The Game of Consciousness, part 3

From chapter 2 of The Dice Game of Shiva: How Consciousness Creates the Universe. Copyright (c) 2009 by Richard Smoley

From a certain point of view, the spiritual path can be divided into two parts. In the first part, the individual senses that what we customarily take to be reality is no such thing, that there is something much more to be found. He looks and looks for it; he reads, studies, meditates, goes to hear the lectures of wise and holy people, undergoes many exercises and disciplines and austerities. Then, in an instant, bidden or unbidden, the realization comes, whether through the whack of a Zen master’s stick or in a flash of insight that occurs during a humdrum chore. After this, nothing can be the same again. Even the spiritual path is no longer the same. The individual is not omniscient or omnipotent, but he now knows something real and true. Study and practice also change their orientation. They are no longer aimed at gaining this insight but at stabilizing it and integrating it into all levels of his life and mind.

Such a person even finds that his attitude toward spiritual literature undergoes a distinctive change. Among the innumerable books and ideas that are available in the marketplace, he begins to be able to discern those that come from genuine knowing and those that do not. The difference is subtle but remarkably sharp. He may even pick up a book, glance through it, and find himself saying about the author, “Ah! He almost knows!” Preoccupation with doctrinal orthodoxies, the truth of “my” religion over all others, and an arrogant contempt for other points of view almost always indicate that the writer does not know.