Zhuangzi tells a story:
"Tiān Gēn was travelling to the south of Yīn Mountain. He reached the river Liáo, where he met the Man without a Name and said to him, ‘I wish to ask you about governing everything under Heaven.’
The Man without a Name said, ‘Away with you, you boor. What a dreary question! I was just about to go chum around with the Creator of things. When I get tired of that, I shall ride off on a bird formed from the unkempt wisps of air, and go beyond the compass of the world and wander in the land of nowhere and the region of nothing, thereby taking my place in the borderless wilds. Why do you come here to bother my mind with this business about ordering the world?”
Let us now continue with our reading of “Making Sense of Non-sense.”
If you recall we had just noted that the nature of the subtle environments which may be encountered all have some things in common, and those things are the following:
- Change of Time—a sense of time dilation;
- Change of Place—a sense of being in the world and yet removed from it;
- Change of Person—a sense of light (or darkness) suffusing persons;
- Change of State—a sense of combined dreaming and wakefulness.
While we may examine each of these ‘changes’ in turn, there is also something of each in all the others.
Change of Time
Time dilation is a slowing or acceleration of time in a given system as perceived by an observer who is in motion (physically or spiritually) with respect to said system. Such an effect has often been reported by those who claim to have intentionally, or unwittingly, entered subtle environments though the effect may only be realised after returning to empirical-historical space-time (as in the tale of Rip Van Winkle, for instance).
Tolkien agrees that subtle realms…
“…open a door on Other Time, and if we pass through, though only for a moment, we stand outside our own time, outside Time itself, maybe.”
But noticing and accepting this as being so in myths, legends, stories, and tales, and seeing and accepting that the same is true in reality at large is quite another matter.
Martha Claire Baldon, in her doctoral thesis, The Logic of the Grail in Old French and Middle English Arthurian Romance (2017), also makes note of different yet concurrent temporal domains within the Grail legendarium:
“The Grail narratives combine diverse models of time to create a unique timescale in which events from the past, present, and future are able to exist simultaneously. This interaction collapses the distinctions between times… In the Grail narratives, time and space interact to allow the knights to travel between the Arthurian present and the biblical past, their geographical surroundings responding to their ability to understand and remember the religious lessons of the Grail.”
Saint Augustine, in his Confessions, provides the briefest suggestion of a rationale for the experience of time-dilation:
“What is now patently clear is that neither future nor past events exist, and it is incorrect to say, “there are three times: the present respecting things past, the present respecting things present, and the present respecting things future”. These three things do somehow exist in the [individual and embodied] soul [but] I do not perceive them anywhere else.”
This relates to the insights of an unnamed “Greek Master” as recorded in an Arabic text:
“In the other world there is no memory, because there is no past and no future there. Rather, all existents and their forms are there at once. Everything the soul did in this world, and everything else with which it was concerned, is as if something present in its essence, by witness and not by memory. Furthermore, when the soul departs from the physical world, it is united with the Intellect, to be purified of the flesh and the senses, so that the soul and the Intellect are as if one thing. Then the forms of all existents are present to it, so there is neither memory nor forgetfulness, but one single knowledge, complete and permanent.”
The notion that time is what we make of it is echoed from within the Buddhist tradition as well, as Lǐ Tōngxuán makes clear in his commentary on the Huāyán Jīng (華嚴經):
“Past and present are a single moment, for there is no past, present, or future. The Buddhas of old have not vanished nor have the Buddhas of the present appeared only now, for in primordial wisdom a single truth unites appearance and reality, and phenomena are identical with this truth… The ten periods of time[…] never move away from the present moment which is so vast that it can encompass all of space, and so tiny that it can fit inside an atom and vanish without trace.”
Time provides a sequence for our linear minds to use in processing, labelling, and storing subjective experience as discrete ‘events’. The transformations we go through as we move through various states require (on return to our stable state) words and temporal coordinates which serve to anchor the changes in memory.
