Nature of the Absolute — Part 3

Vedic metaphor sug­gests some­thing like this: sup­pose an expan­sion of God-dess sleeps and dreams this world. God-dess’ dream cre­ates a “real­ity” that goes on for bil­lions of human years, mea­sures bil­lions of light years across, and seems so solid and cap­ti­vat­ing that some believe it is all that exists. Yet it is a dream, an illusion.

Cos­mic Con­scious­ness is higher than Undif­fer­en­ti­ated One­ness in the hier­ar­chy of man­i­fes­ta­tions as we under­stand the absolute, per­sonal God-dess. Undif­fer­en­ti­ated One­ness con­sti­tutes the basic real­ity under­ly­ing all con­crete formations.

Cos­mic Con­scious­ness cog­nizes, con­trols, and reg­u­lates the con­crete for­ma­tions. From our per­spec­tive, Cos­mic Con­scious­ness implies a dif­fer­en­ti­ated, qual­i­fied state of God-dess. Cos­mic Con­scious­ness is qual­i­fied in a lim­ited sense as a par­tial man­i­fes­ta­tion of God-dess, who is qual­i­fied in end­less ways. Cos­mic Con­scious­ness exists within the liv­ing beings and mate­r­ial nature, con­sciously main­tain­ing all.

God-dess relates to con­di­tioned liv­ing beings and nature through Cos­mic Con­scious­ness. God-dess cre­ates the world and enters into it as Cos­mic Con­scious­ness. God-dess per­vades, sus­tains, and reg­u­lates the liv­ing enti­ties and the entire uni­verse col­lec­tively and indi­vid­u­ally as Cos­mic Consciousness.

God-dess pos­sesses infi­nite ener­gies, or modes of dis­tinc­tion, but from our per­spec­tive and level of under­stand­ing, the three most impor­tant are the spir­i­tual energy, mate­r­ial energy, and the liv­ing enti­ties. They inhere in the nature of God-dess. Spir­i­tual energy con­sti­tutes the essence, or intrin­sic self of God-dess, and forms the sub­stra­tum of the entire tran­scen­den­tal world where God-dess dis­plays tran­scen­den­tal forms and activ­i­ties. Mate­r­ial energy relates exter­nally to God-dess and causes the mate­r­ial world. It relates to God-dess in the sense that all ener­gies ulti­mately inhere in God-dess. God-dess’ intrin­sic, per­fect self­hood tran­scends the dual­ity of mat­ter and exists totally free of its influence.

We per­ceive the mate­r­ial uni­verse as a space-time man­i­fes­ta­tion. It appears real just as the world we inhabit in dream seems real, but when we wake up, we real­ize it was an illu­sion. We con­sider this wak­ing world to be real­ity, but it is another level of illu­sory dream.

This does not mean we do not exist. We exist as eter­nal, indi­vid­ual spir­its. The illu­sion is our false iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with our tem­po­rary, mate­r­ial body and its prod­ucts. Even if life seems one big night­mare, it is good to know we can wake up and a bet­ter life awaits us.

God-dess’ con­scious­ness per­vades the entire mate­r­ial cre­ation, which is God-dess’ dream. Every­thing is God-dess’ energy and noth­ing is sep­a­rate from her-him. There­fore, every­thing is ulti­mately spir­i­tual. Because we see things as sep­a­rate from God-dess, they are called mate­r­ial. When we real­ize this is God-dess’ cre­ation, simul­ta­ne­ously one and dif­fer­ent from God-dess, and only God-dess exists, then we reach enlight­en­ment. Then we remain awake within the dream. We know what’s what.

God-dess reg­u­lates and con­trols mate­r­ial energy through Cos­mic Con­scious­ness. Mate­r­ial energy, being uncon­scious, can­not func­tion by itself. The three modes that set mate­r­ial energy in motion–goodness, pas­sion, and ignorance–exist in a state of equi­lib­rium before cre­ation. Accord­ing to the Vedic view, God-dess starts the process of cre­ation by glanc­ing at mate­r­ial nature, which dis­turbs its equi­lib­rium and ener­gizes it. This glance also impreg­nates mate­r­ial nature with the liv­ing enti­ties as an expres­sion of God-dess’ exu­ber­ant joy and love. Cre­ation pro­vides the enti­ties an oppor­tu­nity to con­sciously evolve and learn to relate with God-dess. Mate­r­ial cre­ation is nei­ther eter­nal nor unreal. It is real but sub­ject to change and anni­hi­la­tion, unlike the tran­scen­den­tal abode of God-dess.

God-dess per­vades all as the ground of all being and cause of all causes. His-her pres­ence in every atom, in every galaxy, in every rock, tree, and per­son sus­tains cre­ation. God-dess keeps elec­trons spin­ning around the nucleus, stars orbit­ing in galax­ies, and all cre­ation alive with won­der. God-dess man­i­fests as Cos­mic Con­scious­ness, and metaphor­i­cally speak­ing, the uni­verse is her-his body.

God-dess remains inti­mately involved with cre­ation and crea­tures, rather than a dis­tant High God who set cre­ation in motion and now lets it work accord­ing to nat­ural laws with no fur­ther involve­ment. God-dess per­vades all as the all-knowing and all-loving Cos­mic Con­scious­ness, but not as the all pow­er­ful controller.

God-dess is incred­i­bly close and imma­nent. We can talk to God-dess. She-he hears, knows, feels, and expe­ri­ences our lives along with us. God-dess talks to us and guides us on the path of life. God-dess remains a con­stant pres­ence with us. We are free to acknowl­edge God-dess’ pres­ence and fol­low God-dess’ guid­ance or not.

The liv­ing enti­ties share God-dess’ spir­i­tual nature but live in the mate­r­ial nature until they are ready to fully enter the spir­i­tual realm. The more we learn to expe­ri­ence God-dess and con­sciously live in the mate­r­ial world respon­si­bly, the more we spir­i­tu­ally evolve. God-dess uses per­sua­sive attrac­tive­ness to entice all beings to the spir­i­tual world to expe­ri­ence the full­ness of their existence.

The Vrind­a­ban Goswamins describe the spir­i­tual energy as sub­di­vided into three ener­gies, which cor­re­spond to exis­tence, con­scious­ness, and bliss. By the exis­ten­tial energy, God-dess main­tains his-her own exis­tence and the exis­tence of other beings. By means of this energy, God-dess exists as an inde­pen­dent sub­stance and forms the ground or sup­port of all other things, which derive their exis­tence from God-dess. The con­scious energy makes God-dess omni­scient and enables her-him to impart knowl­edge to others.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 19:53 and is filed under Jungle dispatch and tagged with Cosmic Consciousness, God-dess, Oneness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.