Friday, February 24, 2012

fantastic voyage within

The Kingdom of God is ever present, for those that have eyes to see, and ears to hear. What did Jesus the Christ mean? I have eyes to see and ears to hear, yet I don't see or hear the Kingdom of God. Were do I look? Were do I turn my head to hear?


As I look and hear from eyes and ears of the flesh, I can only see and hear things from the visible. material world. The phenomenal world has beauty and uniqueness, and a certain vague, universality about it; like a snowflake, its pattern is distinctive in all cases, but its structure always has six points. How many different pattern, permutations, can nature create? Answer, How many grains of sand are there? However, regardless of the almost infinite possible patterns, it is that hint of unity that attracts us. We therefore, can occupy an entire life time searching for the one pattern that leads us to the essence of the snowflake. Take science for an example, they have been searching for the "missing link," that spices of ape-man that bridges the gap between ape and man. They have been searching since Darwin. Or, 'once we map the human Geno of the brain we will understand the human essence.' Or, 'once we find the "god particle" we will understand the mysteries of the Universe.' However, all science can really find is more paradox. Our rational mind is not capable of penetrating paradox to find satisfactory understanding. That which is beyond the phenomenal world cannot be known through the rational mind, but we need the self-awareness of the rational mind to take us to the threshold of the world within, the spiritual world. In order to know the world beyond the material world we must see and hear with spiritual eyes and ears. Rumi, a Sufi poet put it this way, "We rarely hear the inward music, but we are dancing to it nevertheless."


We humans have begun to search, what we call the "last frontier," outer space, not full well understanding its great risk and difficulties, but the idea of searching inner space is beyond, even our imagination. Even the most bright and courageous of our race would stop and hesitate at the paradox of using their consciousness as a light to explore the depths of their unconscious. Meister Eckhart, a philosopher, mystic of medieval Germany, explains "The soul has two eyes, one looking inwards and the other looking outwards. It is the inner eye of the soul that looks into essence and takes being directly from God." Who has the spiritual and moral courage to look God directly in the eyes? Turns out, that going back 5000 years or more there were ancient sages who had found a way into the inner circulations of the unconscious, traveled there at will, and came back to tell of their great adventure. Not only did they tell of their adventure, but also told of their method of entry into to the unconscious, and have passed down that method to generation after generation in an unbroken chain, to those who are prepared to walk the inner path. Pythagorus, an ancient Greek philosopher, and one of those later travelers into the inner world, used the letter Y to explain and distinguish the two paths. Maximinus, an ancient Romeman poet wrote a poem using the Pythagorean Y as the object of his poem:


The Pythgorean Letter two ways spread,
Shows the two paths in which Man's life is led.
The right hand track to sacred Virtue tends,
Though steep and rough at first, in rest it ends;
The other broad and smooth, but from its crown
On rocks the Traveller is tumbled down.
He who to Virtue by harsh toils aspires,
Subduing pains, worth and renown acquires.
But who seeks slothful luxury and flies,
The labor of great acts, dishonor'd dies.


What these brave, ancient voyagers of the inner world found is that the manifest Universe is issued from and sustained by the Infinite. Remember now, that this Infinite is called by many names, God, Vishnu, Jehovah, etc. but each name gives no meaning to It, because a name is finite. It is absurd to use the finite to describe the Infinite. If you try to objective the Infinite you will wind up within a paradox. If these ancient voyager's discovery wasn't sublime and fantastic enough, they also discovered that the Infinity, wonders of wonders, is within us. We in It; and It in us. St. Paul, in his Letter to the Colossians, Chapter 1, verses 25-27, centuries later echos the ancient voyagers findings: ..."It is the task of fully proclaiming his (God's) message, which is the secret he hid through all past ages from mankind but has now reveled to his people. God's plan is to make known his secret to his people, this rich and glorious secret which he has for all peoples. And the secret is that Christ is in you, which means that you will share in the glory of God."... The Christ Principle, the Buddha Principle, the Infinite, the face of God is within you; you are It, you are That. There also is an echo of this profound thought practiced every day by way of a pose, usually practiced in India, but not strictly. It is also practiced in our country, as also in many other countries. The pose is taken when meeting another person: hands are placed together in prayer position and placed by the heart, there is a head bow at the same time saying a Sanskrit word, "namaste." Namaste means, 'the divine in me, recognizes and acknowledges the divine in you.'


It is because we are essentially a spark of the divine, that the Kingdom of God is ever present. It is the outward looking eye of the soul that captures our attention and builds a veil, dimming the vision of our inward looking eye of the soul. We must learn that the inward eye of the soul sees into essence, and is the vehicle that can unite us with the Divine. We will let Jakob Bohme, the Mystic Cobbler, have the last word, "For the Book in which all mysteries lie is man himself; he himself is the book of Being of all beings, seeing he is the likeness of the Divinity. The Great Arcanum lies in him; the reveling of it belongs only to the Divine Spirit."

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