inner and outer

June 15 

Last week, I was party to a long conversation about the question of inner and outer life, in which some of the participants — who  have been practicing what we refer to as “inner” work for decades, many many decades – professed confusion about what the difference between inner and outer is, and what use it is to see that difference.

 An extensive intellectually based exchange followed. Many intelligent things were said, including the observation that in a certain sense, everything is “inner,” simply because consciousness perceives all things that it had counters from within, both inner sensations and outer sensations, within itself.

Yet while this is true, it glosses over the important distinction between the natural and spiritual world, or, the outer and the inner world. The natural world is the outer world; the inner world is the spiritual world. I thought I would take some time to try and explain the difference between the two more specifically for those who feel confused about it.

The outer world, the natural world, consists of objects, events, circumstances, and conditions. I’ve been using this description of the outer world for a number of years. Breaking it down, we have:

Objects. Things that exist and outlast the existence of ourselves and those around us. We know these are “real,” because grandmother may die, but her rocking chair is still here and everyone else continues to see it. Objects have a continuity. Of course human beings and all other living things are also objects, and we can verify that they objectively exist because they continue to exist even when others who perceive them die.

Events. These also have an objective existence outside ourselves, since grandmother may die, but the events surrounding her existence continue. We hold a funeral. Weeping takes place. And so on. Events involve the interaction of living things and objects, but they exist outside those living things, and the objects exist independent of one another: we can destroy grandmother’s rocking chair while her jewelry remains intact.

Circumstances. These are the things surrounding objects and events: That which is in their immediate presence. For example, grandma died because she fell out of her rocking chair due to a broken rail. (No wonder we destroyed it! That lousy rocking chair.) Circumstances also exist outside us, and we encounter them constantly. In fact, one might say that everything outside of the initial inner action of consciousness is a circumstance of one kind or another.

 Conditions. This describes the nature of objects and events. Grandma’s rocking chair was broken; it was sad that she died. (Unless she was hateful and cruel, in which case perhaps we’re ok with it.)

 The inner world consists of consciousness — of Being. It is the world of the soul and the spirit, and it exists before objects, events, circumstances, and conditions are encountered. We can’t assign this the same value that the natural outer world has, because it is there before grandmother, her rocking chair, and the funeral. Being is the fundamental and first measurement of life; it manifests as consciousness, which has a distinct and objective existence apart from objects, events, circumstances, and conditions.

One can provide an argument that consciousness is dependent on an object we refer to as the body. Yet, because it is a whole that is distinctly greater than the sum of its mechanical parts, it’s quite certain that awareness has a different quality and comes from somewhere else. The universe not only has an astonishing degree of order; consciousness has an ability to perceive that. Consciousness flows into Being through the vehicle of bodies, but it is its own thing. That “thing” isn’t, in fact, anything at all, but the manifestation of God within spirit. That spirit infuses all of reality; but the way that it manifests inside an individual Being through the ability to encounter, perceive, and evaluate, is the inner life and forms the spiritual world.

The spiritual world is a world of relationships, not static objects. Relationships are formed through the threefold action of encounter, perception, and evaluation. These are directly parallel to and consonant with the moving, emotional, and intellectual centers.  Moving center encounters through engagement with the physical; emotional center perceives through the sensitivity of its reception; intellectual center evaluates using its comparative abilities.

Something greater than individual actions of encounter, perception, and evaluation arises as a result of their threefold interaction. That greater thing cannot emerge without all three of these functions participating.

The inner world that we inhabit can be directly sensed through the influence, or inflow, of divine energy directly into our Being. This is what creates our consciousness. One person asked whether this is the same as what they call “presence”; and perhaps it is, because the word presence is derived from the Latin word meaning to be there. That is, to exist.

 Yet to exist is not enough. If grandma doesn’t die, but instead suffers a stroke that leaves her comatose but alive, she still exists; and she is still here. Yet we wouldn’t say she has presence. Presence, then, implies an inflow of spiritual power, of Being, that allows her to manifest consciously to one degree or another. And it is this inflow of being, this point of contact between a higher form of energy, spiritual energy, and the action of consciousness itself that matters the most. That point of contact, which exists deep within the soul and takes place at the very point in which the soul makes its closest contact with God, is where everything begins in this life. It’s the point — the inner point — from which all of my being begins, before I encounter anything or perceive anything.

 This point of origin is what the  classic Zen koan “show me your original face before you were born” refers to. It reminds us of the effort to discover ourselves at the point from which all of our being begins, and nowhere else. This is an inner place, not an outer one; and to the extent that we draw our strength and force from it, to the extent that we understand contact with it, to the extent that we live from it, so much so are we alive.

Wishing the best for you on this day,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.