Interview With Timothy Conway in Sun Magazine

7/27/2019 Interview With Timothy Conway in Sun Magazine

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Interview with Timothy Conway in Sun Magazine

On Engaged Spirituality and Mystical Spirituality

(C) Copyright 2003 by Timothy Conway, Ph.D.


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http://www.thesunmagazine.org/

About The Sun magazine: No other magazine provides quite the same atmosphere of intimacy

as The Sun. Along with beautifully written, thoughtful essays and fiction, this publication

regularly prints readers' reactions to topics as diverse as smoking and the telephone, mothers

and illness. It's a magazine completely unlike any other, always personal, always meaningful,

always unexpected. --Utne Reader on presenting The Sun its "Alternative Press Award for

General Excellence"

The Sun isn't "literary" or "political" or "spiritual" in the usual sense. It begins where thoselabels end, which is where life gets interesting. Each month, in essays, stories, interviews, and

poetry, people write in The Sun of their struggle to understand their lives, often baring

themselves with surprising intimacy. Our writers aren't afraid to take risks, to look at

something ugly - or beautiful - and describe it honestly. Sy Safransky, Editor and Founder

==============

The Sun magazine --April 2003, Issue 328

The Sun Interview

Coming Back to the World: Timothy Conway talks aboutengaged spirituality, Interview by Arnie Cooper

[Note from Timothy: This interview was conducted in Fall 2002, with significant cuts

and editing by both Arnie Cooper and The Sun editor Andrew Snee. Some of the more

"mystical spirituality" emphasis was removed for the sake of emphasizing more of

both the "engaged spirituality" content and popular social critique expressed in the

long interview.]

Introduction by Arnie Cooper:Timothy Conway grew up in the LA entertainment

industryhis father was a Hollywood literary agentbut his real passion was sports.Basketball and football were his religion from an early age. When a series of knee

injuries took him out of competitive athletics at the age of sixteen, he grew greatly

depressed. It didn't help matters that he was reading the existentialistsCamus,

Sartre, Kafkafor a high-school literature course. Then, four months before his

seventeenth birthday, Conway had an experience that knocked him out of his

depression and set him on a different path.

"Looking out from my backyard," he writes, "over the San Fernando Valley, near

Mulholland Drive, I was flooded with grace and the presence of God." He knew atonce "that we are literally made of Gods love and joy." From that moment on,

everyone and everything seemed sacred.

Having been raised Catholic, Conway considered becoming a priest, but it was

difficult for him to reconcile his mystical experiences with the views of Church

establishment. Luckily, his high-school math teacher, "a little old Italian Jesuit," was

happy to hear him question the conventional belief that human beings are separate

from God. "Father Colossimo took me aside one day in the big rectory of Loyola High

School and, looking both ways to be sure no non-mystics were in earshot, said, Yes,


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Timothy, in the mind of man there is separation between man and God. But in the

mind of God he paused again to be sure the coast was clearits all God!'"

Conway began to read the Gospels, visionary Teilhard de Chardin, and the eminent

Catholic mystics to help him understand his religious awakening. He ultimately

outgrew what he calls the "limited theology" of traditional Roman Catholicism. He

also outgrew his conservative view of global politics, opening his mind to the shadow

side of U.S. domestic and foreign policy. At the University of California, Santa Cruz,Conway began to explore Eastern philosophy, devouring everything he could find on

the Advaita Vedanta tradition and different schools of Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism, and

Christian and Jewish mysticism.

At the age of twenty, Conway suffered a major loss: the death of his younger sister

Kathy. Independent of him, Kathy had also chosen a spiritual path, turning away from

a possible modeling career to explore nature, mysticism, and music. Within a few

years, she had given away nearly all her possessions and was caring for an old blind

man in rural Hawaii. Conway went to visit her there. They hiked to the east side of

Haleakala Crater and then down to a campsite on a grassy promontory overlooking

the coast, where they spent a day meditating. At midnight, under a full August moon,

Kathy, having gone off earlier that evening with some acquaintances, went swimming

alone in the ocean below, and a strong riptide apparently took her out to sea. Her

body was never found. Kathy's death was heart-wrenching, but it also reinforced for

Conway the crucial importance of going deeply into mysticism: the understanding,

which he and Kathy shared, that all beings and things are sacred, a manifestation of

God.

Six years later, in 1980, he spent time as a monk in northern Burma under the

Buddhist master Taungpulu Sayadaw. After that, he traveled throughout India as a

lay aspirant, meeting many of that country's great spiritual teachers.

Conway is the author ofWomen of Power and Grace: Nine Astonishing, Inspiring

Luminaries of Our Time (Wake Up Press). In his upcoming book,Healing Our

World: Urgent Solutions for Pressing Problems (the first installment in a trilogy),

the 48-year-old educator and scholar proposes that the many ills afflicting our world

today demand more from us than just a mystical spirituality. We also need an

"engaged" spirituality, one that extends its concerns beyond our personal spiritualdevelopment. Conway has a Ph.D. in East-West Psychology from the California

Institute of Integral Studies. He has taught for many years at Santa Barbara City

Colleges adult-education program, as well as at Pacifica Graduate Institute,

Antioch University, and other schools and venues. He can be reached at [t.conway1@

cox.net]

Conway and I spoke for several hours one morning last fall [2002] in Conways

Santa Barbara condo, where he lives with his wife and two cats [now three!]. Images


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of the world's saints and mystics looked down from his walls as our conversation

ranged from cutting-edge physics to the television comedy Seinfeld. What struck me

most, however, was how calm I felt in Conway's presence.

