Theos-Talk Archives (August 2003 Message tt00167)

Hi,

Are Theosophists primarily involved with translation or transformation? For
the difference,
see the article by Ken Wilber below.
Zack Lansdowne


Translation Versus Transformation
Ken Wilber

In a series of books (e.g., A Sociable God, Up from Eden, and The Eye
of Spirit), I have tried to show that religion itself has always
performed two very important, but very different, functions. One, it
acts as a way of creating meaning for the separate self: it offers
myths and stories and tales and narratives and rituals and revivals
that, taken together, help the separate self make sense of, and
endure, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. This function of
religion does not usually or necessarily change the level of
consciousness in a person; it does not deliver radical transformation.
Nor does it deliver a shattering liberation from the separate self
altogether. Rather, it consoles the self, fortifies the self, defends
the self, promotes the self. As long as the separate self believes the
myths, performs the rituals, mouths the prayers, or embraces the
dogma, then the self, it is fervently believed, will be "saved" -
either now in the glory of being God-saved or Goddess-favored, or in
an after-life that insures eternal wonderment.

But two, religion has also served - in a usually very, very small
minority - the function of radical transformation and liberation. This
function of religion does not fortify the separate self, but utterly
shatters it - not consolation but devastation, not entrenchment but
emptiness, not complacency but explosion, not comfort but revolution -
in short, not a conventional bolstering of consciousness but a radical
transmutation and transformation at the deepest seat of consciousness
itself.

There are several different ways that we can state these two important
functions of religion. The first function - that of creating meaning
for the self - is a type of horizontal movement; the second function -
that of transcending the self - is a type of vertical movement (higher
or deeper, depending on your metaphor). The first I have named
translation; the second, transformation.

With translation, the self is simply given a new way to think or feel
about reality. The self is given a new belief - perhaps holistic
instead of atomistic, perhaps forgiveness instead of blame, perhaps
relational instead of analytic. The self then learns to translate its
world and its being in the terms of this new belief or new language or
new paradigm, and this new and enchanting translation acts, at least
temporarily, to alleviate or diminish the terror inherent in the heart
of the separate self.

But with transformation, the very process of translation itself is
challenged, witnessed, undermined, and eventually dismantled. With
typical translation, the self (or subject) is given a new way to think
about the world (or objects); but with radical transformation, the
self itself is inquired into, looked into, grabbed by its throat and
literally throttled to death.

Put it one last way: with horizontal translation - which is by far the
most prevalent, wide-spread, and widely-shared function of religion -
the self is, at least temporarily, made happy in its grasping, made
content in its enslavement, made complacent in the face of the
screaming terror that is in fact its innermost condition. With
translation, the self goes sleepy into the world, stumbles numbed and
near-sighted into the nightmare of samsara, is given a map laced with
morphine with which to face the world. And this, indeed, is the common
condition of a religious humanity, precisely the condition that the
radical or transformative spiritual realizers have come to challenge
and to finally undo.

For authentic transformation is not a matter of belief but of the
death of the believer; not a matter of translating the world but of
transforming the world; not a matter of finding solace but of finding
infinity on the other side of death. The self is not made content; the
self is made toast.

Now, although I have obviously been favoring transformation and
belittling translation, the fact is that, on the whole, both of these
functions are incredibly important and altogether indispensable.
Individuals are not, for the most part, born enlightened. They are
born in a world of sin and suffering, hope and fear, desire and
despair. They are born as a self ready and eager to contract; a self
rife with hunger, thirst, tears and terror. And they begin, quite
early on, to learn various ways to translate their world, to make
sense of it, to give meaning to it, and to defend themselves against
the terror and the torture lurking beneath the happy surface of the
separate self.

And as much as we, as you and I, might wish to transcend mere
translation and find an authentic transformation, nonetheless
translation itself is an absolutely necessary and crucial function for
the greater part of our lives. Those who cannot translate adequately,
with a fair amount of integrity and accuracy, fall quickly into severe
neurosis or even psychosis: the world ceases to make sense - the
boundaries between the self and the world are not transcended but
instead begin to crumble. This is not breakthrough but breakdown; not
transcendence but disaster.

