Remembering &
Forgetting
Exile from the Kingdom
( Section V, 7 of The Heart Doctrine)
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"I am seated in everyone’s heart,
and from Me come remembrance,
knowledge and forgetfulness."
Bhagavad-Gita, XV, 15
"The secret of secrets is the divine spark
within each of us. Remembrance is remembering
that which we already know
It is to get in touch with that divine spark
that God has placed within each human being. ...
"To practice remembrance," you've said,
"is to unveil the knowledge and power
and beauty of this spark of God within us."
(Robert Frager/Sheikh Ragip, psychologist
and Sufi Master
in conversation with Jonathan Cott: On
the Sea
of Memory:
A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering,
2005)
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Modern psychology, philosophy, science, religion and education are
simply based on contemporary ignorance, prejudices and
forgetfulness.
Knowing self is the missing idea in scientific theories and modern
thought,
and provides a key to the enigmas of creation. One must die to
the
levels of ego within oneself, and be reborn in Self, in order to
realize
the Kingdom and the Pleroma within.
As one begins to awaken, one will realize more and
more deeply the sleepwalking state of one's former self, and of
humanity.
Ouspensky (1949) wrote of his early experiences with self-remembering,
a practice taught within the fourth way which aids the individual in
becoming
more conscious and awake within the fullness of the present moment:
I was walking along the street and suddenly I saw that the man who
was walking towards me was asleep. There could be no doubt
whatever
about this. Although his eyes were open, he was walking along
obviously
immersed in dreams, which ran like clouds across his face. ... After
him
came another also sleeping. A sleeping coachman went by with two
sleeping passengers. Suddenly I found myself in the position of
the
prince in the “Sleeping Princess.” Everyone around me was
asleep.
... I realized what it meant that many things could be seen with our
eyes
which we do not usually see. ... I at once made the discovery
that
by trying to remember myself I was able to intensify and prolong these
sensations for so long as I had energy enough not to be diverted. ...
When
attention was diverted I ceased to see “sleeping people” because I had
obviously gone to sleep myself. (1949, p. 265)
Consciousness must be understood within
oneself, through
the processes of self-study, self-remembering and awakening.
Nothing
else is serious but to awaken and to remember. Can we say, as in
the Gnostic Gospel of Truth: “... from the heart that you
are
the perfect day and in you dwells the light that does not fail.
...
and speak of the light which is perfect and filled with the seed of the
Father, and which is in his heart, and in the pleroma.”? Or,
are our hearts and selves far from the Lord?
Mystical and spiritual teachings offer inspired
views on the origin and nature of life and the universe. Human
consciousness
is ultimately rooted in God consciousness, in a Sea of Infinite Light,
Divine and Spiritual Intelligence, in Radiant Bliss, in the Void and
Plenum.
These principles are elaborated in a remarkably consistent way
throughout
the mystical literature and are suggested by the esoteric maxim: “Know
thyself, and thou wilt know the Universe and the Gods.”
Hence, we as individuals–as
divine
or spiritual sparks, Sons of the Lord and Sons of the Sun–have
miraculous
and awesome possibilities open to us within a vast universe of
unspeakable
complexity and subtlety. The individual consciousness, which
emanated
as the divine spark, and then brought down into the spiritual nature,
and
then ensouled and embodied, is qualitatively One with the Supersoul and
the Lord of the Universe! We are all point sources of Ineffable
Light
emerging from within higher dimensional Space, within which we
live
and move, and have our being. I AM is a Son, a star, a divine
source
emanation, of the Living Father emerging from within the Divine Plenum
of the vacated Heart Space. Most importantly, we can know these
things
directly to varying levels through the awakening of consciousness and
the
transformation of the Heart.
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The heart
doctrine
is an ancient, timeless teaching of eastern and western mystical and
religious
traditions. The individual spirit soul emerges within/without
from
a Sea of Infinite Consciousness into a contracted state of egoistic
consciousness,
as an ‘eye’ or ‘I’ of the Absolute. This ‘I’ loses its high
state of transcendental realization as it descends through subtle
dimensions
of being, finally to be born into the material world of sense-based
awareness.
This is a world of distractions and attachments, of suffering,
pleasures
and pain, and of forgetfulness. The spirit soul is seemingly cast
out from the realm of transcendental being, as Adam and Eve are
expelled
from the Garden of Eden, and sewn into the instrument of time.