The American journalist and science-fiction novelist Frank Herbertcautions us about the trap our word-oriented mental frameworks impose:
“Because of the one-pointed Time awareness in which the conventional mind remains immersed, humans tend to think of everything in a sequential, word-oriented framework. This mental trap produces very short-term concepts of effectiveness and consequences, a condition of constant, unplanned response to crises.”
But what of the unconventional mind free of the trap produced by such “sequential, word-oriented frameworks” and the ”one-pointed Time awareness” in which they immerse us?
The German philosopher, mystic, and Protestant theologian, Jacob Böhme (“Yakub boeh-may”), declares that the effect of mystical contemplation was such that:
“In one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at a university.”
Time-dilation is also remarked upon in a Hadith of the Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him):
“A day with your Lord is like a thousand years of your counting.”
It seems clear—both from experience and the testimony of those witnesses assembled here—that one’s state of being radically alters one’s perception of time and place relative to persons who remain both “in the world” and “of it”.
Change of Place
As just mentioned, in addition to an altered perception of time, one’s sense of location, place, or space may also be subtly transformed.
The lesser reason of the person trapped in “sequential, word-oriented frameworks” and immersed in ”one-pointed Time awareness” is not able to perceive subtle realms clearly and consistently. This relates to what the contemporary Kabbalist Shemuel Avital wrote regarding what he referred to as the “Jumping of the WAY”, reinforcing the previous caution from Frank Herbert:
“…when one is in tune, one can be near and far in a blink of an eye [and so] travel to realms that are still ‘unknown’ to humans who are on the limited perception of appearances etc.—‘invisible’ to those who are still trapped in semantics and limited linguistics.”
As with the perception of time, this alteration in the perception of place is tied to the state of the soul. The Ceylonese metaphysician, historian, and philosopher, Ananda Commaraswamy, paraphrasing Jacob Böhme (“Yakub beh-may”), wrote that:
“…heaven and hell are everywhere, being universally extended…The soul hath heaven or hell within itself, and cannot be said to go to either when the body dies…”
That is to say: natural and supernatural subtle environs are not post-mortem states or locations utterly disjointed from the empirical world and historical time, but are actually always with us because we are always with them whether we are aware of the fact or not.
The 13th-century Sufi, Najm ad-Dīn Kubrà, declared much the same. He stated that:
“The lower soul, the Devil, and the Angels are not realities external to you. You are them. So too Heaven, Earth, and the Divine Throne are not outside you, nor are Paradise, Hell, Life, or Death. All exist within you, as you will realise once you have accomplished the initiatic journey and become Pure.”
Functionally, change in the sense of place is made manifest through the blending of imagination with sense perception such that what is perceived through imaginative vision is given outward semblance and bodied forth for external perception via a purified and unified sensorium.
The contemporary American philosopher John Sallis wrote that we should imagine what it might mean to sense imaginally…
“…with such force as to bring forth what would—if it were an instance of sensing and not of imagining—be sensed, what would be sensed while also, decisively, exceeding sense.”
Long before him, the philosopher-soldier Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock wrote clearly, though circumspectly, regarding the function of the imagination:
“There are those who believe that the imagination is a great creative power in the soul; which, in itself, “is vague and unstable;” and that it is the duty of the artist “to regulate and fix it, and at last to exalt it into visible presence.” When thus disciplined, it is supposed that the imagination may “body forth the forms of things unknown, and give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name” far more enduring than the visible forms of external nature.”
