What is not of this world. Not of this world
The Church is paradoxical and antinomic: it is not only the Body of Christ, but also an organization, and therefore there is always the danger of introducing the elements of the world into it. What dangers await the Church, which has declared its active presence in society? How can Christians not confuse otherworldliness with anger at “not ours” and the pride of a tax collector who is not like everyone else?
Hegumen PETER (Meshcherinov), rector of the Moscow Danilov Monastery Metochion in the Moscow region, employee of the Patriarchal Center for the Spiritual Development of Children and Youth at the Danilov Monastery, church publicist, reflects.
— What does “not of this world” mean? Christ speaks these words about the Kingdom of God (“My kingdom is not of this world”; In. 18:36), but how does this relate to the Church as an earthly community?
— Otherworldliness Christ's Kingdom in the context of the Church can be described as follows. Every phenomenon of this world is fraught with death. Everything natural is born, develops to a certain completeness and dies. The life of man and society has its end; empires cease to exist, social forms die out; works of art are destroyed, etc. Everything that is rooted in this world is subject to suffering, illness and death. The Church is the only phenomenon on earth whose vector is exactly the opposite: not from birth to flourishing, and then to extinction and death, but through dying and death (and death on the cross) - to birth in eternal life. By grace Christ Church removes a person from the determined power of the elements of the world and already in earthly life places him before Christ, transfers his existence from the earthly mode to the heavenly one, so that the Christian already here on earth tastes, or rather “anticipates”, “as through dim glass, divinatory" (1 Cor. 13: 12), but at the same time completely real - "The kingdom of God has come with power" (Mark 9: 1).
By “this world” we mean, of course, not nature, beautifully created by God, or human nature; We are talking about the damage to man caused by the Fall. Reverend Isaac the Syrian writes: “...the word world there is a collective name that embraces what is called passions... The composition of the collective name that embraces individual passions is also called the world. And when we want to name passions collectively, we call them peace; and when we want to distinguish them by the difference in their names, we call them
passions... And the passions are the following: commitment to wealth; bodily pleasure; the desire for honor from which envy flows; desire to be in charge; arrogance at the splendor of power; desire to dress up and be liked; the search for human glory, which is the cause of rancor..." and others (Word 2). The life of an individual Christian, like the life of a church community, according to the ascetic teaching of the holy fathers, should represent a feat of struggle against passions.
The Church also provides help for this feat, proclaiming the gospel of Christ to the world. Those who respond to it and enter the Church receive grace-filled strength to follow the path of Truth and Life. Therefore, the relationship of the Church with the world should be built on the basis of, let’s say, the maximum possibility of preaching life in Christ - and preaching not only in word, but also in deed.
The Gospel pays great attention to the “methodology” of evangelism. “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves: therefore be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16), says the Lord. The Apostles of Christ carefully guarded themselves from the spirit of the world, and they turned humanity to Christ by methods that were not at all worldly. “...We could appear with importance, like the Apostles of Christ, but we were quiet among you, just as a nurse tenderly treats her children” (1 Thess. 2: 7). “We do not cause anyone to stumble in anything, so that the service is not blamed, but in everything we show ourselves as servants of God, in great patience, in adversity, in need, in difficult circumstances, under blows, in prisons, in exiles, in labors, in vigils, in fasting, in purity, in prudence, in generosity, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in unfeigned love, in the word of truth, in the power of God, with the weapon of righteousness in the right and left hand, in honor and dishonor, with censure and praise: we are considered deceivers, but we are faithful; we are unknown, but we are recognized; we are considered dead, but behold, we are alive; we are punished, but we do not die; we are saddened, but we always rejoice; We are poor, but we enrich many; we have nothing, but we possess everything” (2 Cor. 6: 3-10).
The world opposes both this gospel and the very life of Christians: “in the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33); “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3:12). But the Church should not be afraid of such external hostility - “take courage: I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), Christ tells us. And we need to be afraid that worldly principles do not penetrate into the Church - “let not the arrogance of worldly power creep in under the guise of sacred rites; and may we not gradually and imperceptibly lose the freedom that our Lord Jesus Christ gave us with His blood” (8th rule of the Third Ecumenical Council).
