River of Peace

There was a numerous crowd of spirits around me that sounded like a sort of chaotic stream. The spirits complained that everything was now going to ruin, because everything seemed disconnected among them, which made them fearful that the end was coming. They thought there would be total destruction, as is usual in these situations.

In their midst, though, I picked up a sound that was gentle, angelic, and sweet, containing only what was orderly. Angelic choirs were on the outside, and the confused crowd of spirits was on the outside.

The angelic stream lasted a long time. I was told that it represented the way the Lord works from what is peaceful in the middle to control what is messy and uncontrolled on the outside. Through this core of peace he reduces the chaos of the outer bounds to order, rescuing each part from its natural error.

Emmanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven

I bring this quote up because while in Detroit, I recently had a personal vision—a precise experience— of how this is exactly true.

When we’re not connected mindfully with our body, through the living force of sensation and the inflow, we spend most of our lives in confusion and fear.

This is a normal thing. Swedenborg points out "as as usual in these situations.”

”These situations” are ordinary life as we encounter it. If you look around you today, you may get the impression that everything seems to be a chaotic stream and people everywhere are constantly complaining that everything is going to ruin because things are disconnected between us.

This is what Swedenborg what he means when he says “natural error:” confusion and fear is born almost automatically from the basic qualities of the material world. In this sense, we can understand "natural error" as our deviation from the inflow of Being and the presence of the Lord. It’s difficult to explain in words, but lacking nthye inflow, one cannot see reality for what it truly is. That disassociation at once produces terrible conflict.

The moment that the inflow is present, the organizing principle of peace begins to flow into being and things are stabilized. An inner harmony appears: and without inner harmony, outer harmony cannot begin to find itself. When I had the impression, the words "a River of Peace" immediately appeared in me because they are what is true about this.

The fact that we do not usually sense this river does not mean it does not exist.

Peace is composed above all of mindfulness of the body and of stillness within thought. It can be accurately said that there is a river of peace that flows into being. This is exactly how I physically perceived it through sensation when it came to me that this force is present in life.

This particular sacred organizing force is of course, attracted by inner work; but it is especially attracted by love, and the love that families naturally feel for one another, as when parents are playing with their young children.

This is one of the places in society and in life least damaged by our paranoia, which otherwise seems to dominate us in most things.

Quite frankly, my friends, we need to get over that. Paranoia and negativity are forces designed to prevent the inflow; and the presence of the Lord does not manifest so easily when they are present, because they are hard things that actively resist the penetration of the heart by love. When it is said that Pharoah’s heart was hardened, this is exactly what it means: we develop a crystallized part within ourselves that refuses the inflow of the River of Peace and instead builds walls out of paranoia and agitation, anger, and division.

We don’t have to be that way. We’re invited to soften ourselves within Being through mindfulness of the body—and this alone is already enough.

In case you don't believe me (and probably you don't, because who the hell am I, anyway?) let me cite a few more authoritative examples here.

We will begin with Swedenborg once again—another passage taken from Secrets of Heaven:

I can assert positively that spirits are much better at seeing than our people in their bodies, and at hearing, smelling (which must come as a surprise), and particularly feeling, since they do see, hear, and touch each other. This is a conclusion that anyone who believes in life after death would reach by considering that life cannot exist without sensation, and that quality of life depends on quality of sensation. In fact, intellect is nothing but a subtle awareness of one's inner depths, and the higher levels of intellect are an awareness of spiritual matters. As a result, the capacities of the intellect end of its perceptions are called inner senses.”

And now, we will change it up a bit and quote from the Buddha:

“When the Fortunate One had granted him permission, Brahmā Sahāmpati asked him,"Fortunate One, how many Dharmas do bodhisattvas, great beings, need in order to rapidly realize unsurpassed, true, and complete awakening?" This was his question.

The Fortunate One replied: “Brahmā, there is one Dharma through which bodhisattvas, great beings, will rapidly realize unsurpassed, true, and complete awakening. What is this one Dharma? It is mindfulness of the body.”

This particular passage is taken from Peter Skillings’ “Questioning the Buddha”, page 358. It’s drawn from the sutra Brahmā Sahāmpati’s Question, in which the Buddha speaks at considerable length about mindfulness of the body.

If you think the Gurdjieff work is any different than these two passages from these two quite different sister traditions, you’re definitely mistaken.

And it underscores the absolute authority of the flow of Being-sensation within the body – cosmological sensation, not ordinary sensation – within the context of true Being, inner peace, and what is needed for the outer world in general. Jean-Claude Lubtchanksy relentless witnessed on behalf of this Dharma during his lifetime.

There is a mistaken doctrine that somehow the outer and the inner world exist naturally separated, and can be sustained that way— even that they’re somehow opposed— but these ideas are grave errors from the very beginning. The whole point of the inner world is to help support the outer world so that the natural organization of heaven can be expressed within society and within people. They are in the end one whole thing.

We as creatures have almost no sense of this and society is descending into cacophony as a result.

***

A candidate-for-heaven recently expressed great concern about this chaos and the degeneration of everything around us.

“What will we do then, if everything falls apart?” They asked.

The question was disturbing and none around them seemed to know how to answer it.

Yet one man spoke well—speaking, it seemed, directly from this great River of Peace.

He said,

“We will find each other.”

We can find each other in this world if we are mindful of the body and we develop sensation; and this great River of Peace, which flows into being throughout the entire world independent of our individual subjective activities and our fear and ignorance, can be manifested.

Not only can it be manifested; it is our duty, duty, duty to struggle against these negative things in us that are perpetually disharmonizing ourselves, our societies, and even this planet, and to strive for a more loving relationship through mindfulness of the body, through an experience of real sensation.

We should turn every effort from within ourselves towards this and never look anywhere else except to be present within this force, which the Buddha himself insisted was the one great Dharma.

Of course, we could choose to do something else.

But why even bother? This is exactly where loving kindness begins; and we need to begin at the beginning.

As those who know me well know, I tend to write songs from where I am at in a given moment, no more and no less, and a song about this popped out recently.

The lyric is below.

I wanna tell you
About the river of peace
I want you all
To listen to the song

There’s a river of peace 
That comes down from above
And it brings a force to earth
That somebody named love

The river of peace
Is always at hand
Leading us forward
Into the promised land
That’s right

In the promised land
There’s a river of love
Deep in your heart
That reaches up to above

There’s a river of peace
That reaches down to the soul
And it can’t be corrupted
It can’t be bought or sold

There’s a river of peace 
That comes down from above. 
And it brings a force to earth
That somebody named love
   
A river of peace
That flows into your heart
And once it arrives
You can’t stay apart
A love that flows
All the way from the top
A current of grace
That never stops.