ORIGIN OF CREATION

Here is a fascinating early speculation found in the 129th hymn of the 10th book of the Rig-Veda:

Then there was neither being nor non-being:
There was no air, nor firmament beyond it.
Was there a stirring?  Where?  Beneath what cover?
Was there a great abyss of unplumbed water?

There was no death nor anything immortal;
Nor any sign dividing day from night.
That One Thing, given no breath, was yet self-breathing;
No second thing existed whatsoever.

Darkness was hidden in a deeper darkness;
This All was as a sea without dimensions;
The void still held unformed what was potential,
Until the power of Warmth produced the sole One...

Who truly knows, and who can here declare it,
Whence it was born, and how this world was fashioned?
The gods came later than the earth's creation.
Who knows then out of what the world has issued?

Whether the world was made or whether self-made,
He knows with full assurance, he alone,
Who in the highest heaven guards and watches;
He knows indeed, but then, perhaps, he knows not.

GUARANTEED "HIGH"

Everyone likes to feel "high," and the higher the high the better.  This may be in the form of praise for something we've done, like volunteering at a hospital, or may be in the form of an accomplishment on the job, some astute analysis, resulting in a pay raise for us, or may be in the form of applause for a performance of ours on stage.

There are highs when we get married and raise a family, when all is going well.

But then, of course, there are also highs that are chemically-induced, artificial highs from alcohol and/or drugs, that last only as long as our bodies can tolerate them. 

But such earthly pleasures are not satisfying in the end if only because they are time bound, transient, and fleeting, in the same way that we ourselves are time bound, transient, and fleeting.  When everything is a moving target like this, how can we expect anything good to come of it?

Yet we persist.  We look around us and say, what is everyone else doing to where they seem so happy, so, well, high, and we're not?  Surely what they are doing will turn the tide, will do the trick, and we'll be really, really happy.  So, we buy new clothes by the closetful, buy new music by the cabinetful, buy new cars by the garageful, and become friends with new people by the roomful.

Still, alas, all of it is for naught, for there is only one guaranteed high, and that comes from what is permanent, abiding, and steadfast, and we all know in our heart of hearts in whom those qualities are found.

LIFE'S PURPOSE

People say that they feel empty, that they don't feel that they have a purpose in life.  What's ironic about this is that life itself has a purpose, quite apart from any purpose that we feel we may or may not have relatively. 

Life's purpose, from the tiniest microbe to the loftiest human, or other, mind, is the realization of God.  Everything is oriented toward this one goal.  It may take lifetimes to achieve it, but it's certain to happen.  It's what's meant to happen.

MEANING OF "LOST": A SHORT STORY

A writer friend sent him a tweet welcoming him back to his blog and asking why he had quit it four weeks earlier.  He thanked him, and then said he stopped the blog because after three and a half years and 421 postings he was burnt out on it, which was not true, but as the full story would not fit into 140 characters, he left it at that.  He did manage, though, before his characters ran out, to say that he felt lost.

But what exactly did he mean when he said he felt lost?  Half of him was dead, was what he meant.  His attunement, his sense of God's presence, remained in tact, but it was stunted now, not fully there, not complete.  And no books, no movies, not fancy meals, no elaborate workouts, not even his many friends were an adequate substitute for what he'd lost.

What he learned from this is that vigilance, ceaseless attention to every detail on one's spiritual path was imperative for the aspirant.  The Atman, in his case, was the detail that he did not account for throughout the month, last month.  He had become complacent, was taking the Atman, his Chosen Ideal, for granted, forgetting the years that it took him to make this connection.  We lost things despite ourselves sometimes, he learned, and it was only by grace that we got it back, he also learned.

YOGA OF THIS THING

When referring to the Brahman, some of us use the expression "This," or "Whatever this is," which brings to mind Gerald Heard's term "This thing."