— Today, the Church, after many semi-underground years of existence in Russia, has set a course for dialogue with society, for its active presence in the life of society. Does this threaten her “otherworldliness”? What will be its “otherworldliness”?
— In itself, dialogue with society cannot pose any threat to the Church. The point is in the characteristics of this dialogue. If the Church, following a completely natural impulse to “straighten up” after persecution, to restore its significance and prestige, gets carried away by this and crosses a certain line, then the dialogue with society turns into a monologue; and this is precisely what threatens the essential otherworldliness of the Church. Quite a few “outside” people perceive many church and social actions as a desire to impose themselves, to “get under the skin.” Let these people be wrong; but this is where dialogue is needed - and it is sometimes replaced by completely mundane actions: force, coerce through the state, etc. It is impossible to imagine that the apostle. Paul appealed to the authorities of that time to assist in the success of the gospel preaching... It must also be taken into account that today the words A very heavily devalued. The best argument in the dialogue between Church and society is an example of a pure, moral evangelical life not only of individual Orthodox Christians, but also of the entire Russian church community; This is where the otherworldliness of the Church will be revealed.
— They often say “not of this world” about an eccentric, in Dostoevsky’s language — an “idiot.” How close is this to the Gospel meaning of the expression “not of this world”? Is the church a “church of weirdos”? But what about the active priests who are restoring churches and monasteries (a truck of concrete there, two trucks of sand here, a team of builders from Moldova, and a deputy from the regional council promised to pave the road, etc.).
- You never know what they say. Christianity “is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18). In fact, that continuum of otherworldliness in which everyone must reside Orthodox Christian, is a work of God’s grace. If a Christian is able to receive this grace, he is enriched with other gifts of God, and becomes wise. And this wisdom “coming from above”, it is “pure, peaceful, modest, obedient, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and unfeigned” (James 3: 17). To outsiders, this may indeed sometimes seem like “eccentricity”; but a Christian, being wise, will behave in such a way that normal people will eventually be able to respect this eccentricity... And such unearthly wisdom not only does not interfere with the activities of the priests, but even helps a lot.
— “Unworldliness”—does this mean life according to different laws than the world? If we simply have different laws (as Tertullian wrote: “a different order of submission,” not to Caesar, but to God) - then how are these laws fundamentally different? After all, in the Church everything is like everyone else: there are canons (laws-rules); whoever violates them is punished (well, not to prison, but to penance); there is also subordination, etc. Is the Gospel law only for the inner life of a Christian? How is it expressed in the Church as an organization?
— Here we need to define the concept of “law.” If we talk about the law as the unwritten elements of life, then, of course, the Church must live according to completely different laws than the world. The laws of this world are “the right of the strong,” power, money, lies, lust, vanity, pride... The laws of Christianity are an “inverted pyramid,” in the words of Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), when “by this everyone will know” that we are Christ’s “ disciples, if we have love for one another” (John 13:35). “...Kings rule over nations, and those who rule them are called benefactors, but you are not so: but whoever is the greatest among you is like the least, and he who is in charge is like one who serves” (Luke 22: 25-26) - this is the complete opposite of the prevailing relations in the world.
If the law is understood as law, then here the concepts of Church and society converge. In society, law regulates, as Vladimir Solovyov puts it, lowest level morality, precisely limiting the most rude and evil manifestations of the elements of this world. In European Christian civilization, to which Russia also belongs, law is based, in addition to the ancient Roman tradition, on evangelical morality, which fertilized the life of Europe for almost two thousand years (therefore, it is very strange when Orthodox Christians disdain law). In the Church, law also regulates the external relations of Church members, from which (as well as from subordination) there is no escape while we live in this fallen world.
As for the relationship between the Church as the Body of Christ and the Church as an organization, everything depends on the goal. If the goal of a church organization is to give people in given historical, cultural, social and other conditions the maximum opportunity for life in Christ, then otherworldliness will be perfectly combined with law. If in And If the vision of the church's purpose is distorted, this opens the door for the elements of this world to dominate the life of the church.
— Sometimes “other-worldliness” is perceived as embittered opposition to the world: this is felt not only in the fight against the Inn, ecumenism, etc., but also in the approach that we are Orthodox and therefore will walk around in sashes, sundresses, frock coats, scarves , pronounce all words in a “church manner” and so on. And we will condemn those who, say, dye their hair, love modern literature, painting, music, etc., because they “secularize” our “unworldly” Church. What can you say about this?
