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"You have raised some very important issues, Melanie," acknowledged Tammy Winthrop. "In retrospect, I think, maybe, I was a little sloppy in my way of introducing and developing the image topic.

"You're quite right, however, in pointing out that the image of Divinity should not be restricted to, or made a function only, of mental or brain or conceptual activity. In point of fact, and, I think, Melanie you have been alluding to this, the mystical image of Divinity is a complex function of different modalities of - to use your term - aware-fulness, each of which engages the infinite nature of Divinity in an entirely different, but complementary, manner.

"The mind, the heart, the spirit, together with about three other kinds of modality of aware-fulness, all must be realized in an appropriate fashion in order to have an image of Divinity which is able to reflect, accurately, the image of Divinity being given expression through all the Divine attributes or capacities, collectively considered, that create, shape, modulate, control, color and orient different realms and levels of manifestation. In addition, eventually, these modalities of aware-fulness occur in a context of - to use Ben's term - one's true self or true self-identity - such that when the individual becomes Self-realized, one comes to understand there is only one real Self Who is engaging the multiplicity of attributes being given expression through the image of manifested Divinity in accordance with the unique, reflections of as many different modalities of, and capacities for, aware-fulness as there are human beings, irrespective of whether these individuals are realized or not.

"From the Divine Essence side of things, so to speak, whether or not human beings become self-realized makes no difference to the purpose for which manifestations were brought into being and given expression. All conditions of aware-fulness through which Essence and manifestations are related are unique in the manner in which they engage and reflect the image of Divinity, and there is nothing human beings can do which would undermine the spectrum or array of modalities and capacities of aware-fulness being exhibited.

"From the human side of things, nonetheless, the issue of self-realization makes all the difference in the universe. We can spend our existence stuck in some limiting, incomplete, and, therefore, distorted and illusory modality of aware-fulness - such as a purely material or sensory or biological or conceptual condition, or we can spend our existence in struggling toward, and God willing, realizing the full extent of the human potential for uniquely reflecting the image of Divinity, made manifest through Essence, by seeking to have all our spiritual modalities for aware-fulness brought on line.

"Divinity provides the metaphysical opportunity and sets the ontological stage on which the human drama is to unfold. We make our choices concerning the kinds of aware-fulness and extent of our spiritual capacities that are to be realized.

"The goal is not so much a matter of raising consciousness, but to change the character of the kind of internal modalities of awareness concerning the Self to which we have access, and, therefore, both to alter, as well as to complete, the ways in which the Self is engaged, experienced, known and so on. Becoming aware of awareness- that is, becoming mindful- is not enough because the Self is much, much more, indeed, is infinitely more, than either awareness of awareness or the mind, although, naturally, such awareness and the mind are partial expressions of what is made possible through the reality of the Self."

"I'm way out of my depth in relation to many aspects of this discussion on mysticism," I confessed, "but there is something that occurred to me a little bit earlier which may fit in with some of what you are saying. In any case, I find the matter raises a lot of interesting questions for me.

"A number of years ago, a medical clinician by the name of John Lorber was doing some work in England with hydro-encephalics. For those of you who may not be familiar with this condition, it is created when, for whatever reason, the flow of cerebral-spinal fluid is blocked in such a way that the fluid begins to become trapped in one or more of the ventricles or cavities within the brain.

"Generally speaking, if the cerebral-spinal fluid accumulates in the brain, it begins to exert pressure from the interior of the brain, where the cavities or ventricles exist, in an outward direction toward the skull. Eventually, if allowed to continue, the brain literally gets squeezed almost out of existence and, as a result, gets compressed to just a few millimeters, or so, in size, around the inside of the skull.

"Usually, the end result of this process is a severe form of irreversible retardation known as hydro-encephaly. Lorber, however, stumbled onto some exceptions to this general rule.

