Today, human culture has, as we all know only too well, taken a drastic turn toward the demonic. We have created a negative, bloodthirsty, and dumbed-down culture that valorizes selfishness, brutality, materialism, ruthlessness, prejudice, narcissism, apathy, unbridled masturbatory sensuality, irresponsibility, ignorance, bigotry, and paranoia. Unless we transform the culture, humanity is lost. In fact, most of us are already in the category of lost souls. The question is how we can re-find our lost essence.
The demonic qualities that obscure our collective consciousness have led us into an evolutionary cul-de-sac. We have fashioned societies that operate on the basis of our lowest level of functioning—structures based on greed, sexual aggression, and general power-madness. These systems of command and control, out of desperation to maintain control even though they have lost their claim to legitimacy, have shifted from primarily ideological and economic methods of maneuvering to the overwhelming application of intimidation and brute force.
The system operates beyond the pale of reason. Empires act on the supervening mandate to increase profits, control all valuable resources, collect all possible information, eliminate all perceived enemies, and to function in secrecy with no moral limitations upon action. Humans have created monstrous mechanisms of power that are now bent on destroying their creators. And the need for the system to act in ways that no morally attuned consciousness could permit has led to the elimination of all but the most opportunist and amoral, not to say psychopathic and sociopathic, from most of the centers of power.
We have used our vaunted intelligence to produce weapons with which we can destroy ourselves utterly and we have put them under the control of those least qualified by wisdom, compassion, and emotional maturity to wield such inconceivably lethal force. Moreover, out of the need to displace the collective anger from being aimed at the system of oppression, external enemies are routinely roused as objects of hatred, turning civilization into a permanent psychotic war dance. Our uncaring and foolish social policies have led to the karmic blowback of planetary overheating, toxic pollution of the water supply and the atmosphere, denaturing and contamination of food products, dangerous genetic modification of life forms, and impoverishment of the vast masses of the human population. All these and other foolish policies have put a stranglehold on our capacity to survive. In response to this human stupidity, the power of Gaia, our planet’s transpersonal organismic intelligence, is intervening by bringing about massive geological changes to remove what has become a cancer on the biosphere. We are that cancer. We either transform or we shall be eliminated. It is that simple.
Here is where our latent theomorphic powers come in. Each of us has the capacity, through commitment to constant practice of Self-awareness, to transcend the egocentric mentality that has corrupted our character. We can quickly rebuild ourselves in the image of the Supreme I-consciousness. This means dedicated re-inculcation of the finest and most noble attributes that have always functioned as guiding human ideals. But because our will has become fragmented and dissipated, in the beginning our souls must take the support of others on the theomorphic path: a spiritual teacher; a community; the reading of inspired texts; a daily regimen of meditation, prayer, interpretation of one’s dreams, and other spiritual practices; a simple, clean, healthy, ethical lifestyle; and continuous focus on the goal of theomorphic transformation. This commitment in itself requires such humility and seriousness of purpose that few will be attracted to such a path. But the necessary numbers will be touched by divine inspiration to undertake the theomorphic project.
Theomorphosis is not a human project, then but can only succeed when inspired and guided by the divine Intelligence, the Logos: otherwise known as the Holy Spirit. There are times in history—times of spiritual exhaustion and dire need of redemption after the human ego has lost touch with its supernal roots and the tree of life is withering—when the power of God mercifully returns from Its eclipse and seeds the Earth with the wisdom and light of love necessary for a new renaissance, a new order of the ages, one that is realigned with the might, the love, and truth of the Absolute.
We are now passing through such a historic moment, when God is palpably with us in a way that is unique to such a momentous spiritual event. But only those who are attuned to the subtle reality of their subjective selfhood and who wholeheartedly seek union with the ultimate source of their being will become aware of this secret coming of the Supreme One. Now is the time to take advantage of this transcosmic event to overcome the downward pull of the egoic mind and attain liberation. In this great outflowing of divine power, whoever wishes may easily attain inner peace, bliss, healing, and even the fullness of psychospiritual perfection.
We have the ability to make ourselves once more into beings of impeccable moral strength and courage; of cognitive clarity and creative intuitive profundity; of generosity and compassion; of serenity and universal love. Such a project of theosis will have profound impacts upon everyone in our circles of influence, as well as, more subtly, upon the natural environment. Once the collective energy field has increased its vibrational frequency to a certain unspecifiable critical threshold of global noetic resonance, a massive shift will occur at every level of psycho-ecological interaction. But to reach this level of Self-realization, we must approach our goal with fervor and unwavering dedication.
