The father is referred to as the object of sacrifice very early in the creation process. This is expected to have been undertaken by the union of Sivan / Sakthi that offered itself for division into male and female halves. This separation of the gender experience is a significant aspect of the human experience.
The separation, however, takes away from the Sivan experience, its identity as the summum bonnum of the universe, the veritable all in itself. This causes the object of sacrifice incredible anguish and agony of loss at a very deep level in our consciousness. To alleviate the loss, man began the practice of praising and propitiating the gods. To the extent that we share in the consciousness, the experience of early Sivan, this act of propitiation goes a long way to ensure that we ourselves are kept in comfort.
However, the act of worship brings with it many experiences that exercise a profound effect on our understanding of ourselves and the world. By the act of worship, it fosters in us, the emphasis on acceptance and takes away our ability to reason. Long periods of such worship cultivates a faith that denies other instruments and exalts the act of deidification, reducing the role of man to mere service of the divine. Finally, one notices that the worship ultimately praises our own self and leads to the exercise of very unnatural egos in the performance of our daily activities in life.
The consequence of these are tremendous and has defined the color and character of human group and individual experiences. Acceptance cultivates the goat, the follower of ideals brought into focus by the act of faith. Every act is explained with deep passion as an act of the divine. Ultimately, the individual accepts even death in the service of the all and explains it as the act of consecration of the body to god.
The consequence of these are tremendous and has defined the color and character of human group and individual experiences. Acceptance cultivates the goat, the follower of ideals brought into focus by the act of faith. Every act is explained with deep passion as an act of the divine. Ultimately, the individual accepts even death in the service of the all and explains it as the act of consecration of the body to god.
In denying other instruments, the individual is kept caged in the practice of acceptance. Indian legends refer to the Krishna as being born in prison, being indicative of the position of man early in our civilization. Such a willful self-persecution and the promotion of the same becomes a self fulfilling prophecy in the mind of the individual and leads to a curious sense of affirmation experienced individually, in groups and in association with the physical world.
Certainly, nature is not without its irony. In the final act of worship, the individual begins to receive the praise himself. This alarms him at first and he often sets about creating penances for such arrogance. In subsequent lives however, he grows into an acceptance of the self idolatry and cultivates it with as much a rational perspective as is possible. It appears to the experience of the Jivan that the life has come full circle and is today the object of worship it undertook in past lives. This presents new inquiries and is the subject of our current experience in the world.
The key to our experiences today, in the times that we live, point to the need for a strong rationality in our matters. An individual growing up today, in the experience of such past worship, feels a profound sense of experience as regards selfless natures, sacrifice, the welfare of the world and other such experiences, considered most extraordinary in his affairs. It induces in him a similar mindset and encourages him to do the right thing. Much of these experiences today are deeply personal and engaged in a privacy of the self, removed from any sharing of the experience with others.
In a sense, the privacy is appropriate, as it engages the individuality of the person and conducts a gradual wearing away of his ignorance regarding the experiences of his lifetime. In a way, it makes everybody feel special about themselves. But where the individual has been schooled in clear rational thinking and the joys of a normal ordinary life, his attitude may well be to view such rising experiences in himself with a certain curiosity and bring such controls to it until he is better able to make sense of it all.
At heart is the issue of the identity of the individual and his relation to the world. The instruction to ' Know Thyself ' is still highly relevant to the understanding of the individual and is a crucial self guide in the process of self analysis. We do not as yet have a clear, step by step guide, to understand the nature of this experience. However what we have seen of the experience in the world is quite astounding.
What appears apparent in the world today is the growth of greed and wanton ambition. Strange that this should be the first sign of what lies beneath. Over the past thirty years, the expression of this experience in the world has been to cast aside all past anxieties about ourselves and introduce in its place an unearthly confidence.
Every man of good conscience has, even momentarily, lamented the emergence of the ' me generation ', seeing it as the fall of moral and ethical natures in man. Then there was the men of god, convinced in their bones that they are the new messenger of the age. Money politics and wealth generation brought itself to new heights and we have today institutionalized the practice of the ' consumer society.'
But together with all these, we are also experiencing something new that may have a powerful impact on our minds. Our new attitude to question everything is causing our minds to grow and to take stock of what we know and know not. To do that we have to look into ourselves and couple that with the historical timeline from whence we came.
The early family began with mother and child, the common gender teens and the relation to the father idea ( see earlier blog ). Today this family properly refers to the experience of the family around the world. The experience of mother is seen, way back in time, when Cybele ruled the world's nurseries. Similarly, the son and others are viewed in relation to the development of civilization and the emergence of the separate communal groupings.
The perspective so undertaken depersonalizes our experience of ourselves today. This may well be the right approach as early human experience lacked the personality nature we identify with today. This goes a long way towards understanding the nature of our experiences. At the same time however, it imposes on us the need to tolerate a greater impersonal nature in our experience of ourselves, without losing the experience of our conscience.
Such knowledge and understanding that we derive from the exercise comes from our bold initiative to bring experience to knowledge and create an association that is accurate. This would imply the collaboration of a father and mother in the process, where either one or both are identified as family. Accordingly, the exercise is undertaken best in relation to existing responsibilities in the home and not in a wooded forest retreat.
What we are about to discover will astound us and yet it is a simple explanation of the passage of time with regards to our emerging human civilization.
Further Reading :
Aurobindo - Synthesis of Yoga
