Part III: The Spiritual Waves Respond

The World Soul

Intro Prologue Part I Part II Part III

     "All right, dear ones, I'll do the best I can. In third tier, we have four basic waves of consciousness--psychic, subtle, causal, nondual. I'll start by trying to describe the psychic wave, and then its likely response to the terrorist attack." She closed her eyes and seemed to enter some sort of state, or some part of herself, and her skin became even more translucent than usual.

      "The psychic wave, the wave beyond turquoise, begins to understand that the universe is not merely physical, it is psychophysical. It therefore moves from the turquoise idea of a cosmic spirituality or cosmic unity to a direct experience of that unity--a direct cosmic consciousness. As 'far out' as that sounds, the cross-cultural evidence for the existence of this state is overwhelming; some of the greatest philosophers and psychologists the world over have testified to its reality--from William James to Henry David Thoreau to, yes, even hard-headed Bertrand Russell. In fact, this experience is often the basis of what is known as nature mysticism.

     "But every wave has its healthy and unhealthy forms, and nature mystics often mistake their experience as being a unity with nature as opposed to human culture. Emerson corrected this error by referring to 'nature-and-nation' mysticism: in other words, the World Soul, the Over-Soul, is the divine ground of both nature and culture. In healthy nature-nation mysticism, you are one with both lakes and windmills, clouds and cars, horses and horsepower. Of course you will work to minimize the human footprint on the biosphere, but you don't do so by absolutizing the biosphere.

      "A profound insight tends to come with nature-nation mysticism: in some deep, awesome, mysterious way, everything that happens is all of a piece. There is indeed something called 'good' over here, and something called 'bad' over there. But both of them are necessary pieces of this great work of Art called manifestation. Just as a beautiful painting has both light and dark shades, so this world necessarily has both good and evil, both pleasure and pain, both life and death: you could not see this world without both, it would not even exist as a manifest event.

      "Now the average person pursues happiness by trying to find one-half of the pairs of opposites: by trying to find pleasure without pain, life without death, good without evil, health without sickness, left without right, inside without outside, up without down. Not the mystic, who instead rejoices in the unity of the opposites, the vast play of pairs as they erotically unite throughout the manifest realm, their secret joy lighting up the night with screams of their uncontainable delight.

      "The great mystical texts, both East and West, always speak, in hushed terms, of the liberated one, the enlightened one, the one who is awakened, the one who understands the ultimate secret of the universe. And you know how this enlightened one is described? He or she, it is said, is ' freed from the pairs .' Freed from the pairs of opposites, freed from the dualistic nightmare of tearing the universe in two and trying to identify with only half of reality while running away from the other half. You tear yourself in half as well, and that torn and fractured condition is known by many names, the most common of which is suffering. But wholeness lies in the other direction, freed from the pairs altogether.

     "And so the secret message rings out, from the Bhagavad Gita in the East:

      Content with getting what arrives of itself

      Passed beyond the pairs

      Not attached to success nor failure,

      Even acting, he is not bound.

      He is to be recognized as eternally free

      Who neither loathes nor craves;

      For he that is freed from the pairs,

      Is known as the awakened one.

     "To the Gospel of St. Thomas in the West:

     Jesus said to them:

      When you make the two one, and

      when you make the inner as the outer

      and the outer as the inner and the above

      as the below, and when

      you make the male and the female into a single one,

      Then you shall enter the Kingdom.

     "To the incomparable Lao Tzu, sage of all humankind:

      Is there a difference between yes and no?

      Is there a difference between good and evil?

      Must I fear what others fear? What nonsense!

      "You see, dear souls, it's true: the great, great Joy of the nature-nation mystic resides in the blissful union of the opposites. He or she does not rejoice in the light conquering the dark, or the good conquering evil, or life conquering death, but in the mysterious play of light and dark miraculously held together in the Joy of manifestation itself. Somehow, everything is eternally right. No matter how dark the dark, how painful the painful, how evil the evil, the mystic knows that it is all a part of the great painting of Life. Even while we fight to lessen evil--and we should--and punish wrongdoing--and we should--and work ceaselessly to right wrongs--and we should--there is a sense that the world is Profoundly Okay. As dear Aldous Huxley put it, 'And then there is the sense that in spite of Everything --I suppose this is the Ultimate Mystical conviction--in spite of Pain, in spite of Death, in spite of Horror, the universe is in some way All Right, capital A, capital R....'

      "People who haven't had this experience of cosmic consciousness often get confused at this point. They think that because you are alive to the basic All Rightness of the universe, you shouldn't be upset by the terrorist attack. Just the opposite! Because you are grounded in the unshakeable security of the perfect All Rightness of the world, you can afford to get totally, absolutely, crushingly upset. You won't weep for the victims, you won't weep for yourself, you will weep for all humanity, it all comes pouring through you with a pain and intensity that will melt your neurons, blister your skin, tear your eyeballs out of their sockets: you will cry for every single sentient being that ever lived, cry for every lion who lost a cub, for every husband who ever lost a wife, for every mother who ever lost a son, for every loss in every conceivable world--it will hurt with a pain so unbearably raw you will throw yourself flat on the ground and beg God and the Goddess to please, please make it stop.

      "And yet--paradoxically, mysteriously, profoundly--under all the horrible, horrible, horrible pain is that unfaltering Joy in the basic All Rightness of it all. The quiet bliss of the simple feeling of Being is your constant companion; you are one with the sun and the moon and the radiant stars; one with the great cities, the planes and trains and automobiles, one with all the wonders of manifestation arising not around you, but within you--a Joy that is so overpowering you often find it hard to breathe, a Thrill that runs the length of your body, toe to head, and then disappears into the heavens happy to hear from you. You hold the earth in the palm of your hand, bless the galaxies adorning your crown, cry as the rain on nature and nations alike. Your compassionate tears and empathic tortures all arise in the vast Security and swirling Joy of the World Soul that is your own Over-Soul, and the Over-Soul will whisper gently in your ear: 'I will be with you, even until the ends of the world. How could anything ever be amiss?'"

      Margaret Carlton was quietly weeping as Joan talked, and I kept wondering, as I always did in Joan's presence, just how such a one could really move among us....

      "And you will rage, too, rage the way rage is supposed to be felt when you are no longer afraid of hurting the world, for the world in its basic All Rightness cannot be hurt, and therefore you can afford to feel the rage--feel all of it, feel every rage that has ever been felt: the rage of the father whose daughter is killed, the wrath of the person whose best friend is murdered, the absolute fury of a husband whose wife is raped and whose body abandoned: you are the Soul, the Over-Soul of humanity, and thus you will feel everything humanity has ever felt--and you will let it all in, because you can afford to. Your rage will find infinity, your blood will circulate plutonium, your heart will feel like Hiroshima, you will suffer wrath and hatred and the incandescent desire to kill and kill a million times over. You will eat it all, you will take it all in, you will open up and stand back and the entire course of nature and nations will come rushing through you, savaging your psyche and leaving the insides of your soul torn and horribly bleeding--because you can afford to. You are not letting in just the light, just the love, just the caring--those are all dualistic opposites, just as rancid, by themselves, as their mirror images of hatred and evil and rage. No, you are letting it all in, letting the universe itself in, because, in fact... you... are... the... universe--in all its wonderfully mysterious play of light and dark, joy and sorrow, cheers and fears, terror and delight.

