| Re: True Theory of Everything
The Great White Bird.......cont.d
A certain Sage..., speaking of unfolded Consciousness above the level of the highest human Adepts, said: "We attain glimpses of Consciousness so Transcendent, rising level upon level, that the senses fairly reel before the awe-inspiring Grandeur."
Here, certainly, is space for evolution far beyond the highest possibility of man as man.
Beyond [the sage's attainment], whatever it may be, there lie further mysteries awaiting his resolution. In other words, We find no conceivable end to evolution.
I cannot too strongly emphasize the fact that Liberation is no more the end of life than is a college commencement the end of the young man or woman who graduates. It is simply the end of one stage and the beginning of another. The really worth-while Life begins after Liberation. When this new Freedom is attained, a Man may return Home, as it were, and spend a long period enjoying the warmth and comfort of that Home. On the other hand, He may return and continue with his chosen profession on a larger field. Some, who have been highly exhausted by their labors at college, may need a long rest, but obviously Those who are strong should occupy Themselves with the Activities of Real Life.
Enlightenment – The price exacted on the personal man
No doubt a price is exacted from the personal man. An extraordinary demand is made upon the nervous organism and so a counter activity is helpful, perhaps necessary. But, even as the personal man is much more than the physical body, the price goes deeper than the body. There is here a kind of dying, proceeding in the midst of continued bodily existence. Doubtless it is but natural that the personal nature should dread all this and, in a measure, grieve. For here we have the real meaning of the crucifixion. The personal life is centred upon the world-field; though it is a doomed life in any case, since, inevitably, Death reaps all here. Still, the personality never quite believes this and strives in its feebleness to will its continuance in the outer world, until in ripe old age it craves rest, even though at the price of extinction.
Enlightenment – Burned up in the Fire and released
A Fire descends and consumes the personal man. For a time, short or long, this Fire continues. The personal man is the fuel, and the fuel, in greater or less measure, does suffer. But fire does not destroy; it simply transforms. This fact can be realized by an analysis of what takes place through the action of ordinary fire. If a log is burning, the fuel is principally, if not wholly, in the form of carbohydrates, and the fire transforms these into carbon dioxide and water vapor. There remains a small amount of ashes, the persistently earthy portion of the log. The carbohydrate in the log was a fixed form, partaking for a long time, of the earthy solidity of the mineral associates in the log. But as the carbohydrates become carbon dioxide and water vapor, they take on new form in the freer world of the air. So too, does the Fire which descends and consumes the personal man but Transform him. Only the ash of the personal nature is left behind, while the rest, the best of the personality, is taken up to be conscious, in airy spaces. The ultimate state is one of a far, far greater Joy.
It is possible for the man passing through the ordeal so to shift his center of self-identity that the pain, instead of being strong, becomes but a shadowy undertone of a Melody that is Joy. He who identifies himself with the fuel predominantly suffers much and keenly, but if, on the other hand, he unites himself with the Fire, all is changed. The Flame of the Fire is a dance of Joy. There is no pain on this level of Consciousness. The transforming man does not then wait until after the Burning to Know the Joy, but feels It through and through while in the midst of the ordeal, which now has almost completed ceased to be an ordeal at all.
Enlightenment – Recognitions can be different
I say ‘Recognition’ rather than ‘experience’ for a very definite reason. Properly it was not a case of experiential knowledge, which is knowledge from the senses whether gross or subtle, nor knowledge from deduction, though both forms, particularly the latter, have helped in a subsidiary sense. It was an Awakening to a Knowledge which I can best represent by calling it ‘Knowledge through Identity’ and thus the profess – in so far as we can speak of process in this connection at all – is best expressed by the word ‘Recognition.’
Not all Recognition carries in Its train the profound and, sometimes, intense Joy. There are Recognitions in which the element of Joy is not conspicuous and, though present, may be too hidden to be revealed to the gaze of the observer, unless the latter is unusually acute in his perceptions.
Namaste`  |
Brilliance.
Linear Mode