But at some point in our maturation process, translation itself, no
matter how adequate or confident, simply ceases to console. No new
beliefs, no new paradigm, no new myths, no new ideas, will staunch the
encroaching anguish. Not a new belief for the self, but the
transcendence of the self altogether, is the only path that avails.

Still, the number of individuals who are ready for such a path is,
always has been, and likely always will be, a very small minority. For
most people, any sort of religious belief will fall instead into the
category of consolation: it will be a new horizontal translation that
fashions some sort of meaning in the midst of the monstrous world. And
religion has always served, for the most part, this first function,
and served it well.

I therefore also use the word legitimacy to describe this first
function (the horizontal translation and creation of meaning for the
separate self). And much of religion's important service is to provide
legitimacy to the self-legitimacy to its beliefs, its paradigms, its
worldviews, and its way in the world. This function of religion to
provide a legitimacy for the self and its beliefs - no matter how
temporary, relative, nontransformative, or illusory - has nonetheless
been the single greatest and most important function of the world's
religious traditions. The capacity of a religion to provide horizontal
meaning, legitimacy, and sanction for the self and its beliefs - that
function of religion has historically been the single greatest "social
glue" that any culture has.

And one does not tamper easily, or lightly, with the basic glue that
holds societies together. Because more often than not, when that glue
dissolves - when that translation dissolves - the result, as we were
saying, is not breakthrough but breakdown, not liberation but social
chaos. (We will return to this crucial point in a moment.)

Where translative religion offers legitimacy, transformative religion
offers authenticity. For those few individuals who are ready - that
is, sick with the suffering of the separate self, and no longer able
to embrace the legitimate worldview - then a transformative opening to
true authenticity, true enlightenment, true liberation, calls more and
more insistently. And, depending upon your capacity for suffering, you
will sooner or later answer the call of authenticity, of
transformation, of liberation on the lost horizon of infinity.

Transformative spirituality does not seek to bolster or legitimate any
present worldview at all, but rather to provide true authenticity by
shattering what the world takes as legitimate. Legitimate
consciousness is sanctioned by the consensus, adopted by the herd
mentality, embraced by the culture and the counter-culture both,
promoted by the separate self as the way to make sense of this world.
But authentic consciousness quickly shakes all of that off of its
back, and settles instead into a glance that sees only a radiant
infinity in the heart of all souls, and breathes into its lungs only
the atmosphere of an eternity too simple to believe.

Transformative spirituality, authentic spirituality, is therefore
revolutionary. It does not legitimate the world, it breaks the world;
it does not console the world, it shatters it. And it does not render
the self content, it renders it undone.

And those facts lead to several conclusions.

Who Actually Wants to Transform?

It is a fairly common belief that the East is simply awash in
transformative and authentic spirituality, but that the West - both
historically and in today's "new age" - has nothing much more than
various types of horizontal, translative, merely legitimate and
therefore tepid spirituality. And while there is some truth to that,
the actual situation is much gloomier, for both the East and the West
alike.

First, although it is generally true that the East has produced a
greater number of authentic realizers, nonetheless, the actual
percentage of the Eastern population that is engaged in authentic
transformative spirituality is, and always has been, pitifully small.
I once asked Katigiri Roshi, with whom I had my first breakthrough
(hopefully, not a breakdown), how many truly great Ch'an and Zen
masters there have historically been. Without hesitating, he said
"Maybe one thousand altogether." I asked another Zen master how many
truly enlightened - deeply enlightened -Japanese Zen masters there
were alive today, and he said "Not more than a dozen."

Let us simply assume, for the sake of argument, that those are vaguely
accurate answers. Run the numbers. Even if we say there were only one
billion Chinese over the course of its history (an extremely low
estimate), that still means that only one thousand out of one billion
had graduated into an authentic, transformative spirituality. For
those of you without a calculator, that's 0.0000001 of the total
population.

And that means, unmistakably, that the rest of the population were
(and are) involved in, at best, various types of horizontal,
translative, merely legitimate religion: they were involved in magical
practices, mythical beliefs, egoic petitionary prayer, magical
rituals, and so on - in other words, translative ways to give meaning
to the separate self, a translative function that was, as we were
saying, the major social glue of the Chinese (and all other) cultures
to date.

