The Stream

One of your tasks is to ‘maintain alertness of consciousness in walking, in sitting, in eating, and in sleeping’ so you are continually aware; this is done by using the instinctive centre to sense. The body has no interest in spiritual work and continually interferes so for a long time you train the body to be obedient, like teaching a dog to jump through hoops on command. You quieten down associative thinking by repeating a mantra or a similar practice, and then the answer to a problem or question will be able to flow through to you because you have left space for something higher to be heard without interference. It is appropriate to work against psychological negativities – but instead of trying to do it all yourself, leave a little bit for God to do.

‘Spiritual knowledge having dawned in oneself … cultivate it with ceaseless vigilance.’ Vigilance is part of taking responsibility for your work – constantly striving to recognise and rid yourself of hindrances on the path. You might think about how well you are working and how you could put more impetus into your effort; without your understanding it, something within you – the real part – prompts you to do this. The ‘you’ in this case is the ego and name, but another part pushes you to go further. The ego has been conditioned for years by all manner of things so you have all kinds of ideas that you may not even be aware of. This creates complexity, which makes everything hard for you. Once you become simple you come to greater understanding and everything falls into place, you can relate more to your real part. Simplicity means everything on this esoteric path, but first you need to recognise your complexity.

These precepts are addressed to monks, yet the principle in precept 8 – to eradicate worldly ambition so that one is not dominated by worldly motives – certainly applies to people working in the fourth way, in life, because they have to overcome life temptations with nonattachment, which makes it harder for them than for the monk whose involvement with the world is less than that of people in ordinary life. When you begin work on yourself the situation you are in is the right one for you, but as your commitment increases the time comes when you see that you have to stop doing things in the same old way.

When Neil [Abdullah as a younger man] first started working on himself he had a large successful business. After some time he became strongly aware that his activities were making his ego bigger and bigger, so he decided to give up his business and all that went with it. This was very difficult to do. He did not have anyone to advise him and tried to find his own way through the situation. Now Abdullah can tell people that it is better to learn to continue to carry out what they are doing in life but with less attachment; they can do this if they are helped to see when they are too attached. Worldly temptations, such as those mentioned in the last two precepts, will always come along, but as a person becomes stronger, more balanced, he will be better fitted to withstand them.

Precept 9 advises ‘abandoning attachment to visible material things (which are transitory and unreal)’. To get a real taste of understanding about the Hindu concept of maya, or illusion, can take a long time. The third, material dimension is real if you are living in the third dimension – if you drive a car into a brick wall the effect on the car and your body is no illusion, but your spirit, which is part of the fifth dimension, is not affected.

The third and fifth dimensions are like separate watertight compartments – there is no crossing between them; you have a body because that is what God in his wisdom put our spirit into while we are on Earth. By struggling against the negativities of the body, which have dense vibrations, you raise your vibration to a finer form. When the vibration is raised sufficiently it can be used to feed your spirit. This is done by the third force of the Sun – the Work in some form. You cannot do this yourself. Your part is the effort to raise your vibration, exemplified by ‘… preventing the three doors to knowledge (the body, the speech, and the mind) from remaining spiritually undisciplined’.

The Work is the fifth dimension, yet it is always here among us in the third dimension as the source of objective morality and the intermediary between dimensions. When you follow this Work, you are part of it spiritually, but not in any concrete or material way – your spirit is quite separate from your body.

‘One momentary glimpse of Divine Wisdom … is more precious than any amount of knowledge …’ Buddhist meditation was intended to lead to samadhi, a state beyond ordinary thinking; if done properly, the resulting silence would enable a glimpse of divine wisdom. To experience continuous samadhi ‘wherein thought-processes are still present’ is of less value than a single moment of true samadhi. Many people who practise meditation are often merely wool-gathering when they think they have a silence. Feeling emotional and overintense about God can produce ‘sensual bliss’, a kind of high – this is one of the traps on the path. A state arrived at through the senses is not true samadhi, but could lead up to it. ‘Nirvanic bliss’, arising from a completely different source, is oneness with God, the highest state that can be achieved.

Precepts 8 and 9 again relate to the pairs of opposites, emphasising that discernment is needed to see though third-dimensional appearances. ‘The smallest good deed done unselfishly is more precious than innumerable good deeds done selfishly.’ Motive is everything. A conscious sacrifice, on no matter what scale, is of very high quality – it is a quality of God. A conscious sacrifice by just one person is worth more than the involuntary sacrifices and suffering of thousands of unconscious people. This is exemplified in the gospel story of Christ’s crucifixion.

The precepts state the possibility for humanity; any person can raise himself up to a higher state of consciousness. People who have ‘entered the Stream’ progress at different rates, passing through different states during many lifetimes. At every stage there is order in the way their development proceeds.

Precept 4 states the hope for humanity in that enlightened beings return to this world to help others, although their influence is rarely recognised at the time. In selfless service they elect to come back, or are directed to do so by a higher force. Such beings would be at the stage of advanced man No. 5 or man No. 6 and do not need to come back for another life. The Buddha himself was such a man.

‘… there existeth … protective spiritual influences which make possible the deliverance of men …’ When you deliberately choose to put yourself under the protection of the Dharma – the Work – you are under divine protection. This means that things open up to you as you progress. The onus is on you to remain under protection by continuing to do your part, persevering with your work; if you lapsed into sleep things would stop opening up.

The biggest mistake that humans make is believing that they are the body: they create duality by thinking that they are something separate from God. The Lord Buddha broke away from ideas accepted in his time of God and personal soul – ‘soul doctrine’ – because he understood that the idea of a separate soul caused people to remain fragmented.

Your body is part of the Earth; when you physically die it goes back to the Earth, but the essential part of you continues. The spirit cannot die. Your original face is constant, unchanging in its essence, its reality; it goes through life after life, having different experiences in different bodies, building towards the totality of what it has to become in order to merge with God. When a man achieves universal vision there is no duality in his awareness. He is absorbed in the One, lost in it, part of it. This is possible only because his ego has been destroyed. It is difficult to convey an idea of these fifth-dimensional states. Abdullah does the best he can with words, but words can mess up the picture – each person really has to get a taste himself of what it is all about.

You have the choice to be lost in the body or to raise your consciousness by working towards self-perfection, taking yourself out of the picture, attempting to come closer to the realisation that you are not your body. If you can gain compassion, it will act as a neutralising force for the identifications of the third and fourth dimensions.

Precept 10 contains our hope: ‘… the Path to Freedom … is ever-existent, ever unchanged, and ever open to those who are ready to enter upon it.’