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..:: The Observer VI
/ Immortality ::..
By
Alan Schneider
Immortality has
been the subject of hundreds of thousands of pages of spiritual
discourse throughout history in hundreds of spoken and written
languages, indicating its status as a primary human concern
present in the observational field. The investigation of this
phenomenon is the subject of this, the sixth essay in
The Observer Series.
Although there are several
possible places to begin this investigation, I will do so with the
Buddhist doctrine of the Four Noble Truths, summed up in the
observations that all of life is suffering in one form or
another, caused by the persistence of desire and the desire
actions committed to pursue and obtain desire objects, and resolved by
the enlightened realization that all we perceive as separate from
us through the body and senses is yet always present within us as
spiritual Truth. The Buddha correctly maintained that the only way to
know this Truth is through meditation it cannot be arrived at
logically through thought, or imagined, and defies all secondary
description of its experiential nature.
The Noble Truths certainly
apply to the consideration of immortality. We are as concerned with
this condition as we are only because we desire to
experience or observe it eventually, presumably following the
death of the body, the primary vehicle of observation up to that
point. Now, much of what the mind (please note the lower case
treatment of the word) and ego consciously experience originates within
the body as subconscious instinct, and we have these elements active
within the observational field because they demonstrate physical
survival value organisms that possessed more of these perceptual
inclinations tended to circumvent certain threats to existence more
effectively than those without such inclinations did. The wish for
immortality is linked to the instinctual fear of death, i.e. the fear of
the permanent cessation of experience as originating in the physical
senses. If I feel that I may be able to experience ongoing sensation of
some kind following death, then that condition loses some of its
threatening content in my consciousness. This mental state has overall
survival value for the individual seen in the reduction of global
anxiety about living, the increased willingness to take risks (many of
which will be at least partially successful in their outcomes), and an
overall increase in positivity and sense of well being.
The problem with the desire
for immortality is the same problem that is present within the nature of
any desire it creates and sustains the perception and belief
that we are subjects separated from the objects (or
objective conditions) that we desire. This state of perception is
endemic to observation on the Physical Plane it is the automatic and
inevitable outcome of the interaction of the physical senses, memory,
and the ego, and is driven by the instincts of the body for various
types of gratification, most of which, in turn have survival value for
the organism. If I observe my desire for food, I will tend to seek out
nourishment persistently. If I desire sex, I will tend to seek out a
partner persistently and copulate more often. If I desire social
prestige, I will join more organizations and pursue promotion through
their ranks in consequence, and so on, and all of it depending on the
primitive perception of subject and object rooted in the body and
senses.
If these tendencies have so
much survival value, why question them at all? Why concern ourselves
with their long term consequences for human consciousness? Why worry
about what the Buddha, and many other spiritual teachers throughout
history, have said against it? Because these individuals have seen to
the maximum possible extent that a human being can, from the perspective
of the highest wisdom attainable, and all knew the deep and subtle
threat implicit in desire addiction to the doomed condition of
the body and physical senses, which must perish eventually.
This addiction will preoccupy our involvement in life to the absolute
detriment of the exploration of the higher states of observation
knowable in the total Psyche using up incarnate time that we cannot
really afford to lose if we wish to know the spiritual Truth. The only
hope of attaining real immortality is to turn away from the
physical realm, and go within to discover and observe as much about our
spiritual nature as possible. The first paradoxical step in this
process is to recognize that the desire for immortality is the primary
mental stumbling block that prevents us from attaining it by fostering
an obsession with the superficial physical events of living!
While it remains true that
the individuals Karma determines the nature and extent of observation,
and extroverts (probably the majority Jungian type in any culture) will
always tend to observe what is without rather than what is within (to
their detriment), we must nevertheless make every effort to direct our
attention, and the attention of those in our immediate physical
environment, within to the journey of spiritual exploration. Why?
Simply because it is the only hope of ever realizing the Self, and that,
in turn is the only hope of ever experiencing the imperishable in any
direct form. Although prayer is one possible avenue of approaching the
Self, it frequently remains ego motivated, thus often occurring in
fundamentally selfish contexts. This leaves meditation as a preferred
method, because it turns consciousness away from the ego, away
from desire, and toward the more subtle, substantially free,
modes of observation present in the collective unconscious. This
reflects an additional liability of desire it enslaves
consciousness to physical perception on the Physical Plane. The primary
function of meditative observation is that it intrinsically promotes and
develops freedom of inquiry for the observer hence,
dispassionate observation is the antithesis of desire in the
observational field.
When meditating on the
fallacy of desire and desire action, the earnest student is usually
amazed by the extent of both conscious and unconscious desires present
in the observational field, and they are extremely numerous, to be sure
the ego has seen to that! Literally everything experienced is
evaluated by the ego through the perceptual filter of hedonism for its
pleasurable or painful content, and classified in terms of its relative
desirability as a result. And again, this has undeniable survival value
for the organism many unpleasant experiences are so because
they overload the organism with intense stimulation, an inherently
dangerous circumstance best avoided, and those who do so tend to live
longer and procreate, passing on this capability to their offspring.
