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Ego & Dualities

Notes and questions prepared by Garry Jacobs for a detailed discussion with Karmayogi & Ashok.

1. The Fall from total and unifying knowledge of Sachchidananda -- 51

  1. If all is Sachchidananda, evil, death, suffering, limitation can only be creations -- positive in practical effect, negative in essence -- arising from the a distorting consciousness that has lost the total and unifying knowledge of itself into error and partial experience
  2. Dualities -- how do they arise -- divided consciousness
  3. Adam & Eve = Purusha & Prakriti -- soul (purusha outside of Nature) soul tempted by Nature has eaten the fruit of the tree -- knowledge of dualities
  4. Redemption by recovery of the universal in the individual and the spiritual term in the physical
  5. This redemption will allow the Soul in Nature to partake of the fruit of the tree of life, be Divine and immortal

2. Universality harmonizes & Transcendence transmutes -- p.51

  1. Sachchidananda extended in widest commonalty and impartial universality -- is this Cosmic Being
  2. Totality is a reversion to harmony and reconciliation of opposites
  3. Sachchidananda transcends forms and therefore dualities no longer exists

3. Relating the individual to the harmony of totality renders different values --p.52

  1. Values of the universe rendered by our present consciousness are practically justified for experience and progress, not the only ways, not complete or ultimate formulas.
  2. There are sense organs or capacities that can see the physical world more completely than we do -- e.g. hearing high frequency sounds, cats seeing in the dark, bats flying by radar
  3. There are mental and supramental states of consciousness surpassing our own
  4. In universality and totality, the dualities still exist but no longer separate and independent from one another, rather as shadow forms or reverse aspects of the orchestral whole
  5. Attaining these states indispensable for self-perfection

4. Accept practical values of the senses and dualistic sense-mind until transformation --p.52

  1. Practical value of senses & mind must be accepted as standard for life-experience until they can transformed into a larger harmony without losing hold of the realities they represent.
  2. Enlargement of sense faculties without knowledge may lead to serious disorders & incapacities making unfit for practical life and use of reason
  3. Same for enlargement of mental consciousness out of egoistic dualities into an unregulated unity of total consciousness may lead to confusion and incapacity for active life of humanity in the established order of the world's relativities.
  4. They may lose own value system without arriving at anything higher

5. As mind replaced senses, new order of truths is needed for human progress -- p.53

  1. Instead of disorder and incapacity arising from the change in perspective, the right goal for human progress is a synthetic reinterpretation by which law of the wider existence may be represented in a new order of truths and more puissant working.
  2. Just and puissant working of the faculties on the life-material of the universe
  3. Progression from Senses to Mind -- Science replaces the sense perception that sun going round the earth with a new conception of reasoned and ordered knowledge --
  4. For the mental consciousness God revolves around ego and is judged by egoistic sensations, emotions and sensations
    1. Good and bad are decided on our needs and preferences
  5. These values and interpretations are perversions and inversions, but they have a practical utility for life and progress
    1. Universe exists for fulfillment of the individual
    2. In truth it is life that supports us. We are not independent -- but in practice the idea we act on our own is useful. Bill Gates did not create Microsoft, society did
    3. Collins is not bestowing great blessing on Bennet family by offering marriage
    4. Collins loyalty to Lady Catherine is egoistic and selfish
    5. Darcy's love of Elizabeth is selfish
    6. Bingley's submission to Darcy is out of weakness, not wisdom
    7. Jane's social docility is not the essence of goodness. Her refusal to think badly is not based on true perception but indiscriminant naiveté
  6. Rough practical systemization of things valid for a certain order of ideas and activities -- not the last or highest state of life and knowledge.
  7. Higher truth -- God is the center of existence. Truth of individual is in universal and transcendent
  8. True goal -- a reasoned effective knowledge in which egoistic life must rediscover its values transformed and corrected --
  9. What is the new order of truths and new law

6. New Order must replace ego with harmony of totality and transcendence --p54

  1. Acceptance of greater verities about the divine existence
  2. Renunciation of the false standpoint and certainties by the ego
  3. Abolition of egoistic values is its goal -- identify with all humanity
  4. Transcendence of limitation, ignorance, death, suffering, evil is its crown

