Hans
10-28-2002, 05:46 PM
Beyond Padgett
4. Encrustments and attachments
“You are made in the image of what you desire. To unify your life unify your desires. To spiritualize your life, spiritualize your desires. To spiritualize your desires, desire to be without desire.
The most dangerous spiritual violence is that which carries our will away with a false enthusiasm which seems to come from God but which is in reality inspired by passion.
Many of our most cherished plans for the glory of God are only inordinate passion in disguise. And the proof of this is found in the excitement which they produce.”
(Thomas Merton: Thoughts in solitude)
We know that Eastern religions preach detachment from the material world as the way to God – or realization. In some way, we can find similar thoughts in the New Testament. Jesus himself was wholly detached from the material world, as the following examples prove:
While he (Jesus) was still talking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers happened to be standing outside wanting to speak to him. Somebody said to him, “Look, your mother and your brothers are outside wanting to speak to you.”
But Jesus replied to the man who had told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?”; then with a gesture of his hand towards his disciples he went on, “There are my mothers and brothers! For whoever does the will of my Heavenly Father is brother and sister and mother to me.”
[Matthew 12:46-47]
When Jesus had seen the great crowds around him he gave orders to cross over to the other side of the lake. But before they started, one of the scribes came up to Jesus and said to him, “Master, I will follow you wherever you go.”
“Foxes have burrows, birds in the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere that he can call his own,” replied Jesus.
Another of his disciples said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.”
But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.”
[Matthew 8:18-22]
Of course, a fully transformed soul, where the material mind (and its desires) have disappeared, cannot entertain material attachments.
One Sanskrit word which sometimes is misunderstood, is “maya”. It does not necessarily mean that our material world is all illusory, that it is nothing but “God’s Dream.”
A Hindu lexicon defines:
Maya (Sanskrit): From the verb root ma, “to measure, to limit, give form.” The principle of appearance or manifestation of God’s power or “mirific energy,” “that which measures.” The substance emanated from Siva through which the world of form is manifested. Hence all creation is also termed maya. It is the cosmic creative force, the principle of manifestation, ever in the process of creation, preservation and dissolution. The Upanishads underscore maya’s captivating nature, which blinds souls to the transcendent Truth. In Shankara’s Vedantic interpretation, maya is taken as pure illusion or unreality. In Saivism it is one of the three bonds (pasha) that limit the soul and thereby facilitate its evolution. For Saivites and most other nondualists, it is understood not as illusion but as relative reality, in contrast to the unchanging Absolute Reality.
The nature of maya as “attachment” to the material is illustrated by the following legend:
Another born sage who left home at an early age was Sukdeva. He was only six at that time, but wanted to go in search of his guru. Byasa, his father, was the author of the Bhagavad Gita. He was fully qualified to be the guru himself. But Sukdeva could see that he had a little attachment to him, as his son. As the boy was leaving, Byasa followed him, pleading with him to seek God at home.
“Keep away from me,” the boy said. “You have maya.”
Byasa then sent him to the royal sage, King Janaka, for training.
In a previous article, I have quoted Yogananda, when he explained the nature of Satan. Both Satan and maya are the expression of delusion, leading us astray in the pursuit of things which will never fulfill us. I remembered the following passage from the Bible:
From that time onwards Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he would have to go to Jerusalem, and endure much suffering from the elders, chief priests and scribes, and finally be killed; and be raised to life again on the third day.
Then Peter took him on one side and started to remonstrate with him over this. “God bless you, Master! Nothing like this must happen to you!”
Then Jesus turned round and said to Peter, “Out of my way, Satan! …you stand right in my path, Peter, when you think the thoughts of man and not those of God.”
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wants to follow in my footsteps he must give up all right to himself, take up his cross and follow me.
For the man who wants to save his life will lose it; but the man who loses his life for my sake will find it.
For what good is it for a man to gain the whole world at the price of his real life? What could a man offer to buy back that life once he has lost it?
