“All at once I noticed that the man next to me had put down his book and was looking my way. ‘Is something wrong?’ he said. I was startled, but for some reason I didn’t brush the question off. The guy seemed sympathetic, so I told him what was happening. He asked me if I wanted his opinion. I said sure. ‘You’ve come to a moment of decision,’ he said.
“I never expected that. ‘What kind of decision?’ I said.
“‘You’re considering leaving your childhood behind.’
“He kind of smiled, but I knew he was serious. ‘How do you know that?’ I asked.
“‘Because it happened to me,’ he said. ‘One day it just dawned on me. I’m an adult. I had crossed a line, and there was no going back. I think the same thing just happened to you.’”
My friend shook his head. “He was right. I didn’t even have to struggle with it that much. My adolescence was over. I flew home. I put my backpack away in the attic. I gave up my temp jobs and got serious on the work front.”
“Those aren’t unusual things,” I pointed out.
“I know. Everyone has to grow up sometime. But wasn’t it strange that it happened to me all at once, and that I was sitting next to someone who knew what I was going through, and had experienced the exact same moment?”
This is an example of how higher awareness reaches into everyday life. On the surface your mind is completely occupied with thinking and feeling. A rush of sensations and ideas fills your head from the moment you wake up. But life has hidden patterns that awaken in much the same way that a dormant gene will suddenly become activated. Out of the blue you have a realization, and in a moment your whole life can change.
Most of the time, however, changing the trajectory of your life is less dramatic. It’s a process that unfolds according to its own rhythm and timing. But whether fast or slow, realizations are mysterious events. You discover that you know something you didn’t know before. An old perspective suddenly gives way to a new one. Psychologists have given us broad maps of major life changes, such as the “identity crisis” that turns teenagers into adults sometime in their early to mid-twenties. There is also the “midlife crisis” when the end of young adulthood creates panic and generates a powerful impulse to be young a second time around.
The significant feature of any turning point is that the meaning of life changes. And when it does, the change can be stunningly drastic, like Scrooge turning from total selfishness to total altruism on Christmas Day. When you suddenly fall in and out of love, when you suddenly find religion after decades of unbelief, or when you go to work and discover that overnight a fulfilling career has become empty, a major change in awareness has occurred. If the meaning of life shifts profoundly, higher awareness has reached into your life from the level of the soul.
Take the experience of love. Love is most overwhelming as a physical and emotional state, which is how we experience it in the visible world. To be in love is to be aroused by the sexual and romantic thrill of another person: your beloved. The heart pounds, and the pulse races. The mundane activities of everyday life pale compared to the intoxication of falling in love. If you try to refine this tumult while it’s washing over you, you can’t. But in calmer moments, love is more stable and pure, as in the love between mother and child. If we keep refining it, a love for humanity—known as compassion—arises. Purer still is the love based on abstraction, such as love of beauty or love of truth. Finally, for those few who reach the subtlest essence, love becomes an aspect of God. Not all love reaches this exalted goal. The point is the process, the refining of awareness until it becomes more delicate, subtle, and pure. You will still love your beloved—the physical aspect of life doesn’t disappear—but at the same time you will feel the higher aspects of love. It’s as if you live in the body and see through it at the same time.
To tune in to your soul, you must participate in this process of purification. Many of us have lost our ability to do that, however, which makes it seem only natural that the soul feels abstract, remote, wispy, and aloof. People began to speak of it as “the ghost in the machine,” a phrase that coupled two false notions, since the soul isn’t a ghost and the body isn’t a machine. This disconnect isn’t about sin or disobedience. You didn’t commit a terrible crime that caused you to be punished as a lost soul (I realize that committed Christians would fiercely argue this point, but in a secular society it seems evident that most people don’t feel that they have inherited a mortal sin from Adam and Eve).
Even if you are a devout Christian, it’s fascinating to note that in the Old Testament, God promises to send a messenger to earth, one who will bring the Lord into the temple, using these words: “Who shall abide the day of his coming? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.” (Malachi 3:2–3). In other words, people have to go through a process of refining before God will be real in their lives.
Effortless change
It would be ideal if the mind were perfectly clear and present in the moment, with no obstacles and blockages. To achieve that, the brain must change. Being part of the body, your brain has its own healing mechanisms. But old conditioning, once it gets established in your brain, becomes part of its neural networks. From your soul’s perspective, these imprints are all subject to change. Moments of realization occur, and then however it is wired, the brain adapts. Unfortunately, current brain science accepts without question that brain changes are physical. Can we show that the brain is actually wireless? If we can, the way is open for awareness as the key to personal transformation.
