3.
The absence of real
meaning in a human life is the cause of nihilism and despair. Human
beings are known to sacrifice food, shelter and safety in the search for
meaning, yet the self, with its illusion of being separated from the
Spirit, can never endow itself with authentic meaning. Given that the
absence of meaning is felt as a draining-away of the will to live, we
can understand that the search for meaning is no whim or fancy of any
fashion trend of this or that culture, but is universal amongst humanity
throughout all stages of history.
In the absence of true meaning, human beings will use almost anything as
a substitute for conscious, spiritual life. Psychologism is merely the
latest substitute, and for millions it remains religion or materialistic
science, and these preconditions of collective Karma have induced
millions more to adopt what they see as the exotic and novel New Age
Movement.
I believe that it is this primordial longing for undistorted meaning and
reality that will guide humanity to its healing in the coming age. “You
create your own reality” demands the most profound spirit knowledge,
understanding and wisdom. And so on the spiritual path we find ourselves
“making haste slowly”.
The aphorism runs, “You are God and you create your own reality.” How
can it possibly be true to state that an individual or all individuals
gathered together is/are God? Whatever this turns out to mean, it is a
repudiation of the historical God/gods of the West. It is of interest to
note that, in the recent history of the West, we have passed from
stating “God is dead” to “You are God”.
Spiritual Realism teaches no Atheism but we reject all Idols including
every anthropomorphic god/ess, in this sense every actually Awakened
Individual is a Spiritual Realist.
The very word “God”, and what it summons up in the mind, is one of those
private thoughts that mean as many different things as there are people.
There are those well-meaning peacemakers who like to point out that all
religions worship the same God really. This God that everyone worships
is evidently spiritually impotent, seeing as its worshippers all over
the world are in a condition of confusion, division and war.
The Spiritual Realist maintains that though there be gods beyond
counting, none of them are self-created or fit for worship, because all
life, from the particle and wave to the most illuminated being, emanates
from the Absolute, which no individualized, limited being can cause or
comprehend. All Beings have their source in the Absolute, and so we
respectfully disregard and gaze beyond “outer gods” to find an inner god
within ourselves. This inner god is filled with wonder awe and gratitude
deep awakened to the source of its arising in "Omnipresent Eternal
Boundless Beness" which is not a Being of any kind.
A sure symptom of spiritual degeneration is the appearance amongst a
people of an anthropomorphic god, such as Jehovah, who delights in the
peculiar condition of being both a limited, identifiable individual,
replete with strong, negative and personal emotions, in support of
despotic authority and, at the same time, claiming to be Invisible and
Infinite. Any megalomaniac could claim as much! “Behold I am a jealous
and an angry God”, "I am the Lord thy God thou shalt have no images
before me" And yet ironically he provides endless images of himself: he
is jealous, he is angry, he is merciful, he is a deal maker, etc., etc.
No religious artist has ever painted an even approximately accurate
portrait of the god of the “chosen”. Gods of the Western type lead in
two directions: to atheism-agnosticism or mysticism. Hence in response,
we have the reaction of the Church over the centuries to these two soul
conditions. On the one hand, there is the attempt to “save” the
atheist-agnostic and, on the other hand, the attempt to manage and
control the mystic, often with death threats, which it has all too often
carried out. This has led directly to the rejection of the God idea
altogether or to its complete reappraisal.
“You are God and you create your own reality”, when fully understood, is
the voice of a spiritually-awakened people speaking of light in a World
darkened by religion and magical-thinking, underscored by the even
darker shadow of materialism. And yet this is not a matter of ideas or
beliefs, because there is no real reawakened presence of Absolute
Spirit, which is the Spirit-Self’s primordial Selfhood.
Spirit-Self-Awareness-Being-Present-Now arises naturally as the
“Clearing” in moments of complete attention and inner silence. This is
the real purpose of meditation, the art of Spirit-self remembering at
its source.
As the Spirit-Self reawakens into progressively deeper and greater
states of consciousness, it always makes the discovery that all beings
and forces in the Universe, including itself, are held within purely
impersonal Laws. These Laws radiate throughout all creation and cause
life to unfold in the way that the Spirit-Self can so clearly experience
and observe. This experience is the real end of the culture-bound belief
in an external God.
The greatest God, Saviour, initiate, scientist, magician or Adept is
unable to alter the impersonal Laws of Life and remains their student
and servant, no matter how exalted that individual may be. The greatest
of spiritual, rather than religious, humanity, have all done the one
real thing that can be done for mankind, which is to teach the true
knowledge of how individuals and nations may liberate themselves from
the bonds of ignorance and illusion and come home to the “Spiritual
Awareness Space” where Spiritual Reality begins.
However, reality is not in the life of the religionists, who persist in
their belief that there is a “god out there” willing and capable of
altering the Laws of the Universe in order to answer their
all-too-personal prayers. The occurrence of so-called miracles and
supernatural events only points to the action of laws and beings not
fully understood as yet by human beings.
The esoteric doctrine teaches that these Laws radiate from the Absolute
as equiprimordial coexistences and are not, as such, the intention of
any being. The Absolute, in its first manifestation, is compassion,
which is the ground of impersonal, primordial Law, which is natural to
its manifestation as the Cosmos. IT is BE-NESS, rather than any being,
and without personal intention. It is the “All-In-all”. No more may we
attribute personal intention to the Absolute than to the spiralling
galaxies or the waves of the ocean deep or the wind blowing on the face
of a man. Everywhere "law impersonal and eternal arises spontaneously
out of unfathomable depths and passes into the cycles of cosmic time".
Philosophers and scientists have observed that evolution shows a
universal trend towards the development of greater and greater
complexities with a corresponding increase of consciousness. The Wisdom
Tradition maintains that in this we see one of the fundamental laws of
the Universe, which is reflected most immediately in human nature.
When the individual has reached “a certain moment of complexity",
wherein the spiritual has become a reality and the limitations of
ordinary consciousness have become painfully obvious, the Spirit-Self
announces its awakening within the field of ordinary consciousness with
the “Quickening”. There is an intensification of the whole content of
the Self, which makes itself felt in every area of the individual’s
life. This “Quickening” fires an intense escalation of all the
transformable processes of the individual’s existence. This “moment of
complexity” is synonymous with the dawning realization of what the
aphorism “you are God and you create your own reality” actually means as
experience.
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