But the fact remains that excessively focusing on desire and comfort
still tends to generate obsessions supporting those activities,
occupying our time and consciousness to the detriment of
self-exploration and meditation. Yes, we must survive, and hopefully
prosper, and yes, these accomplishments mean nothing in and of
themselves they acquire meaning in the contexts of contemplation and
enlightened self inquiry.
Eventually, the serious
meditator who stills many desires will find that another insidious
pitfall awaits along the Path the desire to be free of desire
can become as dangerous as any other desire. One cannot want to
be free as an actual condition one can only be free. When even
the goal of desireless consciousness has receded from awareness in the
practice of meditation (and right living), we have paradoxically arrived
at the destination sought for liberation from Karma and suffering in
the state of Satori, the supreme bliss surpassing understanding and
description. In this state of awareness, even the question of
immortality is irrelevant, because conscious observation has passed
beyond the desire to live forever, beyond even the concept of
desire, into the Self. We have attained peace beyond understanding
through the consummation of Yoga, and have come home to our true nature
at last. We are absolutely free observers.
If the Self is the original
source of all observation, as I strongly suspect it to be, many
paradoxes must be considered from the perspective of observation at the
level of physical sensory awareness on the Physical Plane of Expression,
in reality so very limited in scope and capability. How did
this inverted condition come to be one in which what seems to
be outside is really inside, and what seems to be tangible is illusory,
while what appears to be quite fantastic is ultimately the Truth? This
is the crux of the matter regarding what appears to the mind and senses
as reality how did it come to be as it appears to be through all of
the levels of observation?
If we begin with what can be
known and agreed upon by most observers, the physical universe
spontaneously appeared for all intents and purposes from pure nothing,
initially expanding so rapidly that it just popped into manifestation,
occupying an unsubstantiated extent of space and time before things
slowed down enough to support observation and measurement as they exist
today, and these measurements indicate that the expansion and
dissemination following the initial appearance are still continuing as
the primal void is continuously filled with form-based manifestation.
Locally, here in the solar
system (about ten billion years ago), the Sun spun off two great arms of
hot cosmic gas that eventually cooled enough to form the planets,
including our Earth with this formation completed about five billion
years in the past. Arguably around two or three billion years ago, the
first primitive inert amino acids coalesced into elemental proteins, in
a chain reaction that eventually resulted in self-replication, and life
was born on Earth in the form of algae existing in tidal pools. At
some point, some of the algae mutated in the presence of solar radiation
into animate forms that could swim around in the cell colony through the
use of flagella, and ingest dead algae, although they still possessed
chloroplasts and could synthesize their own sugar for food from
sunlight, just as the algae did.
Eventually, some of these new
organisms lost their chloroplasts, again as a result of radiation
mutation, but acquired the ability to ingest not only dead but living
algae through surrounding them and absorbing them through their now
permeable cell walls, simply dissolving and directly metabolizing the
captured cellular contents. Thus innocuously began the predatory feeding
cycle that has existed ever after on this Earth, long before the
evolution of nervous enervation, and very long before the advent of
human sentient consciousness.
Somehow, there must have been
an inherent turbulence present at the instant of Creation that propelled
all of the subsequent events thereafter. I submit to the reader that
this turbulence was intelligent in character, on a level far
beyond human intelligence today, and has always manifested an
intelligent design in the background behind the surface chaos of
creation. Our human experience of that intelligence is the Self at the
center of the Psyche, come into rudimentary perception at our stage of
evolutionary development. And this Self is aggressive in nature
and intent disposed to continue Creation as its first priority, beyond
the conditions and consequences for the mortal carriers of that
Creation. I submit to the reader that the Self has always existed,
even before the first manifestation of form, and will exist after
the collapse of the physical universe as we know it today beyond
understanding but not beyond observation, because it is
observation manifest as physical and temporal form. Observation by the
Self is the essential process that creates all manifestation.
And, again paradoxically,
this Self, on the rare occasions when it is directly observed by a human
source in deep meditation, is composed of pure Love and pure Light
these are the root drivers of all manifestation everywhere.
Ultimately, the universe is a pulsation of Love and Light radiating
forth from a Super Being omnipresent in its background both internally
and externally the Jungian Self.
We attain immortal perception
by experiencing this living Truth, and being fully present in the
here and now, things that sound simple enough, but are most
difficult to attain as conditions of existence. The Self exists in the
background of experience in the deep subconscious because that is
where it chooses to be, at the most powerful place in the Psyche,
creating everything we experience by observing it into existence,
just as it always has, and always will. If we can reach this level of
observation ourselves, we pass beyond mortality into infinity we
become One with the Self. And meditation is the Way to this
level of Knowing and Being the way home for humanity.
In the next, and last, essay
in The Observer Series, we will complete the investigation of the
question of immortality, and probe, as well as can be probed, the
spiritual and psychological implications of the Jungian Self for human
observers here in our solar system.
- With Love, Alan -
(Copyright 2009, by Alan Schneider)
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