Not Only What, But Exactly How?
 |
| Saskatchewan, by Unknown |
"In meditation, as the mind settles down to dwell on a single focus, attention begins to flow in a smooth, unbroken stream, like oil poured from one container to another. As this happens, attention naturally retreats from the other channels. The ears, for example, still function, but you do not hear; attention is no longer connected with the organs of hearing. When concentration is profound, there are moments when you forget thte body entirely. This experience quietly dissolves physical identification. The body becomes like a comfortable jacket: you wear it easily, and in meditation you can unbutton and loosen it until it scarcely weighs on you at all. Evnetually there comes a time when you get up from meditation and *know* that your body is not you. This is not an intellectual understanding. Even in the unconscious the nexus is cut, which means there are sure signs in health and behavior..."
"I am helping you to penetrate the great illusion, which is one with the great tabu. And this is the illusion. The relation between yourself and nature is, not a relation between your body and all else in nature, but the relation between yourself on the one hand and, on the other, your body as at once a part of nature and her epitome. This is all important; nor will you understand it until you have taken hold of it, not as an interesting speculation, but as part of your daily experience; until it is as obvious to you as waking up in the morning."
One of these is Barfield's, from Unancestral Voice, in the character of the spirit called the Meggid.
The other is from Eknath Easwaran's introduction to his translations of a selection of the Upanishads.
The quote from Easwaran, he says - not only in this text, but others, and many times - is from direct experience, over many years of deep and deepening meditation.
The quote from Barfield, he said in an interview, is not from direct experience, but a fictionalized depiction of Rudolf Steiner's teaching.
Since first reading Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances in 1988 - 34 years ago - I devoted much time and energy to 'attaining' a vision of 'the world bathed in the light of the evolution of consciousness.' In some ways, I have achieved that, in a sensitivity to, and the vaguest feelings of, a cosmic view of human history.
When I first read Unancestral Voice, years after reading S the A, and came across the revelation of the Meggid, and the gnomic 'the relation between yourself and nature is...', I turned a corner in my own deepening pursuit of experience free from the body.
Especially, I sought, not only more clues, but direct instruction from Barfield himself on how he attained this separation from bodily consciousness.
Then I learned that he hadn't attained it. Or, at least, he didn't say so in print, but more importantly, didn't offer the instruction I was after.
In the meantime, beginning about seven years ago, I started on a dedicated, devoted practice of an established method of meditation, a practice that has not only yielded the first fruits of that separation from bodily consciousness that I've so longed for, but has transformed into love, compassion and understanding.
As a result, I've come to see, from one perspective, a distinction in my own appreciation and continued study of Barfield's work: on the one hand, focusing on his thought as *his* thought, and using it, extending it, in the directions he himself did - poetic diction, philosophy, understanding of religious and scientific history, and the evolution of human consciousness.
On the other hand, there is the longing to achieve this separation from bodily consciousness, and using his works as a method, a technique to achieve that.
The first focus I've found incredibly enlightening, substantive enough to sustain thirty-four years of study - of history, consciousness, literature, psychology.
The second focus - as a method of transcendence, of achieving what Barfield himself 'speculated', but didn't seem to achieve himself - produced...well, as much for me as for him.
It's in this regard, in considering that distinction, and especially the longing for transcendence - or, as the AA steps say it, 'conscious contact with a power greater than myself' - that I found such profound teaching in Barfield's own master, Rudolf Steiner. I knew deep down that Steiner *was* the master, if I wanted to become able to make conscious contact.
But though Steiner has been my teacher in matters much beyond what I've learned from Barfield, I still had not been able to learn his method of meditation. It just didn't take.
So here I am, seven years into a practice of meditation, that from the first months took me well beyond what I had been able to achieve with Steiner's methods, and well beyond what I had even hoped was possible with any method (though surely this more recent practice of meditation was, and is, benefitting from all I've learned from Barfield and Steiner).
I'm not promoting a particular practice of meditation. I'm testifying to the fact, in my own life, that it is indeed a devoted practice of meditation that brought about what Owen Barfield had given me reason to believe was possible. It hasn't been philosophical speculation, but deep, single minded meditation that has begun to loosen the jacket of sensory enclosure - sensory suffocation - so that I do sense, and know, in a small and growing way, my body as a separate entity, and consciousness as non-bodily.
Again, not all of us are 'into Barfield' in the same way, or for the same reasons. But this is my story, and I wanted to share in case others find some clarification in their own engagements with Barfield's thought.
And, finally, is it obvious which name belongs to which of the two quotes above?
Comments