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Dethroning the Gods of the Religions Copyright © 2001, Estefan Lambert. All Rights Reserved. When the body-mind is indivisibly unified in consciousness man is continuous with the universe of life forces. The threads of unity, the lines of force that connect the body-mind to the cosmos and to the universal are in that case open and full. Their sundering coincides with the collapse and inversion of the body upon itself in self-protection. These lines of force are precisely the nadis of the yogic tradition, the hitas of the Upanishads, the jing luo (meridians) of the Chinese tradition and the varmas of the Siddhanta tradition of South India. They are the threads of force by which the universe is integrated; they constitute the web of life, the circuits of the life-force or of the current of manifestation. These threads are integrated and synthesized in the body-mind by means of its psycho-cosmic axis which we have termed the sushumna. The sushumna is the living prolongation of the axis mundi in function of which the body-mind inheres in the universal matrix, in the web of universal force (shakti) on which the world lives. Severed from the cosmos and from consciousness itself - for it is by consciousness alone that man realizes direct, unmediated participation in reality - man perforce falls out of the universal and out of reality and into the folds of the collective mind where it finds security, meaning, direction and the means of its survival as a separated organism. The mass mind is unconscious, for the forces which govern and condition it rule it through the subconscious. On the basis of the prior detachment of the individual from the universe he or she becomes entirely susceptible to authoritarian repression and control. This detachment from reality or the loss of the sovereign consciousness of universal man marks precisely the passage from consciousness to unconsciousness, from the individual to the herd and the creation of a subconscious psychic domain which henceforth becomes the de facto controller of the now superficial conscious mind of the waking state. The mass mind operates precisely in virtue of the ascendancy of the subconscious as the new seat of psychic functioning. The
term reality is synonymous with the term being or existence.
Metaphysically, we could say that only existence exists and there
is no alternative to it, regardless of whether someone perceives it
or not. This also means that existence is both undifferentiated (yet
paradoxically comprised of distinction) and unlimited (yet paradoxically
comprised of limits) since it must exist in every point of space-time
and there could be no gaps, no emptinesses and no nothings where it
is not. Therefore existence is not in space-time, rather space-time
is in existence [1]. From
a different point of view we could say that reality is life itself,
and by this we mean the life-force (shakti) of existence manifesting
as all forms and beings. The uncaused, self-originated life-force is
undifferentiated (although, paradoxically, it is all-possibility) since
its transmission requires a universal connective medium. Just as electrical
conduction requires both a conductive medium (such as copper) as well
as a continuous closed circuit, similarly participation in real life
means that the individual being must break out of its defended self-bubble
and enter the universal circuits of the life-force, that is, the being
must become unobstructed and conductive. The
separation of the body-mind from the universe and from consciousness
and its retreat into narcissistic self-enclosure has given rise to the
corruption of the cognitive process and of the capacity to existentially
participate in real life.
Man projects his separated condition onto the universe on which, therefore,
he projects an external causality, namely, a separated or external Creator
God or some other cosmological singularity such as a “Big Bang”
prior to and independent of space-time. Because he finds himself psychologically
outside the universe and separated from life in function of the sundering
of the lines of universal integration - the nadis, hitas,
and so forth - this permits him the illusion that he can locate his
awareness outside the universe or that there is, or can be, such a point
of view. In reality there is no outside the universe, there is no outside
of existence except nonexistence which precisely is nothing. Any point
“outside” the total universe would either be nowhere and nothing
or else it must be part of existence. Hence there is no universal causality;
there is no agency external to existence which causes it. Existence
always exists. This is precisely why such questions as “is the universe finite or infinite” or “what caused the universe” are false and cannot be answered because the point of view from which such questions arise does not really exist and is unattainable. It presumes that consciousness can take up a position outside existence as such in order to observe it - and that the totality of existence can be an object to it - which is impossible on pain of immediate self-negation. Therefore the universe perceived by this separate mode of awareness in a certain sense does not exist in the form in which it is perceived and therefore a science or a theology which attempts to do so starts from a cognitive position that is already false. From
the standpoint of consciousness itself, truly realized, the universe
appears altogether differently from that projected by the religions
or even by modern astrophysics. Existence is an infinite potentiality
or a potential infinity which has no opposite, no contrast, no outside
and no inside [2]. In that case
reality is recognized as nondependent and unoriginated; it has no external
cause; it simply exists in uncaused ecstasy. Once the separated body-mind
coalesces or merges into the aggregate of the collective psyche it projects
a causality external to itself and thereby lays down the conditions
for control by external authoritarian agencies. Although
a full treatment of the subject is outside the scope of this essay,
we should note in passing the significant fact that both modern science
and the religions adopt an authoritarian point of view when they speak
of Nature obeying immutable laws, or laws laid down by a Creator God.
In reality the universe is not functioning in passive abeyance to any
laws; all existents are functioning according to their specific nature
and are not simply submitted to an external determination. To deny this
is to admit that reality is a nothing and has no inherent identity and
that the qualities and behavior exhibited by phenomena are the result
of the imposition of an exogenous force or will which, in either case,
amounts to reduction to the arbitrary. A true understanding of the universe
cannot with impunity bypass the process of realizing the central position
of consciousness itself in which cognitive distortions resulting from
the superimposition of the separative point of view on reality are resolve
[ 3]. |