Henry Corbin, declares moreover that:
“…there is a spiritual place and a corporeal place. The transfer ofone to the other is absolutely not effected according to the laws of our homogeneous physical space. In relation to the corporeal place, the spiritual place is a No-where, and for the one who reaches Nā-kojā-Ābād everything occurs inversely to the evident facts of ordinary consciousness, which remains orientated to the interior of our space. For henceforth it is the where, the place, that resides in the soul; it is the corporeal substance that resides in the spiritual substance; it is the soul that encloses and bears the body. This is why it is not possible to say where the spiritual place is situated; it is not situated, it is, rather, that which situates, it is situative. Its ubi [‘where’] is an ubique [‘everywhere’]. Certainly, there may be topographical correspondences between the sensory world and the mundus imaginalis, one symbolising with the other. However, there is no passage from one to the other without a breach. Many accounts show us this. One sets out; at a given moment there is a break with the geographical coordinates that can be located on our maps. [Typically] the ‘traveller’ is not conscious of the precise moment; he does not realise it, with disquiet or wonder, until later.”
In the Arthurian legends, the disciplined imagination and purified sensorium of the knight allows for an ‘enchanting’ of the landscape. The fact that change of place can be mobilised by spiritual vision is something that has been recognized (at least in literature) even by academic scholars like the aforementioned Martha Claire Baldon:
“Gawain’s inability to perceive the path of salvation offered by the Grail quest is reflected by his physical inability to find any path or aventure, leaving him to wander aimlessly through the unusually desolate wilderness of the Grail forest. Bohort (“boarre”), Perceval, and Galahad, on the other hand, each encounter a series of strange and allegorical aventures drawn from biblical sources and which, along with the immeasurable and pathless forest and the vast sea, form the landscape of the Grail quest […] in the Grail narratives the heightened sense of religious priorities mobilises the Arthurian romance landscape. As opposed to remaining static, the geographical features of the Grail setting seem to move alongside the knights, constantly changing and transforming the shape of the landscapes through which the knights travel. This foregrounds the significance of the knights’ individual perceptions of the quest, indicating that the journey towards the Grail is controlled by a spiritual, as opposed to a merely physical, progression […]conceptualisations of space in the Grail narratives illustrate the interactive relationship between spiritual and physical progress, a central part of the distinct logic… The physical landscape of a knight’s journey becomes itself a demonstration of his state of spiritual understanding, while his ability to respond to the dialectic reasoning provided by the religious figures that he meets dictates the aventures that he will encounter next… This particular relationship between time (in the form of historical events) and space parallels that of mediaeval maps, suggesting a shared geographical imagination which is exegetical rather than cartographical.”
Change of Person
Transformation of our person alters our perception of others as well. When looking at a person manifesting a harmonious being-state we may see, as Swedenborg has noticed, that they:
“…look indescribably beautiful. Love radiates from their faces, from their speech, from every detail of their behaviour.”
It is important to understand what Swedenborg means in referring to spiritual or subtle beings. Otherwise we may not understand the importance of this insight in relation to our thesis:
“When we are doing good things out of love and kindness, our inner self is in Heaven, in a community of [beings] who do the same kind of good things as we do. Our minds are led into deeper things, and we become Wise… Wisdom is seeing truth in its own Light… [We humans have] lost our original depth, becoming more and more superficial[,] materialistic[,] and physical-minded […] engrossed in the pleasures of material loves…”
Swedenborg also speaks to the phenomenology of light for those “doing good things out of love and kindness”:
“In good people [or, more properly, for people acting from their spiritual nature], the inner part is in Heaven with its Light, and the outer part is in the world with its light. When this is our state of mind, Heaven's Light shines into the world's light, and our inner and outer parts work together like a cause producing an effect…”
He writes more on this elsewhere:
“We are created in such a way that we are in the Spiritual World and the earthly world at one and the same time… And since that is how we are created, we are given an inner nature and an outer nature—an inner nature that allows us to be in the spiritual world, and an outer nature that allows us to be in the earthly world… For good people [more properly, for people acting from their higher nature], their inner level is in Heaven and in its Light, while their outer level is in the world and in its light. Further, for good people this latter light is brightened by Heaven’s Light, so their inner and outer levels act in unison like an efficient cause and its effect, or like what is prior and what is subsequent. For evil people [again, more properly, for people reacting from their lower nature], though, their inner level is in this world and its light, and the same holds true for their outer level as well. This means that they cannot see anything in Heaven’s Light [while they are feeling, thinking, and reacting from their lower nature], only in this world’s light… That is why Heavenly matters are in darkness for them and worldly matters are [seen] in the [lesser, worldly] light.”
