Transcript: The Wall

by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

We all have a few seminal experiences that define our life, are like the chapter headings of our life’s story. I have had three such happenings. They all centered on the worlds of light and love. When I awoke aged sixteen, the garden by the river where I would sit was full of unexpected light, the flowers alive in colors I never knew existed. And it brought joy and laughter, so different to the grey days of my boarding school. Then, in that dramatic night when I was twenty-three and awakened on the plane of the Self, I was in a world of light and endless space, where time did not exist. I remember a few days later seeing a group of preschool children walking to the park, and was, for an instant, shown the pure light that was their essence shining like a sun in their hearts, and I knew that we all come from the light, that it is our true nature. But around the same time I saw the grey world where the light does not dance, where colors do not sing in the air, and I knew that this was the world in which so many people live. It was the only time in my life I have reached for a glass of whiskey, as a way to dull the pain of seeing this world without light.

Then, as I have told,¹ when I was fifty-five, I was taken completely into the world of light, taken to a landscape of love with rivers of light, where love is. Here the light is endless and darkness does not exist. And this world has been around me since then. It was present in the way I taught, effortlessly bringing this dimension of light and love into a room, into people’s hearts, reconnecting them, reminding them of their true nature, how love flows and the heart sings, how love is endless and contains the secrets of our existence.

I have also seen how this light is present in the created world, in the trees bending in the wind, in the songs of birds, in all the colors now alive in the garden. In recent years when my time of solitude has taken me onto the trails and beaches near where I live, I have become immersed in the wonder and pure love that is around me—the orange and yellow poppies opening to the sun, the bobcat crossing the path. It is all so simple, a direct expression of life’s oneness and divine light, the pure light becoming the many colors of existence.

And I have felt this dimension of love within and around me, sometimes directly in the heart, reassuring me. I try to be present here in my prayers and meditation, both sitting and walking meditation. But I also sense how this world is waiting for me, at the borders where life and death meet, and beyond. Then my heart cries and my eyes fill with tears as I long to return, to be back where I feel I really belong. Where we can communicate without words or misunderstandings, but the direct knowing that comes with the light. Where space and time are not constricted as in our world, where everything is both near and far. Where the stars sing to us and the masters of light are present.

We come from this light and return to its dimension—the Source, the Essence of our being—knowing it is beyond both life and death. Sometimes it is like the sun breaking through the clouds that cover our existence, reminding us of what is Real. In recent years I have felt its presence all around me, dissolving my ego consciousness more and more. Its Truth is as simple as sunlight, immersing me in a reality so different to the increasing toxicity of our present world.

And all along I have wondered how and why we live in this world of shadows, excluded from what is Real, from this light that belongs to the soul and the World Soul.² A world where the light of the sacred is forgotten, and we appear caught in all of the distortions and lies that surround us. But then I remembered a vision I had more than ten years ago. In this vision I saw a wall, a wall that separates humanity from the worlds of light that surround us. And I saw that this wall had been built by human consciousness, the same consciousness that had been given as a gift from the world of light. I realized that humanity’s drive for power had separated us from the spiritual world that alone can give us true meaning and sustenance. At that time there was the hope, maybe a naïve hope, that an awakening spirituality could dismantle the wall in the same way that the force for freedom had dismantled the Berlin Wall, brick by brick, in the Winter of 1989. That we could reunite the worlds of spirit and matter that had been kept separate for so long.

Maybe this dream was just an unrealistic fantasy. I do sense that there was an opportunity at that time which is now over, that humanity made its choice and we remain fully in a darkening world of separation. On the morning of the 22^nd February, 2022, awaking to the news of the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, I was clearly told “The way of life as we know it is over.” And what we have witnessed since then is a growing darkness with the wars and famines in Gaza and Sudan, the brutal suppression of the “women, life, freedom” movement in Iran, and many other examples of an increasingly toxic world. The cries of young people for a future being stolen has been met with more corporate green-washing, CO2 emissions in 2023 reaching a new world record even as we have the hottest years on record.

