Beyond 2012: Gnostic Soulcraft

   

In Graham Hancock's book Heaven's Mirror: Quest for the Lost Civilization, he concluded that the Ice Age civilization that ended around 10,500 B.C. passed on not only a knowledge of astronomy and precession, related to the cyclic catastrophe that ended the Ice Age, but also a "science of immortality". This was a technology of the soul, in which techniques acquired over a millennia of study and experimentation could be used in ways to preserve consciousness beyond the veil of death. Hancock says the knowledge was passed down through secret societies, and traces can be found in the Gnostic writings at Nag Hammadi.

In Gnostic versions of the Genesis myth, the forbidden fruit gives knowledge of light and darkness. the Tree of Knowledge can easily be seen as some sort of hallucinogenic plant that made those who had eaten it aware of other planes of existence and, via out-of-body experiences, they would have seen that consciousness can exist without the physical body. The "Tree of Life" thus became perceptible; the Kabbalistic tree of life is a map of the paths of the netherworld, and the middle pillar relates directly to the chakras in our subtle body, situated along the middle pillar -- the spine. By certain exercises involving the chakras or power zones, and the snake-like Kundalini energy, it seems that the astral body can be perfected or transformed into a vehicle with a much longer lifespan.

So, Hancock's study traced this science of Soulcraft from a pre-diluvian race, through ancient civilizations in Mexico, Egypt and other places, suggesting that it is linked to the precession cycle.

Some of the information can still be found in the Bible. In Matthew 22, the "kingdom of heaven" is compared to a marriage, at which those who are not wearing the "wedding garment" will not get to witness the wedding. In Like and Matthew, we are informed about the pineal eye:

     "Your eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is sound, your whole body is full of
     light; but when it is not sound, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest
     the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark,
     it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light."  ~ Matt. 6:22-23

This theme is expanded in Matthew 25:1-13, in which we are told to have our lamps fully fueled up and burning, ready for the arrival of the bridegroom at his marriage feast. As to exactly what this means, John Major Jenkins, in Galactic Alignment, has provided us with as clue from a book called The Celestial Ship of the North, by Valentia Straiton, in which someone called Edgar Conrow is quoted:

     "The pineal gland is the 'North Gate'. This, in man, is the central spiritual creative
     centre. Above in the heavens, it is found in the beginning of the sign of Sagittarius,
     and is the point from which spiritual gifts are given. It is called 'Vision of God', and 
     is the Light within, a gift to the pure in heart, who verily may 'see God', but to the impure,
     or those who abuse this great gift, the consequences are terrible.
          This North Gate, the creative centre in man, the most interior centre in the body, has
     become atrophied, and redemption or regeneration means restoration to creative ability,
     by having the electrical, or positive, and the magnetic, or negative, forces restored in
     equal balance in man and woman."

The alignment of the solstice Sun with the Galactic Equator, close to Galactic Centre at the start of Sagittarius, is thus a time when the Galactic Pineal Eye will radiate its light and restore our individual pineal eyes to their full potential of transmundane vision. However, not everyone will qualify. Luke's gospel implies that only the unmarried will qualify, but it seems that he means male sexual energy should not be 'wasted' in ejaculation, but used instead for the higher purpose of modifying our subtle body into its fully flowered form.

Egyptian Shamanism 

You can find an expanded essay on this subject, called Soulcraft, at www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/soul.htm  in which all the traces of knowledge are exhumed and compared, but, briefly, we can trace it back to Egyptian sources to get quite an early version. The Egyptians had a shamanic religion, in which the Pharaoh would induce an astral flight by means of techniques including hallucinogens, light and sound, meditations timed by lunar phases, and possibly a darkroom retreat to become Osiris (who was cut into pieces and then re-assembled) in a death-rebirth experience. Isis reassembled the fourteen pieces of Osiris, having collected them in the Land of the Phoenix (Phoenicia -- now Lebanon), during the fourteen days of the waning moon (except for the phallus, which was lost), then bound him up like the pupa of a butterfly. She then used a wooden phallus to concieve Horus, and Osiris ascended to Heaven (possibly encoding the use of higher sexual energy). The phoenix was retained as the symbol of an immortal bird, but is also connected with the recurrence of a long cycle of time.

The Egyptian winged disk, according to Charles Muses, represents the "non-molecular body" that is developed for these flights. The timing of the whole 70-day mummification process was synchronised with the 70-day disappearance of Sirius into the Duat (the period when Sirius is not visible). Muses points out the parallels between mummification and the process of metamorphosis from caterpillar, via cocoon and pupa (chrysalis) into butterfly. The wrapping of the body in bandages represents the silk-enswathed larva (caterpillar), and the folded wings embossed on the sarcophagus lids represented the visible wing shapes that are visible on the pupa or chrysalis case. The Meskhent, or "birth tent of skin", that was placed around the mummy represented the outer cocoon, while the ancient Egyptian word for the funeral chamber is literally "the birth chamber". Humanity is seen as the larval stage in preparation for the final metamorphosis. The 70-day embalming period was a later metaphor for a metamorphic transformation -- one that was commenced while the physical body was still alive, leading to the birth of the "winged form", or immortal body.
 

Non-Molecular Body 

The Egyptian soul-science ("psyche-ology") is quite complex, with several non-physical bodies being involved, but Jeremy Naydler has reconstructed the scheme in a quite convincing way in The Temple of the Cosmos. The khat is the physical body (symbolized by a fish hieroglyph), and the ka (symbolized by upturned arms), or double, can be seen as "vital force" -- an energy body that seems to be equivalent to an etheric body. The ba (symbolized by a bird with a human head), although often translated as "soul", is better understood as a seed-soul consciousness, since it is "but a preliminary to a yet more exalted state of consciousness". It is consciousness externalized, and seems to be the equivalent of the astral body. "As a ba, a person had the experience of looking at his or her body as if from an outsiders standpoint. This experience was central to the Osirian initiation". The khabit, or shadow (symbolized by a dark silhouette), represents "all the transformed earthly appetites and obsessions that fetter the ba to the physical realm and prevent it from moving on" (the astral body is also known as the emotional body). The akh, also called akhu or khu (represented by a bird -- the Crested Ibis), means "shining one" or "illuminated one". It is also called "the imperishable one" that returns to its source beyond the Duat.

