Spirituality that Translates and Spirituality that Transforms

Question. I always get a little bit confused, as spirituality seems to comprise so many different things that often seem very conflicting. For example, a lot of teachings tell one that if we wish to be  truly spiritual, we  will need totally to transcend our ego, whereas a lot of other teachings seem to be about trying to help us feel happier in our ‘separate self’ state. Could you please tell me what you think?

Serge. I would be delighted to try. First, what you say is very true, only I do not see a conflict. Rather I see that the issue is one of different levels of spiritual teachings. We need to proceed step by step. We  need to understand that at root, the spiritual journey is one of our learning to embrace self at ever higher levels of awareness. Most of us come in to the world needing to evolve an ego self, that is, an identity where we experience ourselves as being separate from our world, and for most of us, it takes a very long time to be able to free ourselves from that role.  Indeed, very, very few of us, actually, are at a level where we are able or ready , to begin to discard our ego and to enter  into what the Master Adi Da called the truly radical life!


Put simply, we need to have a secure foundation inside us – an effectively functioning ego, a healthy emotional life - before we are capable or strong enough to begin  contemplating journeying into the void or embracing the  true emptiness.    In Ram Dass’s words’ We need to become a somebody before we are ready to become a nobody’, that is, we need to have established a strong enough separate self identity - even if it is not yet our authentic self, even if it is still based on images we have of ourselves - before we are ready to let  it go  and consider blending with a self that belongs to all of life!


And even then, we may not wish to, or be able to. I must stress that it can be dangerous to ‘let go’ prematurely, (and many of the difficult acid trips I experienced around me in the 60’s, were about hippies taking too strong a dose and being temporarily precipitated into states of  egoless being which in no way were they prepared for).  I say this because  the experience of deep spirituality can be very, very shattering. It is all about the total dissolution of that ‘safe world’ that  most of us believe is the only world and depend upon. And it is not  at all comfortable! (See my long article on ‘The Spiritual Path  as Tough Journey’ ).


Ken Wilbur is very clear on  all this. In his journal ‘One Taste’, he  talks of two kinds of spirituality; spirituality that translates and spirituality that transforms. The former is focussed on consoling the separate self, fortifying it, defending it, promoting it. ‘With translation, the self is given a new way to think or feel about reality. The self is given a new belief – perhaps holistic instead of atomistic, forgiveness instead of blame. The self then learns to translate its world and its being in the terms of this new language or new paradigm and this new and enchanting translation acts, at least temporarily, to alleviate the terror in the heart of the separate self….


But with transformation, the very process of translation itself is challenged, undermined and eventually dismantled. With typical translation, the self (or subject) is given a new way to think about the world; but with radical transformation, the self is inquired into, looked into, grabbed by the throat and literally throttled to death….The self is not made content; the(old) self is made toast!’


Wilbur argues that both of these functions are incredibly important and altogether indispensable. He suggests that translation itself is an absolute necessity and crucial for most of  us for most of our lives and that if we cannot ‘translate adequately’, we can fall into severe neurosis or even psychosis where the boundaries between the self and the world are not transcended but instead begin to crumble.  In his words, ‘This is not breakthrough but breakdown; not transcendence but disaster.’


As I said, only a very few of us are ready to ‘go for’ the higher or deeper spirituality and to leap into the  egoless unity.  We know we are ready  for something deeper only when we become fed up with, and feel like discarding,  translative   spirituality’ with its emphasis on helping us ‘feel better’, be ‘more powerful’, live ‘more causally’,  have ‘more meaning’, be  more the ‘master of our own destiny’, etc.  Much of what we loosely call ‘New Age Spirituality’ falls into this category. The truth is, though, that most of us still need this translative spirituality. 

It is the spirituality that is primarily advocated in this magazine. Translative spirituality helps a lot of us in many important ways and assists us make the shift from being part of the problems in the world to being part of the solution. So, to emphasise my point again, just as developmentally, we are not ready to run before we can walk or  can engage in geometry before we have  properly learned to count, so most of us are not ready to submit ourselves to the shattering process that a genuine  transformative spirituality offers us. While we may like to talk about  transformation or about the joys of not being so ego-centred,  in reality, many of us are not yet ready to die to our old identifications and truly to allow ourselves to be reborn.  So I think we need  equally to honour those spiritualities that  help  us cater for our separate self as well as  those that help us shatter it.