Swedenborg can also help us appreciate the states possessed by those who live in spiritual or infernal subtle realms:
“…the more we derive our thoughts and intentions from Heaven, the more our Inner Spiritual Self opens and takes shape. This is an opening to Heaven […] and a taking shape in accord with the priorities of Heaven. In direct contrast, the more we derive our thoughts and intentions not from Heaven but from the world, the more our Inner Spiritual Self closes and our outer self opens. This is an opening to the world and a taking shape in accord with the priorities of this world. When our Inner Spiritual Self has been opened to Heaven all the way […] we are in Heaven’s Light and in an Enlightenment […] which means that we come into Intelligence [Understanding] and Wisdom. We see what is True because it is True and we perceive what is Good because it is Good. On the other hand, when our Inner Spiritual Self has been closed we are not aware that our Spiritual Self exists, let alone aware of what that Spiritual Self is… Since we are solely in the light of this world and its ‘enlightenment’ what is false looks true to us, and what is evil is perceived as good. We refer to [such] people as “sense-oriented”when their inner nature is so external that they cannot believe anything unless they can see it with their own eyes and touch it with their own hands […] and are [because of this narrowing of attention and potential] subject to misconceptions about everything...”
In the Platform Sutra (六祖壇經), the Sixth Patriarch of Chan, Huineng(大鑒惠能), makes the fluidity and instantaneousness of such transformations quite clear:
“A foolish passing thought makes one an ordinary man, while an enlightened second thought makes one a Buddha.”
Change of State
Professor Tolkien discusses the phenomenology involved in subtle perception when—speaking of Legolas in particular and Elves in General— he writes of the blending of waking (sensory) and dreaming (imaginal) perceptual modes:
“...he could sleep, if sleep it could be called by Men, resting his mind in the strange paths of elvish dreams, even as he walked open-eyed in the light of this world.”
…and…
“Legolas already lay motionless, his fair hands folded upon his breast, his eyes un-closed, blending living night and deep dream, as is the way with Elves.”
Tolkien-scholar Verlyn Flieger (“Fleeger”)notes that:
“…dreams in The Lord of the Rings reach into unsuspected regions of the mind, bridge time and space, and so demonstrate the inter-relationship between dreaming and waking that the two states can be seen as a greater whole.”
While there is a tie-in with so-called lucid-dreaming, this blending of imaginative vision with sense perception is not restricted to that type of experience but can also happen outside of sleep. The imagination is able to clothe spiritual realities in imaginal forms so that people who are “in the world” but only partially “of it” may appreciate them.
In the extra-canonical Gospel of Philip, it is indicated that:
“Truth did not come into the world naked, it came in types and images. The world will not receive Truth in any other way.”
But for unprepared souls that stumble uninvited and perhaps unwelcome into subtle realms, sleepiness and torpor are common experiences, as Tolkien makes clear in describing the Hobbits’ entry into the Old Forest:
“At last they came suddenly into a thin shade; great grey branches reached across the path. Each step forward became more reluctant than the last. Sleepiness seemed to be creeping out of the ground and up their legs, and falling softly out of the air upon their heads and eyes.”
Other symptoms of being uninvited and unwelcome—of entering a realm to which our ontological steady-state does not grant inherent right of access—are weariness and withering:
“…were you so to voyage that escaping all deceits and snares you came indeed to Aman, the Blessed Realm, little would it profit you. For it is not the land of Manwë that makes its people deathless, but the Deathless that dwell therein have hallowed the land; and there you would but wither and grow weary the sooner, as moths in a light too strong and steadfast.”