But this vision of a wall of separation remains for me a seminal vision of our human condition, a story that belongs to our collective destiny. In the intervening years, rather than the hope of destroying this wall, I have come to see the possibility, the prophecy, that out of the ruins of our present self-destructive civilization can be born a way of being that goes back to the beginning, to the time before time, long before there was any wall. This is the dream of a future that I see waiting.

So I feel to share an edited version of this original article, which can be found in full in my small book, Darkening of the Light, a book which was sadly prophetic of our present era, a time of increasing darkness generating collective lies, as opposed to the simple, bright light of Truth. But which also holds a promise for life recreating itself—when life’s real song is present again, and the worlds come together in a new way.

THE WALL

In deep meditation I come to a wall. I know this wall. I have seen it many times before in meditation and waking visions. It is a high brick wall. I know what is on the other side of the wall: a world of light. But there is no way through; there is no doorway, no ladder, no break in the wall. When I come to the wall I walk along it, and then I have to turn away, back to the narrow streets of this world. And yet I know what is on the other side. Sometimes I have made every effort, and, clambering to the top, looked over the wall. Or I have just felt what is there—endless expanses of light, and the beings of light who live there. And yet always I have to come back, back into this world, so constricted and full of shadows: the half-light of our existence.

In the Summer of 2008 I spent three weeks on the other side, in that world of light. It was a crazy time. I was very ill and hardly slept. When I went to bed and closed my eyes I was in the world of light. There was no need to sleep, no possibility of sleep. There was so much light; there were experiences in light. Light upon light. Sometimes during the day, too, I was fully awake in this world of light. I could see our world from the other side, see its loves and hopes and dreams, its worldly power structures and places of prayer. I could see the spiritual essence of every tree and flower, and the patterns of darkness in which people are so caught. I saw the beings of light that are waiting for us, that want to help us, and I saw how we have forgotten them. I saw this sticky substance of forgetfulness that covers us and drains away any remembrance we may have. And I saw how other beings of darkness that belong to this world also drain our light, keep us caught, cover us in greed and desire, hatred and anger. And I saw that this is how it is.

But I could not live forever in this world of light, even though I longed to. There was too much light. It burned into my consciousness. It didn’t allow me to sleep. I was exhausted. I needed to be able to live in this world, however dense and distorted. And so, in order to survive, in order to live, I turned away from the world of light. I closed my consciousness to it and focused on the physical world, on letting my body heal. I came back into this world, battered and bruised, sometimes full of resentment at having to leave behind the light, feeling angry, deserted and betrayed, at having to return. How could I be given a taste of the beyond and then be pushed back into the darkness and limitation of this world with all its distortions and misunderstandings, all of the stuff we have been conditioned to call life? Yes, there is beauty here, but there is so much darkness. On the other side there is not this darkness, or this density; there is never this forgetfulness. We are beings of light. How can we forget?

Once before, when I was twenty-three, during a Summer of intense experiences, I was taken to the other side and given the choice to live or die. I remember this experience so vividly: being taken out of my body, high up into a place of freedom and light. I was told very clearly, “You are free now. You can go.” And just as clearly I remember my reply: “I am a Sufi. I am here to be of service.” And so I returned. You never forget the consciousness of the other side. It haunts you as both a promise and a poison. Sometimes it makes you long for death, to return to the light and freedom that you know are waiting. But of my free will I had made a pledge, a promise, and so I returned, and the real spiritual training began.

And now, over thirty years later, I was taken back to the other side, and not just in a moment in and out of time. For three weeks I was fully conscious on the other side. And what is beyond is so pure, so endless and unencumbered.

Now when I saw the brick wall, I knew what was on the other side. This time I had no need to try to climb the wall, to look over. I knew that landscape of light, and how different it is from what we call life or existence. And I was left on this side of the wall, in these narrow streets, where even the flowers that grow beside the streets have forgotten the world of light. And I wondered, has it always been like this? Is this just the wall that separates what we call life from what we call death? I know in meditation one can leave behind the body and the mind and go into the light, but always one has to come back. Is the only way to fully live in the light to leave the physical world behind and die? Most people only access this world of light after they die, or in near-death experiences. Is this wall the barrier that has been placed between the worlds, like the river Styx of the ancients?

