Such are the lives of the small minds. Though Gracie be a genius and a shrewd businesswoman, her heart is cold and her mind is cramped as regards the other people. She can only form warm ideas about a tiny subset of the world, which are her immediate relations. You can see how this results from a lack of mental power. The relatives are forced upon the senses, and the egos make do with them, with little mental coordination or comprehension. In the
Nameless world there may be many mentors, and my ideas depend on the independent people of the
commune demonstrating love in practical ways for the children. These people would have big minds, not small. They'll be able to form hundreds or thousands of warm, rich, descriptive mental models for the others. With them it isn't squabbling and complaining among the least common denominator, which are immediate relatives. Instead their minds can notice noble attributes, and create love-bonds from this.
There appears to be a huge impassable barrier between considering objects, and considering living persons. The world's geniuses so far have never shown the slightest trace of interpersonal warmth based on the attributes. Among the egos, the relatives barely drag them out to try to consider that others may be real. They don't like it, it is very difficult for them, and so the family is home to many quarrels. The animals don't need to think about the personalities of other animals; and in human bodies those faculties take ages and great mental purification to develop. The major part of work is personal, not technical. What do you think about yourself, and those with whom you interact? The ego thinks of objects it can manipulate and drag into its private domination-plot. The selfless people are not attached to the body, living in a land of awareness of personal attributes. Thus relationships are not forced upon them as life backs them into a corner with real others, where they'd have preferred total domination. Instead they have an active life, ignoring family ties as irrelevant to the higher causes for friendship.
A powerful soul in a body is easily overwhelmed by violence. Such a person is reduced to a tiny fraction of his or her total potential by the limiting factors of ordinary people who nevertheless are forcing the society to go their way, having no greater insight or higher vision. The powerful people retreat into a pure rational consideration, which looks like something easy to push over and mangle, to the ones who think an exhibition of domination is a sufficient show of superiority. The world has been arranged so you don't even know the situation is brutal, until you attempt to move against it, asking for improvements in morality or holism. Then you find the ego is uncompromising and the mold it has placed upon society, in which its desires may be fulfilled, is nonnegotiable. The true power of the soul is for an orderly and rational mind, but the souls which are arising from the animal plane use the faculty of reason for rationalizations, twisting logic until things appear favorable.
One of the first things to come when power visits a soul, is devotion to the external Deity. This is because when the soul is truly seen, there are many signs that it was made by an external hand. Such a person knows that God exists, but does not yet know the properties of God except by the excellence of His craftsmanship in making the soul, and the obvious power to create so many billions of souls. Then, the soul also becomes capable of recognizing the Avatar, for it knows its own limitations, and beholding the Lord, finds one whose source of power cannot be from a created soul such as its own. It turns to the Lord and says, "You are different from me, what are you?" The Lord answers, and helps to establish intellectual integrity throughout creation. Rebellious angels such as Satan are a literal impossibility because to hate the Source of Power, means you cut off your own power. The Bible's notion of warring angels merely reflects the corruption of human minds.
The resources take their worst hit at Christmas. The Christians are thus doing their uttermost to destroy the world they say Jesus made, in a brutal and unthinking attempt to "worship the Lord," which amounts to flattery that fools no one who is wise. The planet was made by divine forces, and since as the astronomers announce we have five to seven billion years remaining to us here, our use of the resources impinges on what these distant future generations require. I say these persons are very real, but Christians believe Earth will be extinguished.
Science has revealed how the creation was made slowly, and the True God who made the Earth and descended as Jesus (and others), obviously has a long-term stake in how the resources are utilized, that Christians ignore. Again, they try to flatter God with false ideas about omnipotence, which amounts to evading the issue of conserving resources while they grab greedily at the nonrenewable resources feeling justified by the Bible. The Bible is a weak book, justifying all kinds of mischief. God's higher dharma is far more strict, and difficult to follow.
That all-loving, merciful God exists, but He required cooperation between the creatures, and they've been able to bring nothing but division and strife. They exist in darkness, turned forever away from God, and following private selfish standards they have "made a killing" out of the planet, threatening God's creative power with their Juggernaut of Abuse, which appears nearly equal to God in its destructive capacity. This Juggernaut is capitalism with its inherent greed, and a continuously increasing population. Man seeks an impossible material expansion.