Cooper: In your upcoming book, you say that, in former times, one could get by with

just an individual spiritual practice but that in todays world its not enough.

Conway: There are two kinds of really powerful, transformative spirituality. One is

mystical spirituality or the full, inner awakening from egoism to transpersonal,

nondual Awareness. The other is engaged spirituality, working for the public good or


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collective welfare, out of a deep sense of solidarity with all sentient beings. The

problems in the world today are so immense, grievous and dire that we need both

kinds of spirituality, not just an individual, inner mystical spirituality.

Cooper: You emphasize the need for engaged spirituality in todays world. Was it not

necessary in the past?

Conway: For tens of thousands of years, humans lived in nomadic tribal societies andtook care of one another, sharing edibles gathered from the forests and grasslands and

game from the hunt. Tribes worked together to ensure that everyone had clothing and

shelter. To remain viable, tribal societies had to be small. Most comprised twenty to

fifty people, perhaps as many as 150 in an unusually large group. Some of the hunter-

gatherers who survived into modern timesfor instance, the Australian Aborigines

and the African San Bush people (who now, sadly, appear to have been extinguished

by the encroaching modern world)still have no private property and cause virtually

no environmental damage. They are among the happiest, most loving people on earth.

So a distinct form of engaged spirituality wasnt needed among tribal peoples. Theysimply took care of each other.

With the appearance of agrarian culture some ten thousand years ago and the

subsequent rise of the great civilizations, a very different human society emerged.

There was division of labor, and societies became stratified into classes. But in a lot of

early agrarian societies, people still took care of each other and made sure that

virtually everyone was fed, housed, and clothed. As time went on, though, the politics

of most societies grew terribly corrupt, which led to great pleasure for the privileged

and much misery for the masses.

In time, engaged spirituality would be promoted by all the great religions: in the ethic

of loving-kindness and generosity among the Buddhists and Hindus, for example, or

in the Jewish tradition oftzedek, or social justice. And the Christian enactment of

agape love. Its not widely known today, but around the time of Christ, many Jews

were Hellenized Jews, people raised in Greco-Roman culture who converted to

Judaism in part because of this wonderful idea oftzedek. Judaism offered a more

meaningful social and religious experience than the fragmented Hellenistic world of

the Mediterranean mystery schools and their remote, often fickle gods.

I should mention, though, that engaged spirituality could be found even in the

Hellenistic world, among the justice-minded CynicsDiogenes (400-320 BCE) and

his followers. Many New Testament scholars now see Jesus as having been, in some

respects, the Jewish equivalent of a Hellenistic Cynic: someone who speaks truth to

power, identifies with marginalized persons, and chastises those who would exploit,

oppress, or ignore them. Early Christianity made numerous converts because of its

social gospel. Christians took care of widows, orphans, and destitute persons. When


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the Roman Empire started to break down, it was the Christian communities that

created a welfare safety net, if you will. Later, in the medieval world and beyond, you

find Catholic orders trying to improve the lot of the downtrodden, especially in urban

areas.

Under the social and economic dislocation of colonialism in the Third World and the

Industrial Revolution in the developing First World, more and more people began to

fall through the cracks. Both colonialism and industrialism spawned horrific social-justice crises. Some of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Holiness movements in

American Christianity, like the Church of the Nazarene and the Salvation Army,

emerged in response to these crises and emphasized an engaged social gospel of

service and charity.

In Asia, Buddhists and Hindus began working more for political, social, and

environmental justice in the second half of the twentieth century, and these

movements are growing more influential, for instance, saving trees and ecosystems

from deforestation and damming, and young girls from the slavery trade inprostitutes. In Latin America, from the 1960s onward, you find the powerfully

progressive Liberation Theology movement, based on late-nineteenth-century

doctrines from the Vatican that express the explicit preferential option for the poor

and favor workers in management-labor disputes. The Vatican has enunciated this

social gospel of solidarity for more than a hundred years.

Cooper: Is the Catholic Church still focused on social justice?

Conway: Pope John Paul II, who is so conservative on Church doctrine and lifestylechoices, repeatedly preaches a strongly progressive social gospel of economic justice.

Most Americans are unaware of this, because almost all of his economic teachings are

censored in the mainstream U.S. press, but just go to the Vatican website or read the

newswire reports when he gives a speech. He frequently promotes a very radical

economic doctrine: that the goods of the earth were created by God and destined for

the good of all, not just for the privileged few.

Thats the official Catholic universal destination of goods idea, enshrined in the

Catechism.

In the revised version of the Roman Catholic Catechism, released in 1994, the chapter

focusing on the seventh Commandment, Thou shalt not steal, goes far beyond

telling individuals not to steal; it talks about institutional thievery and corporate

mistreatment of workers and the environment. The Catechism implicitly and Pope

John Paul II explicitly condemn the International Monetary Fund and the World

Bank, which, along with groups like USAID and British AID and all the other

official foreign aid agencies (not to be confused with wonderful private aid groups

like Oxfam, Catholic Charities, Friends Service Committee, and Direct Relief


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International), form a system designed to exploit poor nations. In his famous bookThe

Lords of Poverty, Graham Hancock, former East Africa correspondent for the

Economist, lambasted these groups for the most wanton forms of stealing. They are

the primary reason why half of humanity toils in poverty, one fourth in dire

destitution.

