Inner Light

BORDER MEETING 10-12 SEPTEMBER 1999 AT VALLENDAR GERMANY

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the Theologische Hochschule Vallendar. I wonder how George Fox would have felt about us Friends gathering in this place of what he would call “notions”!

I want to stress that I am not trying to be a preacher, or a spiritual teacher or a guru this weekend. I am not going to give a theological interpretation of George Fox’s experiences or of the conclusions he drew from them. “Guru” is a much misused and misunderstood concept in the West for it is a tradition which is foreign to our culture. I have met and walked with many authentic and inauthentic gurus and gained a lot from them.. However, I’ve always had little time for imitations, life is too short for that…Therefore all I intend to do is to share with you some exercises I have found helpful as initial steps on the inward path and some reflections on the three Quaker concepts of Inward Light, Truth and Power. For those who feel it is of any significance, I have a degree in Protestant theology and have spent a very unhappy period of service in the ministry. I also have 30 years experience in learning, practicing and teaching Raja yoga, which is a combination of physical exercises, breathing exercises, the classic Indian scriptures and different forms of meditation.

You may remember that I participated in a week’s “Trainer’s training” course on Rex Ambler’s “Experiment with Light”. I am drawing on Rex’s academic approach to Early Friends, which I think is very good, but I will not be using his meditation method as developed by the American therapist Gendlin, a method called “Focusing”. It can be a helpful therapy for some, but it has very little to do with spirituality. So I will stick to what I have tried to learn by understanding, by

long practice and by passing on methods that may some day become meditation. Our time together is very limited and we will only be able to look at some simple pointers toward what in reality is an ongoing life process. Most of us have been working and traveling today and may be tired, so tonight I’ll share some thoughts on the concept of the “Inward Light”. We will then add some visualisation exercises and as a simple gift I’ll take you through a nice relaxation exercise that will get you ready for bed. Tomorrow we will start the day by looking at Truth and Power and perform a guided meditation.

The most frequently used Quaker expression today certainly is “that of God in everyone”. Sometimes it even serves as the one concept that binds evangelical and liberal Friends. Yet, in George Fox’s Journal and his Epistles it occurs only about 47 times, while the Inward Light is mentioned over 200 times. Maybe it is less threatening to gloss over “that of God in everyone” – the number of interpretations of what it could actually be is very great – than to find out by keen and critical observation of inward experiences what Early Friends were referring to.

In contrast to the established churches of his time, George Fox did not urge people to believe and to follow his teachings. Instead, he admonished them to DO. Quakerism is a DO spirituality. Friends said “do this – do that” and then things will happen. Fox mentions an easily overlooked condition to be ready as it were to turn inward to the Light: “All must first know the voice crying in the wilderness, in their hearts”, he says. There has to be a desperation of the soul, a real thirst to know the truth before the individual will be moved to search for the ultimate reality. One has to be tired of “the many false religions of the world and of the divinations of people’s own brain, and of all presumptuous talkers of God, who see him not”. After one has been unable to find the Truth in the outward world, turn inward because “As there is a world without you, so there is a world in the heart”. And, Fox said, “All keep in the sense of truth, and be digging for the pearl in your own field, and to find the silver in your own house”. He could testify to the finding, because “I have examined myself, and proved myself, and have found Christ Jesus in me”. Note that he did not jump to conclusions easily about his inner experiences. He examined them rationally. He also tested himself and at the end of this process had to conclude that he had found the Christ in himself: “and now Singleness of heart is come; pureness of heart is come, joy and gladness are come”. No doubt remains and the immediate fruits are joy, gladness and inner peace. “And the light of God, that calls your minds out of the creatures, turns them to God, to an endless being, joy and peace”. This is pure poetry, like the Satchitananda of the Bhagavat Gita, and such are the consequences of experiencing God’s closeness. There is no instant call for action in the outside world.

Full attention and concentration is required for being guided towards the Truth. “Mind that which is pure in you to guide you to God. Mind the Light, that all may be refreshed one in another, and all in One”

How does one do it? “Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit from thy own thoughts, and then you will feel the principle of God to turn thy mind to God, whereby you will receive his strength and power from whence life comes. Therefore be still a while from thy own thoughts, searching, seeking, desires and imaginations, and be stayed in the principle of God in thee, to stay thy mind upon God, up to God.” Be still and silent from thy own wisdom, wit, craft, subtlety or policy that would arise in thee, but stand single to the Lord, without any end to thyself.”

