Reincarnation As Organic Metaphor

[Ulises]

This feels exquisite to me...much in resonance with the integral spirit that brought me to learn about Taoism...

 

Reincarnation As Organic Metaphor, an Essay

 

The philosophical generosity that birthed the Vedic spirit is completely absent in today’s world. Our world culture has become religiously self-righteous and utilitarian. The view that spiritual realization arises as a gift from nature, a flowering of various invisible, organic processes, has vanished.

 

Judeo-Christian-Islamic theologies assert the existence of a God separate from nature. Accordingly, they tell us that the world was created for a two-fold purpose, first to glorify this transcendent, separate God, and second to redeem the human race in time and space. However, this view is dualistic in nature and ultimately incorrect, for nature does not exist in linear time. Nature’s time is cyclical. An apple tree produces apples year after year without any ultimate purpose other than the joy of fruition. Nature’s functioning is not teleological. Humans tend to hyper-intellectualize, projecting purposes onto other life forms. They freeze the fluidity of life into rational concepts. Judeo-Christian-Islamic dualistic theologies have devastatingly stained the spiritual fabric of our world.

 

Reincarnation is a charming, sensuous metaphor for organic life in migration. Rebirth was not meant to create the impression of a linear march (of births) through time. Instead it pointed to the world as fertile soil in which human beings might flourish. The ancient Vedic rishis, or seers, were ardent lovers of nature – even nature-worshippers. In the natural world they saw the “reason” for existence, filled as it was with spontaneous displays of overwhelming beauty. Skies, seas, mountains, fragrances of sweet flowers, were meant to lift the human spirit into supra-sensual ecstasies. Perceptual, emotional, and mental faculties were spiritually stimulated by natural phenomena. Knowledge and devotion were like strings on a guitar, fusing into the melodic rhythm of the total human being. Lila, the spirit of playfulness, the self-generating power seen in nature, was the universe’s matrix, the ultimate “reason” for its existence.

 

Evolution allows the soul’s maturation through time, carried by the force of desire. Just as a flower requires sunlight to live and grow, human beings blossom through yearning. Desire is not a dirty word, as certain spiritual traditions insist. Desire’s force serves the expansion of human consciousness as it matures and deepens into a painful hunger for God, culminating in moksha, spiritual liberation. Liberation or moksha x`is actually desire’s fruition, not its negation.

 

The yogas of karma, jnana, bhakti, and raja were the spiritual paths of action, discrimination, devotion, and meditation. They conveyed a theme of adapting any and every form of human activity into the Self or pure consciousness. These spiritual paths affirmed compassionately that any type of person could awaken from dualistic experience, and evolve from the waking state to unlimited Brahman consciousness.

 

Samsara often referred to as the wheel of birth and death, the field in which transmigration occurs, literally meant “running together,” or “wandering.” Samsara referred to living movement, like that of a meandering river. This non-mechanistic image starkly contradicts the guilt-ridden idea of rebirth as retribution. It nullifies the cold notion of physical embodiment as a mechanical exercise carried out by the indifferent principle of cause and effect. Judeo-Christian-Islamic monotheistic, utilitarian theologies seeped into the fabric of Hinduism over the centuries, tainting its immaculate, highly metaphorical, notion of rebirth.

 

The rebirth process was carried out by the vasanas, infinitely subtle, wave-like energy patterns. Vasanas transmigrated from body to body, bridging incarnations. Curiously, the word vasana comes from the root VAS, which means “to perfume.” A human being “perfumed” from body to body. Vasanas, trans-fleshly fragrances, organic blueprints of matter and psyche, were the potentialities of consciousness, acting to transform matter into energy, and vice versa. A reincarnated human being was hardly considered a heap of residual, karmic debris. He was a floating fragrance, evanescent as a wisp of air, seeking a proper nervous system, one that would in-breathe him into human form.

 

This ethereal view of rebirth may sound effeminate and oversimplified in today’s overly patriarchal spiritual climate. A circular, self-generating reality cannot be grasped by a mind obsessed with purposes. Reincarnation, organically understood through metaphors, exasperates the strategies of the rational mind to obliterate a spontaneous ontology. Only a mind freed from utilitarian consciousness can grasp the reality of a purposeless existence. Time, space, and nature vibrate as webs of energetic frequencies, organic nexuses through which living forms grow. These frequencies may be grasped intuitively by a poetically liberated awareness.