Cooper: What are some of the forces taking us in this direction? Do you blame

technology? Or do you think it was meant to happen this way?

Conway: Fear, greed, ignorance and lack of empathy are the primary forces driving us

in this direction. And technology is part of the problem, in that it allows those with the

better weapons to prey upon the vulnerable and steal their lands and resources.

As for it all being meant to happen, from the mystical point of view, the entire

human drama is an amazing Divine Comedy, perfectly scripted by the Divine

Intelligence.

Of course, theres nothing funny about the world situation. When you consider the

fact that nearly a fourth of the worlds population lives on less than a dollar a day, and

when you perceive the worsening environmental conditions and the imminent

disaster of global warmingwith all this going on, you might think the world is just

going down the drain. What a tragedy!

But in any good comedy there are periods of tragedy, terror, villainy, loss, and anguish

before the climax. Then everything changes from being all wrong to all right. In the

big metaphysical picture, we 6.2 billion [now 7 billion in 2011] human beings, and

countless other nonhuman sentient beings, are being challenged to question the

illusion of our egos and awaken from the dream of me to our true identity as Divine

Spirit.

Cooper: And whats going to lead us to that realization?

Conway: Pain, anguish, and a sense of absurdity or meaninglessness often drive us to

awaken as a last resort. At a certain point, people find life so intolerable that they

reject the traditional conception of an external, puppet master Deity. As noted

Protestant theologian Paul Tillich said back in the 1950s: when God is up there andwere down here, were under his thumb. As conditions worsen, this rather

sadomasochistic view of the deity eventually becomes intolerable.

Christianitys Meister Eckhart 700 years ago urged that we go beyond god to God.

We must go beyond the dysfunctional theism that puts God up there in the clouds,

lording it over us. I would also say that theres no real solace or ultimate spiritual


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satisfaction in pantheism, either, which is the idea that God is nothing more than the

sum of all aspects of nature.

Beyond mere theism and pantheism is what has been called panentheism. A few

twentieth-century theologians have tried to introduce this concept in the West. Its

really the perennial wisdom of the great mystics, which declares that God is beyond

all and yet within all; God is transcendent and yet also immanent.

The mature panentheistic view says that God alone IS, the I Am That Am, the Self of

all selves. God plays all the parts in the phenomenal drama of existence. Like a single

actor moving about on stage to create various characters, God is exploring all kinds of

experiences: pleasure, pain, loneliness, popularity, fear, longing, resentment,

euphoria. As some saintly Hasidic rabbis courageously stated, God is the Jewish

families going off to the ovens in the concentration camps, and God is the Nazis

sending them to their deaths. God is the suffering Iraqi children dying of cholera,

typhoid, and diarrhea because sanctions have deprived them of clean water and basic

medicines, and God is the U.S. State Department and White House officials who keepthese murderous sanctions in place. All are guises of the one God. God plays all the

possible rolesfrom enlightened beings to the most unenlightened dictators and

death squads. So many different possibilitiesand not just human, but also animal,

plant, fungal, bacterial. All played by this one Spirit.

This nondual view answers the problem that Paul Tillich saw, of all creatures

suffering at the whim of an almighty Creator whos putting them through their paces.

No! If you feel pain, this is Gods pain. God is here, experiencing what its like to beyou, experiencing this grievously troubling situation, just as God is experiencing

what its like to be George W. Bush, or Saddam Hussein, or a cancer patient, or

someone who just won the Lotto. What an amazing [truly miraculous, "wondrous"]

play of divine creativity and courage and poignancy.

Cooper: So what act are we in? How does the play end?

Conway: From the mystical view, it doesnt matter. When youre living timelessly in

the Nownot the nunc fluens, the now that flees, this illusive moment [snapping his

fingers] which vanishes every millisecond, but in the nunc stans, the now that stays,

Gods eternal Nowthe question doesnt come up.

At another level many faiths see existence as a story with a beginning and an end. The

ancient Hindus, who have a more cyclic, nonlinear notion of time, divided the human

story into different yugas. Supposedly right now were in the Kali Yuga, the dark age

of environmental ruin, societal breakdown, and hideous abuses. As to when Kali

Yuga ends and a more benign era comes, no one really knows. God knows.


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Cooper: Mystical spirituality has been your main emphasis in your teaching for the

past twenty years. Could you explain a little more about it?

Conway: Mystical spirituality, as practiced and described in the Eastern and Western

sacred traditions, would have us transcend ego and selfishness and discover this

Absolute Being-Awareness that stands prior to self, this single Reality underlying

everyone and everything. Were always tested, though, because the ego, which is the

Divine dream disguise, can work in subtle, insidious ways. I have found that, in areaswhere I thought I was ego-free, the ego still shows up: selfish, grasping, judging. We

can cut through all of that and return Home without any binding attachments or

aversions. Most mystical traditions use this metaphor of the great return to What we

always Are. Mystical spirituality is about coming home to God, our Real Nature. This

fulfills the first Commandment of the Torah, as quoted by Jesus: Love the Lord thy

God with thy whole soul, heart, mind, and strength. The mystical Sufis of Islam

speak of passing away or being annihilated in all-consuming remembrance of or

return to Allah. The Hindu sages speak of losing the sense of a separate, mortal self

and realizing your original identity as the Divine: Tat tvam asi, That thou art, orAham Brahmasmi, I am Brahman. Taoist mystics speak of the ultimate return (fu) to

ones primordial nature as Tao. And so on.

