DETACHMENT AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

WHAT IS DETACHMENT?

Most if not all the worlds major religious systems seem to advocate some form of
detachment for Pilgrims seeking to follow the spiritual path. Furthermore, the degree of
detachment advocated varies not only from religion to religion, but also within a
particular religion. Thus is Christianity for example, there are the Desert Fathers living
solitary lives in caves and at the other end of the spectrum in some Christian groups,
Christians are encouraged to establish contact with those outside the faith for, say,
evangelism and so on. But what is meant by detachment and what are we supposed to
be detaching from? Well here is our first problem because some of the definitions used
by some spiritual disciplines are quite specific. So for now I will just use the basic
dictionary definition that generally defines the word in this way:

Detach: To separate, disconnect or unfasten. Therefore-

Detachment: a state, condition or way of being separated or disconnected. This can

have a slightly negative connotation of aloofness, indifference, a lack of interest or
involvement with other people or worldly concerns, a disinterest, apathy.

Sometimes related terms are used, for example:

a) Disassociation: to end an association or relationship, to create distance from
connection or involvement – separation.
b) Disengage: To disconnect, separate or become uninvolved. To release from
mental or physical attachment, to withdraw.
c) Withdraw: To remove (oneself) or take back, to retreat from social contact and
the world.
d) Renounce: To give up a claim, position, title or right, to give up a habit, pursuit
or practice, denial of something for religious reasons.
e) Abstain: To choose deliberately not to do something, to hold oneself away.

The idea of detachment at its most acute leads to those who become hermits, recluses
and ascetics:

a) Hermit: One who withdraws from social interaction into solitude. The objectives are:
i) To lose identification with the mundane
ii) To learn strict mental discipline
iii) To increase spiritual skills/abilities

b) Recluse: to live apart or separate from others. One who lives a solitary life devoted to
prayer/meditation. From a root word meaning ‘to shut up’.

c) Ascetic: One who lives an austere life of self-denial as part of a principled spiritual
discipline.

Although these words vary in their nearness and approximation to the meaning of
detachment, they all have related themes to detachment in some way or another. For
now e can I think note from the above that detachment:
 a) Involves a separation and withdrawal from something or someone, a withdrawal
of interest and involvement.
b) That the degree of withdrawal and separation that is advocated varies. Not every
spiritual pilgrim becomes an ascetic living an austere disciplined life in a cave
in the desert.

A SPIRITUAL FRAMEWORK

So as we begin to explore this theme of detachment, I will first outline something of the
perspective that I adopting. The position that I am advocating declares that Absolute
Spirit is Formless and Undifferentiated and therefore beyond the comprehension of our
minds. It further suggests that Infinite Formless Spirit contracted to be manifest as finite
material forms. The whole universe is a manifestation or expression of Absolute Spirit
which is Essence of all that is, thus in this way, Absolute Spirit is Transcendent and
Immanent at the same time – a position known as panentheism. Thus I agree with Ibn
al-Arabi when he says ‘Wherever we look, there God is’. But of course, what we see is
not Essence per se, but a delimited, contracted form or manifestation of Essence. Thus
again, I agree with Arabi when he declares that any form or existent simultaneously
reveals and veils Essence. This contraction or delimitation of the One to many finite
forms also brings about Ignorance and Illusion. Illusion comes down to a mistaking of
the finite material universe or some aspect of it for Final Reality. But in fact, the
universe and everything in it is a secondary, dependent expression of Absolute Essence
– the universe has no existence or substance of its own – it only has that finite bounded
temporal existence given to it by Essence – of which it is a contracted, delimited
expression. The locus, or focal point of Illusion is in our minds: in the way in which we
perceive and construe what we experience. Because of the Illusion that we create, we
remain in Ignorance as to the True Nature both of ourselves and the universe and thus
we are Ignorant of Final Reality. Rather like a dreamer, who whilst dreaming, believes
that the dream is real, so too we believe that finite, temporal, material existence is the
Ultimate Reality. Thus spiritual Enlightenment or Realization is like the dreamer
entering into a lucid dream state – that is – the dreamer becomes aware that their
experience is not real – even as they are dreaming, they are aware that they are
dreaming and this changes their whole perspective. Ultimately of course, they will
wake up. In this spiritual perspective, the Ultimate fate of the universe is that it returns,
or expands back to Undifferentiated, Formless Spirit and the many becomes One again.
Then the dreamer is fully awake.

Even though Absolute Formless Spirit is Unknowable and beyond the limitations of the
human mind, we nevertheless use language to point That which cannot be known. One
of the major descriptors of or pointers to Absolute Spirit is ‘Unity’. Since the whole
universe is a delimited expression of Essence, then in the beginning, before time itself,
contained within Essence, or Absolute Spirit is the potential of all there is. Absolute
Spirit is the potential of all that has, does or may exist. It is from this ‘Oneness’ or
‘Unity’ that all that exists proceeds and it is to this Oneness and Unity that all will
return. What this gives us is direction: for Meister Eckhart this was termed as a
‘flowing out’ and a ‘flowing back’ to Essence, I have called it ‘contraction’ and
‘expansion’ and ‘Oneness’ and ‘manyness’ - other Pilgrims from all religions have used
similar types of terms. The spiritual journey is, amongst other things, about recognising
the direction of the spiritual path – which is back to Oneness and Unity and away from
separation and division. The apparent separation and division, the many-ness of
seemingly separate objects in the universe is an Illusion, because in Essence, all is One.
Every existent at its Foundation and Ground is Essence but in delimited contraction,
each existent expresses One Absolute Spirit according to its capacity.

THE DIRECTION OF THE SPIRITUAL PATH: UNITY

This is not mere theorising or idle philosophising, because it has a real effect on our
perception of ourselves, the universe and our place in it and it begins to affect our
behaviour, because seekers after Truth have an encouragement to be authentic, to be
genuine, to be what they are, to act and behave consistently with what they know to be
Ultimately True. Since our True Nature, Ground and Foundation is Essence, an
intrinsic path is encouraged – a path whereby we in one way or another become
sensitive to the One True Teacher within. Thus religious teachers, priests and gurus are
placed as secondary to the direct or Immediate experience of the Teacher within. This
path tends to place external or extrinsic religious ceremonies, rituals and creeds as
secondary to matters of the heart. It places moral codes or religious laws as secondary
to an intrinsic morality that arises from our True Nature and it is here that we find the
natural direction of the spiritual path. Intrinsic morality emulates Absolute Spirit and
Absolute Spirit is Unity and Bliss, Transcendent of all. The intrinsic path is sensitive to
the Transcendent within. It does not seek division, but rather to transcend it. It
recognises God in all things, thus creating a respect for the material universe. It
recognises the Ultimate Essential Unity of all things and the artificiality of separateness
and division. It aspires to unite with Spirit and thus Oneness with the Inner Self. Hatred,
war, contempt and lies, though God is in them, descend in the opposite direction to
division and separateness. For this path then it is of cardinal importance that we should
remember that the True Path is in our Self and that the direction is towards Unity.

