Theos-Talk Archives (November 1998 Message tt00376)

Augoeides:

[writing to Dallas]

>This is a better scenario than the "dew drop slips into the shining
>sea" stuff , i.e., the Monad emerges from a sort of cosmic soup and
>then struggles though the lower kingdoms finally to emerge as
>individualized self-consciousness.  Finally after, aeons of more
>struggle and self-effort the Monad becomes liberated from the
>lower worlds only to slip back into the cosmic soup again !

There are some subtle points here, and I'll try to address
a few of them. It's another challenge to write about things
that almost cannot be written about; a fun challenge at times,
but risky too -- it's so easy to be misunderstood or to not
find the right words!

Speaking of "the dewdrop slipping back into the shining sea,"
we have an incomplete picture of that happens.

As Monads, we are sparks of the grand flame of divinity,
transcendent, perfect, unchanging, beyond the space/time of
any scheme of existence. Were it not so, we couldn't exist
right now, nor at any moment of time nor in any position
in space. In our inmost, we are rooted in the Essential
Nature, the Unknowable, the Grand Source.

There are stages of unfoldment, as we send forth a ray of
our awareness into a world-scheme, a system of existence.
Regardless of stage, though, regardless of our participating
in a scheme of existence, yet we *are*, even though we
*are not*. That is, there's a form of archetypal, trancsendent
being, outside of time, in which our essential nature resides,
unstained by temporal events. There is that *something* to
us, even though it *does not exist*, e.g. it's not something
that manifests on the area of life. It's not ourselves on
higher planes, it's beyond the concept of existing here or
there or anywhere. It cannot go away or be taken from us,
since it doesn't exist, it *is not*, yet it does exist, in
the same sense that 2 + 2 = 4 exists in pure mathematics,
apart from temporal events and the unfolding of things
during time.

Coming into particular existence, starting to manifest,
sending forth a ray of consciousness into the evolutionary
scheme, we go through various stages of awareness and
participation in a particular world, place, plane.

The first stage is a general awareness of the color, flavor,
texture, essential nature of, the Swabhava or unique
characteristic of ... the world itself. We're not a
particular being, not with any ties to this or that
person, just aware that *this world* exists, and what
it's like. At this point the dewdrop is part of the
shining sea, but the Monad is aware of *this sea*, of
*this world-scheme*.

At a later stage, there's a sense of self, a separating
apart from others, an awareness of "this is me and that
is you." The dewdrop has separated itself from the shining
sea. On the gameboard of life -- this particular board --
we now have a playing piece that represents us. We
perceive the world and act through that piece.

We benefit from having played the evolutionary game.
We do grow and change. During a particular game we
learn certain skills. Perhaps we become trained to
play more difficult games in the future. But when we
finish the game, the pieces get put away and what we
take with us is the general skills and affects upon
us of the experiences that we've had. There are the
experiences *as a game player*.

How do we carry these experiences forward, as a karmic
treasury that spans great periods of evolution, of
dissolution of the world, pralaya, and its subsequent
remergence anew, in the next evolutionary period, the
next manvantara?

My thinking is that there are levels or parts to
us that transcend existence, that are unmanifest or
non-existing yet very real and very present behind
things. The higher part is timeless, and represents
our essential nature per se. Below it, as a sort of
veil, is another part, that enters into relation
with conditioned time, that is subject to growth
and change and the accumulation of experience. That
part, even though not *existing* or manifest in the
sense that we understand it, is real, and the foundation
of our perceptive ability, the foundation of our
ability to come into being, one step removed from
actually doing so. It is eternal in nature, with no
beginning nor end, but it does not *exist* in the
sense we typically think of things existing.

-- Eldon