Conversations with a Monk
Purusha writes: I was finally able to start reading the posted chapters of Book 4 of The Immortal last night. What I read is really off from the Truth. What I read was a great example of mind mimicking the Absolute in its limited, finite way.
JJ: First, I never welcomed you to the group. We are honored to have an Ishaya monk in our presence. We have had several students in the past. I’m not sure if any remain.
That said, I do not think the writings are off the mark as you believe. Let us continue.
Purusha: I am referring to where the book starts into the lesson on the third Key, of Communion. It is true that Communion involves “a form of communication”,…
JJ: I would hope so. That is the basic definition of the word.
Purusha: but that is just a very limited understanding that is safe to the mind. A more expansive version (from expanding the word no less!) would be “coming into Union” or “come-union-ication”.
JJ: I would say that this definition applies to some degree on all levels. Even when two average people speak and understand each other with no soul contact, the understanding, which is correct, that they share is through a union of thoughts, feelings and even concrete definitions of literal words.
Purusha: This Union occurs in the soul, not in the mind.
JJ: A union can occur in the soul for advanced souls, but also to a lesser degree in the mind as well as the feelings and also the concrete brain.
Purusha: The soul “remembers” the Truth of communion, and causes us to seek it. But like the game of Chinese Whispers, a distortion of the Truth takes place…a distortion that comes about due to inattention, or misunderstanding. This misunderstanding and inattention take place because we chose to come out of Union with the Source and became “stuck” in one moment, or one piece of the manifestation of the Source.
JJ: No disagreement here. I have taught this basic principle in different wording a number of times. Book IV will cover this in more detail as it proceeds.
Purusha: The mind, in its independent need to justify its own existence, has an addictive habit of understanding, categorizing, and analyzing everything in order to decide what action to take in order to avoid pain and acquire happiness. Like the blind men discovering the elephant.
This process is NOT cognition, it is not knowing, it does NOT come about as part of the Oneness Principle.
JJ: I basically agree again. The mind understands data, but the language of the soul is the language of principles, as I have said many times. An understanding of a principle comes through “cognition” as you say, but the mind provides stepping stones to get there.
Purusha: And this is why “Christ”-ianity and the Church needed to obfuscate, condemn, and attempt to eradicate Gnosticism. Gnosis is “the knowing” of something from direct personal experience.
JJ: Agreed. The church wanted to be the final authority.
Purusha: If the blind men had innocently asked to know what they were sensing, they could have cognized it was an “________”, and then they could have cognized what to call it in their language. This is what true sages have done for ages – cognized the Truth rather than figuring it out.
JJ: But attempting to figure things out is a stepping stone. I have never met anyone (or read about anyone) who has discovered any truth through the soul who has not first done some thinking about the subject or principle. Now, I have met people who claim to have all truth through osmosis, but when probing them there is usually nothing there, except a repetition of what they have read.
Purusha: But the mind, in its limited understanding, has called these men magicians, or sorcerers, or even Satanists.
JJ: But other minds have called them sages.
Purusha: Somewhere the mind has crept back into this work and is masquerading as John. It became very apparent to me when John began using inductive reasoning (a form of logic) to explain the nature of God. An entity with John’s gnosis of God would not use such a limited form of thought on such an Infinite topic. Logicians no longer even agree on the validity of logic. William of Occam (Occam’s Razor) maintained that the structure of language and logic corresponds only to the structure of the mind, not to that of Reality. He went on to state that there is a distinction between our concepts and Being. William had recognized Creation not as a necessary consequence of the Divine Intellect, as Thomas of Aquinas suggested, but as an expression of God’s limitless will. So, rather than trying to use logic to induce the Infinite, as “John” has tried to do, I would like to share with you what I have directly experienced, or cognized, in the hope it will help you have your own direct experience of what you seek.
JJ: It is true that there is understanding (or “cognition” as you call it) above the plane of the mind. I have often referred to the first step in this direction as “soul contact,” a phrase not original with me.
