A Simple Fact

Ahh when did I ever say that helping people was not important? I'm all for serving mankind...trust me, I am.

 

A little know concept in Hinduism is of the two kinds of enlightened masters. One is the brahma koti master and the other is the ishvara koti master. The brahma koti masters are not concerned with working in the world, teaching, serving, etc. They are content to remain soaked in their inner experience, wanting nothing, seeking nothing, totally contented in themselves. Masters such as Sri Ramana Maharshi and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa fall into this category. They teach anyone who comes to them, but don't go setting up missions or service projects etc. Their role is solely to push the highly developed spiritual aspirant over the edge of enlightenment.

The ishvara koti masters are the men of action, who produce a tremendous volume of work - teaching, serving, reforming, guiding, etc. Examples would include Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Swami Sivananda, etc. The amount of amazing work churned out in ever avenue by such masters is mind-boggling.

 

Relax, that was not directed at you in particular.

I was just pointing out that the thread isn't about transcending Good and Evil (Though this is an important realization) as much as it is about recognizing the Good and Evil forces in the material realm and acting for the better.

 

It makes sense that the world would need both and it seems that each mystic has their time, place and purpose. The only reason that I was specifically stressing this idea of action is that the OP was in regard to GOOD and Evil on the material realm but I overlooked the obvious spiritual radiance a mystic deep in the SELF actually contributes to everything and everyone around him. Now I see from your posts that one can influence GOOD on poeple/animals/nature many different ways and sometimes doesn't necessarily involve the action I was so strongly stressing before.

Everyone, please excuse me for being so emotionally strong on the subject at some points of this thread. I just wanted to make the point that if reaching this state, one should contribute somehow and now I see that if one does reach this state they are contributing.

Thanks Bhaskar for making these points to me.

 

Sorry it's taken some time to reply -trouble with my internet connection, which is down presently.

I certainly don't mean to imply that Sri Aurobindo is the 'only wise'.

If that's how it came across, I am sorry.

My view is that everyone should pursue whatever path works for them.
I don't really think I'm creating disharmony - I actually spoke of 'convergence' - in one sense the idea that all these paths lead in the end to the divine.

I'm just putting a particular point of view, not saying it's the only correct way to view things.I have no interest in the 'my guru is greatere than your guru' game.

 

Not just on the material plane. There are dark forces on other planes too - some of them quite high planes. Look at how false religions, doctrines etc imprison people in disfunctional and narrow modes of thinking and being. Yet often those who hold such ideas claim a divine origin for them, eg Islamic fundies.

Transcending good and evil is one step, on the level of the individual consciousness. However, much of the 'evil' is the collective creation of human beings, and could easily be changed if there were the will to change it.
But even if we were to change the world order, there would still be the duality - it is neccesary that contraries exist for the purpose of the manifestation at this level of it's continuing evolution. Even in a utopian world, if I put my hand in a flame it'll get burned.
What Sri Aurobindo was talking about is really a total transformation, way beyond the limited goals of the reformer or philanthropist. It would mean a new creation, a new humanity.

'A new heaven and a new earth' is spoken of in the Bible -
This would be a world of perfect manifestation, of perfect beings with perfect and infallible knowledge and power, where consciousness would be permanantly in the driving seat, no longer subject to any kind of external energy, but not absorbed in a kind of passive inner realization, nirvana, or transcendence (there would be nothing to transcend)only, but fully active and dynamic.
Our current limited mental powers would be replaced by a higher supramental power as the basis of our being, and the being of the cosmos. Thus because we don't have the supramental consciousness we can only project a very limited notion of what this would actually be like.
Sweet Mother, Sri A's yogic partner, said what he is trying to bring in is like "a beautiful fairy tale".

 

I understand the point your trying to make but just for the sake of discussion,

I would agree that there are dark forces on other planes but if the religions were false are they not misinterpreting God/? as a concept of God/? or what they think God/? to be. Would their concept that they have created be their driving force towards these actions you spoke of?