Naydler says "The akh may be understood as the ba divinised" but in order for the akh to be released from the body, a new spiritual body had to be germinated from the physical body as a vehicle for the akh. This spiritual body is the sahu. This sounds like the immortal man in Taoist Yoga, who is gestated in the abdomen and expelled through a psychic opening in the top of the head to appear as a person sitting on a lotus within a golden sphere, as we shall see shortly. The lotus was also a symbol of rebirth in Egypt. Naydler says the re-membering following the dismemberment was an essential part of the Osirian initiation, which is a germination process in which the sahu is formed and the akh is attained, allowing access to the stellar realms beyond the Duat.

Naydler's interpretation implies that the conscious mind resides in the khabit (shadow) and the unconscious mind in the ba (astral body). If the shadow can be conquered, then it can unite with the ba to form the akh (khu). At the same time, the sahu can be germinated from the ka, which now has access to more vital energy -- the sexual energy, that is no longer being diverted into emotional blockages since the cleaning up of the shadow. this interpretation provides a scheme of the unification of male and female (conscious and unconscious), while retaining the evolution of the higher bodies.

This all seems to support the contention of Charles Muses that there were three post-mortem paths that could be followed by the newly deceased Egyptian: The Hippo Path, in which the the soul's vehicle disintegrated and the soul reincarnated; The Cow Path, in which the soul experience a dream-like existence in the Duat, or Underworld, from where it could either reincarnate or ascend; and The Lion Path, where a higher body allowed access to a higher dimension...

Taoist Yoga 

There is an important point to consider, if we are to find ourselves navigating the "invisible landscape" of the astral realms, and this knowledge has arisen from a study of neolithic sacred sites, combined with certain clues from Taoist yoga, so we shall follow the clues in the next few paragraphs.

In Taoist yoga, breathing and visualization exercises are practiced in which the generative force is diverted from its normal route (ejaculation) and is circulated around a system of power zones that closely resemble the Hindu chakras.

In a leaflet from the occult bookshop The Sorcerer's Apprentice, the system is claimed to be similar to Kundalini yoga, but safer. During a long process of internal alchemy, the original spirit cavity is located and transformed into the "precious cauldron" (which is equivalent to the activation of the pineal gland), and an "immortal foetus" starts to develop. Eventually, the spirit body separates from the physical body (up from the precious cauldron, through the top of the head, or "heavenly gate") and combines with the spirit body.






The developing immortal foetus (left), from which the immortal man emerges in a mass of golden light (right). After Luk [1970, 1996]

In the version given by Lu K'uan Yu, the immortal man or spirit body sits upright within "a mass of golden light, the size of a large wheel":

     "When spirit manifests for the first time, it should only be allowed to leave the 
      physical body in fine weather and it should be well looked after, like a baby
      just born. Its egress should on no account take place when there is thick fog,
     heavy rain, gale, thunder and lightning."

The spirit body is "very sensitive to fear and awe, which should be avoided at all costs". This immortal man within a golden wheel is reminiscent of the original "merkabah" (Hebrew for chariot) that was seen by Ezekiel, enlarged on by Hurtak, developed further by Drunvalo Melchizedek and connected by Gregg Braden with the zero-point in 2012. Braden said that when the component tetrahedrons were counter-rotating, the whole Mer-Ka-Ba (he spells it like this to emphasize that the concept includes the Egyptian Ka, or etheric body, and the Ba, or astral body) would look like a flying disk. Lu K'uan Yu also describes the spirit body as a "golden ball of light".

From ~ Beyond 2012: Catastrophe or Ecstasy - A Complete Guide 
            to End-of-Time Predictions, pgs.240-244 & 255-256
By ~ Geoff Stray; Introduced by John Major Jenkins




Related Posts:

Example of Sufi Ideas
Insan-i-Kamil: The Completed Human 
The Earnest Expectation of the Creature
Stepping through the Shadow











                       

The Art of Alchemy

 

'Aurum nostrom non est aurum vulgare', claimed the Alchemists -- 'Our gold is not common gold'. So if the Alchemists of the Middle Ages were not, as is usually assumed, concerned with the production of ordinary gold from base metals like lead or iron, what kind of gold did they seek to make?

The answer is bright and shining inner gold, the gold from which souls are made, no less -- 'sophic' gold, as they called it. From heavy, leaden, ordinary man they sought to fashion light, golden, spiritual man -- beginning with themselves. For the first work of the true Alchemist was to refine and transmute his own very self from coarse to fine, from lower to higher, and then to help others to effect the same change.

Without the guidance of an already golden man, a 'changed one', without his mastery, the transmutation could not be achieved. As a member of the alchemical fraternity told Helvetius of the Hague in 1666, "Nay, without communication of a true adept philosopher not one student can find the way to prepare this great magistry". The student, too, had to be of a certain quality, "Scarce three in one million canst be candidates for the Work of Holy Alkimy", says Thomas Norton in his 'Ordinall of Alkimy' (1477).

The great Persian philosopher and Sufi adept, Al-Ghazali (1058-1111), known in the West as Algazel, states in his masterwork 'The Alchemy of Happiness', "Alchemical gold is better than gold, but real alchemists are rare, and so are true Sufis". He further tells us, "....man's happiness undergoes successive refinements according to his state of being." In his 'Minhaj el-Abidin' he describes the process of the alchemising of the human consciousness in 'seven valleys' of experience: the valleys of Knowledge, Turning Back, Obstacles, Tribulations, Lighting, Abysses and Praise. "Fulfilment", he avers, "is a property only of Paradise, entry into which depends on alchemical transmutation."

That Ghazali uses the alchemy metaphor is not surprising, for there is a clear connection between Sufis and Alchemists throughout the Middle Ages. In fact, both he and the great twelfth century Sufi teacher, Jalaluddin Rumi, actually refer to Sufism as Alchemy from time to time in their works. It is also significant that the Golden Head, 'sar-i-tali' in Arabic, is a Sufi term referring to a person whose inner consciousness has been "transmuted into gold" by means of Sufic study.

