Where will this Light go?
Some who claim to know
See its presence dim–
A wisp of cosmic whim–
A flicker made complete in afterglow,
Why was this Light made?
To complement the shade?
Did schism at the source
Give the dark its force?
What Whole could luminescence have betrayed?
Yet burning Lights may be,
Within the Mystery,
An ember in the dark,
A needed bearings mark.
More or less than this makes it unfree.
May we set the world on the unquenchable fire
Casting all cares and crowns into universal flame
One by one, and all together, we fall and rise again
Forged anew into bonds unbreakable
Good poetic response to the issue of consciousness. What sort of consummation do you see? Reunion with the Whole? Reincarnation?
Thanks for your thoughts.
Consciousness is the light for our bearings in a universe that would be nothingness without it. The light seems turned on at birth. Where does it go at death?
Is there afterlife consciousness? Is there a before life consciousness? Maybe both?
The ego should evaporate, preferably before, and after going through, and overcome the obstacles.
But then what? Nothing gained or lost in the process, but conscious awareness of identity is the clincher. Those who can not give it up, ( as per Khrushnamurti ); become hungry ghosts.
Those that can, will not be turned back, and their return is eternally voluntary.
The become self aware then if they wish, because the returning light does not impose that requirement on them coming back.
They are free, with the naturally recurring manifested risks involved. Theh may again be tempted to seek the forbidden.
Only the strongest souls can avoid and defeat temptation.
NDEs suggest that “conscious awareness of identity” can exist after death.
When he was very young, my son told me that he existed before birth!
The reference of Self does not have to be the accumulations of ego while living. It can be merely a perspective, a light for bearings in the dark.
But then what is the ego? A perspective attached to some sense of self? It many perspectives?
According to. biblicAl zources:
“A spiritual ego is a mind infused with spiritual ideas and beliefs. It’s the idea and identity of yourself as being spiritually evolved.”
So NDE’s have this intrinsic awareness of who we are, therefore implying a thoughtful realization which transcends time and space?
And this quality does away to a certain degree the spiritual differences of others, or the other view that the objective, physical differences of human beings reflect the internal differences.
Or, that it’s an either/ and/ or, where the two states can realize each other, on the spiritual level, but not in the physical realm
Interesting, and with far reaching implications to science and religion.
They may, again, be self excluding or including realizations.
I suspect that there is an ego which is informed as to its identity by memes and can be different from a Self as the this which observes/interacts with the that.
Mysticism appears to be about the shedding of the memetic ego in order to arrive at the true self–an “I” that is an eye. Blake made the distinction between seeing with the eye and seeing through the eye.
Seeing with the eye provides a vision of memetic possibilities, Seeing through the eye provides a vision uncluttered by mental evaluations.
That makes ‘sense’ in a way that transcends the formative , earlier genetic source, and as such, might there be a transitional breakthrough which connects the dots - which makes self realization possible across the board between various groups of people?
For, except for a very small segment of the populatipn, such will appear a hypothetical preception, without an original ‘intentio’.
The transitional breakthrough may be the shedding of accumulated identities until one reaches the existential core of Being in order to hear the soothing silences of God speaking to the heart, to the essence of the true Self. Mystics, East and West, talk of such a situation. It is available to all and is the path “few can find” simply because few dare to look. After all the shedding of accumulated egos is not without sorrow over loss of the familiar. Going there often involves a “Dark Night of the Soul” for that reason. If this were only a hypothetical, no one would have experienced it to the extent the mystics claim happens.
Removed, for lack of the meaning of what is really implied.
Thank You Irrellus …
Yes, but reaching that core of existance , the being of conscious thought ( consciousness) is the essence manifested of near invisibility
Sartre believed that the shedding of layers of the ego causes fear and dread. Others believe that this uncovers the part of human beings that is the Heaven within or the juncture of God and the soul. Perhaps the truth of what is the real essence of Self can only be determined by
how the archeological digs into the ego affect the actions that rise from believing a certain way.
Nowedays the majority opirnion works the other way, to shed the ego is to abandon all hope for certain unwanted behavior by those who evaluate it in terms of such belief systems which may only mirror the acceptable menu.
Reality as such denies the existence of formative. fantasy and reactive consciousness, including aesthetic license.
Illusions come near to delusive attempts to somehow prove an anarchic mindset, intended merely as a stage, framing the simplistic merely an artifact that may appear as if the ego can be shed that way, whereas that ego was never real, but an idealized version of it, that could never, ever be recaptured, only through the eternallay recurrance of the wheel of life.( as in Buddhism)
A Course in Miracles aligns with the Buddhist teaching that the ego is unreal, that we simply do not remember our true selves, but must be reminded. This reminder is enlightenment due to a spiritual awakening; otherwise, we remain trapped in our attachments and desires.
The Self that gives a sense of bearings in a world of darkness or Other is a light. The ego, on the other hand is a distortion of the light, a focus on Self as its attachments. With the latter, one sees the light as an image in a mirror, surrounded by things that it sees as enhancing itself. It cannot see through the eye (I) because it sees attachments as defining what it is. It looks with the eye, as Blake noted. Thus, it cannot see itself under the coverings of accumulated self-definitions.
I just wanted to note that there are two "I"s—Self and Ego, the bearings light and the artificial light. With the latter come the questions such as–why was this made? And where will it go? With the former there is presence and process, conditions of the true Self.
Note–I asked the ego questions early on. Now I see them as useless.