 

The ancient Vedic understanding of reincarnation remains a brilliant, liberating, and life-affirming metaphor, vivified in an aboriginal, spiritual innocence, solidifying a vast, organic, evolutionary process.

David Spero

 

http://www.davidspero.org/teachings/metaphor.html

Edited October 23, 2010 by Ulises

[The Observer]

Very beautiful article. However I think a lot of people lose these ideas because they are associated with the caste system of India. I guess a lot of this mystic knowledge was co-opted into a system of slavery.

[Ulises]

Very beautiful article. However I think a lot of people lose these ideas because they are associated with the caste system of India. I guess a lot of this mystic knowledge was co-opted into a system of slavery.

 

 

Yeah it's a shame...always the same sad story: Taoists abusing mystic knowledge for energy vampirism, Christians burning gnostics, Muslims killing sufis,Buddhists of different sects killing each other in battles...and so forth and so on..

 

I like what the N/om Shaman Brad Keeney says ( as he was told in the Kalahari, by the wisest mystics there): "The only difference between a shaman and a sorcerer is self-control...or lack of it".

He also tells that it comes a phase in the spiritual growth, where you are before a fork and you have to choose: the path of power, or the path of love

 

warm regards

Uli

Edited October 23, 2010 by Ulises

[C T]

the path of power, or the path of love

 

warm regards

Uli

Hi Uli...

 

Welcome to TTB!

 

Thanks for putting up the above article. I liked what the writer said.

 

Was wondering if you would like to speak a bit and expand on the quote above about the two paths? Be nice to hear your thoughts...

 

(Btw, thanks to you, i watched a couple of Tim Freke's short talks on YT, enjoyed them, and thinks he is a very compassionate and wise man. I shall be keeping an eye out for more of his clips in future.)

 

Leave you this (talk by Mooji) as a token of thanks:

[Ulises]

Hi Uli...

 

Welcome to TTB!

 

Thanks for putting up the above article. I liked what the writer said.

 

Was wondering if you would like to speak a bit and expand on the quote above about the two paths? Be nice to hear your thoughts...

 

(Btw, thanks to you, i watched a couple of Tim Freke's short talks on YT, enjoyed them, and thinks he is a very compassionate and wise man. I shall be keeping an eye out for more of his clips in future.)

 

Leave you this (talk by Mooji) as a token of thanks:

 

 

Thank you!

I'm just a shaker in the making...but this I feel. Each day, I feel before a crossroads: mastery/mistery, separation/union, poverty/poetry....Is it my heart owner of my mind, or my mind owner of my heart...?

Or, as Keeney says: "We sacrificed our link-to-the-universe-heart for a delusional body-less-head-trip that has imprisoned us far too long."

 

 

A call for wild ecstatic experience

 

"Shaking medicine is the trembling, shaking, and quaking associated with the experience of ecstatic bliss. This major transformative experience is an entry into the numinous – the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. Arguably all religions and pre-religions initially felt this ecstasy and regarded it as an awakening of the original mysteries, the most extraordinary experiences possible for a human being.

 

The emergence of social institutions to house ecstatic rapture - whether as temples, ashrams, churches, synagogues, medicine societies, shaman guilds, or pagan societies - resulted in the quieting of the originating experience in exchange for uniform narrative understanding and maintenance of social hierarchy. The ecstatic experience was sacrificed for normalized belief and group conformity. This was true for shamanism as well as the major world religions.

 

In the sociology of religion this social process is called the “routinization” of the founding charismatic experience. Wild ecstatic experience is replaced by standardized ritual that overturns spontaneous play and improvisation. Guided imagery, clichéd patter, and loyalty oaths overtake raw unadulterated creativity, free expression, and heightened emotions.

 

The shaking traditions propose that we most deeply thirst and hunger for an ongoing immersion in ecstatic experience. The source of this shaking bliss is what the Ju/'hoan Bushmen call n/om. They wisely never give a totalizing definition of n/om, but respectfully allude to it being a mystery responsible for bringing forth life’s vitality and acknowledge that its root is open-ended limitless love. When you have n/om, it makes you shake with ecstatic delight. For members of textually constrained cultures, it is often difficult to loosen the cognitive habits and tightly constructed belief systems that inhibit fully awakened feelings.