     "But now you understand the secret union of the pairs, the ultimate oneness of all the opposites, and you will never again play the game of looking for light without dark, pleasure without pain, good without evil, left without right, up without down. Freed of the opposites, you rest in the unshakeable Confidence of the basic All Rightness of the entire universe, and through the vast open spaciousness that you now are, the opposites will come and go, moving to a destiny that is no longer exclusively yours. You are now every nation and every nature that has ever existed--your Heart is that big, dear souls, your Heart is that big.

     "How could you possibly be just an American, how could you possibly be just a terrorist? You are all of them, here and now, in a Heart that embraces the entire world and chooses neither this side nor that in the eternal game of the opposites. The rage of the American, the desperation of the terrorist, all come pouring through you in a rushing roiling earthquake that only a Heart as big as the cosmos could possibly contain.

     "And yet, and yet... at the very same time, you certainly can recognize relative right and wrong--the opposites are united, not obliterated--and therefore you will work as hard as you can to do good, avoid evil, right injustices, heal the sick, shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, curb imperialism, eradicate terrorism. It is just that you will never, never, never again believe that the play of opposites in themselves is anything but a passing nightmare meant to frighten children."

Toward an Integral Response

      Joan paused for a long time. The light shifted in the room, seemed to come from her; but then, Joan could bend space--that's the first thing I ever noticed about her, in that miraculous first day I stumbled into Integral Center and succumbed to the chain of events that would soon end my life, setting my soul afloat in destiny's display.

      Joan looked at everybody present. "Perhaps we should pause here and discuss an integral approach to terrorism that would include not just the spiral up to turquoise but also the transpersonal realms? Then we can come back and discuss the rest of the transpersonal realms themselves. Yes?"

      "Yes," said Margaret Carlton. "I've cried enough for right now."

      Lesa leaned over, squeezed Margaret's shoulder, smiled. She looked at Hazelton. "Joan, how do you see a stage or even state like cosmic consciousness affecting practical solutions to these problems? Many people view these experiences as too weird, far out, spooky, or occult to have any practical meaning."

      "Well, dear souls, as far as I can tell, in practical terms, this does translate into one action item especially, relating to the terrorist attack. The basic aim of second tier is, of course, to honor and integrate the entire spiral of development-- the Prime Directive . In other words, it is the health of the overall Spiral, and not any particular wave or meme, that is the prime ethical imperative. Well, third tier is the actual source of the Prime Directive--the divine ground of the radiant desire to include all sentient beings in an integral embrace of Freedom and Fullness. And that means, in terms of practical recommendations for courses of action, any experience of third tier will strongly reinforce the Prime Directive.

     "In other words, the best course of action is that action which satisfies the most number of value memes across the full Spectrum, but apportioned by turquoise informed by third tier."

     "Whoa, that's a mouthful!" Fuentes laughed. "One at a time, for dummies like..., well, I was about to say 'me,' but that can't be right. For dummies like Derek."

     Derek almost smiled. "You're a yuck a minute, Carla."

     "Okay," Joan said, "there is another way to state the Prime Directive: it is actually the same thing as the Basic Moral Intuition--namely: protect and promote the greatest depth for the greatest span. This Prime Directive does not say, act to protect and promote ONLY depth, or only the highest memes--not only would that represent less than 2% of the world's population, it overlooks the fact that the junior memes are components of the senior, and thus to ignore the junior is to kill the senior. (That rancid elitism is the Auschwitz move.) Nor does it say to protect and promote ONLY span, or only the lowest common denominator, because without the senior memes, the juniors loose much significance. (That would be the Gulag move.) No, the Prime Directive says to act so as to promote the greatest depth for the greatest span in all sentient beings--promote the health of the entire Spiral--and exactly how to do that is the great province of moral intuition and practical wisdom, because there is no one single, best, instrumental answer. This is not calculus; it is the messy world of human flesh and its interactions.

     "But we can see the general idea, namely: somehow try to balance the wisdom of the senior memes with the fundamental importance of the junior memes, for none of them can be ignored, devalued, or short-changed without dire consequences for the entire Spiral itself. The best course of action therefore has something for everybody--something for every meme--but gently tilted toward actions inspired by Eros, or a tilt towards the higher, wider, deeper waves of awareness acting for everybody.

     "Thus, as for what specific course of action to take in response to the terrorists, a more integral approach would recommend actions that can be justified based on second-tier moral principles informed by third-tier insight--namely, the Prime Directive--but formulated and worded in a way to resonate to some degree with all of the memes, bottom to top, and their values and needs at this time. What we want to do is take actions that would satisfy as many memes as possible, although not for the reasons given by any one meme (e.g., we might decide, based on second-tier moral reasoning, that it is justifiable to kill the terrorists, an action that would satisfy both red and blue, but an action that ideally would not be motivated by their reasons, namely, revenge. This will become clearer as we proceed).

     "Very briefly, here are the basic needs of the major waves or memes and the types of responses to the attack that they might prefer:

     Beige--physiological necessities, water, food, shelter, safety; needs to reestablish basic physical security disrupted by the attack.

     Purple--emotional bonding, vital needs, organic identity, tribal or familial; needs to reestablish emotional 'us' versus 'them'; will retaliate to do so.

     Red--dominance, control over rival groups; would like to kill the terrorists, period. Any reason will do, just kill the bastards, which will reestablish my control.

     Blue--need for certainty and stability (not merely physical, but in terms of values and principles); the terrorists threaten eternal truths and need to be vanquished; a crusade against evil-doers; rally around the flag, around God, around nationalism: united we stand, divided we fall; this is a simple case of good versus evil--the terrorists need to be removed because the attack on the good demands retribution; only by 'bringing them to justice' can the one good and true way be reestablished.

     Orange--need for individual achievement, excellence, progress, profit. The attack was an attack on civilization itself and an attack on freedom itself; the terrorists need to be apprehended; whether we actually kill them or not is less important than the fact that we strategically reestablish free market, business, democracy, industry, progress, profit.

     Green--need for caring community, sharing of feelings, subjective bonding, self-expression, trying to honor multiple viewpoints; the attack is an opportunity to join together to reestablish community and reaffirm peace and nonviolence, which is the only correct stance. We should have love in our hearts, not military retaliation, which will only increase oppression and further aggravate the problem.

     Second-Tier--acting with a view of the patterned whole, how can I best facilitate the health of the entire Spiral? Act to support and promote actions based on the Prime Directive--i.e., actions that promote the greatest depth for the greatest span. Will support military action if in support of the Prime Directive (i.e., it takes Krishna-Arjuna's view of military action if warranted, as does Third Tier).

     Third-Tier--in the basic All Rightness of the Kosmos, all things arise exactly as they should; and therefore, paradoxically, I must work even harder for the health of the entire Spiral. There are no others to save ; therefore, I vow to save them all . In practice, supports the Prime Directive.

     Joan finished the rundown and paused.

     "So," Charles reflected, "it looks like, on the specific issue of possible military retaliation, all the memes except green would support it."

     "Well," Jefferson replied, "second and third tier would support it if warranted . That mean that it can be strategically justified using at least yellow cognition. The problem is, as an old member of the Rangers, I'm just not sure that we can be very effective militarily in this case. If the Russians couldn't whip Afghanistan, I don't know what makes us think we could.

