Introduction to ‘The Cosmos’ – Beezone

“A thesis and a claim, an unusual one.”

(00:42)

A 12 week course given by Franklin Jones (Adi Da Samraj) on ‘The Knee of Listening’ – January-May 1973

Edited* introduction to week one of ‘THE COSMOS’
(for the full lesson see below)

There is a vast Cosmic system that’s assumed, implied by all of this. So, I thought it was appropriate, at the beginning to discuss some of these things. What kind of a cosmos or a world or larger reality do we exist in if the functions and phenomena described in the first part of the Knee of Listening are true? The world of the One who is writing this book is quite different perhaps than the world assumed in our ordinary conversation, our ordinary social understanding.

(12:23)

***

I’ve described the aspects of this a number of times before, but in this particular case I want to speak not just about the internal system, this sphere of our own functional existence which I’ve described a number of times. I want to particularly talk about the larger condition.

There is an absolute, timeless infinite, untouched, perfect realm, not describable, which is eternal. And you can call that heaven if you want. It is the God-world. Coming out of the God-world, the God-Light, descending from it, just as the God-Light reflects the perfect God, the Real-God, there is a reflection of the God-Light. That reflection is all of the infinite numbers of universes and non-universes, the entire, indescribable cosmos, of billions upon billions upon billions of universes, and possible states and worlds with all kinds of paradoxes. Within our single universe there can be infinite numbers of other universes, Within this universe, simple and apparent and visible to us, there are infinite numbers of other universes, existing coincident with this one, and yet with different energy frequencies, different time, relationships. The entire manifest cosmos is a vast, paradoxical entity, and it is a reflection of the God-Light.

So all of these manifest worlds appear as reflections of the Divine. And just so, just as they reflect it, the energy that is being reflected also returns. No light simply gets thrown onto a mirror. It is bounced off a mirror. So that manifest cosmos, the conditional universes which reflect the infinite God-Light, all have this circular, descending-ascending structure.

So the worlds descend from the God-Light and return, like an infinite circle or bridge of qualities, from the moat perfectly subtle descending down to the most absolutely solid, inert forms, and then again ascending through degrees of subtlety. Real-God and the God-Light are infinite and perfect, beginningless, endless. The light that reflects Real-God is as infinite and perfect as Real-God. They are both the qualities of the ultimate God or Reality.

But all of the reflected dimensions, all of the billions and billions upon billions of conditional states and worlds and entities are mortal, conditional, temporary, not themselves the Truth. They are a process.

Quite naturally, then, there are two ways in which to live in any manifest condition.

There is the way of living it as it is, in right relationship to its source and ultimate function; and then,

There is the other way, of buying it.

Of living the condition itself, living from the point of view of the apparent condition, without taking into conscious and living account, all of the subtler implied and not necessarily conscious aspects.

So all beings are obliged to become conscious of their actual condition and their actual or real condition is God.

God is our condition, He/She/It is both our ultimate nature and also the form of the process in which we are appearing.

Within the range of reflections of the ultimate Divinity there are many worlds, certainly many conditions that are superior perhaps to the present world or the condition that you’re in at this moment. And these can be very distracting.

But there is no world, no condition that is a reflection of the God-Light that is not temporary, that is not simply a form of change. So to become attached to any condition in itself is the first rule of suffering, to become identified with it, to assume the dilemma, the proposition that it represents, and to pursue life as a goal of release from that state or fulfillment of that state in itself, any such movement is the rule of ignorance, the rule of suffering.

So life in the universes always becomes moment by moment the motivation to release. Ordinary living always becomes dilemma and always instigates the striving for release from dilemma, regardless of where an entity appears, what karmic condition he arrives at. And so he’s continually only exchanging one karmic condition for the other, until the real process, the Divine process begins.

There’s an aspect of the fullness of the Divine to reflect itself, so the Real-God becomes God-Light, but without limitation, without illusion, without suffering. Just so, God-Light is becoming all of the manifest worlds.

But if the Divine reflects itself without comprehending its own activity, the Divine is becoming obsessed with its own reflection. That’s the nature of Narcissus.

So any manifest entity, any conditional entity, who has not understood his ultimate condition, his perfect and present condition, is simply duplicating a possibility of ignorance that is latent in the reflecting work of the Divine. Fullness itself.

So we could say that the entire cosmic process is a form of self-realizing activity within the Divine Nature. And in the case of any individual appearing in any time and place, the apparent purpose of present existence is to create a confrontation between the internal karmic tendencies that are latent within the subtle life of that entity, confrontation between that and the solidified, external conditions.

So the karmic entity, with all his arbitrary tendencies:

Confronts a solidified, lawful universe that exists over against his tendencies, in spite of his tendencies.
This demands adaptation on his part. The process of that adaptation, is on the one hand the means of purifying him of his tendencies, his karmic destiny.
It can either be a means to that purification or
it can be a means to the manipulation of karmic life itself, so that he only takes on other tendencies, or exchanges present tendencies for others.
So there are two ways of life.
There is one lived by the law of karma, or change itself, in confrontation with the solid world, the appearing world; or
There is the way of living from the point of view of Truth or the actual, the real condition.
When the entity lives from the point of view of the real condition, then the karmic condition, living within a manifest world, becomes a purifying event, and he moves always into more and more appropriate forms of action, and is released from the limitation of tendencies so that he falls, ever more perfectly into the prior condition, the Divine condition.

* Beezone cut out sections to make this ‘introduction’ short. For the full talk see below.

Read and Listen to the whole talk: The Cosmos