Questioner: Ego has a function and we will never get rid of it, but can we not develop our internal witness so that, instead of the ego driving the car, Consciousness is in charge?

Richard: The ego or I-sense appears to us in layers and the first layer, which we most certainly can get rid of, is the childhood ego that is created out of past conditioning. The second layer of ego is the one that posits a subject in relation to an object. Thus I love you rather than love is here binding us together. When this layer of ego is relinquished we are enabled to enter into a period of spiritual preparation in which more subtle layers of ego-delusion may be released through relaxing the ego-contractions. In this way the soul is born into the spiritual domain for eternal devotion and at this point again increasingly subtle energetic forms of ego-investment are dissolved.

What I call the ego-compromise is a popular idea, but it is spiritually incorrect. It is the idea that popularly supposes that I can retain my ego and make peace with myself and follow a spiritual path of some sort. The reality of spirituality stands firmly in the integrity of spiritual truth. Thus an ego-intended spirituality is simply incorrect. It is not that ego is relinquished in some magical way or through supposed awakening "experience" enabling us to be, act, and practice spirituality, rather it is that passing through the stages of psycho-spiritual work toward the intense period of spiritual preparation that is demanded of the initiate, certain aspects of human illusion have to be shed.

If you are following an authentic spiritual path (and for the foreseeable future for mostly everyone authentic psycho-spiritual path) these processes of ego-attachment will fall away naturally. Thus it is not something that you do, but rather one of the things that take place as a result of your engagement with the unfolding path of the heart.

The Witness or witness-consciousness is not an ego-compromise, neither is it an alternative to shedding the ego. On the contrary, the witness in the ancient Vedas (Sakshi in Sanskrit) is the observer or the Supreme Being. Sakshi is the pure awareness that observes the worlds without becoming affected or involved, thus there is no ego-tendency in Sakshi. Sakshi occupies the total universe and is beyond or prior to experience or the experiencer. So you see it is not some light alternative to dropping the ego; it has no involvement with ego whatsoever.

The Witness is beyond awareness itself, since awareness is observed by the Witness.

And finally, "Consciousness is in charge," you say, but of what? Consciousness is another word for the more traditional God, Brahman, the noumena. As such it is a label or a term for what can never be labelled. How do you address  All and everything? It is impossible! Consciousness is neither in charge, nor not in charge. Consciousness merely IS.

Richard Harvey welcomes your questions here for further BLOGS.

BLOG entry #25

Seeing with spiritual eyes is a way of saying seeing things as they are. Seeing things as they are eschews of prejudice, evaluation, bigotry, judgment, and even preference. Seeing things as they are means seeing through things to their essence, the essence in which we are all love.

When you embark on the exercise of seeing with spiritual eyes immediately you are struck by the objectification. You notice fairly quickly how you appraise everything you look at. Next you notice how each of the evaluations of things you look at reflexes with others. Thus something is more beautiful than something else, more ugly, more useful, and so on.

Further on, you begin to notice projection: the beautiful, ugly, and useful parts of yourself are perceived in the outside world as disowned parts of you. The world outside is your garbage dump, the place you put things you cannot quite handle in yourself. You might well ask, if the outside world is comprised of projections – disowned parts of yourself – then is it anything else at all?

The isolation and alienation inherent in that idea may be too much to bear. Indeed it is too much to bear for many who make their way back from these further reaches of inner enquiry out of fear of losing the comfort of projection and having to face themselves.

But if the intention to see with spiritual eyes remains strong, then you persist. Persisting at this point involves a radical shift from seeing things to mere seeing. Instead of objectifying and identifying with the objectification, you bring your attention to the field of seeing itself.

For those of us who have worked with deep emotions, it is like watching feelings arise in the body form and tolerating the arising without expressing the feeling themselves. After a while you rest in the experience of awareness, awareness of arising feelings. Emotions then cease to have such a powerful, insistent, and incontinent effect on you.

Resting in the source of seeing rather than seeing something, a gentle alchemy begins to work within you as the world becomes subject to your direct perceiving rather than processed through the separating, dividing process of thought.

BLOG entry #24

Spirituality... just say the word and it elicits a response sometimes disproportionate to the six syllables uttered. But what is it? What does it signify? Why is it important?

The spiritual realm is the invisible realm, the etheric, the astral, the energetic realms, a realm prior to the manifestation of solid matter and gross creation. All religions it seems perhaps proclaim, suggest, and imply this realm with an explanation, a doctrine, a dogma, some principals that underlie spirituality. Like "God," the word evokes innate reverence, and in some correspondingly contempt.

Today of course even physics has arrived at the inevitable conclusion that all is energy, nothing is solid in essence. Likewise as a child I would reside in the invisible world and commune with something nameless and wonderful and mysterious. No one else seemed to know about this world and today it is rather similar. Many of us for whom the invisible world is real are marginalized by those who do not recognize, participate, or otherwise doubt its very existence.