     "Let me add that military action ideally would be sanctioned by appropriate international legal bodies--but since the United Nations has already done so, we will take that for granted. And in the best of all possible worlds, we would simply apprehend bin Laden, take him to the Hague, toss him in jail with Slobo Milosevic and other fun-loving thugs, and try the lot of them according to international law. But we're a little short on InterPol in northern Afghanistan, so we have to go in ourselves; I'm just worried about how well we will succeed with that. In other words, morally and legally, military action might be justified; militarily, I'm not sure it is."

     "At the same time," Margaret Carlton interrupted, "just because a majority of the memes want to take military action doesn't mean it's right."

     "Yes, but that's not what we're saying," Joan reminded her. "The greatest depth for the greatest span means that second and third tier responses are given greater weight; both of them agree that if warranted, military action might be advisable, because in certain cases not using violence leads directly to greater unchecked violence. The question now is, can military action be justified, not on moral and legal grounds--it can--but on tactical and strategic grounds--and Mark is saying that he doesn't think so."

     "I'm afraid the most we can say about military action," Jefferson offered, "is that none of us has access to the types of information that would allow us to make an informed judgment. President Bush is spending several hours on the phone with President Putin, and you can imagine that he is getting an earful on the Afghan situation. Plus all the secret military intelligence, troop movements, military strength, you name it. Any decision we would make would be woefully ignorant here. I am worried, however, about an endless morass of ineffective military action. I hope that the likes of Colin Powell would make sure that any military action fits with his own doctrine of swift, effective action or no action at all."

     "Perhaps we can say this," Morin suggested. "We have established our belief that (1) as a last resort, military action to take out the terrorists might be morally justified in this case; (2) if strategically feasible, it would also fit with the needs of all of the memes except green--although each meme, following its own values, would give a different reason for the retaliation, which is fine. In this particular case, effective military action as a last resort might therefore be consonant with an integral approach. Agreed?"

     Everybody nodded. "You always hope, however"--Joan spoke for all present--"that it never has to come to that. There are easier ways to do your duty and remember the Lord."

     "And we shouldn't forget the overall or global situation here." Fuentes looked around the room; she seemed almost angry. "The causes for terrorism are AQAL--that is, we can only understand the causes of terrorism by taking an 'all-quadrant, all-level, all-lines' look at the entire situation, here and abroad, because a huge number of factors, a massive number of factors--in all the quadrants, the levels, the lines--have come together to create the problem. A simple solution--bomb the hell out of their Lower-Right quadrant and freeze their Lower- Right bank accounts--is about as fragmented and idiotic as you can get. It's not the military action that bothers me, it's the pathetically fragmented and partial nature of the understanding that produced that action and that thinks such an action will permanently fix much of anything.

     "Globalization--meaning in this case rampant, market-speculative, profit-driven, boardroom-governed capitalism--is itself partly to blame for terrorism. We did not create poverty or the terrible conditions of the Third and Fourth worlds, much as some would like to lay rancorous blame in that direction; but our actions have contributed to them, even if unwittingly (though sometimes, alas, wittingly).

      "Usama bin Laden is a machine created and built by the CIA to fight their war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, fueled by an opium/heroin trade, sponsored in part by the CIA, that at the time produced 1/3 of the world's entire supply of illegal narcotics, much of the funds funneled to the Mujheddin to fight the CIA's fights. Well, those cocks have come home to roost, eh?

      "Some of which explains, none of which excuses, the terrorists acts. My point is simply that the AQAL situation--or numerous factors in the quadrants and levels all around the world--will continue to produce more bin Ladens until that complex integral is broken into at any of its major points and organically re-grown from within. We might be able to root out these particular terrorists, but we cannot root out the red and blue waves of development . And unless those waves can grow up in an AQAL situation that encourages their healthy version at every point, then these types of terrorist actions are just the start of a very unpleasant, police-state century. Watch for anthrax in the mail, sarin gas in the Boston subway, smallpox bombs in Washington, plutonium in L.A.'s drinking water."

      "Carla nailed it," said Morin. "The problems are AQAL, the solutions must be. But this does not mean what the average green-meme thinks--namely, that if American just stopped its nasty capitalistic imperialism that everything would be okay. Remove America completely from the world picture, and some 90% of the problems would still remain, because at this point the lion's share of development rests with the interiors of the world's cultures themselves. In some cases, America's economic actions actually help countries move from blue to orange; in other cases, our actions dampen or prevent the basic needs of lower memes getting effectively met. But that is only a pitifully small slice of a much bigger picture.

      "By focusing on America's exterior actions, we therefore lose sight of the interior development that these cultures must undertake in any event. Obviously, all four quadrants play a role here, so if America's actions decisively disenfranchise others economically (LR), then that will make their cultural growth (LL) more difficult. But little we can do will positively foster that interior growth unless the population of a culture is ready and willing to do so. We can give Lower-Right quadrant aid--and I think we should--and we can desist in certain Lower-Right actions that clearly harm others as shown by a truly integral (not merely flatland) analysis--and of course we should in those cases cease and desist--but none of that addresses the Left-Hand quadrants where the real action eventually must be enacted. That is the part of the integral picture that is so distressingly untouched by tirades on economic globalization.

     "It is not that IC's blind spot is the Left, as is often said by the Left, but that the Left's blind spot is the interior dimensions, a blind spot that leads them to catastrophic analyses--analyses almost as blind as those of the Right. What has yet to be done, what is still screaming to be done, is an AQAL overview that includes the best of both and jettisons their frankly psychotic fragmentations. Both of them are on to important if partial truths, but partial truths that, when paraded as the whole, demonstrably cause more harm than good. You cannot go into a situation and say, 'Here are some important economic, Lower-Right problems that we will fix,' and fix those problems without addressing the corresponding Left-Hand quadrants, and expect anything but absolute disappointment. I don't know if I'm more furious with the Left or the Right, or the neo-Left or the neo-Right, or the neo-Lefto-Righto-retro, or the whole rotten lot of them!" Fuentes looked up, smiled, and rolled her eyes. "Although, you know, some of my best friends are...."

      "The importance of the Lower Left," agreed Carlton, "and frankly, when it comes to the Lower Left, there is a bit of a problem with Islam. For various reasons, Islam is perhaps the most recalcitrant blue-meme structure now in existence. Historically, Islam rarely developed a self-critical hermeneutics, as did other monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism), and thus it tended to remain medieval in its outlook. Contrary to what is being said, the Koran specifically condones--and on occasional commands--the killing of unbelievers. For the fundamentalist core, 'Islam' means 'peace' only if you believe in Allah and his one and only prophet, Mohammed. And 'Muslim' means 'surrender,' but surrender only to Allah and the ethnocentric commands of the Koran. Obviously there are many wonderful exceptions; but just as obviously, Islam--which was vital in moving red tribes to blue bonding via violent means if necessary (a completely adaptive and evolutionary move at that time)--is perhaps the most problematic of all the world's ancient blue mythologies. There is no breathing room, there are few openings for escaping from that red/blue base into blue/orange worldcentric perspectives. This is why it is imperative that more developed Islamic scholars and leaders come forth, publicly begin the self-critical stance so often lacking in previous Muslim exegeses, and rely increasingly on the Neoplatonic Sufi trends present but often buried in that tradition. If this happens, then the shining potential of the great Muslim mystics--al Hallaj to the incomparable Rumi--might find a happy home in today's world."

