Cosmology and Transcendence

Hi All

Transcendence can either be considered from the perspective of our ability to adapt or transcending what we ARE: our level of being.

One of the ancient meanings of the symbol of the cross is a definition of what it means to "understand." Our level of being is what determines our "understanding." Conscious transcendence is a transcendence of our objective "understanding.

The horizontal line of a cross represents the line of knowledge. It is the sum of what we know. this horizontal line that has its existence in linear time intersects the line of being (the quality of NOW) that exists in a vertical relationship to it. The higher our knowledge is on the line of being, the greater our conscious perspective. The highest level of being is the "Absolute." It is consciousness without contents but everything exists in living potential.

"Being" as it is understood in the West is not relative. This idea of levels of being on which the universe is structured as well as ourselves as a microcosm is little known but without it, I don't see how transcendence relating to what we ARE can ever be appreciated.

I see topics on consciousness, purpose of existence, and other great questions but am at a loss to discuss it without some appreciation of levels of reality. For example consciousness is our ability for inclusion. It is only through levels of reality where we can see how one perspective can be included within a higher perspective which allows its objective meaning to be appreciated. It is through the gradual collective appreciation of levels of reality through pondering cosmology that the eventual natural union of religion and science becomes possible. The young IMP have to become more aware of it in the context of their questions for the betterment not only of ourselves but for society as a whole..

A while back I found a site that included the first chapter of Jacob Needleman's book "A Sense of the Cosmos."

http://www.amazon.com/Sense-Cosmos-Scientific-Knowledge-Spiritual/dp/0972635726

Jacob Needleman is Prof. of Philosophy as San Francisco State University and a highly respected man.

http://www.rawpaint.com/

Click "Library" at the top right corner. Then click on Jacob Needleman's Chapter One: The Universe which opens Part One: The Universe as A Teaching. Chapter One has nine parts. If interested, you will get an introduction to Cosmology or levels of reality which will introduce a perspective necessary to be aware of for anyone drawn to transcendence

For example:

Let us, therefore, entertain the possibility that we understand very little about what a teaching or a universe really is.

Every great spiritual teaching speaks of itself in its own way as a mirror of cosmic reality. In the traditions of China the Tao is both the way to truth and the way things are. In Christianity the Word is both the teaching of Jesus Christ and the fundamental manifestation of God. In the Hindu tradition (including Buddhism) Dharma means both duty and the sustaining order of the universe. And in the Hebrew tradition Torah includes not only law in the sense of the teaching, but also law in the sense of the foundations of God's creation. A well-known passage in the book of Proverbs expresses this idea without ambiguity. Wisdom is speaking:

The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.
I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.
When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water...
When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth... when he gave the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment; when he appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by him...
Now therefore harken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that keep my ways.
Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not.


(Proverbs 8:22-33)

Wisdom thus speaks not only as the teaching (the instruction) but as the divine pattern of the cosmos.

How to think about this equation of the universe and a great teaching? It is tempting, for example, to see a teacher such as Mohammed or Bodhidharma, who brought Buddhism to China in the sixth century A. D., as the bearer of an extraordinary energy which is distributed to the world in the form of ideas, actions, events, schools, factions and the organized efforts of the community of followers. To compare this sort of pattern to a universe would require that we think of reality not in terms of things but as a ladder of processes, a great movement and exchange of energies. A teaching would then be a copy of this cosmic process on the scale of human time on earth. To receive such a teaching in ourselves, one's own life would have to become yet another copy of this process.

The "ladder or processes" being referred to is the vertical quality of "being" and the essence of cosmology. It is also the union of science and religion. I believe our being has the potential to consciously transcend but to do so will require opening to the universe as a teaching. I invite anyone interested to read Chapter One and give their impressions. It could lead to a meaningful discussion.