The main difference is there are today a lot more of us, at least than there seemed to be in my childhood. But... and it is a big but... just believing or practicing or being interested in spirituality is not enough. It is my sincere belief that without a revolution in consciousness in the modern era our world is truly lost.

The signs have been here forever it seems – the end times, the apocalypse, weapons of mass destruction, the Second Coming, the Maitreya, the Kaliyuga. It appears that if we take our spirituality seriously then love, compassion, respect, and reverence would be expressed in outward expression, acts of mercy and courage, interventions and help.

While this may be true, any amount of acts of mercy and kindness do not address the fundamental question of our being-ness, our truth, the destiny, capacity, and potential of humanity itself.

We are spiritual beings fundamentally animated and nourished by the Divine. We are temporary appearances of Consciousness appearing in the relative realm, temporarily separated from the flow of Consciousness. Will we find a way to honor this source, the Divine Oneness of Life, without practical applications, without treating the symptoms while ignoring the disease?

Humanity has stooped to some of its lowest levels of ignorance today. With seven and a half billion people of which a mere few tens of thousands may possibly be sincerely engaged in spirituality per se what changes can be wrought? To every single person with an earnest calling I say tend the flame, care for the light, because from a single burning ember a great blaze can be born.

BLOG entry #23

In her incredible book, Chasm of Fire, Irina Tweedie speaks of her master Bhai Sahib. In frustrating moments of jealousy and possessiveness she is miffed that he spends more time with visitors with seemingly negligible spiritual intentions than he does with her.

Bhai Sahib explains to her that his work is threefold. Some people come to see him to talk over their domestic issues, relationship hurts, or difficulties with their children. Others come for spiritual reasons and mostly for the way of dhyana – mindfulness or meditation. Tweedie herself is in a third category: full devotional surrender to God.

Reading this book was the first time I had seen these levels of inner work described so clearly. It has helped me arrive at my thoughts on capacity and potential. As healers, counselors, or teachers we accept and meet each individual where they are. Without judgment we relate with the other, in the knowledge that there is very little difference between us in the material world and none at all in the spiritual realm!

We cannot always predict accurately what someone is coming to see us for. Sometimes it is obvious. At other times it is mysterious and hidden beneath several coverings. Sometimes it turns into a level we never suspected. Rarely can or do expectations conform to thought.

The way is bespoke – custom-made for your individual needs. You can moan and complain about this as much as you want, but it is the case. In this last week alone in my practice I have counseled one client that her way is the way of devotion. However, her background and conditioning is such that she will always choose the hardest of ways, so she will have to pass through a period of dhyana and struggle in order to realize the absolute ease of surrender to the life of devotion.

Another has the tricky task of discerning his ego-self as it ducks behind quite reasonable interpretations of mind which reflect self-importance (after a mere short examination), playing the victim, and despair. For him, the path of awareness (dhyana again).

If all this should sound like gobbledy-gook to you, the basic principle that underlies this discussion is this: true spiritual sadhana, devotion to spiritual discipline, and sacred-spiritual practices as a way of life does not accrue or progressively get you anything or anywhere.

Personal, domestic, emotional issues demand a practical approach: What should I do? How shall I deal with this problem? This is how you fix the car, so to speak. Deeper issues of character and personality also require a practical approach, although with much patience and tenacity too.

In dhyana a practical approach is adopted toward spirituality. You are encouraged to struggle or relax, meditate or breathe, or practice some other awareness technique. But these are merely ploys to return you to a semblance of naturalness and ordinary living. In contrast, spiritual sadhana is total, timeless. It is your immersement in the heart, not the heart of separative relationship or sex or sentiment or romance or relative, partial relationship, but the heart that is all-inclusive and embraces All.

BLOG entry #22

In my new book Your Sacred Calling I have done some more deconstructing and radical demolition of the present era of so-called spiritual teaching. "Pop" spirituality sounds so very sensible and rational – and this alone should make the spiritually intelligent seeker suspicious – that we can be forgiven for being enticed and seduced by the gentle lilt of its comforting sentiments. However it is all without doubt (who doubts?) unnecessary – and worse.

Why unnecessary?: the way to the Divine is not a way as we think of it, practice it, conceive or experience ways in the material world. The real way is reminiscent of Franz Kafka's famous and perhaps by now too often quoted:

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. 

What I like about this is how you feel privy to the writer's mental process. No sooner does he think, and write "listen" than he dismisses it. No sooner does he think, or write "wait" than he dismisses that also. "Still and solitary," however, he does not dismiss. Kafka knows that everything is contained in the heart... and the heart thrives on silence and solitude. The heart of a human being is unlimited, without boundaries of any kind.

Do you seriously think that some progressive practice can bring you to the heart? "Pop" spirituality can only offer these forms of delusion. To arrive in the heart, you must simply stop whatever you are doing. Do not do, simply be. Do not even think about being, just relax. Do not even relax, do nothing. All the world is here, now – revealed in supplication, or as Kafka would say rolling "in ecstasy at your feet."

BLOG entry #21