And also, claiming divine origin doesn't exactly mean that the origin is divine, right?

So I guess i'm just not sure what evil is on higher planes, and honestly I'm really not too sure about planes in general. There is the astral plane and i'm pretty sure there is evil there and of course the material plane has evil but I don't really know too many planes I guess, or their inhabitants.

Do you know anymore about these ideas?

 

Well, there is dark magic and voodoo type stuff out there that can be used to seriously harm people. Even the vedas speak of rituals by which enemies can be killed, people's wealth drained away, etc.

 

Good point, i'm not well versed in the vedas so I had not heard of this but calling to mind voodoo makes total sense.

Yeah, I don't really know anything about different planes of existence.

 

I believe that all is essentially good / spirit/ divinity. There is no such thing as bad, only lack of TRUTH. Fear ultimately reflects love, because it is love of life/self. People who don't love don't fear. And we all know how love inspires creativity, gives boundless energy, etc.

All paths eventually lead towards the Divine, you just have to honestly listen and accept the energies that are telling you. For ex: SWIM had grown up orthodox Christian, and always searched for truth even since the age of 6. Evening doing every drug imaginable to dissect and explore consciousness, reading up 100's of hours on religion, etc. Then one day, through an EXTREMEPLY simple meditation and realization, he had a spiritual experience. Complete mind/body/spiritual orgasm, cleansing of all past psychological trauma, perfect health, divine love, inner peace, 2x as good emotionally/physically than Molly. There was only NOW, the overly pervasive reality of this feeling of Divine Love that inspired all future action and all cells of the body. At that point, he realized that even though it took over 18 years, it all lead up to this realization. There is no point in doing drugs because now he knew what all the Great Teachers were talking about. Now there was a new craving.

Now, this kid probably could of achieved this type of spiritual level by simply being a nice person. But in the end of the day, as long as you keep on searching, you will find the answers. It all comes back to TRUTH.

I also don't believe in good/evil, only what you want and if you're heading in the right direction. How can you tell a family man that he should abandon his family because he should seek divine love? How could you tell a monk to procreate to save the human race? There are levels of closeness towards the Ultimate, but that doesn't make any choice good/bad. God loves all, even mass murderers. He doesn't force us to be anything, but the potential is there if we want to. Everything in life is a test, a lesson. When the Holocaust happened we could of just said "oops that sucks". But instead we learned from it. What it meant to have uncontrolled power, masses of ideologically obsessed people, etc. We could of not had slavery at all, but we moved closer towards divinity by learning from it. All return to the source.

 

Divinity is a loosely defined term. You would need to elaborate further on Sri Aurobindo's definition of it. I know next to nothing of this sage.

Personally I doubt I could come anywhere close to understanding or expressing divinity or godliness. Admiting my ignorance is as far as I can go.

 

One way to look at it might be to say that the divine is SAT-CIT-ANANDA, being, bliss, awareness. Everything else would then be un-divine, and forces which consciously work to impose un-divine conditions on existence, or to maintain such conditions, would be anti-divine.

But saying the divine is sat cit ananda is only a kind of finger pointing at the moon - it doesn't give any actual experience or perception of the divine. But I think loosely speaking we can say that the word 'divine' indicates a kind of perfect status of existence, which remains unrealized here in this world by almost everybody. It also means the source of everything, that which sustains everything. A kind of quintessence....really it can't be grasped by the conceptual mind.

 

There are different schemes according to different sources - and there is some crossover between these systems.
Since I began this by speaking of Sri Aurobindo, I'll give just a very brief overview as he saw it - I emphasize though that there are other ideas about all this coming from other Hindu sources as well as Buddhist, Western Magical, Quabbalistic etc.

Briefly, in ascending order, the main levels of existence are:

The Supreme
Supermind
Overmind
Intuitive Mind
Illumined Mind
Higher Mind
Mind
Vital
Physical

This sequence represents descending and ascending grades of conscious being. From the total unconsciousness of physical matter, through life and mind planes up to the supramental which is all knowledge and power.