The connection is established beyond doubt by the fact that while the mysterious Hermes Trismegistus of ancient Egypt is traditionally regarded as the originator of Alchemy -- the Hermetic Art, the founding father of Arab-European Alchemy since the eighth century of the present era is always held to be Jabir Ibn el-Hayyan (721-7760, called Jabir the Sufi, and known in the West as Geber. Behind him, however, stands his own teacher, the Sufi master Jafaq Sadiq (700-765) who wrote 'The Perception', an esoteric text casting much light on the inner nature of the alchemical quest.

Jabir himself was the author of over three hundred treatises on alchemy, but it was not until 1144 that Robert of Chester, who studied in Saracenic Spain, produced for the West a translation of Jabir's major text, 'The Book of the Composition of Alchemia', which first gave us the word 'alchemy' -- from the Arabic 'al-kimia'. This, in turn, was derived from the old Semetic name for Egypt -- 'Kem' -- meaning black, the distinctive colour of its alluvial soil after the flooding of the Nile, in contrast to the white sand of the surrounding desert. Alchemy was thus the Egyptian Art, or the Art of Egypt. The Arab alchemists believed themselves to be the recipients of the ancient teaching of Hermes through Dhu'l-Nun, theEgyptian, known as 'Lord of the Fish' and a Sufi exponent of the highest order.

However, it is now recognized that Alchemy was practiced in all the great civilizations; and no matter whether in India, China or Greece, it was invariably called 'The Work' or 'The Great Work'. Furthermore, in whatever culture it manifested itself, there were always the same three elements: 'mercury', 'sulphur' and 'salt', which had to be combined for the production of the Philosopher's Stone. The consistency is significant. It indicates not haphazard experimentation, but a constant body of knowledge.

Alchemical terminology thus appears to be the symbolic mode of expression adopted by an esoteric developmental school for the projection of its allegorised message. It contained concealed instructions for, and descriptions of, processes leading to the perfection of the human being. This was technical material for the transformation of consciousness, a disguised spiritual path. "Our gold is not your gold, and our sulphur is not your sulphur." states the 'Rosarium Philosophorum' -- the Rosary of the Philosopher -- and adds, "Only he who knows how to make the Philosopher's Stone understands the words that relate to it." The Adept, we are reminded, is essential.

What then is the Philosopher's Stone, which the alchemists deemed so necessary for the making of golden men and women, and which was, it seems, the very heart of their quest? It would appear to be none other than the heart of man himself. Like the Kingdom of Heaven -- it is within. Idries Shah gives us the Sufi view:

      "The stone, the hidden thing, so powerful, is also called the Azoth in the West. 
       Azoth is traced by Orientalists to the Arabic 'el-dhat' (or ez-zat), meaning
       essence or inner reality. The stone, according to Sufis, is the 'dhat', the essence,
       which is so powerful that it can transform whatever comes into contact with it.
       It is the essence of man, which partakes of what people call the divine. it is
      'sunshine' capable of uplifting humanity to the next stage.
           The Sophic stone is the Sufic stone."

"The stone is of exalted purity, and he who makes it makes himself perfect." says the fifteenth century alchemist Thomas Norton, informing us also that it is, "the result of concentration, distillation and refinement." These terms refer to work on oneself and inner refinement -- the refinement of essence. It is noteworthy that the Sufis have described their activity as 'the refinement of the consciousness.'

    
The medieval occult philosopher, Cornelius Agrippa (born 1486), is explicit, "The stone is not a stone. It is an internal spirit within us." Of alchemy he says, "This is the true and occult philosophy which men seek. The key thereof is the understanding. For the higher we carry our knowledge, the more sublime are our attainments in virtue, and we perform the greatest things with more ease." Three hundred years later, the English lady alchemist, Mary Anne Atwood, was to write in her book, 'A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery': "Alchemy is divine Art, the very transformation of life itself. The spirit teaches its own Art, and according as it is obeyed the artist goes on developing the way to advance to perfection." Agrippa and Mary Atwood may be separated by time, but not in activity.

She continues, "Thus being awakened and at the same time drawn centrally, the consciousness comes to know and feel itself in its own source, which is the Universal Centre and Source of all things."

In ancient China, the Art was called 'nei-tan', inner alchemy, and was usually found interwoven with Taoism, with which it was held to esoterically correspond. Thus a later practitioner of nei tan, Chang Po-tuan, who lived in the eleventh century, states in his 'Treatise on the Golden Elixir':

      "Volatility transmutes into true essence;
       The human mind changes into the mind of Tao.
       Without refinement by the spiritual fire,
       How can gold be separated from the ore?"

Enlightenment was often referred to as discovering or uncovering the inner or golden elixir; while it will be remembered that the alchemists of the West sought the mysterious Elixir of Life -- doubtless another name for the Philosopher's Stone.

Both Taoists and practitioners of nei-tan describe the process of spiritual development as the fashioning of 'the sacred embryo', the 'shang-tsi', a new being that must grow and develop within; or as the growth and unfolding of 'the golden flower', whose petals only fully open upon enlightenment. Thus the alchemist Lu Tsu declares, "I must diligently plant my own field. There is within it a spiritual seed. Its flower is like yellow gold. Its bud is not large. Its growth depends upon the soil of the central palace, but its irrigation must come from a higher fountain."

...As one great Alchemist has said:

              "The Kingdom of Heaven
               is like a grain of mustard seed,
               which a man took, and soweth in his field:
               which indeed is the least of all seeds.
               But when it is grown, it is greatest among herbs,
               and becometh a tree
               so that the birds of the air come
               and lodge in the branches thereof.

                                                           (Matthew 14:31-32)

So wisdom is something that grows. It is a living thing. It is not 'acquired', like information, but absorbed. We grow in wisdom as we grow into wisdom. We must receive it, embrace it, become part of its very texture and allow it to become part of our very texture. For verily it is 'the Dayspring from on High that visits us.'

From ~ Stairway to the Stars: Sufism, Gurdjieff and the Inner Tradition of Mankind pgs 53-57
By  ~  Max Gorman













   

Is the Great Awakening Truly Upon Us?