[Matthew 16:21-26]
Jesus had called Peter “Satan”, because of his attachment to the “person” Jesus and not to the “cause” Christ. Peter had expressed his ego-driven “love” for Jesus, possibly fearing future abandonment and persecution, forgetting the most basic teachings Jesus had imparted him.
And then, Jesus continued with a discourse on material detachment. Of course, this passage has been tampered with by later scribes. Nobody would have understood Jesus when saying “take up his cross.” But the spirit of Jesus’ words is still clearly discernible.
The sublimation of our desires, maya, or their redirection towards God, as the way to perfection has left many traces in Christian writings.
About the “Desert Father” Abba Isaiah, was stated:
... when someone asked him what avarice was, (he) replied, “Not to believe that God cares for you...”
“Let go” and “don’t try to be in control of everything” modern channelings would state.
And Teresa of Avila wrote:
So dead is our faith that we desire what we see more than what faith tells us about -- though what we actually see is that people who pursue these visible things meet with nothing but ill fortune.
(The Inner Castle, Second Mansion, Chapter 1, Paragraph 6)
And A. W. Tozer wrote:
There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets ‘things’ with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns ‘my’ and ‘mine’ look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do... The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.
Outside Christian literature, we find the following statements:
Sufiyan: This is my prayer: let God be satisfied with me.
Rabi’a: How dare you pray that -- when you are not satisfied with God?
(Quotation from Rabi’a al-Adawiyya)
Everything in this world -- like wealth, women, and clothes -- is sought because of something else, not in and for itself... All things form links in a chain {of seeking that leads} to God. It is He who is sought for His own sake and who is desired for Himself, not for any other reason. Since He is beyond everything and is nobler and more subtle than anything, why would He be sought for the sake of what is less than Him? Therefore it can be said that He is the ultimate. When one reaches Him, one has reached the final goal; there is no surpassing there.
(Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi)
Bound souls, worldly people, are like silkworms. The worms can cut through their cocoons if they want, but having woven the cocoons themselves, they are too much attached to them to leave them. And so they die there.
[Sri Ramakrishna]
But the most intriguing statement I have found, is maybe this one:
Even as vapours darken the air and allow not the bright sun to shine; or as a mirror that is clouded over cannot receive within itself a clear image; or as water defiled by mud reflects not the visage of one that looks therein; even so the soul that is clouded by the desires is darkened in the understanding and allows neither the sun of natural reason nor that of the supernatural Wisdom of God to shine upon it and illumine it clearly.
(St. John of the Cross: Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book 1, Chapter 8, Paragraph 1)
I felt vividly reminded of what Judas once had told me:
This is the pristine state of the soul, this total transparency, its entire surface like an interface to Divinity. Upon the soul’s incarnation, it receives the great gift of not only perceiving the Divinity that surrounds it, but of incorporating it, owning it, and then emitting the light that forms through the reaction of “fermentation,” caused by the incorporation of Divinity.
Unfortunately, with incarnation also come encrustments that cover the smooth surface, making it opaque, not transparent, that don’t allow the entrance of light. But always, even in the worst of cases, there is a small crack through which the soul may know that something more exists out there, something irradiating warmth, light, happiness, something that is worth yearning for, worth trying to obtain.
Incarnation and the formation of the spiritual body and its abilities, however, also implies the formation of the material mind which, fostered by the kind of education we receive, finally asserts itself, squashing and suffocating the soul and its innate longings.
The opening up of the soul is something active - once it is open, and once a small portion of Divine Love has entered, it is not enough to rest satisfied with the achievement. No, it is the permanent work of keeping open this divine interface, of entering in a continuous communication with Divinity, communication that is necessarily reflected in the person’s attitude and daily living. If we allow this portion of Divine Love that has entered us to become inactive, that is to say, if we don’t contribute in any way to stimulate the “fermentation of the batch of dough”, the surface of the soul will turn opaque, and the Divine Light cannot penetrate, as well, the feeble light inside us cannot shine forth, it will be invisible to the world, as if it did not exist.
