The Descending Process part2
Tue, 01/29/2008 - 20:10 — admin
TEACHER: It’s not that He desires to keep us in ignorance, but rather that He cannot be understood by reason or sense perception alone. He’s always willing to reveal Himself to the materially conditioned souls, but they must be prepared to accept information about Him from Him. Even I, an insignificant soul, can only be understood by a person lesser in knowledge than myself if he approaches me and gets information about me from me. If he ignores this opportunity, he’ll never have any intimate connection or relationship with me. Those who try to ascertain God by the empiric method will always be doomed to failure since by the very nature of this approach they alienate themselves from Him.
Descending knowledge is different in that it is not subject to the restrictions of empiricism. Descending knowledge is knowledge about the Supreme Person which has descended from the Supreme Person and which is accessible to the conditioned souls within the material world. Because I’m not all-powerful, I cannot ascend to and see the Supreme Person, but because the Supreme Person is all-powerful, He can descend and reveal Himself to me if He so desires. Knowledge, about the Supreme Person descends from the Supreme Person in various manners. This knowledge is not material, because unlike knowledge acquired through the ascending process, it does not originate here in the material world. It is actually spiritual knowledge which springs from the Supreme Person, who is transcendental to the material world. Only by receiving this descending knowledge is one able to understand the nature of the Supreme Person and the nature of the spiritual world.7
MICHAEL: Exactly how does this knowledge descend?
In his book Small Is Beautiful, noted British economist E. F. Schumacher wrote:MICHAEL: I can understand the logic behind your conclusion. What I can’t understand is why God would desire that we should not come to know Him.
Insights of wisdom … enable us to see the hollowness and fundamental unsatisfactoriness of a life devoted primarily to the pursuit of material ends, to the neglect of the spiritual. Such a life necessarily sets man against man and nation against nation, because man’s needs are infinite and infinitude can be achieved only in the spiritual realm, never in the material.*
It is a fact that no matter how much sense gratification a person gets, he will never be satisfied. Material food, material things, material sense gratification cannot satisfy the atma (spirit soul). Just as the body needs material food, so the spirit soul needs spiritual food. To try to satisfy one’s spiritual craving with material things leads to endless consumption, greed, envy, violence, and war. Western people have as much sense gratification as one could ever want, yet they are not satisfied. Why? Because they are spiritually empty.
Science of Identity Foundation – Siddhaswarupananda
* E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. 38.
TEACHER: It’s not that He desires to keep us in ignorance, but rather that He cannot be understood by reason or sense perception alone. He’s always willing to reveal Himself to the materially conditioned souls, but they must be prepared to accept information about Him from Him. Even I, an insignificant soul, can only be understood by a person lesser in knowledge than myself if he approaches me and gets information about me from me. If he ignores this opportunity, he’ll never have any intimate connection or relationship with me. Those who try to ascertain God by the empiric method will always be doomed to failure since by the very nature of this approach they alienate themselves from Him.
Descending knowledge is different in that it is not subject to the restrictions of empiricism. Descending knowledge is knowledge about the Supreme Person which has descended from the Supreme Person and which is accessible to the conditioned souls within the material world. Because I’m not all-powerful, I cannot ascend to and see the Supreme Person, but because the Supreme Person is all-powerful, He can descend and reveal Himself to me if He so desires. Knowledge, about the Supreme Person descends from the Supreme Person in various manners. This knowledge is not material, because unlike knowledge acquired through the ascending process, it does not originate here in the material world. It is actually spiritual knowledge which springs from the Supreme Person, who is transcendental to the material world. Only by receiving this descending knowledge is one able to understand the nature of the Supreme Person and the nature of the spiritual world.7
MICHAEL: Exactly how does this knowledge descend?