In my essay on the Core Philosophy of Spiritual Realism, I asserted that our Souls reach through from the realm of the divine into our world through four different channels, our spiritual senses, our symbolic senses, our emotional senses, and our physical senses. I’m going to share some of what I know about these channels in my next set of essays, beginning with this one that addresses our spiritual senses.
As I have discussed elsewhere (In Search of a Revelation: An Essay in Spiritual Philosophy, available on Amazon), I spent the decade of the 1970s studying many different spiritual teachings from quite a wide range of spiritual teachers. I actually undertook to check out every Guru and Spiritual Teacher that came through the Bay Area. (In Search of a Revelation presents the stories of what I encountered and what I learned.)
Without any question, I had the deepest experiences and learned the most from Robert Nadeau. Bob was an Aikido Sensei and a personal student of Morihei Ueshiba and he also taught energy awareness and meditation.
These next two essays tell the story of my encounter with Robert Nadeau as well as presenting an approach to engaging our spiritual senses and what I learned of the spiritual realm through that approach.
Aikido
Morihei Ueshiba: Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido, learned many different Samurai arts. Whenever I think about the Samurai, I return to a scene in the movie, The Seven Samurai. The farmers have finally gotten the Samurai leader to side with them, and he begins to recruit. He has his young assistant stand beside the doorway just inside the inn where they were staying with a stick and tells him to swing at each potential recruit as he walks in.
The first Samurai walks in and the assistant swings, but the samurai catches the stick before it can fall and disarms the assistant. The next Samurai doesn’t even walk in. He stops outside the doorway and asks what is going on. However, when the fellow pretending to be a Samurai comes in, the stick falls and hits him on the head.
Each of those people lived along a different dimension of experience. Each of them had their energy extended out a different distance. One felt the stick as it hit his head, one as the swing began, and one before he entered the door. The better the Samurai, the more powerful the field of energy that extended around his body. This manifested in the elegance of his sword strokes, his speed, his awareness of opponents in any direction, and such like. The best Samurai could often tell the relative power of someone’s energy field, just by looking at them or by observing one of their actions.
At a point later in his life, after a thorough Samurai training and an extensive spiritual education primarily with Onisaburo Deguchi, Morihei Ueshiba had a series of spiritual experiences and realized his true mission. He saw how to create a Budo, a way of the warrior, through which to practice reconciliation rather than destruction.
In writings put together under the title Memoir of the Master, he says, “The secret of Aikido is to harmonize ourselves with the movement of the Universe and bring ourselves into accord with the Universe itself. He who has gained the secret of Aikido has the Universe in himself and can say, I am the Universe.”
It seems to me what he realized was that the energy field surrounding and interpenetrating an individual warrior was just one eddy in the great flow of energy that is the Earth moving around the Sun and the Sun moving around the galaxy and the galaxy moving out from the core of the Universe.
“When an enemy tries to fight with me, the Universe itself, he has to break the harmony of the Universe. Hence, at the moment he has the mind to fight with me, he is already defeated. There exists no measure of time fast or slow.”
Morihei Ueshiba realized that, at its highest expression, the way of the warrior could become the way of love.
In the art of Aikido, one person plays the role of attacker, and the other person responds by being receptive to the attacker’s energy, blending with it and then, at the magic point, the receiver transforms into being positive and guides the attacker’s energy into a pin or a throw. First, the positive becomes receptive (Yang becomes Yin), then the receptive becomes positive (Yin becomes Yang). The Tao turns.
However the attacker attacks, there is a way to blend with that energy and transform it so that it is neutralized. “Aikido’s spirit is that of loving attack and that of peaceful reconciliation. In this aim, we bind and unite the opponents with the willpower of love. By love we are able to purify others. Understand Aikido first as Budo and then as the way of service to construct the World Family. Aikido is not for a single country or anyone in particular. Its only purpose is to perform the work of God.”
Robert Nadeau: I began studying Aikido with Robert Nadeau in the chapel of the First Unitarian Church in San Francisco. Bob had studied Aikido directly with Morihei Ueshiba in Japan. On the mat, Bob taught us techniques, but with the techniques he also taught us a Philosophy.