Jesus said His yoke was easy, and His burden light. What is required of good people, is living profoundly in the spirit while living lightly on the resources. This road is too narrow and straight for the ego to enter. Jesus also said it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to get into Heaven. The ego has a material mind, which is externalized consciousness, thoughts derived from the senses without spiritual insight. Therefore it finds no path to joy at the joy of another, that was required for true harmony and Jesus' yoke.
Thus among the powerful people, every day will begin in the meditation hall, for meditation is a profound social activity binding the people together tenderly, as well as the major means of bringing insight and awareness from above the senses on the pure spiritual plane, into daily life. Humans have long proven themselves impotent to break out of the nuclear family into communes, but the angels choose communal life as their first option. They have the mental power to make room in their hearts for thousands of "dear ones," and are not satisfied with a few.
Christians have not stopped to think, that having demonstrated the power to take on a body, the Lord would likely do so again and again. They agree that a True God took on the body of Jesus, but their teaching mixes matter and spirit, as they believe the Lord also took on their inner darkness, their cravings, insecurities, jealousies and greed. They don't really think about a soul as separable from the body; their minds are trapped with a self-image as the one who experiences the senses, to which they cannot recall a beginning or imagine an end. From this they do not really fear death, though they put on a show of it to please the public and secure renown among the other egos as one who "knows" and "cares" about such things. The true fear of death is an all-encompassing existential angst, and when it touches a soul it makes the approach of the Lord or any heavenly authority very easy. Before this the soul is highly rebellious, which is the persecution of the saints. So benighted is man, that the martyr in his dying agonies would have accused Jesus of insanity, had the Lord approached him.
If the Lord can take on a body, next follows another potential humans have never imagined, the angels might also take on bodies. I have seen these heavenly messengers interspersed throughout the human realm, but so far they remain in strict isolation, each working against impossible odds to bring spiritual reformation to humanity and mostly failing. The angels are very wise, but their wisdom stops at violent man. The divine attributes look evil to humans, bringing out rage and hatred in them. These attributes retreat from domination, which is all the ego knows, and the ego must die before it can ascend to a real divine potential, which is the process of spiritual purification described in India. A full-powered angel would be a dreadful sight to humans. They wouldn't know what they were seeing, in actions, motives and speech that are mainly the reverse of the ego's course of sense domination. But only if the angels gather, would they experience their fuller powers and also find the greatest joys they can find in embodiment. The humans cut them down continually, as they're forced to think on an apish level.
The comic illustrates the Problem of Man, that although they are gathered into groups, their thoughts turn to the material realm rather than to one another as miraculous spiritual entities of dynamic association. From this every communitarian attempt has failed. Facing other men, a man sees little. He conceives the value of life will be in domination over the object-field, and unable to witness personality, he thinks of the other humans as special types of objects capable of more challenging modes of manipulation. From this the world has spun out magnificent technology, but poor personality. These minds can't think about the whole Earth in its total time frame, so their waste has been extravagant.
See, they are unable to face one another warmly, but each eventually finds a spouse and makes a large family, all of whom they expect to be escorted into Heaven because they are sure God will follow their standards, as they decide their children must be good. I submit that if they cannot face one another warmly in a group while they are young like this, the family must also be a fiction of warmth, where the relationships are matters of convenience, the parents hoping to expand their worldly power by molding the children to share their beliefs and worldview. If the warmth in families is fictitious, God sees no justified persons on Earth, loving the neighbor as Jesus said should be done.
When an ego attempts selfless behavior, the idea of practical needs does not penetrate their assessment of the nature of the situation. That requires the ability to rejoice at the joy of another, a non-egoic potential seen only in unified or non-dual minds. Then it becomes natural to think that your work as a farmer will feed many people and allow them to expand in their happiness, that you take as your reward. You've made a difference in the spiritual continuum, and thoughts of money would obtrude in this noble awareness, like a distracting insult. Great people make it their life's work to meet the practical needs of one another. It seems mundane, but this is needed for glory to emerge.
