Introduction
Western ways of life have come to the end of their fruitfulness, rationalism has made its final contribution and modern man will succumb increasingly to physical and spiritual decay unless he finds some new way of coming back to his essential self and the true sense of life.
Even the transforming and redeeming power of religion is declining in the measure that the range of images in which it is presented and the concept of God which it conveys have lost their roots in man's original relation to Being.
The break-through to Being as well as the transformation arising from the sense of oneness with the divine ground is imperative today for all those are standing on the "front line" of spirit.
Our task today is to help the man who has come to the end of this tether, by revealing to him the latent content of his deepest and most essential experiences, by opening the door to the basic truths and laws of life, and above all by showing him a way to achieve by practice a lasting attitude in consonance with them, without which there can be no progress in faith and no inner ripening.
What we are called upon to do is to the restore him to the context of the Greater Life, to un-block the door at-one-ment with the wellsprings of his existence, and to show him the way to give expression of his contact with Being through a life-affirming attitude.
Eastern And Western View Of Hara
From experiences gained through Hara one comes to see that it contains a hidden "treasure of life" which is man's birthright, which was lost in the evolution of his consciousness, and which we must rediscover and practice as a prerequisite.
Man With Hara
In the beginning and in the end, in the origin, and in the unfolding of all life, stands the transcendental I AM. Behind, within, and above all that exists man senses the Great I AM of all of life as the "stillness of Divine Being" from which all of life proceeds and to which it returns.
The Strength, Breadth, And Closeness Engendered By Hara
When awareness of Being arises in man his life-feeling undergoes a radical change. This awareness leads to the experience of define qualities which have an unmistakable significance. Everything is permeated by a different light, attuned to a different key, and brings a different state. It is as if an invisible veil where lifted that had hitherto separated man from the world, from life, and even from himself.
The Self he now knows is clearly no longer the old I but a wider, more comprehensive one. He comes conscious of a new inner breadth, he feels an increase of inner volume as if had burst the bonds confining him in his physical body. A strange feeling of boundlessness arises, a liberated breath. He does not lose himself in it, but, on the contrary, truly finds himself. A new breathing space, score, and sphere of action opens up and he realized only then how confined he had been before, how imprisoned and isolated. The man without Hara has only a very small space within, and around him.
The man who gains Hara enters into a new relation with the world which makes him both independent of it and yet connected with it in an unforced way. Uninhibited and without fear he can unite with it because he has found within himself a broader base of action. He can embrace the world and let himself be embraced by it because in his being feels at one with it, yet he can detach from it because his new Self, as distinct from his old I, is no longer bound down by it.
The man without Hara is dependent on the world precisely because he lacks real connection with it; the man with Hara is constantly connected because he lacks real connection with it, the man with Hara is constantly connected with it because he is independent from it.
For the prisoner of the I the world has no breath. His whole consciousness at any given time or by whatever has taken possession of his feelings. When a man has found his basic center the limited space-time realities take on a transcendental significance. His inner vision remains unlimited even when much assails him or when the particular intrudes on him and demands all the attention of his I.
And because all his feelings, conditioned by his word-experience, are embraced and permeated by an awareness of the other-worldly life and its order, they do not throw him off balance but are all transmuted into impulses which open him even more deeply to the Being which speaks from his deepest center.
With Hara increasing a man joyously experiences a new closeness to himself and to the world, to people and things, to nature and God - a closeness beyond the opposites of new and far, cold and heat, sympathy and antipathy as felt by the I
When the primordial Being fuses with the being of the individual he feels a support beyond any explainable worldly security
The Order Of Life in the Symbolism of the Body
Instead of a hierarchic order based on the Way leading to the full unfolded Self, a conflict arises in which the mainly rational man excludes and represses that part of this nature which he feels to be irrational, less valuable or even value-destructive. "Above" and "below" are then evaluated as high and low, noble and base, spiritual and material, light and dark.
To the extend that the tap root of his existence has disappeared from his awareness, he will, while striving for the "crown of life" aspire misguidedly to heights existing only in his imagination. He becomes sapless and weak and gradually his life-stem dries out. By clinging to an impoverished and lifeless concept of value he blocks any integration with the underlying depths.