That possibility took a huge leap forward when a team of Italian researchers in the 1980s was studying the brains of macaque monkeys. When a single neuron was monitored in a monkey’s lower cortex, a region responsible for hand action, that neuron would fire when the animal reached for a piece of fruit, say a banana. In itself, this was a routine finding. Muscles move because the brain tells them to. But when the monkey saw another monkey reach for a banana, the same neuron fired again. In other words, the act of seeing caused the first monkey’s brain to fire as if it had performed the action itself.
The concept of “mirror neurons” was born, meaning any neuron that imitates the action taking place in another, separate brain. The mirroring doesn’t have to be between two like animals. A monkey watching a lab technician reaching for a banana will have its mirror neurons activated the same as if it were seeing another monkey perform the action. This response is not purely mechanical. A mirror neuron can tell the difference between an action it is interested in and one that it is indifferent to. For example, when a macaque monkey watches an experimenter put a piece of fruit in his mouth, a host of mirror neurons fire, but when the experimenter merely places the fruit in a bowl—an action the monkey shows little interest in—the mirror neurons barely fire.
This means that the brain’s pathways do not have to be sculpted by direct physical experience. They can be shaped vicariously. Is that how we learn in the first place? It seems intuitive that a baby monkey, for example, learns to grab things by reaching out for them. But intuition is wrong in this case, because a baby monkey’s brain doesn’t have the neural pathways to perform the action for the first time. The purpose of mirror neurons is to build those pathways simply by looking—or, more precisely, by paying attention and being interested. Those words should sound familiar, because the Tibetan monks whose brains had neural networks for compassion built those networks the same way.
The brain doesn’t even need instructions to make new pathways. Baby monkeys that are still nursing will watch their mothers eating solid food, and the mirror neurons inside their brains are activated as if they are eating solid food themselves. When weaning time comes, the brain is prepared. An unknown world becomes familiar simply by looking. Human learning may occur the same way, but no one knows yet. For ethical reasons, brain cells can’t be wired for study in human infants, but by looking at eye movements, it appears that babies develop a
mirroring system in the first year of life simply by paying attention to significant events around them.
Is this how you learn from the soul, too? We have one strong clue that it is. Think back to the phenomenon of darshan—the transmission of a blessing when someone is in the presence of a saint. Sages believe that merely setting eyes on a saint brings the blessing, and now we can see how: the devotee’s brain is changed by the act of looking. “Blessing” is too mild a term, because in its highest form, known as atman darshan, there is a direct transmission from one soul (or atman) to another. It couldn’t have occurred to anyone that mirror neurons were at work. The notion was unknown to me as a child visiting local saints. But the effects I felt—buoyancy, elation, inner peace—didn’t require any understanding on my part. Someone else’s soul had effortlessly changed my brain.
Why, then, can’t my own soul do the same?
All the soul has to do is radiate its influence. If simply being close to a saint is enough, how much closer are you and I to our own souls? Higher consciousness is a field, like electricity or magnetism, and when a person comes into contact with that field, the brain mirrors it. The word darshan derives from the verb “to see,” but your eyes don’t have to be open; it is nearness to the field that causes the effect.
Going deeper, one finds that higher consciousness isn’t static. A saint can transmit a specific energy, such as healing, and the target can be one person. Consider the passages in the New Testament where Jesus is implored to heal the sick. He is often reluctant, because he wants his listeners to go inside themselves to discover the Kingdom of Heaven—in essence, he’s telling them that the field is part of themselves. External miracles pull attention in the wrong direction. When Jesus does happen to heal the lame, halt, and blind, he attributes the miracle to the one who was healed, not to himself.
Mark 10:46–52 offers a dramatic example, centering on a blind beggar sitting by the side of the road as Jesus walks by.
When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.
One is struck that the blind man seems more insistent than faithful, but in the tradition of darshan, the incident makes sense. Healing depends on connecting higher consciousness to lower, a perfect soul sending energy to an imperfect body. (Jesus’ intervention wouldn’t be needed, except as he says regretfully of his disciples, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” In other words, their bodies are not perfectly attuned to the soul, while Jesus’ is.) The body has no choice but to shift, just as a magnet has no choice but to point north. What could be more effortless?
Pauline’s story
“Everyone who knows me says that I lead a charmed life,” said Pauline, a professional woman who is now forty. “Some shake their heads and say it enviously, or with disbelief. But almost no one knows the truth. There’s a reason everything goes right for me.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Everything?”
Pauline nodded. “I haven’t had a setback in twenty years. Things happen that look like problems to other people, but in the end they always turn out well. No matter what.” She wasn’t smug, or smiling as if she were keeping a mischievous secret. Pauline had something serious in mind.
“It all goes back to a very stressful time in my life. I was out of college but had no direction. At twenty-five I had landed in a civil service job that had nothing to offer except security. I dated, but there was no one serious. These sound like ordinary complaints, and they don’t convey how terribly restless and dissatisfied I felt. I would wake up in the middle of the night gasping for breath, like somebody drowning.
