Than you, David, for the quotes!
Lou Gold wrote: ↑Mon Feb 15, 2021 6:51 pm
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says the mischief begins with the thoughts of 'me' and 'mine'. I agree.
In instinctive life there is cooperation as well as competition and the emerging scientific thinking is that mutuality is actually more critical for survival. What does seem to change is not morality as much as the context of action, moving from a narrow niche to a planet. This is an ecological shift. Errors that once were quite permissible at small scale become ecocidal at another scale.
Things seem to get really mixed up here. I don't think there are many people in this forum that don't see the ecological problems. Things like animal agriculture, overfishing, deforestation, etc. all contribute to the ecological crisis. I don't think anyone here would deny this and would suggest that man should continue on his path of self-seeking exploitation.
What we are here discussing is of different character. It is about what's the solution of the problem. Your citation of Krishna is slightly out of context. The trouble is not that we can say "I" but when our "I" seeks the satisfaction of its desires at expense of others. To suggest that self-consciousness must be abolished is a naïve solution to the problem. It's like saying "Man can't handle his 'I' so it's in the best interest of all life that this 'I' be taken away". If this is the philosophy we might as well quote Stalin instead of Krishna: Есть человек - есть проблема. Нет человека - нет проблемы (There's a man - there's a problem. There's no man - there's no problem). This would be the best solution, wouldn't it? If only man could disappear from Earth, all remaining life would be completely instinctive, under the will of Nature.
The bias that you project on me is actually motivated by your disbelief that the "I" of man can be ennobled and become a conductor of Divine Life. In your view the "I" emerges as an individual texture on the surface of total life. But deeper penetration into the nature of the "I" reveals it to be more of
portal. Think of the narrowest part of a hourglass. That's the pinhole of the "I", through which the Higher Nature of man gradually flows into the Lower Nature. Obviously this process has not even remotely began in the vast part of humanity. But the fact that we are speaking of these things in a place like this, shows that there are people ripe enough to at least think about such a possibility.
What I'm trying to suggest here is that if men simply revert to their primitive instincts things wouldn't go for the better. Then people will simply die in tribal wars but at least you'll be happy that it's Nature's will and man is not doing anything "wrong". Instead of dissolving the "I" in the instinctive whole, the "I" can be ennobled and inspired by its Divine Nature.
Then we again reach wholeness. Something that has always been called
brotherhood of men. Not an instinctive swarm of dreaming animals but society of free individual beings, living in expanded awareness towards the higher worlds, striving to express their highest ideals and contributing to the whole out of Love.
Instead of the picture of the "I" as a transient individual texture on the total surface of life, I can suggest another picture:
A torus turning within itself. A symbol for meditation. Of course, it should not be taken too literally and too far. It can't represent all important aspects of reality but nevertheless, it hints at an idea. Think of the middle part as the narrow part of the hourglass, the "I" experience. Divine Life is constantly flowing through it and becomes perceptible below. That's how Nature gradually comes to know herself - by constantly transcending her own forms and encompassing them in higher stages of consciousness.