Tolkien’s assertion that it is the deathless that hallow the land is consonant with Buddha-Dharma wherein there has always been a recognition that the mental states of beings defile or purify environments. Thích Thiền Tâm in Pure-Land Zen, Zen Pure-Landswrote:
“When the mind is pure and undefiled, any land or environment becomes a Pure Land.”
…while Master Lok To, in Pure Land of the Patriarchs, notes that…
“…the Pure Land is the blissful land of one’s own mind… It is not necessary to seek the Pure Land far away […] if the mind is pure, the land is pure. If the mind is defiled, the land is defiled. If an evil thought comes to mind, then many obstacles appear. If a good thought arises, peace is everywhere. Thus, Heaven and Hell are all in one’s own mind.”
Be that as it may, we are cautioned by Muso Kokushi:
“Even if you believe in inherent enlightenment, if you only believe and have no inner communion with it, this is not yet actually the true aspiration for enlightenment [bodhichitta]. The belief or faith that characterises true aspiration is […] in essence […] the orientation referred to […] as only seeking enlightenment. This means passing through worldly states without clinging; it also means passing through spiritual states without taking them to be final or absolute. This progress can only be maintained with an inner sense of the transcendence of enlightenment over lesser goals, coupled with an inner sense of the immanence of this enlightenment in the mind. [Only this] fertile union of inner sense is called [true] aspiration for enlightenment.”
Worlds become hidden or revealed—undergoing purification or defilement —in response to how we organise and utilise our sensorium, which includes our imagination. Henry Corbin also mentions this:
“...the spiritual Imagination[,] Imaginative perception[,] and imaginative consciousness have their own noetic (cognitive) function and value, in relation to the world that is theirs […] thealam al-mithal, mundus imaginalis, the world of the mystical citieswhere time becomes reversible and where space is a function of desire, because it is only the external aspect of an internal state. The Imagination is thus firmly balanced between two other cognitive functions: its own world symbolises with the world to which the two other functions (sensory knowledge and intellective knowledge) respectively correspond.”
We can learn to use our internal sensorium to determine what type of world we are in or are about to enter. All the acts which a given world engenders in us relate to the organisation and direction of our faculties (in/out, up/down, harmonious/in-harmonious, etc). We thus get a sense of the world we are in—whether and when we have moved up or down the scale of ontological existence at any given moment. Some worlds leave a bitter taste and we even describe the people that live and react from such worlds as 'bitter' persons. We should register the ‘taste’ of the states we move through as this data can be used to navigate while journeying.
What’s more, events cast their shadows before them so we can pick up a foretaste prior to entering a world because our faculties will have already begun the process of organising themselves in such a pattern as will take us there and we can become aware of this before we permit ourselves to enter the associated world or begin acting (or more likely, reacting) from the accompanying mindset.
This teaching is also consonant with Buddhadharma as Master Nan Huai-Jin makes clear in discussing virtue and vice and their effects:
“The seeds of karma include past, present, and future, intelligence and stupidity, virtue and evil. Virtuous people bring to fruition their seeds of virtue from the alaya [or ‘storehouse consciousness’] and in so doing, slowly, slowly transform the evil seeds into virtuous ones… On the other hand, if one nurtures bad habits or evil, the virtuous seeds will also become tainted.”
We all have corners of our minds where darkness lingers and others where light enters. We thus always have access to devils and defiled lands (through which we endure hardships of our own making) as well as Angels and Pure Lands (through which we experience the bliss of inherent Nature). But those who live in and from the Pure Land state are, as Tolkien tells us, persons of Power in both worlds:
“Those who have dwelt in the Blessed Realm live at once in both worlds, and against both the Seen and the Unseen they have great power.”