It is important to keep in mind that when the higher is attained, that the lower is not negated, but enhanced.
For instance, when attention is lifted from the physical instincts and brain to the feelings, the body does not disappear, but is put to greater use.
When the attention is moved from the feeling nature to the mind, the feelings and body do not disappear, but are used all the more.
When the attention is raised to the Buddhic plane through the soul the mind, emotions and body are not negated, but the greater understanding uses these three as a vehicle of expression.
Therefore, both an intellectual and a master may use the mind in his presentation.
The greatest of us all, the Christ did this and often reasoned with those who asked him questions. Let me give two of many possible examples:
He said that God “maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” Matt 5:45
Then the next two verses give further mental reasoning: “For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?” Matt: 5;46-47
If the master himself used the mind regularly then why do you discourage others from doing so?
Purusha: That is why the Keys have been presented to mankind. That is the purpose of any true Teaching, and is the purpose of any true Teacher. It is “the reason” that Yeshua was asked to experience crucifixion. The purpose of God is simply to experience Itself. To know Itself as Itself in all forms, flavors, instances, and situations. Why? Simply, as Neo in the third Matrix movie answered Agent Smith before he surrendered to him, because God chose to. Or as Occam would say, as an expression of God’s limitless will.
JJ: I accept this as an aspect of the truth.
Purusha: God, even the Supreme Being, was “created” in that It is a movement of the Absolute, of the Source into form. The Absolute, (or Ascendant as we Ishayas call it) is pure, perfect Totality in and of Itself. It is both the Source and the Goal of all things. The Ascendant is the all-Moving and the all-Still, the Alpha and the Omega. Of all the limitless possibilities of occurrences, “one day” a desire became to know Itself, and so Creation was begun to facilitate that desire. Now, know that this desire was not like a human desire. There was no need, nor lack substantiating that desire, just a pure choice of expression. So, I chuckle to read all of this thought on the “imperfection” of God and of Creation. It comes not from one who lives the Truth but from a mind that fears Truth.
JJ: I think the truth is the other way around. People are afraid to even consider that God may be imperfect for “fear” of offending him. It’s much better (says the lower mind) to give God the benefit of any doubt and ascribe to him all perfection, all knowledge, all of everything to avoid any offense coming up on judgment day.
It takes a courageous and fearless contemplation to believe in God and yet consider he may not have achieved perfection in time and space. One must have a genuine faith in the love of God.
Purusha: It is the same line of thought that invented “Original Sin”, and “Satan” and from the same mind that has the desire to divert mankind from the Truth and mankind’s reclamation of its true Nature and subsequent re-Union. It is the creation of an ego that needs to create God in its own image in order to preserve itself. Some would call this the Dark Brotherhood, or the Opposition, or the Asurs. Whatever name it is called, this too is part of the manifestation of God’s desire.
JJ: I’m not sure why you think this way as I see no evidence in the scriptures.
Moses doubted the perfection of God and argued with him and forced him to change his mind. I doubt if you think he was in league with Satan.
Consider this: the Christian Church who was opposed to gnosis is extremely adamant about the perfection of God. Anyone questioning it in the past would have been put to death. In fact, it is only of recent date that controversial doctrine can be presented without persecution.
Purusha: What some call the Illusion, or maya, or the Opposition, is simply contrast. To perceive the manifestation of “white”, it is helpful for a while to have the manifestation of “not-white” (maybe black). To perceive “right” it is helpful for a time to have “not-right”. For God to know Itself, it was decided it would be helpful to have available “not-God”. So the purpose of all of this temporal manifestation of the Ascendant is simply to help all of us “little aspects of God” know who we truly are – to provide contrast. It is no more real than that, no more meaningful than that.
JJ: Additional truth is revealed in the Law of Correspondences. When you are a child, do you seek to become an adult just so you can know that you are an adult, or is there more to it?
There is more – much more.
