Scientific
Proof of the Existence of God Will Soon Be Announced by the
White House!
Chapter 9: The Western Way
My Analysis of Man
The typical esoteric analysis of human existence that is
found in the classic mystical and yogic traditions of India
is as follows: The soul (or essential self) is different
from the body and exists independent of mental and physical
states. Observe that no matter what arises as a state of
body or mind, whether during waking, dreaming, or sleeping
consciousness, you are the witness of it. Therefore, awaken
to the presumption of existence as soul or essential self,
free by virtue of being independent of body and mind.
Likewise, just as the soul or essential self exists within
the body-mind, the Infinite Transcendental Divine Reality
exists within the soul. Enter into independence as the
essential being, and worship or surrender to the Divine
within it.
The problem with this analysis – which is a technique of
salvation, or liberation of the soul from this world – is
that it is a strategy, not merely or simply a direct
intuition of the Truth. The entire consideration and process
is an expression of an intention that, from the beginning,
is primarily concerned with experience as a problem to be
escaped-this rather than the expression of a mood that is
awakened to the Reality or Truth that is obvious even in the
moment of experience.
There is an awakening and a process that develops on the
basis of simple and direct consideration of experience. That
is the consideration that I have called the Way of Divine
Ignorance, or the Western Way. It too is liberating, but it
is not strategic in nature. Therefore, it is not to be
identified with the analysis or technique that arises in the
oriental mode. Nor is it a species of the preference for
separation from the experience of body-mind or the effort of
exclusive inversion toward inwardness.
The analysis of human existence that naturally arises in
the consideration of this Western Way is quite the opposite
of the classic oriental or Eastern analysis. In the oriental
analysis, the soul or essential self is conceived to be
within and separate from the body-mind. In my analysis, the
body-mind is conceived to be within (or an inherent
modification of) the soul or total self. Just so, in the
oriental analysis, the Divine or Transcendental Reality is
conceived to be within the soul or self. In my analysis, the
total self is conceived to be within (or an inherent
modification of) the Transcendental Divine Reality.
Of course, variations on the classic oriental analysis of
human experience can be found in the many traditions of the
East. Some seem to have a more positive view of
psycho-physical experience, or at least a sense that such
experience is not to be merely cut off. Others do not have a
notion of the Divine within the soul or essential self, but
they consider the essential self to be the Transcendental
Reality (or Self). But all typically oriental paths are tied
in one fashion or another to the preference for strategic
inversion, or an orientation which is based in the prior
sense of psycho-physical existence as a problem to be
solved.
My analysis begins only after the problem or the problem
consciousness is itself overcome in the direct understanding
of our experiential position – which is not inherently one
of knowledge, dilemma, or doubt, but one of Ignorance,
always already and totally free of the binding power of
experience in limitation. My analysis does not seek
strategic separation of soul or essential self from its
empirical conditions. Rather, my analysis proceeds from an
understanding of the prior freedom of existence even under
the conditions of the body-mind.
The Western Way is, therefore, not a conventional
technique of salvation (or liberation from inherent
bondage). The Western Way is simply the Way of Life, or the
process of Man as Man is.
We exist in Ignorance under the conditions of a universal
pattern of psycho-physical conditions, or spontaneous
modifications of the Transcendental Reality (in which the
total self inheres). Once this is understood, the process of
human existence becomes one of equanimity and ecstasy, or
self-transcendence within a progressive school or ordeal of
Life-positive adaptation and growth.
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