09 March 2010

Beginningless Beginning

I found this in a notebook, written some years ago:

We say that God is our Creator, which implies an act of creation occurring in time. Suppose we remove that concept from the time process and say the same thing in a different way: that God is our Origin or Source, the essential Being at the center of our existence. He, or rather It, the Ultimate Reality, is our own Self, the one Self of every self.

If there is only one Self, then why do I see many selves around me, seemingly separate from my own self, as well as a whole world of separate things? It is because all of these things and selves are (apparently) continuously emanating out from the center
my center, your center.

Was there ever a time when this began to happen? Meher Baba calls it the "beginningless beginning"; and then there is an "endless end" . . . and then there is another beginningless beginning in a continuous series of cycles of Being and non-Being.

And yet . . . nothing happens, because it is all Maya, Illusion.

How extraordinary. And what am I supposed to do with this "information"? What good will it do me, as I go about my daily life, trying to meet responsibilities, trying to be happy and make others not too miserable, to know that the Everything is really Nothing?

Because of the love of Meher Baba, the idea of Nothing does not drag me down to nihilism and meaninglessness, but the Everything draws me onward toward Truth. There is nothing to be done about the existential predicament
— nothing outward. But inwardly, I can practice remembrance of the Truth, in the form of Meher Baba, by making him my constant companion, and thus establish my center in the beginningless, endless Source.

***

That is what I wrote in my notebook. Is it true? I don't know. There are many creation myths, many possible ways of trying to imagine or explain the inexpressible (an effort that, we are told, will not help us reach the Supreme Goal of realization). This is just one way that I draw meaning from what I understand of Meher Baba's words.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Last night I couldn't sleep, so I got up and meditated for a while, and I had a weird image -- my body was covered with eyes, and the eyes were suddenly flooded with light. If it weren't for the eyes, the light would not exist, and if it were not for the light, the eyes would be useless.

I've often wondered, all the way back to my teens, about time and timelessness. The Beyond Beyond state of God is certainly outside of time. The Beyond state must be linked to it somehow. This illusion is somehow important enough for the conscious descent of God into it. It would seem that, even if it were all nothing but God, and God had conscious enjoyment of it as a creature apart, it would be a nihilistic series of illusions for those of us bound in this state were it not for a glimpse of the divine reality on this level. After all, this false self I experience is simply nothing. I cannot help but wonder what good is God to this me that I experience? I can recognize its false nature and lay it at the feet of God -- even as I go about eating too many cookies and getting angry at my children and generally being a bumbling idiot -- somehow that act of surrender, even if, at this stage it's just a pantomime of surrender, seems to justify all the silliness of the falsity.

iluvmeher said...

God is on a journey of Self-discovery hence the Physical Universe. Osho says "God is not a creator like a sculptor where the creator and creation remains separate, God is like a dancer where the dance and dancer remain one". The innermost core of all of us is the same just that each soul looks different due to their Sanskaric journey/burden.
All actions presuppose a thought. Creation is God's plan in Avataric Whim. Evolution is the actual execution of the plan. Time a phenomenon of alignments of celestial bodies, Time is Maya it can exist in the realm of Matter not in beginningless beginning where there is No matter, Just God-is. God exists as Consciousness without Substance, as Infinite Knowledge, Power and Bliss.


All quotes of Meher Baba © Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust unless otherwise indicated. Writings by Kendra are © Kendra Crossen Burroughs unless otherwise noted.