Sepher Khasifa - Scepticism As A Spiritual Discipline

 This is the thrid extract that I am publishing here on hubpages from a book called Sepher Khasifa. If you haven't read the other two then you should probably start there before reading this one. They are all part of the same first chapter of the book, its just that it seemed a bit big to put on one page. You can read the first one here - Sepher Khasifa -Towards A Reasonable Religion

Living your life in a sceptical way is, in my opinion, the foundation of proper spiritual practice. Most certainly I have found it to be the proper starting point for the practical work of Kabbalah.

What this amounts to is essentially the application of an objective method, as outlined previously, to your own existence. It is science and the method, reformulated to adhere to the stricter and purer version of radical doubt, and applied by the individual to their own lives rather than to the abstract physical systems which are studied by conventional science.

We have seen that if we are to doubt all that can be doubted, and therefore remove he presumption of and independent physical existence from our thinking, then the only proper object of study is the totality of our own perception, of our own existence.

Here we hit upon the problem of objective knowledge. The point of radical doubt and the innovation which kick started science was the pursuit of objective knowledge. This is the knowledge which we can be certain of, which comes to us only from the object that we are studying and with our own presumptions and prejudices removed (the definition was created on the false premise that the mind is the subject, so the idea was to remove everything that came from us to study only ‘matter’). But if our matter is perception, rather than physical ‘things’, then by neccessity it is subjective. Two people cannot share the same perception, and so we cannot have a shared and objective system of knowledge. We can only have an objective knowledge of one part of our existence, and that is the part which has previously been abstracted and called matter.

This means that there are two levels of objective knowledge. This is because our minds are part subject and part object, they are in a way a middle ground between the two (we will explore the nature of this middle ground in later chapters). So we have a shared objective knowledge, which relates to the shared object of matter, and we have the more complete but purely personal objective knowledge which encompasses the whole object for each of us.

The solution to this comes in simply ceasing to want to do the impossible. We cannot have an objective knowledge in this pure form, but what we can have is an objective method – that is a method which leads one to an objective understanding. This understanding, as it is an understanding of your own existence, cannot be a shared, universal understanding which is the same for everyone. It is something that you must reach for yourself. That is what one might call enlightenment.

So what I am saying is that enlightenment and spiritual revelation are not only compatible with scepticism, but that a true and pure scepticism is itself the method through which they are attained.

In saying this we are still remaining fully consistent with the teachings of Kabbalah. The word Kabbalah itself means ‘to receive’, and it is primarily given as a method through which one receives spiritual revelations and the beneficence of the spiritual world. Whereas ordinary religion, which one might call exoteric spirituality, is a shared set of teachings and has been described as the ‘body’ of religion, Kabbalah is the ‘soul’ of religion, and comprises a method of mysticism and magick through which the individual becomes united with the divine. This is a long and arduous path to follow – hence the need for exoteric spirituality for all those who do not have the time, the means, or the inclination to follow the narrow path, but yet it offers a greater spiritual truth to those who follow it, without the intermediary of the priestly class.

So we can now begin to address the question of how one would go about applying the objective method in this way. The simplest way to state this is that it is about begin grounded in reality. Being grounded is an important part of many esoteric spiritual traditions, and it is especially so here. This is a very simple thing to say and a very difficult thing to do, as it encompasses so much and requires a constant mindfulness.

The first thing that one must do is to purify your perceptions, and to deal with habits of perception. One of the great symbols of Malkuth is that of the Virgin. The virgin represents that which is always untouched, pure and new in every moment. This is the world that we live in, but unfortunately it is not the way in which we habitually experience the world, and habitually is the right word, because by relying on and not questioning our habitual patterns of perception we do not truly see the world as it is – but rather in a large part only as we expect it to be.

It is almost as if we look at the world with a set of filtering spectacles on, only letting through those insights and that information which confirms or feeds our prejudices and previously held assumptions. We are too lazy to pay attention to the novel, to the new, to that which would require a different way to make sense of things. For an easy life we accept the worldview we have received, and it is in this way that we confirm it: by only noticing the things which confirm it.

