Tuesday, June 27, 2006

The Mystic's Obligation to Love

I know that we have been over this ground before, about dreaming, the nature of Mind, reality, and all that. I do not want to replay or rerun articles already written, but there are just a few words that I feel motivated to share:

God is Love, as well as cosmic Mind. Because of this, God is defined as the sum total of thoughtfeelings that lead to, or support, liberation, joy (bliss), peace (tranquility), etc. Since evil has no absolute reality, God is not its source. It can, in fact, have only one source, and that is illusion, as a part of the dreamworld.

But the mystic's commitment to Love does not permit her simply to shrug off evil, or suffering, as delusion. Real people experience real suffering even in unreal dreams. So, the mystic is obligated by her implicit vow to obey Love always to alleviate suffering whenever and wherever she finds it. Mystics live in a "personal" reality, just like everyone else. So, their assignment is not to alleviate all the suffering in the universe, or world. That is simply too huge. So, whatever is in front of you is your "assignment."

My cosmic "assignment," or task, right now is this article,,for example. Five minutes, or five hours, from now, it will be something different.

Suffering is real, because it exists in Mind, which is the definition of being real. So, the call of the mystic is to allow God (Love) to act through her to aid any sufferinng creature, to the best of her ability, even with her limitations.

She will do her best to explain the Way to an inquiring professor, and she will also feed a hungry dog at her door; both are acts of compassion, in the practical world.

This world did not start out as the "prison" that it now might seem to be. Way back, when "individual souls" were first "emanated" by God, to create plurality, worlds such as earth were virtual reality "amusement parks," in which minds could pretend to be animals, with all the sensory richness implied, and then, return to the pure worlds of Mind when they were finished "playing." So, for many eons, nonphysical beings (minds; souls) played every game, as virtual animals, that can be imagined-- and some that cannot!

But one day, a being had the bright idea that the most exciting of all games would be to will, or hypnotize, yourself to forget that you were Mind only, a nonphysical being, and to plunge into the dream with vigor and gusto, convinced that you actually were the animals that you were playing or dreaming! This seemed very exciting to several Minds (Souls), and they came to earth as their playground.

But the unexpected happened: Once they arrived, the game began to change. They, many of them, fell victim to the illusion that they were indeed animals, not souls, physical, not spiritual. The game had worked too well: They actually forgot that they were dreaming, at all. This is, imho, illustrated by the story of Cain having killed his brother Abel. This was the grinding sound of the start of the great machine, the
great wheels, of karma.

During the next few millennia, during "human history," these beautiful souls fell further and further into illusion-- killing and being killed, abusing, falling into violence and greed. All the fun, all the awareness, was draned from the game. No one even wanted to play any more. But, caught by karma, they had to return to the earth playground, now a virtual prison.

This is how polybiographic mystics explain the existence of so much "evil" in our world. But if we can remember our original connection with Love, and that we are actually incarnations of Lovemind, then the promise of Krishna is fulfilled, in the Celestial Song: We are released from the burden of karma, and find bliss as our natural state. This is moksha, or liberation, because a mind in bliss is slave to nothing.

This mysticism is a longterm path, requiring many lives to perfect. But good news! Some of us have been on this path already for many lives, so the situation is by no means hopeless. We can be filled with rich hope for the future, which will last forever.
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