“Nobody knew how I felt. What was there to say? Nobody could tell me what was really going on, at least not anyone I knew.”
“Do you know now?” I asked.
Pauline nodded. “I was breaking up inside. No, that’s too dramatic. I was reshuffling. The whole process must have been going on for a while, maybe since childhood; I was intensely religious at ten years old, dressing in black and retreating up into the attic to read the Bible. Anyway, I didn’t know how to handle my restless state, which came to a head one Saturday afternoon.
“I was sitting by the window in an old armchair, my mind racing. I can’t remember what my thoughts were about, but I do recall wondering if this is how people lose their minds.”
“Did you feel crazy?” I asked.
She shook her head. “That’s the funny thing. I wasn’t agitated emotionally. A strange kind of calm had settled over me. It was like watching somebody else’s mind racing faster and faster. Suddenly it all stopped. I looked outside at the bright summer sun, and I knew. Everything you want is coming to you. There’s nothing to do. Just like that. I couldn’t believe it.”
“Did you hear a voice in your head?” I asked.
“No. But it felt as if somebody was communicating with me. God? My higher self? I wouldn’t want to put a name to that inner voice, but my body became very relaxed. I thought I was going to cry, but instead I gave an enormous sigh. A huge burden was lifted that I didn’t even know I was carrying.”
“In one epiphany you got a charmed life?” I said.
“Yes.” Pauline was unblinking.
“Right away?”
“Not quite. At first I went around in a state of euphoria. I had complete trust in what the voice told me. I saw everything through rose-colored glasses. You see, I had no fear anymore. People don’t realize it, but fear is always lurking somewhere in the background, like termites in the woodwork. When it’s gone, the whole world brightens up.
“That phase lasted only a few weeks. I came down off my high. I was more myself again. You’d think that was the end of it. But in fact the change was real. Bad things stopped happening to me. I started making choices that were right. My existence was no longer full of crises and drama. Other people began to notice that I was leading a charmed life.”
One could see from Pauline’s calm certainty that she didn’t care if anyone believed her. I congratulated her, we chatted awhile longer about the good things that kept happening to her, and then she left. I have rarely met anyone who is a better example of the soul’s field effect. The voice she heard didn’t come from outside herself. We could say that she heard her soul’s voice, but the soul is silent. Rather, she heard her own mind putting into words a shift in consciousness. Such shifts are unpredictable; you never know beforehand that you are going to take a quantum leap (although going through a period of turbulence, as Pauline did, is quite common). There are many kinds of epiphanies, and it is mistaken to categorize them all as religious. What all epiphanies do have in common, however, is that awareness expands beyond its normal boundaries.
I would call this an epiphany about surrender. Imagine that you are caught between two forces. One, the force of conditioning, pulls you toward a life full of effort and struggle. The other, the force of the soul, pulls you toward a life that is effortless. The contest appears to be grossly unfair, because the first force has a huge alliance behind it. Everyone you know accepts that life is difficult, and therefore society demands that you go along, not only in word and deed, but even in the thoughts that run through your head. For your thoughts are not your own. You have assimilated a hundred voices from the wider environment—family, friends, mass media, society in general—and now they speak to you from inside your own mind.
Compared with this massive alliance, the soul has no visible power. It has no voice in your head. It is too intimate f
or other people to explain to you. We have seen that awareness can move energy, but the soul’s awareness is so refined that the energy it moves is incredibly subtle. With so much going against it, how does the soul exert any force at all? The answer is surprisingly simple. Your soul is you. Outside forces exert constant pressure, and in the short run, your soul’s signals will be blocked out. But in the end you can’t ignore yourself. By being ever-present, your soul can wait as long as it takes.
You can perform a simple experiment to prove this to yourself. Consider another ever-present thing: breathing. You spend hours ignoring your breath. It proceeds without cessation, never drawing attention to itself. Now sit still and try to ignore your breathing. Deliberately make an effort to shut it out. You can’t. Once your attention has been drawn to your breathing, a change has occurred. Eventually, of course, your mind will wander. You will lapse back into forgetfulness of your breath. But that makes no difference to it. Like the soul, your breath can afford to wait, since it is ever-present as long as your are alive.
In Pauline’s case, what really happened wasn’t an epiphany in the ordinary sense. God on high didn’t suddenly notice her and send a special telegram. Rather, she noticed her soul the same way a person notices his breathing. In itself, that’s not a unique occurrence. Each of us has passing moments when we slip inadvertently into a higher state of consciousness. The trick is to keep your mind from wandering away again. Pauline achieved something rare: she noticed her soul and then didn’t take her attention off it. The soul’s presence remained with her, which is why her life became “charmed.”
Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul Page 14
