WORDSWORTH AND THE LONGING FOR GOD
Although the non-dual understanding was more freely expressed in the East than it was in the West, due to its suppression by the church, there are many instances of it in Western literature. One such example is William Wordsworth’s poem, ‘Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’,* in particular the fifth stanza:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Wordsworth’s use of the image of the birth of an infant and its subsequent growth into adulthood can be taken as a poetic analogy of the birth of the finite mind from unlimited consciousness. This cycle from infancy to adulthood could also be applied to the twenty-four-hour cycle of the emergence and dissolution of the waking state. As such, ‘Our birth’ could be understood as the emergence of the waking state from the field of infinite consciousness, which Wordsworth describes as ‘a sleep and a forgetting’.
Consciousness is by nature self-aware. Its nature is simply to know its own eternal, infinite, inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled being. However, the infinite can only know the infinite; the finite can only be known by the finite. Therefore, in order to know a limited form or manifestation, consciousness must seem to cease being infinite and assume the form of the finite mind, the limited subject or knower from whose perspective objective experience may be known. Consciousness assumes the form of the finite mind by limiting itself to and locating itself in the body. As such, the body is the agency through which infinite consciousness becomes a finite mind or separate self. The name that the separate self gives to itself is ‘I’.
It is no coincidence that although all separate selves are known by others by a variety of names, all separate selves know themselves as ‘I’, a subliminal recognition of the fact that at the heart of all finite minds shines the same infinite, indivisible consciousness, of which all apparently separate selves are but partial reflections. It is for this reason that the first true statement that all apparently separate selves can make about themselves is simply ‘I am’, a statement that confesses the knowing of being that shines in all minds at all times, irrespective of circumstances, situations or states of mind. And it is for this reason that the knowledge ‘I’ is considered a portal through which the separate self passes on its return journey back to its home in pure consciousness, and the same portal through which infinite consciousness passes in the other direction as it assumes the form of the finite mind.
This apparently limited self or ego is the ‘Soul’ to which Wordsworth refers. It is the beacon of consciousness around whom the finite mind revolves, that shines – ‘our life’s Star’ – as ‘I’ in the midst of all experience. However, this ‘I’ does not belong to, nor does it share the limits or destiny of, the finite mind. The finite mind borrows the knowing with which it knows its experience from infinite consciousness, the only consciousness there is. The soul or separate self ‘hath had elsewhere its setting and cometh from afar’. It ‘comes from’ infinite consciousness. It is a contraction within eternal, infinite consciousness or, in religious language, God’s infinite being. The soul or separate self is a crystallisation of the infinite field of pure consciousness, a dream in God’s mind, from which it derives its being and its sense of ‘I’-ness.
However, in the early stages of this emergence, fresh out of infinite consciousness, the separate self is still saturated with its fragrance, that is, saturated with God’s presence. Hence Wordsworth says, ‘not in entire forgetfulness, and not utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home’. As the finite self starts to crystallise out of God’s infinite being, it retains the memory of its own eternity embedded within it.
That is why, as the thin veil of nothingness that shrouds consciousness’s knowing of its infinite being in deep sleep begins to diversify and multiply itself as the dream and waking states, these states are still transparent to the light of consciousness and thus saturated with its peace. It is for this reason that the early morning, before the forms of the waking state have fully crystallised, and the evening, as their apparent solidity is beginning to dissolve into the fluidity of the dream state, are considered auspicious times for meditation, when the natural cycle of emergence and dissolution are cooperating with the mind’s longing to sink into its source.
In the waking state, all minds, feeling the immanence of the freedom and peace from which they have emerged, long to be divested of their limitation or separateness and return to their ‘home’ of infinite consciousness, God’s being. This longing to be divested of its limitations is the desire that the apparently separate self feels for happiness, intimacy and love.
