Truth is eternal, yet unfolding. Unchanging, it assumes ten thousand
guises. Its form varies in order to
speak to a given age. Its scope and
depth unfold as the recipients become able to hear. The crucial variable is the extent to which awareness is able to
recognize, experience, and live that truth on both individual and collective
levels. The number and degree to which
individuals are conscious of any portion of truth, to align their momentary
truth with eternal truth, has varied enormously throughout history. When many individuals recognize the truth of
their being and the nature of life itself, the world witnesses periods of
incredible spiritual advance...a transformation, an awakening.
We live in such an age. Perhaps never before have so many people come to understand the
truth of life to such an extent as is occurring at this very moment. We are
living in the midst of what may be our histories grandest spiritual
awakening, the beginning of an era of astonishing spiritual progress. We are, in fact, not only participating in,
but creating this great spiritual awakening from within ourselves. Such spiritual progress will, as it turns
out, be the factor that solves the social, political, economic problems that
vex humanity. This is an ambitious
assertion, but defensible.
This spiritual awakening, it can be argued, is an
inevitable event in human history...an event whose time has simply come. A strong case can be made that this
spiritual awakening is a logical outcome of the evolutionary process of
life. The inference is that evolution
is a process that works toward enhanced spirituality achieved by means of
expanded consciousness on both individual and collective levels. A central tenet of this spiritual awakening
is the understanding that evolution takes the form of expanded consciousness,
and through this expanded consciousness can be channeled to yet further expand
consciousness. In terms of
consciousness, evolution is a cybernetic, creative, self-referent,
self-interactive, self-organizing system which builds upon its own inner nature
to move onward with constantly greater impact, more rapidly, more deeply, more
pervasively, and more beneficially...unfolding, infolding, expanding, and all
inclusive As the individual rises to
new heights of awareness, and joins others in this enterprise, that awareness
spreads beyond even those “consciously” participating to become part of the
fabric of the consciousness of the whole.
Slowly and painfully modern science and its
philosophers have had to come to the conclusion that the physical universe as
science perceives it, bears a marked similarity to the one that spiritual
mystics have known over the millennia.
The nature of the material universe uncovered by science reveals a unity
underlying, pervading, and upholding all diversity in a replete lawful
system. The surface appearance of hard,
separated objects has given way to a swirling ocean of energy/matter in which
every element is dynamically interwoven with every other element.
God explains that in the beginning God was all that
is or was. Nothing else existed. But
this All that was All that existed could not know itself in Its totality
because nothing else existed. So, in
effect, “All That Is” was not. Knowing
that All That Is was All was not sufficient because Its unbounded magnificence
could only be known “conceptually, not experientially.” Experience was the only way God could know
God fully. God’s magnificence was only
a concept.
Since nothing else existed, God had no point of
reference outside of God by which to create that which was not magnificent nor
anything else that was not All That Is and All That Is Not. Yet experiential knowledge was still desired. God could only use a reference point within
Itself. Such a reference point would
have to be only a part of the whole.
Thus the All had to divide Itself.
Because God is consciousness and consciousness can view itself from any
angle within itself, division was possible.
Having done so, each part could than look back on itself, being
self-referral by nature, and see the magnificence of the whole. This division took place in one stupendous,
glorious moment. Now that which is this and that which is that existed as did that which is here, and that which is there, and that which is neither here
nor there. All this existed simultaneously.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has developed an understanding
of this process in terms of God as Pure Consciousness. The mechanics of consciousness...the
three-in-one unity of knower, the process of knowing, and the known repeated
again and again, layer upon layer defines the mechanism by which the energy
and, ultimately, the stable energy patterns that form matter appear as the
material universe and all that exists within it. Consciousness is the field within which that which Is/Is Not can
create within itself that which is other than itself and at the same time not
other than itself. God seen from the
perspective of Pure Consciousness is a self-referral, self-interactive, dynamic
but silent field of existence from which diversity springs. But this diversity is ever structured in
unity. Creation is unity in di