When you are mature you attain greater reasoning, strength and power. But when this is attained do you feel that this is all there is to your life?
No. What do you do?
You use these greater resources to attain greater joy and open greater vistas of achievement.
Even so, we came in this world for a much greater reason than to merely return knowing we have matured. We will use that maturity to go to new endless worlds of creation.
Purusha: For someone to say that this is imperfection, and to subsequently imply that God is seeking perfection is the ego projecting one of its cornerstones of ignorance onto the Infinite.
JJ: Again, I think the truth is the other way around. The first words out of the strongly ego-orientated religious ones is that God is perfect, knows all things and can never make a mistake. That may be true in the realms beyond time and space but not true as God manifests in the material world.
Purusha: The Ascendant seeks nothing. It is the Source and the Goal. Those of us that have re-cognized Truth and live it call our lives the supermundane. As simple a thing as placing a hanger on a clothes rack is as orgasmic as the best sex, the best meal, the best painting and the best music all experienced together at once. And that is “just” my still expanding experience of my expression of Itself knowing Itself.
JJ: I see some opportunity for some good humor here, but will leave it to the reader’s imagination.
I agree that if one is one with the Spirit that he will have feelings even better than sex and this could occur while hanging a coat, but the feeling has nothing to do with the act of hanging clothes.
The feeling from sex though does have something to do with physical and emotional touch beyond the feeling generated by the clothes-hanger – unless hypnosis is involved.
Purusha: But that “unfinished-ness” does not imply an imperfection.
JJ: Obviously, anything unfinished is not yet perfect. In fact the word translated from the Greek as “perfect” more accurately means “finished.”
Purusha: Imagine that all of this that we know is a playground and we are simply enjoying ourselves. Are we better after we play hopscotch than before we do it?
JJ: Yes, we are better off if we had a good time.
Purusha: Are we worse off before we finish building our sandcastle than after it is done?
JJ: Does anyone, after he has created anything of beauty, wish to go back before creation as if nothing was built? No.
Obviously, it is natural to feel, when we have made a step in creation that we do not wish to take it back. We do not wish to take it back because we feel we are in a better place because of it.
Purusha: This whole train of thought is again just the mind making believe itself is real instead of the Truth; again just running its old habit of comparison (a form of analysis) in order to ascertain if it is “doing it right” or “doing it wrong” so it can make sure it will attain pleasure and avoid pain.
JJ: If you believe this way then why are you using your mind to reason with me?
Why are you using comparison such as that which is God and that which is not God, true and false communion, the Church and Gnosticism etc???
It is impossible to not use the mind, body and emotions and yet live in this world. They are here for us to use as you are doing in your post – and as I am doing.
Purusha: The true Keys, or any true Teaching, will bring your awareness back to your true Self and a personal direct experience of the Source – gnosis. Be Still and know thy Self. All of this discussion that I see, all of these opinions of meanings and interpretations and bantering just keep you from that knowing, just keep you adrift in the ever-changing instead of coming to rest in the Source of All. It is pointless, fruitless, tiresome and unfulfilling, but it keeps the ego busy and therefore engaged and in control. If you wish to let go and experience peace, quit thinking about it, quit arguing your intellectual ideas of it, quit engaging your mind. Instead, find a Teaching that applies the Oneness Principle (Union with the Absolute) as its goal, a Teacher who has used that Teaching to attain stabilized Union, ask for help and follow their guidance to the letter. Then you can have your own experience of the Immortal Self, instead of just reading about it.
JJ: You speak from an attitude of superiority here and make assumptions about me that are not true.
The true teacher comes through the soul and is not to be found in some technical system. No matter how good it is the word of life will not be there if soul contact is not achieved.
You know not what I have experienced. If you did you would have no need to reason with me of the way to peace.
Overall, I do not see much conflict between your basic thinking and what I have written. I have taught many times that we must go higher than mind to achieve liberation.
Aug 5, 2004
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