* * *
Wordsworth continues to describe the emergence of the finite mind as a further contraction or restriction of infinite consciousness, a deeper forgetting or ignoring of its own eternal nature: ‘Shades of the prison house begin to close upon the growing Boy’. And yet, at this stage in the emergence of the waking-state mind, consciousness’s knowing of its own eternal being still filters into experience as repeated moments of happiness. Experience is still transparent to and pervaded by God’s infinite being, from which it flows: ‘He beholds the light, and whence it flows. He sees it in his joy’.
The boy’s feeling of happiness is the experience of the free and inherently fulfilled light of infinite consciousness that is modulating itself in and as his own mind. However, it is not in fact the boy who experiences happiness, God’s infinite being; a person cannot experience God’s being. Only God’s infinite being can know God’s infinite being. Only infinite consciousness can know infinite consciousness, for there is no other self or entity present, either to know or not know it. The person is simply an imaginary limitation of the infinite and only being there is.
As Balyani said, ‘No one sees Him except Himself, no one reaches Him except Himself and no one knows Him except Himself. He knows Himself through Himself and He sees Himself by means of Himself. No one but He sees Him.’
To know itself, consciousness does not need to rise in or assume the form of mind. It knows itself by itself, in itself, as itself. The boy’s mind, which knows itself as ‘I’, is a localisation or contraction of consciousness, the true and only ‘I’, which consciousness itself freely assumes in order to actualise or realise a segment of its own infinite potential in the form of the boy’s experience of the world. The boy is, as such, a process or an activity made out of mind, not an object made out of matter, through which consciousness filters itself in order to experience a world. The boy is the agency through which God knows itself as the world.
The emergence of the deep sleep, dreaming and waking states out of infinite consciousness could be seen as a progressive veiling of consciousness. In deep sleep there is a thin veil of nothingness or blankness over the inherent peace of our true nature. This veil is not sufficiently thick to eclipse the inherent peace of our true nature, and that is why deep sleep is experienced as peaceful.
In the dream state this veil begins to diversify itself and, as a result, appears as a multiplicity and diversity of loosely arranged objects and selves, which only become fully concretised as apparently independent entities in the waking state, just as the screen of a laptop could be said to first thinly veil itself in the form of a blank screen saver, which subsequently diversifies itself into emails and images.
The waking state, in which objects and selves are at their most distinct and separate, could be said to be the farthest from consciousness as it progressively contracts within itself and assumes the forms of experience. Likewise, the dissolution of objectivity as we progress from the waking state to the dream state, and from the dream state to deep sleep, could be seen as a progressive thinning out of consciousness’s veiling of itself.
However, this is said only as a concession to the separate self that seems to come into apparent existence as the dreaming and waking states emerge. From the perspective of consciousness – and, of course, consciousness’s perspective is the only one that is real – no state veils itself in the slightest degree, in the same way that from the point of view of a self-aware screen no image, however dark, agitated or diverse, obscures it in any way.
In other words, the veiling of consciousness is only real from the limited and ultimately illusory perspective of a separate self that seems to come into existence with the emergence of these states. Thus, ignorance is only for the apparently separate self, never for consciousness, and it is for this reason that in the Vedantic tradition ignorance is said to be unreal. It is, as such, referred to not as ignorance but the illusion of ignorance.
* * *
The word maya is used in the non-dual traditions to describe consciousness’s ability to assume a form with which it seems to limit itself. It is the power that a screen possesses to appear as a landscape and, as such, seem to veil itself with its own creativity. From this perspective maya is often translated as ‘illusion’, that is, the ability of infinite consciousness, the self-aware screen, to appear as something other than itself, which it now knows from the perspective of a separate subject within its own dream. However, the illusion is only such from the limited and ultimately imaginary perspective of the separate subject of experience that seems to come into existence as a result of consciousness’s veiling power.
Maya, as illusion, is the activity of mind through which infinite consciousness brings manifestation out of its own being into apparent existence. It is its own cause. However, from the point of view of consciousness, its ability to assume innumerable names and forms does not create the illusion of a world, but is rather seen and experienced as an ever-changing outpouring of itself within itself in order to realise, manifest and enjoy the endless flow of its own infinite potential in form. Thus, the deeper meaning of the word maya is ‘creativity’, the process by which consciousness manifests itself as an ever-changing flow of experience without ever ceasing to be and know itself alone.
