 Scientific Proof of the Existence of God Will Soon Be Announced by the White House! Chapter 5: The Seamless Garment of Love Divine Descent and Human Ascent
Exoteric religious traditions are frequently, if not commonly, associated with the primary idea that God has descended or will descend and manifest to mankind, even by incarnating as a human being (or, ultimately, as all beings, human or otherwise). Esoteric religious traditions are frequently, if not commonly, associated with the primary idea that Man, as each and every human being, must and will ultimately ascend (via the inversion of our manifest faculties) and manifest to God, even by merging into the independent Domain or Form of God. All such traditions, both exoteric and esoteric, are founded upon intuitive and experiential associations with the structure and structural symbology of the human nervous system and brain-mind. The exoteric notion of Divine “descent” and “incarnation” expresses our feeling of positive association with the extended body-mind, the “material” Earth-world, and the outward or evolutionary play of the sense-mind via the autonomic nervous system. And the esoteric notion of the “inversion” and “ascent” of Man expresses our feeling of positive association with the root-condition of the body-mind, the underlying Essence and Source of the Earth-world, and the unconditional state of energy and consciousness, prior to the experiences of body, senses, and mind, communicated deep within the central nervous system. However, when the absolute ideas of Divine descent and human ascent appear in the languages of religion, they seem mutually contradictory. If Man succeeds at ascending and God also succeeds at descending, then Earth will eventually become Heaven (since God will be here, but Man will have already vanished), and Heaven will become merely another urban sprawl (since Man will be there, but God will have long ago gone to Earth)! Clearly, the two ideas, when thus considered as equal and absolute propositions, become absurd. But in what sense, then, are they rightly understood? Truly, the exoteric idea of Divine descent is a popular conception, communicated among the masses of ordinary and suffering humanity, promising help and salvation to those whose lives and minds are bound up in the conventions of outward and mortal experiencing. Such individuals are greatly consoled by the messages of Divine Providence. And, indeed, the Eternal Divine is Revealed to ordinary humanity via extraordinary Acts of Grace and via the relatively rare appearances of those Adepts who surrender themselves in service to the people. But once any individual has become healed and steadied by the Work of God in the world, that individual begins to become inclined toward the Divine Itself, and for the sake of Loving and Realizing the Divine (rather than the acquisition of any consolations or advantages in this world). In that case, the individual begins to respond to the inverted and higher psychic movements of the being, and he will eventually enter into profound sympathy with ideas and practices of esoteric or mystical ascent. Therefore, we may understand the independent messages of Divine descent and human ascent to be expressions of two primary stages in human psychological and cultural or religious growth. However, this is not to say that those two stages of growth represent the total possible human pattern, and, clearly, the doctrine or primary proposition of each of the two stages is in itself partial or incomplete. The partial doctrines of human experiential understanding must all be yielded at last to the direct Revelation of the Living Divine Person or Truth. And that Revelation, to which the completed Adept is Awakened, serves to correct the partial or yet to be completed understanding of Man. This book is itself a prophetic meditation on many of the partial views that pervade the popular and also the “secret” or esoteric domains of human culture. The Wisdom-Revelation of the Living God is the Principle whereby these meditations or prophecies have been made. Therefore, let us also consider these ideas of Divine descent and human ascent in the same Light. As I have already said, these two ideas express two characteristic orientations toward our experience and even toward the psycho-physical mechanism (or body-mind) of our experience. But what is the Truth of our experience? Should we receive and incarnate the Divine, or should we invert our psycho-physical consciousness and ascend to God within and away from this world? The conventional “incarnation” idea is fundamentally “occidental” and the “inverted ascent” idea is fundamentally “oriental.” Is Truth of the East, or the West? Truly, Divine Wisdom is whole and One, even as the body-mind is a single and dynamic harmony. Neither East nor West is, in itself, the Sign of Truth. Both are transcended in the Single Vision and the Whole Bodily Enlightenment. The Living God is Transcendental Being. God is not merely above and separate in absoluteness, nor is what appears below (or in experience) of value in itself or independently. The body-mind must be transcended through Awakening to the Transcendental Condition of self and world. In that case the illusions of our stages of relative maturity are vanished in singular Bliss. It is not that we are going to leave this world and only then “return” to God, nor is it true that God is going to come here as an independent person, suddenly evolve both Earth and Man to perfection, and stay here to Govern us forever. Rather, our Condition is always already one of Divine Inherence, and our Destiny is always to go on being transformed, in a Process with all other apparent moments of beings and things and world, eternally-in the Eternal Play of God. The idea of the “ascent of Man” is a characteristically “oriental” concept, founded in the esotericism of inversion, abandonment of the body and its relations, and exclusive absorption in the central energy of the spine and brain. And the idea of the “descent of God” is a characteristically “occidental” concept, founded in the exoteric mythology and bodily hopefulness of the vitally extended human nervous system. But the Truth and the Way of Life that transcend ideas and the structural imperatives of the human nervous system are founded on Ecstatic Equanimity, or the Intuition that body, mind, and the world of beings and things and changes all inhere in the Infinitely Radiant Divine Being. The heart or feeling being of Man is the “place” of the Unity of Vision, or the Harmony of the independent motions of ascent and descent. The heart is zero, the “place” or Way of the surrender of the total psycho-physical self into the Radiant Transcendental Being. From the “point of view” of the heart-surrendered being, God is not exclusively above, nor is Man exclusively below, nor is either mind or body considered to be the dominant realm of human existence. From the heart we may enter, even in body and mind, into the Vision or Love-Intuition of Only God, in Whom self and mind and body and all objects or phenomena are presently arising. The body-mind need not be suppressed. Neither are we even now separated from the Transcendental Divine. If the Living and Perfect God is Realized, the parts of Man, above and below, within and without, become equalized, and God becomes Man indeed.
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