— There is confusion here, characteristic of our time. Most church people understand churchliness as the current Orthodox subculture that has developed today. The “subculturalism” of the church worldview is one of the most important current problems. The Church is universal; it embraces not only space and time, but also all phenomena human life without exception. In the spiritual-ascetic plan, universal churchliness expels sin and passions from all these aspects of life, introduces into them the grace of God and the nobility of otherworldliness, which frees a person from being bound by this world and makes him wise and skillful in all his actions. Subculturalism narrows this universal horizon to the extreme and believes that Christian spiritual and moral life depends on clothing, food, certain aesthetic tastes, national interests or socio-political dispositions. That is why subculture is in fact a direct product of the elements of this world, an essentially pagan phenomenon and one hundred percent this-worldly. Where there is otherworldliness, and therefore genuine churchliness, there is no place so expressively described in this issue subculture.
— Christianity, as you know, “is a temptation to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks” (1 Cor. 1:23). Modern Western culture is Hellenic. When we act based on religious motives (we give alms or don’t eat meat for almost two months) - for the “Hellenes” this is madness. But there is also a downside - sometimes you want to feel special... If I’m so Orthodox, I behave deviantly, as if I’m trying to emphasize my otherworldliness - is this the otherworldliness that Christ spoke about?
— Modern Western (more precisely, globalist) culture is no longer Hellenic. Hellenic culture is the holy fathers: Basil the Great, John of Damascus, ascetic writers. (By the way, the perception of fasting that we have in our church life now is quite Hellenic.) Modern culture rather “enlightenment”, simplified in comparison with the culture of antiquity, and even more so with the great cultural tradition of the Church.
And deviant behavior is practical identification subculturality of the Church and directly opposed to otherworldliness; their motivations are completely worldly. All otherworldliness is inside, in the heart, in the motivations and values of a person. In addition, otherworldliness is gracious and knows how to behave so as not to embarrass or burden others. Otherness, I repeat, is wise; and deviance is stupid (both in the biblical and ordinary sense of the word), and exposes this stupidity to everyone, ensuring that because of us “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles” (Rom. 2:24).
— The otherness of a Christian to the world is often understood as the fact that a Christian owes everything, “like a fool”: to forgive like a fool, to give in like a fool, to serve everyone like a fool, while the entire free world has long recognized that no one owes anyone anything.
— The world may have admitted this in words, but in reality man is entangled in the world’s obligations from head to toe. He must think, feel, look, read, listen, consume only this way and not otherwise, look, have a prestigious job, car, apartment, etc. And these are not written laws, but inhumane and cruel, like the embrace of a dragon, the elements of this world. And the Christian, armed with otherworldliness, breaks these chains; he is free and wise. And he, by and large, does not even force himself to “not allow” everything that is generally accepted, but reasonably and freely does not want to take part in the herd madness, because he has tasted the best.
— Doesn’t the otherworldliness of Christianity turn it into a kind of opposition? Doesn't it give reason to consider other people unenlightened? And, on the other hand, doesn’t it look in the eyes of “outsiders” that Christians “are not like people”?
— Christianity is not an opposition in a political sense. But it is always critical: in relation to oneself, the world and the manifestations of its fallenness from an evangelical, moral and spiritual point of view. This criticism is not just grumbling with or without reason, but And sharing in the light of God’s grace the truth of life, both personal and social. And this is in And This really makes the perception of a Christian different from “like other people.” But since this perception is possible only “together with God,” by grace, it excludes contempt, exaltation and condemnation of any person.
A Christian should not have “everything like people” - not only in the subcultural, but in the moral and spiritual area. Christians should be the “light of the world” and the “salt of the earth” and live in such a way that people become like Christians; “so that everyone can see our good deeds and glorify our Heavenly Father” (see Matt. 5: 13-16).
The whole trouble lies precisely in the fact that in our church everyday life, for the most part, we have exactly that “everything is like people”...
Dmitry REBROV, Irina LUKHMANOVA
“I learned to live simply and wisely. Look at the sky and pray to God…”, - I began to read Akhmatova on the instructions of the teacher to read my favorite poem. And I heard complete silence in the class. I felt how the class and the teacher plunged into a state of surprise bordering on mild shock.
