Sean Reagan

I remember years ago picking up a copy of Krishnamurti’s slim but powerful book Freedom from the Known. Krishnamurti is a complicated figure, as likely to arouse conflict as anyone else, but I think beyond the level of opinion, his articulation of the human condition in relation to what might loosely be its spiritual search is clear and helpful. It is natural to ask what, if any, relationship can be found between Krishnamurti and A Course in Miracles.

In Freedom from the Known, Krishnamurti neatly frames the dilemma.

Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living. A dead thing has a path to it because it is static, but when you see that truth is something living, moving, which has no resting place, which is in no temple, mosque or church, which no religion, no teacher, no philosopher, nobody can lead you to – then you will also see that this living thing is actually what you are – your anger, your brutality, your violence, your despair, the agony and sorrow you live in. In the understanding of all this is the truth, and you can understand it only if you know how to look at those things in your life. An you cannot look through an ideology, through a screen of words, through hopes and fears (15).

As soon as we say that is the truth – whether we are pointing to the Catholic Church or Islam or A Course in Miracles – then we are no longer talking about truth. We can accept this insight intellectually, of course – most of us are quite sophisticated about these things now – but that is different than understanding it at the level of mind, where change is actually possible, and where change must happen, if it is to happen at all.

On the one hand, I think Krishnamurti would have been quite dismissive of A Course in Miracles. It is a clearly Christian text and relies entirely on Christian ideas, images and symbols. To the extent that the course aims to undo all of this – and I believe it does – it still does it in the first place.

Krishnamurti urged his followers to a sort of radical attention. This is not so dissimilar to what quantum physicist and philosopher David Bohm taught in his work on dialogue and creativity. We need to make contact with thought outside the lens of the self: our judgments, our opinions, our feelings and all of that. We have to pay attention to the movement of both the observer and the observed.

Lee Nichol has written clearly and helpfully that this sort of engagement – the radical undoing that facilitates contact with Truth, with Reality – can only happen when one has done considerable work on themselves.

Bohm claims that the ramifications of the ego process – both individual and collective – are at the root of human fragmentation and suffering. At the heart of his dialogue proposal was the prospect that awareness of the movement of ego, willingly engaged in by a number of people simultaneously, might quicken insights into the ego process that could take much longer if approached only on an individual basis.

In other words, we have to work on who we are – we have to make contact with our own ego experience before we can begin to make contact with the Truth that it obscures.

This is very much in the wheelhouse of what A Course in Miracles teaches. Indeed, one could say that what A Course in Miracles is about is simply making contact with all the ideas and opinions and idols that obstruct our capacity to see and know Truth. Truth is given. When we see this, the need for learning is over.

Love is not learned. Its meaning lies within itself. And learning ends when you have recognized all it is not. That is the interference; that is what needs to be undone. Love is not learned because there never was a time in which you knew it not (T-18.IX.12:1-5).

This is what Krishnamurti refers to when he talks about the need to go beyond the level of teachers and ideology and words.

There is no guide, no teacher, no authority. There is only you – your relationship with others and with the world – there is nothing else . . . when we look at what is taking place in the world we begin to understand that there is no inner and outer process; there is only one unitary process, it is a whole, total movement, the inner movement expressing itself as the outer and the outer reacting again on the inner (Freedom from the Known 15, 16).

One of the charges sometimes laid against A Course in Miracles is that it is too dense and metaphysical and thus encourages an ultimately unhelpful intellectual approach. Certainly I have been guilty of this in my own practice. And yet, reading Krishnamurti often feels even more risky in this regard. He is clear what is needed – attention, freedom, courage and so forth – but somewhat less clear in what to do when we can’t seem to bring that about. In many ways, he was an incredibly disciplined teacher in refusing to allow his teaching to be codified or reduced to a system.

I don’t doubt a lot of human beings are okay with that. But others – and I am one – needed a better map. A more practical map. The Truth might be a pathless land, as Krishnamurti observed when dissolving the Order of the Star, but some of us need to pretend there is a path in order to figure out – sooner or later – that here is no path.

I don’t think Krishnamurti is especially helpful in that regard. I speak for myself of course. While I find his writing deeply inspiring and clear, I often fumble in their application. It was not so different from reading a lot of Christian mystics, from Saint John of the Cross to Thomas Merton. One felt such longing to be where they were and believed that such a longing could be satisfied and yet . . .

How? How?

This was caused Bohm to be frustrated near the end of his life with how his work on dialogue was being received and practiced. Certainly, it is connected to Nichol’s observations. If you have only a vague sense of where you want to go but no earthly idea how to travel or what direction to face or who to turn to for guidance, then you’re going to foment more of the separation and fragmentation that you want to avoid.