HINDRANCES AND OBSTACLES TO FOLLOWING THE PATH

If the direction of the spiritual path is towards Unity, then it is by definition, away from
separateness and division. Thus it is that any behaviour that leads to Unity and Oneness,
such as Balance, Harmony, Love and Peace, is the behaviour that is followed because
this emulates the Oneness and Unity of the Divine, which is the True Nature of all
things in the universe and the Essence of who and what we are. In following this
direction and allowing these qualities to emanate from within, then also by definition,
we are not following the alternative divisive path of separation. The emphasis here then
is on emulating the Unity aspects of Absolute Spirit as opposed to avoiding, or
withdrawing or detaching ourselves from the divisive aspects of manifest expression.
This is not then a path of negation and avoidance, or a path of mortifying or putting to
death undesirable behaviour or thoughts. It is a path that focuses on the positive and
optimistic – not in a false or artificially sentimental way – but which nevertheless draws
on positive, unifying qualities as opposed to the idea of ridding ourselves of undesirable
negative qualities and thus focussing upon them. It is a path for example that embraces
the world, because the world is a manifestation and expression of Absolute Spirit. The
world is not perceived negatively as something to be renounced or avoided.
Nevertheless, in emphasising Unity, it follows a direction in which Ignorance, Illusion,
separation and division are avoided, to varying degrees. But in terms of this path, the
focus of attention is not on avoidance or negation of Ignorance, Illusion, separation and
division, but rather on the emulation of Unity and an Immediate experience of the
Divine, for with such an experience Ignorance and Illusion begins to be dispelled and
Unity experienced.

Of course following this path may not be so easy. Meister Eckhart is correct when he
points out at least three core hindrances to realizing this approach in practice:
1) Our expression as a bounded material form in a material universe
2) The multiplicity of such delimited forms
3) Our existence/expression/manifestation in time.

It may be correct that our True Nature is Essence, but it is also true to say that we really
are manifest, temporal, finite, material expressions. This delimited expression is not just
a fantasy or a dream and the universe is not just a figment of our imagination. Material
existence IS a reality – but it is not Ultimate and Final Reality. As Arabi would say, it is
real and Real. It has real material existence, but this is secondary and dependent upon
Spirit which is Real. We do well to remember that the locus or focal point of Illusion
and Ignorance is in our minds – the locus of Illusion is not the manifest universe itself.
In other words, the universe itself is not an Illusion – rather, it is our mistaken
perception and understanding of it that generates the Illusion which perpetuates
Ignorance. The fact that we are surrounded by a other people who by enlarge operate as
if this Illusion were in fact Reality, because of the Ignorance that arises from the
process of contraction, means then that Pilgrims tend to keep being drawn back into this
mistaken perception to some degree at least, again and again. Those in Ignorance may
perceive a rope on the floor of a dimly lit room as being a snake and be filled with fear.
They may then become enlightened and perceive the True Nature of what lies before
them – a rope - and their fears and apprehensions may accordingly subside. But a week
later, they may walk into another poorly lit room and experience the same
misperception and have the same fearful reactions again. Those people living in contact
or relationship with the spiritual Pilgrim are often not spiritual seekers or travellers
themselves and thus the Pilgrim often perceives them as remaining in [relative]
Ignorance: placing their trust and values in Illusions. But the people around us have the
effect or reinforcing our own Ignorance and Illusion, of pulling the Pilgrim back into
patterns of thought and behaviour that they have learned all their life and are very
experienced in. It is not surprising then that for some Pilgrims, being surrounded by
such people, practices and values serve as distractions and hindrances in their spiritual
journey. Thus it is that there are those Pilgrims that retreat from society and secular
work in order to live a reclusive life devoted to God. Some may do this for a limited
time – in the form of a weekend, or retreat for a week, and others may take say, a year
out of their usual occupation and routine and yet others may adopt such a lifestyle
permanently, by joining a monastery for example. And that is fine. The spiritual path
advocated here recognises that for certain temperaments and personalities, for some
people in certain situations, all these are reasonable things to do as part of encouraging
spiritual maturity. It also recognises that for others, indeed, for the majority of Pilgrims,
such a course is not an option or not suitable. Certainly it is not necessary in following
a spiritual path.

DETACHMENT FROM THE WORLD AND SOCIETY

Thus there are those who seek to come out of the world: they retreat to monasteries and
sanctuaries in order to minimise the contracted ideas and values of the world – the
world that is dominated by Ignorance and Illusions in its perceptions and values - and
they do so in order to fellowship with like-minded pilgrims or even to be alone with
Spirit. But Pilgrims are of the world, in that they are physical, emotional, thinking
beings and it is true to say that most Pilgrims choose to remain in that worldly society.
The spiritual path advocated here considers that such an approach is quite legitimate: it
is fine for a Pilgrim to be in the world, to work, play, marry e.t.c.. But on this path,
where the Pilgrim lives, works and plays in worldly society, the differences between the
spiritual path and worldly one are always more acute and immediate and such a Pilgrim
will always be drawn into contracted ways of being. Pilgrims walk in two worlds and
they have to balance the expansive and the contracted way of being. Thus, Pilgrims
may take time away from daily duties to meditate or study daily. Sometimes, the calling
of the expansive path may actually hinder their worldly work. Sometimes the expansive
path is frustrated by the demands of the contracted material world. But the general
principle for Pilgrims is to follow the Virtuous Way of intrinsic morality that seeks to
emulate Unity. But because they are also in and of the world as material beings in
society with other material beings, even though they follow the Virtuous Way of
intrinsic morality, they may also for example use societies laws against those who
trespass the codes of society – an extrinsic path. There is a balance to be found, and
indeed, close to Unity is the quality of Balance.

We have heard it said by some Pilgrims that the material world is to be dismissed and
that those who rest satisfied in material things are being blind. The Pilgrim must place
this idea in the context of their journey. Theirs is a journey to Absolute Spirit that
transcends material things. You have heard it said, “Even a Buddha must eat.” but if
you seek God, food and drink are not enough, (although perhaps some may find God in
such things). To rest satisfied in food and drink is not enough. When the Pilgrim’s eyes
are opened, and their ears have heard, (through Immediate experience of Spirit), they
know that to rest satisfied in the purely material is not enough. But that material world
cannot be negated or ignored, because the human body is a material body. In the same
way, a person cannot ignore all other people, because we live with others in this world.
We find here then that the Pilgrim does not withdraw or detach from the world and
society, but lives, works and plays within it where both they and all around them is a
manifestation of the Divine. The Pilgrim recognises that people in the world, including
themselves, are dominated by Ignorance and as such mistake secondary reality for Final
Reality, thus falling under the spell of an Illusion arising in their own minds. Desirous
of Enlightenment, the Pilgrim seeks to emulate the highest quality of the Divine and
looks to principles of Unity from within, from Essence, from their True Nature and
these Unitive principles are applied in a Balanced way according to the situation that
they encounter. What we have then is a form of situational ethics where the Pilgrim’s
ethics - their conduct and behaviour in relation to others and their environment, are
informed by principles of Unity and its derivatives of Love, Balance, Harmony, Peace,
Love, Beauty, Truth, Integrity, Compassion, Wisdom, Respect, Tenderness,
Trustfulness, Faithfulness, Healing, Openness, Mercifulness, Fairness, Goodness and
Creativity. In following these aspects of Unity, the negative aspects of Hatred, Lust,
Ugliness, Lies, Betrayal, Deceit, Merciless, Pain, Cruelty, Foolishness, Imbalance,
Anger, Violence, War, Contempt, Violence, Deceit, Betrayal, Pain, Secrecy,
Dispassion, Injustice, Evil and Destruction fall away. They are indeed avoided but not
through mental efforts to push them away or to resist them. The focus rather is on the
emulation of Unifying aspects of the Divine.

