Theos-Talk Archives (February 2003 Message tt00082)

Time to answer this one as well. I wrote my views between the lines,
starting with **
----- Original Message -----
From: <stevestubbs@yahoo.com>


> --- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Etzion Becker <etvionbb@n...>
> wrote: There cannot be any spiritual advancement without the supervision
of
> > super-consciousness.
>
> Dear Etzion:
>
> Well, yes, it is true that nothing can disprove the existence of the
> supreme personality. However, there are some purely logical
> arguments which may lead to a wrong conclusion and which nonetheless
> make it clear a supreme impersonal reality may be what we find at the
> end of our quest.

** Dear Steve, may I make it clear, I have no intention whatsoever to *sell*
my Master to anyone. I am just trying to share some of my experiences of
daring to follow a Master for thirty years. I actually talk about the
*lineage* of Masters, of the Divine Hierarchy, which, to the utter
disappointment of humans, have never left the earth, and have never gave up
on humanity, inspite of the horrors these creatures commit, on a daily
basis.
I feel the presence of my Master as most personal. This is His grace, how
else a limited human can experience Infinitude, if this infinitude doesn't
appear on our level? This is the magic of the true Masters. They don't play
big God on us, to me, he is my friend, the only reliable one. The real
Masters are what we call God in human form, or as I call it, a window in the
physical plane, through which the face of God is being seen. This is true
for all of us, but our windows are concealed with thick curtains, and when
you manage to open the curtains, you discover that the glass of the window
is blocked with a thick crust, made by billions of years of ignorant
activity. All what they want, is to help us wash this glass quickly, so the
light of Truth will shine through us to the world.


> I assume you are conscious, so that is prima facie evidence that
> there is consciousness in the universe.
>
> I assume you are also intelligent, so that is prima facie evidence
> that there is intelligence in the universe.
>
> I see your consciousness and intelligence as a manifestation of the
> principle of consciousness and intelligence in the universe.

**True, but I didn't create it on my own volition. If I started my spiritual
evolution from zero one, from where I had the intelligent consciousness to
create intelligent consciousness? It was given to me, by *something*, and I
am most thankful for this *one*.


>
> The argument is complex, but there is good reason to believe that
> consciousness is an integral component of being. I.e., if there is
> no consciousness, then there is also no being. Thus, anything which
> can be said to exist must be endowed with consciousness, however
> elementary it might be.

** My Master teaches us, that before the creation, *God* didn't have
consciousness. But *God* wanted to know itself, so, without words, He asked:
"Who am I?" This primeval question created the entire universe, and we are
the by product of that ancient question, which we have to answer in due
course. And in order to answer this question, we need to develop this
intelligent consciousness.


>
> Empty space would therefore represent total unconsciousness, and
> sensible objects (planets, stars, comets, and the residents thereof)
> would possess some sort of consciousness. That this is so seems to
> be recognized in the Theosophical idea of planetary spirits.
> Logically, one would expect planetary consciousness to be more
> elementary than that of man, but Theosophy asserts that the opposite
> is true. It could be so.
>
> The existence of space and matter in the universe (I think Leucippus
> described these as Being and Not Being) is evidence that
> consciousness and unconsciousness coexist.

**Since God is Infinite, the state of unconsciousness (the Beyond Beyond
State, or Paratpar parabrahama), is alwas there. But this state seeks to
become all-conscious, so this process, of the evolution of consciousness,
goes on forever.

>
> Theosophy asserts that unconsciousness (or The Unconscious, to use
> Eduard von Hartmann's terminology) came first and is the supreme
> reality. Since consciousness is phenomenal, unconsciousness
> noumenal, this makes perfect sense to me. One interpretation of
> Einstein's equations is that what we experience as matter is really a
> distortion of the space time continuum, which implies that there had
> to be a space time continuum (unconsciousness) before there could be
> matter (the stc distorted, resulting in consciousness.)
>
> Thus at the beginning of the manvantara (the end of the Maha Pralaya)
> there was "differentiation" in space, resulting in the appearance of
> atoms, which congregated to form planets, etc.
>
> Now suppose that there are personalities much superior to that of
> man, a personality or personalities we would call godlike. This is
> entirely possible or even likely. It would still seem that behind
> the superior personality there must be some noumenal reality of
> unknown nature, just as something must underlie human and animal
> personalities. Such a personality could exist, but the supreme
> reality would be beyond it, and not personal.


