(This is Part 7 of a continuing series. Go back to Part 6.)
1. The Principle of Existence
This principle has two meanings:
The first meaning is that the Oneness of existence is the same as the Voidness of existence. To say that God is One also means that it is Nothingness in terms of what our minds can understand.
Because the Infinite is not a personality and has no qualities in the normal sense, tt appears as emptiness to the mind. This emptiness is, however, a very pregnant emptiness.
If we took an apple and blew it up so that it filled all of existence, it would appear to be nothing to us because it would be everywhere. By the same token it would also be Oneness, because there wouldn't be anything apart from it.
Since the Oneness of God is also the Nothingness of God, to be one of those things is also to be the other. Thus, when certain religious traditions refer to the Oneness of God and other religious traditions refer to the Emptiness of the Absolute, they are talking about the same thing.
At the deepest level there is no separate anything, and this brings us to the second meaning of the first principle: That at the deepest level of reality there is no such thing as a separate or "personal" existence.
Since all is One, one essence, one energy, anything separate from that would imply a duality incompatible with the nature of the One. This is the Buddha's principle of anatta—no self—the underlying reality that we don't actually exist as the separate beings that we think we are.
We think of ourselves as "I," a separate being leading a "personal" life and making "personal" decisions, but at the deepest level all of that is ficticious; there is only Oneness and It is doing everything.
Nevertheless there is a level of reality where there is the appearance of separateness, of a "personal" existence. This sense of separateness is literally a mental construction built up over time.
The sense of a separate identity is constructed from the thousands and millions of thoughts about this "I," this "myself," that gradually solidify the impression that we are living a personal existence. Indeed, this impression is so strong that we normally take it for granted.
When a baby is born it has no sense of separateness. It still lives in the world of Oneness. But over time, the baby learns and solidifies the concepts of "myself" and "others" as separate things.
When a mystic awakens, he or she returns to this primal perception of Oneness, but now with an experience of the world. She clearly sees the appearance of separateness, but can no longer be fooled by it. Now she sees reality directly, as it is, as the Oneness everywhere, showing up everywhere as everything.
Though our personal self-concept is a fiction, nevertheless it has a certain reality of its own, just as the reality portrayed on a movie screen is only moving images and yet exists as the reality that we call a "film" or a "movie."
Various "realities" can co-exist simultaneously. For example, at one level "you" are atoms and molecules, at another level "you" are various organ systems, at another level "you" are a personality. All of these levels and others exist at the same time.
Similarly, though at the deepest level there is no such thing as separate or personal existence, yet at another level there is the appearance of separateness, and the two "realities" can co-exist simultaneously.
And at the level of reality where we appear to exist as personal beings, it makes perfect sense to make "choices," including choices to grow in love and consciousness, because that is what we do at this level, in this dimension. That is what is appropriate in this "personal" existence that we normally experience.
On this "personal" level we can also be said to have a "soul," an inner essence. But we don't have separate souls; that would just be the fiction of separateness returning in a more subtle form. Rather, "your" soul and "my" soul are the same thing, the same Soul, the One.
If we take apart a car we will never find the "essence" of the car. Just so, if we take apart a sentient being we will never find its "essence." Nevertheless, this divine essence is within all of us, simply because it is within all things.
(This is the end of Part 7. Go to Part 8.)
—jim sloman, 12.17.03 for Apr 10
|