The planetary conditions, meanwhile, are rapidly disintegrating, as everyone who is not in denial can plainly perceive. The crisis will continue to magnify exponentially until the final tipping point is reached. Then life on Earth will radically alter for everyone through a series of cataclysmic events that will bring the current age to an instant vanishing point. Through extraordinary tectonic processes, our contaminated continents will then sink into the depths and new virgin landmasses will rise from the ocean floor to become accessible for habitation by the surviving communities. Conditions will gradually become favorable for the inauguration of a new kind of divine culture. This kind of massive planetary transformation has occurred before, and is the subject of many of the world’s oldest myths and legends. Though modern science would find such a notion outrageous, there is more in heaven and earth, as Shakespeare said, than is dreamt of in our current philosophy.
The present crisis is meant to awaken us from our egoic trance. We have forgotten what is Real, what is important, what we are, and how we might live together as a united human community, would we only choose the path of truth and nobility of spirit. The current decomposition of all social bonds is making us aware of our mistaken priorities, the lethal nature of our hubristic egocentricity, the utter contingency and unimportance of our continuing existence, should we choose to remain in our fallen state of arrogance and ignorance. Fortunately, we shall not all make such a choice.
We have reached the moment of truth. In the coming collapse of our national and international systems of finance and trade, in the ongoing shattering of our families and social networks, in the rampant paranoia of burgeoning madness that is ripping apart the matrix of human existence, we have no choice but to realize that we have lost our way. We have lost the very ground of our Being. To recover our source and foundation, we must undertake an extreme inner makeover. To do that, we must surrender our total being—body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit—to the blessed omnipotence of the Supreme Self.
The most important element of the theomorphic project is learning to silence the mind. Only when we have gained sovereignty over our mental agitations can we access and harness the most subtle and lifegiving energies of the Absolute’s Pure Presence. That is the point of Sat Yoga. It is the practice of constant union with the Absolute, known in Sanskrit terms as Sat-Chit-Ananda (Being-Awareness-Rapture). It is the practice of surrendering the ego mind and all its banal concerns to the ultimate Void that is the entrance to the mind of God.
To achieve this sublime overarching goal, we must sacrifice our distractions and lesser intentions. We must give up our judgments and our opinions, our limited loyalties and attachments, our projections and externalizations. We must interiorize our awareness, renounce all egoistic self-images and representations, and retreat to our inmost essence. In the attainment of utter emptiness, we come upon the astonishing realization that what we had considered the external world is nothing but the manifestation of the Absolute. The dynamic impermanence of the world process is the eternal play of divine energies in the creative expression of infinite wisdom. Human history is but a cosmic cautionary tale of what happens when we forget who we are, and exists to provoke a permutation to ever-greater recognitions and introjections of the resources of our unlimited potentialities. Once we learn again to speak the language of God, life transcends the barrier of death and becomes one endless delight.
One life ends, another begins. One age ends, another is born. The cycles of existence far surpass what can be understood by the egoic mind. But the message of Spirit is clear: Be not afraid. The environmental crisis is not an inconvenient truth, after all, but rather, the harbinger of the most wonderful advent possible. Such a wholistic paradigm of the cyclic nature of temporal reality was common currency in the ancient world. It became part of the patrimony of our cultural intelligence that we for centuries took for granted. It is as much a part of Greek and Roman understanding—read the writings of the Stoics, for example, or the dialogues of Plato, or the Enneads of Plotinus—as of the East. It is part of the perennial philosophy, embedded in the esoteric dimension of every world religion.
What all the great religions prophesy—apocalypse, redemption, the return of the gods, the coming of the new kingdom of heaven on Earth, and so on—is now about to come to pass in the most unexpected way—a way that will befuddle the believers of those religions even as the prophecies are being fulfilled. This is because our religions have mistaken their textual signifiers for the signified, have misunderstood their own symbols, have taken metaphors too literally, have misinterpreted their founders’ teachings according to egoic wishes rather than transcendent wisdom. Yet the great sayings are true: The Saviour will come as a thief in the night. We need only prepare ourselves for the descent of grace, understanding, and liberation. God became man that man might become a god. The true Passover is yet to be observed. Build thee an ark, a merkabah, a lotus life, to float above the flood. Cleave to Allah. The hour of judgment is nigh. As Buddha says, work out your salvation with diligence. Become a theomorph.
Namaste,
Shunyamurti