Dualism and the Dark
Age
Dualism.
Dvaita.
The bane of good souls and the people generally in the Kali Yuga.
“Us vs. Them,” “God vs. the Devil,” and divisions into binary
dualisms generally is the great cause of suffering in this Age. The
proclivity to create “the Enemy/enemies” else to manufacture a
“scapegoat” is the primary problem proffered humanity in this
Dark Age.
The
Jewish people created a succinct dualism by calling themselves “God's
chosen people,” more than implying that the rest of the world was
“not-chosen.” In Abraham's apparently complete break with his
ancestors' and their religion, and exemplified by the Hebrew people's
historic practice of killing every man, woman, child and animal
amongst their foes, the Hebrew construction of reality is very much
based on an absolute rejection of anyone “not-us.”
Christians
seperate themselves from God by their notion of the “sin nature,”
and from the rest of the world by the dichotomy of “the saved”
vs. “the lost,” this despite the fact that their own scriptures
tout that Jesus Himself is recorded as having said that He came to
save the Jews, not the Gentiles, not the rest of the world's people.
His supposed followers are the ones who decided that Jesus came to
save the whole world, AFTER Jesus had parted from their company. Not
unrelatedly, it seems many Christians (though not all, mind you) seem
to have more faith in the existence of evil and “the Devil” than
in the integrity and compassion of God, and in fact thus empower and
give license to veritable “evil” and to a great many injustices
by their animosity towards the rest of the world/non-Christians and
by narrowly prejudiced judgement of any perspective that disagrees
with their particular dogma.
The
Muslims seperate themselves (and to some slight degree, the “people
of the book,” Jews and Christians) from “the infidels,” and
from all (including Jews and Christians) who do not accept “the
kalima,” the Muslim's all-important confession of faith in Allah
and Mohammed. Though the Hebrews eradicated their conquered foes,
and the Christians try to “save them,” the early Muslim conquests
only attempted to eradicate those who would not convert (other than
Jews and Christians) amongst those they conquered. Jewish or
Christian cities the Muslims had conquered who would not convert were
granted “djimi”
status
and
levied a one percent poll tax and granted self-rule. Regardless,
Islam is still based on a succinct dichotomy of “us vs. them,”
despite the less succinct separation they place between themselves
and the “people of the book.”
The
Abrahamic religions are all three too much caught up in the fear or
pride based division/delusion of “us vs. them,” and are thus
blinded to the beautiful Oneness of God and all that truly Is, to the
reality that beyond the illusion of time and space humanity and all
beings and Being are Advaita,
literally “not-second,” not in truth other than the First, the
Eternal, brahman,
“God.” All else is illusion and delusion, forgetfulness of our
true Nature as Divine.
A Sikh saint once said, upon being chastened for pointing the bottom
of his feet towards the altar at a temple, “Where might I point the
soles of my feet where God is not?”
In
this last Age of a cycle of four Ages, the Kali Yuga, The “Dark
Age,” our most dumbed-down state, most forgetful of the intrinsic
Unity of All with the Divine (one's True Self), a base response to
trauma or suffering is to blame someone or something “other,”
forgetting that in truth there is no real “other,” and certainly
no “Other.” People in this age generally are rather prone to
creating quite terrible and nasty enemies for themselves out of
whatever “other” is available, and too often in the name of
“God.”
The
easiest division to make cognitively is a bifurcation, to split
things into whatever “this vs. that” or “us vs. them” is at
hand, the which is nigh always an error, an error that in most cases
leads to much suffering and injustice. In this Age when we're at our
stupidest (compared to the last three Ages, so it is said) such easy
constructions as a simple binary offers are too often the choice of
people when facing conflict, rather than to consider the intricacy
and multiplicity of factors involved in any such scenario, process
or set of relationships, and the intrinsic connectedness if not unity
of all things.
