Ati. " In other words, there is only the enlightened mind wherever you

look. The ego, samsara, maya and illusion—all of them do not have to

be gotten rid of, because none of them actually exist: There is only

Ati, there is only Spirit, there is only God, there is only nondual

Consciousness anywhere in existence.

 

Virtually nobody got it—nobody was ready for this radical and

authentic realization of always-already truth—and so Trungpa

eventually introduced a whole series of " lesser " practices leading up

to this radical and ultimate " no practice. " He introduced the Nine

Yanas as the foundation of practice—in other words, he introduced

nine stages or levels of practice, culminating in the ultimate " no

practice " of always-already Ati.

 

Many of these practices were simply translative, and some were what

we might call " lesser transformative " practices: miniature

transformations that made the bodymind more susceptible to radical,

already-accomplished enlightenment. These translative and lesser

practices issued forth in the " perfect practice " of no-practice—or

the radical, instantaneous, authentic realization that, from the very

beginning, there is only Ati. So even though ultimate transformation

was the prior goal and ever- present ground, Trungpa had to introduce

translative and lesser practices in order to prepare people for the

obviousness of what is.

 

Exactly the same thing happened with Adi Da, another influential (and

equally controversial) adept (although this time, American-born). He

originally taught nothing but " the path of understanding " : not a way

to attain enlightenment, but an inquiry into why you want to attain

enlightenment in the first place. The very desire to seek

enlightenment is in fact nothing but the grasping tendency of the ego

itself, and thus the very search for enlightenment prevents it.

The " perfect practice " is therefore not to search for enlightenment,

but to inquire into the motive for seeking itself. You obviously seek

in order to avoid the present, and yet the present alone holds the

answer: to seek forever is to miss the point forever. You always

already ARE enlightened Spirit, and therefore to seek Spirit is

simply to deny Spirit. You can no more attain Spirit than you can

attain your feet or acquire your lungs.

 

Nobody got it. And so Adi Da, exactly like Trungpa, introduced a

whole series of translative and lesser transformative practices—seven

stages of practice, in fact—leading up to the point that you could

dispense with seeking altogether, there to stand open to the always-

already truth of your own eternal and timeless condition, which was

completely and totally present from the start, but which was brutally

ignored in the frenzied desire to seek.

 

Now, whatever you might think of those two adepts, the fact remains:

they performed perhaps the first two great experiments in this

country on how to introduce the notion that " There is only Ati " —there

is only Spirit—and thus seeking Spirit is exactly that which prevents

realization. And they both found that, however much we might be alive

to Ati, alive to the radical transformative truth of this moment,

nonetheless, translative and lesser transformative practices are

almost always a prerequisite for that final and ultimate

transformation.

 

My second point, then, is that in addition to offering authentic and

radical transformation, we must still be sensitive to, and caring of,

the numerous beneficial modes of lesser and translative practices.

This more generous stance therefore calls for an " integral approach "

to overall transformation, an approach that honors and incorporates

many lesser transformative and translative practices—covering the

physical, emotional, mental, cultural and communal aspects of the

human being—in preparation for, and as an expression of, the ultimate

transformation into the always-already present state.

 

And so, even as we rightly criticize merely translative religion (and

all the lesser forms of transformation), let us also realize that an

integral approach to spirituality combines the best of horizontal and

vertical, translative and transformative, legitimate and authentic—

and thus let us focus our efforts on a balanced and sane overview of

the human situation.

 

WISDOM AND COMPASSION

But isn't this view of mine terribly elitist? Good heavens, I hope

so. When you go to a basketball game, do you want to see me or

Michael Jordan play basketball? When you listen to pop music, who are

you willing to pay money in order to hear? Me or Bruce Springsteen?

When you read great literature, who would you rather spend an evening

reading, me or Tolstoy? When you pay $64 million for a painting, will

that be a painting by me or by Van Gogh?

 

All excellence is elitist. And that includes spiritual excellence as

well. But spiritual excellence is an elitism to which all are

invited. We go first to the great masters —to Padmasambhava, to St.

Teresa of Avila, to Gautama Buddha, to Lady Tsogyal, to Emerson,

Eckhart, Maimonides, Shankara, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Bodhidharma,

Garab Dorje. But their message is always the same: let this

consciousness be in you that is in me. You start elitist, always; you

end up egalitarian, always.

 

But in between, there is the angry wisdom that shouts from the heart:

we must, all of us, keep our eye on the radical and ultimate

transformative goal. And so any sort of integral or authentic

spirituality will also, always, involve a critical, intense and

occasionally polemical shout from the transformative camp to the

merely translative camp.

 

If we use the percentages of Chinese Ch'an as a simple blanket

example, this means that if 0.0000001 of the population is actually

involved in genuine or authentic spirituality, then .99999999 of the

population is involved in nontransformative, nonauthentic, merely

translative or horizontal belief systems. And that means, yes, that

the vast, vast majority of " spiritual seekers " in this country (as

elsewhere) are involved in much less-than-authentic occasions. It has

always been so; it is still so now. This country is no exception.

 

But in today's America, this is much more disturbing, because this

vast majority of horizontal spiritual adherents often claim to be

representing the leading edge of spiritual transformation, the " new

paradigm " that will change the world, the " great transformation " of

which they are the vanguard. But more often than not, they are not

deeply transformative at all; they are merely, but aggressively,

translative—they do not offer effective means to utterly dismantle

the self, but merely ways for the self to think differently. Not ways

to transform, but merely new ways to translate. In fact, what most of

them offer is not a practice or a series of practices, not sadhana or

satsang or shikan-taza or yoga. What most of them offer is simply the

suggestion: read my book on the new paradigm. This is deeply

disturbed, and deeply disturbing.