The
spiritual soul forgets its true nature and inward relationship to the
Infinite
Sea of Light Consciousness, and hence lives in ignorance, exiled from
the
Kindgom within.
Mystical and spiritual teachings offer
inspired views of the nature of consciousness and the possibilities for
self-realization and attaining real I. In addition to the
everyday
state of sleep walking consciousness, the possibilities exist for
humans to experience objective knowledge and varied subtle planes and
dimensions.
In addition, we might experience states of samadhi, cosmic
consciousness,
even divine consciousness and the world of emanations! The
mystical and religious teachings of humanity all point to such
possibilities
for profound states of self-realization, cosmic insights and
illuminations,
and God consciousness.
Are these mystics, saints and seers correct
in what they proclaim? Perhaps, as materialist science
maintains,
humans are nothing but higher primates that have evolved through random
chance and nature's mechanical processes. Perhaps consciousness
originates
in the mid-brain or cortical structures, and human beings have no soul
or spiritual nature–or any substantive consciousness. Perhaps we
should tell our sweathearts that we love them with all our limbic
systems
or hormones, as scientists imagine. Maybe the ‘I’ does
simply
disappear with the breakdown of the material brain as Isaac Asimov
suggests.
The mind longs to know the secrets of
the heart and the inner life, but the unenlightened mind is deluded and
ignorant of the nature of Self. Unfortunately, humanity is lived
out in a state of waking sleep and the vast majority of people have no
remembrance of their true nature. They do not realize the love
and
bliss inherent within their inner being. They do not realize
consciousness
as light or experience their inward depths as spiritual beings or
divine
sparks, that are reflections and emanations of the divine world.
Life in the quantum vacuum is very deep indeed.
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Swami Prabhupada explains the fallen position of the
spirit soul:
While exploiting the gross and subtle inferior energy (matter), the
superior energy (the living entity) forgets his real, spiritual mind
and
intelligence. This forgetfulness is due to the influence of
matter
upon the living entity. But when the living entity becomes free
from
the influence of the illusory material energy, he attains the stage
called
mukti, or liberation. (1972b, p. 370)
The basis of self-realization is the understanding that one is
not
simply the material body, nor the personal mind and emotions, and that,
on the contrary, the true nature of the spirit soul is of light
consciousness,
related to the metaphysical dimensions of the heart. The
opening
of the heart chakra, and the dissolution of the knots of the Heart,
bring
about Self realization. Mystical psychologies and philosophies
elaborate
complex theories and methods to enable the individual to be liberated
from
material contamination through spiritual practices. Disciplines
for
the purification and refinement of the body, emotions, mind, and
consciousness,
all help to bring one deeper into the essential nature and into
remembrance
of Self.
Humans live in a state of
forgetfulness,
like the Dwarf of Ignorance depicted here, but the possibility exists
to
remember one’s true nature. Mystical and spiritual teachings set
forth different emphases and assume different orientations to
transformation
and awakening, but all speak of the possibilities for enlightenment and
supernatural modes of experience and existence. In fact, all of
life
is miraculous and it is only we, in our state of sleep, who are
ignorant
about the essential nature of both material reality and self. All
of material nature exists in relationship to the deep dimensions of
existence
and being, and all physics must ultimately lead to metaphysics.
The following account of how the Soul
forgets her true nature derives from the secret teachings of the
Egyptian
Gnostics:
The soul turned at one time towards Matter: she fell in love with it,
and burning with desire to experience bodily pleasures, wished no more
to be separated from it. Thus the world was born. From that
moment the soul forgot herself; she forgot her original dwelling, her
true
center, her everlasting life. ... But God, unwilling to abandon the
soul
to its degradation with Matter, endowed her with understanding and the
faculty of perception – precious gifts which would remind her of Her
high
origin, the spiritual world ... which would restore her consciousness
of
herself, teach her that she was a stranger here below. ... As soon as
the
soul ... has regained self-consciousness, she longs for the spiritual
world
as a man exiled in a strange land sighs for his distant homeland.
(Doresse, 1986, p.316)
The aim of life is Self-remembrance and the realization of
one’s essential nature. The lost souls–who search in the unknown
for meaning, pleasure and happiness–simply do not understand
Self.