      "I don't know enough about the Koran to comment on that," Powell said. "It sounds plausible. But I would like to say that I agree completely with Carla in that the root causes are AQAL, and therefore any true solution must be. I don't oppose military action; what bothers me is how alarmingly partial and fragmented that action is. Nor do I really mind that America will gear up its huge Capitalist Machinery to grind the daylights out of those who disagree with it--I don't mind because in the real world, the memes do what the memes do. You know, memes will be memes; deal with it.

     "What I mind--Mark was saying this--what I mind is that in our positions of leadership there are no second-tier leaders, no integral politicians, no men and women of global--in the good sense--vision. America, as America, needs to strengthen its blue bonding, and Bush is doing a wonderful job of that, since he himself resonates so deeply with blue. A green-meme President would probably be a disaster right now. But so much better than either would be a second-tier politician, an integral politician, who would let the entire Spiral speak through him or her and to the world at large. You know what they call the yellow meme? 'The universal donor.' Know why? Because it can intuitively understand each and every first-tier meme, meet each of them where it finds them, then give them want they need. A president of such caliber would not merely be a blue-note president or a green-note president, but a universal donor, giving to each what is needed, taking from each what can be contributed. And most of all--most of all--such an integral leader would start to see the big picture around the globe and begin to take AQAL actions that would ever-so-slowly nudge the world in the direction of Eros and basic sanity."

      "That's a stunning vision, Lesa, but an impossibly tall order, just impossible."

      "Well, better to light one integral candle than curse the first-tier darkness."

      "Sister, yes!" yelled Jefferson, slapping the table and laughing.

     "An additional option, on a smaller scale, but still interesting," Van Cleef added, "has been circulated on the Net by a young integral thinker--name of Dinan--he's really a little snot-nosed shit but I'm very fond of him. He's so smart, so intelligent, so arrogant, with an ego so big it has its own zip code, good looking, so obnoxious, so know-it-all, so wise-ass that he reminds me of..., he reminds me of..., oh yes, me!" Everybody laughed. "I'm pulling the boy's leg; he's a terrific dude. Anyway, he suggests a philanthropic bounty on bin Laden's head, and perhaps that of other terrorists. He writes, 'By this I mean when somebody kills bin Laden and/or various allies known to engage in terrorist acts, they get not just a personal reward ($5 million bounty, which already exists) but the U. S. and other countries will put money (amounting to several hundred million dollars) toward a Better World Fund or something like that, which would go toward a variety of defined philanthropic efforts:

     (1) Economic and infrastructure development in Third-World countries. This appeases orange in the service of moving toward a global commons

     (2) Social, environmental, and peace development projects which would appeal more to green

     (3) Killing the terrorists appeases red

     (4) Reasserting our moral superiority in the context of eradicating evil appeases blue

     (5) Doing this in the service of creating a more cohesive, developed, and safe environment for business in the world without needlessly wasting resources, human life, and money to do so appeases orange

     (6) Using this an opportunity to redress past wrongs and move toward peace appeases green

     (7) And keeping the focus on moving toward a global commons, ethically and morally, helps all the vMemes, eventually.'"

     Van Cleef looked up. "Any thoughts?"

     "I'm very fond of the general idea," Lesa Powell said. "It clearly shows second-tier thinking moved by the Prime Directive. A heavy green tone, but he's just a kid, so what the heck. And I am impressed with the attempt to find a truly integral approach that speaks to the greatest depth for the greatest span. My only concern is the pragmatics of the idea. It would never get through Congress."

     "Yes," Jefferson concurred. "The major problem with this type of suggestion--but really, almost none of our suggestions get over this hurdle, either--is that it rather thoroughly fails to take into account the single greatest difficulty with integral politics and integral solutions in general: namely, they are solutions coming from a level of consciousness that is shared by less than 2% of the population.

     "We all know the stats here: approximately 40% of the population is blue, 30% orange, 20% green, and less than 2% is at second tier (and forget third tier--probably less than 1/100 ^th of 1%). We're talking stages here, not altered states--we're talking people's general center of gravity.

     "Well, the solution that this gentleman proposes makes wonderful sense to us --precisely because, on a good day, we are operating from second tier. We therefore immediately resonate with the Prime Directive guiding the suggestion and it makes a great deal of sense. But 98% of the population will not resonate with it --it won't even make sense to the vast majority (in fact, it will alarm them)--and in a democracy, that means oops.

     "The framers of the American Constitution figured out a brilliant, mostly benign way to get around this problem and make the higher waves of consciousness up to orange available to the population at large. But so far, nobody has yet figured out how to go the next stage and repeat that miracle for second tier, let alone third. We are awaiting the Mothers and Fathers of the Integral Constitution. This is the call of integral politics in the coming millennium, which will indeed be the Integral Millennium--as that 2% becomes 5%, then 10%, then 20%, then 30% and maybe higher--but we are at this time merely Moses on the mountain peering into the Promised Land." Jefferson let out a long sigh, looked around the room.

     "Yes," Joan said, "and in the real world, at this moment, the Spiral is doing the best it can to respond, given its present center of gravity, which is blue-orange in America. And that center of gravity is going to strongly support military action--whether feasible or not--and therefore I fear that we might soon be bogged down, not in effective swift military action, but an endless quasi-Vietnam driven by a blue-orange drive for retribution come what may--an ineffective military lashing-out that merely spends first-tier emotions and certainly cannot be justified by any higher standards, by the Prime Directive, or by second and third tier. Oh dear." Joan shook her head.

     "Right," Van Cleef agreed. "The collective action is already underway; military retaliation is in full swing; a recent poll showed that a staggering 92% of the American public supports it. All that we can do now, therefore, is give recommendations to individuals on how they can respond in their own minds, hearts, souls, and bodies. And so what would we recommend. Lesa?"

An Integral Response in an Individual

     "What we recommend is: in your response to the terrorist attack, attempt to span the entire spectrum of consciousness. Start by noticing your own, spontaneous, immediate response to the attack. And then tell the truth: was it red, blue, orange, green, second tier, third tier? Whatever it was, allow it, feel into it, be with it, honor it.

     "And then try to feel beyond it. Try to feel into the next wave of your own higher consciousness. If you responded red--just kill the bastards!--try to see that there are higher principles involved here, that human beings can only interact based on principles of dignity, honor, and duty, and this act violated principles that most cultures, at one time or another, have found honorable. Move from red to blue.

     "If you already responded from that blue position, and felt that your principles of God, family, and nation were violated, then go one step further and see that this was an attack not just on Americans, and not just on your God, but on ideals of freedom and self-determination that most civilized nations have found noble to uphold. Try to expand your emotional resonance from ethnocentric to worldcentric; it was indeed, in some sense, an attack, not on your nation, but on the ideals of civilization itself, however imperfectly any one nation might embody them.

     "If that orange response is easy for you, try moving to green. No matter how much this might have been an attack on God and country (blue) or civilization and freedom (orange), still, the terrorists are human beings, and nobody attacks merely out of hatred, but out of deep hurt and despair. Not only might America have contributed to that hurt and despair, America needs continually to critically examine its own role in social oppression, and to reassess and acknowledge the bitter downsides of global capitalism. Even IF America is generally right to take the action it does, still this can result in great pain for others, and thus in some sense let us have a genuine compassion for people driven to such pain that they would take such suicidal actions.