MORALITY AND THE SPIRITUAL PATH

However, unlike some religious systems and philosophies, in this spiritual pathway,
morality is not the primary concern. When we look at Christianity for example,
morality or holiness is central. The gospel is about salvation or deliverance from the
penalties that we are said to have incurred essentially through our moral failings. These
penalties, it is said, will be meted out in a future Final Judgement to which all humanity
is resurrected, where God will search all the secrets of our hearts and judge us
accordingly, the penalties having everlasting duration. In Christianity then, morality is
absolutely central and pivotal with a Just and Pure God dispensing absolute Justice;
salvation being made possible through Jesus, the Son of God, taking these penalties on
our behalf as our Substitute. Similarly, many other religions place morality in a central
point in their perspective. But there is no acknowledgement in the position that I am
taking of any resurrection or reincarnation, no acknowledgement of a Final Judgment
before which we must all appear, no system of Karma whereby good and evil deeds
build up to determine a future reincarnation state or state of liberty or bondage. There is
no need here for sacrifice either of animals, humans or gods, no purgatory, no heaven or
hell. This is not to say that morality is unimportant, or negated. Indeed, as I have begun
to suggest here and have argued elsewhere, morality is an essential, but not central part
of the spiritual path. (1) In this approach then, morality does not take the primary
position that it does in the Christian perspective. Rather, the primary focus of this path
is not moral – though the effect of ‘good’ morals may well follow as the Pilgrim seeks
to emulate the Divine, instead the primary focus is on Unity – not just on recognising
Unity but also experiencing that our True Self and Absolute Spirit are One. The
secondary or subsidiary elements to this experience are enlightenment, overcoming
Ignorance, seeing through Illusions, understanding the nature of Final Truth and seeing
our True Nature and the True Nature of the universe. It is not the mere intellectual
assent to these ideas and concepts that is the destination of the path, but the very
experiencing and immediate knowing of them. Thus this experience is sometimes
referred to as the ‘Immediacy of God’ or ‘God-Immediacy’. It is ‘Immediate’ because it
as an experience that is direct and not mediated initially at least, by rational, conceptual
thought. It is in effect the difference between say, learning from a book and teacher
about the nature of water and ‘wetness’ and about the dynamics that causes rain to fall
on the one hand, and stepping out into the rain on the other and learning about rain and
wetness in that way. God-Immediacy is like the direct experience of stepping into the
rain.

IDENTIFICATION AND THE BOUNDED SELF

The spiritual perspective that is being advocated here talks more about ‘identification’
than it does about ‘detachment’. So we need to look at this word. It is connected to the
word ‘identity’ and has a number of meanings, but the sense or meaning that we are
concerned with here for these words is as follows -
 Identification: Strong or powerful feeling of affinity or sympathetic bond with
something or to be closely linked with something.

Identity: To be able to say who and what a person is, the set of qualities and
characteristics that are considered as belonging uniquely to a person and
constituting their individual self.

Both these words are from root words meaning ‘same’ or ‘to make the same’. So we are
concerned here with our existential definition and what it is like, or the same as.

The spiritual perspective that we are considering declares that the first lesson, if the
Pilgrim is to find the Immediacy of God is to stop identifying with the material world,
in other words, the Pilgrim is to stop considering his or her self as being solely a
physical, material body. This is because they are God; their Essence or True Nature is
Absolute Spirit and therefore, the Pilgrim must identify with God in all things. They
must begin to stand above their physical body, in other words, to detach their identity
from their physical body, because the Pilgrim, in essence, is not their body, they are not
their mind, they are not their thoughts. Rather, the Pilgrim is Absolute Spirit expressed
and contracted into these things, therefore, to realise God, the Pilgrim must expand
beyond these limitations and identify with God-as-Spirit, not with me-as-body. Thus
one Pilgrim starting on the spiritual path declared: ‘I knew that God was close, so very
close, such that only a thin veil separated me from Immediacy. I knew also that I had to
surrender my bounded identity of self-sense, to let go in order to be swallowed up. But
all this seemed elusive. Yet I knew that God is here in all things, unifying all things
now, but could not experience it’. Indeed, as we consider Absolute Formless
Unknowable Transcendent Spirit, we may find ourselves thinking that God is distant: so
high above all things that God is remote and impersonal. This is a measure of the
distance between you as contracted-God and God-as-Spirit. God is not distant. You are
God and God is expressed in you and in all things and is immediately present. All that
is lacking is your sense of that Immediacy, and it is lacking because you identify with
the material.

Ignorance and the Illusionary perspective that is generated in our minds as a result of it,
is a state that is described as being blind. In this state of blindness we create a view or
perspective of ourselves whereby we have a bounded-self-sense. We tend to see
ourselves as minds housed in a finite, temporal physical body. In other words we see
ourselves as being a finite body/mind organism. This kind of view, however it is
described and whatever words we use, makes up our identity. This is what we are, by
nature – a physical/material organism – a body – with an emergent mind. We are
bounded in space and time and eventually, our body will die. These are the sorts of
ideas that are meant by the phrase ‘bounded self-sense’. But according to the spiritual
path we are considering, such a view is an Illusion and in holding to such a view, in
tying and binding ourselves to it, we are blind. Such a view is a materialistic view,
where the material, physical world is the only reality – indeed, it is seen as the Final
Reality. Thus, sentiments are expressed such as ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow
we die’, and ‘Get on and live life to the full – this is not a rehearsal’. Wealth, material
comfort, health, a long life, security, happiness and sometimes power and status
become important goals in many people’s lives. To be robbed or denied these things
may be seen as a major setback, unfair, even a crime. But the Inner Teacher declares: ‘It
is tragic when viewed from your bounded self-sense. But since all around you is
contracted-God, ultimately it is God who is set against God in these matters and at the
end of time, the Balance and Unity of God-As-Spirit will be restored. If God chooses to
be partially divided against God for a while in the adventure of contraction, then so be
it, for God-As-Spirit is only accountable to God-As-Spirit. From your bounded-self
perspective, you see the cruelty, suffering and pain of a fellow human being. The more
you identify solely with this bounded physical self, as though this is all a person is –
a finite body-self – then justice and punishment become important and centred
around this view. In such a perspective, what else is there but the physical life and it’s
comforts? To live long, be healthy, have riches or at least to have comfort and to be
happy: these become the dominant values. Thus, to take someone’s life, to injure them,
cause them ill health, or to rob them of their possessions and happiness; these become
the major crimes and such a society may decide to punish such transgressors’. But to
believe that to eat, drink and be merry is the end of all things is blindness concerning
God. Similarly, if we rest satisfied in our emotions or feelings, in our relationships, or in
our mind and intellect, then we are blind and cannot find God. We have to transcend
our emotions, senses, logic, concepts, understanding and theories; yet in finding God all
these are included - our passions are aroused for example. In the Immediacy of God,
our concepts and understanding are deepened, yet they are transcended.