The Sufis describe how we need a separation between the worlds, “seventy veils of light and darkness” or “the glories of His Face would burn away everything.” As I know from my own experience the light of the divine is too dazzling for us to perceive it directly, its energy is too strong. This is one of the reasons why spiritual life is a slow process, a gradual lifting of the veils as one develops spiritual strength, becomes more and more able to bear the light. But these veils filter the light. They are not a wall that cuts us off from it.

Now, for the first time since I had seen this brick wall, I began to wonder. Why was I shown it like this, always a brick wall? It is not a river of forgetfulness, a veil of light, or a rainbow bridge. It is made of bricks, and bricks belong to this world. And then suddenly it dawned on me: this wall was made brick by brick by human beings. It is not a natural separation between the worlds. It had been purposefully built by people, by their ideologies, laws, and power structures. Humanity had purposely created a wall of separation between the physical world and the world of light. And it had been built so long ago and been so effective that we all accept it. Now we live in the shadow of this wall without even noticing it. Nor do we realize that we have been denied our heritage of light. We have been conditioned to accept the world of shadows and half-truths we call life without even realizing that we are cut off from the world of light. This has become our heritage. We have successfully stranded ourselves from the Divine.

THE CREATION OF THE WALL

I began to wonder how the wall was created. There was a time long ago when humanity lived in a world of light. Maybe this is what we call the “Golden Age.” It may be likened to the mythical Garden of Eden in the Bible when Adam and Eve walked naked in the presence of God, before they “hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God” (Genesis 3:8) and were cast out. At this time there was no wall between the worlds: we were not separate from God. We lived in God’s presence and had no consciousness of any other way of life. But then, in contrast to Indigenous cultures who live in harmony with the natural world and its spiritual dimension, in our Judeo-Christian heritage humanity began to claim its own power and became separate from God, experienced the “Fall.” ³ In the Bible this is imaged as eating of the forbidden fruit. Humanity liked the feeling of its own power and autonomy and came to create a separate world governed by the ego. Turning our attention away from the Divine and focusing more on our own power, we began to build a wall between the worlds. Gradually we created a world in which the Divine is no longer fully present, the Earth no longer seen as sacred.

At different times prophets and saints, the friends of God, have come to remind us of our divine nature. Christianity was born through an infusion of divine love with its message of sacrifice, forgiveness, and mercy. Through Christ’s life, crucifixion, and teachings, the gates of grace were opened, and light and love flowed into the world. In the early years of Christianity, through the devotions of small circles of believers there was a continued outpouring of love, of the Holy Spirit. But only too soon the mechanisms of worldly power began to block this flow. Under the guise of unifying Christian beliefs, those teachings that gave the individual direct access to the Divine, for example those in the Gnostic Gospels, were banned, and its practitioners were persecuted as heretics. Only through the priests and the hierarchical structure of the Church could the individual have access to God. Gradually, but also systematically, as the Church became a temporal power, religious structures were created that strove to keep God in heaven so that the church hierarchy could keep its power on Earth. Finally, in the brutal slaughter of the Crusades and the tortures of the Inquisition, we see a Church that has chosen to abandon love and forgiveness for the fruits of worldly power. What is less understood is how this religious ideology cemented a separation between the worlds: God could only be reached after death; heaven could not exist in this sinful world.

