The Mystery of the Maze

There is a symbol that stares at us through the hazy mists of antiquity. Its origins lie lost in the antediluvian world. It is a symbol which has been renewed in meaning from one culture to another, and from age to age. It has formed a powerful source of fascination for the human mind. This symbol is the maze.

At first glance, the maze seems to be nothing more than an intricate pattern of concentric lines. However, on closer examination, this convoluted pattern has been formed from a single unbroken line. This meandering line starts at the circumference of the circle, and after a series of tortuous turns arrives at the centre. From there it proceeds back towards the outer fringe, as depicted below.

The labyrinthine features of the maze were adopted by the early Christian Church, and this symbol was incorporated into the foundation of some of its grandest structures. Perhaps the largest of these labyrinths, shown here, is set out in the nave of Chartres Cathedral. It measures some forty-two feet (13 metres) across the floor.

Another classic example of this symbol can be found carved in stone on the walls of the cathedral at Lucca in Italy. Other examples of labyrinths can be found in cathedrals at Amiens, Bayeux, Sens and Poitiers in France. While these symbols were most commonly portrayed in the form of a circle, they were also constructed in rectangular or octagonal forms.

The symbol of the maze did not originate with the early Christians, however, but was derived from earlier sources dating back to the ancient Egyptians. The maze was also an integral part of Greek culture. According to Hellenistic mythology, the hero Theseus killed the legendary beast called the Minotaur that lurked within the labyrinthine tunnels of Knossos in Crete.

Throughout the centuries, the intricate meanderings of the maze have come to represent in symbolic form the deepest truth of the human evolutionary adventure. The maze is, in fact, a mandala (esoteric symbol) of the cosmic web.

The maze is a symbol of the universe, that wondrous artifice of thought which we have learned to spin. The world which we have taken to be a solid, separate and objective mass is, in truth, a subjective phenomenon – a stream of images displayed upon the screen of consciousness.

The universe of ours is moulded by experience and varies with experience. When we examine our subjective states of experience, we classify them into dreams, visions, hallucinations and the like. Each one of these states is a montage of images that is projected by the mind of each individual and is unique to that individual.

My dream is unique to me. It is not shared by others even though it seems to be populated by a host of other living forms. In a similar way we do not share our visions or drug-induced hallucinations. The content of each visionary experience is determined by the content of each mind, and represents a creative interplay of those thoughts, memories, expectations, desires and fears which characterise each individual mind.

Our worlds of visionary experience are not fixed worlds. They do not operate according to fixed laws of behaviour. The experiences of our dream worlds are infinitely plastic and can be moulded into unlimited panoramas of expression.

The true nature of our waking world is challenged by the examples of our dreams and other visionary hallucinations, which are direct subjective creations of our minds. In contrast with these subjective experiences, we have become conditioned into believing that our waking experiences are unique, and that they alone represent the real world.

We have been taught to believe that this world of objective form exists independently of our minds and operates according to pre-ordained laws. Yet our dreams and drug hallucinations do not defer to some divine creator. We alone are the creators of our dreams.

The creatures that inhabit our dreams are not the product of some pre-ordained system of evolution. They do not slowly evolve over aeons of time into the form in which we experience them in the dream. They are in fact momentary projections in consciousness, sustaining their existence with the unfolding saga of the dream.

When we wake, our dream worlds resolve themselves again into consciousness. They do not continue to undergo some separate existence from our minds, until such time as we choose to revisit them.

We are the creators and destroyers of the universes of our dreams. In a similar way, each one of us spins a web of thought, sustained by belief, which becomes for us our waking world of “reality”.

We learn to project our worlds according to certain patterns of belief that are common to our culture. In this way we come to share worlds which are common to those who think like us. Having created this subjective world of expression, we imagine that all people who inhabit our world share similar worlds which have the same content as our own, and which function in similar ways according to similar sets of rules.

This actually is the case for those who think exactly like us. But there are numerous other people who do not share our culture or our beliefs and who do not think as we do. They create for themselves very different worlds of expression. These other worlds are inhabited by different sorts of beings and operate according to different sets of rules.

The fundamental truth is that there is no objective universe out there in space. And the universe that we experience is experienced differently by different people. There is no single universe that is common to all souls.

Among those who create worlds of richer experience than our own are those people we call psychics. These “sensitives” create worlds for themselves which are not only far more vivid in terms of colour and intensity but are also populated by a far more diverse range of beings. They interact with ethereal beings that are invisible in our world.

As much as we might like to share their window on a wider world, we find that we are unable to do so, for as long as we hold steadfastly to our foundations of belief – those fundamental principles of thought which have given our world its distinctive and definitive character. Once we choose to change these underlying tenets however, we find that our world becomes transformed in harmony with these changes.