Engaged spirituality means spontaneously working for the collective welfare out of a

deep sense of solidarity with all sentient beings. It also involves inward activity of

healing prayer or blessing. It fulfills the second Commandment of the Jewish Torah

and Christian Gospels: Love thy neighbor as thyself. An equivalent can be found in

all other sacred traditions. Its basically a radical empathy with the other, who at

that point is no longer other, but a manifestation of the one Self, the nondual divinereality of Spirit. When one is the totality of manifestationall beings, all forms, all

eventshow can we not be deeply involved with our human brothers and sisters and

all our fellow creatures on the planet?

So, while mystical spirituality is about the true I, engaged spirituality is very much

about the I that is we. We need both modes, simultaneously, for a full, balanced,

deeply alive spirituality.

Cooper: Many people feel a tension between the more contemplative life on the onehand, and the more engaged activist life on the other.

Conway: To heal this conflict, I think it helps to see our situation on three levels

all equally true and valid. Ill start with the most familiar level, level three, the level

of our ordinary experience in the world. This is a realm of opposites, of pleasure and

pain. In some spiritual literature, you hear a lot about going beyond the opposites,

beyond duality, but lets stop at this level and acknowledge the loss and gain, the

beauty and ugliness. This is the level of right and wrong and good and evil. Its


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humans doing despicable things to each other and to our ecosystems. Its also all the

good and beauty and joy in the world.

Look at September 11 and the horrific damage the terrorists caused: not just the nearly

three thousand dead, but also those who were scarred for life, the economic

dislocation, the massive layoffs and monetary losses. But there was also the great

heroism shown by the firefighters and police officers and rescue workers and all those

who donated their blood and time and energy. The events of September 11 showedboth the best and worst of humanity.

This is level three: the amazing play of good and evil. At this level, one must look evil

in the face and see it for what it is. And one must be willing to step up with an

engaged spirituality and do what needs to be done for the public good.I do not mean

mere charity, but getting involved in enacting justice. Theres a big difference

between charity and justice. Bill Moyers said, Faith-based charity provides crumbs

from the table; faith-based justice offers a place at the table. He wrote that in the

preface to a book by another hero of mine, Jim Wallis, a progressive evangelicalChristian, editor of the spiritual-political journal Sojourners and cofounder of the

Sojourners community. In his book, Wallis says, We need to do more than pull

people out of the river before they drown; someone needs to go upstream to see who

or what is throwing them infor example, government policies that punish poor and

middle-class Americans, or corrupt foreign-aid practices that destroy habitat and

displace thousands or millions of people from their ancestral lands. So level three, the

realm of good and evil, is where engaged spirituality shines.

Cooper: What about level two?

Conway: On this level, we realize that, whatever happens, its all perfect. The great

fourteenth-century Christian saint Juliana of Norwich was immensely troubled by the

misery around her, the sinfulness of people, and the traditional idea that sinners would

go to eternal hell. Then she experienced a dazzling revelation: Jesus appeared to her

and, among many other lovely utterances, said to her, All shall be well, and all

manner of things shall be well. And this beautiful secret from God was revealed to

herthat all beings would somehow be brought Home. No one would have to

permanently suffer in hell, for God is our deepest truth, our real condition of eternallove and bliss.

This goes back to the old, largely forgotten Christian idea ofapokatastasis, or

universal salvation taught by Origen and Clement of Alexandria and Gregory of

Nyssa: Gods love is so powerful that no creature can exile itself from this Love

forever. It may take eons, but at some point God will redeem all souls. Even Satan will

be reconciled in Gods love. The beauty of universal redemption is that, no matter

whats happening on level threethe oppression, exploitation, and terrorismits all


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perfect, for this Divine Comedy has a happy ending. Moments, or periods, or even

eons of suffering are ultimately outshined by reconciliation in God. This idea is not

found just in Christianity. It is also known to mystical Sufis and Hasidic Jews, and it

is openly acknowledged in the Eastern traditions. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Lord

Krishna promises universal salvation for all beings. So, too, does the Buddha, when he

says that all beings will come to nirvana, that none of the conditioned states are

permanent. The ancient Brahma Sutras of India say, All beings will eventually

become Brahman, or Divine Reality, because there is only Brahman.

So, with this blissful outcome for all, theres a sense that its all perfect. Yes, there are

times of terrible tragedy and tribulation, but ultimately everything turns out well. All

soulsreally God in disguiseuse their suffering as grist for the mill to produce

sublime awakening to Spirit.

Ramakrishna, the great Bengali master of the nineteenth century, when asked why we

suffer, replied: To add zest to the play. In classic works of comedy, from

Shakespeare to the Marx Brothers, things get darkest before the dawn. And when thatdawn comes, when the comedic climax happens, all those on stage awaken to an

overwhelming sense of joy and happiness. In the highest form of comedy, even the

villains are converted.

So here at level two, the deep, mystical part of us realizes that all is well. Unlike our

vulnerable human aspect, which fears things are going down the drain, this deep Self

knows that, in the exquisite script authored by Divine Intelligence, its all perfect and

everything happens for a reason. You can take this on faith, but mystics know it in the

core of their being as the truth of every situation.

Cooper: Many people have trouble even taking it on faith. They want proof.

