Eugene, I'm in harmony with what you speak of, as far as it concerns the
general picture of things. The whole thing is that when this general picture must be connected with concrete realities it basically amounts to: "Anyone can do whatever they want, there's no direction, there's no need to exert effort". In other words, all those talks about evolution, divine realization, divine goals and so on remain entirely poetic expressions that float in the air and have no practical significance. We can only understand why this disconnect manifests if we take a closer look on evolution and Time.
What you describe with completely general strokes, places man as timeless observer/experiencer, where he feels that evolution is simply the gradual change of seasons before the eyes of the spirit. That's why we need not bother with the oceanic current - it takes care of itself. Our job is to experience small turbulent eddies which produce the fractal diversity of existence. This is also why one feels completely satisfied with vague religiosity which doesn't place any special demands on our eddie currents.
The evolution of man has led to a point where we're in position to experience the true nature of Time. The oceanic current is the archetypal flow of Time which we experience microcosmically in Thinking. We're continually transforming the
world potential into
world memory through the pinhole of our Thinking activity.
If we hear this only abstractly, it may not sound like much but in reality it's a big deal. I can put that into a metaphor.
We don't need to breathe consciously. We can take conscious control but if we don't, breathing happens on its own in a way Nature intended. Now imagine that gradually Nature withdraws and leave us more and more to control breathing ourselves. People are split. Some say "Nature is leaving us on our own. We need to understand and practice deep, slow, rhythmic breathing in order to promote health." Others say "Nonsense. There's no need to intervene. This is the way it is supposed to be. Some breath shallowly and are sick but that's the beauty of life - we're here to experience its full palette. Seeking some healthy way of breathing is utopian, it will only lead to stagnation. We must not go in one direction. Instead we should live on the border between health and disease because this is what makes life interesting."
I guess the metaphor is clear. This may sound as a strange thing to say but in certain sense Nature is weaning us and we're becoming more and more responsible for the rhythmic time-flow of consciousness. We must move our thoughts, feelings and actions along the streams of time with our own spiritual forces. Why? Nature wants us to be free. And to be free it means that we must be creatively responsible for more and more of reality, instead of being forced to flow along predefined currents. This also means that we must understand the ways in which we must conduct our activity because when we take control of it it can make the difference between life and death. While Nature is in control everything is wisely ordered but when we take things into our own hands we have the creative freedom to destroy ourselves. These archetypal processes and are transparent for those who know how to read the script of living Nature. It's the same thing as the child growing into an adult. More and more of the things it received ready-made - food, shelter, care - become his own creative responsibility. This is the same pattern on all levels. Beings awaken in the maternal embrace of Nature and gradually turn their being inside-out such that they become the fully conscious Spirit of Nature
for other beings. For example, what we today see as life, most clearly exemplified in the plant-world, is the expression of consciousness which at some point has grown as we grow today but has evolved to such a degree, that it has taken upon itself such degrees of freedom, that these beings
are now the forces of life in Nature. The fully conscious spiritual activity of these beings is the maternal womb of life
for us.
This is the general way everything evolves. And here's the critical point for humanity today. Certain forces of Nature which have been thus far lovingly carrying us, are gradually pulling away. Without noticing it, more and more forces that support the proper flow of our life, our feelings, our thoughts, are receding and we must more and more take their function through our own forces. This is growing up, this is evolving, this is becoming a free being.
Seen in this way, the quest for perfection is not to stagnate in perfect symmetry. It's the creative endeavor to find those rhythms, those patterns which are compatible with and promote life and consciousness.
I hope I was able to convey this idea sufficiently. Please stop for a moment and think about it. It's not something that will be found in ancient religious texts, nor in modern Darwinian theories. Effectively it means the following: we imagine that the great oceanic current knows its job, it carries us along, we're only to explore the small eddies. And up to a certain stage this is so but these currents form a fractal hierarchy and layer by layer these currents - from the closest to us, towards the grander - are weaning us. And this is the only logical thing to do. The One Consciousness that awakens in each one of us wants to know itself in fullness. It makes no sense to remain eternally maternally carried by other aspects of itself. Instead, the small perspectives must take more and more of the functions of what has been hitherto performed by Nature. Only in this way they can be free, they can become the creative perspectives of Nature.
So what does this mean all in all? That we must make very crucial discernment today. We must realize that more and more of the chaos that we witness today is
not because this is what MAL wanted to experience but because more and more forces of Nature have withdrawn and were left to the responsibility of men,
even thought they don't know it. This in itself shows how important it is to become fully conscious of the degrees of freedom that have been bestowed on us and seek the wisdom how to employ them in the most life and consciousness promoting way (assuming that we're interested in healthy life and free and expansive consciousness). If we don't recognize the signs of the times, if we can't use our common sense to understand what is going on, we'll be in a position of a child from which very gradually, imperceptibly, the mother's breast is being withdrawn, the shelter taken for granted is withdrawn and so on. The child begins to experience misfortunes and wonders why. It can say "Maybe my Father made me so that I should experience all this". Or it can realize that certain things that it took for granted are no longer so, and it must begin to study, to educate itself, to develop skills, such that it can find the ways to do what external forces have hitherto done for it, and even more.