!
The Vision
By the Venerable Ananda Bodhi Acariya
(now Namgyal Rinpoche)
as transcribed by Margaret Aboud
1971
The Dharma Centre of Canada Toronto, Ontario, Canada
copyright c 1971
(The Dharma Centre of Canada Limited)
God needs us. In fact, He needs us more than we need Him. How is this? We usually think about God in terms of our need of Him. What in God's name does He need us for?
Man is the summation of thousands of years of different forms of life on this planet. "Man" is an abstraction from this continuum of on-going existence, this continuum of evolution. We can view this continuum as varying degrees of consciousness. Man, as the highest form of consciousness on Earth, has all the previous states of consciousness within him. Each form of life wants to live. Man knows that he wants to live. But unlike the plant that will push aside any obstacle in the soil that prevents its growth to reach the light of the Sun, most of Mankind is not conscious of his deep longing to reach the light. He gropes in his darkness, lacking the one thing that would awaken his consciousness to its purpose; a Vision. It is the Vision that will help us complete the path to union with God, from whence we sprung. So God needs us to complete His purpose of union with Him so that we should know His mysteries. "...for I, the Lord thy God am a jealous God." He meant "I am concerned for you. I love you so much that I do not want you to lose the pathway that leads you to me." So God needs us in order for His purpose to be fulfilled. For God's sake, feel worthy to do this.
How are we to fulfill the purpose? We must first have a sensibility of the extrasensory world -dimensions of this life that are other than, or beyond, the sensate experience. In other words, we must become quite literally non-sensical and allow our intuition to grasp the nature of our purpose as human beings. We must gain the awareness that there is a sphere (like the troposphere or the stratosphere of the atmosphere) of consciousness surrounding us that provides a climate for our being to unfold. But the main point here is that at this period of history we must collectively make a leap out of the darkness into the light -- a quantum leap. Whether we like it or not, we are being invaded by others. The world is shrinking. We can respond positively to this or not; by opening up our being and reaching to others, or by withdrawing into our defenses. Those who do not really want anyone to reach their core and be penetrated and communicated with are committing psychological suicide. We have powers that still lie dormant within us. But we must throw off the conceptual hypnosis that keeps us isolated from each other in terms of religion, class, race, ideas and chosen people-ism; and that keeps us as individuals from exploring ourselves and our outer world. It will no longer be viable to stay locked within oneself. We must join one with the other to make exploration of that which lies within and without us. Only in this way will question be awakened, in turn to awaken us. And only in this way can we live life the way it must be lived; with passion, commitment and intensity.
A Vision contains both the "end" state of affairs on the one hand and the means to realize it on the other. Thus, the Vision we see guides us in our actions towards the achievement of an aim. What is the aim of my Vision? Very simply, it is to unfold, to awaken to and to fulfill the true purpose of our life on Earth as part of the human experiment. As you may notice, the aim just stated was described by verbs and verbs imply action. What kind of action? Again, very simply, exploratory action -- action which awakens question and increases what could be called the bundle of doubt. Thus, we must make haste to doubt, not in a pessimistic sense, but in the sense of the raising of questions, of both the inner and outer planes of our existence. For unless we make the within as the without, we will not see the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Vision sees God as both universal and personal. We come from the Light, from Love, from the Divine and our task is to return. Just as we must let the images of ourselves and the world die, so too we must let God die -- that is, our concept of God. We must see God as a very silly being if we think that we have to approach Him in the rituals and formulas of organized religion. And in the sense that the universal flow is continually unfolding through all manner of phenomena, we are continually approaching God. Our task is to become aware by doubting Him that we are continually in His presence. This doubting is a compliment to God. It means that we are seeking to know. Our mind is from the same God who wants us to use it to doubt Him.
But while we are in the process of doubting, another "ingredient" must be present, namely faith. There is no real dichotomy between doubt and faith. In fact, as the doubt increases, so does the faith. How is this? You may say "But if we must continually raise questions, how can we believe in anything?" First, we must be careful to distinguish between faith based on blind dogma and ritualized formulas and faith based on question, on seeking to know. In other words we must become aware that we were created to doubt, to explore, to extend our consciousness. This is precisely what we have faith in! Faith in the universal flow or process. Second we must come to realize that even though we raise questions about the life flow, it still keeps flowing. In other words, this flow exists as an objective fact of the universe. Although we may each have our perception of the flow, it is merely a perception "of" and is not the flow itself. Our task is to come into harmony with this flow, so that we are this flow. Most beings spend most of their time resisting the flow and call this resistance "Life".
You must understand that the Vision does not see Man as a puppet in slavish subservience to some iron-clad laws of the universe. On the contrary, it sees Man as coming into harmony with these laws. If man is in slavish subjection to something he senses is out of his control, it is by his own unawareness that this is so. The dharmas are quite literally acting out all around and within us, waiting for Man to make an exploration of them, so that he may understand the nature of the universe as "hidden" in the workings of the laws. But Man must go forth to explore the dharmas, they will not come to him without effort on his part. The Kingdom of Heaven must be taken by storm -- that is, pursued -- and this search demands full absorption. We must become aware that there is literally nothing better for us to do than to join together and collectively tap our powers such as telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience and moving matter by mind. Indeed space ships are crude in the sense that through meditation, we can go into space without them. We have the potential of mastery of any aspect of the universe. It merely requires a shift of power from one form of action to another, from exploitation to exploration.