**We talk again about the Masters here, and how they play their role. They
also had to undergo the entire evolutionary process, live the dual life of
humans, till they come to the point where they answer the ancient question.
The answer is by living it - that we are inherently *God*. Their only wish
is that we will live the same life; they don't feel superior on us.

>
> As I said, this is logical and could be totally wrong. Nature is not
> obliged to follow logic. Or not mine, anyway.
>
> As for evolution being blind and mechanical, Wallace showed the flaws
> in that theory a century ago. According to Darwin, an Australian
> aborigine should have just enough intelligence to function in a
> pretechnological society. The fact that they have considerably more
> than they need (as do dolphins and other species) is a serious
> problem for classical Darwinian evolution. Schopenhauer pointed out
> that, given that evolving beings are intelligent and have will and
> aspiration, it makes more sense to assume that there is an
> intelligent component to evolution. But where he diverged from the
> Darwinists and the Creationists, was in suggesting that THE
> INTELLIGENCE WHICH GUIDES EVOLUTION IS IN THE EVOLVING BEING ITSELF.
> Thus, to use one of his examples, a deer has antlers because its
> ancestors wanted them.
>
** It cannot be. Life on earth demands disintegration; naturally, there
cannot be any evolution. The process of evolution on earth is against the
laws of the planet, like the gravitational pull should cancell any attemp of
standing erect. Only in water this force is being held, till a certain
extent. There must be some kind of force, which pushes the beings on earth
up, which creates the need to develop different organs for changing
circumstances. And this Force is not of the physical plane.


> I would think that if mice were evolved by some intelligence, that
> intelligence must function separately from the intelligence which
> evolved cats to consume them. It makes more sense that there are two
> inelligences (one for cats and one for mice) which are operating in
> parallel rather than that one master intelligence evolved both of
> them. Of course, it could be that the system is hierarchical, and
> that the Great Cat and the Great Mouse both were evolved by something
> higher up in the hierarchy, but I suspect they evolved separately.

**I would look at it as one experience of the same drop soul - living in the
dual existence. Till man, the soul is actually either eating or being eaten.
The soul must undergo all the dual experiences, till it assumes the man
form. In the man form the dual experience moves between good and bad, till
the final destruction of the mind, or the final wiping out of all
impressions, and then the drop soul merges forever in the Infinite, and in
return, helps those who are still in Illusion, to become like *Itself*, and
so on, ad infinitum.

>
> This suggests that evolution may be a bottom up, instead of a top
> down thing. It is also possible that it is a combination. There is
> no way to know for sure what the truth is, but that should give you
> something to wrap your head around for awhile.
>

**This is true as a human. But since there are super beings, who wish to
help us, the evolution goes both ways.

> If this reasoning is correct, BAG's Vishnu could very well exist, and
> would be very exalted, but not supreme. This would not present a
> problenm to a philosopher but could be such for a devotional mystic.
> Of course in that event the supreme reality would be forever beyond
> us anyway, which is also what Theosophy teaches. The supreme
> reality, whatever it is, is beyond our comprehension or experience,
> whether you are theist or not.
>
**This is true as long as we assume the limited human stance. But Infinite
Intelligence IS, and we can see its evidence everywhere. Your own body is a
manifestation of Perfection, you call it *mine*, but you cannot weave two
molecules together. See the perfection of the earthly orbit - for billions
of years it is in a perfect distance from the sun, if it will move a bit
closer or a bit further from the sun, all life will be extinct. So what
keeps it in place? And how could it be, that the moon is permanently showing
us only the same face, it never changes, even not a bit.


> Historically, the idea of the Jewish deity as supreme is a relatively
> modern concept. In Moses' time he was a tribal deity, and one among
> many (other tribes having their own.) For devotional purposes his
> status came to be elevated in time as the consciousness of his
> worshipers evolved.

**This is the petty human notion. It is so funny, each tribe/nation claims,
this is *my* God, such silly humans.

>
> I hope those ideas are not too elementary. I don't want anyone to feel
insulted.

**The only one who ever gets insulted is the limited, human mind. Even we
all dwell in this state, we keep our focus on the Infinite, and in due
course, we will be ONE with it. This is the promise of the Masters for us.
Best wishes, Etzion