In other words, the veiling of consciousness is only such from the perspective of the separate subject of experience. From the perspective of a separate self, maya is an illusion; from the perspective of consciousness, it is an expression of its own inherent freedom and creativity, with which its never-changing reality appears in the form of ever-changing experience. As Balyani said, ‘His veil is His oneness since nothing veils Him other than Him. His own being veils Him. His being is concealed by His oneness without any condition.’
Thus, when the apparently separate self is divested of its self-assumed limitations and stands revealed as the true and only self of infinite awareness, maya ceases to be a veiling power and is experienced as a revealing power, and in correspondence with this change, objective experience, which once seemed to veil consciousness, now shines within it.
Consciousness knows itself in and as the totality of experience. Even our darkest moods shine with the light of its knowing. This inability of consciousness to be, know or become anything other than itself is the experience of love, which admits no separation, objectivity or otherness. Thus, from the perspective of consciousness, creation is a manifestation of love.
* * *
In order to manifest itself as a world, consciousness contracts within itself, sacrificing the knowing of its own infinite being for the sake of love, and in doing so seems to cut itself off from its own innate peace and happiness. For this reason there is a wound in the heart of all apparently separate selves, which most seek to alleviate by losing themselves in objective experience.
In order for consciousness to reclaim its innate happiness, a reversal of this process takes place, and it is for this reason that in the Tantric tradition it is said that the path by which we fall is the path by which we rise. The experience of happiness is the relaxation of this process, the unwinding of the self-contraction. This reversal is the de-localisation of awareness in which the mind is gradually, in most cases, divested of its temporary limitations and returns to its original, unconditioned, irreducible essence of pure consciousness, which shines as happiness itself.
In fact, the mind doesn’t return to its original condition; it never left there. There is nowhere for the mind to reside other than its own nature of unlimited consciousness. It would be more accurate to say that consciousness ceases to veil itself with its own creativity, and is revealed to itself as it is. It recognises itself. The knowing of its own ever-present, unlimited being is the experience of happiness itself, and it is for this reason that all apparently separate selves seek happiness above all else.
The dissolution of the mind’s limitations, which is itself the experience of peace or happiness, happens naturally and gradually as the waking-state mind gives way to the dream state, and as the dream state dissolves in deep sleep. In deep sleep only a thin veil of nothingness obscures awareness’s knowing of its own unlimited being; it is sufficiently transparent to afford the mind a measure of peace or happiness.
This dissolution also takes place momentarily on the fulfilment of a desire, when the mind’s activity of seeking comes briefly to an end and, as a result, the mind plunges into its source and briefly tastes the unconditional peace and inherent fulfilment of its true nature. After this experience of peace or happiness, the mind, on rising again within the ocean of consciousness, usually attributes the fulfilment that it experienced to the object, substance, activity or relationship that preceded it, and therefore seeks the same experience again.
Although these brief moments give the mind samples of the lasting peace and happiness it desires, they never fully satisfy it. At some point it begins to dawn on the mind that it is seeking peace and happiness in the wrong place. This intuition may occur spontaneously as a result of repeatedly failing to secure happiness in objective experience, or as a result of a moment of despair or hopelessness when the mind, having exhausted the possibilities of finding fulfilment in objective experience, finds itself at a loss and, with no known direction in which to turn, stands open, silent and available. In this availability the mind is receptive to the silent attraction of its innermost being, drawing it backwards, inwards or selfwards, a call that is always present but usually obscured by the clamour of its own seeking.
The unwinding of the mind may also be effected in more extreme moments of great fear, sorrow or loss, when the coherence of the mind is temporarily disturbed and it is ‘thrown back’ into its original condition, a fact that the Tantric traditions have developed into a series of formal practices in which the mind surfs intense emotion back to the shore of awareness. It can also be brought about in moments of heightened pleasure, such as sexual intimacy, when the mind is expanded beyond its customary confines by the intensity of the experience and, as a result, tastes the nectar of its own immortality.