[“The soul,” August 19th, 2001, H.R.]
Then, are our desires the so-called soul encrustments?
A material life, or let’s say, a “normal” life, without desires is impossible. Not all desires are sinful, most are not.
Is it necessary to suppress or “sublimate” all desires, to renounce sexuality, to eat unsavory food and not to desire a good, tasty chocolate bar? Reading the writings of the wise Indian men, one could come to that conclusion. But there is another example, Lahiri Mahasaya. He, living in Benares, had worked during decades for the British Army as an accountant and for a local railway company. He was married, had children. Nevertheless, he attained to the highest goal any religion can claim: At-onement with God. He is acclaimed as one of the greatest saints born in India.
Eastern masters hold that through their meditation practice they eventually lose their “ego” and all their attachments. They say so, they may even believe so, but I doubt it. How could they lose their own self?
Can you imagine a fully developed soul losing ego? Can you imagine Jesus without ego? No? Of course, he had (and still has) ego, and what an ego! Can you imagine him with egoism? No? This is what great masters lose, egotism and not ego. On the contrary, their ego even expands, filled with Divine consciousness, but it is still their ego.
Hence, it would be appropriate to say that soul encrustments are not composed of our desires, but of the thousand faces of our egoism.
And error? We have read that “sin and error” are the source of soul encrustments.
Well, I understand that the error referred to is not necessarily our false beliefs or ignorance. It is our clinging to such beliefs, our negative to open up to Truth, our saying “I cannot be wrong!” It is just another face of egoism.
This is the reason why Ramakrishna could state:
“The desire for bhakti cannot be called a desire. You may desire bhakti and pray for it.”
Bhakti is devotion or love for God. This desire does not spring from selfish motifs. To love God and to ask Him for His Love is to fulfill the Will of the Father.
To be continued…
4. Encrustments and attachments
“You are made in the image of what you desire. To unify your life unify your desires. To spiritualize your life, spiritualize your desires. To spiritualize your desires, desire to be without desire.
The most dangerous spiritual violence is that which carries our will away with a false enthusiasm which seems to come from God but which is in reality inspired by passion.
Many of our most cherished plans for the glory of God are only inordinate passion in disguise. And the proof of this is found in the excitement which they produce.”
(Thomas Merton: Thoughts in solitude)
We know that Eastern religions preach detachment from the material world as the way to God – or realization. In some way, we can find similar thoughts in the New Testament. Jesus himself was wholly detached from the material world, as the following examples prove:
While he (Jesus) was still talking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers happened to be standing outside wanting to speak to him. Somebody said to him, “Look, your mother and your brothers are outside wanting to speak to you.”
But Jesus replied to the man who had told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?”; then with a gesture of his hand towards his disciples he went on, “There are my mothers and brothers! For whoever does the will of my Heavenly Father is brother and sister and mother to me.”
[Matthew 12:46-47]
When Jesus had seen the great crowds around him he gave orders to cross over to the other side of the lake. But before they started, one of the scribes came up to Jesus and said to him, “Master, I will follow you wherever you go.”
“Foxes have burrows, birds in the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere that he can call his own,” replied Jesus.
Another of his disciples said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.”
But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.”
[Matthew 8:18-22]
Of course, a fully transformed soul, where the material mind (and its desires) have disappeared, cannot entertain material attachments.
One Sanskrit word which sometimes is misunderstood, is “maya”. It does not necessarily mean that our material world is all illusory, that it is nothing but “God’s Dream.”