“Some instructors teach first you do this, then you do this, then you do this, breaking the techniques up into their components. I could teach that way and I will if I have to, but I think it takes too long. If you get the quality right, you can do black belt techniques from the beginning. What would it feel like if you were a boulder? How would a boulder do it?” He would then give us his best rendition of a boulder doing a wrist throw. The qualities varied – sometimes a cloud, sometimes the stately majesty of a king, sometimes a dancer. There were many qualities.
As we worked, he often stopped us to have us just stand and swing our arms or slowly let them rise, while he talked about sensing the energy. “What would it be like if you put your arm into a vat of cement that hardened instantly? Sense your arm as a column of energy extending out across the room.”
Over and over, he told us to “straighten and settle,” and to sense our bodies as an “equal and even” energy field. “Your feet have a mind. Your back has a mind. Your seat has a mind. Let the mind in your head take a coffee break and let the mind in your seat sense the mat.” As I kept to the twice a week ritual, I caught on that he was primarily teaching an imprint, a state of being that he possessed. The Aikido techniques could flow from that imprint, but also that state of being offered a way of doing anything.
“After you finish, stay a minute and correct. It doesn’t matter if you break, just stay and correct. Eventually the corrections become automatic.” I really like that one. When I have completely screwed something up, I get much solace from running my memory loop of Bob saying, “stay and correct,” and straightening and correcting himself. “A little tight in the shoulders? That’s Bob getting in the way of the energy flow.” He would drop his shoulders and do the technique again. “Ah that was better.” The memory completed, I could look back at whatever the mess was that I made and try to let go of the tension and start over.
Teaching a throw, he often said, “Don’t think about the throw. We’re too result oriented in this culture.” He would muscle up and jerkily grab his partner and flatten him or her to the mat. “Unfortunately, that gets results sometimes, but it’s limited.” He would demonstrate the throw again, this time as one constant graceful motion. “Now you are here. Now you are here. The throw just happens. It’s a happening.”
Introduction to Meditation: Sometimes Bob had meditation sittings after the Aikido classes. After I had studied with him for a while, I began to stay for the sittings to meditate with him. “Seat on the chair, feet on the floor. You are a physical being, but you are also an energy being. Shift your awareness to your energy body. You are a space. You are an awareness. You are a universal awareness.” He had us shift up through those levels and back down.4
Another time he said, “This is a small circle,” and circled his head with his finger. “We usually stay in the small circle, but there is also a big circle,” and he circled his whole body with his finger. “You can shift your awareness to the big circle.”
He taught many different meditation practices. Sometimes we sat in a circle and held hands. Sometimes we paired off and held hands with one another. Sometimes we just sat. “Close your eyes. Ease back on the face.”
The first few times I participated nothing much happened to me except that I felt quite calm and peaceful, entering a dark void. After a while, I began to experience vague distant images and forms, columns of light whirling, the bodies in the circle etched in fiery energy, sometimes different wave forms. Often he said, “Play the game. It may seem like your imagination. That’s all right. Go ahead and play it. It’s very close to imagination. If you see an angel, if you see a spirit, go with it. Play the game. If you see a devil, it’s probably an angel in disguise.”
I went ahead playing the game as best I could. Bob never told us what to experience, though I often wished he would. He just kept trying to get us to shift our awareness to the lighter and the finer energies. My meditation experiences slowly became a little clearer and more distinct, but I didn’t know what to make of it all. I had no sense of what I was looking for, of what to expect, of where to put my attention. “It’s much easier than the Aikido. Just sit and let it happen,” Bob would say.
Finally, one evening with my eyes closed in my inner vision, two eagles glided down and landed on my shoulders. I experienced them more clearly than any of the earlier images. They flapped their wings and began to take off with me. I prepared to go with them, playing the game, but Bob brought the meditation to a close, calling us to shift back to our energy bodies and then our physical bodies and then to open our eyes. I was quite amazed by that event. I figured I better investigate this further.
