One In The Many

“By spiritual autonomy, I mean a kind of certainty-not egoic certainty, but one that comes from your essential nature, from the level of the divine being. We find this spiritual autonomy very clearly mirrored in the figure of Jesus. Jesus walks through his life knowing who he is and what he’s doing, even though his Disciples don’t understand him, the authorities don’t understand him, and the Pharisees don’t understand him…This is a mythic portrayal of what spiritual autonomy looks like and how it moves in the world of time and space…The egoic state of consciousness literally has no capacity whatsoever to understand it, because this autonomy is functioning from a different dimension of being. Jesus spoke of being in the world, but not of the world; this is real spiritual autonomy in action.” (Adyashanti 2014).

The spiritual autonomy Adyashanti is speaking of, was a topic I feel relevant to my Rastafari informants. Adyashanti is interpreting the Jesus story as it describes a person who functions according to a different type of knowing that all the people around him, and in spite of their lack ofunderstanding. It is interesting that Adyashanti uses the example of this biblical figure to describe the experience of one standing on one’s own feet in a spiritual sense. What to be in the world but not of it can possibly mean in the context and experience of Rastafari...

When studying Rastafari spirituality, the nature of the herb (cannabis) was not so much emphasized as a “spiritual tool” as it was as a way of “freeing-up” more generally, though obviously the informants were aware and may have in their speech referred to it as something sacred. However, when inquired more deeply, the herb wasn’t seen as something necessary in spiritual sense (getting connected): “If one can’t get connected without the herb, one is off-base. What’s gonna happen to him who doesn’t have herb? He can’t connect to God?”

To some the herb has played the function of opening oneself up spiritually in the beginning through the experience of not being limited to the separate body-mind one generally experiences. I have asked multiple rastas if the herb is necessary for them to the feeling of connectedness. Most rastas I’ve spoken to express a preference to not having to use this, even though natural (as I’m always reminded) substance to get connected. However, very few claim that they are living in a 24/7 experience of inter-connectedness with everything.

One of the informants, an elderly rasta, had given up the herb decades ago due to an experience he had after being in a car accident. He walked me through a memory of lying there in a hospital bed, deciding out of nowhere, that it was time to give up “the spliff”. He had tried smoking again once after that, but had a bad experience with it. I had an opportunity to participate in the life of this person, and can note that I’ve not witnessed such visible inner peace accompanied with mental clarity in any other rasta before...

"I find it important to note that most, if not all, of the examples of the themes could be read from the sacralization of everyday life –perspective introduced by Yawney (1979). They way in which Rastafari approaches life, by holding an ideal if not an experience, of everything being ultimately ofone divine essence, can be seen as sacralization. I suggest, though, that when looked at from the
Gergenian point of view and more importantly the outcomes he suggests come from changing the current foundation for experience characterized by individualism, what is commonly regarded as sacred (which has a flavor of religiosity or spirituality) can also be seen as relativity given another word. For the Rastafari, the outcome is an outlook of respect towards the multiple forms of life.

The paradox of the individually centered orientation typical to the late modern era can be seen in the informants’ expressions. I say paradox, because though the quest of personal growth is a trendy subject even in the spiritual arenas of today, I argue that there is a difference between the ego-driven search and the search that is embarked for the sake of “truth”. This is also what I see the Rastafari continuum of “commercial” rastas to “true” rastas refer to. As noted previously, not everyone is willing for their personal ideologies to be questioned in order to come to a more all-embracing place where the little me is not the fixed center of one’s experience. After all, if everything is an expression of the one, how could there be a separate me outside of that?

As much as I find the conducting of this research to be a journey that gave me much understanding on the subject of Rastafari spirituality, a lot remained yet undiscovered. I find the topics of spirituality and oneness such large, or rather deep, realms that a research this size hardly covers the depths of the informants’ full experience. That is why if I was to conduct research with Rastafari again, I would envision it to be a very co-operational study, an action research perhaps to involve members movement in the spirit of “each one teach one”. This would require longer periods of time spent with the subjects, as was shown with this research, where I find the familiarity and time spent in the field with the informants to be a necessity."

-- THE ONE IN THE MANY: Expressions Of Rastafari Spirituality