Inclined
to think in binaries, most in this Dark Age cannot clearly discern
what the Isa Upanishad means by the assertion that “He who sees all
beings in his Self, and his Self in all beings, what fear does he
have?” At least a base symptom of the malady of the Kali Yuga is
the proclivity to blame someone else, to construct an “other” as
the enemy or scapegoat or as “the one/ones who need to change,”
rather than recognizing the supposed “other” as like you and even
another expression of the same Divine Self, another player in the
Grand Play of life on Earth on a like pilgrimage through the lila
of eternity, and that what one has the certain power and right to
change is his or her own self in relation to the Divine that exists
both inside and out, and the right to change one's own life
practices.
Now
mind you, I do recognize that in this presentation of the play of
these religious perspectives I am myself thus constructing a division
of us vs. them, “them” being the Abrahamic religious discourse as
opposed to “us” who can see the delusion of dualism. I suppose I
must clarify by noting that as I am refering to these various
religious groups I am speaking of the general discourse said groups
proffer in general terms, and do not mean to essentialize all
practitioners as fitting within those generalities. There are within
all peoples and among all groups of religious practitioners some
Self-aware individuals, and coversely some Hindus and Buddhists who
are prone to such “us vs. them” delusions, despite the very clear
precepts of both religions that teach otherwise, that both teach
ahimsa
and satyagraha
and
extreme restraint as the generally proper response to conflict with
supposed “others” presented us in the midst of this Grand
Illusion, the matrix of smoke and mirrors that is maya.
To
reify, I do not wish to imply that among the practitioners of the
“Abrahamic” faiths there none who are Self-Aware individuals, nor
that they should renounce their religions, nor that those religions
are in essence “bad” nor “evil.” I only mean that those
constructions are prone to dualistic renderings of conflicts and
interactions generally, whereas constructions that do not create such
stark and arbitrary separations between “us and them,” between
“God” and humanity, between Nature and civilization, do indeed
prove more harmonious and in concert with what really is. Reality is
in fact and by any reasonable scientific purview never truly a binary
function of off/on, us/them, self/not self, saved/lost, the
faithful/infidels, black/white, nor even of male/female, and such
integrous worldviews as do not promote such ignorant dualistic
thinking are more prone to fomenting peace and genuine prosperity,
both amongst their own and in the world generally.
The
complexity and intricacy of reality and Being cannot ever quite be
fitted to within the base dichotomy of black and white, save perhaps
by tandava.
The closest the teachings of sanAtana
dharma
come to a black/white dichotomy in terms of cosmology is in the
Dance, the Tandava, of Shiva and Kali Ma, wherein an Effulgent
(though not necessarily “white”) Dude is dancing with The Black
Mama, the two always in motion and thus not ever quite merely two,
but existentially both Many and One; the Great Mama, Dark like the
depths of the Womb, conveying all the Sensuality and Beauty and
Potency of Feminine, of The Mother, and the Great Papa, Protector of
Souls and Animals and the Source of Light, together in constant
Motion conveying Devotion and Passion and Playfulness and indeed,
Desire, but never quite presenting merely Two, and never in truth
other than One.
Indeed
as these various groups, faiths, peoples and lifeways have developed
to be such significant factors in this world at this or any time,
they are each certainly variously cast to play particular roles in
the lila
of the Kali Yuga, or to be more specific, the Gauri Yuga of the Kali
Yuga, as these are Golden times compared to what awaits as the
dualistic, “us vs. them” darkness ensues as the rest of the Dark
Age continues after the Golden Age part, according to the teachings
of sanAtana
dharma.
Indeed the Gods are at play, only they are not-not us.
The
various religious constructions of this world, indeed all of the
variegated arrays of paradigms and peoples, can be seen as
strategically deployed to create means of transforming the
self-destructive impetuses of this Age of Ignorance, to distribute
the cognitive malaise and confusion of reality caused by the
dualistically debased state of human cognition in such ways as such
dimwittedness might cause the least sorrow and suffering. It is not
unlike a board game played with the planet as board, with the Players
being Devas and Devis and other orders of beings, and by the ancient
accounts of many traditions, extra-terrestrials from various star
systems that have been involved in many of the acts and scenes across
the Ages and Play cycles played out via humans and their tribes and
civilizations, nations and religions and philosophical disputations,
at least according to the ancient teachings of sanAtana
dharma
and many other more recent if still ancient mythologies. And indeed
when seen true, the Play and Plays of life on earth is merely a game
God/True Self is playing with HerSelf/HimSelf in this Illusion born
of Desire.