"After doing some brain scans of some of his patients, he found these people's brains had been compressed, as one would expect, to an extremely thin layer along certain interior portions of the skull. Yet, amazingly, these patients were not severely retarded but were fully functioning, intelligent human beings, at least one of whom was an honors graduate in mathematics from Cambridge.

"This meant one of two things. Either having a brain gets in the way of doing mathematics, that may be why so many of us have difficulty with mathematics, or one may not need a brain to exhibit intelligence.

"Why some people who exist more or less without a brain are severely retarded, while others who appear to be in the same condition are not similarly retarded, no one knows. Some people have speculated the difference may be a matter of how quickly or slowly the damage is done, with the latter process allowing time, perhaps, for some sort of transfer of functioning that is not possible with a relatively quick compression of the brain.

"Whatever the explanation turns out to be, one has difficulty looking at the significance of brain functioning in the same way after learning about Lorber's findings. The relationship between, on the one hand, intelligence and consciousness, and, on the other hand, neurotransmitter chemistry, neuronal functioning, and brain electrical activity, may not be quite as neat as some psychologists and neurophysiologists would have us suppose is the case.

"In addition, in the light of Lorber's findings, one has trouble, I think, trying to maintain that consciousness is merely an emergent property of the activity of billions of neurons and/or their synaptic connections. When most of these synaptic pathways have been destroyed and when neuronal functioning has been severely disrupted, if not entirely compromised, and, yet, consciousness or awareness remains intact, at least in the fully-functioning hydro-encephalics, then the idea of treating consciousness as an emergent property of a certain level of complexity in brain activity seems to lose much of its appeal, if not, logic."

Although no one said anything in response to my comments, I could tell from their facial expressions and body language that they were quite intrigued by the information being presented to them. I guess just as I had been very enveloped by what the others had been saying about mysticism, aware-fulness, and so on, without having said anything, until now, in response, the absence of verbal participation from, or feedback by, an individual didn't necessarily signify the person was not interested in what was taking place.

In any event, I no longer felt so much like a useless cog in the visible aspects of our group dynamics. If necessary, I could be silent for the remainder of the discussion and still feel I had been holding up, in some minimal fashion, my end of things within the group.

Colby Shaw's voice interrupted my internal musings. "Earlier, Melanie had voiced her concern about the tendency of a variety of people to reduce the spiritual or mystical realms to being a function of purely mental or psychological or brain activity.

"I have a related concern. There is a very strong parallel trend to isolate or remove various practices from their original, spiritual environments.

"Quite frequently, individuals seem to have no sense of the ecological character of spirituality or mysticism. They seem to suppose they can venture into a variety of different mystical ecologies and extract different practices from those ecologies and transfer them as techniques back to a completely artificial and rationally fabricated ecology of modern mysticism.

"Many years ago Jacques Ellul had warned us, although not necessarily in the context of mysticism, about the tendency of modern, technological societies to try to make a technique of everything, or reduce everything to technique. In the process, individuals who are exposed to, and become entangled with, this world of techniques, and its concomitant thinking, become impoverished in a variety of ways because the humanity of these individuals becomes limited to, and a function of, the logic of machines.

"When we come under the sphere of influence of technique, our political, economic, educational and social forms of organization all are affected adversely by this. This same sort of thinking seems to becoming increasingly evident in a great deal of modern literature and movements dealing with altered states of consciousness, mysticism, spirituality, trans-personal psychology, and the so-called expansion of consciousness.

"Inherent in the logic of machines is the idea one can substitute, in an endless fashion, machine parts without adversely affecting the functioning of the machine in which the substitutions are made. Also inherent in the logic of machines is the idea that one can cannibalize machines as required and take from those machines whatever one likes and use the parts in another context and for other purposes than was the case with the machine or machines from which the parts were cannibalized.

"The logic of machines involves the belief one can move machines anywhere, and they will operate in the same fashion as they did in the original setting with, at most, only minor adjustments having to be made. The logic of machines has little regard for the subtleties, richness and complexities of ecology.