The attitude of selfless service looks like slavery to egos. The ego makes a show of charity and concern for others, but it can clearly be seen to be posturing that way for the sake of social renown. The ego is unable to think, "I am going to work in order to allow others joy." Its mental function shuts down if this practical potential is encountered. To see a happy other is most galling to the ego. It feels that it is losing its domination of the situation, and since it has no substantial spiritual ecstasy, it concludes by a selfish mathematics that
it will probably be made happy if the other is miserable. From the ego's unhappiness to see another in joy, communitarian attempts splinter before they begin.
In order to feel joy at the joy of another, you need the mental power to create a wide space for them in your heart, and where you also have joy from above the senses so that you aren't under the illusion that life is a competition for joy. An inner spring of serious ecstasy allows you to see another in joy and never feel jealous or fall into the dualistic trap of concluding shoving them down into sorrow can make you happy. We can talk about it for thousands of years, but if the soul just doesn't have this inner spring, it won't be able to respond in a living fashion. This is what Jesus meant when He said His message was for those "with ears to hear." He has not yet been heard in His higher meanings.
Men work so hard for the family, but with a little intelligent design they might not need to work so hard and the quality of their life might be higher. From lack of affection for one another as spirits-in-bodies, humans set up money as a barrier between them, designed for each on both sides to get the most they can materially from a situation, where neither beholds the beauty or glory of spirit, their own or anyone else's.
If I say I want to go without money, I depend on virtue in its place. That is to say, as I would not deny a friend all the five necessities of life, but would even work hard all my life to support a system that supported him and myself too, and where I have a capacity for thousands of friends, I'd expect not to be denied, myself. Otherwise I wanted everyone to be happy, but none of them wanted me to be happy, on Earth.
If you are going to talk about a community of noble persons, then the people must be frugal in their demands on the system, and the administrators must be generous in response to shy demands, carefully considered. With these two elements in place the resources can be protected, yet joy flows like a river in the communes. This is beyond egos, who only see family. It means valuing persons for who they are.
If I really see a person, then I want that person to be happy. If his demands on the system are rational rather than selfish, it is a privilege for me to spend my labors to support his physical life, so that he can feel secure and expand in his spirit to the uttermost joys he can discover. I don't hold him for ransom before a pile of money! I want to see him, to know him, to understand what he is in a dynamic and fun relationship.
This is not like how it is among humans. I mean spending time with persons, without much material overlay. Matter supports spirit; that is its function. If I awaken myself to the poignancies, subtleties and glories of personal interaction, matter fades away to a great distance, until I see clearly that the glory of life is spirits meeting, everything else secondary. But you need noble spirits for that, so the deeds are memorable!
The higher souls are beyond body-identification, and one consequence of this is that they don't want to be touched, or to touch others, including handshakes or hugs. The soul-mates embrace, young children benefit from occasional hugs, and the people may like to dance together at formal events. But, a profound soul is aware that the body is not its life, and random touching forces life down to the material plane. The normal expectation of such a soul is that it will not be touched by anyone, at any time. Going to work each day with this reality, the person is able to build deep and stable mental models for the situation of spirits around himself, which is the type of "food" that Jesus said He alone could eat, but which I think the angels might also enjoy. The noble people are going to like spending a lot of time with one another, including every limitation of embodiment, in which even the strongest souls feel languid or unfocused as the energies are restored. If you are able to behold others in their intrinsic traits of personality, this fully satisfies the need for warmth in relationships. Touch is the "dark sense," communicating virtually no personal information and obscuring the distance between souls, which are never exactly the same in spiritual merit. Among the Nameless, then, there will be no touching, yet mysteriously they will spend time together with a craving humans cannot understand. They want to see one another, to know one another in profound ways, but they don't get confused and think the spirit is the body. Knowing spirit, the body is both a danger but also the secure home. Touching calls everything into question, and nobility is lost.
