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In
an infinity of form everything is possible...
If one were to study the surface of the earth from a distance, like
looking at an orange, living matter, forests and cities, would appear like
a spreading mold; humanity with its alarming proliferation of stuff and
speed of reproduction not unlike a cancer. Cancer as far as we know is a
game of speed, cell reproduction hurried out of proportion to its
environment. Without pushing the analogy too far we might nevertheless
see the human, and its cargo, as devouring the earth's surface, even to
the extent of draining its life blood from below, something like the
action of a virus with its tentacles penetrating the skin of the cell.
However,
this is not an attempt to denigrate the human spirit. Still, until we have
a profound concept of our role in the universe, we will be used by
unconscious forces and combinations of forces, we will be cheated out of
the beauty and majesty of our innate vision of being actors in an immense
cosmic game of unthinkable form and variation.
Whether
as destroyers or creators, the role of all living matter is for the
transformation of raw energy to light. We do not inherit light from the
sun. As from other planets, we receive powerful emanations out of which
the stuff of light is produced. All phenomena exists for the process of
converting energy to light. Collectively, species play their games of
competition and mutation for the refinement of energy to light.
There
cannot be a shortage of energy. There is nothing but energy. When we
speak of needing more "energy", the word is a misnomer. What we
fall short of are the means of refining pure energy into light. We need
only to see a city from
an aircraft as we fly over, to realize our love affair with light,
or to stay in Las Vegas a few days to realize our outright passion for
light. Our greed for energy, the reason we devastate the forests and suck
the earth's crust is a lust for light. Light is our lover and god.
Lucifer, the god of light, has us in His embrace. Like moths we fly to
light even with the knowledge of certain destruction.
Modern
civilization is a light junky. When we see the amazing spectacle from
above of a city at night, we realize why millions of people arise in the
morning to work all day, use machines that produce light, and that use
light. The light of day is no longer enough. At night we watch the dramas
of refracted light on TV, or the projected light of movies, stages and
sports arenas lighted by billions of candlelight's of floods. We drive
cars lighted with powerful beams, cook with light, heal with light, kill
and communicate with light. Lucifer, the angel of light, ousted by a
jealous god, has won the world, and uses it as a plaything. Are
we sure it was the bad angels who were kicked out of heaven?
It is
said, that one of the scientists at the birth of nuclear energy on the
flats in New Mexico, awed by the release of light and energy in the first
atomic blast, quoted the Bhagavad Gita : (trans.. by Juan Mascaro)
"the
light of a thousand suns arose in the sky and Arjuna saw in that radiance
the whole universe in its dance of innumerable forms and variations, all
gods and all creatures-the splendor of an infinite beauty which illumines
the universe, blinding
incomprehensible."
According to a popular scenario the human and humanity is a mixture of
monster and angel, and if we don't manage to pull the teeth from the
monster there is a bleak future ahead, if any at all. We have come to this
pass, say the moralists awed by their own guilt, through ignorance and
greed, that we are children with more power in our hands than we know what
to do with. There is another theory that says the whole thing is a huge
cosmic joke, that tomorrow we shall be saved despite our errors even
though they have been great and grievous; at the flick of an eyelash we
shall find ourselves in another dimension where peace and beauty reign
supreme, without rent to pay or hurts to feel.
Early
nineteen century Scotch philosophers advised us to keep our minds on the
practical and despise hope and imagination, but then what isn't the
product of imagination, including materialism, and what isn't ground for
action except hope?
An
alternate viewpoint appeals to neither idealism nor materialism, nor
reprieve from error, but suggests that by perceiving and giving
expression to any profound moment of being, we can face the hard bright
power of reality, meaning-of-meaning without reservation. We can face the
fact that we are what we are, not what we should be, or might have been,
nor could have become if God had of been kinder, mama and papa more loving
and luck on our side, but are the spontaneous knowledge of this - this
immediate creative act of being - that there has never been, nor will ever
be, another place, another time, another One. We have always existed in
this moment of creation-destruction.
As a
species we are a mass of paradoxes. We are beautiful and mean,
altruistic, gentle and kind and at the same time given to torturing, not
only our own kind but other creatures, and to the display of power for
power's sake. We are generous and greedy, capable of heroic acts and acts
of insane cruelty and cowardice. We have, through our unique faculties,
projected the idea of a cosmos of awesome proportions, an immense light
show, creating a world of fascinating apparitions and dramas, at the same
time we indulge in the most barbaric acts, running roughshod over other
species, decimating our own.
For sure,
the concept of 'humanity'
is a tremendous and majestic idea, greater than it itself
collectively recognizes. We may never know the breadth and scope of the
greater game of which we are a part, but with imagination and a certain
sense of humor and awe we can perhaps, with luck
and a certain grace, touch something of the magnitude of the
greater Being, but only with proper humility and available tools of
mathematics philosophy, intuition and implication. This is one of the
better roles of love, art, science and religion.
Any
picture we project out of the accumulation of contradictory experiences
and perceptions filtered through our own and
species' memory, is of course, only an approximation. Expression at
its best is a necessary generalization, no less for being that. Reality is
a fact of perceived being, total acceptance of the moment, spontaneous
being-of-being without qualification, referred to as the ground of Self,
the Absolute, God, or anyone of countless devout and curious labels, all
of which are approximations, cultural modes, no less valid for that
reason.
Ultimately
we must look to culture to get a picture of this angel-beast, this
creature of contrast. Culture alone contains the elements that permit the
spiritual, the sensual, the intellectual, the active and the passive,
the male and the female , the dualism of Being be perceived through the
lens of Beauty, demands, in fact, that we not deny any portion of human
experience and knowledge before we are given access to this powerful
lens.
Then
came, at a predetermined moment, a moment in time
and
of time,
A
moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history:
transecting,
bisecting the world of time, but not like a moment in time,
A
moment in time but time was made through that moment:
or
without the meaning there is no time, and
That
moment of time gave the meaning.
-
T.S.Eliot: from The
Rock
(on the Incarnation of the Word)
We are
here to serve perfection of Being as node ends of experience. We are here
to adventure, to perceive, with luck, to touch something of the beauty and
dimensions of the Creative gesture.
If we
miss the vision, cosmos will not be disaffected, nor will our blindness be
held against us. Those who care to see, will be given vision, and although
the cost in mental and physical anguish might be intense, one drop of
the sublime vision apprehended at the end of a pine bough, or caught in
the eyebeams of the Beloved can suffice for a lifetime.
We are a
part of a molecular light-organism, which heart is the expanding
contracting universe. Each living thing inherits a single life cycle to
experience something of its majesty and beauty.
We are
not here to change one iota of it. We can only change our own perspective;
change is inherent in the illusion of time, we are used by change, but in
reality, there is no change. The totality of the organism exists in one
split second of this timeless moment.
Time and
space, are at best lenses through which we perceive implications of an
alternate reality. To stare directly at Reality-of-Being is beyond
capacity of any single part. However the whole can experience itself
through each of its parts. No single part can experience the whole except
in penetration through the creative act, or through drowning, in what the
Sufis call, the Divine Honey pot - Love - Love of God.
Become as God; then Ah! what joy is thine!
Thou drinkest God with every sip of wine.
Angelus Selesius
-
Nick Nickolds, 2004
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