The soul, conditioned by the three modes of
nature, tries to be lord within the realms of material existence and
becomes
more and more divided and fragmented through the processes of
identification,
attachment and desire, isolation and heartbreak. Only
through
mystical death and rebirth, the healing and awakening of the human
heart,
can the false persona be dissolved and individual consciousness resolve
back into the Self and the Supreme. The ego must yield to the
Bright,
within the lotus of the heart, in order to remember our deep
origins.
Only escape from the general laws, from illusions, conditioning and
forgetfulness
can afford a true happiness and fulfilment in life and the
afterlife.
Such liberations establish us in the blissful and illumined nature of
the
soul, experiencing life within the nothingness, which contains such
potencies
and possibilities. Paradoxically, these conditions already exist
and all separation is illusory.
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In the Phaedrus, Plato explained:
Every soul of man has the way of nature beheld true
Being;
this was the condition of her passing into the form of man. But
all
souls do not easily recall the things of the other world.
For Plato, the soul is sewn into the “instrument of time,”
or the matrix of creation, and the goal of life is to recall or
remember that knowledge which lies within ourselves, within the vacated
Spaces of the Heart.
The ancient meaning of education similarly
referred to bringing out that knowledge already inherent within the
individual–that
is cosmic and spiritual knowledge and realization. This is not
blind
acceptance, faith or belief, but knowledge inherent within the inner
dimensions
of the cosmos of consciousness in its relationship to the Infinite Sea
of the Absolute. The aim of religion is to ‘re-unite’ the individual
soul
with the Supersoul, just as yoga seeks to yoke or join these
together.
The realization of the mystics are also reflected in the
works of various poets who realized the transcendent dimensions of
existence,
as well as in the poetry and music, and literature of the world.
Wordsworth, in Intimation of Immortality, wrote:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory,
do we come from God, who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy . . .
At length the man perceives it die away
And fade into the light of common day.
And similarly, the modern rock band Tea Party,
sings:
... here, here we are
shelterless souls
lit by the stars
... because the world keeps turning
... seven circles twisting
around these moments of our lives...
... see what we are is limitless light
reflecting the stars
seven circles, Tea Party
The mystical and spiritual traditions offer a view of
human nature
which radically opposes all modern views of humans as being nothing
more
than higher primates, who die upon physical death and the dissolution
of
the body: all with no spiritual or soul nature. Instead, the
mystics
teach that all knowledge, eternal life and a state of blissful
existence
are facets of the hidden, secret self- the human birthright, under our
noses the whole time, as is said in the Hebrew tradition.
As
it happens, however, in this accidental and strange universe, our
hearts
are far from the Lord, our hearts are imperfect mirrors, veiled and
knoted,
and full of so much non-sense of the Dwarfs of Ignorance.
People
unfortunately do not remember ourselves, are not fully present, but are
instead always absorbed, attached and identified with the legions of
little
i’s which constitute the lives of sleeping humanity.
"The secret of secrets is the divine spark
within each of us.
Rememberence is remembering
that which we already know
It is to get in touch with that divine spark
that God has placed within each human being.
In the Koran it says that God breathed from
the divine soul into Adam;
another way of translating that would be
that God placed a divine spark into
every human being. And that divine spark
is the secret of secrets.
My master put it this way:
That spark in us could set the whole universe
on fire. Its greater than the universe itself
because its a spark of what is infinite.
And its within every one of us.
Who we are is far more than who we think
we are.
"To practice rememberence," you've said,
"is to unveil the knowledge and power
and beauty of this spark of God within us."
Robert Frager/Sheikh Ragip
psychologist and Sufi Master
in conversation with Jonathan Cott
On the Sea of Memory:
A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering
(Random House, N. Y., 2005)
As Genesis, describes, there is a Tree
of
Life within the Garden of Eden, so we might long to gain
the
deepest knowledge, understand and wisdom as all contained within the
physical
and metaphysical dimensions of the human heart. Oh, if we only
all
realized the wonderous nature of the magical universe, transcend false
ego to realize Self, and experience the mystical dimensions of the love
and the heart. Oh that we might be so illumined by the supernal
life.
Man, woman and children live in exile, while the Kingdom exists within.
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