4.
But going on within us
is something much deeper than the vain search for identity in the
shattered mirror of self-images with the labels of a false paradigm,
something that is not vulnerable to the optical view of the spiritual
eye. Self-understanding exists within us always prior to any image of
self-perception, otherwise we would never be capable of understanding
the significance of images.
Consequently, while we are contained within the conditioned notion that
true spiritual awareness is something perceived in images, we are struck
forever. There is no way out of it unless we realize that we are capable
of being aware in a natural, primordial awareness which is deeper than
any image of consciousness, and that we are capable of encouraging,
fostering and cultivating this deeper image-free awareness.
Beyond the Looking-Glass:
You are “in there” in your subjectivity. You are listening to what I am
saying. You are in this room, but that separate self non-entity in you,
which is ostensibly listening, is actually the avoidance of real
listening. Yet, if you are really listening deeply and with great
attention and with the effortless concentration which comes with
thoughtful seriousness, then awareness has a context of silence. We are
sensitively, deeply, silently aware of what it is that is doing the
perceiving. In this silence there is energy which is freed up from
consumption by the continuously talking-to-itself separate self
non-entity. This silence opens the self to itself in the world as the
Silent Individual, aware-awake in we-awareness within the One. In this
whole awareness space the separate-self has become non-operative.
Freedom within dynamic unity spontaneously arises, being-here-now is
effortless.
If I am aware that the separate self is here in the split mirror of
subjective self-concern, and I am aware of its limited and conditioned
self-enclosure, then it ceases to fill up the whole awareness space. It
is an accumulation of associations, education, conditioning, pain,
desire – all of these problematic experiences. When I become aware and
realize fully that this separate self is the past, composed of
fragments, mere partial memories, deeper-level authentic awareness is
now freed, freed from the confines of the separate self instantaneously.
There are those times in your life when you would say, just for a
minute, just for an afternoon, just for one day, “I felt as if I was all
of a peace (piece). I felt as if I was completely and totally here. I
felt alive in the fullest sense of the word.” And then, of course, that
passes and there is no way to regain it. Every attempt to repossess
numinous experience, to repeat it, results in defeat, sadness and
depression.
The third fundamental proposition of the Secret Doctrine teaches how the
essence of Man’s being, his Higher Self, is identical to the Essence of
the Universal Over-Soul. This Essence of the Universal Over-Soul is the
“Absolute One Reality”, which is not a being of any kind. The host of
beings who are human beings in their Higher Selves are called Kumaras,
and, having just awoken from the Universal Nirvana, called Pralaya, they
are destined to existence as “the Cycle of Incarnation (or Necessity) in
accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole term” of a
manifested Universe, called a Manvantara, which is a vast span of Time.
We Kumaras are “ex-Nirvanees”, existing as time beings in Time, yet
grounded in the Eternal Be-ness of the One Reality. Therefore, it
follows that the “extinction” implied by the word nirvana applies to the
karmic experience of the manifested Universe and not to the eternal
Higher Self, the Kumara. The Kumara exists eternally as Time. Even when
resting in the dreamless sleep of Pralaya (a nirvana or night of
universal life), the Kumara is destined to reawaken at the dawn of a new
day of Universal manifestation. The essence of Man is the Silent Eternal
Individual.
Life as the continuously distracted and preoccupied “I-think” subject,
the Separate-self has become 'normal'. This is the form that
"self-forgetting" now takes in the world as a site for global
will-to-power and money projects.
Prior to Descartes, it was the “I-believe” true believer in a
deal-making God. Awakening from the sub-human sub-awareness of the
separate self is always an awakening to the Higher Self who is always
already here. The Cycle of Incarnation or Necessity is this “relational
process” of “We-awareness” within the “Mystery of the One and the Many”
which is simultaneously the transcendence of the self-enclosed horizon
of the “I-think” subject, the separate self non-entity, in its mass
hypnotism and forgetting in the everydayness of the everyday world.
Man is predisposed in the very essence of his being to exist as a
relational being. In our time, Man’s relational mode has been captured
and imprisoned within the “I-think” subject, the separate self. Man is
the time-being host of Kumaras who are naturally relational within the
Mystery of the One and Many. We are the destined beings who are memories
and futures moving forward in time. Our essence (the Monad) is “all time
and all space”. With the lapse into the sub-awareness of sub-human
distraction, Time is the time of the separate self. And so we meet in a
very superficial way.
For instance, I look at you in your there-ness. At first, there is
silent self-awareness or unconscious self-dwelling within. This is
followed by an opening out towards you, apprehending “who” is being
perceived. The third stage in this consciousness movement is the
re-internalization of the apprehended image in the mirror of the
subjective self. I contract inwardly and reflect to see, to be aware of
who it is that is there and what my impressions are. And then again,
awareness extends and regards you. The three-fold movement of
interpersonal attention repeats itself (or is distracted by some
“internal” or “external” object of perception and continues to repeat
its pattern of perception). This occurs spontaneously in every moment,
and, in this way, we continue as separate selves with personal memories,
with a future moving forward in time. And so it continues that we are
time-beings living in and as time. We are unable to arrest the movement
forward of ourselves as time-beings. This is part of what is meant by
the Cycle of Incarnation or Necessity. We are capable of widening and
deepening the horizon of this awareness so that we are aware-awake as
the Silent Individuals we are, living in the We-awareness of the One and
Many.
This is occurring within the horizon (ring-pass-not) of the lower self,
or fourth principle, kama manas - (mind driven by personal desire). If I
am aware of this movement occurring, I can very easily see that you are
doing the same thing. So, just as my awareness goes out and breathes
itself back in, you have done the same thing. Thus, the circle closes
between us, but it is at a very superficial level, separate self to
separate self. It is that we are never actually fully and totally,
mutually aware within the larger “We-awareness” horizon and presence
space where the fullness of ourselves can meet within the Mystery of the
One and the Many. Because we are in time as time, the circle closes, but
no sooner have I apprehended an image and reflected upon that image,
then you have formed an image and become momentarily captured by it,
then our mutual images regard each other again and we are in the next
moment in time. So, the circle of the known closes, we recognize that
which we recognize and already know, but never fully meet, because the
known is the past, the separate self. The self-enclosed “I-think”
psycho-spiritual subject relates and compares each encounter to past
experiences. It is bereft of innocence, imprisoned as it is within a
world of personal images.
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