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ON QUALITATIVE EVOLUTION
The world today seems very much in need of a restatement of religious principles. In order to undertake such a project we should investigate the inner dynamic, the forces, or aspects, which need to be balanced, one versus the other, in daily life. Every major world religion has put forward (in some way or another) an ethical or moral base. They all have a code - sometimes basically unethical but nonetheless involved with the life of the group, the preservation of the group. Some of these codes may cover such things as hygiene, style of worship, and so forth, rather than questions of morals. These types of laws or principles are concerned with how you conduct a religion, and in the coursing of history, principles expounded for the sake of hygiene can become confused with questions of morality and ethics.
Morality is involved with harming another being. Issues such as the question of whether one should become a vegetarian - which involves the relationships between all beings - are part of morality. This is the first step in an attempt to separate out what is concerned with ethical behaviour from what is a reasonable style of conducting a religious life. Much of the ritual behaviour patterns can be seen as an extension of man's desire to and attempts to control his environment; to safeguard life at the physical level. Ritual codes were (and are) written on the basis of experience. Primitive man made rules to suit his primitive conditions; suitable at particular times and places. These have only a transitory relevance, and it is important to distinguish such laws from what we could term an enduring ethic.
Morality or ethics are often bordering on confusion because of the similarity to ritual codes decreed as necessary at a moment in history. The question of war has always plagued man - war can be fought to preserve one's own group's life but not fighting war is also an act for the preservation of life. How much distinction can you find in these two views? For a person to be moral he must know in depth what is fundamental to the preservation of life. If war is immoral, it is not because of the decree of angelic beings but because of evolutionary awareness in the depth of mankind as to what preserves life. Love and war seem to be opposing forces to choose from - competition versus cooperation. Does war under certain circumstances preserve life?
It is not enough to merely exist. The quality of existence is a factor which preserves life. The ancient Aztecs had a ceremony where they cut the heart out of a man. This type of oppression (which symbolizes the oppression of such leaders as Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin) has never remained in power for long. It is always pushed out by the life force. There can only be two possibilities - the slow eating away of beings who oppress or the arising of the life force itself to make necessary changes. And the quality of life (which is moving towards true communal/socialist living style) will correct the imperfect manifestations which presently exist in the “socialist” political forms. The force of life will overcome any of the by-products of its promiscuity! Over the generations, this force is sweeping on towards universal consciousness. The pacifist is counting, not on the immediate situation, but on the sweep of history. He insists that quality is essential to the preservation of life - that, unless quality is preserved, life cannot persist. We would not want to go on living in a state of great suffering. The pacifist sees himself as a guardian of certain moral values - but so does the man who fights to defend what he believes to be a superior way of life!
All life itself is involved with quality. This is the way of the evolutionary thrust.
All of life has a quality control inbuilt for the preservation of life forms - evolutionary selection and refinement, improvement, adaptation - and the drive to enlightenment in man is a manifestation of this principle of preservation. Trees split rocks apart to reach upward toward the light. Oppressive states are all, sooner or later, swept aside by the winds of change. States of depression pass away. Everything in Nature, great or small, is born with a prodding ruthlessness, urging on to enlightenment. Throughout all of evolution, life is involved in the increasing quality of life. The question is not “ to be or not to be”, but “how to be better”.
The individual's restlessness and search are prodded by the collective drive. Ideas that arise in this or that individual man are for the preservation of man as a species, and the debate in man comes from the depth of cellular consciousness. Each being is just a unit in the long, long sweep of history. Our interests are borne by the sweep of history. In the very cells of our body is the drive to enlightenment for the preservation of all mankind; to get man to a point of secure, all-knowing capability. After all, if you know everything, you can handle everything. So, the primary drive is for preservation, and after that comes a desire for extension of this preservation.
Another word for Nirvana is preservation. In the book, The Buddhist Doctrine of Totality, knowing is like the sounding of the depth of the being. And the depth of the being is on about preservation. What is life on about? The questioning of the depth, in depth, is the answer, and in order to continue questioning, the individual must be preserved.
All of Buddhist morality is resting on the premise that oneself must be preserved. The first precept taken by Buddhists on every full moon states “I undertake to train myself to refrain from killing.” The primary concern here is with preservation of the self. All of the precepts are rally just one law established to protect against the revenge motif in life. If you cheat someone, you are subject to retaliation; if you give aid, you cut out the motif of revenge. If you do not kill, or lie, or steal, or exploit others, only those who are exploiting, trying to save their lives blindly, would try to harm you. So then, if you were no longer harming yourselves by overindulging your senses, or using intoxicants to the point where your faculties are impaired, the need for defensive lifestyles would be greatly reduced. All the precepts are only one law. In Christianity Jesus added to the strict rabbinical law by stating beings should love God first and then love their neighbours as themselves This has great merit but unfortunately it is not explained well.