                                                       

Many people are saying that a "great awakening" is currently taking place in our world, and some are even saying that the "Great Spiritual Awakening of Mankind" is beginning. I do not know what is happening, but with all the protests and uprisings and revolutions that have been happening since the beginning of this year, and now with all the Occupy Wall Street protests and the 99% movement taking place, not just here in America, but around the globe, it's getting kind of hard to deny that something certainly seems to be "going on". But are the sleeping masses truly beginning to awaken -- is the sleeping giant finally rousing from its long slumber -- or is all this just more devious shenanigans and a machiavellian rearranging of the "Grand Chess Board" for the 21st Century?

Some of the more politically minded and/or conspiracy oriented people out there are saying that the Powers-That-Be are just stirring all this up in order to get better control of the planet, while the more more spiritually/mystically oriented types believe (or suspect) that we are going through a "Great Awakening" and that positive, but sometimes painful, transformations are taking place and will continue to take place. Perhaps, it is a little bit of both, and more besides. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions, but, clearly, something is going on, or as the Master of Deduction might put it, "something is afoot!" And with so many people, from every part of the planet, seeming to awaken (at least in a political/social sense) all at the same time, and with everything else that's going on in the world, at the moment, I don't see how all of this could possibly "engineered". Maybe some, but not all of it.     

As far as "2012" and all that goes, back in the late 80's and early 90's, when I first started hearing and reading a little something about it, I thought there might be something to it. But as the 90's wore on, I decided that 2012 would probably just come and go like all the other "doomsday prophecies". But starting sometime last year, with certain synchronicities and personal experiences, moving into this year with the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions, and all the other uprisings in the Arab world and in other parts of the globe, and then the triple whammy devastation of Japan with an Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster (which is still ongoing, by the way), and all the other thousands of 5 and 6.0+ Earthquakes that have been happening around the world in the last few years, and especially this year, Japan alone has had over 1600 earthquakes (still ongoing), most of them 5.0+, since the "big one" on March 11, and now we've recently had an earthquake, centered in Virginia, that shook New York City and pretty much the whole northeastern U.S., and more recently, Colorado, Texas, and Oklahoma and a bunch of other places, including Turkey, have been getting in on the action. And, of course, let's not forget Sumatra, Haiti, Chile, New Zealand, etc. Add to all this, the poles shifting, the ice caps melting, dead birds falling from the sky, dead fish washing up everywhere, mass extinctions and all the other ecological and environmental catastrophes, and the fact that most, if not all, of the ancient cultures, from every part of the planet, not just the Mayans, have prophesied or predicted major changes and upheavals and new beginnings for this general time period in history. All of this together, and now, for the first time in known human history, people from all parts of the globe are beginning to wake up and unite as one and rise up against The-Powers-That-Be --- again, it is getting harder and harder to deny that something certainly seems to be going on.

Is "The Great Awakening" finally upon us? Honestly, I do not know, and I admit I have my doubts, but all the signs seem to indicate that this might be so. And again, I will leave you to draw your own conclusions about all this. I have provided some videos, in separate posts, underneath this post, that deal with these subjects, and you can take from them what you will. But whatever the realities or hallucinations about the "Occupy" movement or "2012", it is always a good idea to prepare one's soul for whatever may come.

Peace and Love be with you.

R.S.











 

Robert Anton Wilson - The Acceleration to 2012

 














     

Timewave Zero: 2012 - Terence McKenna

    
  













       

Graham Hancock - Why 2012?

    

 












   

2012 Explained - Daniel Pinchbeck

 














          

The Challenges of 2012 - Geoff Stray

  















     

2012 and Maya Cosmogenesis - John Major Jenkins

  
  














  

The Prophecy of the Native American Elders

  

 












        

Earth Changes: Axis Tilt

   

 












            

2012 - The Revolution Has Begun

                                                 












                                  

2012 - Global Awakening

                                              












                                                                                     

The One Reality

                         

   

Many attempts have been made to describe the feeling of salvation which the Buddhists call Nirvana and the Hindus call Moksha. Where these descriptions are in the form of doctrines we notice that among such doctrines there is a wide variety of differences whereby students of religion are often misled. If the doctrines of Christianity are different from those of Hinduism, it does not necessarily follow that the religions are different, for more than one doctrine may describe a single state of mind, and without this state of mind the religion , as a mere collection of doctrines, has no meaning whatever; it is just as if it were a babble of unintelligent words. But doctrines differ because people have different mental backgrounds and traditions; an English person and a Chinese person may have the same feeling but they will speak of it in different ways because they are relating it to different mental contexts. It is therefore most unwise to study religion from the standpoint of doctrine as doctrine, for this is the purest superficiality. Doctrines and conceptual ideas vary as languages vary, but one and the same meaning may be conveyed by both English and French. Christians believe in a personal God and Buddhists do not, but as regards the true essentials of religion this difference is as superficial as the fact that in French every noun has a gender, whereas this is not so in English.

Therefore to extract the true meaning of a religious doctrine we must ask, "What does this doctrine mean in terms of a state of mind? What sort of feeling towards life and the universe would have caused a person to think in this way?" For religious experience is like the experience of beauty; indeed, it is akin to felling beauty in the whole of life instead of in a single picture, scene, image, or melody. Beethoven and Stravinsky may both arouse the sense of beauty, and they are quite as different in their own way as Christianity and Buddhism. The important thing, however, is that they arouse that sense; we may discuss and argue over their respective "merits" till we are blue without coming to any conclusion. It would be more profitable, however, if we could take one who feels beauty in Beethoven and one who feels beauty in Stravinsky, and then consider the varying degrees of profundity in their respective feelings. But here we should be dealing with intangible and imponderable factors that ordinary methods of criticism and discussion would be useless, and we could only judge by intuition. The same principle applies in religion, for the feeling of beauty in art or music is here the feeling of salvation. By this I do not mean freedom of moral conscience nor even the certainty of an everlasting life of bliss after death, although such things may be attained by any number of different religious systems. These elementary forms of "salvation" have much the same relation to the deeper forms as mere sensuous thrill has to the perception of beauty.