Thus, without in any way belittling the truly stunning contributions
of the glorious Eastern traditions, the point is fairly
straightforward: radical transformative spirituality is extremely
rare, anywhere in history, and anywhere in the world. (The numbers for
the West are even more depressing. I rest my case.)

So, although we can very rightly lament the very few number of
individuals in the West who are today involved in a truly authentic
and radically transformative spiritual realization, let us not make
the false argument of claiming that it has otherwise been dramatically
different in earlier times or in different cultures. It has on
occasion been a little better than we see here, now, in the West, but
the fact remains: authentic spirituality is an incredibly rare bird,
anywhere, at any time, at any place. So let us start from the
unarguable fact that vertical, transformative, authentic spirituality
is one of the most precious jewels in the entire human tradition -
precisely because, like all precious jewels, it is incredibly rare.

Second, even though you and I might deeply believe that the most
important function we can perform is to offer authentic transformative
spirituality, the fact is, much of what we have to do, in our capacity
to bring decent spirituality into the world, is actually to offer more
benign and helpful modes of translation. In other words, even if we
ourselves are practicing, or offering, authentic transformative
spirituality, nonetheless much of what we must first do is provide
most people with a more adequate way to translate their condition. We
must start with helpful translations, before we can effectively offer
authentic transformations.

The reason is that if translation is too quickly, or too abruptly, or
too ineptly taken away from an individual (or a culture), the result,
once again, is not breakthrough but breakdown, not release but
collapse. Let me give two quick examples here.

When Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a great (though controversial) Tibetan
master, first came to this country, he was renown for always saying,
when asked the meaning of Vajrayana, "There is only Ati." In other
words, there is only the enlightened mind wherever you look. The ego,
samsara, maya and illusion - all of them do not have to be gotten rid
of, because none of them actually exist: There is only Ati, there is
only Spirit, there is only God, there is only nondual Consciousness
anywhere in existence.

Virtually nobody got it - nobody was ready for this radical and
authentic realization of always-already truth - and so Trungpa
eventually introduced a whole series of "lesser" practices leading up
to this radical and ultimate "no practice." He introduced the Nine
Yanas as the foundation of practice - in other words, he introduced
nine stages or levels of practice, culminating in the ultimate "no
practice" of always-already Ati.

Many of these practices were simply translative, and some were what we
might call "lesser transformative" practices: miniature
transformations that made the bodymind more susceptible to radical,
already-accomplished enlightenment. These translative and lesser
practices issued forth in the "perfect practice" of no-practice - or
the radical, instantaneous, authentic realization that, from the very
beginning, there is only Ati. So even though ultimate transformation
was the prior goal and ever-present ground, Trungpa had to introduce
translative and lesser practices in order to prepare people for the
obviousness of what is.

Exactly the same thing happened with Adi Da, another influential (and
equally controversial) adept (although this time, American-born). He
originally taught nothing but "the path of understanding": not a way
to attain enlightenment, but an inquiry into why you want to attain
enlightenment in the first place. The very desire to seek
enlightenment is in fact nothing but the grasping tendency of the ego
itself, and thus the very search for enlightenment prevents it. The
"perfect practice" is therefore not to search for enlightenment, but
to inquire into the motive for seeking itself. You obviously seek in
order to avoid the present, and yet the present alone holds the
answer: to seek forever is to miss the point forever. You always
already ARE enlightened Spirit, and therefore to seek Spirit is simply
to deny Spirit. You can no more attain Spirit than you can attain your
feet or acquire your lungs.

Nobody got it. And so Adi Da, exactly like Trungpa, introduced a whole
series of translative and lesser transformative practices - seven
stages of practice, in fact - leading up to the point that you could
dispense with seeking altogether, there to stand open to the
always-already truth of your own eternal and timeless condition, which
was completely and totally present from the start, but which was
brutally ignored in the frenzied desire to seek.

Now, whatever you might think of those two Adepts, the fact remains:
they performed perhaps the first two great experiments in this country
on how to introduce the notion that "There is only Ati" - there is
only Spirit - and thus seeking Spirit is exactly that which prevents
realization. And they both found that, however much we might be alive
to Ati, alive to the radical transformative truth of this moment,
nonetheless translative and lesser transformative practices are almost
always a prerequisite for that final and ultimate transformation.