Eventually, Bob gave a workshop down in Mt. View that I decided to take. At the workshop, we did a lot of repetitive movements. We did arm swings for one whole hour. We did the two-step from Aikido. We tried to experience our arms being raised by clouds of energy. All the activities were devoted to balancing and centering.
Interspersed with the movements, we did meditation sittings and Bob drew some pictures on a black board and talked to us. “The here and now is a doorway to the higher dimensions. The physical is just the heaviest tip of a great iceberg of energy, extending out to the limits of the Universe and beyond.” He drew a body and behind the body a doorway and behind the doorway a space. “Everyone has their space. It is continually feeding you. Whenever you take a moment and center you come right up to the doorway. When you meditate, you can go through the doorway and let your space talk to you.”
When we meditated, we did mostly meditations in which two people sat facing each other holding hands. In the meditation I remember most clearly, I encountered my partner and myself both together on a giant absolutely clear sphere whirling through some kind of space. We each became transparent, and somehow we seemed to be draining into one another – very pretty, like the finest crystal.
Spiritual Encounters: One evening, a while after that first workshop, I went to bed, and after some time, I entered a state like a lucid dream, but also somehow different. Suddenly, I discovered myself in the basement of a house, with mats on the floor. I looked up and found Bob there. He looked quite surprised to see me, perhaps a little irritated. He said, “The Universe has had to go through a large change for us to meet here.”
We began to do Aikido together. I quickly realized that I had been brought there for some kind of special lesson. I tried my best, but I fear that I didn’t perform very well. However, Bob appeared quite amazing. I could see the energy streaming out of his hands. When we blended, I felt like I became a part of him. When he threw me, he didn’t need to do anything. The energy from his hands and arms and body picked me up and rode me down.
I experienced the whole attack, blend, throw sequence as happening in a kind of frozen time that I could step into and out of. I could be at each place in the sequence at the same moment. I was too amazed even to be scared. I just tried to be as polite as possible under the circumstances. Pretty soon Bob indicated to me that it was time to stop. I thanked him, went out the door, and kind of floated off, finding myself in bed, very awake, without having the sense of waking up.
At Aikido class a few days later, Bob came up to me and asked me, “Well, are you ever going to get a uniform?” I had wanted to buy one of the white uniforms that most everyone practiced in, because I would have liked to practice in the wide pants and jacket tied with the cloth belt. They seemed to bind people less than regular clothes. However, I did not have the money to afford one.
I told Bob, “Sure, it’s just that I can’t afford one now.” He said, “Here,” and threw me a bundle. He said, “Patch it and it will last you for six or eight months but be sure to cut my name off it. I can’t quite explain why, just be sure that you do it.” He indicated some Japanese characters on the bottom of the jacket. I was charmed by his action. I told my friend George Leonard about Bob’s gift and George asked if I had pants. I said no, so he offered me a pair of his pants that were a little too short for him. I had to buy my own belt. I cut off Bob’s name and began wearing my new attire and my Aikido practice took a marked jump up.
A couple of weeks passed and then one night I encountered Bob in the non-physical reality again. This time a few other people were along. We walked outside up to a very tall sheer cliff, the top of which I could scarcely see. Bob began to climb up the cliff’s sheer face quite easily, beckoning me to follow. I doubted my ability to make it up, but I went ahead and started and discovered that I could walk up the cliff’s face with ease. I came to the top and found Bob balancing there.
We walked along the top over to a pinnacle of rock where we found the others. Bob was taking them further on some sort of mission that I didn’t understand, and he indicated that I should go back now. I watched them move along the rock, and then I found myself going through what seemed like some kind of energy transformer. At the conclusion of the process, I was lying in my bed, again awake without having awakened.
I really didn’t know what to make of these experiences and felt quite shy about them, so I didn’t talk to Bob about them at that time, but I certainly made sure to go to the next workshop he offered. We did various balancing and centering practices and then he told us to lie down on the floor, on a line on the mat, and to sense our left foot, left hip, and left shoulder. Then he said to sense our right foot, hip, and shoulder.
