Swami Tripurari on Postmodernism, Loving Relationship, and the Persona of Nature

Still Monist; Not Pagan

I still use the word "Monist" to describe my beliefs in experiential mysticism.  I no longer identify as "Pagan."  On the one hand, I feel I don't belong to any religion; on the other, I feel I belong to several or to all. (I'm probably more in the neti-neti/not this, not that vein, though).

I am probably more "metareligious" or "metaspiritual," by which I mean that my actual religion/spirituality is about the sources of religion/spirituality rather than any established cultural forms.

I don't enjoy ritual much anymore -- that's been true for five years now.  I don't have a religious community and don't attend religious events or observe a religious calendar any longer.  Some of these things now seem empty and some rather silly.

Religion has never been a family thing for me, and over time, religous communities haven't been personally rewarding enough to bother with.  My path is not very group-oriented and is less about "tribal" identity now than ever before.  In my personal experience, group religion is far more limiting and binding than it is liberating, and I regard organized religion as generallly retardative of mystical experience.

If the Divine One(ness) is present and interactive, what need have we for all the props?  At this point, they all seem superfluous to me, at least as established ensemble.

I have an unusual and "unorthodox" relationship to Father Divine and to Meher Baba.  I do not consider myself a nominal "follower" of either of them, but they are more interesting and important to me than any other teachers in history, and I love them and think of them often.

Coconuts and Manonash

Meher Baba has explained the symbolism of the coconut, ubiquitous in Indian religion, in relation to mystical transcendence of the mind and its accumulated impressions:

"The outer threads on the hard cover of the coconut represent the physical body. The outer hard covering represents the subtle body with all its surging impressional desires. The inner kernel in the coconut represents the mind with seeds of impressions. And the inmost water is essentially not different from the water of the ocean, from which it is ultimately soaked up by the roots of the trees on the shore. It may therefore be likened to a portion of divinity itself.

"Now, because of the sheaths of the inner kernel, the outer cover and the thick layer of threads, the inmost water remains completely hidden from view; and the identity of the inmost being of the coconut with the ocean itself is not even suspected. So the coconut, with all the covers, is symbolically offered to the Master in order that he may reveal the inmost essence of the soul as it is.

"The Master takes off the threads on the exterior one by one. This is like relieving the burdened mind of ordinary men. It corresponds to taking from them all bodily attachments one by one and ultimately taking away from them the attachment to body itself. Destruction of the body through physical death does not solve any problem, because the ego-mind grows new bodies in new incarnations.


"Through utter non-attachment to the physical body, the soul is relieved of the limitations of the outermost covering, symbolized by the threads of the coconuts. When the hindrance of the physical body is removed the body begins to function consciously. This is the state of the Yogis.

"But the sheath of the subtle body, with all its surging desires, has also to be shed. This corresponds to the Master's breaking open the outer hard covering of the coconut. And when the obstructivity of the subtle body is removed, the soul begins to function consciously through its mental ego-body. This the stage of the advanced souls.

"The ego-mind corresponds to the inner kernel of the coconut; and the Master has to break open even this inner kernel to take the soul to its own essence, which, in this analogy, corresponds to the inmost water in the coconut. Breaking the inner kernel means that the mind of the person ceases to function completely. It comes to a standstill since the seeds that activate the ego-mind are all burnt up.

"When the hindrance of the ego-mind is removed, the Master, as it were, drinks the inmost sweet water and makes it unite with the ocean of life that He is. Lover and Beloved have become one consciously." [source]

This is in relation to Meher Baba's teaching that "The real goal of life is not death of the ego, but of the mind!" 


He elaborates: "Therefore when Muhammad or Zarathustra or Jesus talked of being born once or dying once, they meant the death of the mind. Mind is born from the very beginning, even before the stone state. This birth is once, and also the death of the mind takes place only once."


"When the mind dies, the false ego is transformed into Reality. Real Ego is never born and never dies. Ego is always real but due to the mind, it feels and acts as limited and false “I.”


"Now mind goes on taking bodies according to its good and bad impressions. This taking and leaving the body is not the death either of the mind or the ego. After physical death the mind remains with its impressions. It is the impressions which make the mind take bodies, in order that the impressions might be wiped out. Consequently, the mind takes bodies according to the impressions, and the ego witnesses this. When one body is discarded, another comes up and forms, though there is a certain amount of time lag between the giving up of one body and taking up another."


The source and much more context for these comments can be found here. 

Why must the mind go?  This makes it more comprehensible: 


"To try to understand with the mind that which the mind can never understand is futile; and to try to express by sounds of language and in the form of words the transcendental state of the Soul, is even more futile. All that can be said and has been said, and will be said by those who live and experience that State is, that when the false self is lost, the Real Self is found; that the birth of Real can only follow the death of the false; and that dying to ourselves the true death which ends all dying is the only way to perpetual life.