God intended the male and female souls to be absolutely equal by power. Among egos, the males assert intellectual domination because of their stronger bodies, and the females thrust into an uncomfortable situation, find their domination in the emotions. This co-domination is the story of human history, with many societies even codifying male domination, but even where there is no open code the women forced into a submissive role. The situation is deep, where the attributes are arising from the ahankara or I-maker of each individual, which is the power of the soul that forms a worldview and is the "devil within." Therefore it cannot be reformed by informing the women they are oppressed, or informing the men that they are oppressive. If that information is communicated to the egos, the men say, "OK," the women say, "OK," but the split continues since it is foundational, within the being-state and not amenable to conscious manipulation. Therefore when the female angels at last awaken their intellects, it will be a horror to both males and females among the egos, and one of the strongest deterrents should any ego get into its head that it would like to live with angels. These women are not forceful, but rational. To find them thinking in profound philosophical channels to rival any male, the egoic males will hate them in their powers, but in a way they are God's greatest prize.
The world is fundamentally cold, but God supplies the warmth. Not only this, it is only God who fully appreciates the warmth that He creates. It is too bad the creatures don't have anything to respond to this. They have no idea of the incredible power into which they could tap, could they respond to the Creator with any reflections, even small ones, of what He desires to see in the rational entities. If you think about human selflessness, God is infinitely more selfless, engaged in constant service of the glorious Plan of all creation. Saying that God is like a mother that searches after her lost child is billions and more orders of magnitude below God's real power and purpose. That power awaits, but no one can tap into it, because the creatures are lost in the dark, conceiving their own wisdom is enough though it crosses God's ideas.
I guess this may show Eknath Easwaran snoozing 20 hours per day and being awake for 4, rather than what he claimed for himself, being awake 20 hours per day and sleeping for 4. He was using this as a sign of an uncommon stamina, but his mind was feverish and sense-based irrespective of the amount of sleep he had. There is a wrong compulsion due to body-identification, for thinking the ultimate can be achieved from the current position, if there is only a little more effort. The truth is much deeper than this, that mental purification requires millions of lifetimes, and the angels may not be seeing Easwaran knocking at their door for a long time. In all those lives remaining in his purification, if he sleeps too little or too much he will lose the fire, like the Buddha recommended in the Middle Way. But in all that time he would not have an angelic mind or the perfectly inoffensive personality which allows the angels to dwell in uncommon harmony, in eternity.
The angels have been secretly controlling human history, though like a roller coaster running off the tracks their selfishness threatens to careen the whole structure into oblivion if not checked by a higher power, above the angels. Santa Claus was introduced as a way to support warmth within families, but as a secret ridicule of them too, the approximate view they have of Jesus that they attempt to worship.
The egoic mentality is externalized, which means the ideas are formed from sense impressions. From this position, the ego first encounters the senses and says, "Mine." It attempts to create value from what it knows, which is sense experience, and it can only do so comparing one bit of sense experience with another, that was called duality in the scriptures. Unable to think about real persons, the ego simply trades.
Without experience of spirit or substantial ecstasy from above the senses, the ego says, "Mine," as its fundamental mental motion, in order to attempt to create value from its experience. Descrying other entities around, that it conceives are also saying, "Mine," as their fundamental mental motion, the ego conceives the others are basically competitors over the object-field. This is the source of war and crime.
After saying, "Mine," the ego takes more steps to try to create value. It says, "This is mine, you cannot have it. If you take it, I will label you a thief. If you want it, you must give me something else that I value." Money is thus highly unfriendly extortion against others over their joy. You are oppressing them in a cruel way, that if they don't give you an object you desire, you will deny them food, shelter, and access to joy.
The ego must be understood as making all other entities its enemies, as the fundamental mental motion of, "Mine," occurs. Human history is explained clearly by this principle, including the families where the appearance of warmth masks underlying greedy motions of selfish use. At first the couples detest the children, after following the sex drive. But soon they see there can be uses, the children will carry their prejudice.
This is the realistic view of human civilization, where there is no genuine affection between people based on the attributes of personality. If that affection existed, the family would be "blown out of the water," since you'd like a person because of their virtues and nobility, never wasting time wondering whose womb they wandered into, in the process of birth. It is a wonderful process given by God, but not the goal!
So Santa Claus was put into place in the human mentality to represent the real image they worship, as they attempt to think about the Lord. It is a being who is fat, which means not too attentive to the malfeasance of people, willing to smile and ignore their sin. Then, Santa is about material reward, after
"he sees when you've been sleeping, he knows when you're awake." That material reward is distant from God.