After we had done that for a while, he said, “Now let your left side float out a few feet away from your right side. Now bring it back together with your right side and feel them click together like two bookends.” Then he told us to let our right side float out and back. Next, we were to let both sides float out to the walls of the room and back. Finally, he had us float both sides out as far as we could go and bring them back, click.
Energy Awareness: At another of Bob’s workshops, we did a little centering and then he had us do some standing and sitting meditations, followed by describing our experiences. People said that their stomach felt queasy or that their heart was beating faster or that they felt pressure in their head. In each case, Bob said that those sensations were their space talking to them and they began by picking it up in the physical, but they could listen to their space directly. He indicated that we should listen to what our space was saying and learn to interpret it correctly. The heart beating might be our space giving us an extra shot of love energy. Pressure in the head might be the indication of some intellectual insight knocking. The queasy stomach might presage enhanced centeredness and balance.
Then he told us to pick a partner and lean up against them, feeling our energy bodies blend and become one. I worked with Betsy Hill, Bob’s long-time partner and co-worker, and felt a great sense of peace and ease as we blended together. I didn’t feel swept into her space, but rather I experienced a melting together that affirmed my own center. However, it turned out that another woman wound up without a partner, so she came over and leaned up against my other side. I felt a quick drain, and then pressed in upon and smothered.
Bob said to break contact quickly and sense what happened, treating it as if our partner had been a lover or a mate and that now we would be separated from him or her forever. At first, I experienced great relief at being out of that pressure. Next, I went into sadness at losing the first peace with Betsy. Finally, I experienced myself rebalancing and setting up again as an independent entity with my own center.
Bob finished out the workshop saying that people often link up with one another because they highly value in the other some quality that they lack in themselves. They frequently come to depend on the other to supply that quality. The panic and frantic seeking that many times accompanies splitting up comes from the loss of the quality that each party has supplied to the other. Often after a break-up, a person immediately starts the search for someone else to supply the quality that has been lost.
However, we each possess all of the qualities in ourselves. Our own space contains universal awareness of all aspects of reality. It constantly feeds us. We just need to learn how to receive it. If we balance ourselves, drawing from our own space, then we can actually come into closer relations with other people by realizing that we already possess what we see in them. We free ourselves to appreciate them without having to depend on them for our own balance.
O Sensei: A while later at an Aikido class, Bob showed some movies of Morihei Ueshiba. He was such an amazing, amazing man. In the movies, which, alas, were old grainy eight millimeter home movies that Bob had taken when he studied in Japan, O Sensei (the title of honor given to Morihei Ueshiba within Aikido) doesn’t seem to move much. He just isn’t there when the others come for him. They go down as he flicks his wrist. When the movies are run Frame by Frame, one sequence shows a group of attackers coming at O Sensei. When the attackers arrive, O Sensei disappears and then reappears behind the attackers as they go down.
One famous time, a circle of attackers came at O Sensei and when they got to him, he disappeared and reappeared way off at the edge of the Dojo. Later he said, “I can’t do that too often. Every time I do it, it can take a couple of years off of my life.” Once, Bob described his own experience attacking O Sensei. Bob said as he approached, he felt disoriented. He couldn’t find O Sensei. Bob felt a cloud of energy descend onto him propelling him to the mat. O Sensei just stood near him, but Bob could not rise.
Another time, Bob arrived early, and O Sensei called him into a back room. He said, “Hold out your arm. Now resist.” Bob complied. O Sensei cupped his hands around Bob’s arm some four inches away from it and turned his hands and Bob could not keep his arm from rotating. They called over someone with a massive forearm and O Sensei repeated the process. Bob described himself cheering the fellow on, “Hold it! Hold it!” but the follow’s arm slowly rotated with O Sensei’s hands still about four inches away from it, using the energy to turn it without any physical contact.
Bob clearly loved the old man deeply. He spoke about him with great reverence and affection. Shortly after one of the first moon shots, the two of them were talking, and according to Bob, O Sensei said, “I don’t know why they spent all that money to send a rocket up there. They could have just asked me. I’ve been there. I would have told them what’s there.”