This is where A Course in Miracles is especially helpful. It is a course! It is a year-long class that one can take at one’s own pace and return to as necessary. Its sense of order – a text, a workbook, and a manual for teachers – is precisely the sort of framework that can move one to that place where understanding and following Krishnamurti can actually bear fruit.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false (T-16.IV.6:1-2).

Thus, however much one disparages guides and authorities and teachers, one can also be grateful that some helpful ones exist. A Course in Miracles has proven a critical system in helping to clear my mind of the detritus that clouds truth. It is as we dissolve those clouds – according to a sacred rubric, guided by the Holy Spirit – that we begin to understand at last what Krishnamurti was getting at.

To be able to look at this seems to me to be all that is needed, because if we know how to look, then the whole thing becomes very clear, and to look needs no philosophy, no teacher. Nobody needs to tell you how to look. You just look (Freedom from the Known 16).

We must be true to ourselves. We must be honest. And we must be rigorous. If we need help, we need to ask for it. If one teacher does not work, then perhaps another will. Krishnamurti and A Course in Miracles can be a good fit. There are others. You know.

A Course in Miracles is a challenging and rigorous spiritual path. It demands a level of attention and willingness that often feels foreign to us. It is not about seeking truth or beauty, but about finding those beliefs and idols that stand in the way of truth and beauty – and that level of seeking can only be undertaken by the very determined. Indeed, absent the help of others – including symbols of Love like Jesus and so forth – our practice would be impossible.

Here is how Helen Shucman’s Jesus puts it in A Course in Miracles:

Truth has rushed to meet you since you called upon it. If you knew Who walks beside you on the path that you have chosen, fear would be impossible (T-18.III.3:2-3).

It is perhaps impossible not to conceive of the course as resembling a path on which one journeys. It is implicit in the human condition: we evolve, change, move in this direction or that. Narrative evolves both to explain and entertain.  And so, until we are able to grasp the simple fact espoused by Krishnamurti – that truth is a pathless land – then we have to work with metaphors and symbols.

That is why the Jesus we encounter in the text and workbook can teach us that he “walks” beside us, as does the Holy Spirit. Indeed, they are our guides out of the world of paths and progress. Without their sure guidance in which to place our trust, we would be permanently lost in fear and guilt. We would be caught in an endless loop of lovelessness.

You do not know because the journey into darkness has been long and cruel, and you have gone deep into it . . . You go toward love still hating it, and terribly afraid of its judgment on you. And you do not realize that you are not afraid of love, but only of what you have made of it (T-18.III.3:3, 5-6).

One of the things that we should not fear is our reliance on symbols – right symbols can be used to undo falsity. That is, if we approach our lives and our spiritual practice with Jesus and the Holy Spirit (themselves symbols), then all symbols can be converted to helpfulness. Everything we have made – the world, our bodies, other bodies – can be used to undo what we have made. Beneath all the hell and misery through which we stumble bereft, remains a single flicker of love. It is enough to redeem us.

. . . your goal is the advance from fear to truth . . . Let us join quickly in an instant of light, and it will be enough to remind you that your goal is light (T-18.III.2:2,5).

How do we make contact with the one who walk beside us?

It is simple: we reach out to one another. We make the way lighter for our brothers and sisters and we allow them to do the same for us. Jesus said it two thousand years ago: whatsoever you do for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me as well. He is saying it now as well.

You who hold your brother’s hand also hold mine, for when you joined each other you were not alone. Do you believe that I would leave you in the darkness that you agreed to leave with me? In your relationship is this world’s light (T-18.III.4:1-3).

We are not alone. The way appears fearful indeed – and the work perhaps beyond our capability – but we are joined by those whose love and light will replace our meager efforts and sustain our wavering faith. Look no further than the one who stands beside you – in the grocery store as you shop, in the bed where you sleep, in the woods where you pray. Love is with us always in the form of our brothers and sisters, as we are love unto them.

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Someone asked me the other day: what does A Course in Miracles teach? And I foundered trying to answer it because everything I wrote seemed bent on making the course attractive to new students or me attractive as a Course writer. How hard it is to be honest! How hard to accept how little the truth asks of us – simply that we let it be.

There is a natural tendency to glorify so-called spiritual paths and to credit ourselves just for walking on them. In my own life, I did that most acutely with Buddhism. I wasn’t serious about it. I didn’t want to do the work. I liked the idea of being Buddhist – and I liked the local Buddhist culture a lot – but it didn’t resonate in a deep way.

