- Conceptual Convergence -

[Nature is an] expression of the Real, impulse of the infinite, transparent to Eternity, is merely a shining surface on an ocean of unending Spirit, dancing in the daylight of the divine, hiding in the night of ignorance. For those who do not know the Timeless, nature is all they have; for those who do not taste Infinity, nature serves its last supper. For those in need of redemption, nature tricks you into thinking it alone is real. But for those who have found release, nature is the radiant shell in which deeper truth resides. So it is – nature, mind, and spirit – Nirmanakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Dharmakaya – gross, subtle, and causal – are an eternal trinity in the folds of the Kosmos, never lost, never found.
- One Taste, 346

There are several different ways that we can state… two important functions of religion. The first function – that of creating meaning for the self – is a type of horizontal movement; the second function – that of transcending the self – is a type of vertical movement (higher or deeper, depending on the metaphor). The first I have named translation; the second, transformation.
With translation, the self is simply given a new way to think or feel about reality. The self is given a new belief – perhaps holistic instead of atomistic, perhaps forgiveness instead of blame, perhaps relational instead of analytic. The self then learns to translate its world and its being in the terms of this new belief or new language or new paradigm, and this new and enchanting translation acts, at least temporarily, to alleviate or diminish the terror inherent in the heart of the separate self.
But with transformation, the very process of translation itself is challenged, witnessed, undermined, and eventually dismantled. With typical translation, the self (or subject) is given a new way to think about the world (or objects); but with radical transformation, the self itself is inquired into, looked into, grabbed by its throat and literally throttled to death.
Put it one last way: with horizontal translation – which is by far the most prevalent, widespread, and widely shared function of religion – the self is, at least temporarily, made happy in its grasping, made content in its enslavement, made complacent in the face of the screaming terror that is in fact its innermost condition. With translation, the self goes sleepy into the world, stumbles numbed and near-sighted into the nightmare of samsara, is given a map laced with morphine with which to face the world. And this, indeed, is the common condition of a religious humanity, precisely the condition that the radical or transformative spiritual realizers have come to challenge and to finally undo.
For authentic transformation is not a matter of belief but of the death of the believer; not a matter of translating the world but of transforming the world; not a matter of finding solace but of finding infinity on the other side of death. The self is not made content; the self is made toast.
- One Taste, 304-305

In short, no direct experience can be fully captured in words. Sex can’t be put into words; you’ve either had the experience or you haven’t, and no amount of poetry will take its place. Sunsets, eating cake, listening to Bach, riding a bike, getting drunk and throwing up – believe me, none of those are captured in words.
And thus, so what if spiritual experiences can’t be captured in words either? They are no more and no less handicapped in this regard than any other experience. If I say “dog” and you’ve had the experience, you know exactly what I mean. If a Zen master says “Emptiness,” merely adding more and more words will never, under any circumstances, convey it.
- Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, 279

When you practice meditation, one of the first things you realize is that your mind – and your life, for that matter – is dominated by largely subconscious verbal chatter. You are always talking to yourself. And so, as they start to meditate, many people are stunned by how much junk starts running through their awareness. They find that thoughts, images, fantasies, notions, ideas, concepts virtually dominate their awareness. They realize that these notions have had a much more profound influence on their lives than they ever thought. In any case, initial meditation experiences are like being at the movies. You sit and watch all these fantasies and concepts parade by, in front of your awareness. But the whole point is that you are finally becoming aware of them. You are looking at them impartially and without judgement. You just watch them go by, the same as you watch clouds float by in the sky. They come, they go. No praise, no condemnation, no judgment – just “bare witnessing.” If you judge your thoughts, if you get caught up in them, then you can’t transcend them. You can’t find higher or subtler dimensions of your own being. So you sit in meditation, and you simply “witness” what is going on in your mind. You let the monkey mind do what it wants, and you simply watch.
And what happens is, because you impartially witness these thoughts, fantasies, notions and images, you start to become free of their unconscious influence. You are looking at them, so you are not using them to look at the world. Therefore you become, to a certain extent, free of them. And you become free of the separate self-sense that depended on them. In other words, you start to become free of the ego. This is the initial spiritual dimension, where the conventional ego “dies” and higher structures of awareness are “resurrected.” Your sense of identity naturally begins to expand and embrace the cosmos, or all of nature. You rise above the isolated mind and body, which might include finding a larger identity, such as with nature or the cosmos – “cosmic consciousness,” as R.M. Bucke called it. It’s a very concrete and unmistakable experience.
And, I don’t have to tell you, this is an extraordinary relief! This is the beginning of transcendence, or finding your way back home. You realize that you are one with the fabric of the universe, eternally. Your fear of death begins to subside, and you actually begin to feel, in a concrete and palpable way, the open and transparent nature of your own being.
- “Stages of Meditation,” 357-358

In this Theory of Everything, I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody – including me – has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace…
- A Theory of Everything, 140

[The teachings of the world's greatest yogis, saints, and sages,] and their contemplative endeavors, were (and are) transrational through and through. That is, although all of the contemplative traditions aim at going within and beyond reason, they all start with reason, start with the notion that truth is to be established by evidence, that truth is the result of experimental methods, that truth is to be tested in the laboratory of personal experience, that these truths are open to all those who wish to try the experiment and thus disclose for themselves the truth or falsity of the spiritual claims – and that dogmas or given beliefs are precisely what hinder the emergence of deeper truths and wider visions.
Thus, each of these spiritual or transpersonal endeavors (which we will carefully examine) claims that there exist higher domains of awareness, embrace, love, identity, reality, self, and truth. But these claims are not dogmatic; they are not believed in merely because an authority proclaimed them, or because sociocentric tradition hands them down, or because salvation depends upon being a “true believer.” Rather, the claims about these higher domains are a conclusion based on hundreds of years of experimental introspection and communal verification. False claims are rejected on the basis of consensual evidence, and further evidence is used to adjust and fine-tune the experimental conclusions.
These spiritual endeavors, in other words, are scientific in any meaningful sense of the word, and the systematic presentations of these endeavors follow precisely those of any reconstructive science.
- Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, 273

Start with general doubt, says [Saint] Augustine, and doubt absolutely everything you can. You will find that you can doubt the reliability of logic (it might be wrong), you can even doubt the reality of sense impressions (they might be a hallucination). But even in the most intense doubt, you are aware of the doubt itself; in your immediate awareness there is certainty, even if it is only a certainty that you are doubting – and you can never shake that certainty. Any truth in the exterior world can be doubted, but always there is the certainty of interior immediateness or basic Wakefulness; and God, said Augustine, lies in and through that basic Wakefulness, whose certainty is never, and can never be, actually doubted…
The path to ultimate Reality is not outside; it is inside. Starting with reason, one goes within reason, to the basic immediacy to its base, and that immediacy takes me beyond reason to the Ground of the Kosmos itself. So that finally, and ultimately, the Truth is not in me or inside me or egoically locked up in me, but is rather beyond me altogether: the ground of intimate presence opens up beyond me to the timeless and eternal Being of all being. Going within me, I am finally free of me: and that is a timeless liberation from the fetters of being only me.
- Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, 367-369