Normally, humans are only aware of the pyhsical, vital and mental planes. The lower so-called 'triple world of the ignorance'. It is only with the spiritual turn that the higher planes begin to come into consciousness.
And in fact, humans are only aware of a fragment of what exists even on the lower planes, whch include 'occult' planes of subtle matter - the 'astral' of western occultism.

Just so as not to be accused of partisanship, here is a slightly different version derived by Sri Krishnaprem from the Gita:

0. - The Supreme - Parabrahman, Purroshattama - beyond all levels.
1. - Shanta Atman - pure consciousness, unmanifested self.
2. - Mula Prakriti - the Matrix, unmanifested object.
3. - Mahat Atman - Mahat, the One life, Great Self,adhi-daivata, cosmic ideation, divine wisdom.
4. - Buddhi - knowledge of no.3, also the faculty by which that knowledge is aquired, jnana atman.
5. - Manas - higher mind,ahankara, individual egos, the "point of view", jiva, adhiyajna.
6. - Lower Manas - ie. manas united with the desire nature; personalities; also the indriyas, the senses and their inner objects, adhibhuta.
7. - The outer world, objects of outer sense.

Anyway, there's two possible schemes for planes of being.

Another that is well worth looking into is the Quabbalistic 'Tree of Life'.

 

I don't get the concept of un-divine. Within your definition everything is un-divine, because anything that is not perfect would reflecting imperfection on this world. Sure, there's levels of closeness to divinity, but something opposed to Divinity? No matter where we are we will have problems / opposition, but it'll just be on a different level/plane/.

Btw, could you elaborate more on your guru's idea of anti-divinity? I've really never heard of that concept (except for "sin").

 

Firstly, can I just say Sri A is not 'my guru'. I have great respect for and interest in his work, but no special relationship exists, and I'm also intertested in many other teachings.

The problem is that if we say 'all is divine' then we'd have to say things like ignorance are divine. Concentration camps, de-forestsation etc would all have to be regarded as divine.

The un-divine is that which is not actually fully conscious - not aware of it's own inate divinity.
Anti-divine means conscious forces which work against the flow of evolution etc.

In Christianity, Judaism and Islam they have the idea of the devil - that is a crude example of the anti-divine. God wants love and harmony, the devil wants hate and war -.

 

Then I think it would be fair to say there are people who are more aware than others, and display a deeper connecton to their inner being and bliss. I think Sri Aurobindo is also correct, that many are so ignorant they are the polar opposite. But personally I feel the ignorance can be removed from everyone, none are born evil, they stumble mistakenly into it, and removing it shows the natural state of divinity. I am far from sure, but it's possible there is a purpose to evil and ignorance, so that it can highlight what we really are.

 

Couldn't it be that all things are essentially divine and that human limitations born out of ignorance create things such as dichotomy as good/evil....so that there is no such things as anti-divinity, just shrouded divinity? Every thing is just consciousness, right? Until we assign name, form, and meaning to it?

 

I agree with Nicole.
See the moment you say the divine is sat-chid-ananda, each of those terms actually indicate that it is all pervading. Justt he word sat - pure existence. Existence is in all things. If you say evil exists, then in that evil also there is the presence of the divine giving it its existence. If you say certain people are in deep ignorance and therefore act in undivine or antidivine ways, there is still consciousness in them that illumines every wretched unholy thought. And that pure consciousness (chit) is the manifestation of the divine in them. In that sense is everything divine - even the concentration camps and deforestation.
But the masters repeatedly tell us not to confuse standpoints. From the absolute standpoint everything is divine and bursting with God. But from the standpoint of the story of the world there are all kinds - good and evil, divine and demonic. The movie has all of these things in it - the content of the movie has the villain and the hero, the damsel in distress, the bigoted father, the angry cop. But when you see the movie for what it is - the play of light upon a screen, these things have no meaning. The hero and the villain alike are the same light. Jesus and Lucifer and you and I are all the same light.