"This means that when the mind with its satellites desires, cravings, longings is completely consumed by the fire of Divine Love, then the infinite, indestructible, indivisible, eternal Self is manifested. This is Manonash, the annihilation of the false, limited, miserable, ignorant, destructible “I”, to be replaced by the Real “I”, the possessor of Infinite Knowledge, Love, Power, Peace, Bliss and Glory, in its unchangeable existence.


"Manonash results in this glorious state in which plurality goes and Unity comes, ignorance goes and Knowledge comes, binding goes and Freedom comes. We are all permanently lodged in this shoreless Ocean of Infinite Knowledge, and yet are infinitely ignorant of it, until the mind __ which is the source of this ignorance __ vanishes forever: for ignorance ceases to exist when the mind ceases to exist!
"Unless and until ignorance is removed and Knowledge is gained __ the Knowledge whereby the Divine Life is experienced and lived __ everything pertaining to the spiritual seems paradoxical.


"God whom we do not see, we say is real: and the world that we do see, we say is false. In experience, what exists for us does not really exists: and what does not exist for us, really exists.


"We must lose ourselves in order to find ourselves. Thus loss itself is gain.


"We must die to self to live in God. Thus death means life.We must become completely void inside to be completely possessed by God. Thus complete emptiness means absolute Fullness.


"We must become naked of selfhood by possessing nothing, so as to be absorbed in the infinity of God. Thus nothing ,means everything."     [Source]

Here is the cave at Khojaguda Hill, Hyderabad in which Meher Baba did the mysterious Avataric work of Manonash that makes it possible for others.  As indicated by baba, his Manonash work was carried out for “the abnegation of the personal will in the Divine Volition.”

According to Wikipedia: "Meher Baba conveyed that the spiritually significant work was done on behalf of the spiritual welfare of all humanity. Mano-Nash is simply Nirvana by another name, and the core group that passed through this stage with Baba was Enlightened in the Buddhist sense."


The folks at this temple may go a bit far, however, by having hard coconuts broken on their heads:

Here is a contemporary Hindu perspective on the ritual of breaking the coconut.

And here is the elusive "Coconut Pearl"

Who was Plotinus?

On this episode of The Philosopher's Zone, Alan Saunders talks about Plotinus. Saunders' guest is Peter Adamson, a professor in the Department of Philosophy, King's College London.

Who was Plotinus?

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Rise Up and Join the Ring

"Sat Urn, Turn, Turn" collage (rough)

Krishna's Rasa Lila as Organizational Model

Meher Baba on the One and the Zero, for 10.10.10

"God is generally spoken of as being One. We use the term One as being opposite to the Many. One we name REALITY or GOD; Many we name ILLUSION or CREATION.However, strictly speaking, no number, not even one, can depict ONE who is indivisibly One without a second. Even to call the ONE 'One' is incorrect. We do not speak of the Ocean as One. It just is Ocean. The ONE simply IS.The ONE is one complete whole and simultaneously a series of ones within the ONE. Illusion is a ZERO and simultaneously a series of zeros within the ZERO. These zeros have no value, except a false value according to their position in relation to the ONE. In actual fact the zeros have no existence - their existence is mere appearance in Illusion, the big ZERO."
From the book "The Everything and the Nothing," available as a free PDF here:
 http://www.ambppct.org/meherbaba/Book_Files/Everything.pdf

A Candle in Hell

Brethren, as it is,


Justification is the light and the darkness, the right, or the image of right, that takes away the totality of wrong; the good, or the image of good, that takes away the totality of evil; the white, or the image of white that takes away the vitality of black.

When as humans we justify in human terms, we run from the total darkness of the Godless world of men We create for our own peace of mind, an artificial man-made light, an image of rightness to counteract the knowledge of total wrongness in a world that has rejected its Creator. We manufacture an illusion of good, so that all is not seen to be evil. We paint white, that which is in essence black because it has removed its [s]elf from the source of all life and knowledge. We give the semblance of truth to that which we know to be a lie.

That is the human game. When a man does wrong and knows he has done wrong, he tries to make it not so wrong by justifying it. He harms another man, feels the guilt, and then tries to reduce the burden of sin against himself; by blaming another, by reducing his awareness of the extent of the harm he has done, by pleading ignorance, by insisting that he only intended good, anything to create some rightness, or illusion of rightness, to relieve the sense of total wrongness.

That is the justification of men, the justification of self by self; a man-made light flickering feebly, but just perceptibly in the great void of Godless darkness.

And by agreement, in the world of men, they justify each other –except when they MUST blame each other in order to justify themselves. And they alternate between combining forces in fear against the common enemy of total darkness, and fighting one another for the meager and inadequate substitutes of artificial light. A man must feel justified, even if it means the whole-hearted condemnation of another man. If for him to maintain his illusion of being right, another must be shown to be wrong, then that is the goal he pursues.

The world of men is the absence of GOD, and therefore the antipodes of Heaven, which is Hell. And man carries a candle in Hell, so that he can pretend he is in Heaven.

