Spirituality and sensuality

Spirituality is not merely something to be thought, it is something to be lived. It does not begin in books or in concepts, but in a direct, intimate experience, where the senses themselves can cease to be turned only toward the outer world. Seeing, hearing, feeling differently: it is in this sense that spirituality can become a form of inner sensuality.

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Spirituality is not merely something to be thought, it is something to be lived. It does not begin in books or in concepts, but in a direct, intimate experience, where the senses themselves can cease to be turned only toward the outer world. Seeing, hearing, feeling differently: it is in this sense that spirituality can become a form of inner sensuality.

Knowledge

"Doing is worth more than saying." (Bhaktimàrga, 195)

When it comes to spirituality, many are tempted to consider that this domain of the mind is self-sufficient and that thought is its privileged tool. They then accumulate knowledge and concepts. For them, thought is a furnace and knowledge its coal.

They explore the mind through intellectual meditations, seeking to understand the very nature of Man in order, they believe, to eventually transcend it.

This is a dangerous path, where the line between intelligence and confusion can easily be crossed. Intelligence and its use in thought are useful, even indispensable, when it comes to solving the practical problems of life. Still, one must remain master of one's thought, and there, things become more difficult. The mind does not produce only what is useful. It also produces fears, projections, certainties, interpretations, and an entire inner world that one sometimes ends up mistaking for reality.

The domain of the soul

Spirituality is the domain of the soul, and the soul does not belong to the mind. Man is not made only of a body and a mind. There also exists within him a spiritual dimension, that of the soul, which is not known in the same way as the objects of the world, nor by thought alone.

The more a child grows, the more his cognitive abilities and physical autonomy develop, the more he turns toward the world. And the world is vast, as vast as Man is small. A single existence is not enough to explore it.

Since the physical world is the most evident to the senses, it ends up eclipsing the more subtle world of the soul, that of spirituality. So Man goes through the world missing an entire, essential part of what he is. He lives mainly guided by the mind and by senses turned outward.

He knows the world, or tries to know it, but he knows far less of this inner dimension, without which something essential escapes him.

No need for theory

Spirituality is not a theory, it is a practice. The texts on this blog are not meant to add a little more knowledge to what you already possess. They are meant to encourage you, to inspire you to live a spiritual life. The Path can help you with this, if you ask to receive this transmission of meditation techniques that allows one to begin a regular practice of consciousness.

This spiritual life is not another life. It is "ordinary" life with consciousness added. Consciousness of what? Of that fundamental harmony of the Whole that certain traditions have called the Tao.

This path has existed for a very long time under various names, depending on the era, the country, and the language of those who practiced it. Forms change, words change, traditions take shape, but The Path recognizes behind these differences one and the same fundamental practice.

The name "The Path," in its current usage, is recent, even though the practice it designates is ancient. It allows it to be distinguished more clearly from names inherited from other eras and other traditions. Yet the word itself is nothing new: in ancient Chinese, Tao means precisely "the path."

Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Patañjali, Jesus, Guru Nanak, and others did not teach labels. Those came later. Each spoke in the language and context of his own time, but all pointed, in their own way, to a knowledge that does not come from books alone.

The Path is neither Taoist, nor Buddhist, nor Hindu, nor Christian. It does, however, show affinities with certain intuitions of Jesus, Buddha, Lao-Tzu, and Patañjali, as well as with Advaita Vedanta, Vishishtadvaita, the yoga of origins that predates the Yoga-Sutra, the Vedas, and the Upanishads, without merging with any of these traditions.

The Path is not today's yoga as we know it in the West either. The yoga spoken of by Krishna or Patañjali is not reduced to postures, physical exercises, or what is commonly called yoga today. Modern yoga, as taught and practiced in the West, has many virtues, but it is a different matter. The Original Yoga of The Path is a practice, a discipline of consciousness.

In the end, the name matters little: practice comes first.

There is of course nothing wrong with being intelligent or educated. Intelligence is useful for many things, including understanding, after the fact, what one has lived. But it must stay in its place.

The spirit must illuminate the mind

It is meditation that must illuminate intelligence, not the other way around: first one practices, then one understands. Sitting down and reflecting serves no purpose where spirituality, as understood here, is concerned.

Meditating, here, does not mean reflecting at length on God, on the meaning of life, on oneself, or on death. That kind of reflection has its merits, that sense of the word does exist, but it is not the meditation in question here. Meditation as taught and practiced on The Path is a practice, an experience of consciousness.

There is no need to read Sanskrit, Aramaic, ancient Greek, or Latin in order to live an intense spiritual life. Knowledge is not the same as knowing. One can have read entire libraries, know the doctrines, the schools, and the Sanskrit words, and yet know nothing intimately of peace. Conversely, a very simple person can have direct experience of it.

When it is said that a man knows his wife biblically, it means he knows her in the flesh, intimately. It is the same for the spiritual dimension of life: one knows it intimately. It is in this sense that the spirituality of The Path belongs to the domain of sensuality: a sensuality turned inward.

The senses can turn inward

The eyes can see more than what is outside oneself: they can see within. The ears can hear more than the sounds of the outside world: they can also hear within, the nada.

There also exists a way of feeling that does not depend on outer objects. The faculties by which we ordinarily perceive the world can be turned another way.

Since childhood, all our attention has been turned outward. Yet it is enough to know how to turn that attention back inward. This is, in particular, what this transmission makes possible.

To see, hear, and feel in this way, it is not necessary to know the Holy Scriptures, even though reading them can hold some interest. Nor is it necessary to reflect. To understand, afterward, is another matter: intelligence can be of some use. But things must be taken in the right order: first contemplation, then understanding. Experience comes first. Words come after.

When experience is present, intelligence can illuminate, connect, and recognize what others have tried to express before us. But if one begins only with words, concepts, and doctrines, one risks spending one's life standing at the door, arguing about what might lie behind it.

Spirituality begins when one enters oneself.

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