It wasn’t until I was nearly forty that I was ready to be grounded in a spiritual path – to study the scripture, listen to the teachers and integrate a practice with my daily life. I’m hardly immune to the fantasies and prattling that characterize a lot of ACIM, but I’ve managed to stay attentive to it, and relatively disciplined, and so in a stumbling sort of way, I have made a space in which it can function.

One of the harder aspects of the course is coming to terms with the fact that it is rigorous and demanding, and that the work we are called to do is not especially sexy or appealing. We are not seeking the beauty of Love itself but rather those blocks which impede our awareness of Love itself. That is its core teaching.

And those blocks are ugly, stubborn, repellent, cunning and quite frequently terrifying. But if one is going to practice A Course in Miracles, that is the work. That is what we do.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false (T-16.IV.6:1-2).

It is fun to think of ourselves as truth-seekers and bringers of the light and all of that. It’s fun to call each other “brother.” But ACIM is not well-suited to clubbiness (all the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding) and sooner or later we have to see that we aren’t really bringing light but shadow. We have to see that what this particular path calls for is not truth-seekers but people who are ready to a) look at the obstacles to truth and b) accept a guide who can undo those obstacles.

I am slowly coming to appreciate this in a very deep way. The truth is given – it is there. We don’t have to become pilgrims in search of anything. But if God, or Love, is present – right here, right now – then why can’t we see it or feel it or know it?

To be a student of A Course in Miracles is to be ready at last to focus like laser on that question. We are done looking for God. We take on faith that God is. We are ready now to consider the mind that has arranged to not only obscure God’s isness but to make even looking at that obscurity a dangerous sin. It is not for the faint of heart.

Thus, A Course in Miracles teaches us that the atonement is simply the recognition that Love is given. It dawns in our mind as we gently seek out the clouds that block it and allow Jesus and the Holy Spirit to undo them for us. It is the marriage, not the month’s rapture, to paraphrase the poet Jack Gilbert. It is the work of a lifetime. And when we begin it in earnest – and begin to sense those first faint glimmers of light – no other work will satisfy.

Often when I step back a bit from A Course in Miracles – disentangle myself from its metaphysics, the demands a sincere ACIM practice makes (or seems to make) – I am struck by its simple origins. It began when two people agreed to try and find a way out of mutual conflict. And it began too with willingness with respect to relating to Jesus.

“This is A Course in Miracles. Please take notes.” That was the first clear directive that Helen Schucman recieved from what she initially called “the voice,” and what she later identified as Jesus. What follows is well-known. She did take notes – quite faithfully, in a sort of stubborn way – and shared them with Bill Thetford.

Relationship – with Jesus and with one’s brothers and sisters – is the ground of the Course. Its helpfulness is premised on being open to our healed mind (symbolized by Jesus and the Holy Spirit) and extending love to others.

In time we learn those two forms of love – listening and loving – are not separate but more like two sides of the same coin.

So we can learn a lot, I think, simply by focusing on that ideal of relationship, that powerful early example the scribes offer of kindness and willingness. It wasn’t that Schucman and Thetford set out to create a new spiritual path, or become popular gurus, or get rich off a vedantic revision of Christianity. It was simply a desire to be kinder and gentler in relationship with others.

And – importantly – it also reflected a willingness to hear Jesus and then do what was asked. This is as true of Thetford as Schucman. As she says in the preface, Bill had his “special assignment” too.

Thus, if we look at the origins of the Course, we might ask where we are in respect to it: are we working diligently at being nicer to people, especially perhaps those people to whom we don’t really want to be nice? Are we making space in our life for a relationship with Jesus, one that is not premised on answers to our questions?

Maybe we can ask: if Jesus asked us to “takes notes,” would we?

Of course, we are at different places with respect to how this works – and even how it ought to work. I know that. The Course meets us where we are and it’s no use pretending otherwise. Often I think I’m half a step away from Heaven and then I’m gently reminded how much work remains. It’s okay. You reach a point where the expectation of divine reward subsides a little. You trust that what is happening is what is supposed to be happening. The ego’s ranting and raving becomes a little less influential. There is some space in which peace is not a stranger.

Perhaps it is never a bad idea to keep things simple. For me, sometimes, that takes the form of stepping back from the Course, looking at it more generally and more gently. I try to avoid heavy duty analysis in favor of gratitude. I come away remembering that all that is really going on here is that a) I am learning to be in relationship with my right mind and b) I am learning to be in relationship with you. The one facilitates the other.

And truly, that is the work of a lifetime.