Perhaps that is what was meant in the bible when it said that we must all be like little children. We need to see the world fresh and new – and as it truly is in each moment – rather than in some filtered down version based on habits. Because see ourselves in the world too – we become a reflection of what we see around us in the world and we see in the world a reflection of ourselves. It is common wisdom to say that the faults which we see most in others and which aggravate us the most are often a reflection of ourselves. And so if a person is like a small child, like the sybolic virgin themselves, then they can see the world as it is represented by the symbol of the virgin – fresh and new, each moment untouched by anything.

So to say that we must approach the world in this sceptical way is to say nothing more than that we must cultivate this childlike perception of the world – and to be absolutely clear that is not to say that one should replicate the midpercpetions or ignorance and naivity of the child, but only that we should make an effort in the first instance, before making any of the judgements and so on that a person must make to live life, to actually see things as they are. This is a spiritual imperative, but most importantly for this book it is also one of the first steps in applying the objective scientific method to your own existence.

In order to understand how we can properly go about this it is important to understand what some of the these habits of perception are and how they come about. Partly it is a lack of energy, vitality and will. We are all limited in the amount that we can be aware of in the world around us, and not just by our senses. Even amongst information that our senses bring in to us, which is a huge amount of information by the way, we are limited by how much we can process – how much we are consciously aware of. Part of the Great Work, the spiritual work discussed in this book is to cultivate a greater awareness. Just as any muscle in the body can be trained, and just as various other faculties of the mind such as the memory can be trained to improve them, so can our ability to be aware.

The first step in doing this is clearly to free up some brain power. You can think of the human mind as being a little but like a computer. So let us say you have a computer with limited resources such as memory and processor power, and you have a program which are running which demand a great deal of those resources. If you want it to run as well as possible then it is obviously best not to have lots of other programs running in the background. In fact the ideal situation would be not to have any running, so that no resources would be taken away from the main program.

This means that the more we can silence the turblence of our emotions, the more we can quieten the often continuous inner dialogue that goes on in our mind then the more we are able to simple be aware. Although there are clear differences still, there is obviously a parallel here between this Sceptical method and the teachings of Buddhism.

There is also a great danger here, that in trying to remain always grounded and sceptical one will cut off their own inner life. There is a certain art which must be learned here in order to avoid this mistake, and to move forwards from level to the next. This is the art of learning to differentiate between fantasy and imagination. Imagination is one of the most wonderful tools that we have in our life and can be a very powerful force for good. Fantasy on the other hand is almost entirely negative.

As we can see part of this process of cutting off fantasy is simply being grounded and present in the moment. Leaving reflection for it’s proper place and time and being properly grounded and present as we interact with the world, rather than allowing our minds to be off somewhere else. Of course we must allow ourselves to imagine different ways to do things, and so it is here that we must differentiate between the inner dialogue which purely distracts from the moment, and that which informs our actions. But it is also about being aware of the logic behind our thought processes and emotions, even when that logic is implicit rather than explicit, which is often the case.

One of the most obvious areas in which we can see this is in the preconceptions that we carry about people. We often judge people based on who we think they are rather than on their actual words and actions, and may not give them a fair hearing because of this. You will probably have experienced this yourself from other people, but if you are totally honest with yourself then I’m sure that you will admit to having done it to others too. It is normal human nature, but that doesn’t mean that it is the best we can be. Part of the work of sceptical spirituality is about seeing people afresh each time we meet them and each time we interact with them, rather than falling back on lazy preconceived ideas. Now that does not mean that you should forget about the past, as we shall see later, but that it should inform the moment rather than replacing the experience of the moment as it so often does. This is simply restating the Christian proverb to ‘judge not lest thee be judged’ and so on, placing it within a broader context. That is not to say that this is the only interpretation of that part of the bible, or the correct one, but that I hope you can see that the ideas which I am presenting here are compatible with Christianity just as I hope that they will be seen to be compatible with other religions.

I could say much more about the practical work of scepticism, but I feel that I will be straying into the territory of later chapters, and in any case this chapter was only meant as an introduction to the practical method which will run throughout this book.