What if Jesus and the Buddha–the two I think of when I think deep spirituality–were really just apprentice spirits? What if the Earth is a primitive spiritual backwater where souls learning the craft of ministry, of teaching, come for their first practical experience? What if all Jesus and Buddha did was communicate what is obvious to all spirits even slightly more advanced than us? What if they only seemed advanced and infinitely higher on the qualitative horizon because they were, but only relative to us?
What if you have to save a planet to get your first spiritual “promotion”? What if you have to save 30 for your second, a galaxy for your third, and 30 galaxies for your fourth? What if there are a hundred promotions?
It is worth doing thought exercises both in the very large and the very small.
An image that came to me the other day is that of our own world as a sort of fountain, where virtue flows up and down, in roughly the same way, but constantly changing. How high does the water surge in a fountain? 10′, plus or minus 2′? That is history. That is cultural highs and lows.
What if this level of the universe has always been like this, and is destined always to be like this? What if you can’t alter the role this level of reality must play in the grand scheme of things? What if Lao Tzu’s essential pessimism about any final, lasting improvements is the wisest stance?
Last night I dreamed I was trying to protect a parade from a group of demons. In my dream, I had done this exercise many times before, and always won. I had a number of compatriots. But I was overconfident, poorly armed, and we were overwhelmed. I was immune, but many were taken.
And I was led in my dream to a stand where people were supposed to come to be saved, but were instead turned into zombies. I tried to fight them, but I was powerless to stop them. Then I was flying, and I could see an ocean of souls moving about like the zombies in World War Z. Trillions of them, oceans of them, climbing on one another, forming planet-sized waves, in constant motion, constant agitation.
Then I came back to the stand, and saw a computer and realized there was a second layer to these people, and that behind all of them was a Buddha spirit. The way to save them was by clicking on the Buddha icon. I “activated” 6 and then woke up.
In recent days I have been more or less offering myself to Death. This has many symbolic resonances, and I do not want to kill it with overanalysis, but will make a few comments.
First, this is not morose in the slightest. It seems to be eroding a standing fear I have had, and is actually making me calmer and more relaxed. I am smiling more.
Second, we assume that the “good guys” always have to win, and I reached a point some time ago where I never have uncontrolled darkness in my dreams. I control things. I can create weapons, fly, walk through walls, float through ceilings, exist underwater, etc. But is this most wise? Behind the darkness of what we might even call the Satanic, there is rebirth.
I am constricted in my emotional and perceptual movement. I am not fully free. And think about this: if being who you are is sanity, then changing who you are qualitatively–even choosing not to be who you are, but no one else either–is a type of madness.
If I am always me, I am limited to being me. I cannot as easily, figuratively, float in the clouds and flow in the streams, and find comfort deep underground. I am not fire and wind. I am not the rustling of leaves, the cackling of hens, or young deer looking for tender young greens.
To do these things, I must leave myself, and as already posited, not being yourself is a type of madness.
In Sanskrit they speak of the ego as the “I Maker”. It forms the I, but the point I want to make is that this construction process is continuous. It never stops. You are being built at the same time you are breaking down.
Who are you when you are lost completely in a beautiful scene? Who are you when you are so lost in a lover you lose track of time and reason? Who are you in a meditation so deep you lose consciousness of your body? You are what underlies the work of the “I-Maker” (ahamkara). You are something else, which may as well be called “that” (and of course has been).
Here is the point I draw, here: ONLY when you are helping someone realize their inner Buddha spirit are you helping them, truly. Nothing else matters. Anything else, and you are simply lost in an endless ocean of motion, without mind, without meaning. Samsara CONSISTS in getting hungry, sick, old, and dying. This is nothing new.