In viewing ourselves merely as a finite body-self, merely as a physical organism with a

mind – an organism bound by time and space, then other views, perspectives and
values, as we have seen, naturally follow on from this. One Illusion leads to another and
we stumble on in Blindness dismissing Final and Ultimate Reality as an illusion and
embracing the Illusion of the material world as being Final Reality as a fact. Our vision
of ourselves and our circumstances and environment, of the universe itself, remains
bounded and limited, separated and divided. In our distorted value system, we value our
achievements, our possessions, our wealth, our intellect, our status and so on, as though
these things are all that matter. This sort of thinking may extend to our spiritual life
also: we may value the spiritual activities that we have been engaged in, the spiritual
knowledge that we have gained, the doctrines and theology that we have grasped, the
position that we have risen to in the congregation or fellowship. People may be very
religious and very busy in religious duties yet remain in Ignorance. Again, the Inner
Teacher speaks to one Pilgrim and declares: ‘You lay so much store by the things that
you have discovered, by your experiences of God, your study and your theology. These
are the things that you rest on, but they are as empty and futile as grasping after
material wealth. The blind rest on material possessions and you often rest on your mind,
insight and intellect. This journey has to take you out of that mind-satisfaction, because
you can only see God by transcending the mind. This will be a hard journey for you, for
to see God you must let go of your mind [and] surrender all that logical thought and
organised structure in your mind by which you understand the world. It serves you well
in orientating yourself and your behaviour, but there has to be a point when you let go
of it and surrender to the transcendence of God. All your logic and ordering of concepts
cannot encompass God’s Immediacy’.

So the spiritual path is one out of blindness, separation and division towards
enlightenment and Unity – especially through the Immediate Experience of Absolute
Spirit, from which theology such as this and the moral behaviour that seeks to emulate
the Divine follows and flows.
In our Blindness and Ignorance, we fall for Illusions – misperceptions with regard to the
True Nature both of ourselves and of Reality. As we have seen, one Illusion leads to
another – such that we embrace a perception of ourselves and of the world, indeed of
the universe and of God that is mistaken and restricted or bounded. We create a web of
values and meanings based on an Illusion with the result that this is how we identify
ourselves – as a material, finite body-self. Furthermore, we often define ourselves by
our roles and possessions, by our status and wealth. This spiritual approach declares
that we have to detach our identity from these kinds of things and recognise and
experience our identity as Absolute Spirit. This is our Essence and true Nature. The
‘things’ that we value in our Ignorance and Blindness are foolishness and trinkets –
they are fool’s gold. This is the change of perception that begins to take place as we
become enlightened – there is a re-evaluation of what is important, what matters, and
what is valued.

RESTING SATISFIED

When the eyes of the Pilgrim are opened and they pass through the Vale of Ignorance,
they are born again and unless you are born again they cannot see the Kingdom of God.
They see a new Kingdom spread before them and they are a new person from that
moment, because from that moment, the vanity of the world and the emptiness of
material pleasure, together with the futility of much religious practice and religious
institutions become increasingly apparent to them. Though many religious rituals,
ceremonies and institutional practices purport to lead to God, happiness and truth, they
are to a great degree empty shadows of a deeper reality. The shadows hold out promise,
but only satisfy the blind. Those who do not come through the Valley of Ignorance
remain in Ignorance, they have never seen, they do not know, they have never tasted
and rest satisfied in empty things. They are like the prospector who has obtained Fool’s
Gold. They think that they have obtained the Prize, but what they have is worthless and
a mere trinket. There are few who get this far – as far as passing through the Vale of
Ignorance - many seek, but most rest satisfied with trinkets - but some see God and then
trinkets will not satisfy them anymore. They come through Ignorance. They have had to
come through because they could not stay where they were, with mere trinkets, in a
fool’s paradise full of emptiness. All religious people think that they have found The
Way, but many have settled for a lesser reward. The Pilgrim who has experienced
God’s Immediacy knows that such people have found only Emptiness and Futility. The
Pilgrim who has experienced God’s Immediacy has spoken with God and knows that
these illusions are empty. Some religious people stress obedience – especially
obedience to religious laws or commands of God. But the path of obedience is futile,
because it is never achieved. It is like a man climbing up steps and continually falling
off because his obedience fails. But for some, this is indeed their path to God: they
know that they will never achieve perfection, but the very act of starting again and
again, with good grace is their path. But they never or rarely achieve Immediacy with
God through this path. They never achieve obedience – it is an illusion.

ABSOLUTE SPIRIT AND STILLNESS

But we need to explore this a little further, because there are some who argue that
Absolute is not only Unity, but also Stillness – that Absolute is without action. Then,
they further argue, since the Pilgrim is on a journey of emulating the Divine, Pilgrims
also should become actionless. By using this kind of argument the whole path of
detachment is suggested: the enlightened person has come to perceive and experience
that all that exists, including themselves, is Absolute Spirit and since Absolute Spirit is
without action and since the Pilgrim emulates the Absolute as they move out of
Ignorance, then there is no need for them to act. This kind of reasoning is used to
support a range of detachment practices from moderate withdrawal to total asceticism –
to not even looking after the body and its needs of food and water – but rather being
detached from the body and relying on the goodwill of others.

AN EXAMPLE OF DETACHMENT AS A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

In Christianity, we see something of this kind of approach in Meister Eckhart, a

Dominican Friar living in Germany in medieval times, though it is also present in
Hinduism and Zen Buddhism. For Eckhart, this detachment is not to devalue material
manifestation, but rather to let it be – to be what it truly is – which is nothing in itself or
for itself. Detachment is self-negation – particularly where the ‘self’ is identified as
‘ego’ or the ‘ego/body/mind self’ – it is a self-naughting: setting the self as nothing;
self-emptying – but it is not self-hatred, self-destruction or other pathological attitudes.
It is both active and passive: there is an active dispossession not only of self, but also of
others and also of images and forms of God. It is renunciation. It is a disengagement of
body, mind and spirit. There is also a passive aspect of letting go and allowing to be –
an abandonment of effort, an approach of surrender and release. It is a receding from
the world’s glance, becoming invisible as it were even to oneself. It is a letting go of:
a) Things: the world and possessions – poverty
b) Others: to attain equanimity and chastity
c) Self: to nurture humility and self-forgetfulness
d) Emotion: to attain self-mastery, even-mindedness, tranquillity
e) Willing: to obtain spiritual poverty, obedience, allowing God’s
order/plan to evolve without resistance and without ‘helping’ It is not
wanting this or that to happen, or this or that possession, or this or that
virtue. Neither is it not waning this or that. It is only that God give me
only what God wills and that God do what God wills in the way that
God wills.
f) Knowing: to attain unknowing, meditation, to live without the ‘why?’
g) God: that is finite forms of the Infinite Formless.

Thus for Eckhart, the highest prayer is never to pray for any transitory thing and to pray
for nothing and nobody but rather to pray for God’s will alone and nothing else. The
highest prayer is communion with God as opposed to a wishing-well for favours. The
perfection of prayer is not in saying prayers but in being open to the sensed presence or
absence of God.

But there is a problem here. Inherent in detachment is separation - and separation is the
opposite of Unity – the direction of the path that I have been suggesting. The degree of
detachment that Pilgrims such as Eckhart in Christianity and Shankara in Hinduism are
suggesting involves a considerable separation and withdrawal from the world and
society. It even begins to verge on self-neglect and I really do begin to question whether
such an approach is correct. There are certain assumptions that are made in this more
extreme detachment position, the main one being with regard to the idea that God is
ordering all events in the universe for a purpose, usually a moral purpose such that all
that happens is being overseen and ordered by God.