In order to explore we need a vehicle. The Vision sees Religion, Science and Art as vehicles, that is, as different ways to explore the same thing. These disciplines are not ends in themselves but avenues running alongside one another. Although our curiosity may be aroused by one avenue of exploration, we must maintain a non-selective curiosity, not clinging to any one part, but seeking to embrace the whole. We must be in a state of choiceless awareness: nonexclusive so that we may be all-inclusive. The Vision sees Man as being open to all possibilities, to all views or theories, to the vast amount of knowledge, and yet cling to none. We must not even cling to a Vision -- that would be to misunderstand its nature. Intensity, passion and commitment do not mean clinging. If we push any discipline to its limits, we come to all the others. In other words, the Vision sees these disciplines as having a common form, namely; wonder, curiosity, the awakening of question about our inner and outer universes and faith that in the seeking we shall find. Thus, the Vision sees the transcending of the dualistic thought that perceives Science, Art and Religion as separate and distinct. It also sees Man as transcending the splits in his being which he has projected onto the outside world.
When we become aware that mathematics, physics, art, poetry and other categories are languages, ways of seeing the processes of the universal laws or dharmas, the barriers to exploration in the form of "I am not" give way to "I wonder if ... " and finally, "I can!". Furthermore, the being is the summation of all that has gone before us in history. What this means is that within our being lie all the mysteries of the universe. The within is as the without and we must understand the relationship between them.
The Vision means seeing, clear-sightedness. It is a clear seeing into the mysteries of the universe that we must seek. The premise upon which the Vision rests is "Seek and ye shall find". Seek to extend the evolutionary process of consciousness through the dropping of the categories and labels that imprison our being in the stagnant existence hardly worth the name of "a life". To say "Oh, I'm not a scientist, I couldn't do science", or "I have no head for mathematics" or, "I could never put colour onto a canvas properly" is to see our being as fixed and static on the one hand, and as the totality of our existence on the other. I say to you that our entire being could never be contained in our man-made categories, and that part of the nature of our being is to be ever dynamic. To see our descriptions of ourselves as the totality of our being is to be unaware that part of our being is always pure possibility, pure potential. Man has always wanted to transcend what he is, but how can he do this when he treats himself as an object, a static and fixed one. We must accept what we are, both in our wholesome and unwholesome aspects, and move on. For although we seem to be in a period of ever-increasing darkness, I do not see Mankind as being inevitably destroyed by some catastrophe like a world war. Man is irretrievably blessed, not damned -- which is precisely why he thinks he can continue to dabble in the destructive arenas of his being. Thus the Vision sees the verb "to be" as being perhaps the most active state in the universe, not just as a passive state. It is passive in the sense of acceptance but active in the sense of a basis for action.
We are at a point in history where Man is on the threshold of a quantum leap. What does "quantum leap" mean? It means that when we realize that it is because we see our own being in another that communication with others is possible, we will understand how it is that we can meaningfully come together. We all spring from the same Divine Seed. And this fact will be the very premise upon which we move and breathe and have our being, not just something to be tossed around once in a while in academic discussions. We are only individuals in the sense of our being unique manifestations of the dharmas. But we are not separate and distinct from one another on the spiritual plane. And it is to this plane that we must return. When our ego defenses that make us see ourselves as separate and distinct are no longer necessary, they can be dropped and the flow of communications on all levels between many beings will produce an “Overmind”, as it were. Human minds will meet for quite a distinct breakthrough in the evolution of consciousness. Many beings are beginning to emerge but they may still be in isolation from each other for the most part. The quantum leap means that the vibrations sent out from like consciousnesses will draw us together on a scale hitherto unknown in order to collectively leap out of our darkness and conceptual hypnosis into a new space, both inner and outer.
In the past, a few individuals here and there throughout history have emerged and unfolded and passed on their teaching. In the future, the quantum leap will lift all those who desire to be uplifted. It is in a state of love that we will make this quantum leap together. For it is from Divine Love that we came, it is love that enables us to intuitively grasp what Divine Love means, and it is love that finally brings a being through to fulfillment of his task. The Vision is grounded not just in the mind but in the heart. It contains the kind of being we desire to be, the kinds of interaction we want. Love springs from the heart. Herein lies the beauty of a Vision. Our hearts are often made into the battleground for the split between the mind and the emotions and the feelings. But it is a heart unclouded by neuroses that will give us the feel of the texture of the task. Our mind or intellect will give us the skill in means. And together, they will produce openness, clear seeing and will power. But the will power is not to carry out our ego's will, but God's.
Vision means seeing means eyes
letting in the light and men are
the pupils of the universe to
explore her. Man is responsible
for the extension of consciousness,
for the exploration of God.
God can only help us if we help him.
The dharmas are, but they need us
to fulfill them so that we may in
turn be filled full and our cups
run over. We must be as cups
for the universe: open-ended bodies
to contain the flow of the universe
only in order to make manifest that
flow and express its shape -- until
it changes shape and flows on.
Containers that do not contain.