Each one of us lives a life within that web of expression that we call the universe – our waking world of projection. When we die this experience of interaction with form does not end. The experience of being continues, and the sense of identity remains, albeit on another plane of consciousness.

These after-death experiences draw their character from those actions which we have initiated during our waking world of life and are shaped by our motives and desires. If we sow pain in our worldly state of consciousness, we reap pain in the after-death state. If we generate joy on the earthly plane, we experience the delights of the heavenly realm.

Our after-death experiences in consciousness thus come to reflect a balance, or karmic character which yields to each the due reward of those seeds of action which were sown during the pre-death state. Our lives are comprised of a sequence of experiences in consciousness.

In the unfolding dream of consciousness, we therefore vacillate from “living” state to “death” state, and back again to the “living” state. This cycle continues endlessly, for as long as we continue to be the initiators of our actions. Within each incarnation, we spin a web of thought which is in harmony with our beliefs.

None of these webs are permanent and none of them are perpetuated. At the end of each incarnation we withdraw the threads of each web which we have so laboriously spun, back into our own source of consciousness, only to repeat this process in another cycle of rebirth.

No matter how grand our­ universe of expression, and no matter how satisfying our experience may be, we always remain bound by the limits of the web that we have spun for ourselves. Every web that we spin is a product of our beliefs, those thoughts which have become deeply imprinted on our minds.

Yet by changing the nature of these thoughts we can enlarge or reduce our webs. We can also refine them or make them coarser. The contents of our living experiences are dependent on the webs which we have spun. The finer the web that we create, the more delicate will be the creatures of consciousness that we will find manifested therein.

If our webs are coarsely spun, with large spaces between the strands, the subtler manifestations of consciousness pass through these spaces. It is not that we are prevented from experiencing them. It is just that our webs are too coarse to reveal their presence. The remedy is to refine our thinking, and to re-make our webs in more subtle ways so as to trap these desired experiences.

The maze that appears on the floor of Chartres cathedral symbolically depicts the web of thought that represents our world. It is composed of a single strand that leads outwards, by complicated convolutions, to the circumference of the web.

This web can equally well be unravelled, by pursuing the thread back to its point of origin.

There is but a single way to overcome the limitations of the web. This way is shown by the outline of the maze. It is the secret of its symbolism and the reason for its enduring charm. The web must consciously and painstakingly be unravelled, by steadily following the thread back to its source.

The Sages have consistently taught that the way to overcome the limitations of our worldly web is by retracing our thoughts back to their origin in consciousness. It is by steadily pursuing our thoughts to their source that we unravel the web of our own creation, and so free ourselves from the limits of the web.

The mystery of the maze hides another profound secret. When the thread that creates the maze is followed to its source, it ends in the emptiness of the Void. The heart of the labyrinth yields nothing but emptiness. Yet it is that emptiness which is the plenum of all created life.

To reach the fountain of Supreme Truth, it is necessary to transcend the Void, that Ungrund of outer darkness which shields the inner light. Those who finally reach this inmost Sanctuary, have to pass through that ring of darkness which St John of the Cross has called “the dark night of the soul”.

Those who persist in their efforts to cross over to the farther shore, however, find a joy that is beyond all telling. It is living at its most abundant, unlimited and without end.

The idea that there can be life beyond the nihilism, emptiness and darkness of personal extinction, defies the intellectual mind. We simply cannot comprehend life other than through our customary conscious experience.

The difficulty which confronts the mind is that it attempts to form a concept of illimitable experience. This attempt is doomed to failure. The limited mind is quite unable to conceive of an experience that is without any form of limitation. All words fail in their efforts to describe it.

No concept, no matter how subtle, can define it. Yet the desire to eat of this divine confection is countered by the fear that we might not like its taste. Anxious to forestall this possibility, we attempt to derive beforehand an idea of what it is we may finally hope to achieve.

Even though we can acknowledge the limitation of the mind, we nevertheless resolutely seek to reduce Reality to corporeality, and so dress the illimitable in clothes of thought, before deciding whether it really is worth striving for.

Having severed the knot of identity which strings images together in consciousness, the Sage does not react to these images from the standpoint of personality. They come, and they go, and there is no desire to link successive images. Yet from the viewpoint of the observer, the Sage continues to act and speak just like a normal, rational human being.

The Sage encompasses all consciousnesses and all worlds, and yet it is not limited by their content. The Sage experiences things as others experience them. The Sage feels and shares the thoughts and feelings of others as if they were his or her own experience. Yet the Sage remains beyond the reach of all experience. Being at the heart of all experience, the Sage is all-knowing.