7. Transcendence & abolition of dualities not possible if egoistic valuations are inevitable -- p54

  1. Transcendence and abolition are not possible in life on earth (only in the beyond) if the egoistic valuations are correct and life is as it appears
  2. Life is a universal existence of a mighty Life-Spirit, not merely individual phenomenon
  3. Dualities are only the individual response to contacts, not the very conditions of all living
  4. Limitation is not the nature of substance
  5. Death is not the first and last condition of life
  6. Pleasure and pain are not inseparable dual sensations
  7. Joy and grief need not go together
  8. Error is not a necessary element of all knowledge

8. Man is like the Arboreal Ape --p55

  1. Ape could not conceive of the appearance of a more advanced species that utilizes a faculty called reason and utilizes it upon the physical world to master it, let alone that it could evolve to become that species.
  2. Humanity can utilize its reason, imagination and intuition to conceive of perfection and a more perfect life and consciousness free from the dualities and to project it as a status of God or for realization in Heavenly state, but it cannot conceive of realizing it here on earth or as possible for humanity in the body.
  3. Man dreams of his own perfection but does not believe he can evolve to become it. His reason asserts itself, rejecting his imagination and intuition and regards it as a brilliant superstition contrary to the hard facts of the material universe.
  4. The very principle that elevated Man above the Ape becomes an obstacle to his further advancement. The higher life is to reason the inspiring vision of the impossible.
  5. All that is possible is a conditioned, limited and precarious knowledge, happiness, power and good.

9. Reason asserts Transcendence -- p56

  1. The principle of reason asserts Transcendence -- it seeks Truth and Unity (p341)
  2. The whole aim and essence of the pursuit of reason is Knowledge, i.e. Truth by the elimination of error
  3. Reason supposes a positive, pre-existence Truth towards which the dualities of right and wrong knowledge move
  4. Reason lacks the instinctive certitude with regard to the other aspirations because it lacks the same essential illumination inherent in its own positive activity
    1. Which other aspirations? -- immortality, freedom from pain, good, power
    2. Why does it lack that essential illumination? Because body, life and emotion are not the own activity of reason. It must know them indirectly.
    3. What essential illumination do they have?
  5. Instinct for unalloyed happiness belongs to the Heart, which has its own certitude, is capable of faith and because our minds can envisage the elimination of unsatisfied want which is the apparent cause of suffering.
  6. Rejection of pain is a sovereign instinct of the sensations
  7. Rejection of death is a dominant claim of our vitality

10. Error of Practical Reason to discount potentiality. Knowledge of causes is power

  1. Subjection to apparent fact, insufficient courage in carrying profounder facts of potentiality to their logical conclusion
  2. Potentiality exists
  3. Mastery depends on knowledge of causes and processes
    • Development is a process
    • Once Darcy knows the cause of Elizabeth's dislike, he knows how to win her affection
    • Solution to Intl Financial Crisis depends on rectifying the shift from man and production to money and need to evolve from national to global institutions
    • EPML's decline was the inverse of rapid growth process
    • Knowledge as Power
      • Extension of knowledge to life, knowledge of essential vs. secondary causes
      • When we read a novel, we know what the characters should do to attain romantic fulfillment. When it comes to our own lives we are unable to apply it.
      • We have knowledge of secondary processes and causes. When we acquire knowledge of essential causes and processes, we can convert our knowledge into power
      • If we know the cause of error, sorrow, pain, death, we can hope to eliminate them.
      • For knowledge is power and mastery
11. Science knows secondary processes. Knowledge of essence can eliminate the negatives

a.      Science does seek minimization of error, pain, suffering and prolongation of life 

b.      Because it envisages only external causes and processes, it can only minimize and not eradicate them 

c.       For total mastery, we need knowledge of the essence, not merely their secondary processes 

d.      If we perceive essential nature and cause of error, suffering, death, we can arrive at mastery and elimination, justifying the dominant instinct of our nature 

12. Vedanta has given the solution

a.      Brahman is the one universal and essential fact. 

b.      Brahman is Sachchidananda 

13. Vedanta's essential knowledge

a.      The essence of all life is the movement of a universal and immortal existence 

b.      The essence of all sensation and emotion is the play of a universal and self-existent delight in being 

c.       The essence of all thought and perception is radiation of a universal and all-pervading truth 

d.       The essence of all activity is progression of a universal and self-effecting good. 

