Adur Alkain wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 12:27 pm
Cleric,
This is all quite fascinating stuff. It doesn't sound absurd to me. I can't respond to every point you are making, but I can offer a few comments:
You are absolutely right when you talk about the "fear of the spiritual world". I do feel that fear, very strongly. The "Spiritual World" you describe seems like Hell to me. Like Eternal Damnation. I'm not denying its existence. In the same way that I'm not denying the possibility of that "Higher Consciousness" you are talking about. But that Higher Consciousness looks to me like the ultimate Ignorance. From my perspective, it's the sort of Higher Consciousness the fallen deities the Gnostics talked about would have. It's based on a fundamental error.
This fundamental error is the rejection of the Absolute Nothingness as the source and nature of everything. This is why I see your Spiritual World as a kind of Hell. Because it amounts to an eternal rejection of the Nothingness which is our true nature. That's why I see it as eternal perdition. That's why I find it dreadful and fearful.
What you call "deep dreamless sleep" is not what I call the "absolute nothingness". There's nothing beyond the Third Door I'm talking about. Absolutely nothing. You can't traverse that nothingness, because there's nothing to traverse.
You can convince yourself that by attaining that Higher Consciousness you can go beyond the Third Door and still be conscious. But what you are actually doing is refusing to go through that door. You are refusing to do so because you are clinging to your consciousness.
This is the ultimate fear. Fear of losing our consciousness. We all have that fear, and that's the deepest layer behind the fear of Death. It's not related to our physical embodied existence, like you claim. All those "higher beings" or deities you talk about are the product of this fear. They don't want to lose their consciousness. That's why they still are striving.
Using religious language, I could say that the Absolute Nothingness is the true and only God. But because it's Nothing, it's so easy to ignore! Every soul experiences God or Nothingness in some way, but most choose to ignore it and call it "deep dreamless sleep" or something of the kind. This is a rejection of God. For most people this state of rejection and ignorance, born from fear, will end at the moment of physical death. But for those who follow the path of Spiritual Science and attain Higher Consciousness, the rejection and ignorance and fear will probably continue beyond physical death, maybe for all eternity. What a dreadful destiny!
Stepping through the Third Door is the end of the striving (any kind of striving, conscious or unconscious), but it's not the end of the journey. You go through the door, and you dissolve completely into the Nothingness, and then you come back. You don't traverse anything, because there's nothing beyond the door. But when you come back, you are free to continue your journey of exploration, truly free because there is no fear and no striving anymore. Like I said, there is no goal, no end of the path in the Diamond Approach. The spiritual universe is infinite, with infinite treasures and realizations to be revealed.
A crucial point is that realizing the Absolute Nothingness as our true nature doesn't eliminate our individual consciousness. What happens is that, from that point on, the individual consciousness becomes a manifestation, an expression of the Absolute. The Absolute gets to know itself as that particular individual. And so the journey continues. Because the Absolute loves to explore itself, endlessly.
So yes, all these different spiritual worlds do exist, and all these paths are real, and they lead to completely different spiritual universes. And we are free to choose the path we'll take, according to our spiritual longings. I guess my path will look as dreadful to you as yours looks to me...
This situation reminds me of William Blake's
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, where devils and angels discuss their respective lots, and what to the angels seems like Heaven looks like Hell to the devils, and vice versa. Of course, the question remains: who is here the angel, and who the devil?