A Hindu lexicon defines:
Maya (Sanskrit): From the verb root ma, “to measure, to limit, give form.” The principle of appearance or manifestation of God’s power or “mirific energy,” “that which measures.” The substance emanated from Siva through which the world of form is manifested. Hence all creation is also termed maya. It is the cosmic creative force, the principle of manifestation, ever in the process of creation, preservation and dissolution. The Upanishads underscore maya’s captivating nature, which blinds souls to the transcendent Truth. In Shankara’s Vedantic interpretation, maya is taken as pure illusion or unreality. In Saivism it is one of the three bonds (pasha) that limit the soul and thereby facilitate its evolution. For Saivites and most other nondualists, it is understood not as illusion but as relative reality, in contrast to the unchanging Absolute Reality.
The nature of maya as “attachment” to the material is illustrated by the following legend:
Another born sage who left home at an early age was Sukdeva. He was only six at that time, but wanted to go in search of his guru. Byasa, his father, was the author of the Bhagavad Gita. He was fully qualified to be the guru himself. But Sukdeva could see that he had a little attachment to him, as his son. As the boy was leaving, Byasa followed him, pleading with him to seek God at home.
“Keep away from me,” the boy said. “You have maya.”
Byasa then sent him to the royal sage, King Janaka, for training.
In a previous article, I have quoted Yogananda, when he explained the nature of Satan. Both Satan and maya are the expression of delusion, leading us astray in the pursuit of things which will never fulfill us. I remembered the following passage from the Bible:
From that time onwards Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he would have to go to Jerusalem, and endure much suffering from the elders, chief priests and scribes, and finally be killed; and be raised to life again on the third day.
Then Peter took him on one side and started to remonstrate with him over this. “God bless you, Master! Nothing like this must happen to you!”
Then Jesus turned round and said to Peter, “Out of my way, Satan! …you stand right in my path, Peter, when you think the thoughts of man and not those of God.”
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wants to follow in my footsteps he must give up all right to himself, take up his cross and follow me.
For the man who wants to save his life will lose it; but the man who loses his life for my sake will find it.
For what good is it for a man to gain the whole world at the price of his real life? What could a man offer to buy back that life once he has lost it?
[Matthew 16:21-26]
Jesus had called Peter “Satan”, because of his attachment to the “person” Jesus and not to the “cause” Christ. Peter had expressed his ego-driven “love” for Jesus, possibly fearing future abandonment and persecution, forgetting the most basic teachings Jesus had imparted him.
And then, Jesus continued with a discourse on material detachment. Of course, this passage has been tampered with by later scribes. Nobody would have understood Jesus when saying “take up his cross.” But the spirit of Jesus’ words is still clearly discernible.
The sublimation of our desires, maya, or their redirection towards God, as the way to perfection has left many traces in Christian writings.
About the “Desert Father” Abba Isaiah, was stated:
... when someone asked him what avarice was, (he) replied, “Not to believe that God cares for you...”
“Let go” and “don’t try to be in control of everything” modern channelings would state.
And Teresa of Avila wrote:
So dead is our faith that we desire what we see more than what faith tells us about -- though what we actually see is that people who pursue these visible things meet with nothing but ill fortune.
(The Inner Castle, Second Mansion, Chapter 1, Paragraph 6)
And A. W. Tozer wrote:
There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets ‘things’ with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns ‘my’ and ‘mine’ look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do... The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.
Outside Christian literature, we find the following statements:
Sufiyan: This is my prayer: let God be satisfied with me.
Rabi’a: How dare you pray that -- when you are not satisfied with God?
(Quotation from Rabi’a al-Adawiyya)
Everything in this world -- like wealth, women, and clothes -- is sought because of something else, not in and for itself... All things form links in a chain {of seeking that leads} to God. It is He who is sought for His own sake and who is desired for Himself, not for any other reason. Since He is beyond everything and is nobler and more subtle than anything, why would He be sought for the sake of what is less than Him? Therefore it can be said that He is the ultimate. When one reaches Him, one has reached the final goal; there is no surpassing there.
(Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi)
Bound souls, worldly people, are like silkworms. The worms can cut through their cocoons if they want, but having woven the cocoons themselves, they are too much attached to them to leave them. And so they die there.
[Sri Ramakrishna]
But the most intriguing statement I have found, is maybe this one:
Even as vapours darken the air and allow not the bright sun to shine; or as a mirror that is clouded over cannot receive within itself a clear image; or as water defiled by mud reflects not the visage of one that looks therein; even so the soul that is clouded by the desires is darkened in the understanding and allows neither the sun of natural reason nor that of the supernatural Wisdom of God to shine upon it and illumine it clearly.
(St. John of the Cross: Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book 1, Chapter 8, Paragraph 1)
I felt vividly reminded of what Judas once had told me:
This is the pristine state of the soul, this total transparency, its entire surface like an interface to Divinity. Upon the soul’s incarnation, it receives the great gift of not only perceiving the Divinity that surrounds it, but of incorporating it, owning it, and then emitting the light that forms through the reaction of “fermentation,” caused by the incorporation of Divinity.
Unfortunately, with incarnation also come encrustments that cover the smooth surface, making it opaque, not transparent, that don’t allow the entrance of light. But always, even in the worst of cases, there is a small crack through which the soul may know that something more exists out there, something irradiating warmth, light, happiness, something that is worth yearning for, worth trying to obtain.
Incarnation and the formation of the spiritual body and its abilities, however, also implies the formation of the material mind which, fostered by the kind of education we receive, finally asserts itself, squashing and suffocating the soul and its innate longings.
The opening up of the soul is something active - once it is open, and once a small portion of Divine Love has entered, it is not enough to rest satisfied with the achievement. No, it is the permanent work of keeping open this divine interface, of entering in a continuous communication with Divinity, communication that is necessarily reflected in the person’s attitude and daily living. If we allow this portion of Divine Love that has entered us to become inactive, that is to say, if we don’t contribute in any way to stimulate the “fermentation of the batch of dough”, the surface of the soul will turn opaque, and the Divine Light cannot penetrate, as well, the feeble light inside us cannot shine forth, it will be invisible to the world, as if it did not exist.
[“The soul,” August 19th, 2001, H.R.]
Then, are our desires the so-called soul encrustments?
A material life, or let’s say, a “normal” life, without desires is impossible. Not all desires are sinful, most are not.
Is it necessary to suppress or “sublimate” all desires, to renounce sexuality, to eat unsavory food and not to desire a good, tasty chocolate bar? Reading the writings of the wise Indian men, one could come to that conclusion. But there is another example, Lahiri Mahasaya. He, living in Benares, had worked during decades for the British Army as an accountant and for a local railway company. He was married, had children. Nevertheless, he attained to the highest goal any religion can claim: At-onement with God. He is acclaimed as one of the greatest saints born in India.
Eastern masters hold that through their meditation practice they eventually lose their “ego” and all their attachments. They say so, they may even believe so, but I doubt it. How could they lose their own self?
Can you imagine a fully developed soul losing ego? Can you imagine Jesus without ego? No? Of course, he had (and still has) ego, and what an ego! Can you imagine him with egoism? No? This is what great masters lose, egotism and not ego. On the contrary, their ego even expands, filled with Divine consciousness, but it is still their ego.
Hence, it would be appropriate to say that soul encrustments are not composed of our desires, but of the thousand faces of our egoism.
And error? We have read that “sin and error” are the source of soul encrustments.
Well, I understand that the error referred to is not necessarily our false beliefs or ignorance. It is our clinging to such beliefs, our negative to open up to Truth, our saying “I cannot be wrong!” It is just another face of egoism.
This is the reason why Ramakrishna could state:
“The desire for bhakti cannot be called a desire. You may desire bhakti and pray for it.”
Bhakti is devotion or love for God. This desire does not spring from selfish motifs. To love God and to ask Him for His Love is to fulfill the Will of the Father.
To be continued…