Again and again we try to look into the mind of the Sage to see as he sees, and to try to grasp the action of his mind. What we fail to recognise is that the Sage is truly mindless, and does not evaluate the images of perception, which do not remain stuck in memory upon the screen of consciousness.

Jesus promised all those who truly sought the deathless state, which was likened to a jewel beyond value, that their wish would be fulfilled. But the price that would have to be paid for this supreme gift was personal sacrifice – the voluntary dissolution of the ego.

Jesus coerced no one. He merely invited those who wished to be like him to adopt the path which he had followed. He was the Way, and his life was the Truth. His Way remains equally valid to this day and has been trod alike by every Sage.

The idea of giving up personal identity, of surrendering individual desire, is a prospect which fills us all with horror. What lies beyond appears as forbidding as the grave, shorn of all laughter, fun and joy, and of every quality which makes our lives worth living. The Sage coaxes us to trust, and not to fall prey to these fears.

He who would save his life, declared Jesus, would lose it. But he who was prepared to sacrifice his own life would gain all things, in a life of boundless joy. This is the acid test of the mature seeker – the willingness to sacrifice the known in the anticipation of the unknown.

We shrink from this call to impersonality, fearing in this sacrifice the loss of personal identity, which is the vital core of our being.

Of all the preoccupations of the mind, the most persistent and captivating is the idea of personality. At each moment of our lives we are involved in a constant search for satisfaction according to the dictates of this identity. We are all obsessed with the idea that we are bound to a particular body that was born in time, and will in turn, succumb to death.

The Truth cannot be grasped by the conscious mind. Every attempt to encompass it must inevitably fail. Yet the earnest desire to experience it creates the conditions which allow it to suddenly shine forth.

If there are few who experience this fullness of Reality, it is because there are few who are willing to lay down the burden of their lives. They would rather strive to improve their temporal condition than abandon it completely.

The Sage is immersed in this Reality and is anxious to reveal the way to overcome all suffering. The Sage sees no difference between this Reality and other persons. All are rooted in the one Reality. Because he knows this Reality, he is ever free from the limitations of unreality.

Those of us who have mistaken this illusory unreality for reality, continue to be trapped in its limiting web. The Sage points out the nature of the web that imprisons us. It is then up to us to extricate ourselves from its cloying strands.

For many, the effort to understand and learn dwarfs their analytical powers. They instinctively resent the mental struggle that is necessary to seek out the origin of their selves. Yet for them, burdened by the weight of many sorrows, there is still hope and the promise of salvation. Enlightenment can still be gained, but only if they truly want it above all things.

The choice is always ours. We are always free to abandon the ways which have led us into pain, sorrow, illness and despair. But it is only when we have truly come to see the folly of our ways and long for release that we are ready to turn within and awaken to our Reality.

We first have to be convinced of the need for change. All too often we confess that we are simply unfitted for this task.

But, for as long as we remain dominated by the desire to experience, we are obliged to keep on spinning. And it is this process of spinning that binds us to the unending cycle of life and death. Birth leads to death which leads again to rebirth.

Whatever the fruits of our spinning, they are lost each time we die, and we start each life anew with nothing save the desire again to experience. Once again, we laboriously spin our cosmic web which is the arena of our desire.

For as long as we choose to spin, we are bound by the limits of our web. It is only when we have become satiated with the chore of spinning that we are finally ready to begin to unravel the web that we have spun.

Only then do we begin our journey back to the centre of the maze, by steadily unravelling the luminous thread of the “I am”. And only when we have succeeded in pursuing it to its source, do we rediscover our true nature, and the fact that we were never bound.

We are free to spin for as long as we choose to experience. We are under no duress to change. There is no timetable to our lives. We have all eternity to spin.

Yet in the course of spinning, there will come a day for each one of us when we will long to be free of our cosmic web. No skill or expertise in spinning will then satisfy this yearning. The pangs of this desire will prompt us to unravel the web that we have spun, and voluntarily destroy the personality which we have built.

In the course of this unravelling, we will have to face the death of our individual personality. Yet it is a death which leads to a glorious resurrection. We will be reborn into a world of immortality, beyond the clasp of pain and the trammels of time and space.

The moment we choose to don this cloak of bliss depends on us. We can do it now, or we can leave it for a billion lifetimes hence.

Yet whatever our condition, whatever heaven or hell we have personally constructed for ourselves, we are destined to be free. No amount of spinning can ultimately deter us from this goal. We will be free because we are already free. We have only to shed the blinkers from our eyes.

The morning of this awakening advances on us NOW!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2019 at 2:09 pm and is filed under The Mystery of the Maze. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments and pings are closed.