We love quoting and half-quoting these passages. Yet Fox knew that spiritual experience does not come all that fast: “But all you that be in your own wisdom and in your own reason, you tell that silent waiting upon God is famine to you; [meditation doesn’t work for me] it is a strange life to you to come to be silent, you must come into a new world. Now you must die in the silence, die from the wisdom, die from the knowledge, die from the reason, and die from the understanding”.

Just experience, just feel, just be in the here and now. He was by no means the first nor was he the last to discover the inward world, but for me as for most Friends his appeal over any other spiritual direction is in the practical and ethical way of life he developed from his initial insights. For some time, George Fox thought that the Inward Light was the conscience, but as he became more experienced he rejected – or rather expanded – that idea. The Inward Light certainly raises awareness of the positive and negative aspects of our personality. Evil, weakness, non-discernment of what is right are painful wants for the ego to admit to. Fox goes even further, to what we would not necessarily consider to be negative personality traits: we should not “give way to the lazy, dreaming mind, for it enters into temptations” George Fox warns us to ” dwell in that which is pure of God in you, lest your thoughts get forth, and then evil thoughts get up, and surmising one against another, which ariseth out of the veiled mind, which darkens the pure discerning”. In modern language we would say that the Light confronts us with our Shadow in the Jungian sense, our dark side which is so much easier to see in the other, from the nagging spouse and the difficult neighbour to Milosovic and the many in between. Fox says here, like Baldwin, that one cannot face in others what one cannot first face in oneself. My objection to using the “focusing method” is that one can never exhaust one’s Shadow, so it is easy to become stuck on a psychological problem that should be worked out in therapy, not in a spiritually targeted meditation, or in a meeting for worship. I am not interested in the relationship with my father in this context, so I’ll leave that for different occasion. To be sure, the Shadow has to be confronted and integrated into one’s conscious personality, which is the only way to disarm one’s dark tendencies. (The person without a shadow becomes a Golem). It is the beginning of spiritual discernment “And then the spiritual discerning came to me, by which I did discern my own thoughts, groans and sighs, and what it was that did veil me, and what is was that did open me” The proper function of the Inward Light is far more daunting because “Which Light being owned, self [our small personality or ego] and the righteousness of self, come to be denied.” In other words, the ego has to die and does die, at least for the time of the meditation. It also reminds us to realise that darkness is just one part of ourselves, that we are indeed children of God, children of the Light. This is Truth that brings Power.

So the Light is a wider reality than the conscience. The Light has a witnessing function, a teaching function and a guiding function leading up to the source of the Light. To be sure, there is something beyond the Light.

Dwelling in the Light requires discipline, inner and outer discipline, a much -neglected truth in our time. It is not enough to go and sit in silence every now and then when the mood takes us, when we decide to have the time for it. There has to be a certain daily disciplined practice of silent withdrawal (and 15 min. daily is much better than 2 hours once a month) and a basic morality of behaviour for which one can find instructions in all sacred scriptures.

One should continuously practice becoming aware of or witnessing what goes on in one’s mind, that is in one’s intelligence, feelings and emotions “lest one runs into the veiled mind” of not perceiving reality as it is, the reality about yourself as well as about the world around you. “If you love this Light it will teach you, walking up and down and lying in bed, and never let you speak a vain word”.

And “Walk in the Truth; stand naked, bare and uncovered before the Lord; then , if you stand in the Light, it will direct you to whence it comes from”. Note that the Light is not to be equated with God who is the source of the Light.

There is another “Light” quote from the Journal with which I am very impressed because of its extraordinary insight into human nature: “As the Light opens thy conscience, it will let thee see invisible things, which are clearly seen by that which is invisible in thee. That which is invisible is the Light within thee, which he who is invisible has given thee a measure of. That will let thee see thy heart”. Fox is talking about a lot of invisibilities here, which are nevertheless the most substantial realities.

I’ll venture a concretisation: “the Light will show you parts of your personality and psyche that you didn’t even realise were there. The Light has been given to you by what Fox calls the Christ and in other religious traditions has different names, the mediator between the source of the Inward Light and the measure of Inward Light as it has been given to us, but which can grow (cf. the analogy with the Seed).

There is an inward world in us, that is as lively and clear as the outward world with its objects and experiences through the senses and the intellect, and this invisible world will become familiar when we learn to turn our awareness inward. The very important truth here is that we will never become whole, healed, “saved” as long as we continue to avoid to even consider that there is a personal inner world. The physical world or Matter extents to worlds beyond the senses and beyond concepts of the mind, like time and space. There is a source of energy at the basis of Light that is immaterial and eternal.

