@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2761684730989137546.post-21411299998257131692013-04-29T12:37:54.104-04:002013-04-29T12:37:54.104-04:00continuation To reach out towards infinite consci...continuation<br /><br />To reach out towards infinite consciousness the infinite unconsciousness first has to fathom its own depths. It must experience itself first as infinitely finite, and gradually evolve into limited and limiting consciousness. With the evolution of the limited and limiting consciousness, there is also the evolution of the illusion which limits this limiting consciousness. The two processes keep pace with each other.<br /><br />When the infinite unconsciousness tries to reach out to the infinite consciousness, the process is not instantaneous because of the infinite disparity between the two. The process takes an infinitely long time and eternity gets seemingly broken into the unending past, the transient present and the uncertain future. Instead of embracing the infinite consciousness in one timeless act the infinite unconsciousness reaches out towards it through a long-drawn-out temporal process of evolution, with all of its innumerable steps. It first attempts to fathom its own depths, then by backward treads it seeks and ultimately finds the infinite consciousness through numberless steps, thus fulfilling the whim from the Beyond. <br /><br />Meher Baba<br /><a href="" rel="nofollow">Beams from Meher Baba on the Spiritual Panorama</a>, 1958, p. 7-11Tom Hickey is Meher Baba's explanation: Through the...Here is Meher Baba's explanation:<br /><br />Through the ages, the human mind has been profoundly restless in its search for final explanations for first things. The history of these endeavors to grasp first things through the intellect is a tale of recurrent failures. The redeeming feature of these great efforts is that instead of being disheartened by the confessed failures of past thinkers, others are inspired to make fresh attempts. All these philosophical explanations are creations of the mind that has never succeeded in passing beyond itself. Thus they are confessed though inspiring failures; nonetheless each such failure is a partial contribution to knowledge of the Beyond. Only those who have gone beyond the mind know the Truth in its reality. If they sometimes explain what they know, which they rarely do, those explanations also being in words are limited but these words illumine the mind; they do not fill it with novel ideas.<br /><br />The unitarian Beyond is an indivisible and indescribable infinity. It seeks to know itself. It is of no use to ask why it does so. To attempt to give a reason for this is to be involved in further questions and thus to start an unending chain of reasons for reasons, reasons for these reasons and so on ad infinitum.. "When" implies a time series with past, present and future. All these are absent in the eternal Beyond. So let us call this initial urge to know a "whim". You may call this an explanation if you like or you may call it an affirmation of its inherent inexplicability.<br /><br />The initial whim is completely independent of reason, intellect, or imagination, all of which are by-products of this whim. Reason, intellect and imagination depend upon the initial whim and not vice versa. Because the whim is not dependent upon reason, intellect or imagination, it can neither be understood nor interpreted in terms of any of these faculties of the limited mind.<br /><br />The first whim to know instantaneously implies a duality, an apparent differentiation (not amounting to a breaking up) into two separate aspects, both of which are infinite as aspects of the Infinite. The first aspect is that of infinite consciousness and the second aspect is that of infinite unconsciousness. The duality strives to overcome itself and to restore the apparently lost unity: The infinite unconsciousness tries to unite with infinite consciousness. Both aspects are precipitated by the whim. This whim of the Infinite is in a way comparable to an infinite question, calling forth an infinite answer.<br /><br />With the infinite question, there arises also the infinite answer. The infinite question is infinite unconsciousness; the infinite answer is infinite consciousness. But the infinite question and the infinite answer do not simply annul each other and relapse into the original unity of the Beyond. The two aspects have now descended into the primal duality which can resolve itself only by fulfilling the entire game of duality and not by any shortcut. The infinite unconsciousness cannot overlap on infinite consciousness; such coalescence is impossible.<br /><br />continuedTom Hickey: There's another fascinating Rig Veda qu...Roger: <i>There's another fascinating Rig Veda quote, don't know the exact reference, so have to paraphrase it.<br /><br />"The answer only the gods can tell, IF EVEN THEY KNOW."</i><br /><br />It's Rig Veda 10: 129. Here are two translations.<br /><br />Then even nothingness was not, nor existence.<br />There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it.<br />What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping?<br />Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed?<br />Then there was neither death nor immortality,<br />nor was there then the touch of night and day.<br />The One breathed windlessly and self-sustaining.<br />There was that One then, and there was no other.<br />In the beginning desire descended upon it --<br />that was the primal seed, born of the mind.<br />The sages who have searched their hearts with wisdom<br />know that which is kin to that which is not.<br />But, after all, who knows, and who can say<br />whence it all came, and how creation happened?<br />The gods themselves are later than creation,<br />so who knows truely whence it has arisen?<br />Whence all creating had its origin,<br />he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,<br />he who surveys it all from highest heaven,<br />he knows -- or maybe even he does not know.<br /><br />Rig Veda, X:129<br /><a href="" rel="nofollow">nāsadīya sūkta</a><br /><br />HYMN CXXIX. Creation.<br />1. THEN was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?<br /> 2 Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider. That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.<br /> 3 Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos. All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit. <br />4 Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit. Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.<br /> 5 Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it? There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder<br /> 6 Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation? The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?<br /> 7 He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it, Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.<br /><br /><a href="" rel="nofollow">Rig Veda, tr. by Ralph T.H. Griffith, [1896], at sacred-texts.com</a>Tom Hickey "takeover" cycle is inherent in all...The "takeover" cycle is inherent in all growing systems. How tolerance limits are or aren't eventually set is where rubber meets the road.<br /><br />Lacking feedback, MOST growing systems consume their essential counterparts - and don't survive.<br /><br />Thee theory of Evolution postulates that those species that DO evolve into something else, are the few who happened to stumble into patterns of feedback-response that DO allow even more capable systems to emerge. Takes a LOT of trial & error pattern matching. Basically, which impossibly complex Rube Goldberg machine can scale up to even bigger heights? Answer: the one that can. There's no architect, only massively parallel trials - all but a few of which fail.<br /><br />We call it sexual/cultural/option-RECOMBINATION. If you look close, there are amazing mechanisms in every system, dedicated to nothing more than early auto-destruct as soon as signs are DETECTED that the latest recombinant form won't work.<br /><br />What constitutes detection? That's a very messy process too. Not all firms forced into bankruptcy, for example, should be liquidated. Nor should all rescued orgs be the ones saved. It's always messy. No one ever said it's easy, or should be.<br /><br />The self-consuming observation is as old as tribal societies themselves. It's also written into some of Aesop's Fables - e.g., the one about the belly,