“Creation” Mythology and Reality
Popular traditional religion tends to be associated with
“Creation” myths, or archetypal and allegorical stories (which
certainly do not qualify as eyewitness reports on the origins of the physical
world) that, in their proposed details, try to account for the existence
of the world and mankind as the effects of acts on the part of either one
or many Deities (or cosmically Powerful Beings). The origin of such stories
is in the “primitive” awe of existence experienced by (generally)
pre-“civilized” human individuals and groups. That awe was experienced
in relation to the mysteriously and unaccountably existing natural and
human world, and the “Creation” stories were themselves human
psychic creations, or projections of the human psyche onto (and through)
the natural forms of existence. Indeed, “primitive” myth-making
expresses a fundamental and profound (and, ultimately, Spiritual) Realization,
that the “natural” world is not merely physical, but it is entirely
psycho-physical, or an interplay of the psychic (or the mental, or the
“invisible”) and the physical, and that both the “visible”
(or physical) and the (generally) “invisible” are Rooted In What
Transcends both psychic and physical phenomena. Likewise, that same Realization
affirms that human existence (fully embraced) is not merely a matter of
knowing and suffering (or otherwise manipulating) physical events, but
it is a kind of Quest, or Great Ordeal, wherein the human individual (and
human cultures) must ever strive to achieve psychic unity (or psychic reunification)
with the natural world, psychic (and total psycho-physical) association
with the Power that pervades the natural world, and Ultimate Realization
of the Inherently Perfect (or, Inherently, Perfectly Free and Happy) Condition
beyond even the total (or psycho-physical) world. And this Great Ordeal
is (or was, and must be) presumed to involve constant transcendence of
merely physical reality by the constant invocation (or evocation) of the
psyche, the Great Power (or many Great Powers, or many lesser powers) that
can Help it, and the Great (or True and Inherently Perfect and Perfectly
Subjective) Self-Condition That Is its Ultimate Source-Condition. Therefore,
the “Creation” stories (and even all culturally operative myths)
were (or are) intended not merely to account for natural existence, but
to project human beings into a participatory psychic (and not at all abstracted,
or merely intellectual) relationship to the natural world (including its
“invisible” or “inner” dimensions).
“Creation” stories generally communicate via
images associated with the physically (or gross bodily) based psyche (although
they may contain representations of “psychic” contents that are
meaningful in the context of each and all of the first five stages of life).
And although one God, and many Gods, and many Goddesses are described in
“Creation” myths as the Causative Powers (or “Creators”)
of the world and mankind, the original motive and source of these descriptions
was not any otherwise independent experience of either the local or the
universal Deity (or Deities), but the primal (or psychically “primitive”)
experience of awe (or fear and wonder) in the context of gross bodily existence
in the “natural” (or conditional and cosmic) world. In other
words, the “creative” source (or productive motive) of “Creation”
myths was (or is) not God, Gods, or Goddesses, but the psychically (and
psychologically) mysterious and terrible experience of physical existence
and the physical world (or physically defined bodily existence within the
physical periphery, or “outer” limits, of the psycho-physical
world). On the basis of that experience, the human psyche anciently began
(and always presently begins) its “natural” work of generating
(or spontaneously Revealing) psychically effective means for transcending
fear (or the separate and separative ego-self) and for Realizing true (or
fearless) participation in (and Ultimate Unity, or even Inherently Perfect
Identification, with) the apparent world (and the “Beyond”).
And once human beings began to participate psychically (or psycho-physically)
even in the gross phenomenal world, they (or the psyche itself) began to
develop complex mythological (or archetypal and allegorical) representations
of the Mana (or Spirit-Power) that (it was naively presumed) magically,
or miraculously, or omnipotently causes (but, really, only pervades) all
effects (and can, therefore, Help human beings in the Great Quest).
The fully developed ancient “Creation” myths
originally appeared (or began their development) in animistic societies
(wherein every thing, event, person, or process was felt to be a manifestation
of its own individual mana, or spirit, or power). As collective myths (and
societies themselves) developed over time, a hierarchy of powers was conceived
(just as societies themselves were conceived hierarchically, from the chief,
or king, at the top to the slaves at the bottom). Thus, animistic myths
of local powers were progressively enlarged toward a cosmic description
of senior and great Powers. And these descriptions were themselves often
developed to the degree of hierarchical grandness, with the “One”
(or the One God, or the One Mind) at the top and all multiplicity (of Gods,
Goddesses, powers, worlds, things, and lesser beings) expanding (by stages)
below. (Therefore, the “One”, even as “Creative God”,
was not the exclusive and original discovery, or, as some would have it,
the exclusive and original invention, of any particular society or culture,
although some proponents like to argue or claim that the Jews were the
originals in this regard. However, the Jews in particular, in reaction
to their early historical disintegration as an independent political collective,
and in anticipation of the dispersal of Jewish people among the peoples
of all nations, did raise their own tribal, or local, God to the status
of a universal and Absolute God-King of all nations. And this universalizing,
and rather political, or “civilizing”, tendency of progressive
Jewish, and, later, Christian and Muslim, monotheism eventually provided
a basic justification for all Western political, social, and cultural efforts
toward the unification, and even the universal Westernization, of mankind.)