     "If that green response was your basic response, try moving to second tier. No matter how caring that green response might be, it still does not care enough to let the other memes be themselves. It does not truly honor the other memes, but rather tries to convince them that they should all have the same response as green. Green will not let red be red, or blue be blue, or orange be orange.... In order to follow the Prime Directive, green has to let go of its intense and domineering demand that others be like green. Like all first tier memes, green thinks that its stance is the one correct response.

     "Therefore, if green was your response, picture a world in which red can be red, and that is fine; and blue can be blue, and that is fine; and orange can be orange, and that is fine. (Litmus test: explain why Republican values are an important and necessary ingredient of any culture.) Of course we can rank memes, and of course we can all work toward helping all of the memes--including green--grow to higher levels. But it starts by realizing that I cannot impose my demand for sensitive feelings on everybody else. I must be strong enough to let go of my own insistence that others see it my way. And I must stop dividing the world into those who are sensitive and those who are insensitive, creating yet more dualisms that contribute to the problem.

     "If I can do that, I will stand open to the great vision of a patterned Whole that begins to open to my inward eye, where all the memes, waves, stages, states--call them what you will--can be what they are; while at the same time I start to realize that some of them are deeper, higher, and wider than others, and therefore, even as I let them remain as they are, I can see that they are ranked in order of increasing consciousness, care, and compassion. I stop asking, how can I make everybody agree with me?, but how can I help the entire Spiral be itself?

     "As I stand contemplating that patterned, fluid, flowing and unfolding Whole, it might suddenly dawn on me that in the deepest part of my own awareness, I am one with that Whole. I do not see the world, I am the world. I am the Americans who were attacked, with their anger, fear, and retribution; I am the terrorists who attacked, in their hatred, pain, and desperation. One with all that arises, I feel the pain and joy of a billion human beings in their anguish, turmoil, and travail. One with all that arises, I also feel the irrepressible Joy of manifestation shining brightly, even through the rubble at ground zero. I am unmoved in my Confidence and Equanimity of the basic All Rightness of the universe. And in that All Rightness, I break down and cry, I sob uncontrollably at the sad, sad, infinite sadness of it all."

Boomeritis Uber Alles

     There was a long silence. "I wonder what the general outcome of this attack will be. Are there any silver linings to this horrible cloud?"

     Jefferson spoke first. "There is clearly a political realignment occurring around the globe. However crudely and sometimes hypocritically, the lines really are being drawn between civilization and barbarity. As we said, even the healthy terrorists think this one was way over the top. And out of that political realignment, certain economic new orders will swing into play, with a strong orange component. This is not necessarily good, but it does appear to be the best that the Spiral can manage at this moment in time."

     "This is not as important, but it is closer to home," Van Cleef said, his spiky edge cutting into the softness of the previous tones. "In academia, extreme postmodernism is dead, and I mean dead. The attack on the World Trade Center ended deconstruction, once and for all, except in an increasingly lunatic fringe. People simply could not watch those Towers collapse and think that there is no right and wrong, no truth and error, no difference between fact and fiction, history and myth, science and poetry. The alleged 'new birth in pluralistic freedom' of the bloated ego is stillborn; pluralistic relativism took a colossal hit, and its extreme forms will never recover. Deconstructive postmodernism was felled at the knees. This is truly the extraordinary story of our time."

     Mark Jefferson looked at Derek, thought for a moment, then said, "The story of our time: the start, and the beginning of the end, of boomeritis . A story that spanned four decades, from the sixties to the new millennium. The WTC event would bizarrely make a perfect end to that story. Somebody ought to write a novel about that! "

     "Nobody would ever believe it," Joan said.

     "That's the truth." Carlton nodded her head. "Still, I do agree about extreme postmodernism and pluralism being down for the count, probably for good. Just this morning on CNN, there was a professor trying very hard to prop up the old boomeritis slogans and postmodern clichés. He was saying things like, 'The attack on the WTC was REALLY due to imperialist, sexist, racist, patriarchal America and its hegemonic, Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm....' As he was saying this, trying to breathe life into the old clichés, there was deathly silence form the rest of the panel, even the other postmodernists. It was so obvious to all of them that they could never inhabit that stance again, not with any coherent belief, and their sloganeering days were over. It was actually rather painful to watch, I must say."

     "Yes," added Lesa, "as painful to watch as Susan Sontag in the New Yorker trying desperately to reanimate the poststructuralist ploys: she was busily inverting hierarchies as instructed by Derrida, so that the 'cowardly' terrorists were actually 'brave' and the 'victims' of the attacks were actually the 'perpetrators.' That old creaky language is as gray as her hair, the entire enterprise a wrinkled agenda on aging, disillusioned Boomer faces. And poor Stanley Fish, writing 'Condemnation without Absolutes,' tries yet again to claim that there are no universals because all cultures have relative standards--and yet Fish asserts that his claim of cultural relativity is unshakably and universally true for all cultures. So he can have his absolutes and universal truths, but deny them to all others, and thus beat us over the head with that which he virulently condemns in everybody else: this is the essence of boomeritis. I tell you, it is sadder than sad, this boomeritis fog, settled on minds of that caliber, bringing a new meaning to Ginsberg's howl: I have seen the finest minds of my generation wasted . But in this case, contra Allen, the cause was not drugs." Lesa lowered her head; her entire face looked pained.

     "Indeed," Van Cleef added, warmth nowhere in sight, "you can't argue Theory and go on about how the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm and the Western Enlightenment have completely ruined your life when non-Western, non-Enlightenment terrorists are bombing the shit out of your children. Kiss extreme pluralism goodbye. I know postmodern scholars now that are so shell-shocked they revert to blue or red; but none of them will easily inhabit the extreme green stance that was the core of pluralistic relativism. The politics of identity, the politics of narcissism, the plurality of authentic ultimates is gone as a theoretically defensible ploy. We have finally seen the contours of deconstructive postmodernism, up close and personal, and it harbors the nihilism and narcissism--and narcissistic rage--that its critics all along have said, critics such as John Searle, Jürgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel, Margaret Carlton, Charles Taylor, Lesa Powell. And now, it has changed, it has all changed...."

      "Well," Joan stepped in--I always had the impression she was clipping Van Cleef off, placing his jagged edge in a more spacious, softer context--"let's just say that that particular form of boomeritis has suffered a meltdown and probably won't recover. But good ole boomeritis will go on, raising its head wherever green goes nuts. Thank god, I say, because what would the world be without its kooks? It's a great big smorgasbord, and I love it all!"

      Margaret Carlton touched Lesa on the hand. I wondered exactly how long they had been lovers, and what Charles had told Kim about it. The photographic negatives of each other is what I had thought when I first saw them--white and black, salt and pepper, ivory and ebony, soft and sharp, yin and yang, porcelain and steel, meow and bark--they were the perfect complementary couple, concretely bringing the opposites together in a Goddess of unrestrained Joy. "Lesa, are you really mad at the postmodern scholars? You sounded like it. We talked about his, you remember?"

      "Sweetheart, no, I'm not really angry."

      "I am."

      "Derek, that goes without saying," Margaret laughed. "I was talking to Lesa."

