Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: E&G: ”Ascending Spiral of the Path,” Feb 9, 2026, live BabaZoom copertina

Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: E&G: ”Ascending Spiral of the Path,” Feb 9, 2026, live BabaZoom

Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: E&G: ”Ascending Spiral of the Path,” Feb 9, 2026, live BabaZoom

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 Dear folks of Baba, Darwin would sometimes describe life with Baba using the metaphor of an ascending spiral encircling Him to depict the spiritual path. It starts at the outer ring, and spirals upward and very gradually narrows around Baba until, sooner or later (usually a lot later), we are face-to-face with our Beloved! There are walls that separate the ever-narrowing spiral. To expand on what Darwin describes: in the beginning, as we move along the outer ring, we revolve through all the many repetitious experiences we have to face in life: our diverse emotional complexes, desires, tests, bindings, breakthroughs, relationships, disappointments, failures and successes. Taking, as an example, one complex such as the fear of public speaking: at the beginning of the spiral, say, we have to give a talk before a class in college. We go through all the agony in anticipation, extremely fearful that we might lose the thread of what we want to say. We try to give the whole ordeal to Baba as best as we can in our agitated state. In the actual talk, we find ourselves stumbling over our words, struggling to remember what we planned to say, and in the end, we embarrass ourselves. We are left with a painful memory. We now avoid public talks in any way we can, but suppose a year later we have to again give a talk which is unavoidable. We go through all the incredible mental turmoil like the previous time. We say to ourselves, “Not this again!” And the talk goes about the way it did the year before—poorly. We conclude that we’re not making any progress whatsoever. This goes on year after year. We do get better, but not enough to call it a substantial progress. What Darwin would say is that unknown to us, each time we face this fear, we have made a circuit of the spiral and are dealing with the fear at a higher level. We are facing our complex at a more refined elevation even though it seems like the same “stubborn old problem”. Again and again, we have to work intensely with the fear, and we surrender a little more of the complex to Baba. Every time we deal with such difficult situations in our life, we are really working at a higher level, and at the same time, we are moving closer and closer to Baba who is ever-present at the center of the spiral. That is, we are making headway even if it doesn’t seem so at all. Going around and around the spiral, rising slightly and often imperceptibly higher each time, we are, Darwin would say, gradually freeing ourselves of our sanskaras (our past karma). But there comes a point when we see that we can burn through the wall of the outer spiral where we are and into one of the inner spirals, and bypass the longer outer route. This is when we make Baba the center of all our aspirations, when we are facing directly toward Him and are turned away from all our emotional complexes that we have had to face along the outer spiral. Darwin calls this a “spiritual bypass”. Through Baba’s grace, we can actually burn through the walls of the outer spirals one by one, and we find ourselves closer and closer to His immediate presence and facing away from the presence of the world and all our karmic complexes. This greatly speeds up our progress toward merging with our Beloved. We are facing the sun, as Baba says, with our backs now turned away from our shadow, the world and our many issues with it. In a Rumi quote liked by Darwin, he says, “On the spiritual path, effort is required. But grace is a thousand times greater than effort. When the morning sun appears, the candle of self-effort can be blown out.” I have always found Darwin’s metaphor of the inner path very helpful and hopeful and which confirms that we are really drawing closer to Baba all the time through our seemingly muddling efforts! Baba, in a profoundly encouraging message, says in His Discourses, “The aspirant is generally conscious of the manner in which he has been responding to the diverse situations in life, and rarely conscious of the manner in which he makes progress towards self-knowledge. Without consciously knowing it, the aspirant is gradually arriving at self-knowledge by traversing the Inner Path through his joys and sorrows, his happiness and suffering, his successes and failures, his efforts and rest, and through his moments of clear perception and harmonized will as well as through the moments of confusion and conflict. These are the manifestations of the diverse sanskaras which he has brought from the past, and the aspirant forges his way towards self-knowledge [towards Baba] through the tangles of these sanskaras like the traveler threading his way through a wild and thick forest.” Does Darwin’s metaphor of the inner life clarify how we proceed on the path? Is it clear how turning directly to Baba within can be a spiritual bypass of our otherwise slow karmic journey? In His love, Jeff P.S. We are continuing on page 68
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