In any case, the truly original and really “creative”
source of all ancient and traditional “Creation” myths was the
native “interior”, or the archetypal and hierarchical design
of the human psyche itself (which apparently is eternally existing, or
is at least existing prior to, and sometimes coincident with, and not merely
subordinate to, or merely dependent upon, or existing merely as an effect
of, gross bodily existence). And, as it was perceived by shamans and psychic
visionaries and seers of all kinds (for whom the “invisible”
sometimes becomes “visible”, or Revealed even within the interior
mechanisms of gross perception), the “Great Within” is (from
the gross bodily point of view) grounded in the body, and it extends upwards,
even bodily, to the subtler reaches of the body-mind and the subtler, or
higher reaches, of the mind itself (and the psycho-physical cosmos itself),
until both high and low are transcended in the Beyond That Is the Heart
Itself, or the One Divine Reality of Being (Itself). Clearly, the ancient
“Creation” myths (and all myths in general) were (or are), by
virtue of traditional (or otherwise spontaneous and “natural”)
techniques of psychic inversion (or inwardness), psychically inspired (or
at least inspired via the psyche), and, therefore, all types of mythic
“thinking” express the many and various possible levels of traditional
(and possible) human psychic (or psycho-physical) participation in the
apparent world. Therefore, no such traditional myths are Absolute, and
none of them are based on any kind of scientific (or analytical and basically
non-participatory) conception or perception of the physical world. Rather,
all of them are based on a purely psychic (or entirely participatory) urge
toward the total (or psycho-physical) world. And in all such myths, it
is not the physical world (or its army of physical causes and physical
effects) but the innate design of the human psyche (and even the total
Spiritual anatomy of Man) that is the principal subject displayed by means
of myth.
Ancient myth-making was fundamentally an expression of
“primitive” magic (or magical ritual), mysticism, and Spirituality,
rather than an early (or “primitive”) form of science. The myth-makers
were not merely trying to describe how physical forms are (in the mechanical,
or merely physical, sense) produced, but (since physical forms already
existed) the myth-makers were trying to raise human existence to a greater
level of participation (or ecstasy) in the total context of natural (or
psycho-physical) existence. Therefore, myths were originally (and rightly)
psychic tools (used along with many other cultural and psycho-physical
means) for the achievement of magical, mystical, and (ultimately) Spiritual
intoxication and ecstasy, or the Realization of a psychic state of non-separation,
non-fear, and Ultimate Unity (or the Realization of the Ultimate Identity).
And myths (or myth-making societies) were (or are), therefore, not merely
pre-scientific, and thus, according to the scientific (or, really, materialistic)
view, wrong, but myths and mythmakers represent the specifically religious
(or non-scientific, and non-materialistic) form of human culture and individual
endeavor, which form of culture and endeavor is even now in its greatest
(or most difficult) moment of struggle (in the face of the worldwide trend
toward submission to the materialistic philosophy and culture of scientism
and gross technology).
In the process of the pursuit of hierarchically greater
and greater levels of ecstasy, visionaries (or ecstatics of all kinds)
developed the ancient concepts (or psychic perceptions) of the “chain”
or “ladder” (or innate hierarchical structure) of the cosmos.
And the ecstatic experiences of Ultimate Unity (and even Ultimate Identity)
achieved by certain uniquely great individuals eventually led some cultures
to postulate (or give mythic acknowledgement to) an Ultimate Singleness
(described in theistic cultures as the “One God”). The ancient
and traditional myths have been culturally transmitted down to the present
day via traditional religious cultures and sects. And each culture or sect
tends to value its own myths as exclusive and final Truths. However, now
that mankind is gathered as an intercommunicative whole, the provincialism
(or tribalism) of exclusive myth and exclusive religion has become both
obvious and untenable. Therefore, more and more, mankind must receive all
traditions together as a basically single Great Tradition, and that Great
Tradition must be rightly interpreted and fully understood (and final Truth
must be Clearly discriminated from the progressive display of partial and
tentative truths).
Relative to “Creation” myths themselves, they
should not merely be criticized and dismissed as pseudo-science, but they
should be understood as exoteric artifacts of “primitive” (and
even esoteric) magic, mysticism, and Spirituality (and even Spiritual philosophy).