In his book My Guru and His Disciple, Christopher Isherwood talks about his friend, the author and lecturer Gerald Heard.  Heard, leading up to his association with Vedanta, referred to what he called "this thing," which he spent three two-hour meditation sessions per day trying to contact.  Heard's natural fastidiousness, as Isherwood put it, prevented him from calling it "God," for to say that he was looking for God would have sounded pretentious. 

Leaving aside its existence or non-existence, "this thing," according to Isherwood, was quite the opposite to his, Isherwood's, "God."  True, "this thing" was by definition everywhere, and therefore also up in the sky, where traditionally such phenomena were believed to exist, but it was first to be looked for inside oneself.  It wasn't to be thought of as a Boss to be obeyed but as a nature to be known.  It was an extension of a person's own nature, with which one could become consciously united. 

The word "yoga" in Sanskrit is related to the word "yoke" in English, meaning union, that is, in this instance, union with the eternal omnipresent nature, or Nature, of which everyone and everything is a part.  This was mysticism in so many words and ultimately what Heard's "this thing" was all about.

REVELATION: A SHORT STORY

He knew what happened now.  His blog came to an abrupt halt because suddenly something had changed in him, which he interpreted as the "dark night of the soul."  God had abandoned him, was how it felt, although he still seemed to have a sense of God's presence, but something of equal weight as God was missing.  Finally, in meditation, it dawned on him what had happened.

His spiritual inspiration and passion he attributed to the Atman.  The Atman, in Vedanta, is the personal aspect and experience of the Brahman.  But alas more recently he had been neglecting it, referring instead to what he had come to call simply "This" or "Whatever this is," by which he meant the Brahman.

The Atman, all the while, is a category of the Chosen Ideal, so-named.  It is an intermediary between a person and the ultimate, God.  Depending on one's background and culture, this Chosen Ideal may be Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Ramakrishna, or any number of other beings, usually perceived as avatars.  The Chosen Ideal is an aid, a way to experience "a personal relationship with God," and it works, he had found.  He knew now that it works, for certain, because he returned to the Atman and it made all the difference in the world.

Alas, then, God did not leave him, but he left God, as the Atman, and he paid the price for it.

SPIRITUAL SINKHOLE: A SHORT STORY

The bottom fell out from under him.  At first he thought he was in the "dark night of the soul," but then, more hopefully, that he was in the Zen state of enlightenment, liberation.

The sudden "pop" like the bursting of a balloon made it feel like enlightenment, and indeed he assumed the Zen way of life right after, the way of no-mind or beginner's mind, where he walked when he felt like walking, ate when he was hungry, and slept when he was sleepy.  He felt free.  This was all well and good except for one thing:  God was not part of it.

He reminded himself that Buddhism is atheistic, or at least that God, if He exists, is not the point in Buddhism.  Yet God was the whole point with him, and his current feeling, whatever it was that happened to him, was the biggest of all points.

So it was back to the sinkhole where he was buried alive.  One thought, though, by God's grace, saved him.  A person gets into trouble when he perceives God as separate from himself, rather than part of himself.  It is the difference between Christianity and Advaita Vedanta, between dualism and nondualism. Vedanta teaches that never for one instant is God not with you, because the Atman in you is God. Any feeling of abandonment one has is imaginary, not the fact of it.

At the top of the sinkhole there was light all of a sudden, there was a way out.

EXPLANATION: A SHORT STORY

St. John of the Cross' poem "Dark Night of the Soul" is about the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God.

More specifically, it refers to the period of spiritual dearth that sometimes follows a period of exaltation. The Dark Night of the Soul can be brief or can last for many years. Mother Teresa was said to suffer from it for 45 years.

In this state, a person feels abandoned by God, even though he has been steadfast in his spiritual practice. He has done everything today that he did yesterday, but now there is nothing. And it feels like there will be nothing for the rest of his life, leaving him in deep despair.

His blog came to a screeching halt, not because of something he decided or because of something it decided, but because of something God decided.  So it felt to him.