Conway: Well, in a way, modern physics supports this aspect of the mystical view.

The basic parameters to get a physical cosmos had to be absolutely, utterly perfect

otherwise this nearly 14 billion-year-old universe just wouldnt have happened. So

many astounding fine-tunings underlie this world that its obvious to many scientists

that divine intelligence and wisdom are active in the process.

What holds the cosmos together is a great mystery. Respected Princeton

mathematician and physicist Elliott Lieb has worked for thirty years on the

foundational problemthe question of why matter is stable. Why doesnt the atom

just implode and then explode? Another glaring anomaly is that, at the origin of the

material universe, there happened to be a tiny bit more matter than antimatter. If there

had been equal amounts, which is what one would expect, then everything would

have just canceled out. But there just so happened to be a few more quarks than anti-

quarks, in just the right proportion.


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And lets ponder that initial inflationary period of the physical universe: the

infinitesimal Planck moment, the tiniest moment in physics, 10-43

seconda ten-

millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second! In this original

moment in time, a speck of nothing, a quantum bubble of space-time, inflated out of

the vacuum to the size of a soccer ball. Then the inflation somehow stopped and the

Big Bang process took over to slowly unfold our universe through an energy radiation

phase to the birth of matter, and then evolving galaxies, stars, and planets to their

present proportions. Now, why did that original inflationary cosmic bubble expand to

a certain point and then stop? If it hadnt gone far enough or had gone too far, in that

initial Planck moment, we wouldnt have a universe today.

And, in a fascinating development over the last two decades, superstring or M theory,

accepted by over 90 percent of theoretical physicists, holds that our familiar, four

dimensional space-time cosmos must be embedded within an eleven-dimensional

hyperspace, a much subtler realm ultimately rooted in the immaterial.

In the realm of chemistry and biology, one great anomaly is water. A century ago,Lawrence Henderson of Harvard explained that water is, in many ways, a miracle

substance. It has some highly unusual properties compared to other molecular

compounds. And without water, you wouldnt have any complex forms of life.

The famous astronomer Fred Hoyle, after being an atheist for most of his life, found

remarkable and inexplicable anomalies in the chemistry of stars that caused him to

declare that a super intellect has monkeyed with [the basic laws of] physics as well

as chemistry and biology.

A survey done by the journalNature revealed that 49 percent of scientists believe in a

personal God. That number surely would have jumped to 70 or 80 percent had the

question allowed for belief in a transpersonal God, such as the one that Einstein held

dear.

The point is this: Atheistic materialists who claim the universe is just an accident have

to appeal to the almighty laws of physics to account for how the cosmos got to be so

stable and so conducive for the emergence of complex forms of life. But when we see

how many absolute miracles of fine tuning were necessary for a universe and sentientbeings to manifest, it becomes a semantic quibble whether you invoke the laws of

physics or God, because they share the same divine powers of manifestation. Of

course, the mystics would say that God actually has powers beyond the physical

cosmos.

Cooper: We still havent gotten to level one.


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Conway: Well, after level twothe realization that everything is the perfect design of

Intelligent Spirityou might ask, What could level one possibly be?

Level one is the deepest mystical truth, namely: Nothing is happening. The world is a

dream. Theres only God here. Its always only been God, changeless and full, whole

and complete. A hymn repeatedly found in the ancient Upanishads declares, Praise

to the great Divine Fullness (Purnam), which remains perfect and changeless despite

all that is happening at levels two and three. Because at level one, nothing ishappening. What appears to be happening at the other levels is a dream of

Consciousness. Sufi saint Hakim Sana`i declared: You think you are something, but

that something is nothing. La ilaha illah Llah. There is nothing but God.

Here again modern physics helps out, revealing that atoms are 99.999999 percent

empty space. Shimmering fields of energy underlie the appearance of matter. And

energy, physicist Richard Feynman declared, is a complete mystery. Thus, an

increasing number of physicists are considering that consciousness may be the basic

reality, the source of everything.

The finest nondual advaita scriptures of India use humor to explain this. Yoga

Vasishtha [an early medieval work], for example, playfully states, The cosmos is like

two sons born to a barren woman who did not really exist, and one day they went out

and got on their horses that had never been born and traveled along a nonexistent path

to an uncreated land to a town that existed only in the imagination. These advaita

scriptures all affirm that the world is a dream-play of the Supreme Consciousness.

Yes, a world-appearance is happening that has a relative reality to it, rich with

phenomenal experiencescolors, sounds, textures, tastes, smells, bodily pains andpleasures, emotional ups and downs. Yet its all a dream. And if you bring attentive

awareness to it, and a strong urge to awaken, the dreams apparent solidity is

dissolved. And thats true for the ego as well, the sense of me, my mind, my body.

So heres the paradox: in Spiritwide open, vast, spacious, infinite Being-Awareness

the No-thing manifests as something, a world of phenomenal entities and

processes.

But, as the Zen masters say, its allsunyata

, empty fullness. Its manifesting as Arnie,as Timothy, as the plants, the walls and all these beings within these walls and

beyond, from the microscopic bacteria to fungi, to animals, to life on other planets.

The entire play of all these souls is the One sitting where it always sits, spaceless,

timeless, conjuring up a dream of multiplicity. Within the heart-mind of God appears

this Cosmos-dream, manifesting on subtle levels of refined light, from the heavens all

the way down to the denser, gross levels of the physical plane. Wondrous and

poignant adventures are happening. God plays all the parts.