This brings us to the last issue I want to touch upon tonight: how real is the Inward Light. Is it literally visible, does it have a physical location? Don’t think these are irrelevant considerations for us Friends. I spent some time in India this Spring and one of the Friends in Delhi said to me: ” I wonder whether European Friends know what they are talking about: none of the many I asked could tell me he/she had experienced the Inward Light. I have; have you, can you describe it to me?” As it happened, I knew what he was referring to in his tradition, so I shared my experiences in an analogy of Vedic and Quaker terminology and I suppose we rejoiced in the universality of Quakerism.

Another point is that, with so many Friends becoming involved with the Experiment of Light, there is a danger of creating new categories amongst us: Friends who have “seen” the Light and others who have not, and the ones who have, deriving spiritual authority from that. I have come across this phenomena already and I feel this is totally out of order. Visualisation of the Inward Light is not important and has to some extent to do with physical conditions – what is important is the realisation that the small self that I call I, me, is a very limited and relative experience of the Truth. That by turning inward I can be guided closer to the Truth. We all fail and we all succeed in getting glimpses of the Truth, but without divine grace there can be no spiritual growth for anybody. That’s enough for tonight.
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DAY 2:

TRUTH AND POWER

We tend to think of the truth as an intellectual understanding, a correct set of ideas. We hold interesting discussions about the truth being absolute or relative, which for George Fox was completely beside the point. For him Truth was an experience, something beyond intellect and feeling. The truth he went out to share with people was at the same time very simple and utterly subversive because it denied authority to a cosmology and a societal structure based on Copernicus and Descartes as well as those of Ptolemy and the Great Chain of Being.

“Christ has come to teach his people himself. Turn your attention inward and you will find the Light which is your teacher and guide and which will direct you to the source of eternal life which we call God. This I know by an experience which is available to all human beings everywhere. Stop therefore depending and relying on outward teachers and objects.” The truth George Fox went out to proclaim was in the experience and the experience was located in an inner world. “Keep within. And when they say: “lo here”, or “there is Christ”, go not forth; for Christ is within you. And they are seducers and antichrists which draw your minds out from the teachings within you; you are the temples of God; and God hath said, he will dwell in you and walk in you. And then what need you go to the idols’ temples without you?”. It would be too simple and arrogant to say that this is outdated and no longer for us. Just listen around you and you will come to the astonishing realisation of the amount of notions and superstitions that are flourishing today. Friends, too, need to be constantly reminded not to go forth, not to run here and there, but to stop and stay in the Truth which is in us. This can be a very sobering experience because not too much is happening there or so it seems. Yet, to stop, to stay with and suffer one’s own bareness is the only way to come to feel the Truth. It may take a while because for too long the weight of our living experience has been directed outward. But coming to know the Truth and living in the Truth is liberating “And if the truth make you free, then you are free indeed – free from all the will-worships [the ego-trippers, the follow-me-and-I’ll-make-you-happy politicians, scientists, philosophers and theologians, etc, the ambitious leaders of all kinds at other people’s expense] and from all the windy doctrines [how to be successful and/or beautiful in ten lessons]; from all the evil inventions, traditions, imaginations, and notions, and rudiments of Adam in the fall [if you don’t act out your instincts you sell yourself short]. Truth is also something you “do to all, without respect to persons, to high or low whatsoever, young or old, rich or poor. Let truth be the head of it and practice it.” “The truth is the truth and changeth not, live in it and it will be your peace and joy everlasting.” Truth as George Fox knows it closely resembles the Buddhist dharma, the unchangeable, eternal wisdom as experienced by living the right way, or by living the Tao. It is harmony of insight and action.

Finding the truth within is never without a price: one has to be faithful and obedient to the truth one has come to know, only then can one answer the witness of God in everybody.” Truth is also liberating because it sets you free from the hold the ego has over all you do and are, and relates you to that part in you which is eternal, meaning outside time and space.