The collection “Anthology of Russian Poetry of the First Half of the 20th Century,” published in a small edition, opened up new worlds and amazing, exciting and intoxicating states for me that cannot be expressed in words. This happened at the age of 13. Gumilyov, Balmont, Mandelstam, Khlebnikov, Tsvetaeva... I copied poems into a notebook, they sounded in my head... At the age of 14, they gave me another rare book to read - “The Master and Margarita”. I was so shocked by the novel that I tried to copy it by hand.
I wanted to be normal, but I felt like there was something wrong with me. What do other people perceive as my “weirdness”? I couldn't answer this question. Probably, I’m just very smart and know a lot. The smartest. This makes it impossible for others to understand me. Therefore, you shouldn’t even talk to them.
Now I see that my “strangeness” was in my detachment from the life of the class, the team, in the lack of desire to communicate and be friends with classmates. I couldn’t even really distinguish who was who: there were two brothers in the class who were the same age, and I constantly confused them. Probably, my arrogance looked strange and incomprehensible despite my average academic performance - I did not strive for high academic performance - after all, what I read by my own choice and what sounded in my head was much more interesting!
I also studied averagely at university. I’m surprised how one young man saw an extraordinary mind in me, because I didn’t open my mouth very much. He said: “I would like your intelligence, I would achieve a lot.” I felt a slight contempt for him and thought: “I don’t want to achieve anything.” I meant building a career, achieving material wealth. Yes, I didn't think about that. But I guess I wanted something? I didn't know. There were some vague thoughts and feelings that big changes were awaiting our country, that the time would come when I would be useful to people as a journalist. That is, I was not a misanthrope, I wanted to benefit society.
"Do not be sad! Whole life ahead!" (R. Rozhdestvensky)
For some reason I started to feel sad early. I wrote poems myself, but they were so dark that I don’t want to present them here. Well, just one line: “How dark it is outside the window, how dark! However, I don’t care anymore.” This is my state at 20 years old. I felt old and tired. Outwardly, everything is fine. I am a student at Moscow State University. And that’s when I first understood what depression is.
That is, I apparently suffered from depression since childhood, but at the age of 20 I felt it clearly. I felt no meaning in life, no purpose. Previously, I had, as it were, forced, obligatory and clear goals - I had to go somewhere to study. I tried three times to enter art school, but it didn’t work out. I decided to enroll in the Faculty of Journalism and got in on my second try. So, what is next? The upcoming 5 years of study seemed like an eternity. And the feeling of emptiness. I went to a psychiatrist. It seemed that he simply did not understand me: “How is it possible that there is no goal? Study, that’s all!”
I studied, but my studies were poorly fulfilling, although we studied works of world literary classics and we had amazing, brilliant teachers. I learned about KSP - the Amateur Song Club, which held its meetings in the forests near Moscow. I got some camping equipment and started going to rallies - these weekends in the forests eased my condition. There I saw quite a lot of people, several like me, “strange” and even stranger.
For some reason, strange people had to sit by the fire at night and sing or listen to strange songs - Okudzhava, Galich, their own compositions, to the poems of Mandelstam, Brodsky. I fell in love with Brodsky very much: “They tell me that I have to leave. Yes, yes, thank you, I'm going to..."
Most of all I loved poems with a tragic tone, with a philosophical sound. But I still didn’t have an idea about my future, about what I wanted in life - I didn’t see a goal. This gave me fear of the future and I tried not to think about it.
“Your whole life is ahead - hope and wait!” (R. Rozhdestvensky)
I didn’t know and couldn’t imagine what to hope for, what to expect. “Strange” comrades from the KSP dropped out of universities for ideological reasons and got jobs as watchmen and stokers. Thank God, I finished my studies. I went to work in the editorial office - at first, when I urgently needed to learn how to write, I worked 12 hours a day and lost myself in my work. Then again came emptiness and misunderstanding of why to live. The height of Perestroika came and I wanted to escape from all this madness. To a beautiful and calm country. I had the thought: “Russia is over.” (And how glad I am that I was wrong).
