The most important opposition to be understood by spiritual aspirants is that between what is realistic and what is Real. The realistic is determined by the culture. It is what conforms to reason, reason that is adapted to social reality, a constructed reality, a reality constructed specifically to maintain a given, though hidden, under-structure of power.

The Real is thus always unrealistic. The Real is what is beyond both imaginary concerns and symbolic concepts. The Real cannot be captured by symbolism. The Real is what is repressed from mundane, realistic discourse. To be on a spiritual path is to be on a path toward the Real. To be on a spiritual path is thus inherently to be unrealistic.

To be on a path toward the Real means to apply one's consciousness to realization of the Real. Since the Real cannot be thought or imagined, it can only be realized—precisely through the deliberate transcendence of the cognitive faculty and the false sense of being that has been conjured by the  discourse of realism and the emotional imaginary.

The problem that arises in the effort to transcend the imaginary and symbolic strata of the psyche is that the first emergence of the Real comes in the form of anxiety. Real One, as we may call it, is the Real of loss, lack, pain, blood, guts, excrement, ugliness, unbearable disgust, stupidity, sickness, senility, death, meaninglessness, nothingness. The world in its brute horror, when contemplated without imaginary and symbolic filters, produces sheer dread. Even the void of death is preferable to incarceration in this realm of the undead, the human zombies who function in the sleep of unconscious reactivity, controlled by forces they cannot and will not comprehend.

For the psychoanalytic mind, Real One is the only Real. Anything of more sublime nature must be fantasy, an effort to escape the angst of Being. But the psychoanalytic mind is also a product of fantasy. The Freudian fantasy is dangerous precisely because it masquerades as realism. And it is correct insofar as there are many religious paths that do attempt to escape from Real One through imaginary processes and activities that cover over the horror of the Real without authentically transcending it. This includes the current fad of using hatha yoga as an obsessive exercise regime performed with religious fluffery such as chanting of mantras and short meditations at the end of each exercise class. Tasteful ambient music, incense, and hugs are wonderful for taking the edge off Real One. But authentic yoga, although it may include music, incense, and even some occasional hugging, is about sitting in silence for long periods, facing down the inner demons of the mind, in inner solitude, penetrating heroically through the plane of anxiety, and reaching Real Two.

Real Two is the Real of divine love. This is not the end of the spiritual journey, but its true beginning. When the ego skin has been shed, the Real of divine love emerges from the heart. In the state of love—which is the absence of both desire and fear—there is a sense of unity in diversity. Divine love is without an object, in fact it is the state beyond subject/object duality. All is realized as oneness. The world is no longer divided between friends and enemies. Thinking is no longer black and white. There is natural mindfulness, presence, and sacredness in all one's actions.

The Real of love is the portal to even higher consciousness. The archetypal realm opens up, and one's buddhi, the subtle intelligence, awakens to the deep structure of reality, the universal patterns that connect us all, the implicit forces, the tacit bonds, the quantum entanglement, the potentials that transcend possibility. And in profound meditative states, the awareness rises to resonance with the supernal light, the divine energy that underlies spacetime and permeates all immanent entities. One is now able to peer through the final veil between the phenomenal realm and the noumenal ground of Being. The power of grace has been fully activated. The activity of grace brings about an inactivity of the mind, a wholehearted timeless turning inward to the center point of the center of the inmost unmoving Self.

The silent awareness, in utter stillness of surrender and immersion, now enters the absolute dimension of the Supreme Real. Here the journey of the Spirit to God attains its consummation. The pilgrimage of reality is complete. The Self is re-absorbed into the indescribable bliss of Anuttara, the ultimate perfection, eternal liberation from all dualities, all limitations, all illusions, all separation from the Supreme Source. At once, everything is understood, transcended, dissolved—universes, gods, truths—all questions, entities, worlds disappear in the overwhelming self-luminous bliss of the Supreme Real.

To the sage who has attained this level of jivan mukti, liberation in life, the phenomenal circus may continue but it is without substance or significance. Those in ignorance who ask about whether spiritual liberation is realistic may receive with great laughter the answer, “No, it is not at all realistic. But it is the only Real there is.”

One is advised not to reject the unworldly divine Real of Love, nor the impossible Supreme Real of Liberation, for the mess of pottage of the merely realistic.

Namaste,

Shunyamurti