cavalier said:
I'll have to think about what you wrote, I'm not sure I buy into your idea that a perfect being can only produce things which are imperfect.
Yes, I posted earlier in haste, and as I reread the post, although
I can understand what I was getting at - I can see how it could be confusing. But I think the problem lies in our attempt to
bridge between the Unmanifest (or UNCONDITIONED state of Being, as a Buddhist might put it), and the manifest, conditioned states ... the latter being all that we can experience while still bound to the wheel of rebirth.
I could go on to say that the real problem, imo, lies in the very
assumptions we make about a/the Divine Being called `God,' and I always chuckle when I watch Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and they mention a fictitious book called
`Who is This God Person, Anyway?' It comes after two books about the various mistakes of
God, entitled
`[SIZE=-1]Where God Went Wrong' [/SIZE][SIZE=-1]and[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] `Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes.' 
[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]Now Douglas Adams was an unabashed atheist, so these titles are purely comical, but from my own POV, Adams actually gave expression to some of the most
sublime aspects of an esoteric cosmology in his Hitchhiker series. In such notions as Deep Thought's design of
The Earth in order to find the answer to
life, the universe and everything, Adams is invoking hylozoism, and any sincere Neoplatonist could benefit considerably by reading and rereading his books!
In very plain, practical and simple terms, as an esotericist I regard
"this God person" as in no wise different from ourselves when it comes to the essentials of His Being. The real distinction, I believe, is that the Spiritual Regent of the Earth is simply evolving on a higher turn of the spiral. He is what has been called sometimes
`an imperfect God,' because as yet this Being has not attained to the stated goal of spiritual evolution that lies before Him. Some of His co-disciples upon the Path have reached that goal, and these are the
Seven Spirits Before the Throne of Christianity. The
Seven Spirits, the Hebrew
Elohim,
do qualify as "Perfect Gods" in that they have attained ahead of their younger Brother,
the Earth Eloi, yet all aspire mutually to the grander status of
their Eldest Brother, the Solar Logos.
Now this is not simply a Theosophical presentation or belief (as some may object), because it will be found that
every Mystery Tradition throughout history teaches, or taught, these truths. Name me a culture or a religion, and we can find parallels. It was known and taught in every tradition that Humanity are the much, much younger Brethren of these lofty spiritual entities, and it was also taught that just as
imperfect gods strive to attain to their respective equivalent of Perfection, so likewise do
all humans strive for the goal of Perfection placed before
us!
A perfected human being may well, and rightly so, look upon the rest of struggling Humanity and regard us,
from His or Her POV, as "evil." Inasmuch as we have not yet overcome the darker, inertial aspects of our terrestrial nature (all of that within us which is
not Buddha-nature, or which naturally gravitates
away from spirit), we might be said to be "evil." But the definition is not absolute,
nor is our status of incompletion or imperfection
in any real way against the Divine Imperative.
Where error and misunderstanding seem to creep in, is in the notion that somehow an
erring, sinful Humanity has "run amuck" with respect to the grander, Divine Scheme. And this, I learned long ago,
is dead wrong. Nothing could be farther from the truth ...
We may find it helpful to invoke such concepts as
Karma, Dharma, and
Buddha-nature in order to answer the question (or address the "problem") of the nature of evil. But this really only works if we stick to the Buddhist framework/mindset, and too much overlap with the Christian will require the invocation of different terminologies. Christ taught
Karma, in the Law of Sowing and Reaping,
Cause and Effect. He most certainly preached the importance of our individual, as well as collective
Dharma, since to "go about doing the Lord's business" is actually the greatest Service a human being (or collective Humanity) could render! And Christ also emphasized our spiritual potential (not unlike
Buddha-nature), and Communed with the Divine in ways which the Apostles were as yet
only just beginning to learn ...
But it seems that even the Buddha did not offer to expound fully upon the nature of evil in his public teachings, just as the Christ, also, reserved certain of his doctrines for the ears of the elect. Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths, and so we know that ultimately,
dukkha comes about through
trishna, tanha. Yet
desire is not in & of itself a "bad" thing, and in fact, without this
thirst or inclination Humanity
would never have become Humanity, and we would never have "fallen into generation" to begin with!
Without desire, we would have remained within the realms of pure Spirit, which is fine and lovely and dandy, but this is the condition of
un-self-consciousness, and it corresponds to the unhatched
egg, or to an embryo, as contradistinct from
The Perfected (read matured) Man.
Esoteric Buddhism, as well as Esoteric Christianity, will both refer in varying terminologies to the
Divine Spark of our innermost Being (the electric
`Jewel' concealed by the Solar Lotus,
aka `The Divine Pilgrim, or Prodigal'), which has clothed itself in matter and descended into the worlds of generation and imperfection in order to pursue, through a long series of material embodiments, the experience
necessary for self-knowledge.
Couldn't the Divine have simply
imparted this to us without making us go through all the rigamarole? Well gee, I dunno, but I should think not! I mean, after all,
here we are! Or you could
just ask Him, but thus far my own inquiry tells me NO. God doesn't make mistakes
as such, yet this is a nice, simple and childish conception of the Divine ... and it denies the very necessary admission that
God, too, evolves - develops, strives and attains, and
verily moves from relative
imperfection to
increasing degrees of Divine, Spiritual Perfection ... just as we know
we do, on our respective turn of the spiral.
Only THE ABSOLUTE,
the UNCONDITIONED Ground of Being, is exempt from this cyclical process, Kalpa after Kapla, Cosmos after Cosmos - World after World - each the incarnation (or
`Dream') of the Divine Being. Even the most immediate manifestations to arise
from this Great Ground of Being ... are
imperfect and incomplete, relative to their Parent SOURCE. And thus,
ONLY after the close of a given cycle, when
ALL ELSE has been (temporarily) resolved or absorbed back into these first, emanating aspects - can and will the Supreme Logos Himself attain to the goal of FINAL PERFECTION placed before Him, as He too, "like a dewdrop, slips into the shining sea" (a SEA which for us, as for Him, will
forever remain DARKNESS and VOID - until that Day of Days, which we call `NIGHT' - or
cosmic pralaya).
Then we will know the answer, although there will be neither Knower nor Known, neither Questioner nor Question, neither Answer nor One-Who-Answers ... because NO DUALITY, no Good, no Evil, no dire Heresy of separateness, and no messy situational ethics where baby-killing and father-rape confront the folks on `Group W' bench, resident
Earth.
taijasi[/SIZE]