It is possible for a person to serve others, yet block his own development. If you are masochistic to yourself, you might also cause harm to others. God, self and other are one and inseparable. It is the person who truly loves God who becomes involved in the love of self and of others. The real meaning of God is a positive exploration of the life in which one is involved. True love of self demands an understanding of one's direction. You must ask in depth: “Who am I? What is going on?” Then this will lead you naturally to ask: “Who are these other beings around me? How do they function? What is the quality of their lives?” Persons who love exploration of life, love themselves and others. If you truly love yourself, you will explore - this is a positive affirmation of life. “What is this? Why is this?” - that's the true search. All such understanding as maltreatment by parents, and so forth, is secondary. The primary need is for reaching out to touch, to explore. It is only because this drive is present that one wants to take therapy, to evaluate relationships. Within us is something beating, something similar to the underlying theme of the drum in Voyage to Arcturus.
What are ethics on about?
All forms of life have the innate instinctual knowledge of preservation. In lower life forms the numbers of eggs produced, or of off-spring born, are much greater than in mankind. In humans there is more emphasis on preserving every unit since the production level is so low. The fewer units produced, the greater the preservation drive. This is most obvious in families with one child. Man has a fantastically strong urge to survive. Hundreds of thousands of sperm reach out to fertilize one egg, and the drive to ensure the life on an individual basis reflects an equal or greater drive for the life of the species.
According H.G. Wells, the human being is the only animal to concern himself with moral issues. The question before man becomes how to preserve life amidst the ever-growing complexity of daily affairs. In the welter of probabilities of modern life men have lost their centre of awareness. Ethics demand a constantly evaluative awareness in everything you do, and in a city one is constantly bombarded with anxieties and threats to preservation. You need far more clarity of ethics to walk down Yonge Street than you do to live like a fish in water. Young people wish to get away from this constant demand of ethic; it is very painful to have to feel the clamouring needs of society, but teachings that promote escapism or continuous indulgence in drugs and fixes which turn off the need to be aware only act to deaden the being. That is not the way to liberation. There is a need for the Stoic principle in city life, to be able to meet the real demands of life; the Nirmanakaya. Turning off is really turning away from the principle of ethics.
I'm not condemning all escapist action. Sometimes it is very moral to go to a cinema or whatever - it fulfils the drive to exist. It could be a very moral act. Perhaps the being is experiencing great anxiety to the point of mental illness. In such case it is moral to seek relief of tension, and that should be done with great awareness. But you all know beings who are vegetating in escapism. If this need is not in balance with the desire to explore, to experience, you run the risk of losing touch with the evolution of your being. There is a time to awaken and a time to sleep; a time to alleviate anxiety and a time not to do so. Medical doctors don't keep patients under ether all their lives! There is a time when the great fear has to be faced. You should concern yourselves with liberation, not only the alleviation of suffering.
One of the main concerns of any teacher is how to impart to students the need to be aware of having concern for the preservation of the quality of life. You can really only explore the phenomena of drugs if you are deeply rooted in morality - that is, if your prime motivation is not for escapism but for exploration; to raise the question of all of life -“Where did that phenomenon come from?” A being can only answer that if he has become honestly aware that the first law of existence is preservation.
If you are not threatened you don't turn off. The Buddha once said that we do all things for the sake of self - including loving others. You see, to love others is an act of reaching out, an augmentation of your being. Preservation also includes the idea of augmentation - the more you augment, the more secure you are. It is the augmentation of the being that preserves - exclusion weakens. If you see the horde of phenomena around you as aspects of your consciousness, as part of the question you are involved in, and you move toward absorbing that, to using that for augmentation of your being, you have much greater security than the being who feels that any movement is possibly threatening to their existence.
One could say that there are two types of beings: ‘moon' beings and ‘earth' beings. Moon beings have no atmosphere with which to burn up that which is hurled in their direction by life. They are constantly pitted by incoming data. The drug state does promote such mind states. Earth beings, however, are surrounded by an atmosphere of active exploration of life - seek and ye shall find security. By loving fully you build up an atmosphere which keeps you from being washed this way and that; from being prone to hysteria and trivia. The moon beings have not got the complexity of a sufficiently integrated ego to be able to deal with the data presented to them. You are part of the totality of life - whether you want it or not. God is totally involved with you so you must be totally involved with God. And when you have a total love of God, this automatically flows to all life around you. If you are not in this sense of total participation all that you see reflects that non-flow feeling. You are stopped from experiencing the flow by not loving God with a total presence. Others can't relate to you if you can't find yourself -- there is really no one there for them to relate to. And it is false to say that other people or other circumstances are stopping you from dong what you really want to do - you stop yourselves!
You know, one of the duties of the teaching is to preserve life by appealing to the intellect. You often hear people saying things like “get out of your head” or “that's just rationalization” but you should understand that the intellect is also an evolutionary adaptation and it has a role to play in life. And if a being loves God, he is totally present with all of his faculties; he is not in the past, not in the future and not even between the two. Such a being is most truly here, a real individual, living in the eternal. And such a being is in love with God with abandon - or better still with total presence; a foundness, not a lostness.