If I may make a metaphor to illustrate this view, it is as if there is a wide, fast-flowing

river and we wish to get to the other side. We make our raft or boat and we launch into
the current. These are our first mistakes, for we have set a goal, a preference, a desire,
an aim and not only that, we have begun to work to try and obtain this goal, namely of
getting to a point on the other side of the river. But, we carry on. Our natural inclination
is to launch in a place where we can make some use of the current and flow of the river
and we paddle and steer our craft in order to reach our objective. For Eckhart and others
like him, it is as if God oversees and indwells this river such that it moves according to
God’s purpose. According to this view, we should have renounced our desire and aim at
the start, we should renounce our will in having a point across the river that we want to
reach, because God will guide us according to the Benevolent Master Plan. Better to
take nothing and no-one with us, not even the raft, because we do not want to become
attached and dependent upon it or them. Best also to abandon all concern for our own
safety and comfort because after all, we are as nothing and since we are part of the
Master Plan we can enter the raging waters with calmness and equanimity, although
even entering the water is evidence of desire. Still, having entered the water, we can
then allow the current to take us where it will, because we must abandon all self-will:
we can neither ‘help’ God by attempting to swim and we can see that to resist or oppose
the fast current is foolishness. In fact, we give up thinking about why we want to cross
the river or why it is taking us where it is. More than this even, we give up thinking
about God in any form whatsoever and allow ourselves to ‘be’ in the currents, waves
and eddies in the present moment as the waters carry us downstream to an unknown
place. If that place be over a hundred foot high waterfall to fall and die on the rocks
below, then such is purpose of God.

This just does not seem right to me as a philosophy of life. One objection that I have is
that I do not consider that we live in a universe that has a moral purpose or bias in its
daily events and occurrences. By that I mean that I do not think that Pilgrims are
favoured in any way above non-spiritually inclined people in the expression of natural
events. An earthquake or tsunami kills the spiritually inclined person and the non-
spiritually inclined person, the morally ‘good’ and the ‘evil’ person alike. We are all
familiar I am sure of accounts where in an earthquake, believers flock to their local
church or temple for safety only to have the building fall on them and kill them. If this
is the case then it is indeed foolish to as it were cast our fate to the wind without care or
concern. The appeal of this approach of course are the ideas of surrender, of the giving
up of effort, of surrender in calm tranquillity to a supposed Higher Benevolence That
orders all for our good. Such people do not have to trouble themselves with what is
happening around them or even to them. In effect they ‘opt-out’ of life’s choices and
dramas in many ways, the abdicate responsibility for life’s choices and consequences
embracing the sense of liberation that it brings. This may sound very attractive when we
are overburdened, under pressure and stressed, but I think that this is just a form of
antinomianism, of licentiousness.

EXPANSION AND CONTRACTION, TRANSCENDENCE AND IMMANENCE

I want to suggest that the approach just outlined is also partly mistaken in the
understanding of the nature of contraction and expression of Absolute Spirit, so we
need to look again at Absolute Spirit both as Expansive and as Contracted, Delimited or
Expressed.

First of all, I want to look at Expansive Absolute Spirit. Here I find myself in agreement
with many of the great sages who have adopted a non-dualist position in their
spirituality. So I find myself often agreeing with Meister Eckhart or Shankara. Absolute
Spirit is so Transcendent that we cannot encompass Absolute Spirit with mental
concepts. We cannot circumscribe the Infinite or formulate the Formless. For these
kinds of reasons, Absolute Spirit is often referred to in terms of negation: Absolute
Spirit is ‘not this and not that’. Despite this conceptual and linguistic difficulty, some
positive terms are used, more as pointers than descriptors of qualities or attributes,
because Absolute Spirit is Unknowable, Attributeless, Emptiness and Formless. I have
already used the word ‘Unity’ as a pointer, since all that exists, has existed and will
exist is present in Absolute Spirit as potential. All existents find their Ultimate Unifying
Ground in Absolute Spirit as their Essence. At the Highest Absolute level, I agree with
Shankara, that Absolute Spirit is Still or without movement in the Eternal Now. In other
words, with Absolute Spirit there is no agency and no need for movement. Absolute
Spirit is Unity and Absolute Is. There is no movement, no action, no condemnation and
no stagnation: just the blissful state of being. If Absolute Spirit ‘chooses’ to move, this
‘choice’ and movement can only be downwards: a contraction into lower forms, from
Unity and Oneness into (apparently) separate manifest expressions. But at the most
Transcendent, Absolute Spirit rests in the eternal present, continually enjoying the Bliss
of the Immediate Now. Thus Absolute Spirit is in a position of eternal, Self-sufficient
rest. There is no need for Absolute Spirit to move or act and there is nothing that exists
which exists outside of Absolute Spirit. Rather, Absolute Spirit enjoys the Now for
ever. However, Absolute Spirit ‘chose’ to contract, to enfold downward into manifold
forms and time came into being.

It is important to note that in the panentheistic view, Expansion and Contraction are in
parallel: Transcendence and Immanence exist simultaneously. It is not that
Transcendent, Absolute Spirit ceased to exist in this Transcendent, Expansive way in
order to contract or delimit to manifest form. The contraction of Absolute Spirit to
manifest, delimited, expressed forms does not negate or diminish Transcendent
Expansion. Thus we can say that God is in all things, undivided, un-fragmented,
without measure and that all things are contracted-God. Jesus said “Even these stones
will cry out to the glory of God” and this is because they too are contracted Absolute
Spirit. Human beings are no different – they are contracted-God. Thus it is with you –
you are Absolute Spirit contracted to space and time. Absolute Spirit is not ‘mixed’
with human nature, or ‘corrupted’ by human nature. But, as I have already indicated, in
the process of contraction, there arises Ignorance as to who we truly are, and Absolute
Spirit is also, at the same time, fully Transcendent.

THE DIVINITY OF MANIFEST EXPRESSIONS

Over time, many who have had mystical experiences have claimed that they are God.
Meister Eckhart declared this in many subtle ways as did Shankara. The Dualist takes
the position that there is Ultimately Two and not One: there always remains a
difference and distinction between God and the creation. Therefore, to the Dualist, the
idea that a person is God is blasphemy and indeed, Meister Eckhart was called to
account by the religious authorities on charges of heresy. Dualism informs the orthodox
theology of many religions including Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Because Dualism
sees an Ultimate distinction between God and the creation such that there is boundary
that separates the Creator from the creation, when a person claims Divinity, they
overstep this mark, this boundary and are guilty in the sight of the Dualist of arrogance,
pride, delusion, heresy and blasphemy - serious charges in the past that could and did
often lead to punishment by death or being forced by the religious authorities to recant
and deny such claims. Even so, through religious history, many who have had
Transcendent Immediate experiences of Absolute Spirit have declared that they are
God, Divine, or Absolute Spirit. In Hindu non-dualism, this is plainly declared: Atman
and Brahman are One – that is in effect, my Ground of Being or True Nature, and
Absolute Spirit are One.