My second point, then, is that in addition to offering authentic and
radical transformation, we must still be sensitive to, and caring of,
the numerous beneficial modes of lesser and translative practices.
This more generous stance therefore calls for an "integral approach"
to overall transformation, an approach that honors and incorporates
many lesser transformative and translative practices - covering the
physical, emotional, mental, cultural, and communal aspects of the
human being - in preparation for, and as an expression of, the
ultimate transformation into the always already present state.

And so, even as we rightly criticize merely translative religion (and
all the lesser forms of transformation), let us also realize that an
integral approach to spirituality combines the best of horizontal and
vertical, translative and transformative, legitimate and authentic -
and thus let us focus our efforts on a balanced and sane overview of
the human situation.

Wisdom and Compassion

But isn't this view of mine terribly elitist? Good heavens, I hope so.
When you go to a basketball game, do you want to see me or Michael
Jordan play basketball? When you listen to pop music, who are you
willing to pay money in order to hear? Me or Bruce Springsteen? When
you read great literature, who would you rather spend an evening
reading, me or Tolstoy? When you pay sixty-four million dollars for a
painting, will that be a painting by me or by Van Gogh?

All excellence is elitist. And that includes spiritual excellence as
well. But spiritual excellence is an elitism to which all are invited.
We go first to the great masters - to Padmasambhava, to St. Teresa of
Avila, to Gautama Buddha, to Lady Tsogyal, to Emerson, Eckhart,
Maimonides, Shankara, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Bodhidharma, Garab Dorje.
But their message is always the same: let this consciousness be in you
which is in me. You start elitist, always; you end up egalitarian,
always.

But in between, there is the angry wisdom that shouts from the heart:
we must, all of us, keep our eye on the radical and ultimate
transformative goal. And so any sort of integral or authentic
spirituality will also, always, involve a critical, intense, and
occasionally polemical shout from the transformative camp to the
merely translative camp.

If we use the percentages of Chinese Ch'an as a simple blanket
example, this means that if 0.0000001 of the population is actually
involved in genuine or authentic spirituality, then .99999999 of the
population is involved in nontransformative, nonauthentic, merely
translative or horizontal belief systems. And that means, yes, that
the vast, vast majority of "spiritual seekers" in this country (as
elsewhere) are involved in much less than authentic occasions. It has
always been so; it is still so now. This country is no exception.

But in today's America, this is much more disturbing, because this
vast majority of horizontal spiritual adherents often claim to be
representing the leading edge of spiritual transformation, the "new
paradigm" that will change the world, the "great transformation" of
which they are the vanguard. But more often than not, they are not
deeply transformative at all; they are merely but aggressively
translative - they do not offer effective means to utterly dismantle
the self, but merely ways for the self to think differently. Not ways
to transform, but merely new ways to translate. In fact, what most of
them offer is not a practice or a series of practices; not sadhana or
satsang or shikan-taza or yoga. What most of them offer is simply the
suggestion: read my book on the new paradigm. This is deeply
disturbed, and deeply disturbing.

Thus, the authentic spiritual camps have the heart and soul of the
great transformative traditions, and yet they will always do two
things at once: appreciate and engage the lesser and translative
practices (upon which their own successes usually depend), but also
issue a thundering shout from the heart that translation alone is not
enough.

And therefore, all of those for whom authentic transformation has
deeply unseated their souls must, I believe, wrestle with the profound
moral obligation to shout from the heart - perhaps quietly and gently,
with tears of reluctance; perhaps with fierce fire and angry wisdom;
perhaps with slow and careful analysis; perhaps by unshakeable public
example - but authenticity always and absolutely carries a demand and
duty: you must speak out, to the best of your ability, and shake the
spiritual tree, and shine your headlights into the eyes of the
complacent. You must let that radical realization rumble through your
veins and rattle those around you.

Alas, if you fail to do so, you are betraying your own authenticity.
You are hiding your true estate. You don't want to upset others
because you don't want to upset your self. You are acting in bad
faith, the taste of a bad infinity.

Because, you see, the alarming fact is that any realization of depth
carries a terrible burden: Those who are allowed to see are
simultaneously saddled with the obligation to communicate that vision
in no uncertain terms: that is the bargain. You were allowed to see
the truth under the agreement that you would communicate it to others
(that is the ultimate meaning of the bodhisattva vow). And therefore,
if you have seen, you simply must speak out. Speak out with
compassion, or speak out with angry wisdom, or speak out with skillful
means, but speak out you must.

