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Knowledge and Ignorance | |
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"The individual soul is entangled in the world of forms and does not know itself as part of the being of God. This ignorance constitues the bondage of the soul from which spiritual Sadhana aims at securing emancipation. "Infinite knowledge is latent in everyone but has to be unveiled. The way is to put into practice the spiritual wisdom one has. The teachings that have come to humanity through the Masters and the aspirant's inborn sense of values shed sufficient light upon the next step to be taken." Meher Baba, GmG p.222See also: "Knowledge and Imagination" |
Knowledge and Ignorance by Gregory Allen Butler |
| Meher Baba uses the terms knowledge and ignorance not in the traditional sense of how much one knows or doesn't know about a subject matter. He uses it in one way only: knowledge or ignorance of one's essential nature. For instance, in the first lines of Part 1 of God Speaks we read: |
| All souls (atmas) were, are and will be in the Over-Soul (Paramatma). Souls (atmas) are all One. All souls are infinite and eternal. They are formless. All souls are One; there is no difference in souls or in their being and existence as souls. |
| To know this deep within is to have knowledge. That is perception. To be oblivious of this is ignorance. Blindness. Now there is a big difference in knowing this as you would know the answer on an exam and knowing it deep within as spiritual conviction. For anyone can, in a few minutes of study, memorize these first few lines of God Speaks and say they know them. You get an A. 100%. But that is not knowledge. Repetition of a few words is something even a parrot can do. What is needed is perception. And how do we get that? We get it by focussed attention. By examination. By remembering. And by a sensitivity to the resonance deep within that vibrates to a higher frequency when we get closer to the truth of who we really are. In my own experience, when this happens, I get a sense of intoxication. It creates a lightness of being within me. And conversely, when I experience a heavyness within me, I know that I am getting off track.I feel then like a computer hard drive that is heavily fragmented and needs a defragmentation. And so that is what I do. I defragment by focusing on who I am and the Source of my Being. In September of 2007 I wrote the following meditation, inspired by Meher Baba's words, to achieve that purpose: |
| The Source of my Being is the Source of all Beings. It is the foundation for all life and everything in creation. Without it nothing can exist. Everyone's being is a manifestation of its abundance. My Source of Being has always existed. It exists now and it will exist forever more. It is beyond time. It is beyond the capacity of mind to understand it. It is beyond good and bad, right and wrong. It is beyond all opposites. It is beyond the measure of the mind. The Source of my Being is invisible to those with ordinary eyes; however, when the eyes are ready, it can be seen everywhere and in everything. As far as the eye can see and beyond, it is there. It never abandons, nor can it ever be abandoned. The Source of my Being exists on all levels of consciousness. It exists in the world that we see and in the unseen world of the spirit. It depends on nothing and it exists in its entire splendor eternally. All knowledge resides in my Source. All power resides in my source. All joy resides in my source. All beauty seen in the world first existed in my source - the creator of all beauty. All harmony, esthetics, intelligence, power and Love have their origin in my Source of Being. All peace and bliss first existed in my source of being. It is the source of all life. The light of the sun is but a dim reflection of the light of my Source of Being. Trillions of years ago it existed as it does now. Trillions of years from now, it will still exist. Unchanged, undiminished, untarnished and unblemished. Universes will come and go, but my source of being will always exist. It is never born; it can never die. Everything comes from it and everything returns to it. My Source of Being and I are one eternally. I have no existence outside my source of being. Everyone and everything in creation are eternally one in the Source of my Being - the Source of all. |
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Ignorance entraps us all. So much of the suffering of the world is unnecessary. It's created by taking the false as the real and consequently, the real as the false. As we make progress in gaining this conviction of who we really are, we gain a deeper sense of love, wholeness, bliss, intuition, inspiration and peace. We begin to understand what is real and what is illusion. The deeper we go, the deeper the reality of the real becomes and the less sway on our consciousness illusion holds. Common sense tells us that the real is more important than the unreal, just like our daily lives are more important than our nightly dreams. So why do we put such an emphasis on the unreal? It's because of conditioned consciousness - a consciousness that takes that which is unimportant and makes it important. In other words, a consciousness that takes the false as the real and the real as the false. This is a paradox, for as long as consciousness is conditioned by illusion, the illusion remains the sole reality. It's like being under the spell of a hypnotist. Conditioned consciousness cannot become unconditioned until it starts to experience the real as real. It's like awakening from a dream. Only then can the false be seen as false, or illusory Paraphrasing physicist David Bohm, some people seem to think that the divisions of the poor and the rich, and the world religions and the political systems and the results they bring - violence and war - are what is real. But that is nothing but a false reality waiting to be supplanted by a reality that doesn't fade, by a reality that will be just as real a thousand years from now as it is today. Here is a hypothetical example: Let's say you happen to reincarnate a thousand years from now and read in some ancient history book about the politics and sports of the year 2008. I would imagine that you would find it as boring as you find reading now about the politics from the year 1008. For example, when is the last time you got into a debate about the Afghan sultan Mahmud of Ghazna and his defeat of the Hindu forces at Peshawar? That was big news in 1008. So was the death of the Umayyad caliph al-Muzaffar of Córdoba after his sixyear dictatorship. That was such a big event that it resulted in nearly two-dozen factions setting up little kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula. But not too many people talk about it today. It's not "real" anymore. I agree with Eckhart Tolle. Anything that is not real after a long period of time was never real. It just seemed real. But take any of the Avatars: Zoroaster, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad or Meher Baba. The significance never fades. Millions of people around the world revere these men. Why? Could it be because what they expressed was a release of love from the Infinite? Could it be that their lives were a reflection of Oneness in a world of duality? The world of illusion seems so real until a crack appears and the light of the eternal becomes visible. For me, the process of a false reality cracking and a true reality beginning to shine happened when my whole world fell apart. I was 20-years-old. My father had just died. My girlfriend left me for another guy named Greg. My band broke up. My health deteriorated to the extent that I was hospitalized for three weeks and my weight was reduced to 90 pounds. I was told that my plans to be in the United States Air Force Band could not go forward because of my physical condition. All of these things seemed at one time so important. But when they fell away my false identity fell away. Instead of experiencing the vicissitudes of life, I was free to experience the joy and bliss of my higher self. I became so blissful that I could hardly sleep. My music became inspired. I started writing. I started caring about other people. I discovered Meher Baba. The veils of illusion serve to condition consciousness, to limit consciousness. It leaves consciousness focused on the trivial and the illusory rather than on the primary. The bottom line is that the veils of illusion, the conditions of ignorance, keep us spellbound in a dream. What we think about becomes more real. When we focus our consciousness on love, love becomes more real. When we keep focusing our consciousness on love, love becomes the sole reality and eventually we merge with that reality. On the other hand, when we get so caught up in the politics of the world, or the ups and downs of the economy, or how our favorite college basketball team is doing, we lose that inner awareness. Our happiness then is dependent upon external situations. Be aware. If you notice that, it's time to change your focus. As God Speaks tells us, we are all souls, infinite and eternal. But so often we forget this and identify ourselves with the finite and the passing. |