I wanted, mainly, peace! It seemed that emigration would solve all my problems at once. When I saw average level living in Finland, for the first time I wanted material wealth. But soon they ceased to please. And the “peace” just made me want to howl like a wolf. I experienced loneliness here full program. And painful depression. Attempts to find the meaning of life in mysticism and marriage failed. The future, without meaning and without purpose, continued to appear as pure blackness, into which it was unbearable to look.
I realized that I couldn’t live. Live among people and in harmony with yourself. It seems that all my life I had been unconsciously waiting for someone to come and change and fix everything in my life. But every time this “someone” disappointed and did not live up to expectations. Who would have thought that the light at the end of the tunnel would suddenly appear from a computer monitor in the process of getting acquainted with the system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan. Help came when, it seemed, everything was completely gloomy, hopeless, hopeless!
And now - life in reality
Three years ago I started reading articles on the portal of system-vector psychology by Yu. Burlan. It has a clear understanding of people with a sound vector in different states of development and realization. It is common for a sound person to feel the outside world as illusory, and himself as the only one in the world. He looks strange in the eyes of other people.
Only sound people think about the meaning of life; it is more difficult for them than others to find their place in the world. There are not many such people - about five percent. In reality there are even fewer of them, since many die prematurely - from drugs, alcohol, suicide.
The articles evoked recognition, a feeling that someone understood me. And I have never had this feeling in my life. I passed free course, then - a full SVP course. I continue to attend free classes. Every time they discover something new. My awareness grows and deepens that the world- is real. People and myself are real.
Poetry is, of course, a good thing. But it no longer takes me into altered states of consciousness, phantasmagoric and sad. I am happy to learn to live in real world and feel solid ground under my feet. In our time, neither music, nor poetry, nor philosophy with esotericism fills the lack of a person with a sound vector. The sound thirst for knowledge of oneself and the world around us is filled only by system-vector psychology. I was convinced of this.
At the age of 50, I felt incomparably better than at 20. Until the age of 50, I went through all sorts of bad states of the sound vector, and after that - amazingly joyful states that I did not have either in childhood or in my youth. And I know that this is not the limit - potentially, sound people can enjoy life more than everyone else, because they have the most high level desires.
I really now feel “life ahead”, that I am standing at the beginning of a new life that brings previously unknown joys to life. There was an awareness of its purpose and meaning. I know why I live and what I want to do. I know that I have the opportunity to fulfill my desires. Chatsky’s words: “I’m strange. Who isn't weird? The one who is like all fools..." - no longer warms my soul.
Thanks to the system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlanaya, I came to terms with people, I understand that other people are not fools, as I once thought, in each vector there is a mind and all vectors have their own purpose in this world. There was a feeling of gratitude to people and deep respect for them for their work for the common good. From a “strange” person I am turning into one more and more adequate to modern reality.
Excerpt from the first chapter of the book by A. Kh. Almaas “Elements of the Real in Man"("Elements of the present in man"). Translation from English by Elena Senkina, ed. Marina Kaldina. Published for the first time in the magazine “Eros and Cosmos”.
Sufis say: " to be in the world without being of this world" This phrase can have many meanings. The meaning depends on the situation and on your own development and ability to understand. To be “in the world without being of this world” is a matter of orientation. I will talk about some of the meanings of this phrase and you will get a better understanding of what we are doing here.
When a child is born, he is almost an Essence or pure Being. His essence is not the same, of course, as that of a developed or realized adult. This is a child’s essence — undivided, as if curled up. As a child grows, personality begins to develop through interaction with the environment, especially with parents. Because many parents are identified with their personality rather than their Essence, they fail to recognize or encourage the child's Essence. After several years, the Entity is forgotten, and instead of the Entity, there is now a personality. The essence is replaced by various identifications. The child is identified with one or the other parent, with this or that experience and with various kinds of ideas about himself. These identifications, experiences and representations begin to coalesce and become structured as a person. The child, and then the adult, believes that this structure is his true self.
The entity was there from the beginning and is still here. Although we did not see her, did not recognize her and even rejected and hurt her different ways, she's still here. In order to protect herself, she went underground and covered herself. The cover is the identity.