 

Thus, the authentic spiritual camps have the heart and soul of the

great transformative traditions, and yet they will always do two

things at once: appreciate and engage the lesser and translative

practices (upon which their own successes usually depend), but also

issue a thundering shout from the heart that translation alone is not

enough.

 

And therefore, all of those for whom authentic transformation has

deeply unseated their souls must, I believe, wrestle with the

profound moral obligation to shout from the heart—perhaps quietly and

gently, with tears of reluctance; perhaps with fierce fire and angry

wisdom; perhaps with slow and careful analysis; perhaps by unshakable

public example—but authenticity always and absolutely carries a

demand and duty: you must speak out, to the best of your ability, and

shake the spiritual tree, and shine your headlights into the eyes of

the complacent. You must let that radical realization rumble through

your veins and rattle those around you.

 

Alas, if you fail to do so, you are betraying your own authenticity.

You are hiding your true estate. You don't want to upset others

because you don't want to upset your self. You are acting in bad

faith, the taste of a bad infinity.

 

Because, you see, the alarming fact is that any realization of depth

carries a terrible burden: Those who are allowed to see are

simultaneously saddled with the obligation to communicate that vision

in no uncertain terms. That is the bargain. You were allowed to see

the truth under the agreement that you would communicate it to others

(that is the ultimate meaning of the bodhisattva vow). And therefore,

if you have seen, you simply must speak out. Speak out with

compassion, or speak out with angry wisdom, or speak out with

skillful means, but speak out you must.

 

This is truly a terrible burden, a horrible burden, because in any

case there is no room for timidity. The fact that you might be wrong

is simply no excuse: you might be right in your communication, and

you might be wrong, but that doesn't matter. What does matter, as

Kierkegaard so rudely reminded us, is that only by investing and

speaking your vision with passion, can the truth, one way or another,

finally penetrate the reluctance of the world. If you are right, or

if you are wrong, it is only your passion that will force either to

be discovered. It is your duty to promote that discovery—either way—

and therefore it is your duty to speak your truth with whatever

passion and courage you can find in your heart. You must shout, in

whatever way you can.

 

The vulgar world is already shouting, and with such a raucous rancor

that truer voices can scarcely be heard at all. The materialistic

world is already full of advertisements and allure, screams of

enticement and cries of commerce, wails of welcome and whoops of come

hither. I don't mean to be harsh here, and we must honor all lesser

engagements. Nonetheless, you must have noticed that the word " soul "

is now the hottest item in bestselling book titles—but all " soul "

really means, in most of these books, is simply the ego in

drag. " Soul " has come to denote, in this feeding frenzy of

translative grasping, not that which is timeless in you but that

which most loudly thrashes around in time, and thus " care of the

soul " incomprehensibly means nothing much more than focusing

intensely on your ardently separate self. Likewise, " spiritual " is on

everybody's lips, but usually all it really means is any intense

egoic feeling, just as " heart " has come to mean any sincere sentiment

of the self-contraction.

 

All of this, truly, is just the same ole translative game, dressed up

and gone to town. Even that would be more than acceptable were it not

for the alarming fact that all of that translative jockeying is

aggressively called " transformation, " when all it is, of course, is a

new series of frisky translations. In other words, there seems to be,

alas, a deep hypocrisy hidden in the game of taking any new

translation and calling it the great transformation. And the world at

large—East or West, North or South—is, and always has been, for the

most part, perfectly deaf to this calamity.

 

And so, given the measure of your own authentic realization, you were

actually thinking about gently whispering into the ear of that near-

deaf world? No, my friend, you must shout. Shout from the heart of

what you have seen, shout however you can.

 

But not indiscriminately. Let us proceed carefully with this

transformative shout. Let small pockets of radically transformative

spirituality, authentic spirituality, focus their efforts and

transform their students. And let these pockets slowly, carefully,

responsibly, humbly, begin to spread their influence, embracing an

absolute tolerance for all views, but attempting nonetheless to

advocate a true and authentic and integral spirituality—by example,

by radiance, by obvious release, by unmistakable liberation. Let

those pockets of transformation gently persuade the world and its

reluctant selves, and challenge their legitimacy, and challenge their

limiting translations, and offer an awakening in the face of the

numbness that haunts the world at large.

 

Let it start right here, right now, with us—with you and with me—and

with our commitment to breathe into infinity until infinity alone is

the only statement that the world will recognize. Let a radical

realization shine from our faces, and roar from our hearts, and

thunder from our brains—this simple fact, this obvious fact: that

you, in the very immediateness of your present awareness, are in fact

the entire world, in all its frost and fever, in all its glories and

its grace, in all its triumphs and its tears. You do not see the sun,

you are the sun; you do not hear the rain, you are the rain; you do

not feel the earth, you are the earth. And in that simple, clear,

unmistakable regard, translation has ceased in all domains, and you

have transformed into the very Heart of the Kosmos itself—and there,

right there, very simply, very quietly, it is all undone.

 

Wonder and remorse will then be alien to you, and self and others

will be alien to you, and outside and inside will have no meaning at

all. And in that obvious shock of recognition—where my Master is my

Self, and that Self is the Kosmos at large, and the Kosmos is my Soul—

you will walk very gently into the fog of this world, and transform

it entirely by doing nothing at all.

 

And then, and then, and only then—you will finally, clearly,

carefully and with compassion, write on the tombstone of a self that

never even existed: There is only Ati.

 

A Spirituality that Transforms

by Ken Wilber

Issue 12 / Fall–Winter 1997

The Modern Spiritual Predicament

An Inquiry into the Popularization of East-Meets-West Spirituality