From staying in the truth, Power comes. From touching upon the eternal, Power comes. Power comes from a source beyond the small self that lives our everyday lives. Not immediately, though. “For the first step to peace is to stand still in the light (which discovers things contrary to it) for power and strength to stand against that nature which the light discovers;” “After thou sees thy thoughts and the temptations, do not think, but submit; then power comes. Stand still in that which shows and discovers; and there strength immediately come. And stand still in the light, submit to it, and the other will be hushed and gone; then content comes”. The secret is in the “standing still”, meaning don’t put energy into whatever thought or memory passes by, but let it pass, just be aware of its passing by, and in the “submit”, again, a passive observance of what goes on in the silencing of the mind. It is the first step to peace and contentment. Power comes later and before anything else it is Power or strength not to make the same mistakes over and over again. It is not Power to go out and change the world according to your image of the world. Initially, it is Power to grow towards the image God has of you. Discerning and understanding this difference is important or one might become an even greater nuisance to one’s surroundings than one already is. If inner peace and contentment diminish while you consider yourself going out to work in the Power you better reconsider. Fox also seriously warns against getting stuck in the past and this too reminds me of the Buddhist idea of the uselessness of guilt feelings: “For looking down at sin, and corruption, and distraction, you are swallowed up in it. But looking at the light that discovers them (in yourself, to be sure), you will see over them. That will give victory; and you will find grace and strength; and there is the first step to peace”(91). “To see over them” does not mean you can just leave the dark side of your personality in the dark and pretend to forget about it because it will then manifest itself in a different form with an even greater destructive force. One way towards integration of the Shadow is to personify and befriend it. Again, to befriend the hysterical witch, the whore, the seducer, the killer, the criminal, the military in yourself is not a quick and easy task – but from integration into your personality Power will come. Power to be a true peacemaker, for instance. Power to be love, instead of preaching love.

Another intriguing quote from George Fox is when he says: “So ye in the power of the Lord God, see over that which brought destruction, in which is power; life and immortality come to light and captivate that which hid life and immortality. In which power of God, which goes over the power of darkness and was before it, ye see before all transgressions, and how all things were blessed.” Truth is eternal and unchangeable: it is the ground of our being, it is God. Staying in the truth therefore makes you immortal. The concept of immortality I find a particularly interesting one because it opens up a whole new field of consideration that merits attention in the second half of life. If there is such a thing as immortality, what in me is immortal, how does it relate to the body or not, and where does it go after this physical abode disintegrates?

Physicists, looking at the phenomena of discontinuity in nuclear processes, saw themselves confronted with the problem of a-causality, and relativity of time and space. In 1960, Jung suggested that the psyche had at least partially to be situated in an out-of-time/space continuum, which could point towards a parallel existence of those living in a time/space world and those living outside the time/space world, or even to a simultaneous existence in both worlds. Sometimes we have a suspicion, an intuition of this double existence. But these, I suppose, are all notions and do not concern us here.

That Fox is referring to a deeper level in the human psyche than that from which we normally act, becomes clear once more when he says: “That which calls your minds out of the earth, turns them towards God, where the pure babe is born in the virgin mind” and further “Therefore be rich in life and grace which will endure, ye who are heirs of life, and born of the womb of eternity”. The theme of the divine child born within is well known in most religious traditions and in psychology. It indicates the birth of a new personality, a stronger personality that has incorporated previously unknown aspects of one’s being and in doing so relocated as it were the center of power from where to act. That this is an ongoing process right up to the closing phase of life can be seen in individuals preparing to leave this world and often accounts for an extraordinary beauty.

The center of Power George Fox is referring to is indestructible because it is grounded in eternity, in something unchangeable, in the Truth which is God. There is no greater healing power than this experience because it is the power of God that will bring nature into his course, and not the way we thought it should go. It is also the center from which the three biblical offices of prophet, priest and king develop and start to function inwardly before eventually being shared in the community of Friends and beyond.

To experience the power to become children of God is no small thing. It is a very real power, also in its initial stages when the ego has not learned to step aside yet, which is far more difficult than we might like to believe. There is great temptation in Power, particularly if it can be used on the mental plane and becomes entangled with gender related forces. Fox was well aware of this and so were James Nayler, John Perrot and other early Friends. Therefore Fox insisted on the gospel order to prevent abuse of the power. It was a stroke of religious genius that inspired him to set out the structure for maintaining gospel order, as he called it, rather than let the movement run a free course which almost certainly would have veiled the light with its earthly ways in the end.

Truth leads us into unity with all beings. A clear test of the righteous use of the Power is in the fruits of your action: do they bring unity or division? If I get the feeling that the whole world is out to get me, there is something wrong with me. We will come to experience Unity with all Beings if we are faithful to the measure of Light given to us. So, George Fox again says, “be still and silent from thy own wisdom and wait for the Light to lighten you inwardly and you will come to know the witness, the teacher, and the guide in you which will lead you up to God”.