What, then, is a truly deep feeling of salvation? Insofar as this question can be answered at all, perhaps it is best to consider one of the greatest doctrines in all religion in terms of a state of mind. For this purpose the best choice is probably the Hindu or Vedanta conception of Brahman, because this is at once the simplest and the most subtle of doctrines -- subtle just because it is so simple. The same doctrine is found in other systems, but Vedanta gives it the best philosophical expression. It is that all possible things, events, thoughts, and qualities are aspects of a single Reality which is sometimes called the Self of the universe. In themselves these many aspects have no reality; they are real only in that each one of them is a manifestation of Brahman or the Self. To put it another way, the true self of any given thing is Brahman and not something that belongs exclusively to the thing in question. Each individual is therefore an aspect of Brahman, and no two aspects are the same. But man's self is much more than what he considers to be his ego, his personality called John Smith or William Jones. The ego is a device or trick (maya) employed so that Brahman may manifest itself, and man's innermost self is therefore identical with the Self of all things. Thus if anyone wants to know what Brahman is he just has to look around, to think, to act, to be aware, to live, for all that is known by the senses, thought in the mind or felt in the heart is Brahman.

In other systems of thought Brahman has many other names -- "Tao" in Chinese, and mystics the world over find similar meanings in the words "God", "Allah", "Infinite Life", "Elan Vital", "the Absolute", or whatever other term may be used. In fact, the intuition of the One Reality is the essence of all mystical religion, but few people understand clearly what it is to feel this intuition in oneself. We are perhaps more apt to think of this idea just as a metaphysical speculation, a more or less reasonable theory about the fundamental structure of life. Someday, we think, it might be possible for us to delve down into the deepest recesses of our soul, lay our fingers on this mysterious universal essence and avail ourselves of its tremendous powers. This, however, does not seem quite the right way to look at it. For one thing, it is not to be found only "in the deepest recesses of our souls", and for another, the word "essence" makes it sound as if it were a highly refined, somewhat gaseous or electric and wholly formless potency that somehow dwells "inside" things. But in relation to Brahman there is neither inside nor outside; sometimes it is called the principle of "nonduality" nothing else exists beside it and nothing is excluded from it. It is to be found on the surface as much as in the depths and in the finite as much as in the infinite, for it has been wisely said that "there is nothing infinite apart from finite things". Thus it can neither be lost nor found and you cannot avail yourself of its powers any more than you can dispense with them, for all these conceptions of having and not having, of gain and loss, finite and infinite, belong to the principle of duality. Every dualism is exclusive; it is this and not that, that and not this. But Brahman as the One Reality is all-inclusive, for the Upanishads say:

      "It is made of consciousness and mind: It is made of life and vision. It is made
       of the earth and the waters: It is made of air and space. It is made of light and 
       darkness: It is made of desire and peace. It is made of anger and love: It is
       made of virtue and vice. It is made of all that is near: It is made of all that is
       far. It is made of all."


What, then, is nonduality in terms of a state of mind? How does the mystic who has realized his identity with the One Reality think and feel? Does his consciousness expand from out of his body and enter into all all other things, so that he sees with others' eyes, and thinks with others' brains? Only figuratively, for the Self which is in him and in all others does not necessarily communicate to the physical brain of John Smith, mystic, what is seen by the eyes of Pei-wang, construction worker, on the other side of the earth. I do not believe that spiritual illumination needs to be understood in quite this sensational way. We shall answer the question sufficiently if we can discover what is a nondualistic state of mind. Does it mean a mind in so intense a state of concentration that it contains only one thought? Strictly speaking, the mind never contains more than one thought at a time; such is the nature of thinking. But if spirituality means thinking only and always of one particular thing, then other things are excluded and this is still duality. Does it mean, then, a mind which is thinking of everything at once? Even if this were possible, it would exclude the convenient faculty of thinking of one thing at a time and would still be dualistic. Clearly these two interpretations are absurd, but there is another way of approach.

Spiritual illumination is often described as absolute freedom of the soul, and we have seen that the One Reality is all-inclusive. Is the mind of the mystic singularly free and all-inclusive? If so, it would seem that his spirituality does not depend on thinking any special kinds of thoughts, on having a particular feeling ever in the background of his soul. He is free to think of anything and nothing, to love and to fear, to be joyful or sad, to set his mind on philosophy or on the trivial concerns of the world; he is free to be both a sage and a fool, to feel both compassion and anger, to experience both bliss and agony.

And in all this he never breaks his identity with the One Reality -- God, "whose service is perfect freedom".





From ~ Become What You Are, pgs. 64-69
By ~ Alan Watts
         











"You are something the whole Universe is doing in the same way that a wave is something that the whole Ocean is doing."   ~ Alan Watts ~




























               
                      

The I That is We

       

If there is one cliche that has been constantly drummed into our ears by countless religious leaders, it is the claim that "we are all one". We hear this so often that we take it no more seriously than a soft-drink commercial. And why should we take it seriously? There is nothing in the world we see to indicate even remotely that it might be true. All over we see people jockeying for position, trying to surpass each other in money, status, comfort. One person's success means another's failure. At any given time, two different people cannot be elected president or win the Academy Award for best actress or be the richest person in the world. One man gets the girl, and the other does not. The verdict of appearances is obvious: we are not all one. Our name is Legion.

This is why, in order to understand the statement that we are one and to see if it makes any sense whatsoever, we have to go past the evidence of the senses and the world we see. To do this, we need to look into ourselves and see what we are made of -- not in terms of proteins and chemicals, but of how we experience ourselves.....

If you look into your own experience, you will soon see that it comes in two basic forms, one might almost say "flavors". There is the world of physical experience, of the outer world of the five senses, which is to a great degree public; we can discuss it and compare it with others. There is also the world of inner experience: thoughts, images, feelings, associations, dreams. This is more or less private (the dream I had last night is practically certain to be different from everyone else's). These two worlds have been given various names in different esoteric traditions. The Kabbalah calls the first world Assiyah, or "doing": the world of physical manifestation. The second is Yetzirah, or "formation": the world of images, forms, concepts. Esoteric Christianity refers to these as the body (or the "flesh") and the "soul" or "psyche", respectively. (The word in the Greek New Testament translated as "soul" is psyche).

