Tuesday, February 26, 2013

our human heritage-God Wisdom

These ideas presented here, extracted from various written sources, have been gathered and ingested over a period of thirty years.  I can not claim originality, nor full comprehension of these deep and grand ideas, for they were always  present as part of our world; although, behind a veil of illusion and ignorance.  What I can claim credit for is having a determined motivation to lift that veil a little, and let the incoming rays of truth wash over my consciousness and expand it, a little.  To expand consciousness on one level is vital, but a relatively small step in the ever progressive advancement towards enlightenment, towards truth, towards finial liberation.  The above description of progressive, expanding consciousness, alludes to Plato's "Allegory of the Caves," in his
"Republic," (if you have an interest, look into my blog archives for an essay on "The Allegory of the Caves").

There is an ancient tradition of spiritual knowledge, from a world view that dates back millions of years, when the gods walked the earth among nascent mankind.  The gods instructed mankind in principles of life, science, and the arts.  These principles claim a Reality underlying life, which rituals cannot discover, and which the agency of ceremonies or the priest craft cannot bring forth.  I know, I know, I can hear you readers saying, "Millions of years ago?  You must be daffy; current scientific theories and religious interpretations are against you."  Please! stay with me; placate my seeming mad ravings.  This world view teaches us that this Reality is the essence of all that is manifested, and sustains the Universe.  It also teaches we are one with this Reality, that this oneness can be realized directly, not after death, but in this life, and that realizing this Reality is the ultimate purpose for which we were born, and the  aim towards which evolution moves.  Thus, these divine principles represent our divine heritage, and in total, what we may called the "wisdom of the gods."  This god-wisdom is then the bases for answering our most fundamental and universal questions of life: "What is our origin, our nature, our purpose, and our destiny?"     

Lets start like Genesis in the Old Testament, "In the beginning"...  In the beginning all that could be manifest began from an ethereal or spiritual form or ideal.  We did not originally appear on this earth totally materialized, with fully evolved human bodies.  We could not call our first spiritual ancestors human, for they had not as yet evolved a material human form or self-consciousness.  To give your imagination something to feed on, I will relate a description of our spiritual ancestors as given in "Symposium" one of Plato's dialogues; Aristophanes is the speaker,  ..."First you must learn the nature of man and the history of it.  Formerly the natural state of man was not what it is now.  For at first there were three sexes, not two as at present, male and female, but also a third having both together; the name remains with us (hermaphrodite), but the thing is gone.  There was then a male and female sex and a name to match, sharing both male and female, but now nothing is left but the title used in reproach.  Next, the shape of man was quite round, back and ribs passing about it in a circle; and he had four arms and an equal number of legs, and two faces on a round neck, exactly alike; there was one head with two opposite faces, four ears, and two privy members, and the rest as can be imagined.  They walked upright as now, in the direction they liked; and when they wanted to run fast, they rolled over and over on the ends of the eight limbs they had in those days, as our tumblers tumble now with their legs straight out.  and why there were three sexes, and shaped like this, was because the male was first-born of the sun, and the female of the earth, and the common sex had something of the moon, which combines both male and female; their shape was round and their going was round because they were like their parents.  They had terrible strength and force and great were their ambitions;they attacked the gods, and it is said of them, that they tried to climb into heaven intending to make war upon the gods."...  Similarities to the above description of our spiritual origination can be found in the creation stores of American Indians, and by the way, their stories are said to have an antiquity of hundreds of thousands of years.  Also, such similarities can be found in Genesis of the Old Testament, specifically with the explanation of the creation of male and female, if not taken literally, but taken as an allegory.  The New Age saying aptly hits the mark in summing up what has been said, "We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a physical experience."

To bring more clarity into a mostly, unfamiliar and cloudy concept of our primary, causal, spiritual origination we will change our view and come at the concept from a different angle.  We will call this angle , natural or rational thought, .  Most of us have formed a concept of the reality of ethereal beings and entities by an association with religion  or some ancient or contemporary philosophy or some  spiritual teaching.  We therefore have no difficulty accepting the reality of gods, angles, devils, demons, ghosts, and a whole host of ethereal beings and entities.  Now lets compare our concept of ethereal beings and entities with materialized, human beings, we should agree, that the ethereal beings and entities have a greater duration than do materialized human beings.  Now days, human being's earth life duration, is on average seventy to eighty years, while ethereal beings and entities have a much greater duration, and in some cases are thought to have an immortal life.  Rationally than, the creation of a human being would logically follow a material sequence of aggregation over a period of time from an ethereal model body.  This concept of development from the spiritual to the material is succinctly stated by an ancient Egyptian, Hermetic axiom, ..."as above, so below; as below so above"...  Don't tie up your thinking process by taking this axiom literally.  Think of the "above" as the apex of a hierarchy and the "below" as the lowest; from the highest, spiritual, to the lowest, (gross matter), and all the gradients in between.  An analogy of this would be the case  of a painter using a conceptual model in his mind to paint a two dimensional representation on a canvas.  The conceptual model in the painter's mind has a more fluid and ethereal quality then the more static, materialized canvas representation, but the "above" model is causally related to the "below," and the "below" is likewise related to the "above."  The evolutionary course is from the highest or "above" to the lowest, "below," and not visa versa.  Clearly than, from a rational perspective , our primary origination is from spiritual forces and not from physical forces.  How this reverse generation process changes the meaning of our lives, will be part two of this series on God Wisdom; giving you ample opportunity to mull over the content of this essay.