There's nothing wrong with having a personality. You must have it. You can't survive without it. However, if you mistake personality for who you really are, then you are distorting reality because you are not a person. Personality is created from past experiences, ideas, perceptions and identifications, or identifications. You have the potential to develop a real individuality, a Personal Essence (which is different from the personality that covers up the loss of Essence), but this potential is blocked by what we call our ego, our acquired sense of identity.
If a person thinks that he is the ego, that is, the result of identifications, ideas, past experiences, then he is said to be “not in the world, but motivated by it” ( not in the world, but of it). He is not aware of who he really is—his essence. This is difficult to understand until you become aware of your own essence, at least from time to time.
The ego, or sense of ego-identity, replaces what we call true identity, and the personality as a whole, replaces our Essence. Personality is a substitute, an impostor. The world is the same for both the Essence and the personality, but the way in which the world is seen is different. A person who is “not in the world but motivated by it” is personality-oriented and not Essence-oriented.
Let's give some examples of how identifying with your personality distorts reality and leads to suffering. Let's take the topic of establishing ourselves in the world as independent, independent person, strong, successful, taking his own place in the sun. This is something that worries a lot of people. Almost everyone wants to be like this. This may be a goal that comes from an essential orientation or a personal orientation. And that's a big, big difference.
Self-affirmation in the world and the desire to be independent means building your personal aspect of the Essence. This is an internal achievement. It comes from a very deep desire to realize who you truly are. To be who you truly are means to be free from all identifications from the past that have created your false sense of identity; it doesn't depend on what you do in the world. What you do in the world may be an expression of who you are, but it does not define you. When you are your Personal Essence, you have a true sense of identity, and whatever you do will have an essence orientation. You usually think that the job you choose, whatever it is – gardener, psychiatrist, mother – gives you a sense of who you really are. But it means that you identify with the fact that you are part of the world. And this means a distortion of reality.
Usually, when a person begins to work on himself, he has no idea what the difference is between choices that are motivated by the personality and choices that are motivated by the Essence. He may think that when he does one thing rather than another, he can be himself better, but he has no clear direction, no understanding of what is what. Not only does the person lack this guidance, but furthermore, as a result of ego identification, he believes what his personality leads him to do and passionately defends his choices. "It's me. This is who I am. This is the best thing to do." Every time you ask him about his plans for the future or his ideas about who he thinks he is, he feels threatened. And any doubt about these structures means the possibility of destruction of all his beliefs.
In our work, which is called ( Diamond approach), we say that the individual's desire for independence and identity is actually a distorted reflection of the desire to receive or feel a certain aspect of the Essence — what we call the personal aspect. This is often described in Sufi tales such as "The Princess of Great Price" or "The Pearl of Priceless". Many fairy tales are tales about how a princess - Personal Essence - was freed from prison, which, of course, means liberation from the prison of the personality, from what is false in us. In other tales, priceless jewels are sought, which signifies the search for the Personal Essence.
How do you apply the phrase “in the world, being not of this world” to this situation? “Being in the world without being of this world” means that you continue to do what you are doing. You continue to pursue your career as a psychiatrist, a gardener, a mother, and so on, but you always remember that this is only a reflection of something else, and that in fact your deepest desire is to express some part of yourself. Thus, the main effort is directed towards understanding this part of oneself and manifesting it. If you live this way, it is true that you live in the world, but your motivation is different. You are not motivated by the world. Your goal is not to be a psychiatrist, a mother, or a gardener. Your goal is to find the pearl of great price, your Personal Essence. If you are a psychiatrist, you can be awarded one award after another; if you are a lawyer, you can become a prosecutor. However, you will still feel unfulfilled if you don't find the pearl. You will be forced to do more, try more, prove more. You can spend your life trying to achieve bigger and better results.
Try to understand correctly what I am talking about. I'm not saying you shouldn't do what you do. I'm not saying you should sit at home and think about what a pearl of great price this is. What I am saying is that whatever you do is a distortion of reality until you are oriented towards the Essence and realize the Personal Essence. Because your personality distorts reality, this may indicate what reality is. To understand this, you can begin to see what truth it reflects in you.
It is correct to say “in the world, being not of this world,” and not to live “not in the world.” When you are “in the world,” you are not meditating on some mountain, you are not living in a monastery. You truly live what the world lives. Your life is an adventure, and whatever you do in the world is not the essence of your life, but is simply a cauldron for melting ore into gold. When you experience yourself as a Personal Entity, what you do ceases to matter to you. You will begin to choose what will increase and strengthen your real self. You cannot experience the feeling of ultimate fulfillment until you connect with this essential part of yourself. Nothing else can take this place.
