Man's Fate and God's Choice by Bhimeswara Challa (ereader for textbooks TXT) đ
- Author: Bhimeswara Challa
Book online «Man's Fate and God's Choice by Bhimeswara Challa (ereader for textbooks TXT) đ». Author Bhimeswara Challa
Having attained him, one fears no more. He, verily, is the immortal Self.â601 Sometimes it is referred to as âthe lotus of the heartâ. Sri Chinmoy said that inside the ordinary human heart is
599 Rabindranath Tagore. Poetry. Acropolis. Accessed at: http://www.acropolis.org.au/poetry/Tagore.htm
600 Howard Martin. The Heart Math Method. Achievement Library. Accessed at: http://www.achievementlibrary.com/heartmath.htm
601 Cited in: Swami Nirmalananda Giri. The Dweller in the Heart. Katha Upanishad. Spiritual Writings. Atma Jyoti Ashram. Accessed at: http://www.atmajyoti.org/up_Katha_Upanishad_23.asp
the divine heart, and inside the divine heart is the soul. In his recent book The Death of Religion and the Rebirth of Spirit (2007), Pearce pleads that humanity must rise above its lower, instinctual âbrainâ to allow âour newest brainâ â the âfourth brainâ â to blossom, which, he says, will bring about a higher stage in evolution that prizes love and altruism. Our culture and civilization have been the creations of the âthird brainâ, and in turn they have heavily conditioned our consciousness. They have fashioned a living context in which our image is more important than our ideas, our decisions are governed by desires, and our desires have no bearing on our stated, conscious goals of life. According to Pearce, the biggest impediments to this new order are religion and science, which together promote violence and arrogance. However troubling that thought might be, the fact is that what man is now is the product of organized religion and orthodox science, and unless their grip is loosened, humanity will continue to drift towards the abyss. Every religion must undergo a process of âwinnowingâ and âweeding outâ and renounce its delusions of monopoly on divinity and Truth. We must, as Advaita and the doctrine of Perennial Philosophy exhort, recognize that the world of matter and individualistic consciousness are rooted in what Huxley called âDivine Groundâ, and that to realize it we need âunitive knowledgeâ and for that, again, we need to be pure in heart and pure in spirit. While God is Absolute, truth is not; and if truth indeed is Absolute, the fabric of our intelligence is not tailored to fit it. Pearl Buck wrote that truth is as people find it, and kaleidoscopic in its variety. But it is the power of the mind to make us think â and believe â that what we think is the truth, that it is the only truth. And the mind leads us to believe, inferentially, that the other side of the question is false; and that leads to intolerance. Science, in the words of Owen Barfield, needs âredemptionâ and redirection. What we lack is not knowledge, spiritual or scientific; it is proper and integral application that is missing. Such a paradigm must enable us to harness our innate capacity for direct knowledge, for immediate insight, without observation or deductive reason, and without abandoning our unique ability to assemble, analyze, and decide; in short, make man worthy of the famous Hamlet dictum of Shakespeare: âin action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!â602 Can science help? Researchers are saying that there could be a âGod-centerâ in the brain, by stimulating which, with repeated practice, one could attain a state of serenity, bliss, and ecstasy. What spiritualists call ârealizationâ could then be a neurochemical phenomenon and be âimaged and anatomically localizedâ. Happiness, the âscientific speculationâ continues, would then be independent of a cause, and could be triggered at will. So could be perhaps, the sense of the Advaitic oneness, the loosening of the grip of the âI-consciousnessesâ.
Spirituality could then be codified and monitored and managed.
When our mind is attuned to our emotions, it is enriched and made more constructive; and when our emotions are illuminated by our mind, they become more practicable. With the heart and the mind working in harmony, we will cease to be a species feared both by man and beast. God willing, many conflicts that bedevil our lives will become more manageable â from suffocating self-righteousness, to our hopeless inability even to ever imagine that we could be wrong on any issue, to narrow nationalism, which Einstein called the measles of mankind, and rampant consumerism, which is the root cause of environmental degradation, to virulent religiosity whose twin brother is neo-secularism. Only then will the power of man cease to be the peril of the planet, and human presence be a positive proximity. We will then be able to resume our march on the evolutionary path and move on to what Elaine Matthews
602 Absolute Shakespeare. Shakespeare Quotes. Accessed at: http://www.absoluteshakespeare.com/trivia/quotes/quotes.htm
called the âhigher dimension of awareness.â603 We might then even be able to understand, if not realize the Upanishadic exhortation to see ourselves as eternal beings presently dreaming the dream of evolution, a dream whose culmination is a different level of âawarenessâ or âawakefulnessâ, towards which all of our attention and energy should be focused.