In the West since the “Age of Enlightenment,” rationalism and the pursuit of science continued to reinforce the wall of separation as the world came to be seen as a mechanical place devoid of any sacred nature. The sacred groves had long been cut down by the patriarchy, Christianity had worked to eradicate any pagan beliefs, and science now gave us an unfeeling, barren world that it could conquer with technology. The wall between the worlds became so much part of humanity’s consciousness that in the West we no longer knew there was a wall. The fact that the world was starving from a lack of the sacred did not even enter into our collective awareness. Finally, in the last century, communism and capitalism became the twin demons of the world, each celebrating an existence defined only by what we can see and touch. And when consumerism triumphed and the glitter of its toys captured our complete attention, no one seemed to notice that the Divine was not present. We had lived with the wall for so long there was nothing in our collective memory to remind us of what we had abandoned, of what is so close on the other side of the bricks.

Of course there have always been individuals who, either within or outside the structures of religion, have consciously made the journey to the other side. Humanity has always had access to spiritual techniques to directly access the light. The discipline of meditation, for example, is a simple practice of controlling the mind, turning within and accessing the light through one’s higher spiritual centers. If one accesses a higher consciousness within oneself there is no longer a wall: one is present in the dimension of light upon light. This is the pure consciousness realized through mystical practice, such as Buddhist meditation, the light of the heart of the Sufi path. These are beautiful and powerful practices, through which one can transcend the limitations of the physical world while still present in this world. But these practices do not dismantle the wall: instead, they offer a way to go beyond it, even to give one access to a consciousness where the wall does not exist, where there is no separation between the worlds. Mystics and spiritual travelers who have had these experiences may remind a few people that this world of light exists and that there is a way beyond the wall into the light, but the wall remains as solid as before. And the world in which we live today is left starving for light.

Although no one can now remember it, the light does more than just nourish us. This light enables us to see what is real. When it used to shine in the world it revealed the true nature of things, their real purpose and meaning. In this light we could each live according to our true nature and recognize the true nature of others and of the world around us. We could see the world as it really is—the divine creation of which we are a part. The world thus seen, in its real nature, is quite different from the world created by our desires and projections, by the endless patterns of our mind and the recycling of our memories that we call existence. Anyone who has for an instant awakened, had a glimpse of what the Zen masters call satori, will know this simple experience of truth, when the butterfly is glimpsed as a butterfly, the plum tasted in its sweetness. It is a reality without comparison or contradiction that communicates its true nature to us directly rather than being interpreted through our mind or psyche. In such moments we are really alive, awake rather than dreaming.

Long ago, at the dawn of consciousness, humanity was given the ability to recognize and relate to the true nature of everything. This ability belongs to the naming of things, because everything that is created by God has a name that embodies its true nature. In the Qur’an (2:31) it is written that

He taught Adam the names
Of all things

meaning that Adam was taught the inner nature and qualities of things.⁴ And so the first man had knowledge of the names of creation, which belong to the divine “secrets of heaven and earth” (Qur’an 2:33).⁵ This knowledge of the inner nature and true purpose of the created world is part of our divine heritage, our inner Adam. It enables us to participate in life as it really is, as a divine revelation: the world created by God rather than the world created by humanity. But today we have long forgotten the true names of creation. We remain caught in the surface patterns of illusion, in our projections and fantasies. This is our present collective predicament.

There are always some individuals who are able to awake to the light of their true self, to see what is real and how to live the meaning of their soul. But for our Western collective this is a distant myth. Most wander through their lives lost in a world without true meaning, unable to find their way. There are always signs that point towards what is real, but we can no longer recognize or read them. It is only too easy for the power dynamics of the world to delude us, to trap and enslave us. Without any real knowing, how can we find our way out of this maze, how can we know what is true in a world of lies? Once we have access to real light, we can see how we have been deluded, lied to. But without the light we know nothing of the world around us: we only see the images that have been made to glitter. We are caught in the illusions that are spun around us.

This is partly why the powers of this world want to deny us access to the light, want us to remain in the shadows, and today censor our basic awareness. Without truth we are easier to mislead and control, and can be sold worthless trinkets. We know nothing and see nothing, and easily believe what we are told.

