At satsang recently, the question arose of the meaning of Christ’s atonement. His death on the cross is usually interpreted as a form of penal substitution, meaning he died for our sins.

In other words, from the Sat Yoga perspective, the prior God-image, that of the wrathful Father, would punish us for our sins, but the new God-image, the Son of Love, chooses meek submission unto death over violent retribution. This state of higher consciousness becomes our own through faith, which is identification or imitatio dei, and thus what really dies on the cross is the superego, the vengeful angry god of chakra three—meaning that through the act of tolerant, compassionate overcoming of anger, we are reborn as the Real Self, or in Christ-consciousness, and liberated from our ego, and thus from our sins.

The ego uses reason poorly. The ego’s hidden agenda is always to flee from its own true Source. Thus, it employs a poor version of reason to create false ideas and construct defense mechanisms to protect its ignorance of its own real being from ever becoming unmasked—and transcended. This is a poor use of reason indeed.

This is all that can be expected of a false self. Once imagined, through the implantation of the I-thought and its gradually increasing attendant complex of signifiers, self-images, and signature emotions, the ego must keep its auto-illusion rolling along to avoid the fantasized catastrophe of ego death and depersonalization, which it depicts to itself as the ultimate dread, horrific lack, lostness, and abandonment in a barren void.

All such negative thought-forms are the real terrorist attacks, perpetrated on our entranced consciousness by the ego apparatus upon itself. These self-attacks, the false flag operations of the inner censor, originally a stimulus overload barrier grown out of control, can burgeon into full-blown anxiety attacks, which can then in turn bloom into psychosomatic symptoms and a morbid fear of both death and life. In fact, all psychopathology can be traced back to such auto-terrorism of the false self.

Language immanentizes the Eschaton. The hyperdimensionality of the Supreme Real is lost in the flattened intellectualized reflection that discourse forces upon our supramental intuition. To say that the Eschaton is upon us is to recognize that the Real Itself is morphing into the monstrous, invading our imaginaries, seizing up our symbolic defenses, and finally forcing us to face the beyond of language. We are entering that beyond, one way or another: through horror that is unspeakable, sadness that cannot control its tears, or infinite ecstasy that unfolds as the Eschaton embodied as the ultimate paradox that is the Self.

Many people still want to waste time arguing—over how serious a crisis is this really; or, whether any leader can be trusted to guide us through the transition; or, whether the vaunted goal of transcendence of the ego is even more than a mirage; or if renunciation of egoic jouissance is useful, healthy, and a necessary part of a redemptive path; or whether grace will simply descend upon us all one day, no matter if we are meditating and fasting, or drinking beer and watching tv.

Thankfully, there is no more time for such barren debates. Civilization is breaking apart; unpredictable catastrophes are occurring daily in every part of the world; the ecological die-off accelerates, murdering our oceans and our lands; the climate continues to morph our sacred planet savagely into a world that is uninhabitable; while armies and bands of guerrillas everywhere continue an irrelevant armed struggle, either to defend or to overthrow a system that is doomed, no matter which side wins.

In Sat Yoga meditation, there is a positive feedback loop between one-pointed attention (ek stiti) on the Absolute Self and the upsurge of the inner fire (Agni) in which the ego is melted into Nothingness.

The Yog Agni, the Fire of Yoga, is created in the brain by the power of will holding still in the silent center of loving awareness, the sacred Heart, the inmost nucleus of our being. This worshipful stillness soon begins to burn away the unloving shields of the ego. Meditation acts like a magnifying glass that is held still outside on a sunny day, that will soon begin to burn a dry leaf that is under it. The magnifying glass gathers together the rays of sunlight into sufficient unity that the light can function as a laser and burn through whatever obstacles are in its path. In the same way, in meditation our fixed attention focuses our psychic rays into a unity that can burn away the ego and all its tendencies—if only we can hold our attention steady for a long enough time. By focusing the rays of pure presence upon the soul itself, the egoic shell is rapidly dissolved and consciousness penetrates into the deeper levels of being, releasing the trapped energy of love and bliss.

When we think of creating new rites of passage, we must remember that we are in the midst of the greatest rite of passage of all time, and we are in urgent danger of failing to pass. Failure will mean the end of life, as we know it, on Planet Earth. Of course, so will success.