From: jdavis@netlink.cts.com (James Davis)
Subject: All the Colors of Reality, Jim->Bill
Organization: ----
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 03:25:43 GMT


Bill writes:
>There is no inner core of "reality"...regard all dharmas
as dreams....shed I/me/mine...dualistic fixation...

I might use the above phrases myself in a certain context.  But I am
skeptical about the sincerity of such formulas and of their utility as
intellectual property.  Though intellectual property be illusory, the
associated personal pain is experienced as relatively "real."  In the context
in which you present these phrases, I reject them because they do not the
foundational appeal of something that proceeds from the core of the sun.  

I, my sometimes illusory "I" shall explain.  Let me share with you the stream
of my "illusions," so that you may sport with them as pleases the disposition
of your point of view:

Premature sheading of a supposed "I" is a fantasy of conducive to inertia.
It is like those who imagine that bridge I mentioned--the bridge into the
infinite without any abutments.  Bridge builders know that the philosophic
negations of the intellect are more dualistic than the affirmations of the
heart.  
  
Perhaps your willingness to say "I see no core," means failure to integrate
spirit and form.  Or perhaps you despair of language, or perhaps you just
don't understand my meaning and are responding to some ghost I am not. Or
perhaps you would reduce language to some minimum dualistic structure.  Or
perhaps I don't understand the special and personal attributes of your words.

Or perhaps your thought springs, not from dusty scriptures, but from living
experience.  Yet, if so, I (with my weak powers) see in your words (above)
only a remote glimmer of truth shining through the relatively illusory
formulation of a human mind.  No doubt you seem to see something similar. :)

Perhaps your statement shows a lack of perspective with regard to relativity
and the One?  Perhaps your thought springs from somewhere in the head that is
remote from the Center?  But I know this, there is a monism of the mind and
another of the heart.  

I am with those of the heart.  I am with those who refer and defer to the
center, the heart of things.  And I am with those who work with the relative
and dualistic vehicle of language.  And I am of those who say that
unconquerable energy of the fire of spirit radiates--an invincible
affirmation as if proceeding from the core of the Sun.  

From a theory of unity one can weave a web that says that radiation is just
another illusory dream to be negated.  But I say that ready negation is more
often a sign of intellectual gamesmanship than of profound enlightenment.  I
am not with those who would zen language to death.

>...statements about internal/external dichotomies and preferences for causes
>over effects are obviously based on dualistic notions, and I doubt whether
>any of the countless strains of thought which can be referred to as Buddhism
>would sanction this.  Not that this is a big deal in and of itself, but you
>should be aware that there is a difference between what you are talking
>about and the teachings which are at least provisionally attributed to
>Sakyamuni.


Thanks, but yes I was aware of the difference.  You probably have more
respect for the old traditions than I.  That's ok.

Bill
>I like this quote, [Alice Bailey on unity, jdavis] especially the part about
>loss and gain being one. I put it to you that you have misunderstood this if
>you prefer causes to effects.

I prefer the consciousness of spiritual causation to the intellectual
conjectures you mentioned.  And I prefer action to inertia and the future to
the past.  I prefer Christ to Hitler, and butterflies to spiders.  And I will
speak for relativity against the dreaming absolutists, and I will speak for
the absolute against the limited relativists.  And I prefer a skeptical
criticism by you, to the thoughtless gullibility of a faithful disposition.

Bill
>If you read this as implying some kind of soul evolution, you aren't looking
>hard enough.  She says "nothing remains but bliss".  "Nothing remains"
>implies a process of unlearning, a process by which death and impermanence
>are recognized as vehicles by which the internal/external dualistic fixation
>you indulge in above can be dissolved.  

Actually the works [of Alice Bailey (Djwhal Khul)] do imply soul 
evolution--I have studied the works (19 volumes, about equal in size to World
Book encyclopedia) for over 25 years, and I can assure you that they do.  
Also, "Death" is one of seven "ways" implied and explicated in all D.K. says.

She/He said "nothing remains," and she also said "nothing is lost."
As I see it, you did not get the inclusive sense of the quote I shared.  Let
me try once more with a additional context.  This is from the text on the
facing page of the passage I quoted previously:

*****************
"It should be noted here, therefore, that there are, literally, two points of
identification in the long experience of the soul.  One marks the stage
wherein form, matter, substance, time and space are controlling factors, and
imprison the soul within their types of consciousness.  This connotes
identification with form life.  The other connotes identification with all
that lies outside of form expression and is released from it.  What that may
be lies beyond the grasp of our present advanced humanity, and is only known
in its true significance by such great Existences as Christ, the Buddha, and
Those of analogous rank in the Hierarchy of Lives.  The qualities generated
and developed through the first of these identifications persist and color
the conscious realization, and it must be remembered that the final
identification is the result of the experience gained through the medium of
the first...but there will be in the final stages--no consciousness of
quality or ray type, but simply a state of Being or of livingness that
realizes identification with the Whole and which, at the same time, holds
in solution (if one may use so unsatisfactory a term) all the results of the
lesser identifications, the various differentiations and distinctions, and
the many ray instincts, impulses and intuitions.  The garnered and expressed
qualities, and the possible actions and reactions are equally eternally
present and capable of re-acquisition at will...

Absorption into the One Life is the nature of this elevated state of
consciousness.  Freedom from all that is implied in the use of the words Form
and Ego is the major characteristic, and therefore, many ancient Scriptures,
when attempting to deal with and explain superlative condition, are forced
back into the use of negatives and the so-called 'doctrine of negation.'
...The negations thus met with (and frequently misunderstood by the
occidental reader) are, therefore, the result of the futility and inadequacy
of language to express the Reality known."
***************

Please notice the line quoted above, "...qualities...eternally present.."
And notice the phrase "persist and color."   Diversity, or the "colors"
eternally exist.  Notice also that the resolution into unity described above
is unlike the image that seems to appeal to some speculators--that is the
annihilation by absorption into an amorphous and undifferentiated "divine"
vacuum.

Here is the crucial parallel passage from that I quoted earlier:

"Consequently all possible actions and reactions and
all focussings, awareness and contacts...approaches and
withdrawals, and all possible expressions of the divine activity
and qualities, phenomenal and non-phenomenal, are included in the
state of Being which is now the natural state of the liberated
and enlightened spiritual Existence.  All are possible of
recovery through the will or in response to a need, but the
spiritual Being is no longer held by them or identified with
them...But at the same time, nothing is lost of capacity, or
quality or of sentient awareness...."

Bill:
>The bliss that remains is not a soul, nor anything else that should be
>misconstrued as "I persist".  Shunryu Suzuki says what we call "I" is just a
>swinging door that moves when you breathe in and moves when you breathe out
>there is no reason to make anything more out of it.

Swinging doors are (literally) an invention of the human mind.  The fiery Sun
is a more natural symbol, and less of an intellectual invention.  The Breath
is not a bad symbol, but in the imagination of many it suggest not much more
than a last gasp.  Have we breathed our last on this subject?

Death is even more misunderstood than God.  Death destroys from, not life.
"Nothing is lost."  That is the truth of death, which is the truth of Life. 
It is better than can be imagined.



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