 

We rarely are encouraged to stand under the sky with raw and naked presence, available to be hit by ecstatic lightning. Even most shamanic cultures, old and new, became “tamed” and conducted in a calm routinized manner. The shamans of old were wild, unpredictable, and appeared out of control. No one, including the shaman, knew what would happen in a ceremony. The so-called “spirits” took over. The same is true of early religious ceremonies. Then Buddhism chased out the Bon shamans, Christians went after their ecstatics, and shamans became reduced to hereditary entitlement or homogenized, standardized training.

 

Shaking medicine is a call for wild ecstatic experience. It is shamanism, spirituality, religion, and transformational performance in its fully improvised elemental form. Ecstatic shaking radically encourages the practice of wild shamanism, wild religion, wild spirituality, and wild transformative performance. This does not refer to trivial, irresponsible, or unethical behavior. The deep wild involves hyper-complexity, the greater mind of nature that holds our psyche as a small part of a more encompassing interdependent though always-changing network of relations.

We can choose to move toward the unpredictable, unknowable, and untamable wild. The sacred lives in the wild. The sacred constitutes the wild. The problem began when someone said that words and meanings must explain, domesticate, and cover up wild experience. Within this hegemony of words, we demystified whatever was mysterious and walked away from the wild in order to become semantically tamed. We sacrificed our link-to-the-universe-heart for a delusional body-less-head-trip that has imprisoned us far too long.

 

Consider a re-entry into the wild. Become a wild shaman, a wild pagan, a wild Christian, a wild Buddhist, a wild Jew, a wild Taoist, a wild agnostic, a wild artist, a wild performer, a wild whatever you want to call it because the name is less important than the experience of being wild in this natural though always uncommon way of giving priority to mystery over mastery.

 

In these challenging and complex postmodern times, shaking medicine is arguably best held by the aesthetic freedom granted by the performing arts. Some explorers of the human spirit are walking away from overly rigid institutions, explanatory frameworks, and reductionist training (whether spiritual, therapeutic, or educational) in order to invent a shape-shifting stage and ceremonial ground for the liberating performance of wild ecstatic transformation."

Edited October 24, 2010 by Ulises

[Ulises]

I resonate deeply with these words from a Zen master:

"My heart burns like fire but my eyes are as cold as dead ashes"

 

and from this great mystic, St. John of the Cross:

"no other guide or light/But the one burning in my heart bright"

[C T]

Excellent writings! Thanks for the inspirational tone.

 

Looking forward to more of your contributions in the coming days...

[三江源]

.

Edited April 9, 2015 by 三江源

[Ulises]

Thank you, kindred spirits! ; )

 

I want to share just another inspirational quote from somebody that has connected the dots between the Tibetan/Mongolian/Greek/Gnostic/Sufi/Native American wisdoms:

 

"Longing is the movement and the call-

ing of our deepest nature. It's the cry of

the wolf, the power of the lion, the flut-

tering of all the birds inside us. And if we

can find the courage to face it, it will take

us back to where we belong. But just like

animals, this longing is dangerous as well

as beautiful. Longing is the powerhouse

of our being, and on this path of return

it breaks everything except what is

unbreakable. It shatters all the man-made

structures that we try to build up around

it and place in its way. It washes away the

future and past and leaves us with

nothing but eternity.

For longing is the creator of time,

and time can never contain it.

(...)

This journey, 'as far as longing can

reach' (Parmenides), is a journey to end all journeys:

way beyond any ordinary human experi-

ence. It demands tremendous courage.

It changes every cell in our body.

Mythologically, it's the journey of the

hero. And yet to understand what's

involved we have to forget all our con-

cepts of what it means to be a hero. We

usually think of a hero as a warrior, a

fighter.And yet what will get us where

we want to go isn't willpower; it isn't

struggle or effort. It isn't even a matter

of having to do anything ourselves. It's

just a question of knowing how to turn

a sharp sword it cuts through all our

cares and ambitions and leaves us naked.

It wants the whole of us, and we know

that in the end this longing is a fire

which will consume every part of us. But

what in all honesty is the alternative?..."

Peter Kingsley

Edited October 24, 2010 by Ulises

[三江源]

.

Edited April 9, 2015 by 三江源

[Birch]

Hi Uli.