      "I was angry three decades ago when deconstructive postmodernism started, and I was furious two decades ago when it took over academia. But not now, I've worked too much on it. Mostly it is just sad, sad, sad. It's romantically noble, in its own odd way: somebody has to pioneer the widespread use of a new meme, and to Boomers fell the task of taking green into the world for the first time on a widespread scale--with all the extraordinary positives that entailed, from civil rights to environmental protection to feminism to health care freedom--and all of the horrifying negatives, implemented by boomeritis and the mean green meme. But I just had an image run through my mind, which a decade ago would have made me furious, but now just makes me sigh: imagine a pluralistic postmodernist explaining to the young weeping wife that her husband was killed in the terrorist attack because she is under sway of hegemonic patriarchal signifiers that marginalized the Other in a metanarrative discourse that displaced center to periphery in an oppressive chain of sliding signifiers.

      "But, you see," Lesa continued, "even when green is trying to do that, silly as it can get--nonetheless behind it all is the wisdom of the Spiral itself, which is nothing but Spirit-in-action in this world. Green is the great guardian on the threshold of the higher realms of second- and third-tier consciousness. Green sensitizes the entire Spiral, making sure that any who pass to the higher waves possess a genuine caring, sensitivity, compassion, and love. That is the great gift of green--the demand that we be open to all perspectives, not matter how Other they might appear. So of course green is always on hand to say, Please be sensitive to the Other, no matter how odd or even horrid it appears. And good for green! It is only through healthy green that we can get to second tier, not to mention third. My concern, my tears, are that so many have been caught in unhealthy green, in boomeritis, in the MGM, in paroxysms of smugness in the face of higher callings. It's sad, sweetheart, it's sad--that's all."

      Margaret leaned over and spoke very softly. "Well, dear, that's what you are doing so much to help alleviate, now isn't it?" and she patted Lesa on the shoulder.

      "Speaking of the guardian of higher waves," Morin said, "maybe we should finish up with that. We were going to describe the response of the remaining transpersonal or spiritual waves to the attack. Does that sound okay? Joan, would you be good enough to continue the tour?"

A Subtle God/dess Speaks

     Joan remained silent for several minutes. "Perhaps I should say that, to the extent that the higher transpersonal waves issue forth in action (not all of them do), they generally reinforce the Prime Directive. So I won't say much more about that, but it should not on that account be forgotten."

     The woman my heart would always love took a breath, gently touched the back and top of her skull. "The basic All Rightness of the entire Kosmos is part of all deeper and higher waves--transcend and include. But the 'reasons' for this Rightness deepen, right to their shocking conclusion."

      Joan closed her eyes. "As we move from psychic to subtle, from nature mysticism to deity mysticism, then the actual Ground of the manifest world of both nature and nations comes more to the fore. It's not just that everything is All Right. Everything is All Right because everything issues from the same divine Ground and Source. If I may again quote Emerson, nature is not Spirit, nature is a manifestation of Spirit. Behind nature, beyond nature--but not against nature!--is the real God and Goddess that issue forth in the gross realms. But to find this subtle Divinity, which is your own deeper condition, you have to let go of the gross world--let go of nature, of nations, of the mind, of the body, of the senses--let go of those gross objects and enter into the subtle spaces of your Heart, the same spaces you enter in dreams at night, although these dreams are more real, more awake, more present to the Present than could any merely sensory display ever be. This subtle Radiance transcends and includes nature, it does not obliterate nature, but it is found only by having the courage to go beyond the gross realm altogether.

      "And that Divinity has one ultimate secret, which it will also whisper in your ear if your mind becomes quieter than the fog at sunset: the God of this world is found within, and you know it is found within: in those hushed silent times when the mind becomes still, the body relaxes into infinity, the senses expand to become one with the world--in those glistening times, a subtle luminosity, a serene radiance, a brilliantly transparent clarity shimmers as the true nature of all manifestation, erupting every now and then in a compassionate Radiance before whom all idols retreat, a Love so fierce it adoringly embraces both light and dark, both good and evil, both pleasure and pain equally, for 'I make the Light to fall on the good and bad alike; I the Lord do all these things'; a passionately embroiling Heat so painful it will melt your bones while you hurl yourself to the ground with awe and supplication and reverence and surrender.

     "And just when you are bowing to that Radiance, thrown to the ground by a Force that crushes mind and body and ego into microscopically insignificant dust, just at that point exactly: that is when it whispers, in barely audible words, a whisper like a beautiful woman calling your name on a shining, silvery, moonlit night: You are bowing to yourself. Don't you remember who and what you really are? Did not even St. Clement say, He who knows himself knows God?

     "Deeper than nature, deeper than the body, deeper than the mind, deeper than thoughts altogether: a luminous shimmering radiance pours out of the Heart, reflects through the crown, and lights up the entire universe. The real secret of the subtle Divine: the light of the sun and the stars and all of nature comes directly from your very own Heart. Wordsworth saw that Light: 'An auxiliar light, Came from my mind, which on the setting sun, Bestowed new splendour.' And you can see it, too, in those quiet times when you forget the Shadows in the Cave and start to turn toward the blazing radiant Light of it all.

     "The directions to finding God, which are printed on the box in which your Heart came, are simple: relax the mind and body; with reverence and devotion, gaze into the Heart; feel the Love-Light radiance that permeates your entire body, and your entire mind, and all of nature, and all nations everywhere. A Current of Luminous Compassion creates and sustains the entire gross and manifest realm, a Current known by many, many names--the Holy Ghost, the Sambhogakaya, saguna Brahman, Arwah or divine luminosity, Keter, the subtle body--but a Current that, in all events, is simply the sound of the beating of your Heart keeping rhythm to the pulsing of the world."

      Joan paused, her eyes still closed; her translucent skin seemed to glow even more, emitting a type of light I had never seen before, not with these eyes. She finally spoke. "And how does the subtle Sambhogakaya respond to the attacks? Many, many ways; this is only one: All of these dear souls--attacker and attacked, murderer and murdered--these are your very own children. Don't play favorites, don't pick and choose, don't deny that you fathered and mothered every single thing and event in this Kosmos that is yours.

      "Still, still, and at the same time, the radiant Current of the Kosmos is itself an Eros, pushing and crashing and pulling and yearning to find a greater Light-Life and Love that is beyond good and evil--but not beneath it. Subtle Divinity--kundalini itself--the Serpent Power of the Kosmos--senses obstructions, contractions, snarls and snags, and moves spontaneously to uncoil them. The Prime Directive of the gross realm issues from the subtle Divine itself: These are my children; what can I do to help each and every one of them grow through the great Spiral that has formless Spirit as its ultimate destination?

     "These are all my children. But not playing favorites doesn't mean not judging, not rebuking, not thunderously acting to burn the knots that obstruct the Current's free flow. The entire Spiral will react to this event--each and every wave and meme, call them what you will--and sometimes the reactions will be wise and oftentimes they will not. But no one single voice in the Spiral speaks for me, for these are all my children. I do not recommend love, I do not recommend hate; I do not counsel compassion, I do not counsel revenge. These are all my children. I make the Light to fall on the good and the bad alike; I the Lord do all these things. The entire Spiral is my Voice in the world, not any particular wave. A chorus of voices will sing my recommendations, and I will act through the entire Spectrum to achieve the best that can be achieved at this time, in this place, on this planet, with all my children in mind.

