Dark Spirituality: The Teaching to End All Teachings
By: Jay Campbell
Tags: Awakening, Enlightenment, Religion, Consciousness, Spirituality

Do spiritual teachings exist to lead us to the Truth… or protect us from it?

Hearing is thought to be the last of the physical senses to go, in the dying process. Most seem to retain their sense of humour, however, even unto death, and beyond. It evidently takes something far more potent than physical death to kill one’s sense of humour. And that something is life itself; existence, that is, without end, without content, without other, and without hope. Or, at least, that’s what is reported by survivors of extreme isolation, who rarely escape the experience with their sanity, never mind their sense of humour.

It would appear that life, which most people claim to want more of, has been confused with the content of life. And it’s this content that people actually desire. Life, or consciousness, merely enables experience, in the same way that technology enables digital communication. But of what use is such technology on a planet with a population of one? No use whatsoever, of course. Just as raw existence has no use whatsoever, except as a medium for content. And content always implies ‘otherness’, does it not? Or at least a convincing illusion of otherness, such as we experience in dreams. The absence of ‘other’ means the absence of content, beyond the content what we ourselves create. But what if we could actually create otherness for ourselves? Well, we can, of course. And we do. It’s the prime biological imperative, for all life, everywhere. And it can be summed up in single word: Replicate. Which is a perfectly logical instruction, given the unbearable nature of raw, solitary existence, as reported by those who’ve experienced it.

‘John’ lost his sense of humour after twelve years of involuntary isolation. “It did come back,” he admits, “in the sense of being able to see why something is funny. But the actual, physical laughter response has never returned. And I doubt it ever will.”

John went further than most people ever have, or would ever dare to. His story isn’t a pleasant one, however, and his subsequent awakening cannot be associated with the kind of candy-floss enlightenment that many of us like to dabble in, or flirt with. No amount of zazen, or silent retreats, or time spent in solitude, can even begin to approach the conscious, contentless void of which I am speaking. Even those who’ve experienced isolation, for years on end, have only ever glimpsed the void from a distance. For, in truth, their own human existence remained relatively rich in content, not least through dreams.

In many ways, the void itself has been turned into content. For there is no end of discussion, and books, and videos, and spiritual practises, that the ego can engage with, in order to become enlightened, or to realise that it’s already enlightened, or whatever. But none of this ‘content’, or desire to attain, has anything to do with the unspeakable terror from which we all emerged. For as reflections of the One, we all share in the immanent reality of meaningless, contentless existence. An existence that was inherently unsought and undesired. For not even God, whatever that word means to you, could have been the cause of his own existence. Rather, God is existence, by definition. An existence that we all share. Or, rather, that we all share the responsibility of having to deal with, since existence is not pleasant.

This knowledge exists in all of us, just beneath the surface. Only, we’ve blotted it out with content. Or, more precisely, we ourselves are the content through which it has been blotted out (by the One). And no amount of existential gymnastics or spiritual denial is ever going to change that fact. All of the world’s spiritual traditions are really nothing more than an attempt to put lipstick on a pig. And let’s make no mistake about it: Existence is a pig! It’s the content of existence that makes life seem wonderful, or at least bearable.

Human suffering pales into insignificance compared with the reality of perpetual, contentless awareness. And yet that is our reality, beneath the layers of content with which we endlessly distract ourselves, and which we cling to for a sense of meaning. It’s all part of the play. The suffering comes from our own need to suffer, in order for the play to seem real and significant. The only way out of suffering, therefore, is to consciously enjoy the play, as a play, in the same way that one enjoys a movie.

In order to do that, however, one must first embrace the ultimately meaningless nature of existence. But, again, I am only referring to raw existence here. Content itself does indeed have a meaning. It exists in order to make existence more bearable. But that’s it. There is no meaning within the content itself, within the play, beyond what we imagine there to be. And it’s precisely this “imagination of meaning” that leads to suffering.

However, our suffering is really just another tactic to avoid the void. And most people want it in their lives, to one degree or another, in the same way that they want to watch movies that feature a bad guy, or a villain of some kind. No contrast = no drama = no meaning. Which takes us right back to the theatre of life, the stage, the divine play called Duality, through which we imagine meanings in the absence of any real ones. Yes, this is knowledge that can be taught. And I do teach it. But I have yet to witness anybody actually “learn” this Truth, without also being able to accept it. Go figure.