 

My sense of it is that it isnt much of a choice,at all, and that the shen of the individual ineluctably decide. Those that are drawn to the path of power simply dont have the qualifications, the heart refinement, for the path of love. They are drawn to combat, and power issues by their very nature, it feeds them, without it there is a gap of lack of focus, and they thrive on focus, because they are outward directed.

 

And love types may well not care about 'power' at all, though there are those that are such powerful forces of love.

 

It's a spectrum, with Warrior at one end, and Mystic at the other, and there is are varying degrees of mobility, according to one's level of development and shen.

 

( funny thing is that Margaret Thatchers' ( 'the iron lady') biography is called "the path to power"....she was famously devoid of love, and took the childrens free school milk away! one amongst many other nurturing systems she dismantled)

 

As usual the polarity is occupied by extremities and also by subtleties, and it's the extremities which shout the loudest.

 

It's all part of the various petals on the flower. Do we, at a depth level, get to choose which petal to be, or do we just clear obstructive debris so the underlying pattern can be seen.

 

Just to add extra sparkle, power can be a form of love, and love is quite definitely a form of power.

 

hey ho!

 

 

Margaret Thatcher Milk Snatcher...

 

Excellent post Cat. I think (at this point) that the "warrior" position has to be taken up at some point during path, for unless one fights (and a question might be "fights what exactly") there is a risk of giving up too readily and giving in to power.

 

IMO power doesn't go away, whatever your position happens to be - but if you give up and give in to power having merely added insight, a truly evil combination results.

 

No longer acting in ignorance, you have to choose. And I would say, you have to keep choosing all the damn time, even if it is the path of love. To keep that up IMO (and small, rotten experience) requires the power of the warrior.

[Ulises]

Hi Uli.

 

My sense of it is that it isnt much of a choice,at all, and that the shen of the individual ineluctably decide. Those that are drawn to the path of power simply dont have the qualifications, the heart refinement, for the path of love. They are drawn to combat, and power issues by their very nature, it feeds them, without it there is a gap of lack of focus, and they thrive on focus, because they are outward directed.

 

And love types may well not care about 'power' at all, though there are those that are such powerful forces of love.

 

It's a spectrum, with Warrior at one end, and Mystic at the other, and there is are varying degrees of mobility, according to one's level of development and shen.

 

( funny thing is that Margaret Thatchers' ( 'the iron lady') biography is called "the path to power"....she was famously devoid of love, and took the childrens free school milk away! one amongst many other nurturing systems she dismantled)

 

As usual the polarity is occupied by extremities and also by subtleties, and it's the extremities which shout the loudest.

 

It's all part of the various petals on the flower. Do we, at a depth level, get to choose which petal to be, or do we just clear obstructive debris so the underlying pattern can be seen.

 

Just to add extra sparkle, power can be a form of love, and love is quite definitely a form of power.

 

hey ho!

 

 

 

 

Hi,

Brad Keeney explained to us that power is a "station" in the development of n/om/kundalini/life force that all the Bushmen pass at some point - you feel omnipotent, you feel that you can jump to the fire,fight lions with your bare hands, etc. - .

Keeney put the example of Carlos Castaneda, saying that according to the Bushmen,and framing it in a linear way ( of course it's much more complex and non-linear) the path of power is the primary school: when you reach the Big Love, you are doctorate...I'm saying all of this with a mischievous smile, of course...

It's difficult to imagine a more rough environment that the Kalahari desert, so these guys are not wimps, or "bliss bunnies", to use a disgusting expression I have seen in some forums in the last times...and yet they say that the most important thing for the development of a human being is the "softening of the heart"and to feel the Big Love that holds all opposites together...to hold in your body and heart the vibration of all opposites.

The love they embody can be, for hardened individuals visiting them, terrifiyng...

Also, the Bushmen stress again and again that word games can very easily trick us, so the important thing is the FEELING, not the thoughts...

I've been pondering this matter for some time. I like what Antero Alli says "The magus is in love with power, the mystic is empowered by love"

http://www.verticalpool.com/2010interview.html

 

...and I feel that in the end is a mystery (hyper-complexity) why you choose to be in love with power, or to be powered by love ( and I think that can change at any moment: some great Bushmen healers "fall" in sorcery and come back to the healer path again...)

Edited October 25, 2010 by Ulises