The arrangements and rearrangements of peoples designed to foment
peace and find good balance to the diversity of peoples and lifeways
can be discerned in the Grand Narrative if one shifts one's focus to
include the span of eternity, of forever, and to the entirity and
integrity of the show here and now, and not merely one's own or one's
own people's seeming separate story, but the whole show and all the
nata
(actors, players/dancers) integrously dancing towards the perfect
bliss and synchronicity that is in truth all that Exists.
One
clear example of the above theory, of the Gods engineering the
development of human civilization, would be the aforementioned
movement of King Bali's Kingdom to across the Pacific at the firm
request of Vaman (Dwarf Avatar of Vishnu), who granted the
“Underworld” to Bali that Lord Indra could reign unhindered
across the Eurasian and African landmasses, i.e., not unlikely to
prevent war between the two powerful kings, as well as certainly to
fulfill so many subtle intentions of the script of the Grand lila
at play in the Gauri Yuga of the Kali Yuga.
Traces of Lord Indra's rulership are to be found in the figurations
of very analagous gods like Zeus, Thor, Jupiter, Perun, Marduk, etc.,
and likely various gods in the African pantheons, and traces of
Bali's kingdom in Patala well enough evinced by the Saksaywaman
Temple, clearly built to honor Deva (God) Vaman (Vishnu's fifth
Avatar of Ten), and many other linguistic and cultural clues.
We
are the playthings of the Gods and We are the Gods—if forgetful
ones, mind you, or at least so it seems to me. And more importantly,
we are God. Not our individual selves/jiva/souls/egos
else ids, mind you, caught up in karma (action) and desire as nigh
all are to whatever degree, but our True Self, the Eternal One that
resides in and outside each and every, that resides in everyone's
heart, about the size of your thumb, the Upanishads do tout. sat
cit Ananda,
“righteous mind bliss” as what is Natural and is Nature. “Sin
Nature” as what is Natural is a terrible lie, a copout, a crutch to
enable or attempt to justify people doing wrongs.
In
these dimwitted days of the Kali Yuga, many ifn't most are prone to
miss the beautiful complexity and multifaceted nature of what is
real, and instead are sadly prone to lump things into stupid binaries
and thus to heap sufferings and sorrows upon themselves and others.
It's easy to make a scapegoat, but such never truly serves the
abiding good of the people.
My
wish for the Abrahamic religions, and any crew inclined towards
binary stupidity in an Age beset by said malady, is that they become
respectfully aware of the many respective roles to be filled in this
Age-long play that has scarce begun, and become duly aware that
though some of their own presumptions and dogmas are wrong and
mistaken, as are some of those of other peoples and religions, all do
fit in the Divine Play at hand, and all peoples and their lifeways
and religions do contain the seed of righteousness, of the
Compassionate and Eternal Divine. Truly, diversity is vital to life
lived, and everyone's own place and conditions of birth and the
practices of their people do somehow fit into the Grand Play
integrously and do provide possible pathways to Divine bliss, as it
is with all peoples and good practice and well kept tellings of the
ancient and abiding Story and Stories.
Requisite
for a well developed play are variously arrayed characters and
groups, factions and factors well woven together, preferably in such
concert as to compliment rather than to compete or to dealve into
suffering-filled conflicts. If one can learn to see the Divine in
and through the whole show, and that when seen true, other peoples
and their Gods are true too, all Players in a Game that includes all
people and peoples and times; if one can accept that the Truly
Divine, Compassionate and Great, in whatever variegated forms
sometimes certainly maintains Presence(s) by many names and amongst
various peoples, and even amongst the fold of your “enemies,”
beyond the “us/them,” then, Religion can be true.
Ekam
sat vipra bahudha vadanti
The
Truth is One, the Sages speak of it variously.
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