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Cooper: But if, on level one, none of this is really happening, then why are we

talking?

Conway: Why not? Its part of the divine play at levels two and three. You see, all

these levels are simultaneously true. Nothing is happening, and everything is

happening. Wisdom says I am nothing; love says I am everything was how one of

my mentors, Nisargadatta Maharaj, put it to those of us who sat with him. The

completion of the journey Home is realizing ones identity as both formlessness andform, nothing and everything, nobody and everybody. And thats where engaged

spirituality spontaneously manifests. When you know that theres only God here,

youre motivated to do whatever it takespeacefully protesting, serving, educating,

prayingto alleviate suffering and remedy injustice.

Cooper: But what about the realization that its all perfect? Why do anything at all?

Conway: Ram Dass related a wonderful story about this. Coming from a good,

progressive Jewish family, he was much interested in tzedek, or justice. One day hewas kvetching to his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, about the suffering in Gods creation,

and his guru finally cut him short, saying: Look, Ram Dass, suffering is perfect.

And Ram Dass, shocked by this apparently callous statement, began to marshal his

intellectual resources to argue with his guru. But Neem Karoli stopped him again and

said: And, Ram Dass, your attempt to end suffering is also perfect.

Theres no airtight case for why we should pursue social or environmental justice,

given the fact that everythings perfect. But, paradoxically, God prefers good over

evil, even though God is also playing the villains on the world stage, from Nero toHitler to Stalin to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who said, regarding

the five hundred thousand innocent children dead in Iraq because of U.S. sanctions,

We think the price is worth it. Yet God is also the human-rights activists attempting

to educate folks like Albright, and God manifests as all progressives rising up to

protest and heal injustice.

Cooper: You say in your upcoming book,Healing Our World, Our Founding Fathers

would be shocked to see how their beautiful adventure in democracy has been turned

into a plutocratic demonocracy.

Conway: Jefferson and Madison saw a dark tendency toward greed, fear, and violence

in the human spirit. As an antidote, they chose representative democracywhich was,

incidentally, based on the representative government of the Iroquois Six Nations.

Later, the Industrial Revolution drove people into an insular, more selfish kind of

existence, competing for manufacturing and mercantile jobs. In our era, the so-called

service and information economies have disrupted the social fabric and caused an

even greater breakdown of the extended family system. More of us are living by

ourselves or cohabiting for economic reasons. Weve been turned into a nation of


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Lone Rangers, and not by accident. There was an orchestrated attempt back in the

early twentieth century to turn people into selfish consumers and alienate them from

each other. Communes and voluntary simplicity and other nonconsumerist

approaches to living have arisen to counter this, but most people feel more and more

separate, more and more out of touch.

Modern life continues to discourage solidarity and empathy and promote competition.

Look at our economy, which is really a sadistic game of musical chairs. Whos goingto get a job that can actually support a family? Whos going to get the decent income

and benefits that allow one to save money and not go into credit-card debt?

Weve been bamboozled by sloganeering politicians who use demonizing anecdotes

about welfare queens to indict single mothers while unfairly rewarding their favorite

welfare kings: the big corporate honchos who lavishly fund their servile politicians

campaigns in return for huge federal subsidies and tax breaks. Hundreds of billions of

dollars in corporate welfare are granted annually to the ruinous oil, coal, nuclear,

mining, and timber industries, and the corrupt agribusiness, telecommunications, andfinancial sectors.

So, yes, we have a demonocracy ruled by demonsgreedy, callous, and conniving.

Most of the politicians playing these sordid little games dont seem to have a

conscience anymore. There are still about a hundred people in Congress who are

trying to promote the common good. Unfortunately they are heavily outnumbered by

these other politicians who are pretty much bought and paid for by special-interest

groups and corporate donors.

I speak critically of these asura or demonic characters, but they need our

compassion. Though they appear immersed in very ungodly behavior, these folks are

essentially God in disguise. Speaking from the radical context of the one Spirit, I am

these people. There is only one Self here. May they and all beings be healed and

liberated into full realization of this one Self.

Cooper: Lets talk about the media. Youve critiqued them for being too conservative,

but many analysts contend that the media are still a bastion of liberalism.

Conway: Republican Vice President Spiro Agnew first came up with this myth. The

truth is that, since the sixties, the media have tended to be liberal on certain social

issues and most lifestyle issues. They have largely supported the causes of civil rights

and gay rights, and ethnic forms of culture, from jazz to hip-hop. But on too many

really important issuespoverty, workers rights, wages, war, military spending,

corporate misbehavior, tax evasion by the super-rich, universal healthcare,

environmental ruination, and the criminal injustice systemthe corporate-owned

media are generally quite conservative and complicit.


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The media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has for years

carefully documented just how far the mainstream media lean to the right on these

important public-policy issues. For instance, most big media outlets have explicitly or

implicitly endorsed Republican presidential candidates over the decades. News

analysis programs almost always feature a debate between extreme right-wingers

and pseudo-liberals who lean to the right, with few progressive populists anywhere to

be seen. And four out of five experts cited by the media on public-policy issues

come from richly funded, right-wing, propagandist pseudo-think tanks such as the

American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, and the

right-leaning Cato and Hoover Institutes.