"Today, we find all manner of so-called psycho-technologies that purport to have the ability to deliver us to self-realization, wholeness, ultimate reality and so on. Many people report having derived benefit, insights and intense kinds of experience through the techniques that are employed by the psycho-technologies.

"What these people may not understand is that deriving benefits, gaining insights, or having experiences is not necessarily the same thing as realizing the true nature of our identity or activating all of the potential of our essential capacities for the different spiritual modalities of aware-fulness which Melanie and Tammy were discussing. If one does not know who or what or why one is, and if one has not realized the full spiritual potential of the human being, then how can one assign a meaning to the significance of the benefits, insights or experiences that have accrued to one through following some set of techniques?

"When one has had a powerful insight or experience, all one can say is that it was unlike anything one has had previously. Where those insights or experiences actually weigh-in when measured by the exacting standards of the grand scale of Reality or Divinity is a question that ought to be asked but often is not.

"Instead, people tend to treat these powerful, never-before-encountered experiences or insights as if they are all that Reality had to offer. These people often seem to assume that, surely, there couldn't possibly be any more than what has been experienced or understood, or thought to be experienced or understood, following the use of the techniques associated with a given psycho-technology.

"For years now, the field of biological ecology has steadily been revealing the damage we do to the environment by applying all manner of techniques to our physical/living surroundings without having any understanding of what we are doing or the nature of the destructive effects which will be entailed by what we do. Truly, we are those who need to be forgiven, for we know not what we do to, among other realities, the ecologies of the Earth and the residents of these ecologies, including ourselves.

"What many individuals do not appreciate is that in the realm of spiritual ecology, things are even more complex, subtle, rich and interconnected than they are on the level of material/biological manifestations and phenomena. Yet, people are so preoccupied with technique and psycho-technologies, they fail to understand the damage they are doing to themselves and their surroundings.

"In legal circles there is a well-known saying to the effect that the non-lawyer who tries to serve as his or her own counsel in matters of law, has a fool for a client. Similarly, in the realm of mysticism, anyone who tries to serve as her or his own spiritual guide has a seriously deluded idiot for a disciple.

"In fact, one of the most important ecological principles of the spiritual realm is to get a guide who is an accomplished and realized veteran of the territory into which one wishes to venture and who will be able to help one avoid harming oneself or doing damage to other aspects of that ecology. This is considerably easier to say than to do since there are a lot of counterfeit guides who are running about in the countryside.

"The ecological character of the guide herself or himself is underlined by the following point. Techniques by themselves have an extremely limited efficacy, and can have detrimental ramifications, unless done in the context of a sincere and loving relationship of reciprocity between guide and the spiritual seeker.

"Among other things, the guide is sort of a catalytic agent with respect to the kind of impact that various practices have upon the individual. As is the case in biochemistry or chemistry in which reactions either would not take place at all, or would do so extremely slowly and probably not to completion, in the absence of catalytic assistance, so, too, in the spiritual realm, in the absence of the catalytic influence of a guide, a person is not likely to get very far on the mystical path, irrespective of the amount of time such an individual may invest in the performance of different mystical practices.

"Spiritual techniques, in and of themselves, have very little to offer. Techniques only become proper mystical practices when embedded in an appropriate spiritual ecology.

"People who employ mystical practices that have been extracted from a proper spiritual ecology, including the presence of a true guide, may undergo various states of non-ordinary experience and, subsequently, conclude the technique has retained its efficacy. What these people may not understand is there is a difference between, on the one hand, having experiences and, on the other hand, becoming transformed in a permanent fashion such that one comes to realize the nature of one's true identity and so that all one's modalities for aware-fulness, in relation to one's relationship with Divinity, become active.

"Divorced from an appropriate spiritual ecology, techniques become so many toys in the hands of those who play around with them. Like children, these people can incorporate the use of spiritual toys into a world of imagination that entails various kinds of fantasies about the sort of activity in which they are engaged, but in the end, the whole thing is still a matter of make-believe."

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