But why try to find happiness through spiritual life? Isn’t modern materialistic civilization all about attaining peace and happiness? We build great skyscrapers, fast cars and miles of freeways. We have paid vacations, TV sets, free hospitals and sick leave, Social Security and welfare benefits. Government, planning commissions and scientific research are all aimed at providing some measure of peace and happiness. Yet the rate of mental illness climbs steadily, and the crime rates rise even faster. The streets are crawling with unstable individuals, and road rage is increasing. This materialistic civilization is not working; in fact, it is collapsing. A happy man does not feel driven to kill his family and himself just because he loses his job or house; yet this happening with increasing frequency even in our ‘advanced’ materialistic civilization.

We like to hold the conceit that Western society is exploiting every area of human knowledge to provide peace and happiness. But we are only beginning to realize that we have overdeveloped the material aspect of existence at the expense of the deeper emotional and spiritual aspects, and now we are paying a heavy price for that strategic error. It is easy to complain about the degeneration of moral and spiritual fiber in America and the world today, but the real task is to do something about it. The only place to start is within ourselves. Look carefully inside, truly and objectively, and you will see moments when you are irrationally angry, or passionately believe in something that you find out later is completely untrue. When you learn to see those moments as they are—see them clearly, cleanly and without condemnation—then you will be on your way up and out of the disease of material consciousness.

You can’t make radical changes in the pattern of your life until you drop your filters, drop your identifications and habitual judgments, and allow yourself to see yourself exactly as you are. As soon as you do that, changes flow naturally. You don’t have to force or struggle to obey rules dictated to you by some authority. You just change automatically, improving by the power of consciousness itself.
But arriving at a realistic view of yourself is quite a task. You must drop all pretension, all self-serving justification and rationalization, and really see who you are and how you are, without illusion, judgment or resistance of any kind. You must see how you function as a social being and the effect you have on those around you. You must see your duties and obligations to your fellow human beings, and above all, your responsibility to yourself as an individual spiritual living being. And you’ve got to see all of that clearly and as a unit, a single gestalt of interrelationship. It sounds complex, but this insight often occurs in a single instant. The result of achieving this insight is deep understanding and serene happiness.

The ancient Esoteric Teaching anticipated Freud and other psychologists by thousands of years. It says: “What you are now is the result of what you did in the past. What you will be tomorrow will be the result of what you do now. The consequences of an evil mind will follow you, like the cart follows the ox that pulls it. The consequences of a purified mind also will follow you as inevitably as your own shadow. No one can do more for you than your own purified mind. A well-disciplined mind brings happiness.” The spiritual process of meditation purifies the mind, just like bathing regularly purifies the body. And it prevents disease in the same way as bathing does. It cleanses the thought process of the spiritual infections that keep you snarled up in emotional bondage. It brings a state of tranquility and awareness, a state of concentration and insight.

In our society, we believe that knowledge makes a cultured person civilized. Material civilization, however, only polishes the personality superficially. Subject an ordinary educated and sophisticated gentleman to stresses of war or economic collapse, and see what happens. It is one thing to obey the law because you know the penalties and fear the consequences; it is something else entirely to obey the law because you have cleansed yourself from the greed that would make you steal, and the hatred that would make you kill. Civilization changes man superficially, on the outside. Meditation softens him within, melts him through and through, and transfigures him into a higher state of consciousness.

Meditation is the cleansing crucible fire that slowly purifies the soul from ignorance through understanding. The greater your understanding, the more flexible and tolerant you can be, the more compassionate you can be. You become like a perfect parent or an ideal teacher; you are ready to forgive and forget. You feel love towards others because you understand them, and you understand others because you have understood yourself. You have looked deeply inside, seen your own illusion and your own human failings. You have seen your own humanity and learned to forgive and to love yourself. Once you have learned compassion for yourself, compassion for others is automatic. An accomplished meditator has achieved a profound understanding of life, and while seeing life realistically for what it inevitably is, he also relates to the world with deep and uncritical love.

Meditation is a lot like cultivating a piece of land. To make a field out of a forest, first you have to clear the trees and pull out the stumps. Then you till the soil and fertilize it. Then you sow your seed, irrigate the field and remove the weeds, and then you harvest your crops. Similarly, to change your consciousness, first you have to clear out the various irritants that are in the way, pull them right out by the root so that they won’t grow back. Then you fertilize, pumping energy and discipline into the mental soil. Then you sow the seed and you harvest your crops of faith, morality, spiritual consciousness and wisdom.

Faith and morality, by the way, have a special meaning in the context of authentic spiritual life. The Esoteric Teaching does not advocate faith in the sense of believing something because it is written in a book, attributed to a prophet or taught to you by some authority figure. Of course we have books and teachers, but what we mean by faith is the confidence born of direct personal experience. It is knowing that something is true because you have seen it work, because you have observed that very same thing within yourself. In the same way, morality is not a ritualistic obedience to some exterior, imposed code of behavior, but a deep sense of knowing what is right based on insight and compassion.

The purpose of authentic spiritual life is personal growth and transformation. The person that goes into the experience of meditation is not the same person who comes out the other side. Authentic meditation changes your character by a process of sensitization, by making you deeply aware of your own thoughts, words and deeds. Your arrogance evaporates and your antagonism dries up. Your mind becomes still and calm, and the ups and downs of your life smooth out. Thus properly performed meditation reduces tension, fear, and worry. Restlessness recedes and passion moderates. Things begin to fall into place and your life becomes a glide instead of a struggle. Meditation sharpens your concentration and thinking power. Then little by little your subconscious motives and mechanics become clear to you. Your intuition sharpens. The precision of your thought increases, and gradually you come to a direct knowledge of things as they really are, without prejudice and without illusion. All this happens through understanding, insight and transcendental knowledge.

So is all this reason enough to bother with meditation and spiritual life? Scarcely. These are just promises, words on paper. There is only one way you will ever know if meditation and spiritual life are worth the effort: make up your mind to do it, learn from an expert how to do it right, then do it and experience the benefits yourself.

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