People ask sometimes how A Course in Miracles changed my life. There are simple answers I give: I smile more. I share more. I’m more patient and gentle. Not perfectly so, but noticeably so. On the other hand, I don’t know if that’s really true. I don’t keep smile records. And it’s hard sometimes to talk about the course in ways that don’t feel cheap and inadequate (not that you’d know it from my wordiness).

On the other hand, one thing I am learning to do is keep my mouth shut. I have always been nimble with words, kind ones and hurtful ones. When I am angry or scared, I have a tendency to use language to beat back the object of my fear or anger. To deliberately hurt another because you are frightened . . . that is not so good. Understandable perhaps, but not desirable. As Bill Thetford pointed out – and as Helen Schucman quickly agreed – there must be another way, right?

That agreement – to which we, too, are party – is the cornerstone of the change ACIM begets in our daily living.

Earlier this week, I found myself in a stressful situation. Someone was not where they said they would be, and when they finally arrived – late – they were preoccupied and unable to focus on me.

I was a little annoyed when they weren’t there, but when they arrived unable to tend to my needs, I began to get angry. Whenever I feel anger, I know that it is a result of fear, and so I try to make contact with it. I try to find the fear. And I do this not so I can “fix” it but so I can fully give it over to the Holy Spirit for undoing. Clear seeing is how this giving – and undoing – happen.

Soon enough, little tendrils of anxiety were obvious. I could observe them. They were like weeds quickly scaling a stalk, tightening and climbing, threatening to overtake everything. Fear often comes very quickly but if you give careful attention, you can perceive its movement. You can see it happening.

It was a challenging situation. Money was involved. My children were involved. A lot of thoughts ran around in my brain: I would never treat anybody like this. I’m paying for this, damn it! I have to stand up for my children. And so forth.

But I did not say anything. I sat quietly and waited. I concentrated on witnessing what I felt and thought without surrendering to it, without allowing it to vent outward. I knew that if I talked it would not be from a place of love, but a place of hurt and anger and fear. And we have choices now! That is one of the promises of A Course in Miracles. We can “choose again.” We can decide to try and remain peaceful despite external circumstances, despite our psychological distress. I chose silence because I have always appreciated the Dalai Lama’s observation that we are here to help others, and if we can’t help them, we can at least not hurt them.

Even when we are roiling with negativity, we can still practice kindness. We don’t have to give in to the ego’s demand that we attack a brother or sister. Mohandas Gandhi said that it was not that he was incapable of anger but that he succeeded “on almost all occasions to keep my feelings under control.”

Whatever may be the result, there is always in me a conscious struggle for following the law of nonviolence deliberately and ceaselessly. Such a struggle leaves one stronger for it (My Faith in Nonviolence).

Of course I am not Gandhi, but it was nice to hear the ego insist this was a crisis and to respond to its insistence with calm and quiet. No, it is not a crisis. And I know who walks beside me to help me understand this now. It was not that the negativity disappeared, replaced by lovely angels singing hallelujah and offering kale and green tea smoothies, but rather that I was able to simply stay with the Holy Spirit, which is to say: I was attentive to my capacity for gentleness, kindness, helpfulness. I was attentive to my – which is really our – capacity for lovingkindness. I did not lose that essential connection.

When we do that – when we do not allow the external world (which includes emotion and thought) to influence and affect us, when we do not let it drive our decision-making process, when we simply observe it in a spirit of gentle open-mindedness – then we see the potential of the choice that A Course in Miracles awakens in us. It is not the power to be happy but to know peace at the deepest level. It is the power to remember what we are in truth.

If you are to be conflict-free yourself, you must learn from the Holy Spirit and teach only by Him. You are only love, but when you deny this, you make what you are something you must learn to remember (T-6.III.2:2-3).

Later – much later – I was able to see the situation in a different light. I understood the pressure that this other person faced. I understood that while what happened had involved me, it was not about me. It was simply another event in an unfolding narrative. Blame was not necessary; only kindness. Only forgiveness, where forgiveness is understood as simply seeing that everything is taken care of anyway. It is okay. It is more than okay.

And I was deeply grateful that I hadn’t screwed it up by giving voice to fear, anger and impatience. In my admittedly inept and awkward way, I had stayed with Jesus. I had stayed with the Holy Spirit. I had stayed with Love – or perhaps it is better to say I remembered that Love cannot leave. My willingness wasn’t perfect, but it was enough. We have to engage our lives right where they are. We have to what is in front of us in the spirit of love, no matter how impossible that might seem.

Sometimes that is what a blessing looks like. That is what a miracle is. And that is how this particular spiritual practice – as strange and wordy and baffling as it can be – has changed my life.