Come Together

A spiritual community dissolves the sense of separateness that causes so much of our suffering. With a few friends, create one of your own.

By Sally Kempton

Perhaps it's due to the residual trauma of being the last girl chosen for my seventh-grade softball team, but I have always been ambivalent about groups. Even during periods when I've been an enthusiastic member of various spiritual organizations, I've remained uncomfortable with certain group behaviors—the tendency that groups have to create their own self-referential culture and jargon, the sheer unwieldiness of making group decisions.

Yet, all that aside, the fact remains that nearly every great spiritual or inner-growth breakthrough of my life has in some way been inspired, triggered, or supported by practicing in a group. Ever since I sang "We Shall Overcome" at my first peace demonstration, I've adored the feeling that contemporary philosopher Ken Wilber calls the "we-space"—that state of unity and love that arises when a group of people give themselves over to selfless emotions. At such moments, the pain of separateness melts away, egos stand aside, and we are able to enter into a shared heart-space that is the deepest possible evidence of our interconnectedness. "Consciousness, which exists as all things, becomes contracted due to the differences generated by our separate bodies," says the Tantric sage Abhinava Gupta in the Tantraloka, "but it expands into oneness when [individual consciousnesses] are able to reflect back on each other." This mutual self-reflection, he goes on to say, happens when a group focuses as one—particularly in spiritual practice, but also during a performance of music or dance. (Haven't you always suspected that certain rock concerts or Mozart performances were spiritual events?)

This is a no-brainer, of course. As social creatures, humans benefit from turning our sociability to higher ends. The Buddha, after all, did make the sangha, the spiritual community, one of the three cornerstones of his path, just as Christ told his disciples, "When two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them." As his words imply, a group practicing together creates a mystical field, a field of grace. The Sanskrit name for that phenomenon is satsang—usually translated as "truth-company," or being in the company of the wise. And satsang, according to several texts of yoga, is one of the great doorways to inner freedom. In the Tripura Rahasya (The Secret of the Three Cities), Ramana Maharshi's favorite Vedantic text, the sage Dattatreya tells his student, Lord Rama, "Listen! I will tell you the fundamental cause of salvation. Satsang, association with the wise, is the root cause for obliterating all suffering!"

By "association with the wise," Dattatreya meant keeping company with sages. Nowadays we use the word satsang as shorthand for any kind of program in which teaching and meditation take place, but when the yoga texts speak about satsang, they mean being with someone who is enlightened, someone whose very presence reminds you that a single wise and radiant Presence lurks inside every atom of the world. I've had teachers like that, and I have to say that there is no faster way to elevate your consciousness than hanging around with someone who knows who he or she is and who you are, and who won't let you get away with being anything less.

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