     "Red will respond red, and that is fine; blue will respond blue, and that is fine; orange will respond orange, and that is fine; green will respond green, and that is fine; yellow will respond yellow, and that is fine..., and all shall be well in the end. If I am to be spotted at all, it is in the gentle pull operating throughout the Spiral that lifts each wave to its next greater expanse--a pull that is Eros longing for the integral Embrace that I AM.

     "And if you rise to that level in your very own Heart--the level where you and I are one--then this very world itself will start to take on the nature of a dream, a shimmering shining gossamer film, less and less to be taken seriously than to be rejoiced in as it passes. Leave seriousness at the door, and please take off your shoes, for this is hallowed ground, and bow to the Lightness and Humor that begins to replace solemnity. The entire world begins to take on a glimmering transparency as material atoms are replaced by light, and the days and nights pass before you like so many wandering dreams, while attention increasingly turns to the divine Dreamer itself, your very own Self, radiant in the midst of the madness."

     Everybody around the table continued their silence, with each of them seeming to enter the shimmering spaces that Joan was evoking.

      "Go deeper yet, dear souls. As nature retreats before God, so God retreats before the Abyss. The entire manifest realm, gross and subtle, even God and the Goddess herself, issue forth from a vast Emptiness, an infinite Formlessness, a radiant Ursprung that is the Ground and Goal of manifestation itself. As the great sages East and West have long proclaimed, in many different voices: beyond God is the unqualifiable Godhead. This vast Emptiness cannot be characterized in any fashion whatsoever (including that one)--it is neither absolute nor relative, neither one nor many, neither universal nor plural, neither good nor bad--because every word has meaning only in terms of its opposite, and This has no opposite. It can be felt, but not known; it is an atmosphere, not an object; it is infinite Release, the great Liberation, a radical Fullness on the other side of fear. Timeless and therefore eternal, it gives rise to all time; spaceless and therefore infinite, it gives rise to all space; formless and therefore ever-present, it gives rise to all the worlds, even here and now. Look! Look! Can you find it? It is closer to you right now than you are to yourself! I promise you, it is closer than your heartbeat, nearer than your breath. It is staring you in the face, right here, right now! Can you find it?

     "If we must think of it, many poetic metaphors have been used: it is Consciousness without an object; the pure Self that sees but can never be seen; the selfless Witness that is the mirror-mind of all space; a radiant Emptiness that is the transparency of the entire Kosmos. But in all ways, and from the start, it is the great I AMness, the One without a second, the Nature of all natures and the Condition of all conditions, the discovery of which is the Great Liberation that leads to a realm beyond death and mortality, finitude and pain, suffering and separation, tears and terror.

      "But those are mere words--bloodless, heartless words, as all words are. Listen to me, dear souls, and go beyond the words:

      "How is the radiant Abyss of the Great Liberation found? It is never found, because it has never been lost. This pure formless Witness is the only thing you have never been without. It is the only constant in the entire Kosmos. You have known this utterly obvious secret for 15 billion years, and before that, you knew it eternally. It is nothing other than your own Original Face, the face you had before the Big Bang. Would you like to see it? Really, truly see it? Right here, right now? A dear friend of mine gave its pointing out instructions as follows:

      Let your mind relax. Let your mind relax and expand, mixing with the sky in front of it. Then notice: the clouds float by in the sky, and you are effortlessly aware of them. Feelings float by in the body, and you are effortlessly aware of them, too. Thoughts float by in the mind, and you are aware of them as well. Nature floats by, feelings float by, thoughts float by... and you are aware of all of them.

      So tell me: Who are you?

      You are not your thoughts, for you are aware of them. You are not your feelings, for you are aware of them. You are not any objects that you can see, for you are aware of them too.

      Something in you is aware of all these things. So tell me: What is it in you that is conscious of everything?

      What is it in you that is always awake? Always fully present? Something in you right now is effortlessly noticing everything that arises. What is that?

      That vast infinite witnessing awareness, don't you recognize it?

      What is that Witness?

      You are that Witness, aren't you? You are the pure Seer, pure awareness, the pure Spirit that impartially witnesses everything that arises, moment to moment. Your awareness is spacious, wide-open, empty and clear, and yet it registers everything that arises.

      That very Witness is Spirit within, looking out on a world that it created. It sees but cannot be seen; it hears but cannot be heard; it knows but cannot be known. It is Spirit itself that sees with your eyes, speaks with your lips, hears with your ears, reaches out with your arms. When will you confess this simple secret and awaken from the gruesome nightmare?

      Can you see the words on this page? Then 100% of Spirit is present, looking out through your eyes. Can you feel the book in your hands? Then 100% of Spirit is present, taking the world in its hands. Can you hear the sound of that bird singing? Then 100% of Spirit is present, listening to that song.

     You cannot look for this Spirit, for it is doing the looking. You cannot see this Spirit, for it is doing the seeing. You cannot find this Spirit, for it does all the finding. If you understand this, then Spirit is doing the understanding; if you don't understand this, Spirit is doing that. Understand it or not, just that is Spirit.

     Hence the amazing, secret, ultimate truth that slowly starts to dawn: the enlightened mind--pure Spirit itself--is not hard to attain but impossible to avoid. How could you ever be without that Spirit which is reading this sentence right now?

      Show me the Self you had before the Big Bang, and I will show you the Spirit of the entire Kosmos.

      Joan paused and looked at each of us. "And how does the radiant Abyss respond to the terrorist attack? Very simply: What attack?

      "You see, here in the world of the radiant Void, nothing ever happens. Consciousness without an object is... consciousness without an object. Of course it witnesses everything that arises, but what is it in itself ? The sages say it is similar to the realm of deep dreamless sleep, except that it is fully consciousness and radiantly alive, but so infinitely Free and Full that no objects can come close to it. Of course as ever-present Witness you are aware of the attack--you are aware of everything that arises from the Emptiness that is your real nature. But the pure Witness is the great Mirror Mind, supremely impartial to the objects reflected on its surface. This does not mean that you feel indifference. If indifference arises, you are aware of that; if love arises, you are aware of that; if hatred arises, you are aware of that. But none of those are you. You are the great I AMness, the impartial Witness, the vast Emptiness in which the entire universe arises moment to moment. Through your awareness the clouds float, through your awareness the WTC collapses, through your awareness a nation mourns, through your awareness various responses erupt.

     "If you experience a particular response--blue or green or yellow, say, instead of being the great Witness of them all--then you have stepped down into the Spiral, and you are manifesting as a particular state. That is well and good, for you are also the Spiral in its entirety. But you are also something else: in your Original Face, in the simple feeling of Being that you are, in your great I AMness, you are none of those responses, you are no response at all: I am not this, I am not that. I am nothing; I am an emptiness, an openness, an infinite clearing in which the world arises, a great expanse in which all responses emerge, stay a bit, and pass. I AM the Ground of the display, the Mirror of the Kosmos, and not any finite object parading by in the dust and dreams of finitude, mortality, suffering, pain, and death. Let mortals contract into the Display and be recycled in the endless torment; but let the great I AM embrace them all with an equanimity that knows no choices, that never enters the stream itself, for to do so is only to perish in time, drawn and quartered in the agony of the dissolution; but the great I AM is timeless, standing Free and Full at the Heart of it All.