In fact, from this perspective the experience of pleasure, normally the enemy of spiritual realisation in the religious traditions, is considered a taste of pure consciousness. In the moment of aesthetic pleasure, the wandering mind is brought to bear so intimately on the object of perception as to merge with it. In this merging the mind briefly loses its limitations, and its essence of pure consciousness shines. That is the experience of beauty. It is the experience that the artist seeks to evoke, and to which Paul Cézanne referred when he said that he wanted his art to give people the taste of nature’s eternity.
It is also the experience with which the lover seeks to unite. In her poem Woman to Lover,* Kathleen Raine describes the dissolution of the separate self which is the essence of all intimacy:
I am fire
Stilled to water
A wave
Lifting from the abyss
In my veins
The moon-drawn tide rises
Into a tree of flowers
Scattered in sea-foam
I am air
Caught in a net
The prophetic bird
That sings in a reflected sky
I am a dream before nothingness
I am a crown of stars
I am the way to die
This dissolution can also be solicited, invoked or fostered in meditation or prayer; likewise through a conversation or a passage in a book, through words that are informed by and infused with its silence. Or it may be precipitated by a question such as, ‘Are you aware?’, ‘What is the nature of the one you call “I”?’ or ‘What is the nature of the knowing with which you know your experience?’ Likewise, the mind may be drawn spontaneously into its source of unlimited consciousness simply by the silent presence of a friend in whom the recognition of their true nature has taken place, without the need for conversation.
The mind may also be divested of its limitations by the silent or explosive power of a work of art whose creation was informed, knowingly or not, by the mind’s recognition or intuition of its essential nature. Such a work bears the signature of its origin, which it dispenses freely for all who have eyes to see or ears to hear. Suffice it to say that the mind receives numerous hints as to the source of the peace and happiness for which it longs, although these hints, in the absence of correct guidance, usually pass unnoticed.
* * *
Wordsworth continues his poetic description of the birth of the finite mind from unlimited consciousness: ‘the Youth, who daily farther from the east must travel, still is Nature’s priest’. The east is the source of light, unlimited consciousness. We are in the dream state now. Consciousness is narrowing the focus of its attention and, as a result, form is becoming more clearly delineated and diversified at the expense of the infinite possibilities latent in pure consciousness itself: ‘At length the Man perceives it die away, and fade into the light of common day.’
The ‘light of common day’ is the full emergence of the waking state, where consciousness’s apparent overlooking, ignoring or forgetting of its own being, and the subsequent division of itself into an inside self, made out of mind, that knows, and an outside world, made out of matter, that is known, is at its most persuasive. In the waking state, consciousness’s knowing of its own eternal being fades as it is eclipsed by the glare of the waking state. Consciousness falls asleep to its own reality for the sake of its creation.
The waking state is like ‘a sleep or a forgetting’ in which the multiplicity and diversity of objective experience seems to veil the consciousness that is its sole reality. Although consciousness seems to lose itself in its own creativity, this forgetting is not a mistake. It is the agency of manifestation, the activity of creation, just as an actress has to lose herself in the character in order to play the part fully. Once consciousness has lost itself in its own creativity and assumed the form of the ‘Soul’ or separate self, it then has to embark on a great journey to recover its lost freedom and happiness. Although that journey is initiated by the separate self, it ultimately requires the loss of its separate identity. It requires the death of the very self that seeks freedom and happiness.
Manifestation is simultaneously consciousness’s sacrifice of itself and its celebration of itself. The same process of self-sacrifice and celebration is performed in the microcosm of an artist’s studio, where the artist has to surrender herself entirely in order to bring forth what is within her. Every artist will recognise this process in the words of the Sufi mystic and poet Hafiz: ‘I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known.’ This longing lives in the hearts of all people and initiates the process of creation that has taken place in caves, studios, theatres and concert halls since the dawn of humanity.
* From Poems, in Two Volumes.
* Kathleen Raine, Collected Poems, Counterpoint Press (2001).