ENLIGHTENMENT AND REALIZATION QUALIFIED BY CONTRACTION

However, we have to qualify this. In the non-dualism of Hinduism, known as Advaita

Vedanta, of which Shankara is perhaps the greatest proponent, it is argued that the
enlightened person - the person who has had and continues to have in some degree the
Immediate experience of Unity with Absolute – becomes detached because of this
Oneness. Absolute Spirit has no agency or movement so neither does the fully
enlightened Pilgrim. In this view, complete enlightenment can be achieved and is
achieved by some such that Absolute and Enlightened Pilgrim are One. In the West, as
we have seen, our religious culture and heritage has been more quick to suppress such
views as delusional, heretical and blasphemous. If we were to meet someone claiming
to be God and declaring their ecstatic experience of Transcendence in the Eternal Now
– perhaps even declaring omniscience and omnipresence, moral superiority, authority
and the possession of hidden, secret knowledge – then we might find ourselves treating
them with some caution, not least because of the West’s cultural heritage of Dualism
and scientific materialism. Even if we entertained exploring the claims of such a person
more fully, it is likely that we would soon find some dissonance between their claims of
Divinity and what happens in practice. Nevertheless, in all cultures there are such
persons who claim Divinity in this way and some of them, perhaps the majority of
them, are found to indeed be deluded or charlatans – manipulative fraudsters who take
advantage of their deceived, vulnerable or gullible followers. They make extravagant
claims as to their knowledge and power, their word is declared as if it is the Word of
God itself, they may expect obedience and submission from their followers from whom
they yet maintain an aloofness and detachment. Often such claimants to Divinity in
West often simply withdrew from contact with society, to become hermits, recluses and
ascetics caught up into their own spiritual world and avoiding the penalties meted out
by religious institutions.

WHAT WE ALREADY ARE

So lets just pick some of this apart and I hope, correct some errors here. Firstly there is
no Union to be attained. The Union with Absolute Spirit already exists fully. All things,
including us, are right now, contracted forms of Absolute Spirit. We do not have to
become Absolute Spirit or attain to it or work towards this Oneness. We are already
Absolute Spirit. Our True Nature, our Ground of Being, our Essence is Absolute Spirit
– undivided, unfragmented, undiluted. Absolute Spirit is not something that we possess
or seek to possess and neither is Absolute Spirit located say in our ‘heart’ or ‘mind’. I
can explain the difference by looking at the traditional Dualist view of death. In the
Dualist view, the person is described either are a purely physical organism, which at
death ceases to function but which is later brought back to life in a physical
resurrection; or the person has a ‘soul’ – an incorporeal element to their nature which is
their essential self – which at death leaves the body to be with God and to await a
reuniting with a new, glorious, physical resurrection body. In both these views, the
separation between God and creature remains firmly in place. In the view that I am
proposing however, Absolute Spirit returns to Absolute Spirit at death. But consider
what remains: the body. Though Absolute Spirit returns to Absolute Spirit, yet Absolute
Spirit is still expressed as the remaining body, as Absolute Spirit is in a stone or a tree
or in the air and clouds. But consider this: the body that remains is not like the body that
was alive, ‘something’ has gone and that ‘something’ is Absolute Spirit. God has
returned to God and yet God remains and is in all things fully. Absolute Spirit is not
fragmented or split up. So firstly, we are Absolute Spirit already – we do not have to
attain, work to, earn or become Absolute Spirit. What is lacking is our perception and
experience of this fact because of the Ignorance and resultant Illusions that arise in the
process of contraction. Instead of identifying ourselves as Spirit, we identify ourselves
as being solely material beings. Instead of recognising that Ultimate Reality is Absolute
Spirit, we perceive Final Reality as being the delimited expressions of the material
universe. The journey on the spiritual path is about insight, perception and experience:
overcoming Ignorance, seeing through Illusion, knowing Truth and Reality in
experience.

But now we need to look at the reverse of this. This is summed up in the metaphorical
illustration of a woman bowing to the ground and praising and worshipping a small tree
sapling, whilst others clap as the moon waxes and wanes overhead. The Inner Teacher
declares: “These people worship the sun, moon, stars and earth. But God is not a tree,
or a sun, or moon. God is in all these things but is not any of them”. I have just been
declaring that all things are Absolute Spirit and that nothing exists that is not Absolute
Spirit. Outside of Absolute Spirit, nothing exists, indeed, there is no outside of Absolute
Spirit. Now the opposite is declared: Absolute Spirit is not any of them. What is being
declared here is the difference between Essence and Expression, between Expansion or
Expansiveness and Contraction or Delimitation. Absolute Spirit as Absolute Spirit is
Expansive. Absolute Spirit, as we have seen, simultaneously and in parallel to this,
Contracts and Delimits to form. Absolute Spirit per se is Expansive and is the Essence
of all contracted, delimited forms or manifest expressions. What is important here is
that there is not a reciprocal relationship in these matters: Absolute Spirit is Alone and
One. Delimited forms are many multiple expressions existing in relationship, connected
and united by the Ground or Essence. Absolute Spirit is Infinite, but expressions of
Absolute Spirit are finite in space and time, even though their Essence is Absolute
Spirit. In other words, Expansiveness embraces all contraction, but contraction cannot
embrace Expansiveness. Absolute Spirit is expressed in delimited, contracted form as a
tree, a cloud, a moon, a star, a planet or a sun – their Essential Nature is Absolute Spirit
– but a tree, a cloud, a moon, a star, a planet or a sun cannot encompass Absolute Spirit
any more than the finite can encompass the Infinite.
LIMITS AND BOUNDS

So, if firstly we are Absolute Spirit in Essence, then secondly, contraction or expression
has important implications with regard to personal declarations of Divinity, of being
‘God’, of being one with Absolute Spirit. The implication is this: whilst a person
remains in their contracted, delimited form of expression, there remains a finite,
limited, contracted quality to them that exists in parallel and simultaneously to their
True Ground and Nature. To put it another way, they are not purely Expansive. Thus, as
the Inner Teacher described stars, trees and planets, so the same description can be
given to the enlightened person: God is not an enlightened Pilgrim. God is ‘in’ an
enlightened Pilgrim [as the Essence and Ground of their being] but God is not [merely]
an enlightened Pilgrim. The fact that the Pilgrim has sentience – has self-consciousness,
self-awareness and a self-reflective mind does not make any difference. Or to put it yet
another way, no person enters into ‘liberation’ or ‘release’ or ‘Realization’ of full Unity
whilst they exist as a contracted form. No person enters into full knowledge or
infallibility whilst they remain expressed in time and space. Indeed, knowledge and
language itself is a contracted, delimited form. No person can enter into full detachment
or Stillness whilst they remain in a delimited form that exists in relationship to other
delimited forms. Full and Total enlightenment is not possible whilst we remain
expressed as a physical body. Delimitation and contraction qualifies or delimits our
expansive True Nature in finite expression in time and space.

When referring to Absolute Spirit, Shankara used to say that Absolute Spirit is ‘not this,
not that’. The great Islamic sage Ibn al-Arabi had a similar approach to delimited
existents. His answer to these kinds of questions would often be ‘Yes and no’. Is this
tree God? – Yes and no. Am I Absolute Spirit? Yes and no. To put it another way, we
are God/not God. We are Absolute Spirit in that our Essence and True Nature, our
Ground of Being is Absolute Spirit. We are not Absolute Spirit in that we are
contracted, delimited finite expressions. This qualification must always be present
because Transcendence and Immanence exist in parallel.