It is the suffering of man's heart which leads to the beginning of all actions.
The unrest may be caused by the sorrows of this world, or it may denote lack of the fulfillment of Being. But in the final analysis, it always reveals man's separation from the divine Unity and his longing to merge himself with it anew.
When the little I withdraws and its working pattern is no longer the sole guide to the recognition of reality, life will disclose different horizons, gain new dimensions, increase in breath, height, and depth.
So the effect of transcending the ego-centered pattern of life is threefold: as a clarification of the senses opening anew to the Primordial, as an illumination of the mind in light of which the pattern of Being is disclosed, and as an awakening of the revealing function of the nature of the heart.
When a man beings to feel again the original Unity of life, and his widened consciousness, begins to know the true meaning of consciousness, he will realize to what extent the development for which he is destined is obstructed by the way his heart dwells within his fixing I, and his I within his unpurified heart. As distinct from the rationalistic attitude of the I, in the new vision he will see the need for an ever renewed merging of himself with the undivided Unity.
Hara As Practice
Being works unsolicited in Man and in all living creates as the divine Life which strives ceaselessly to manifest itself in the perfection of its own creation. It is this vital urge within him that compels even the imprisoned man to strive for the blessing of Being. Thus, unknown to this conscious striving, Being is ever at work trying to break through man's shell and to enter the light of his consciousness. Fundamentally this urge of life toward the light is the primal force behind all human life and activity, but if the only channel it can find in man runs through a hard ego-shell it will be chocked and blocked. Yet the primal driving-froce of the human will is basically co-determined, animated, and winged by the striving of Being toward the light.
The grace which may flower from this experience is not the product of a doing but of a permitting of what fundamentally is, of what the aspirant himself is by reason of his participation in the Great Being within his own being.
"What is the highest that man can achieve through practice?" I frequently asked Eastern masters. The reply was always "The readiness to let himself be seized"
"Practice is nothing but work toward illuminating that power that separates man from life. It means the adventure of opening himself without fear, of hearing and all the signs through which Being speaks to him. At the beginning and end all of practice stands the re-rooting of the conscious life in that center which epitomizes the original Oneness. "
"Only if a man dares to entrust himself again to the depth of his origin can he reach the height for which he was destined. In abandoning his consciousness anchored in his I and in relinquishing the world of opposites rooted in it, lies his sole change for the unfolding for a higher form of consciousness which corresponds to the primal Oneness of Life. "
Tension-Relaxation
When it comes to the Inner Way, the practice of relaxation has a completely different significance. It aims at a man's liberation from the yoke of I, leads him toward a progressively deepening awareness of original Oneness of Life, and serves to strengthen that inner state which permits the Greater Life to manifest itself in our little lives.
The separation from his Being is what produces the basic tension of his life; the release of it is imperative for the integration of his I-self with his essence. Here appears the urge of Being to manifest itself in ultimate Self, and equally the necessity of the integration of the I-self with Being.
The driving force of all his seeking is nothing other than what fundamentally he always is. In so far as he is not all that in his I-world-consciousness, his essential oneness with Being shows itself as divine discontent. The separation from his Being is what produces the basic tension of his life; the release of it is imperative for the integration of his I-self with his essence.
However, only where the aspirant in right relaxation feels in himself the unfolding Oneness and tastes the deeply moving "quite different" with a reverent heart and accepts it as a new obligation does he show that spirit which have described as indispensable to all real practice: the spirit of Metanoia, where the mind is permanently turned toward the Divine.
That this new relation to the divine Ground of Being should permeate the whole life is the distant goal. Its achievement is hindered by nothing as much as by those wrong-tensions belonging peculiarly to the life and suffering of the I which have become, as it were, permanently set and crystallized.
The whole life of man is shaped by psychological burdens, some fresh and urgent, others old and of long standing, by breathtaking instinctive needs and desires as well as by self-imposed, deliberate tensions belonging to his conscious life.
Only one who has struggled to make himself whole and sounds know how insidious the effects of those over-tensions are, and how it is difficult to free oneself from them once they have become ingrained.