This is suggestive of the person of shinjin (信心) who shares in the virtues of Amida Buddha, as Shinran Shonin, founder of what became the Jōdo Shinshū sect of Japanese Buddhism, writes in his Jodo Wasan(‘Hymns on the Pure Land’):
“Shinjin […] is […] the mind aspiring [only] for great enlightenment; The evil spirits that abound in heaven and earth all hold in awe the person who has attained it.”
For people of a calculative and controlling mindset, things that have to do with ‘Heaven’ are dark, obscure, and painful, but things having to do with ‘hell’ are revealed and lit with a false light. For this reason, in The Lord of the Rings, Frodo—having given in to the temptation to put on the ring during the attack of the Nazgul beneath Weathertop—finds himself in the shadow-world of the Nazgul, and only leaves it when he hears himself calling the name of Elbereth.
We have been counselled to be “in the world, not of it.” Swedenborgmakes the utility of this injunction crystal clear:
“Thinking spiritually is thinking about things as they are in essence… If our inner part is spiritual, we are actually Angels of Heaven.”
Again, with Swedenborg, references to the presence and influence of Angels from ‘societies’ in 'Heaven' or the influence of harmful ‘spirits’ or ‘devils’ from ‘societies’ in ‘hell’, refers to our internal states—as adjusted and altered by the influence of human (and subtle) beings, suggestive thought-forms, the effect of sense-objects, and/or the imposition of inherited (genetic) or conditioned (mimetic) traits. We literally are ‘Angels’ or ‘devils’ when we submit to, and manifest, the corresponding mindset.
The academic scholar, James Wade asserts that place and state are inextricably related when it comes to subtle environs:
“…in relation to the ‘actual world’ (the world where I am located and that I consider to exist independent of me), there exists an infinite number of possible worlds that are products of mental activities, such as dreaming, imagining, and storytelling.”
Martha Claire Baldon uses this supposition by Wade to explicate the levels of ‘place’ in the Arthurian romances, with specific reference to the ‘world’ of the Grail:
“At the opening of each Grail quest, the knights move from the secular Arthurian world (to be read in this instance as the knights’ “actual world”) and into a world that is a product of their “mental activities”. In the place of “dreaming, imagining, and storytelling”, however […] the mental activity that controls the distinct Grail journey that each knight will make is the improvement of his[spiritual] understanding and the quality of his interaction with ‘Grail logic’ […] the texts propose that there are a myriad of possible journeys and worlds into which they could pass, and their progression on the quest is entirely dependent on how successfully they can interpret the logic of the Grail aventures.”
Imaginal worlds can be dangerous to the overbold, as we have heard. Even the experience of Heaven’s Light may be appropriated by the ego through the agency of the imagination (or rather through its lesser and lower reflection: phantasy), therefore we must be on guard in all these transformations against the danger that the lesser reason and personal will of the individual will conflate itself with Heaven’s Light and the Divine Will. If this happens, the self then takes up its own calculative and controlling desire and will and indulges in phantasies along the lines of those desires, further inviting darkness to enter the heart and mind, inevitably taking credit for any imagined good it may think it performs while justifying or rationalising all the evil it actually does (usually by asserting that the end justifies the means).
Shinran Shonin relates a teaching about people of ‘faith’ (‘resigned’ or ‘entrusting’ people) assuring us that such are grasped and led, such that the bits and rubble of their calculative minds are transformed into the gold of shinjin (信心):
“...the person who has realised true shinjin [entrusting, faith] is constantly protected in this life […] these people are constantly illumined by […] unhindered light […] light illumines the person of shinjin always, without interruption, at all times and places…[P]eople who have realised shinjin […] are not defeated [or]confused by evil demons […] for they are grasped and protected, never to be abandoned.”
Coda
Tolkien would remind us that myths and legends and sojourns in subtle realms have a value and a purpose in our lives: they are a means of orienting toward the good, the beautiful, and the true. And though we may not yet have taken the path less travelled … it yet remains:
Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though we pass them by today,
Tomorrow we may come this way
And take the hidden paths that run
Towards the Moon or to the Sun.