And it is no longer either necessary or appropriate for religion itself
to base itself on (or otherwise depend on) “natural” or cosmic
arguments for the existence of God. As all the Great Seers have proclaimed,
God (or Ultimate Reality, and Truth, and Happiness Itself) is not “out
there” (at the beginning of a long chain of events in the objective
context of the merely physical world). Rather (as the myth-makers themselves
were demonstrating in the very making of “Creation” myths), God,
Truth, Ultimate Reality, or Happiness Itself Is “within” (or
In the context of the total, or psycho-physical, world). Indeed, God Is
Existence (or Being) Itself. God, Truth, Ultimate Reality, Happiness Itself,
or Existence (or Being) Itself Is Self-Evident (unless the mind interferes
and disagrees and seeks). And God, Truth, Ultimate Reality, Happiness Itself,
or Existence (or Being) Itself is, therefore, not to be “proven”
by conceptual argument, but God, Truth, Ultimate Reality, Happiness Itself,
or Existence (or Being) Itself is to be directly Realized (by self-transcending
psychic participation in the psyche itself, or the total psycho-physical
design in which the personal self inheres, and, ultimately, by Inherently
Perfect transcendence of the psyche, or the total body-mind, itself and
the entire psycho-physical world).
The Message of all “Creation” myths is a call
to magical, mystical, and Spiritual ecstasy, progressively transcending
the hierarchies of “Creation”. Myths themselves (or myths of
every kind) are not a call to mere belief, but a call to God-Realization
(or to Spiritual, and necessarily self-transcending, Realization of the
Truth, or Real Condition, of cosmic existence), and once myths themselves
(and all the categories associated with the first five stages of life)
are outgrown, the final call is to Ultimate (or Inherently Perfect, and
Perfectly Subjective) Realization, beyond all conditional and cosmic categories.
As long as the propagation of “Creation” myths (and religious
myths in general) is limited to the domain of popular exoteric religion,
all myths are used more or less exclusively to support the popular (and
“creaturely”) social, political, and institutional purposes of
public “civilization”, but if religious myths are visited in
the context of the real process of self-understanding and participation
in the esoteric Spiritual culture of self-transcendence, then they serve
as psychic reminders of the Great Ordeal that leads not to a “Place”
above the stars, but to the Transcendental (and inherently Spiritual) Divine
Self-Condition (transcending both “outside” and “inside”),
just Beyond (or, Truly, As) the Heart Itself.
And just as that Great Ordeal does not (or should not)
stop either in the world of the gross body or in inner visions of the cosmic
Man, it is not necessary that religion itself begin in (and it is certainly
neither appropriate nor sufficient that it end in) belief in a “Creator”-God
(or even many “Creator”-Gods or “Creator”-Goddesses).
Indeed, such “Creator and creature” beliefs are primarily about
the world (and only secondarily about God, Truth, or Inherently Perfect
Reality), and, therefore, they tend to affirm and idealize gross (or “creaturely”)
human and social existence, rather than to effectively guide human attention
to self-transcendence in God, Truth, Inherently Perfect Reality, or the
Ultimate Realization of Happiness Itself. Therefore, may not religion begin
as it (in Truth) must end, with self-understanding and a direct Spiritual
Awareness of That Which Merely (or Inherently Perfectly) Contains, Pervades,
and Transcends the world (while the world itself is made and unmade by
every kind of conditional and even Godless cause and effect)? And is it
not by religion itself that God, Truth, or Inherently Perfect Reality becomes
“Creative” (when Man opens at the core, and, by psychic participation,
opens the world at the core, thus giving room to Spirit-Power), whereas
otherwise (apart from total, or psycho-physical, and self-transcending
Submission to Truth) the world and Man are “Created” and changed
by much and all that is not Divine? Indeed, if God, Truth, or Inherently
Perfect Reality were the Direct, Simple, and Only “Creator”,
religion would not be necessary to convert, and raise up, and “Perfect”
any one at all, but Perfection Itself would “Picture” here in
the Perfection of all “Creation” (from the beginning, unchanging,
and never ending).
Until the One and Perfect Is Realized (and “Perfected”
in Its “Bright” Demonstration), all the countless imperfections
gather in twos and threes to pester and break the Heart. And this begins
at the “beginning” itself, or in every present instant of perceived
(or otherwise intended) separation between “light” and “dark”,
“this” and “That”, “Heaven” and “Earth”,
and the “other” and “I”. Therefore, the Message of
myth (or of religion itself) is transcendence. If by myth (or by any other
means) the natural (or psycho-physical) world and the human self are conceived
and perceived to arise within the Context of the Spiritual and Transcendental
Divine, then the total world and the human self are not merely to be desired
and clinged to for their own sake (as if they were an irreducible necessity),
but the total world and the human self are to be progressively (and directly,
or even immediately) transcended In the Spiritual and Transcendental Divine
(Which Is the Only Necessity).
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claims perpetual copyright to all photographs and the entire Written
(and otherwise recorded)
Wisdom-Teaching of Avatar Adi Da Samraj and the Way of the Heart.
©1999 The Da Love-Ananda Samrajya Pty Ltd., as
trustee for The Da Love-Ananda Samrajya.
All rights reserved.
Used in DAbase by permission.
note to the reader
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