lorenzop wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2024 2:25 am
If I grasp what you suggesting: 1) Reality is structured in layers, from a more gross and crude layer (Earthly existence?) to increasing celestial and sublime layers. Perhaps Reality isn't literally structured in layers or levels - but it has a certain explanatory benefit to think of Reality this way. I agree with this.
The second point you're making is that the 2) the path to Cosmic Consciousness, fully living and understanding Reality, is using intuition\will, to understand and appreciate the increasingly sublime and Divine layers, ultimately inclusive of Cosmic Consciousness Itself.
Using your diagram, (I think) you are proposing an ever increasing circle of appreciation and influence, encompassing all finite alters and sublime regions - until Cosmic Consciousness Itself is known.
Teachers such as Rupert Spira, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Ramana Maharishi take a different approach than you 2)
Cosmic Consciousness is to be appreciated, known and lived FIRST, then continuing subtle and finer aspects of Reality as it suits one's personality and interests. In the spirit of that old saying: Capture the fort and the territories will follow.
There multiple reasons for this direct approach. One, the layers\segments of Reality are non ending . . . there will always be another layer of celestial awesomeness, always be more 'stuff'.
Secondly, Cosmic Consciousness FIRST is easier because it's our nature . . . it's who we are. There is nothing to be understood, learned or acquired.
OK, Lorenzo. Even your choice of words ("appreciation") shows that you look upon the sublime layers of CC as something extraneous and quite optional. One may appreciate these layers but may also not - it doesn't matter, nothing will change for the limited perspective of CC that does or doesn't appreciate
its own higher nature.
It's all so simple. Imagine this vividly. Coming to know our Self feels as if we have been so far enmeshed in a web of entanglement. Our attention has been drawn by the thousand things. Desires ruled the direction of our existential movie. From your experience you very well know that we can differentiate our Self from this elastic web and know ourselves at a more fundamental and freer level. For a moniker let's use the term enlightened self for this state.
All this you understand very well. But then something very peculiar happens. We speak of even deeper layers of enmeshment and now suddenly you see these as
already externalized - even though there's no consciousness of them. You see yourself
already at the core of existence and basically say "Even if some day consciousness of the deeper layers develops, it won't in any way change the way I feel about who I am. Whether I know these layers or not is irrelevant. Once I have found this sense of what I am, it will remain the same forever and ever. All else can simply embellish the state with external details."
But this is absurd! It would be the same as if the ordinary unenlightened ego (which is still a perspective of CC, however, very constrained and unfree) was to say "I hear that you speak of some enlightened state but that's quite optional. In my chaotic, tossed-by-desires egoic state I am already a viewpoint of CC, so I am already what I am. Even if I approach the enlightened state that you talk about, this will simply reveal some additional layers of awesomeness but my life will remain completely untouched by this. I'll still be tossed by my desires, my mind will still jump erratically. This is my true self and I like it."
From your perspective you should clearly see the fallacy of this argument. It simply makes no sense. To approach the enlightened state is precisely the liberation of the inner being from the enmeshment of desires and chaotic mental forces. It is a misunderstanding to say "Yeah, I see the layers of the enlightened state, I appreciate them, but I'm still tossed by desires." It's obvious that this ego doesn't see what you are talking about. These layers are seen only when we become liberated from them, when we feel them as
sheaths of our inner core.
By using this simple analogy we can very well understand how things stand regarding the even deeper Cosmic layers of the Self. We only need the
humility to realize that even though our enlightened self is somewhat purified and elevated, it is still enmeshed in a
mystery. To claim that in this state we already know our true nature, who we are, is the
exact same fallacy, as the ordinary ego claiming it knows its true nature.
In both cases, the canary in the coal mine is the fact that there's
resistance for change. This is the hallmark of a stagnated state of CC. CC squeezed in the state of an ordinary ego feels attached to its situation. Maybe not because it likes it so much but because it is crushed in that position. However, the resistance for change becomes glaringly obvious when that egoic state of CC declares that it already knows itself and there's nothing else to know or learn. The deeper enlightened layers may exist but they are expected as some additional perceptions, sensations, etc. It is implicitly maintained that existence will always feel like it feels in the egoic state - as a flow of perceptions, being thrown around by desires, and flooded by chaotic thoughts.
By analogy, we have the same situation for the CC that now considers itself enlightened. The resistance for change is still there. CC's perspective has simply moved a notch deeper but now acts in precisely the same stubborn way as in the unenlightened state. It once again believes that it already knows itself in full. It believes that even if perceptions of the Cosmic layers pop up in consciousness, this will in no way change how CC feels itself, how it experiences existence, and so on.
The solution to this stagnation is obvious. We should simply realize that no matter how enlightened we are, our present state is enmeshed in still deeper layers. This leads to the idea of the Higher Self. We continually become that Self by
sacrificing our enmeshments. At any stage there's more to dismantle and thus the Self can resurrect at a higher stage. And this resurrection is not simply embellishing with more awesomeness our forever immutable sense of who we are but the sense of who we are changes - we change, our understanding of what we are and what existence is changes. Now the Self knows itself at an even truer level. Thus it is a sign of stagnation when CC claims that there's nothing more to know than what it already knows in its limited situation (even if enlightened). We understand that our evolutionary journey consists of knowing the Self at ever truer and deeper levels, transcending the merely personal.