There, it would seem, we have the totality of experience: body and soul, inner and outer worlds. In fact, modern Christianity speaks of human beings as made up of body and soul. Ancient Christianity, however, said that we are composed of three entities: body, soul and spirit. "I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (I Thessalonians 5:23). Soul and spirit are two different things: "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit" (Hebrews 4:12). What's the difference between the two? If you consult even the most learned authorities in contemporary theology, you'll probably conclude that they don't know. This is a crucial distinction that has been lost in Christianity, and Christianity has never been right since.

To go back to our own experience, we can see that although experience can be comparatively easily divided between inner and outer, between soul and body, what is left out is that which experiences. If there is an "I" that can witness even its own most private thoughts and desires from a remove, this "I" must be distinct from them. This is a very subtle but very profound point. It's not terribly difficult to grasp (although it will probably be easiest for those with a certain amount of meditative experience), but it is often forgotten. This witness is always that which sees, so of course it can never be seen. "What you are looking for is what is looking", said Francis of Assisi. The Hindu Upanishads say, "You could not see the seer of seeing. You could not hear the hearer of hearing. You could not think the thinker of thinking. You could not understand the understander of understanding". Hindu philosophy identifies this witness with the Atman, usually translated as "Self". As I said in Chapter Four, the Gospels refer to it as "the spirit", "the kingdom of heaven", the "kingdom of God", and "I am". Some esoteric Christian texts, especially those of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, call it the nous or "consciousness". If one grasps this point, suddenly an extraordinary amount of what was baffling and cryptic in mystical literature of all types becomes remarkably clear.

This consciousness is not limited to humans or even to living beings but subsists in everything, no matter how apparently inanimate. Thomas Edison once said, "I do not believe that matter is inert, acted upon by an outside force. To me it seems that every atom is possessed by a certain amount of primitive intelligence. Look at the thousands of ways in which atoms of hydrogen combine with those of other elements, forming the most diverse substances. Do you mean to say that they do this without intelligence?" Sir William Crookes, a renowned British physicist of the late nineteenth century, said, "Every atom has sensation and power of movement". This does not mean that a hydrogen atom has a conscious ego like ours or even of the sort that we observe in the most primitive life forms. But under certain circumstances, the atom "knows" how to recognize an oxygen atom and "knows" how to react with it to produce certain chemical combinations such as water. From our perspective, this is mind at a very rudimentary level, but it is mind nonetheless.

We can take the matter a step further and say that this universal, all-pervasive mind is God in his immanent aspect: "For in him we live, and move, and have our being", as Paul told the philosophically sophisticated Athenians (Acts 17:28). Esoterically, this immanent aspect of God is called the "Son". The Jews of the first century A.D., influenced by Hellenistic philosophy, called it the Logos, usually translated as "Word" but meaning something more like "reason" or even "mind" -- particularly mind in its structuring and organizing aspect. Because it's also known as "I am", Christ, speaking in the person of this Logos, can say in the Gospel of Thomas, "Split the wood and I am there": what in us says "I am" is also present in everything. Christ, again speaking in the person of the Logos, also says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6). This "I am" is the gateway to universal consciousness and beyond it to the experience of the transcendental Father who is the ground of all being. Such an interpretation transforms this verse from a narrow sectarian claim into a profound insight into metaphysical reality. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, "If you have heard [and understood] not me but the Logos, it is wise to agree that all things are one".

Heraclitus also said, "The Logos is common to all, but most people live as if they had minds of their own". Although the Logos, mind, subsists in all things, in day-to-day experience the "I" can be, and usually is, fixed in a stance of opposition against the rest of the world. It is frozen in egotism and isolation. Vladimir Solovyov observes:

      "This abnormal attitude toward everything else -- this exclusive self-assertion, or egoism,
        all-powerful in our practical life even though we deny it in theory, this opposition of the
        self to all other selves -- constitutes the radical evil of our nature. It is characteristic of
        everything that lives, since every natural entity, every beast, insect, and blade of grass,
        separates itself in its own peculiar being from everything else and strives to be every-
        thing  for itself, swallowing up or repelling what is other (whence arises external,
        material being). Therefore, evil is a property common to all of nature."

As Solovyov stresses, "radical evil" is not limited to humans. It is a universal force, which far outstrips the petty sins of a single species on earth. This is why Paul can say that "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain until now" (Romans 8:22). We do not, probably cannot, know how this drama plays out in the lives of different species, on this planet and possibly on others, or in the dynamics of the universe itself. The twentieth-century French alchemist Henri Coton-Alvart daringly suggests that matter itself is constituted of the resistance of this radical evil to the light of God: "The regions whose extent is of the order of magnitude that we attribute to the atom or the neutron, or even smaller, are.... places void of light, in which nothingness, the spirit of negation, exclusively prevails".

In any event, what Solovyov calls "this abnormal attitude toward everything else" is not something that arose once in a primordial past. It occurs on a moment-to-moment basis. In humans it is largely perpetuated by the mind's own identification with its contents. There is a world of difference between having a thought and remembering that you and the thought are not the same thing. Most of what passes for waking life is in fact a kind of sleep, a half-conscious identification with the thoughts and emotions, which inevitably imply a "me" and "mine" set off in opposition to the rest of the world. (The emotions in particular are, in the esoteric Christian tradition, usually called "passions", a significant choice of words in that it emphasizes the passivity of consciousness in regards to its own contents.) As many spiritual teachers have emphasized, it is necessary to detach the consciousness, the true "I", from its contents in order for liberation to occur. This is arguably what the text from Hebrews means when it speaks of the "cleaving asunder of soul and spirit". It does not refer to death but to liberation of the consciousness ("spirit") from enslavement to its own experience ("soul" or psyche). This is why practically all esoteric traditions put such emphasis on meditation, which is the day-to-day process that makes liberation possible.