If you think about it you will see that there cannot be a collective until there are emerged individuals. To experience your own individuality and uniqueness is not an ego trip. Unique you are, for all time you are never to be repeated! In this sense you can say that you are as great as God - unique and eternal. God themselves cannot take away the fact that you have ‘being', that you are. The story of your life is written forever. Every act that you perform changes whatever is around you - the aquarium is not the same if you remove the goldfish. And no one will have a true morality until they learn the value of themselves. That is the essence of true ethics. You must value life and you must value the individual.
Ethics were gradually turned to stone by the dictates of various priests with their “Thou Shalt” and “Thou Shalt Not” mentalities and now it is time to bring them to life again. You really must value life; you must know in your depth that the entire of life is motivated to the betterment of mankind. This knowledge will automatically dictate true way of life and relationships. If you kill, chaos results. If you take an undue share, chaos again. Over-indulgence, sensual misconduct, gossip, lies and drugs - all of these lead to chaos. When will this end? Not until we have a completely communal society. Relationships between individuals must be based on something real. For instance, sexual relationships should be open to the question of whether they are for the benefit of self and of other and of life. Anything that harms God, self, or other is not ethical. Wrong speech (gossip, for example, which harms both yourself and others) leads to chaos and insecurity, so it is immoral. Whatever leaves you with a sense of greater involvement adds to your foundation and thus to the unfoldment of your being. But there is a very fine line between involvement and obsession.
You know, it is very difficult (if not impossible) to lay down a code of behaviour suitable for other beings to follow - there are so many variables at work. For instance, attention to clothing to a certain range is beneficial to unfoldment, but at some point it becomes empty, a meaningless concern. The subtlety of an ethical code increases as the society grows in complexity. But you should understand that a clear, knowing ethic is essential to life and it must be based on the completely honest admission that each and every being wants most desperately to live - each being is clinging furiously to life. You and everyone that you meet - all are in the grip of tanha.
The psychological milieu of a being determines to a great extent the quality of the teaching that he comes up with, so really everyone must work this whole question of ethics out for themselves. You must know and see for yourself, by direct experience, what to accept and what to reject. The Buddha and all of the gurus that you may wish to collect are really only mythical creatures - the true teacher, the real expert on what you should or shouldn't do is in your own being. A teacher is just a piece of seaweed thrown up by the ocean of life. Do all things for the sake of self. Your first duty is to preserve your life so that you are able to explore. To the extent that you have preserved yourself you are able to explore.
You need to have both the father principle and the mother principle working within you. Every human being begins life in the womb and then continues for some time as a dependent child, so your first experience is of the mother principle, which keeps you safe; gets you securely on your way. This is the law of life - preservation comes first. Only after that do you increase its quality through exploration. Ethics involves these two aspects in this order; first to exist, then to exist better. So, if you are a being who is committed to love, you are also committed to a daily life that includes more priorities than just making money. “Give us today our daily bread”. The daily existence is what makes the fabric of your life. “Give us today a foundation for this day.” It is only the truly spiritual person who can accept today's entertainment without guilt. Maybe it will take a thousand days of ‘existing' to attain to one day of Existence. On that day you probably won't want to go to the cinema - you might find that all of life is just one glorious cinema.
Your strength lies in accepting the weaknesses and anxieties and daily tribulation of your life and looking at them very simply. Get them into perspective. This will happen naturally if you just bring them to consciousness, integrate them into your conscious mind. Once you don't have some anxiety or worry in a relative proportion to your being, once you don't accept your problems, they become real problems. It is important to get all of your anxieties “out front”, into some kind of perspective - this is really the path to resolution of difficulties. And if you could totally resolve the ethical question, you would awaken.
What is sleep? Why do we say you are asleep? Because you turn off, turn away from exploration - you kill the desire to explore! If you want to shut off oppression, fight it! Move - don't wait for someone else to come along. You know, in a way there isn't anything to be sacrificed. And there's something quite pathetic about the wish to be saved - as if you were lost. You should pray to become so lost in love and life that any concern for salvation would just shrivel away for want of attention. When you are in a state of love you are truly repentant; that's perfect contrition. All else will just drop away. Love is so positive, so glorious, it's not scrounging around under the table for crumbs at the feast of life! Sin is such pettiness compared to life's grandeur. Live gloriously, for God's sake.
Teachers like Christ and Buddha lived long ago, and while they can provide great inspiration, there are new questions arising from today's realizations; questions about space beings, about individual and group consciousness which need you to seek for answers. There is work for you to do, so stand up for the truth - don't piddle around confessing untrue, unjust guilt. If you accept your true nature you are pardoned and the guilt of any false accusation falls back on it's source, it cannot be allowed to harm you. This is a law of existence. The belief that history will correct the misunderstandings is an excuse for those who have forsaken their own truth. “God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.” There are millions upon millions of beings interweaving and interreacting. From one's own limited point of view, the dance of life appears very mysterious. But develop your awareness of the dance, experience yourself and your many selves doing the dance and go further - join with the other dancers and give yourself over, abandon all for the mystery of love.