13^rd March, 2024 • Søren Aas

Chapter IX - The Third Form of Contemplation

Time has come to explore the mystics third and final form of contemplation. As the two previous forms allowed expansion of consciousness, so this third form will continue expanding it further until we become aware of something we cannot comprehend, but that we come to know exists. This that can not be understood is God, we cannot explain it, but only experience it.

Part of the the contemplation we will be exploring will entail a willingness to let go of what we know and have faith that we will find. Faith meaning that we have no way of knowing, we must choose to trust. We are asked to sacrifice without a promise of getting anything in return. This is not a trivial thing to do.

Commentary

The third form of contemplation will be a significant change in our apprehension of Reality. Until now we what we have achieved has been a result of hard work (self-discipline, daily practice, observation etc.). Through our continual willing we have achieved an awareness of Reality outside ourselves (nature) and within (spirit). It has been work indeed, but the work has been to enable us to feel the subtle contact of deeper realities. However, now that we are able to observe our Reality more clearly, we seem to have run out of work to do. Sure, we continue our practices, but we are no longer breaking new ground on our own accord. Our curiosity may be lost.We are aware of silence and stillness, but there seems to be now more for us to do. Our task now is to remain passive and wait.

It can be unsettling at first to let go, we have been working hard for sometime, but now all we can do is wait in the silence within with our awareness receptive. Waiting for what exactly? Nothing less than our most ardent and most sacred desires. It may sound lofty, but the mystics insist that we have to be given it, we cannot reach it by our own efforts. And it is this realization, that we are impotent and powerless, completely subject to mercy, that the most painful and essential lesson can be learned. We are to test the purity of our love through the passive suffering of humility, this lesson shall complete the decentralization of our character.

Of course, sitting around passively will be something our mind will try to get out of, for it hates silence and unknowns. The need we have within to establish ourselves as something that exists and is tangible is keeping us from peace. This urge to overcome and succeed is the obstacle we must overcome to be able to accept anything that may happen, even humiliating failure or unbearable evil. We must acquiesce to the fact that we are part of a Reality where we are entirely at the mercy of God. This is our only way to to become fully part of a loving union with Reality. Our self hood must die so that we may be reborn.

It is one thing to understand the above on a superficial level, and another to actually be able to let go into submission. A obvious trap is to convince ourselves that we have surrendered, without this actually having happened, and therefore feel superior that we have completed our endeavors, for as Alan Watts has said The biggest ego trip is getting rid of your ego.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but lets be pedantic anyway - a full self surrender of our ego an complete acceptance of submission with nothing given in return, will for most of us be a harrowing experience, a plunging into darkest night with out a promise or even a candle. But it is here we must have faith, and if we are able to surrender ourselves unconditionally, we may come to find ourselves changed. We are now subject to the actions of God, and not our own, that instead of acting we receive. This willing to receive is, as it where, what makes receiving new experiences possible.

All of us have a capacity as humans to experience the infinite, or eternal. Some more than others, but we all have it. We are all capable of knowing because we have experienced it and it is this experience that the third form of contemplation is about. It may take time, it may be tough, but patience and submission will lead to a mysterious contact and bring you ever closer to Reality.

This change in awareness may be imperceptibly gradual or a violent awakening. And it amounts to stilling of our awareness and a cessation of striving. We are filled with a knowing, a certitude of life that is as magnificent as it is incomprehensible. There is an Absolute Will, Thought and Love that fills us with a humble joy. Once experienced it becomes the central fact that we know, this mighty, gentle, passionate, self-giving, creative force we can call Absolute Love. What mystics call God, by which they mean a plane of consciousness that is experienced. This Nameless Being, of Whom nought can be said.

Underhill now spends some paragraphs of praise embroidering upon what has already been said, it seems best to leave them uncommented and let them be savored directly.

Returning to the practical, through our ability to observe with out attachment (disinterestedly) we have been able to develop from a narrow self-centered awareness of only ourselves as the center of the universe, to a ever increasing awareness of Reality and to experience union with it. Finally by surrendering ourselves and sacrificing our ego we are able to experience the union of the soul with its God.

We have expanded our awareness of the finite material world (first form of contemplation), awareness of the eternity of the stillness within ourselves (second form of contemplation) and finally awareness of a something greater than all, that we can not comprehend (third form of contemplation). As we live our lives our awareness will shift between these three modes, allowing us to harmonize apparent opposites, such as work and rest, conflict and peace etc, but always aware of God.

It is important to realize that the three modes of contemplation are not a hierarchy from least valuable to most valuable, but rather see them as enrichment's of our personality, of additions to it. They each have increased the scope available to our awareness.

Final thoughts

Our awareness has expanded from just living inside our head and thinking we where it, to being able to know ourselves as expressions of a divine will and to become aware of that something we cannot explain, but that we may call God.