Since the Reagan Era, hard-line right-wingers have routinely written our public

policy, and Republicans have hastily rammed it into law, with the help of right-

leaning Democrats. Meanwhile, the complicit media have refused to give a voice to

those who seriously protest these evils. Thats why were seeing the alarming loss of

species and natural resources, worsening global warming, ever-increasing poverty

here and abroad, criminal neglect of Americas and the worlds children on a massivescale, and erasure of our middle class. Corporate executives, elite investors, and free

traders are growing richer while everyone else loses their shirts. I sometimes think

that if you transported our current media starsthe celebrity news anchors and talk-

show hoststo Nazi Germany in the 1930s, these people would, in the interest of so-

called objective reporting, allow the Nazis to have their say and not give any

conscientious protestors the time to lay out their case for human rights. The whole

thing would be treated as a big joke, a form of entertainment.

Cooper: It seems that entertainment has replaced real reporting.

Conway: Yes. Too often the media fall headlong into anything goes sensationalist

journalism, celebrating outrage and looking for the most bizarre forms of expression.

This then drives a cultural process wherein young people or mavericks feel that they

can push the envelope even further. Look at what happened to rap music: it started out

as a form of social protest, but then was hijacked by some surly characters who, aided

and abetted by the corporate music industry and big media, turned it into something

violent and degenerate. As someone who appreciates the beauty and power of

traditional sacred arts, Im sometimes rubbed the wrong way by our cultures uglyforms of music, sculpture, and so on.

Cooper: But arent traditional notions of beauty elitist? What about those who would

say that ugly is beautiful?

Conway: There is, in fact, an aspect of Zen which says that whatever happens has a

cosmic beauty to itwhat the Zen practitioners call suchness. Dogen Zenji, the

thirteenth-century Japanese Soto Zen founder, said in one of his haiku, Ah, spring is


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here. Flowers are blossoming. So are the weeds. Zen delights in the profane and the

mundane and doesnt distinguish between them and high art. You see this, for

instance, in the cartoonish, clownish self-sketches by certain great Zen masters like

Hakuin.

Yet Zen also has fostered sublime temples and gardens and beautiful arts like the tea

ceremony and sacred shakuhachi and koto music. So even the Zen tradition, which

most persistently chops down artificial barriers between the mundane and the sacred,has given rise to highly refined sacred arts.The reason Im still old-fashioned about

the arts is that certain sacred arts have an uplifting, refining quality. They expand

consciousness and shift it to more subtle realms. The European sage of advaita

(nonduality), Jean Klein, often talked about the power of sacred art to awaken people.

Pop culture for the most part doesnt have this powerexcept, perhaps, by accident.

Cooper: Is there no room for pure entertainment?

Conway: I don't hold any elitist bias against the profane arts, where people are justhaving fun, sometimes very bawdy or raucous fun. My wife introduced me to the

sitcom Seinfeld, a wonderfully postmodern comedy where everything goes wrong,

there is no happy ending, yet thats OK in an odd way. Popular culture can be fun,

but when we lose awareness of the sacred arts that celebrate our spiritual origins,

when we become hooked on the adrenaline rush that pop culture so relentlessly

pushes in its ideal of frenzied euphoria as the acme of human experience, when we get

shocked too often by hard-rock music, gangsta rap, and so on, something precious is

lost. To use the Indian chakra model, pop culture stimulates only the lower chakras,

and that can eventually become more enervating than gratifying.

Cooper: You also quote Gandhi in your book: Those who say that religion has

nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means. What about the

separation of church and state?

Conway: We need to separate institutional religions from the state, because

institutions want more power, more control. They would distort the political process.

But our politics can be motivated by the core spiritual beliefs that transcend religious

divisions.

Many religious leaders are coming to appreciate the value of a spirituality that goes

beyond institutional religion. In the early 1960s the Catholic Churchs Second

Vatican Council documents openly declare that God is working to save souls in

religions outside of Christianity. So, hopefully, humanity is evolving toward a more

enlightened, mature spirituality based on panentheism.


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Of course, for a corrupt political state, engaged spirituality itself is a threat to the

status quo.

Cooper: Do we even need organized religion?

Conway: Certainly. For all its grievous sins, organized religion generates a

communal, celebratory power that can inspire us. And it promotes engaged

spirituality through charities and social-justice movements and environmentalcoalitions, like the National Religious Partnership for the Environment. Think, too, of

Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil-rights leaders who used the organizational

power of the black churches to mobilize so many courageous marchers and

demonstrators.

In this country there are some 62 million Catholics. Some are ultraconservatives, but

a great many tend to be political progressives. Who most opposed Reagans and

Nixons atrocious policies in Latin America? It was primarily Catholic nuns and

priests and laity, especially in Latin America itself. Many Catholics in the U.S. arecurrently fighting to close down the notorious School of the Americas in Fort

Benning, Georgia. The SOArecently renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for

Security Cooperationis the US Army division that trains, arms, and funds death-

squad leaders from Latin America, who, over the last forty years, have slaughtered

nearly a million people: peasant farmers, schoolteachers, union organizers, laborers,

journalists, priests, and nuns. A Catholic priest, Father Roy Bourgeoiswhos also a

highly decorated Vietnam War veteranhas led the movement to shut down this U.S.

terrorist training camp.

It was Catholics like Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Jim Forest, and the Berrigan

brothers who spearheaded the religious arm of the antiwar movement in the sixties.