It is important to understand that money is violently unfriendly. God has embodied the spirits in a plentiful land, so most of the work required to supply joy to the souls is already done when someone is born. But when he is born, he finds the others arrayed in antagonism against him, "Give us money or we won't give you food, give us money or we won't give you shelter." Confronted by that he is deeply disturbed in his mind, and the potential for full spiritual joy is cut off for his lifetime. In order to experience the full potential of joy, you'd need to confront a rational system, where the other people value you highly because you are ready to work for the good of all. That's the simple and real thing which should confer value in social terms. Instead the humans demand a shrewd and harsh cleverness, that you enter competition and start pushing down those around you, in order to be the one at the top of the hill. By human standards, you must harm the others, to excel.
The very traits which God (and all rational entities) value most highly, mark you as anathema and a weakling, according to the human rules. God wants this one thing, that you stand and say, "I am ready to help," but capitalism requires a shrewdness to grab from limited resources. Capitalism simply mows down and ignores the best and greatest individuals, who wanted to help, and didn't feel "capable" to push others out of the way. Eknath Easwaran was highly pleased to be an English professor, but he never told the tale of the hundreds or thousands of other Indians he beat out, to obtain this position in a world of competition. Those who succeed in this world are by and large lucky, but they won't acknowledge it. They say they were the best, but really they were the best manipulators, able to force their way as they wanted to go. So in my system, the administrators assign the jobs based on real need, and the powerful people could do any job, with enthusiasm to spare.
The comic addresses this issue, of when it is appropriate to move to a different standard as regards housing or the other necessities of life. Aluminum siding has advantages in maintenance and durability over wood siding, but the decision to use aluminum for this purpose means that less aluminum would be available to distant future generations for such purposes as airplane parts, or bicycle frames. Thus in this real world, the administrators would make their absolute best guess, saying, "The resources lost to paint and wood are less than if we use aluminum for siding. There are other alternatives such as plastics made from renewable resources to use for this purpose, but aluminum is in many respects irreplaceable. Our buildings will not use aluminum siding, and this is the wisest decision at the present time." If you recycle aluminum, it cannot be welded, and up to 40 % of it is lost in the process. Surely the future can find better uses for it as we find other means.
There is no shaktipat. The angels today are actually sleeping with the sadhus in many marriages, but the woman or man who is involved experiences little but revulsion for the angel's display of the divine persona. Jesus said that He came not to bring peace, but a sword, and I think this may mean the separation of the angels from their spouses and families, as they wake up to their true divine nature and notice they have been consorting with swine and vermin. The creation is arranged this way, that the souls are arising from the animal plane and eventually reach astral ascension, and the angels reach down in compassion to states that they admit were once their own. Yet the process of "new mind" which they underwent renders them into God's corner, which is antagonistic against the corner of the creatures before the dawn of spiritual awareness. There is no spiritual transmission by proximity to even the mightiest figures, including the Lord. Instead the humans live within their own ideas, regarding the true authorities as like tamasic slugs they can push out of their way by will.
The way this will happen, is that the angel in question will perceive a friendly land in the other angels, but the egos they have known may put up violent protests. The angel's experience will be one of sweetness and beatitude, security, warmth and happiness, but those they have known before will throw violent tantrums. When the angel is with the Lord or other angels, he or she will feel very happy, that they are valued and cherished for their noble attributes, as it should be. Those they have known before will then seem like screaming wild animals, without reason and without warmth. It will be difficult to separate from these animals, but the other angels are like a supreme cushion of love.
This is one of the truths about the Lord, that if you have a noble attribute He will love you. To perceive this love is not easy, since the Lord is not body-identified. But the angels are able to perceive the excitement and joy of the Lord, when the creation He has supported returns glorious attributes, which are reflections of His own attributes. Among their current families they feel a certain amount of warmth and love, but they will find to stride in the presence of the Lord or the other angels is far more secure and warm. From that perspective, they can examine the family ties, to see those others had intended selfish uses, and were not really happy when they are happy, like the angels are.