And whenever a man feels wrong in the eyes of GOD, he tries to make himself right in the eyes of men. When he feels the darkness of his estrangement from GOD closing in upon him, he lights a candle of manmade lightness, and fights off the suffocating gloom. He justifies.

Every time he makes an excuse for his actions; every time he pretends to himself that what he has done is not as bad as it really feels to him; every time he blames his shortcomings on his background, or his upbringing, or his environment; every time he blames his circumstances on his neighbors, or his employers, or the government, or the weather; every time he blames his failures or mistakes on his friends, or his enemies, or his colleagues, or his lack of education; every time he protects his good and altruistic intonations against the knowledge of his selfishness; every time he blinds himself to the destructive consequences of his actions; every time he makes a show of good will which balies his inner feelings of distaste; every time he makes himself feel pity of remorse, to convince himself of his virtue; every time he shifts responsibility for all the ugliness and wrong around him; he justifies. He carries a candle of illusion into the darkness of reality.

For if a man can justify his state of being, if he can find just a chink of light in his world, or if not find it, then create it, then he can continue in that state of being OF that world.

That is what it is to justify. If we are wrong and we know without a shadow of doubt that we are wrong, then we MUST cease to be what we are. If what we do is evil, and we cannot escape the knowledge that it is evil, then we MUST stop doing it. No one can do or be that which no part of him tells him to do or be, and if no part of him can find even a pretence of an illusion or rightness or good in an action or state, then no part of him drives him towards it. He has no justification.

But if we can find a grain of what seems to be rightness in what we are, or create an image of rightness, even if it only lurks in the back of the mind, then we can go on being what we are. That grain, that image, drives us to continue. And if we can create the illusion of just one shadow of goodness in our actions, or at least a suggestion of inevitability which counteracts the concept of deliberate evil, then we can go on acting as we do. These tiny images of rightness and goodness and choice-less-ness, are enough to give us what we need to continue as we are.

They are our justifications.

The world of man lives in a constant state of justification.

The lie is: "...justification reveals the truth, and therefore it is the right thing to do."

Justification is one of the roads of Hell. It runs parallel to another road in Hell called Blame, which is the detonator of all evil.

And man carries a candle to light his way. And so as man believes he is moving forward, he moves in a state of illusion. The candle lights his way in Hell, so that he can pretend he is in Heaven.

In the world of men, countless bright and shiny images, dreams and illusions, burn to keep humanity justified in its estrangement from its Source of Life. Man has, in his terms, justified himself and his Godless state of being, justified his actions, justified his way of life, with everything the world has offered him.

But a few, a precious few, have stopped before it was too late. They have remembered the Light of Life. They have recalled its brilliance and its purity, and they have remembered that it was not made by man, but stems from GOD. They have seen the inky blackness of man's self-justification. They have witnessed what he calls his altruism, and seen it as no more than masked egotism. They have looked behind the protested appearances off good intention, and seen the self-interested and destructive motives which they hide.

They have looked at man, the mighty lord of all creation in his own deluded eyes, and seen an empty husk, chasing, in ever decreasing circles after an empty dream. They have known the hollowness of man's endeavors on his own account. They have seen the utter futility of his attempts to create a GOD that works on man's agenda.

And, they move forward. They have rejected justification. They OWN the Circumstances that surround them. They see what stops them, acknowledging the failure and moving forward. They stand powerfully in the giving of their Word and are responsible for their actions. They seek out a clear space to create profound thought and concepts. They uncover that which is concealed.

They reconcile opposites and watch as Blame and Justification no longer become their well traveled road.

Alone, they reach into the murky depths of the pool of darkness and feel for a hand and pull on it to reveal the man that does not know he is drowning.

And when the man is pulled out of the pool he is bent over barely able to stand, weak, in all of the nakedness of his illusions. And now he looks around him and looks at sights that he can vaguely remember from a long time ago, years past, in his youth; and the man begins to cry so deeply that there is no sound, only the pain on his face, for now he confronts the source of all of his ills, himself.

Copyright Church of the Final Judgment, 1967


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MISHEFA REŞ

MISCHIEVOUS CHICKEN

Some Lines by Emily Dickinson

 

Nature and God--I neither knew
Yet Both so well knew me
They startled, like Executors
Of My identity. 

Poem 835

All Circumstances are the Frame
In which His Face is set--
All latitudes exist for His
Sufficient Continent--

The Light His Action, and the Dark
The Leisure of His Will--
In Him Existence serve or set
A Force illegible  

Poem 820 

The Martyr Poets--did not tell--
But wrought their Pang in syllable--
That when their mortal name be numb--
Their mortal fate--encourage Some--
The Martyr Painters--never spoke--
...bequeathing--rather--to their Work--
That when their conscious fingers cease--
Some seek in Art--the Art of Peace--

Poem 544 

 

Some of my older thoughts about Emily Dickinson