This is far more powerful than saying truth is what we are supposed to find out about ourselves and about others, as some people like to think today. Most people know themselves not to be totally good and nice and where they go wrong in their relationships. Truth comes with the promise that we can morally and ethically grow. The experience of the Truth empowers because it involves surrender of the small self to a higher authority. The leading power in our lives shifts from “me, myself” to an entity who stretches beyond me as beyond everybody else, and in doing that unites me with all people. “Feel the power in yourself to guide your minds up to God, giving you dominion over all weakness and strengthen and heals you, but only if you deny yourself and keep your own mind low.” We give this entity a name, God, the Spirit or a reference like “that of God in me” meaning the interface between the individual and a transcendental God, or no name at all, or simply consciousness, awareness. With the death of the old self, of the ego, we receive the power and the strength to stand against the old self. We will come to act in life from the experience of being on the way towards wholeness, of being one inside, instead of being pulled in so many directions. It brings us into unity with Friends in Meeting for Worship, with our fellow human beings in the world. It is this experience of unity that gives rise to what we know as our testimonies.

But that is for tomorrow.
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DAY 3:

FRIENDS: WORSHIP, DISCIPLINE AND TESTING

Meditation, beyond the initial stages of concentration, ultimately culminates in personal worship. An encounter with “the sacred” or “a higher moral authority”, fearsome and loving though it can be, will be part of it. It takes the individual to a spiritual peak experience that will give meaning and direction to one’s life. For very many people today this is enough and I think it is, on condition that the discipline of solitary meditating is sustainable which it often is not. Encounters with the divine can happen any time, anywhere outside meditation, but even then it seems as if meditation has helped to clear the path, as it were.

As Friends we have chosen to stand in a tradition that goes beyond the personal and that includes spiritual community with like-minded seekers. We prefer coming down from our individualistic mountains, like greater prophets before us: Moses, Buddha, Rama, Jesus, Fox , Mother Theresa, to name but a few. The nature of the appearance of the divine is related to your personality, as is the nature of your ethical consequences flowing from meeting for worship. Some of us are by nature action people, the do-ers, some are intellectual seekers, some are devotional worshippers and probably most of us a little bit of it all three.

We all respond to that of God in us in our own appropriate way. The relationship with the divine is a one-on-one relationship, but as Friends we are also part of one another. Therefore, the core of our spiritual experience is our Meeting for Worship, much more than our individual meditation. As a spiritual community we worship with the whole Christian community from which we sprang and with the spiritual world community with which we are related. For us the culmination of meditation is in the Meeting for Worship for which personal meditation has been a preparation. Accepting the Quaker discipline and the testing of the spirits, as St. Paul says, is a critical part of our Quaker identity. Without a continuing discipline and testing of our leadings, our community would soon collapse because people have an infinite capacity for self-deception and illusion. All experiments with the Inward Light, however good or dangerous they may be, have no validity for us as Friends unless they are tested in and by the established Quaker community. Not just because it is mentally safer for the individual because of the safety net the group provides, but because for us the testing consists of both the gathered Meeting for Worship and the Meeting for Business, held in the spirit of worship. Any group can be a therapy group of some sort and since the sixties we have seen a never-ending string of them pass by. Many of my generation had a taste of at least some of them and some were great fun. A Quaker Meeting is different in nature: it is a group of collective wisdom and is accepted as such by the community. Great fun is a characteristic of collective wisdom, I feel. If joy and laughter are missing in yourself or in your meeting, check.

It is an essential Christian insight that our relationship to the divine is a we-relationship, perhaps to the point that many Christian groups have also experienced the divine as a “we”. Quaker concerns are religious in the sense that “as we are saved, all can be saved” (Barclay, Fox). The experiences or the results of personal meditation have to be brought to the group of the worshipping community because it is there that moral and spiritual growth happens. Being in love with love is not enough, it has to come to the community; being in love with the Inward Light is not enough, it has to come to the community, it has to be submitted to the discipline and the testing of a fuller measure of Light. Changing the world and changing the other is not your responsibility – changing yourself is.

It can be very frustrating when a meeting for business does not carry an individual concern. I know, I have been there. If it is a true, – a non-ego – , concern, way will open and a much richer way forward will be given. Membership of the Religious Society of Friends goes beyond “feeling at home with Friends” in that it accepts discipline and testing as part of our worship. It is a tradition I can safely rest and grow in, which is a rare gift in this world. So, let us trust the Spirit and not try and carry all the misery of the world, dear Friends, after all, not even the Buddha himself could bring about world peace. (Which is not to say we should not continue to do good work where we can).