The leading Catholic peace activists tended to be mavericks, but they also operated

within the channels of the organized Church. Thats how they were able to mobilize

so many fellow activists.

So, yes, we need separation of church and state to save us from Pat Robertson and

Jerry Falwell, and yes, we need a movement toward a more mystical, nondual

spirituality. But its nice to have institutional religions around to serve as aconspicuous moral conscience for the nation and the world.

Cooper: And what about the religions of the East?

Conway: Well, the Dalai Lama, who has a lot of clout on the world stage, has been

emphasizing an engaged spirituality of action, not just meditation. Hinduism has a

reputation for being amorphous and unorganized, but lately many Hindus have

realized they need to create religious associations. The Hindu holy woman Ammachi

(whom I wrote about at length in the last chapter ofWomen of Power and Grace) has


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become a recognized leader within that tradition. A profoundly nondual mystic, she

has talked of ending the oppression and exploitation of women, and also of

empowering women and men to realize the compassionate way of universal

motherhood to alleviate the ills of the world.

Cooper: Doesnt religious orthodoxy become a problem with any organized religion?

Conway: Yes, rules can become quite rigid and unjustly oppressive. But I think that,for people who havent come very far on the journey home and dont really have a

highly developed conscience or sense of empathy, religious orthodoxy can help to

keep them on the right path. I know that sounds horribly elitist, but its the truth.

Certain souls will benefit from orthodox codes of right beliefs and right practices.

Such codes serve as a conditioning force, eventually refining and ripening adherents

to a point where they can begin integrating the deeper, mystical teachings. Otherwise

they might stumble on certain mystical teachings or powerful practices before they

are ready and turn these teachings on their heads, using them for ego-aggrandizement.

The worst cases go around exploiting people monetarily or sexually and claiming, Iam the Divine.

Cooper: What about someone who meditates to reduce stress?

Conway: Great. Theres nothing wrong with being stress-free and at peace, but are

you realizing genuine peace, or are you trying to achieve peace as something you can

show off to your friends? Thats not real peace. Its an inflated ego posture.

Many spiritual aspirants never question this basic ego syndrome that all great spiritual

masters invite us to examine. This illusion of being a solid ego in a solid world. We

can ask ourselves, Who or what am I? We presume a sense of solid self in a solid

world that we manipulate and exploit in different ways for getting pleasure and

avoiding discomfort. Deep spirituality questions the entire delusion of separate self.

Cooper: Youve also written about our cultures self-absorbed obsession with

needlessly complicated, time-consuming, distracting forms of spirituality.

Conway: Obsessing about a spiritual practice is better on some level than obsessing

about getting money or having a beautiful body. The problem is that people candevelop a false conception of enlightenment. They think its some special thoughtless

state that can be achieved by going to meditation retreats and trying to become ever

more contemplative, to reach a permanent state of formless, blissful consciousness.

But none of the Eastern masters ever taught this as being the ultimate goal. Nor did

Western masters like Saint Francis, who routinely entered deep samadhi states for ten

to fourteen hours a day. None of them ever promoted this as the be-all, end-all state.

Yes, it might help one to experience the truth that Spirit is all there is. But all authentic


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spiritual masters teach that one comes back to the world with an eyes-open, nondual

view that expresses itself through engaged spirituality.

Some people spend vast sums of money on workshops, nutritional supplements, and

hi-tech consciousness altering gizmos in their quest for spiritual transformation.

This money could be better spent helping the poor and victims of injustice. You can

support a Tibetan refugee woman or a child at a Mexican orphanage for less than two

hundred dollars a year. Many have been conned into spending tens of thousands oncorrupt movements like Transcendental Meditation and Scientology. You could

easily spend a hundred thousand dollars by the time youre finished, if there were any

finishing it.

Such groups will always try to seduce you into paying for the next big experience.

They hold this carrot in front of yousome new state or new level of initiationif

only you do x, y, and z, and pay through the nose. Too many folks have squandered

valuable time and money on practices that were never really recommended by our

greatest spiritual masters. The result? These people, so many have noticed, still haveclosed hearts, unenlightened minds, and big egos.

Cooper: So what can we do to avoid this?

Conway: Be savvy. For instance, many aspirants believe they need to undergo endless

rigorous training to achieve a blank mind. Thats a bogus idea of enlightenment. You

arent the mind or the body, but the pristine Awareness that transcends and includes

both. What the authentic spiritual masters taught is to become, not thoughtless, but

thought-free; not emotionless, but emotion-free, intuitively standing in your realIdentity as the unborn spiritual Self. That is, we should be free to have our thoughts

and emotions and not be had by them.

So, yes, much of what passes for spirituality today is an ego project in another form.

Can yoga make me more toned and let me hang out with beautiful people? Can

this workshop on crystals make me more wealthy and influential? Twenty-five

hundred years ago, the Buddha clearly warned about these limited forms of

spirituality, from deluded forms of superstitious piety, to the sort of occult magic

practices that much of the New Age movement dotes onnone of which can awakenpeople from the dream of the grasping, clinging me.

It all comes down to this: Are we content to muddle along in our mediocrity? Or will

we awaken to the peace beyond all fathoming, the spiritual freedom from all that

binds, and the healing love that embraces all beings in the one Divine Spirit?


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Enlightened-Spirituality.org

Copyright 2006 by Timothy Conway, Ph.D.

Email: [email protected]

SBI!

Interview With Timothy Conway in Sun Magazine

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