      "Nothing ever happens, you see. Nothing ever happens. Objects come and go, but the Seer remains; events come and go, but the Self never moves; anything you can see is not real --only the Seer abides eternally. You think objects are the ultimate reality: but, dear souls, I tell you: they are dreams, phantoms, bubbles, shells, ghosts and shadows, gossamer images floating by in the mind of timeless Spirit, fleeting shadows in the cave of the great I AMness that you alone are, mere objects floating by in the vast expanse of Emptiness that is your real Self, that is your own I AMness in this and every moment.

      "You think the objects of your awareness are ultimately real--you are riveted by the objects in front of you right now: they are everything that matters, you think. But you can't remember the objects that were in front of your awareness last week, or last month, or last year: yet then you also thought that those objects were the ultimate reality, the only thing that mattered--you latched onto them with a life and death fervor, with great drama and upset and hope and fear: and yet where are they now? You can't even remember them....

     "A million objects have come and gone, and where are they now? And why were you so upset by them, so obsessed with them, so enslaved by these, your self-made masters? Why did you love them so, hate them so, torture yourself over them when now you can't even remember their names?

      "A million objects have come and gone; they have all vanished; they have all been pulverized by the stream of time and torment and returned to the dust that does not care. But one thing has not changed; one thing is the same today as it was yesterday, and last week, and last year, and last century, and last millennia: something in you has not changed , something in you has not entered the stream of time, something in you stands free of the torture and turmoil: what is That? Indeed, something in you has not changed, and you know that something in you has not changed: what is That? I tell you: it has not changed since the Big Bang and even before: what is That?

      "One more time, dear souls:

      Let your mind relax. Let your mind relax and expand, mixing with the sky in front of it. Then notice: the clouds float by in the sky, and you are effortlessly aware of them. Feelings float by in the body, and you are effortlessly aware of them, too. Thoughts float by in the mind, and you are aware of them as well. Nature floats by, feelings float by, thoughts float by... and you are aware of all of them.

      So tell me: Who are you?

      You are not your thoughts, for you are aware of them. You are not your feelings, for you are aware of them. You are not any objects that you can see, for you are aware of them too.

      Something in you is aware of all these things. So tell me: What is it in you that is conscious of everything?

      What is it in you that is always awake? Always fully present? Something in you right now is effortlessly noticing everything that arises. What is that?

      That vast infinite witnessing awareness, don't you recognize it?

      What is that Witness?

      You are that Witness, aren't you? You are the pure Seer, pure awareness, the pure Spirit that impartially witnesses everything that arises, moment to moment. Your awareness is spacious, wide-open, empty and clear, and yet it registers everything that arises.

      That very Witness is Spirit within, looking out on a world that it created. It sees but cannot be seen; it hears but cannot be heard; it knows but cannot be known. It is Spirit itself that sees with your eyes, speaks with your lips, hears with your ears, reaches out with your arms. When will you confess this simple secret and awaken from the gruesome nightmare?

      Can you see the words on this page? Then 100% of Spirit is present, looking out through your eyes. Can you feel the book in your hands? Then 100% of Spirit is present, taking the world in its hands. Can you hear the sound of that bird singing? Then 100% of Spirit is present, listening to that song.

     You cannot look for this Spirit, for it is doing the looking. You cannot see this Spirit, for it is doing the seeing. You cannot find this Spirit, for it does all the finding. If you understand this, then Spirit is doing the understanding; if you don't understand this, Spirit is doing that. Understand it or not, just that is Spirit.

     Hence the amazing, secret, ultimate truth that slowly starts to dawn: the enlightened mind--pure Spirit itself--is not hard to attain but impossible to avoid. How could you ever be without that Spirit which is reading this sentence right now?

      Show me the Self you had before the Big Bang, and I will show you the Spirit of the entire Kosmos. And as for that pure, timeless, formless Spirit: You... Are... That.

      The room was one mind, one soul, one beating pulse in the midst of the insanity of the world around us, a world that was also within us, that was us, as the Spirit of the Kosmos magnified through Joan and descended on us all, swallowing what was left of separation and time and tortured dreams, leaving us awash in luminous release, radiant wonder escaping from the hearts of all assembled.

      "And then the strangest thing happens. Resting in the pure Self, abiding as the timeless Witness, noticing that the clouds float by in the vast expanse of Emptiness that is my own ever-present awareness, the Witness itself suddenly cannot be found. The Seer vanishes into everything that is seen and never again returns to haunt the universe as a separate and separating force. Subject and object vanish into One Taste, the Nondual announces itself as a Presence that has no within or without, the ultimate Mystery permeates the Kosmos with an Obviousness that is too simple to believe, too close to see, too present to be reached, too This to be noticed.

      "The Seer vanishes into everything seen, which sees itself eternally. I no longer witness the clouds, I am the clouds; I do not hear the rain, I am the rain; I can no longer touch the earth, for I am the earth; I cannot hear the robin singing, because I am the robin singing, here in the painful brilliant clarity of ever-present One Taste. If nature arises, I am that. If nature vanishes, I am that. If God arises, I am that. If God dies, I am that. I am the terrorists with unforgivable murder in their hearts; I am the victims in the Towers who crashed to a fiery death; I am the love in the hearts of those who care, I am the hatred in the heartless souls of those who massacre without remorse.

     "Precisely because I am not this, not that, I am fully this, fully that. Beyond nature, I am nature; beyond God, I am God; beyond the Kosmos altogether, I am the Kosmos in its every gesture. Where there is pain, I am there; where there is love, I am present; where there is death, I breath easily; where there is suffering, I move unconstrained. On September 11, 2001, I attacked me in a distant part of the galaxy on an unremarkable planet in a speck of dust in the corner of manifestation, all of which are wrinkles in the fold of what I am. And none of which affects me in the slightest, and therefore I am totally undone, I cry endlessly, the sadness is infinite, the despair dwarfs galaxies, my heart weeps monsoons, I can't breath in this torture.

     "Totally insignificant, infinitely significant--no difference, truly. Atoms and Gods are all the same, here in the world of One Taste; the smallest insult is equal to the greatest; I am happy beyond description with every act of torture, I am sad beyond compare with every act of goodness. I delight in seeing pain, I despise seeing love. Do those words confuse you? Are you still caught in those opposites? Must I believe the dualistic nonsense that the world takes as real? Victims and murderers, good and evil, innocence and guilt, love and hatred? What dream walkers we all are!

     "Love in your heart? You are caught in illusions. Compassion in your soul? People, wake up! You are a million miles off the mark, wondering what to do, what it means, how to respond, where to find love, how to show compassion--all totally off the mark, careening between the opposites, caught in endless roving dreams that have no reality at all! Let the Spiral do what it must to handle these affairs, and then tell me: can you show me your Original Face, exactly here and now? Who is aware of wanting to love? Who is aware of the pain of the attacks? Who is aware of wanting to practice compassion?

     "Who is aware of all those objects? Forget those objects and show me this Self , and I will show you the Kosmos.

     "Where were you before the Big Bang? Show me that, and I will show you the ultimate response to the terrorist attacks."

     Joan looked gently at everyone present, then slowly focused on me, as if she were seeing me for the first time. "Ken, is that you?"

     "Yes, Joan."

     "Do you know who are?"

     "Yes, Joan."

     "Then show me."

     I hold up a flower and smile.

     Joan takes a long breath, lowers her head, and the vision vanished forever.

Intro Prologue Part I Part II Part III