And this is truly a terrible burden, a horrible burden, because in any
case there is no room for timidity. The fact that you might be wrong
is simply no excuse: You might be right in your communication, and you
might be wrong, but that doesn't matter. What does matter, as
Kierkegaard so rudely reminded us, is that only by investing and
speaking your vision with passion, can the truth, one way or another,
finally penetrate the reluctance of the world. If you are right, or if
you are wrong, it is only your passion that will force either to be
discovered. It is your duty to promote that discovery - either way -
and therefore it is your duty to speak your truth with whatever
passion and courage you can find in your heart. You must shout, in
whatever way you can.

The vulgar world is already shouting, and with such a raucous rancor
that truer voices can scarcely be heard at all. The materialistic
world is already full of advertisements and allure, screams of
enticement and cries of commerce, wails of welcome and whoops of come
hither. I don't mean to be harsh here, and we must honor all lesser
engagements. Nonetheless, you must have noticed that the word "soul"
is now the hottest item in the title of book sales - but all "soul"
really means, in most of these books, is simply the ego in drag.
"Soul" has come to denote, in this feeding frenzy of translative
grasping, not that which is timeless in you but that which most loudly
thrashes around in time, and thus "care of the soul" incomprehensibly
means nothing much more than focusing intensely on your ardently
separate self. Likewise, "Spiritual" is on everybody's lips, but
usually all it really means is any intense egoic feeling, just as
"Heart" has come to mean any sincere sentiment of the
self-contraction.

All of this, truly, is just the same old translative game, dressed up
and gone to town. And even that would be more than acceptable were it
not for the alarming fact that all of that translative jockeying is
aggressively called "transformation," when all it is, of course, is a
new series of frisky translations. In other words, there seems to be,
alas, a deep hypocrisy hidden in the game of taking any new
translation and calling it the great transformation. And the world at
large - East or West, North or South - is, and always has been, for
the most part, perfectly deaf to this calamity.

And so: given the measure of your own authentic realization, you were
actually thinking about gently whispering into the ear of that
near-deaf world? No, my friend, you must shout. Shout from the heart
of what you have seen, shout however you can.

But not indiscriminately. Let us proceed carefully with this
transformative shout. Let small pockets of radically transformative
spirituality, authentic spirituality, focus their efforts, and
transform their students. And let these pockets slowly, carefully,
responsibly, humbly, begin to spread their influence, embracing an
absolute tolerance for all views, but attempting nonetheless to
advocate a true and authentic and integral spirituality - by example,
by radiance, by obvious release, by unmistakable liberation. Let those
pockets of transformation gently persuade the world and its reluctant
selves, and challenge their legitimacy, and challenge their limiting
translations, and offer an awakening in the face of the numbness that
haunts the world at large.

Let it start right here, right now, with us - with you and with me -
and with our commitment to breathe into infinity until infinity alone
is the only statement that the world will recognize. Let a radical
realization shine from our faces, and roar from our hearts, and
thunder from our brains - this simple fact, this obvious fact: that
you, in the very immediateness of your present awareness, are in fact
the entire world, in all its frost and fever, in all its glories and
its grace, in all its triumphs and its tears. You do not see the sun,
you are the sun; you do not hear the rain, you are the rain; you do
not feel the earth, you are the earth. And in that simple, clear,
unmistakable regard, translation has ceased in all domains, and you
have transformed into the very Heart of the Kosmos itself - and there,
right there, very simply, very quietly, it is all undone. Wonder and
remorse will then be alien to you, and self and others will be alien
to you, and outside and inside will have no meaning at all. And in an
obvious shock of recognition - where my Master is my Self, and that
Self is the Kosmos at large, and the Kosmos is my Soul - you will walk
very gently into the fog of this world, and transform it entirely by
doing nothing at all.

And then, and then, and only then - you will finally, clearly,
carefully and with compassion, write on the tombstone of a self that
never even existed: There is only Ati.

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Copyright 1996, 1997, Shambhala Publications
For More Information Send Email to: editors@shambhala.com

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