As the fixity of ordinary identification begins to dissolve, the psyche is increasingly experienced as a kind of flowing -- the "stream of consciousness" made famous by twentieth-century literature. The "I" becomes able to watch its own experience as a film unfolding before it. But then questions arise: If all of what passes for "my" experience is in itself a sort of other -- a film that I can watch from a distance -- who or what is this mind that is doing the looking? And where is the dividing line between my mind and someone else's?

That is precisely the crux of the matter. As the mind begins to dissolve its attachments to its "own" experience, it begins to regard itself not as an isolated thing but as part of a larger mind. There is no real border between this "I" and the collective "I" in which we all participate. This is sometimes known as "the I that is we".

Such, of course, is not our day-to-day experience, which is all too easily cut up into conceptual categories. Esoteric Christianity depicts the broken shards of the androgynous primordial human, huddled in coats of flesh, in the figure of Adam. The Self or true "I", the part of the mind that is capable of transcending this isolation and restoring Adam to his pristine unity, is known as Christ. "For in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive" (I Corinthians 15:22). This theme goes back to the earliest days of Christianity, for example, in the epistles of Paul: "So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another" (Romans 12:5). "There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all..... For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all members of that body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ..... Now are they many members, yet but one body" (I Corinthians 12:6, 12, 20).

Christ in this sense does not refer to the historical Jesus, but to the Great Work of the restoration of this cosmic unity, in which each of us has a part, whether we know it or not. To quote Solovyov again:

      "This body of Christ, which made its embryonic appearance in the form of a tiny 
        community of the first Christians, is growing and developing little by little. 
        At the end of time it will encompass all humankind and all nature in one 
        universal divine-human organism, because the rest of nature is, in the words of 
        the Apostle, awaiting with hope "the manifestation of the sons of God."


Whatever connection we may make between this body of Christ and the historical Jesus, it is clear that the two cannot be equated in any simplistic sense. And while "the tiny community of the first Christians" may also have played a crucial role, it is hardly likely that they initiated the process, which in all likelihood has been going on since the beginning of time itself.

The theme is in fact older than Christianity. We have already looked at the Zoroastrian myth of Gayomart. The Hindu Rig Veda (dated from 1200 to 900 B.C. or sometimes earlier) describes the generation of the universe in very similar terms. The universe comes about through the sacrifice and dismemberment of Purusha, which is portrayed in the Vedas as Man, the cosmic human, but which -- even more profoundly -- means consciousness, "the seer of the seeing", or as defined by the scholar of Indian religion Heinrich Zimmer, "the living entity behind and within all the metamorphoses of our life in bondage". The Vedic hymn says:

      "The Man has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet. He pervaded the
        earth on all sides and extended beyond it as far as ten fingers.
             
             It is the Man who is all this, whatever has been and whatever is to be. He is the
        ruler of immortality.
             
            Such is his greatness, and the Man is yet more than that. All creatures are a
        quarter of him; three quarters of him are what is immortal in heaven."

What is most radically the Self, the "I", Purusha, is nothing other than this transcendent principle known as the Christ, an idea we also find in Paul: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Galatians 2:20). Indeed, Paul's entire theology is incomprehensible without reference to this truth. Without it, one might, for example, find oneself trapped in the endless controversy about whether one is saved by faith or by works. For Paul, it is neither faith nor works that saves us but union with this cosmic Christ by realizing that the "I" that lives is the Christ that "liveth in me". What it saves us from is not the banal hell of popular imagination but the true hell of isolation from the common Life that pulses throughout the universe. In this light, we can see how Christianity may be rescued from the specious theological debates that have reduced it to a faith of scribes and Pharisees.


     


From ~ Conscious Love: Insights from Mystical Christianity, pgs. 134-45
By ~ Richard Smoley

























                                                                                                        

Love's Universe

 

The Universe is an Expression of Love 
 
Many believe that this is an impersonal material universe, a universe that is more darkness than light, more cold than warmth, more vacuum than substance. Furthermore, many people feel that the random, isolated consciousness at the heart of each human life is endangered by vast forces that do not recognize its fragile existence.

For those with spiritual vision, however, we are living within an infinite heart. This whole universe is a manifestation of cosmic love. This whole universe was created from just a spark of love. In the Sufi tradition these words are attributed to the Creator, the Source of our being:

    "I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known,
     so I created both worlds, the visible and the invisible,
     in order that My hidden treasure
     of generosity and lovingkindness would be known."

    ~ Hadith Qudsi ~

This universe is an expression of love. We live in an ocean of Love, but because it is so near to us, we sometimes need to be shocked or hurt, or experience some loss, in order to be aware of the nearness and importance of love. A little fish was told that without water it could not live, and it became very afraid. It swam to its mother and, trembling, told her about the need for water. The mother said, "Water, my darling, is what we're swimming in."

I have known people to go through exactly this experience through their contact with the Way of Love. One person expressed it to me this way: "I used to believe that compassion was something within myself and other human beings, but I was not convinced that this compassion existed outside of ourselves. Our work together has made it clear that compassion is outside of ourselves and that is why we also find it within. We are living in it!"


Every being and thing is set in motion by Love 

The Planets revolve around the sun, and the sun radiates its energy to the planets. Atoms are held in a delicate but immensely powerful balance by love. Every species has its own form of love or desire that motivates it. Every human being has its own unique form of love through which it approaches life. Everything is seeking union with the object of its desire. And all of these desires are the derivatives of one Love.

Perhaps this morning you wanted some Ceylon tea and fresh bread. Later you had a hunger for some soup and salad. In the evening you had stir-fried vegetables over rice, with blueberries and cream for desert. The motivation behind all of these was the hunger of the body. In the same way, Love is the motivation behind every yearning.

We believe that we love this or that, but the fundamental Love is the pure experience of Being. This Being, this isness, is the fundamental energy and substance of the universe. When we are in a state of presence, fully awake and alive, we are open to this isness, to Being, and since the essence of this Being is the Love that created existence, our experience of Being is Love.

In all of life Love is seeking to discover itself. We come into this world, and we experience a profound forgetfulness; we are asleep. Everything that happens from then on is the process of waking up to the fact that Love brought us here, that we are loved by a Beneficent Unseen Reality, and that the core of our being is Love. The whole purpose and meaning of creation is to discover the secret of Love.