603 Elaine Matthews. The Heartbeat of Intelligence. 2002. Writerâs Showcase. New York. USA. p.87.
Chapter 8
Models and Metaphors for Human Transformation
Lessons from the living world
The terms âawarenessâ and âwakefulnessâ often occur in spiritual and religious writings. In such contexts, the ideas they embrace are far more profound, inclusive, and elevating than we normally associate them with: awareness implies watchfulness, and wakefulness brings to mind a state of alertness. We are âaliveâ in different dimensions and âasleepâ in different degrees. One could be âawareâ without being âawakeâ and âawakeâ without being âawareâ. In spiritual parlance, these notions refer to our state of âseparatenessâ, that is, the way we view ourselves in relation to other humans, non-humans, and to Nature and God. While in our mundane world we are more âawareâ and âawakeâ if we are more absorbed with our body and personal lives, it is the opposite in the spiritual sense: the more detached we are, the more âawareâ and âawakeâ we become. It is a way to destroy the distance between two living beings, which, in turn, will destroy the distance between man and God. In different languages the meaning and import of the word âawareâ varies. For example, in Japanese the phrase âmono no awareâ is a comprehensive concept that embraces within its ambit attributes we cherish in life: beauty, harmony, sensitivity, empathy, and simplicity. When the Buddha was asked who he was, he replied that he was neither a god nor an angel, and then enigmatically added âI am awakeâ. Different scholars and pundits might interpret these three words differently, but they all agree that in âbecomingâ a Buddha, Prince Gautama attained a higher, perhaps the ultimate, plateau of consciousness any living being can. The transition from Prince Siddhartha to Gautama Buddha, what H.P. Blavatsky (The Secret Doctrine) called âthe mystery of Buddhaâ, was transformation at the highest and deepest levels through consciousness-change. In Buddhism, âtransformationâ itself means awakening a deep awareness of our oneness with all others, even with the world of Nature. Such an awareness will allow caring, compassion, and love to replace indifference, intolerance and hatred as our primary reflexes. The path it prescribes is the path of consciousness change. That ought to be the aim, the goal and direction of transformation we should strive and seek.
Dissatisfied as we are with what we are, and subject as we are to a multitude of constraints, enticements, and temptations, we want to be, all at once and in one leap, a âsaintly supermanâ, to enjoy all good things of life and still be âgoodâ, to experiment with every conceivable or, if we could, even inconceivable experience and still be sinless, to be invulnerable to disease and death but be vulnerable enough to emotions like love. And then, if we must die, we want nothing else but to go to Heaven with our body intact. In Blavatskyâs words, used in a different context, it is like âtrying to bottle up the primordial Chaos, to put a printed label on Eternityâ. At a more mundane level, we have tried everything, scripturally and scientifically, intellectually and intuitively, and even summoned gods and gurus, to be simply âhealthy and happyâ, but to no avail. If anything, we are falling behind; things are worse than ever before, at least in the minds of millions. That is largely because that âhealthâ and âhappinessâ, like much of everything else in life, is comparative and competitive. But the quest continues. Some see hope in science, some in the innate nature of man; some expect an avatar to save us; some think that the best service we can do to the world of Nature is to quietly dissolve into the sunset. We always feel the need for something tangible; something
we can relate to. Where do we look for light and lucidity, metaphors and models? The answer lies in the living world of Nature. An avatar does not have to be a man â or a god. In fact, most of the avatars in Hinduism were neither. Maybe, having completed a full circle, from a fish to a perfect man to a poorna avatar (complete incarnation), the cycle is going to begin again. Not necessarily as God manifesting as a creepy creature or a winged bird, but with man being given the knowledge and wisdom to know what he needs to know to transform himself. But we must realize one basic fact in Nature: we cannot become what we already are not; transformation is to bring out what is implicit, hidden, and camouflaged. A species cannot become another species; and every species is at the same time empowered and conditioned depending on its assigned place on earth. And yet everything is always in a condition of continuous transformation.
Even a stone, for that matter. The nineteenth century Natural Theology tradition of seeking sermons in stones symbolizes the essence of manâs tendency to find the meaning of existence, his place in the universe, and his responsibility as an individual. Nature bristles with change, transformation, and metamorphosis. Growth, inherent in Nature, is a mysterious process independent of human will. The growth of a seed into a tree is transformation. Jesus used the parable of a mustard seed transforming into a tree with âgreat branchesâ to explain the growth of the Kingdom of God on Earth. And through our lives, we are using what environmental historian Paul Josephson (Industrialized Nature, 2002) called brute-force technologies, which transform or rather traumatize the biosphere, the living world, and the earth, and which turn forests into âcellulose factoriesâ, oceans into giant fish ponds, and prairies into bio-industrial landscape. When it comes to such exploitative transformation, all nations, all âismsâ, all ideologies are united; the quarrel is over the question of how to share the spoils. Human creativity has transformed the biosphere through several ways such as the invention of fire, language, agriculture, culture, civilization, and
Comments (0)