THE INHERENT DIVISION IN MANIFESTATION

Thirdly, this difference between Expansion and Contraction and thus between Infinity
and finiteness, between Oneness and manyness means that there is an inherent divide in
manifestation. In this sense and to this degree, the Dualist is right – whilst manifest
contracted expressions of form continue, whilst creation exists, then there are two.
Ultimately, while contraction is maintained, this division is as close to Absolute Spirit
as is possible to be without being inherent in Absolute Spirit as an Attribute,
characteristic or quality of Absolute Spirit. From this primal division arises suffering,
separation, Ignorance and Illusion. Absolute Spirit is the Author of suffering. Without
Absolute Spirit nothing can exist. In contracting to distinct and separate expressions,
with the Ignorance that arises from such contraction, Absolute Spirit is indeed the
Author of suffering and division. But since we and everything around us is contracted-
God, ultimately it is God who is set against God in these matters and at the end of time,
the Balance and Unity of Absolute Spirit will be restored. If Spirit ‘chooses’ to be
partially divided against Spirit for a while in the adventure of contraction, then so be it,
for Spirit is only accountable to Spirit.
The enlightened person perceives in mind and experience that all is Absolute Spirit.
They perceive that Ultimately only Absolute Spirit exists, thus, for example, if they
were to pray, who ultimately prays and to what? Prayer is delimited, expressed
Absolute Spirit in the form of a finite body/mind self praying to a delimited, expressed
‘deity-form’ of Absolute Spirit – a projection of delimited attributes and forms onto
Attributeless Formless Spirit. Indeed, Expansive, Transcendent Absolute Spirit is
actionless and Still, without movement or agency in perfect Undifferentiated Oneness.
Only contracted forms move and act in relation to one another. Absolute Spirit does not
exist in relationship, but is Absolutely Alone. Movement, action, relationships,
morality, choice, agency, responsibility all come into being in contraction. Engagement,
contact, connection, association, desire and involvement all arise in the many-ness of
contraction – they arise out of separation, division and even isolation. Separation,
division and isolation are of the very nature of delimitation, contraction and expression
to bounded form. But the Origin and Final Destiny of manifest, expressed form is back
to The Transcendent Oneness and Unity from which they emerged. Thus the position of
the manifest delimited expression, our position as Pilgrims, is of a simultaneous and
parallel Unity and division, Oneness and separateness. Unity exists within separateness,
Oneness exists within many-ness, Action exists within Perfect Stillness.

WALKING IN TWO WORLDS

The spiritual Pilgrim is concerned about how to be in the material world. In being
enlightened by the Inner Teacher and Immediate experience they find themselves in
two worlds. They have seen and tasted that they are God. They have experienced the
Immediacy of Spirit and their perspective and vision has been correspondingly
widened. They are drawn to Spirit and long to taste the Immediate Bliss. But they are
also in the material world, as contracted-Spirit, in a world that is largely Ignorant of the
expansive view and which organises itself along delimited and Illusionary materialistic
lines. They are so surrounded by this that they soon become embroiled in the
perspective and values of the contracted world again even after Immediate experiences
of Spirit. There are those Pilgrims who seek to come out of the world: they retreat to
monasteries and sanctuaries, to minimise these contracted ideas and values of the world
and to fellowship with like-minded pilgrims, yet all the time, they remain themselves as
contracted, delimited existents prone to choices, preferences, desires and needs. This is
their very nature – just as their Ground is Absolute Spirit so their expression is their
material finite body-self. They are of the world, in that they are a physical, emotional,
thinking being. Some Pilgrims choose to remain in worldly society and it is quite
legitimate to be in the world, to work, play, marry e.t.c.. But on this path, the
differences between the two paths – the material/ worldly path compared with the
spiritual path - are always more acute and immediate and such a Pilgrim will always be
drawn into contracted ways of being. Pilgrims walk in two worlds and have to balance
an expansive and contracted way of being. Thus, Pilgrims may take time away from
daily duties to meditate or study for a short period each day. Sometimes, the calling of
the expansive path may hinder their worldly work. Sometimes the expansive path is
frustrated by the demands of the material world. The general principle however is to
follow the Virtuous Way and emulate the Unity of Absolute Spirit. The fact that the
spiritual Pilgrim walks in two worlds means that they may avail themselves of the
approaches of both approaches, for they have been enriched by the enlightenment
gained. Those not so enriched may only use the more contracted approach, for example
by having to rely on external commandments, laws and codes, on rituals and external
authorities such as Scriptures and priests.

Why is morality necessary or even of value in the spiritual life? Morality is part of the
return to Absolute by overcoming the intrinsic division and separateness of this present
level of Spirit’s expression and unfolding. Since each person is [in Essence] Absolute
Spirit, then each person has at their heart, at the Ground of the being, the uniting
Virtues that derive from Unity of Absolute Spirit: the uniting qualities that come into
being in the first moments of contraction.

MOVEMENT OF THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

Absolute Spirit then has no Agency, no movement and indeed, our ‘movement’ towards
God and our spiritual ‘journey’ consists of our increasingly clear perception and
Immediate experience of the Ground of our True Nature in Stillness, Quietness and the
Eternal Now and of True Reality. It is a ‘move’ away from perception and experience
of separation and division to Unity and Oneness. This movement is an enlightenment of
our mind and perception, because we begin to see through the Illusions and appearances
of the world that take place in our contracted Ignorant perception which has arisen from
the process of contraction. As contracted, delimited expressions of manifest form, we
do move, we do journey. And because we are contracted delimited forms, albeit
possessing a secondary derived reality, it is a reality nevertheless, even if it is not Final
Reality. In this spiritual approach, the manifest universe is not inherently evil – it is an
expression of Absolute Spirit, each form manifesting the Divine according to its
capacity. The universe follows the inherent properties and principles of matter – such as
forces of gravity, chemical and biological reactions and so on. It has no inherent moral
purpose whereby it benefits and shows mercy upon those who are spiritually inclined.
In this matter, the universe is morally neutral. In the material universe there is an
evolution or progression and a natural order according to the properties, laws and
principles of matter such as physics and chemistry and thus an order and evolution on
Earth and an order and evolution of humans. The direction of that evolution is back to
God. In the course of this process, both hospitable and inhospitable places emerge.
Earth is not and never was a paradise for the human species. So, in a general sense, God
has provided and created the material and the material is evolving itself back to God,
yet God is in all things. In this general sense then, God provides means of sustenance
and areas suitable to inhabit. If God did not provide air to breathe and water to drink
and food for bodies, then humans would cease to exist and God would return to God.
But God does not provide for each individual in a specific manner, thus when some
choose to explore inhospitable places they may be pushed to the limits of endurance
and even die. Or greed, violence and warfare may push some to inhospitable places, yet
even here, God is. And sometimes disasters and catastrophes occur such as storms and
earthquakes – all according to natural principles – and Pilgrims are not favoured above
others in these cases.

PROBLEMS WITH DETACHMENT

I am suggesting then that detachment is not an attitude or approach that serves as a
philosophical outlook on and for our contracted existence, because –

Detachment involves the opposite direction to the spiritual path – it involves separation,
withdrawal, isolation and division – whereas the spiritual path is in the direction of
Unity.

Detachment withdraws from the world, be it material and/or social, a world that is in
fact a manifestation of the Divine.

The practice of detachment is based on an imbalanced emphasis on Absolute Spirit as

Actionless and Still, whereby the Aloneness of Absolute Spirit is not always recognised
in comparison to our relational existence.

The practice of detachment is based on an imbalanced emphasis whereby the reality of

delimitation and contraction to manifest expressions is diminished and regarded as an
illusion and not real. In other words, the balance between Expansion and contraction,
between Transcendence and Immanence, between Real and real is lost.