The experience of love is the most fulfilling and important experience we can have, the highest of all values. We can't compare love to anything. It is its own meaning and criteria. Since everything is explained by something subtler than what is being explained, nothing can explain love because love itself is the subtlest of all things we can experience.

Love is seeking us. Love brought us here, whether we know it or not. Love nudges us to make plans, to seek relationship, to create the possibility of a meeting of hearts. It puts the pen to paper; it puts a word on the tongue. Love is not the goal of anything; it is the cause of everything.

    "See how the hand is invisible while the pen is writing;
      the horse careening, yet the rider is unseen;
      the arrow flying, but the bow out of sight;
      individual souls existing,
      while the Soul of souls is hidden."

    ~ Rumi, M, 1303-1304 ~


The Sufis know that Love is the most active, the most powerful force in the universe. Love is always acting on us. We think we are the creators and directors of our lives, but our actions may be just the slightest visible signs of a process that is vast and invisible. We know only a fragment of what can be seen; of the unseen we know very little. Like children we are unconscious of all the forces and factors that sustain us, care for us, and guide our life and our world.

The spiritual life requires a reversal of our usual egoistic thinking and wanting. We believe that we are seeking, but what if it is Love itself that is the seeker? Rumi says:

    "Abundance is seeking the beggars and the poor,
      just as beauty seeks a mirror.....
     Beggars, then, are the mirrors of God's abundance,
     and they who are with God
     are united with absolute abundance."

    ~ Rumi, M, I, 2745, 2750 ~

The idea that we live in Love's Universe may seem a sentimental and naive proposition to some people. Why then do we live in a world of such injustices and horrors?

Life brings us very real suffering, and this suffering can be the cause of some doubt about the beneficence of life. Often, when we are in the midst of our suffering, we cannot see a purpose in it. We may lose our trust in the meaning of life. The soul faces a critical choice at this point: whether to be embittered by reality or allow the pain of life to reorient us to a deeper truth, to help us form a connection to a reality beyond space, time, and even beyond our individual selves.

The idea that we live in a universe created by love is anything but sentimental and naive, because it does not deny the pain of life but embraces this complex reality with all its contradictions. We see that we are turned from one feeling to another and taught by means of opposites and contrasts.

    "He alone has the right to break,
      for he alone has the power to mend.
     He that knows how to sew together
     knows how to tear apart:
     whatever He sells,
     He buys something better in exchange.
     He lays the house in ruins;
     then in a moment He makes it more livable than before."

    ~ Rumi, M, I, 3882 ~

Sometimes we need to be shocked out of our complacency and indifference in order to know the reality of love. We need to find a way to restore the proper perspective. We need to be reminded of the centrality of love.

Without becoming passive, we can stop resisting and submit to Love. We begin to see the infinite power of love as the greatest cause in the universe, and little by little we begin to serve it. Eventually, we begin to see that even a bitter drink is sweet when it is from the Beloved.

Knowing that Love is the master of the universe helps us to accept and learn from every experience. Knowing that there is an eternal dimension residing here in intimate association with material existence will begin to free us from fears. When we are less governed by negative thoughts about God's creation, we will be freed from many fears.


The human being is God's beloved 

The human being is the macrocosm, not just the microcosm, of the universe. While in outward form a human being is the microcosm, a miniature universe, in truth, according to the masters and prophets, humanity is the macrocosm, the cause of the existing universe.

This subject is being debated today in cosmological physics. It appears to those who have done the necessary calculations on the formation of the universe that if you were to change any one of the physical laws one iota, there would not be a universe that could support the human being -- nor would there be a universe at all. It appears to those who have looked carefully that the universe was virtually designed to create the human being.

Maybe this is what Mevlana Rumi means when he says the fruit is the cause of the tree, not the other way around. In the simplest terms, the gardener planted the tree in order for it to bear fruit. How many fruits are on a tree? How many trees are within the fruit?

God says: "I created the whole universe for you and you for Myself" (Hadith Qudsi).

Every human being is the creation of love and a beloved child of the universe. And every human is free to turn his or her back on love.

     "Water says to the dirty, "Come here."
      The dirty one says, "But I am so ashamed."
      Water says, "How will you be made clean without me?"

     ~ Rumi, M, I, 1366-67 ~

The more we live in our individual sense of isolation, loneliness, alienation, in our envy, resentment, pride, and shame, the more we allow this love to be obscured.

If we attempt to go this way alone, we will find only our own ego. God loves us to be together. God is us-with-us and doesn't like loneliness. Trying to attain truth through books alone is like trying to fall in love with a picture. We cannot at first fall in love with something we don't see. But if we meet the divine love in others who have melted in that love, if we stay close to those who have understood this love, then we begin to sense the Love behind all the forms of love. We enter spiritual work and spiritual community so that love might be more revealed and known, less obscure.

Something has brought us together, established the relationships of our lives, and there is a reason for this and a reason behind the reason. Among other things it is our purpose to discover the reason and explore what connects us. An infinite Intelligence has arranged our situation, and that infinite Intelligence is certainly not you or I, although it operates through you and me. We are here to be in communication with one another and to explore the mystery of Love. It is Love that has arranged all this. It is Love that brought us here. We are here to open a space that Love can enter and be more known, more apparent, more understood. if we can keep this intention in mind -- opening a space for Love -- it will help us stay aligned with its power.




From ~ The Knowing Heart: A Sufi Path of Transformation, pgs.40-45
By ~ Kabir Helminski


To read the whole chapter, go here: http://sufism.org/articles/loves-universe-by-kabir-helminski-2











  

Gamble Everything for Love

 

                                              Gamble everything for Love,
                                              if you're a true human being.
                                              If not, leave this gathering.

  Half-heartedness doesn't reach into majesty. You set out to find God, but then you keep
                          stopping for long periods at mean-spirited roadhouses.

   Don't wait any longer. Dive into the ocean, leave and let the sea be you. Silent, absent,
                                          walking an empty road, all praise.




                                              ~ Mevlana Jalaludin Rumi ~