But now the deeper question remains: do we have to remain stranded in these shadows when the light is so near? Is it our collective destiny to be imprisoned by the wall of separation created by our ancestors and reinforced by our own forgetfulness? Or can we reclaim this dimension of light—the light that will enable us to see the world around us, a sacred world of beauty and wonder, where joy has returned and we no longer pollute our environment with unsustainable desires?

How then can the wall be destroyed? When I look at the wall, I see no sign of any attempt to break through it. There is no indication of any real rebellion. There are no armies of saboteurs attacking the wall, or even ladders placed against it. Its bricks are smooth and polished. The wall appears untouched. We seem to have accepted the wall without question. It is high enough that we cannot see over to the other side. It has been there for so long and become so familiar we do not even notice it. Who is there to question it? Do we have the will or the power to destroy this barrier to the light? We are so seduced and drugged by the playthings of this world that we do not even question what we have been denied.

Leonard Cohen once wrote, “There is a crack in everything and that’s where the light comes in.” Perhaps we just need to make a crack in the wall through which the light can begin to stream. Many times cracks have appeared in our collective defenses, as for example in the hippie movement of the 1970’s with its vision of peace and love. But these harbingers of light do not appear to last. They easily self-destruct, destroyed by drugs for example, or are swallowed back into the collective, sold out to materialistic values. Sadly, much of the new-age spirituality that brought the light and the practices of spiritual traditions from the East soon became corrupted and self-serving, using the energy of the light for money and ego desires. The forces of darkness know our weaknesses only too well, and the cracks are quickly mortared over before enough light can come through to make a real difference. Maybe a crack in the wall is not enough.

If the Earth itself needs this light, can the Earth rebel? Can the primal powers that are present within creation awaken and destroy what humanity has created? Is this what the real future of the coming climate crisis portends? That the energies of the Earth will rebel against our greed and exploitation, against our forgetfulness of the primordial covenant, the Original Instructions⁶ given to our distant ancestors. We may be making scientific models of a future determined by rising temperatures and rising seas, we may even be recognizing that we are in a time of polycrisis and possible social collapse. But we have no real understanding what this might mean, what happens when we pass environmental tipping points and feedback loops. Although there is a deep anxiety now present within the collective that tells a truer story, as if the collective itself knows that there is a storm coming, one that its politicians and corporations cannot prepare for.

And does this future have a spiritual dimension? Will our transition through the coming bardo bring us to a simpler way of living that directly nourishes the soul? It is so long since the light was here that we have almost no memories even in our ancestral consciousness of how to live in the light. We have learned how to live in the shadow-lands of our culture, how to manipulate and deceive, how to protect our self and our possessions. But in the light there can be no manipulation or deception: there is too much clarity. We will have to learn again how to be honest and truthful, how to be sincere and open. And how to take real responsibility. This is the only way to live in the light.

In my own deepest dreaming this darkening world will transition to a world whose foundations are the unity of being, a oneness that embraces the more-than-human world to which we all belong. And in this world we will be given more access to the worlds of light and love that surround us. As I know from my own experience we cannot transition to a direct experience of the light of our true nature. It is too blinding. But maybe the coming crisis will help us to return to an awareness deep in our DNA, to a time before the wall even existed. Then we will recognize that there is a world of light that does not belong just to some unobtainable heaven or elevated spiritual state. It belongs to the world around us, what the alchemists called the lumen naturae.⁷ It is present in the patterns of interdependence that are visible in the natural world, for example in the way that mycorrhizal fungi networks nourish and protect a forest. And for humanity it is when the web of life and the web of light and love merge and flow together. When life begins again to sing, as it did in the earliest years.

We know in our depths that humanity and the world cannot itself survive much longer without this light that comes directly from the Source. Everything else has become too polluted and corrupted. The heart of the world is bleeding, and the soul of humanity is crying out. We need this light in order to see our true nature and the true nature of the living Earth. And life needs this light in order to heal and transform, so that together we can make the next step in our shared evolution.

This is my understanding of the vision I was given: how it points to a possible future just as it describes the shadows of our present time.

Listen to Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee reading this transcript.