Detachment as lifestyle assumes a benevolent force or direction in the universe,

whereas it is in fact neutral in matters of morality. The universe is not necessarily ‘fair’
or ‘just’, neither does it show a disposition to ‘protect’ or ‘deliver’ those who follow the
spiritual path, or who seek to practice noble virtues.

DETACHMENT NOT TO BE IGNORED

Nevertheless, detachment need not be totally ignored. To have a regular daily period of
quietness and solitude, to have a regular time whereby the affairs and busyness of the
world is laid one side for a short time in order to focus attentively and to contemplate or
meditate of spiritual things is not a problem. In the stillness one may listen to the Inner
Teacher and so on. Then afterwards the world, as a delimited manifestation of the
Divine, is engaged in and connected with again because this is what WE are –
delimited, relational expressions moving in time and space – whose Ground of Being
simultaneously and in parallel to this, is Transcendent Absolute Spirit – a Reality that
will not be fully Realized until all contraction and delimitation is complete and all
returns to Absolute Spirit. Consider the waves of the sea. The surface of the sea rises
and turns over itself, forming droplets and spray as it does so, but they remain as the
sea. They do not cease to be water, but remain seamlessly part of the ocean and return
back again. Thus shall we return as Absolute Spirit. In contracting, God rolled out the
material universe like a carpet, and the time will come when God will roll it up again,
because God will no longer be pleased to be contracted to space and time.

THE MYSTERY OF ACTION IN STILLNESS

We are left with a mystery and why not? Why should we be able to explain and
categorise all that is? I have emphasised that the mind cannot encompass Absolute
Spirit, that the finite cannot encompass the Infinite. However deep we go, there always
remains a mystery beyond our grasp. The mystery here is this: If Absolute Spirit is Still,
Actionless and without movement in the Eternal Now then how did contraction come
about?

I have spoken, in metaphorical terms, about Absolute Spirit ‘choosing’ to contract, to

be expressed and manifest, but these are anthropomorphic terms, projections of human
capacities and qualities onto Infinite Formless Absolute. God ‘chose’ to contract, to
enfold downward into manifold forms and time came into being. Before time, Absolute
Spirit is in Self-sufficient Rest: without need to move or to act and there is nothing that
exists outside of God. There is no agency and no movement. There is no material
substance, only Spirit – Imperishable and Indestructible. Then, in the beginning of all
material existence, in the beginning of time and space, Absolute Spirit, God-as-Energy,
God-as-Light, moved. There was a change – a movement - that is itself a change from
the position of Self-sufficient Rest. This movement itself is the beginning of
contraction: a movement downwards from Formless Spirit to form. Closely allied to
this movement is an expression of the ‘will’ of God in that God chose to contract: to
enfold downward into manifold forms. Prior to this contraction, change or initial
movement, there was no ‘will’ of God: no preference of this over that, no inclination
towards one action over another, for there was no ‘this’ or ‘that’ and there was no
action, only Stillness: Uncontracted Expansive Spirit in the Bliss of the Unity of
Perfect, Timeless, Stillness: the Bliss of Perfect Rest. The ‘will’ of God emerges in and
is a product of that very first movement, in that very first moment of contraction and on
contraction of Spirit, the material universe comes into being. Furthermore Spirit ‘chose’
to continue and maintain this material contraction by various natural means. Connected
with this first movement, agency and will of God is the ‘pleasure’ of God. The ‘choice’
to move in one way as opposed to another, or to continue in one way as opposed to
stopping or returning necessarily involves pleasure. Indeed, many Pilgrims have been
told that God does things for pleasure. It ‘pleased’ Spirit to contract, to be involved in
the ‘adventure’ of contraction, to bring time, space and the material universe into being,
but in time, God will no longer be pleased to be contracted to space and time and
having rolled out the universe like a carpet, God will roll it up again. God will return to
the Absolute state of Formless Spirit and the universe, time and space will cease, being
swallowed up again in the Bliss of the Self-sufficient Rest of God-as-Spirit in the
Immediate Now. And this is about as much as I can say on the matter. For in the
beginning, there is only Absolute Spirit. Some external force did not affect absolute
Spirit such that movement was brought into being. There is nothing external to
Absolute Spirit, there is no external to Absolute Spirit. The movement to contraction
must be in Absolute Spirit, for the movement can arise nowhere else. Yet Absolute
Spirit is Ultimately perfectly Still. It is a paradox beyond my comprehension, and here I
rest.

SUMMARY CONCLUSION

How then can we summarise the spiritual path and detachment? There is indeed at its
heart a form of abandonment, surrender and detachment. But this is not primarily to do
with our moral conduct: it is not a detachment from the distractions of the surrounding
world or from society. It is not surrendering to the ebb and flow of life as though the
universe itself has a beneficial moral and meaningful purpose for those who seek
Absolute Spirit such that all we have to do is to stop worrying and allow life to be in a
disinterested way. It is not a battle whereby we are seeking to detach from and abandon
our feelings, desires, passions and behaviours that we consider to be immoral. We are
not at war with ourselves seeking to mortify or put to death aspects of ourselves – we
are not in the business of suppressing or repressing our emotions.

The first thing that is being abandoned is resting satisfied in anything less than
Absolute Spirit. Anything less than Absolute Spirit has, as we have already seen, a
temporal, bounded, finite, derived and secondary existence. It is real, but it is not Real.
To rest in any of these things is to miss the mark, to settle for fool’s gold, to remain
satisfied with trinkets and futile emptiness. For these secondary existents and
expressions are nothing and have no existence in and of themselves. Ultimately there is
only Essence, only Absolute Formless Spirit outside of which and apart from which
there is no existence. Note that this path does not say that we are to have no satisfaction
in these things. Who would deny themselves the pleasure and satisfaction of watching a
beautiful sunset, enjoying a pleasant meal, delighting in good company and so on?
What is being emphasised here is the attitude of resting satisfied, as though the Prize
has been obtained, as though the temporal, finite thing giving satisfaction is the
Ultimate End such that we stop and rest here. Nothing less than the Immediate
experience of Union with Absolute Spirit will do. Anything less is a trinket, a piece of
fool’s gold to satisfy the blind, a piece of futile emptiness. The goal of the spiritual
path, as we have seen, is Unity and this means the immediate experience of our Essence
and True Self as Absolute Spirit. As some Pilgrims say: Absolute Spirit and our
Essence are One. This is Final Reality and we can know it in immediate experience.

The second thing that the Pilgrim is to detach from is any Ultimate definition of our
True Self that is in any way less than Absolute Spirit. Whilst allowing for our
expression in contracted form in space and time, and the duality and division that this
brings, there is also the recognition and experience that our True Self, our Essential
Being is no less than Infinite, Formless, Absolute Spirit. We cannot deny our delimited,
contracted manifest expression as a finite body self. This is real. But it is not the
Ultimate, Final Reality of our True Nature. Neither can we be fully enlightened whilst
we remain in this contracted form – we can only attain a nearness, a pointer and a
glimpse of our Transcendent Nature and Unity. Nevertheless, it can be immediately
experienced. To define our True Self as anything less, as bounded and limited in any
way is to remain in blindness and to continue to be deceived by the Illusion that arises
in our minds. In our True Nature, in our Self, we transcend our body, our mind, our ego
and time and space itself.

References

(1) Laynton, R. (2011) ‘Morality, non-dualism and the spiritual ascent’ Published on
the internet on ‘Scribd’ and ‘Feedbooks’.