2008-11-3 02:21:00
I have been spending so much time handling peoples objections and disagreements that I have not been adequately directing seekers toward the first principle.
Even though your responses have not struck the chord I am looking for, many have been good and stimulating and also helpful to others in this forum. It has also stimulated great discussion on a number of issues that must be dealt with upon the path sooner or later. It has even inspired some beautiful poetry. It has created some conflict, but the major ray of this planet earth at present is "Harmony through conflict."
Harmony is often an illusion until it is resolved through conflict of some type.
Take a look at the number of contributions to this forum and then look at the ones above this one and you'll see that there must be some type of stimulation here. This is good and I praise you all for your participation.
Nevertheless, I want to stimulate a greater knowledge of the first principle.
A general (but not complete) recap of your answers is as follows:
You are Gods, sons and daughters of God, one with God, a part of God, You are I AM or I AM THAT I AM, you are God fragmented, You are poetry. You are Soul, the Higher Self, You are everything you can name that comes to mind, You are Love, You are Consciousness, You are energy, void, spirit, flesh...
There is nothing wrong with any answer that has been received. You never know what stimulation a shared thought may have with someone else.
At the risk of sounding arrogant, however, I must ask you to raise your thoughts to the possibility of a higher understanding. You cannot acquire these keys by reiterating anything you have read in a book or have been told by any teacher. All your stimulation by being a student of books and teachers is to serve one purpose -- to get you to think for yourself and to get you to be able to put your understanding into your own words.
Let us take a common answer, for example. "I am Consciousness, or Higher Consciousness."
Have you ever thought about what you are saying? What is consciousness anyway? What is the principle that produces it?
If you say I am Soul -- have you thought about what Soul or Spirit is? Is it higher vibration? What is Vibration? What is the difference between higher vibration and lower vibration? Or has it occurred to you that the difference between the worlds may not be the speed of the vibration at all, but the type of vibration? If it was speed only then science could discover the higher worlds using present methods.
Perhaps the higher vibration is hidden within the lower just as the spirit is hidden within the body?
The key to knowledge with understanding is to ask questions of yourself -- to reflect -- to contemplate. Memorizing the words of others is good if reflected upon, but if not then this merely creates an illusion of understanding and is actually a detriment to understanding. This is where "the mind slays the real."
If you look within yourself and observe how your consciousness works it will help your understanding.
Let me elaborate some more on what YOU are not.
You are not your body. Most of you seem to understand this pretty well. However, many people identify too much with physical impulses.
A few teachers have also said you are not your feelings. We have tossed this around the forum and I do not recall any elaboration on it. Perhaps it is because it is hard to imagine the fact that we are not our feelings because they seem to be such an integral part of ourselves.
What are the feelings? There are positive ones like love, aspiration, happiness and joy. Then there are negative like hate, anger, jealously, possessiveness. We like to identify with the positive and ignore or suppress the negative, but the truth is that we are not either of them. We like to say that we are love, but what we normally call love is felt by one of our vehicles which we are not. The astral or emotional body feels love, hate and all the emotions. Just as when our physical body dies we no longer feel physical pain, even so if our astral body were to die we would no longer have a vehicle to feel the emotions.
Therefore, we feel emotion, but we are not emotion.
If we drop the physical and astral body then what is left? The only body in the world of form we have left is the mental. This is the vehicle that thinks, but do not get it confused with the physical brain. The physical brain is like a great computer. It calculates and runs computer programs, but it does not have living thoughts any more than the computer. On the other hand, the mental body is a vehicle for the intelligent comparing of data. It has discernment, logic and can follow a series of events to its logical conclusion. It is able to assign value to things. It has power of interpretation and is very useful in interpreting the feelings sent to it from the astral.
The beginner in human evolution identifies with the physical body and instinct. The average person identifies with feelings. The advanced human identifies with the mind. All three are in illusion because they identify to some extent with their vehicles.
They use the body, emotions and mind, but all these have a beginning and an end. What is left? "Who and/or What Are We?" What were we before we acquired these vehicles and what will we be when we leave them behind?
This part of you has certain attributes. It has one thing in particular that it can participate in while occupying the three vehicles simultaneously. You use that participation every day and there is even a common name for it. If I were to have told you this keyword in the beginning it would have meant little, but now after reflection -- hopefully it will mean something.
Still, the keyword by itself is only the first step. The final step is the realization behind this attribute, which is responsible for life itself and consciousness as we know it.
Hopefully this will be a useful hint. Keep in mind that I will never claim to offer any ultimate in understanding, for there is none. If there were then we as life forms would have an end. Because the ultimate "I found it" will never be found, then there will always be a cause for us to continue in this, or some future universe.
Copyright © 2008 by J.J. Dewey, All Rights Reserved