Man is apparently, the only being who in all beings of nature has attained individual consciousness, who can point to himself and say the word “I”, which feels different from the Cosmic Whole. Nature's other beings - mineral, vegetable, non-humans - only vaguely feel this difference; apparently, they are not “I”, they are not clearly aware of this difference. But in this sense, it should be remembered that what man knows is only a drop in the vast ocean of his ignorance.
This sense that “I am distinct”, that “I am not the Cosmos”, this awareness of being unique, is man's privilege but one-day science and religion may identify another earthly being with the same consciousness. It is likely also that in other regions of the Universe there may be beings even more aware of their difference before the Universal Whole, but here on Earth, no another being is known yet to possess this awareness of his “non-identity” with the Cosmic Whole. Other beings may even be “aware”, but man has the consciousness that he is something other than the Cosmos. But some men are against this conscience.
The first stage of this self-conscious being, as different, as a being not identical with the Whole produce a sense of separation. Instead of the simple notion, “I am different” from the Whole, man, in the first stage of his consciousness, feel separated, and often this difference turns out to be hostility, which is deeply psychological. To reinforce this awareness of being different, the man struggles with all his power not to return to the bosom of the Universal Sea and to remain on the surface as an individual wave. He strives to affirm and intensify his incipient conscious individuality, which is the greatest treasure he has won through millions of years of slow and progressive evolution.
And man vehemently defends his great achievement of being different, of being individual.
This vigilant defence of his alleged and uncertain individuality as an autonomous personality proclaims his individual Self as a personal ego proclaims the Undivided and the Indivisible of the Individual as divisible, as a persona. And this proclamation of the divisible personality is a great illusion, born of a unilateral and incomplete view of Reality, for there, can be no separate finite from the Infinite - just as there is no separate wave from the sea.
In other words, man-ego goes to the opposite of his former state, pre-conscious identity with the Cosmos, and develops in him a sense of being different, non-cosmic and even anti-cosmic; makes of his non-cosmic difference an anti-cosmic hostility, and dissatisfied with his difference “I”, his individuality, proclaims his ego hostility, his persona, his mask. For being not yet aware of his individuality undivided, man lives the false intoxication of a separate personality.
But evil is not that the man goes through an evolution, evil is that he stops midway through his ascensional journey, when the man-ego is born, of the man-persona, of the man-sinner, whom Moses symbolized by the “snake”.
Man-ego is Lucifer, the one who carries the light, but not yet the “light of the world”, but it is the first morning lights, the dawn, and from this semi-Lucifer man may one day arise the plenitude of the Christlike man - supposed that man discovers in his dynamic intellectualism, his rational potentiality.
It is this dawn of the ego-conscious in man that is “original sin,” the illusion about his human origin. As long as the man-ego does not reach the man-Self, he remains in “original sin”; only the Christlike light of the “individual Self” in all its fullness can redeem him from the Luciferlike shadow of the “persona ego”.
All the major philosophies and religions, especially the Gospel and the Bhagavad Gita, refer to this evolutionary process of the man-ego towards the man-Self, of the “Adamic man” and the “Christlike man”. The awareness of the hostility that separates must culminate in awareness of the difference which unites. When a man succeeds in living the cosmic reality: “I and the Father are one” ... then he will be redeemed from his “original sin”, that is, he has abandoned his Luciferlike ego and adopted his Christlike Self.
The man-ego lives in the illusion that his personal ego is the source of his works; he sees the visible channel of his ego but does not see the Source of the Self, and so his myopia leads him to consider the channels of his ego as the Source of his Self.
Later, when visualizing the Source, the man begins his ascensional evolution, realizes that there is a single-origin, through which all the waters of the Source flows through the channels of creatures, and becomes aware that all finite comes from the Infinite.
At first, he has the impression that the Source, the Infinite, is beyond the finite channels, and begins to “believe” in a distant and transcendent Source. But gradually discovers that this distant Source was created by his own imperfection and visual weakness. In the end, man makes the stupendous discovery that the Infinite is not in a distant place but within all finite - just as the substance of the sea is in each of its waves.
Man discovers that the Infinite is permanently present in all finite as the invisible essence of all visible existences.
From then on, man, in gradual ascensional evolution knows that although the Infinite Father is in him and works in him, man, as a channel of this Source, is responsible for his free acts. If the human channel were just a passive and unconscious automaton - as in the mineral, vegetable, and perhaps the non-human world - the channel would not be responsible for the content received from the Source, because it would obey the law of mechanical causality, but the channel of the free man is responsible for the character he imparts to the waters he conveys since the dynamic causality of free will makes him the author responsible for his free acts.
If, on the one hand, the man knows that the works he does are works of the Source, on the other hand, he is aware of his human responsibility. His clear awareness of the purity of the living waters received from the Infinite Source generates in him the desire to keep human channels highly pure, and the smallest atom of impurity causes him to suffer painfully.
The more conscious man becomes of the purity of the Divine Source, the more conscious he becomes of the impurity of his human channels.
The great seers of mankind, while still pilgrims of spiritual ascension - always think of themselves as great sinners; for in a brightly lit room the air thought pure in a less luminous environment is full of impurities, however small.
Man, on an advanced ascensional journey into the light suffers the most from his insufficiencies as he gets closer to the Source of Light, and the shadows he casts grow larger and thicker. It seems that only Jesus, who had made his channels as pure as the waters of the Source could say, “Who of you can accuse me of any sin?”
Man's entire task is to realize the truth that his finite channel receives everything from the Infinite Source and strives to make his human channels as pure as the Divine Source.
Since the human ego is itself impure (selfish), the acts emanating from it cannot but be impure, contaminating the pure waters of the Source. Hence the tendency of many mystics, especially from the East, to want to give up any activity and fall into total passivity so as not to increase their impure acts.
However, the most enlightened comprehend that the painful problem of man's existential tragicity is not inactivity - as it is not in activity, but in another kind of activity - in activity not inspired by the sinful ego, but by the Redeemer Self. Not to act for the sake of the objective, external fruits or results, but only to fulfil the will of the one who sent him - this redeems all activities from the curse of selfishness, ensuring the purity of the Source of the divine Self, the “Father in us”.
My Self is undivided, not separate from the Divine Source, and the works that this Self does in the name of the Source are works of the Source, though conveyed through human channels, pure uncontaminated waters of the ego, pure as the Christlike, redeeming Self.
This is the total and ultimate liberation of a man here and now by the proclamation of true happiness on the face of the Earth.
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