14. Ego deforms, universality and transcendence rectify

a.      The play and movement embodies a multiplicity of forms, tendencies and interactingenergies 

b.      Multiplicity permits interference of deforming factor -- individual ego 

c.       Ego is a self-limitation of consciousness by a willed ignorance of the rest of the play and its exclusive absorption in one form, tendency or field of movement of energies. 

d.      Ego imparts to the movement reactions of error, pain, sorrow, evil and death by misrepresenting their values in relation to the one Sachchidananda

e.      Recovering the right relation we may eliminate ego-determined reactions

f.       Recovery is effected by universalization of the individual and transcendence  

Ego as Creator of universe vs. Ishwara

a.      Later Vedanta (Shankara?) concluded that ego is not only the source of the dualities but the essential condition for the existence of the universe. Getting rid of ego eliminates our existence in the cosmos. 

b.      Therefore the best we can aspire for is a relative good linked always to its opposite. 

c.       Ishwara is the essential condition, Lord and creator, not ego. 

d.      But ego is only an intermediate representation of something beyond it necessary fora certain line of development. 

Following this line of development can lead the individual to that which is beyond himself, which he represents and can continue to represent as a center of the Divine and universal consciousness embracing, utilizing and transforming all individual determinations into harmony with the Divine.

Summary

a.      Foundation of human existence is the manifestation of the divine Conscious Being in the totality of physical Nature 

b.      Condition of our activities is the emergence of that Conscious Being from an involved and inevitably evolving Life, Mind and Supermind. 

c.       This evolution enabled man to appear in Matter. 

d.      It will enable him to manifest God in the body -- universal Incarnation 

e.      Egoistic formation is the intermediate and decisive factor which allows One to emerge as the conscious Many out of the indeterminate totality general --obscure, formless subconscient. 

f.       Dualities are the first formation of the egoistic consciousness 

g.      Dualities are the inevitable result of the ego's attempt to realize unity in an artificial construction of itself exclusive of the total truth, good, life and delight of being in the universe. 

h.      Supreme fulfillment is by the dissolution of the ego by self-opening of the individual to the universe and God (transcendent) 

i.        Egoistic life is a prelude to this as animal life (senses) is a prelude to human life (reason). 

j.       This fulfillment arrives at the realization of the All in the individual by transformation of limited ego into a conscious center of the divine unity and freedom.

k.       Divine result toward which evolution moves is the outflowing of the infinite and absolute Existence, Truth, Good and Delight of being on the Many in the world. 

This is the supreme birth which maternal Nature holds in herself and strives to deliver.

Comments

 Notable Changes: Point

 Notable Changes:

Point

Subdivision

Text-original

Text-modified

Type

1

A

arising from the a distorting consciousness

arising from a distorted consciousness

 Grammatical

 

A

be Divine and immortal

be it Divine or immortal

 Grammatical

2

A

widest commonalty 

widest commonality 

 Spelling           

 

C

Dualities no longer exists

Dualities no longer exist

 Grammatical

3

E

Indispensable

Is indispensible

 Grammatical

4

A

Until they can transformed

Until they can be transformed

 Grammatical

 

D

They may lose own value system

They may lose their existing value system

 Sounds Better

5

G

Individual is in universal

Individual is universal

 Grammatical

8

E

 

 

 Is this sentence correct?I couldn catch the meaning.

14

Title

 Ego deforms, universality and transcendence rectify

 Ego deforms, universality and transcendence rectifies

 Grammatical 

14

Ego as Creator of universe vs. Ishwara

But ego is only an intermediate representation of something beyond it necessary fora certain line of development.

But ego is only an intermediate representation of something beyond it and is necessary fora certain line of development.

 Grammatical

14

3rd Para(Following this..)

Following this line of development ..

.................

 individual determinations into harmony with the Divine.

Following this line of development

.............l individual determinations in harmony with the Divine.

 Grammatical

 

8th point - subdivision C -

8th point - subdivision C - line 1 - do not

14th point - subdivision A - line 2 - interacting energies

 



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