TRUE SELF – Page 415
At its inception religion was
deemed to be an inquiry into the mysteries of existence. Its reason- for-
being coincided with the evolution of the human mind.
To ask questions and conceive
of answers. Its founders, the shaman seers, explored the unseen by
channeling the super-conscious mind, which they entered through a trance
gate in the unconscious. To articulate their visionary discoveries,
they used mythic language. Then with the establishment of religious institutions
they linked the behaviors of people, in or out of alignment with the wishes of
the divine, as the basis for the stability and orderly procession of the cycles
of nature. This was the basis for economic stability and social
order.
Upon this foundational view,
visionaries explored the relationship between cosmic order and human
experiences and offered various depictions of divine cosmologies. During
this formative era, religion was alive with debates. Seers spoke the same
language, a mythological, spiritual and symbolic communication they used to
convey their perspective of the unseen forces underlying existence.
Building upon the insights of
his predecessors, the Buddha presented a cohesive vision of Existence as seen
from the grand perch of his enlightened Universal-Mind what it was, how it
worked, and its purpose for being. He proposed that human beings
were programmed from birth to create a sense of self out of tendencies and feedback. “This
default identity” was needed for survival. But it came with a price.
Consequently, he espoused the view that seeing the bigger picture of
existence would liberate the mind from this limited mindset and allow a high
consciousness to emerge. Underneath the surface of the unconscious, he had
discovered the boundless imprint of the mind of the Universe whose purpose was
to advance the evolution of mortal beings beyond the instincts of survival.
Siddharta Gautama had broken
through the veil of mortality. He saw the scope, nature, and essence of
existence more clearly than any human being had ever seen it, and he understood
what he saw. Finally, he left behind a legacy vision for awakening the
true Self, the luminous, indestructible, and inconceivable reality of the
Universal-Mind.
The True-Self (Skt. Svabhava)
embodied the essential endowment of the Ultimate Buddha hidden within the core
of every living entity.
The desire to reveal the True
Self catalyzed the formless cosmic self that illuminated individuality, but was
not curbed by it. The True Self was the enlightened self that all Buddhas
shared. It was a free self, unencumbered by the default self, and yet it
could transform the desires of the default self into the virtues of Perfect
Enlightenment. The True Self could only be seen with the Eye of the
Buddha.
Yet because people generally
could see only outcomes, or some small familiar aspect of it, he revealed
that all individuals possessed an Information-body. It stored Karma,
the ever-changing database of causes and effects that shaped the manifestation
of individuals, their relationships and their environment in the here and
now. It included the information that determined one’s appearance,
abilities, thoughts, feelings, and experiences. It triggered, changed,
and renewed every manifestation and produced the related conditions of
existence.
This information processing
mechanism, as revealed by the Buddha, operated with or without the conscious
awareness of its users. Most importantly, because of this system, human
beings had the opportunity to access the True-Self. As change was ever
present, the people caught upon the cycles of suffering could either
devolve into warped states or evolved into Buddhas.
The power of Karma was in the
hands of its user, but one had to become aware of having this power. In
the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha provided the One Vehicle (i.e. Lotus Cosmology
ekayana), defined as a method for discovering, entering, and actualizing the
original enlightenment that was endowed__without exception__to all beings in
the Universal-Mind.
12/20/21