Let's take another example: the question of how to be with someone while remaining independent. It often seems to you that in order to be in a relationship, you must sacrifice part of yourself, seek a compromise. What if you don't want to do this? What if you want to have close or intimate relationships, love and be loved, and continue to be yourself without compromise? How can you be “in the world without being of this world” in this example? To answer, we first need to understand something about the nature of relationships.
A key need to have an intimate love relationship is the desire to replicate certain relationships that you had in early childhood with your mother. When you were a baby 4–5 months old, you were in a state called “symbiotic union.” In this state, you were in essence merging with your mother. There was no feeling of “I am I” and “you are someone else.” There was a total, undivided connection with wonderful, pleasant, warm, dissolving sensations.
When you think about what you want in a relationship, you usually think that you want to be so close that it's as if there are no longer two separate individuals. You feel such a deep desire to dissolve in another person, without boundaries, that there is no longer a question of two people loving each other, there is only a state of love. This state resembles a pond — a beautiful, golden pond — it is like honey through which the sun shines. This is the golden womb. You feel safe, protected, dissolved. Your body is pleasure itself, your thoughts do not exist. Since we had a similar experience with our mother in our infancy, we believe very deep inside that in order to get this state again, we must be with another person. For this we are looking the right person. But what we are really looking for is that feeling of merging, that golden, dissolving feeling.
How can we have this and not be motivated by the world? It is necessary to understand that the state of complete fusion, complete disappearance in dissolving pleasure is the state of the Essence. You don't have to be with anyone else to have it. You can experience this aspect of the Essence by yourself or with your cat, with a blanket, with your car, with another person — anything. Our belief that we need someone else in order to experience the feeling of golden fusion is very strong. “If only I could disappear into your arms, if you would just love me, everything would be perfect.” You think that if you find another person, you will get it. For most people, it is easier to experience a state of merging with someone else because they are convinced that having someone else is a condition for feeling this state in themselves. But in reality we are simply looking for a certain aspect of the Essence. So, in this case, being “in the world, but not of it” does not mean that you should forget about relationships, retire to a cave or the North Pole and merge with the icebergs there. If you don't want to do it — fine, it doesn't really matter. What matters? Whatever you do (whether you're in a relationship or not), you need to look inside yourself and figure out what's stopping you from experiencing that part of you that can feel merging and dissolving no matter who you're with or where you are.
The desire for this essential state applies not only to the relationship with a partner, but also to the desire to have children; people want this state of merging with the child. Also, when people are looking for beautiful landscapes or something like that, what they really want is to feel one with what is around them, and they believe that in order to do this they must fulfill certain conditions. So, relationships can be a cauldron for discovering a certain golden essence substance within.
I gave two examples that are very closely related. The first example deals with independence, the desire to be oneself, and considers the issue of identity - the personal aspect of the Essence. Another example deals with relationships, and usually looks at the conflict between the desire to be independent and to experience fusion, which often makes you feel as if you have lost your identity.
If you pay attention to what is happening in your world that is a distorted version of the true state of affairs, you can understand what is really there. Your career, interests, and relationships are important, but they are important insofar as they lead you to a deep understanding of yourself. Otherwise, they don't matter.
Nothing is more important than who you are, as the following story demonstrates.
Zen Master Hakuin was famous in the area for his righteous life.
She lived not far from him beautiful girl, whose parents ran a grocery store. And suddenly the parents found out that their daughter was pregnant.
They got very angry. At first the daughter did not want to name the father of the unborn child, but, tired of questioning, she finally named Hakuin. Seething with rage, the parents went to the master.
Really?
- “That’s all he said.
When the child was born, he was brought to Hakuin. By that time, the master had already lost his reputation as a righteous man, but this did not bother him. He began to care for the baby with great diligence. He took milk and everything the baby needed from his neighbors.
A year passed, and then the young mother admitted to her parents that the child’s father was a young man who worked at the fish market.
Mother and father rushed to Hakuin to beg for his forgiveness. They apologized for a long time and asked to return the child.
