Obscured Human evolution - By Sri Aurobindo

It is not very easy for the customary mind of man, always attached to its past and present associations, to conceive of an existence still human, yet radically changed in what are now our fixed circumstances. We are in respect to our possible higher evolution much in the position of the original Ape of the Darwinian theory. It would have been impossible for that Ape leading his instinctive arboreal life in the primeval forest to conceive that there would one day be an animal on earth who would use a new faculty called reason upon the materials of his inner and outer existence, who would dominate by that power his instincts and habits, change the circumstances of his physical life, build for himself houses of stone, manipulate nature's forces, sail the seas, ride the air, develop codes of conduct, evolve conscious methods for his mental and spiritual development. And if such a conception had been possible for the ape-mind, it would still be difficult for him to imagine that by any progress of Nature or long effort of will and Tendency he himself could develop into that animal. Man, because he has acquired reason and still more because he has indulged his power of imagination and intuition, is able to conceive an existence higher than his own and even to envisage his personal elevation beyond his present state into that existence. His idea of the supreme state is an absolute of all that is positive in his own concepts and desirable to his own instinctive aspiration, - Knowledge without its negative shadow of error, Bliss without its negation in experience of suffering, Power without its constant denial by incapacity, Purity and plenitude of being without the opposing sense of defect and limitation. It is so that he conceives his Gods; it is so that he constructs his heavens. But it is not so that his reason conceives of a possible earth and a possible humanity. His dream of god and heaven is really a dream of his own perfection; but he finds the same difficulty in accepting its practical realization here for his ultimate aim as would the ancestral ape if called upon to believe in himself as the future man. His imagination, his religious aspirations may hold that end before him; but when his reason asserts itself, rejecting imagination and transcendent intuition, he puts it by as brilliant superstition contrary to the hard facts of the material universe. It becomes then only his inspiring vision of the impossible. All that is possible is conditioned, limited and precarious knowledge, happiness, power and good.

(The life Divine P.60-61)

New Decade

1/1/10

It seems to me sometimes as if it me who is the one experiencing all of this. Like there is some higher overlooking presence looking at this body and all the shit its going through, the mind which is influenced by what the body is going through. When the pain and the suffering start becoming a daily ordeal, it's as if something realizes there is more to the reality right now than this.
Last night, when I was Djing for 7 hours straight in our New year's eve party here in the village, I felt the best I have felt yet since I began radiation and Chemo 2 weeks ago. The flow of energy between me and the people and the music instilling positive vibrations in my body had a tremendous healing power and I was not busy with nausea, throat aches, mouth sores or any of the other little but annoying things I have to deal with these days. When i'm totally present and alive in what i'm doing, and if I love doing it like a love Djing, it creates release, true freedom from suffering. It's the goal of meditation, to be free of Dukha (in Pali – unsatisfactoriness for lack of a better translation. This is why I like to use the Pali word because it so specific). I am free in the present moment from any discomfort related to bodily issues or other issues because essentially, they do not exists in the present moment. Physical pain is a derivative of space and time. Only if time is in the picture, can I experience the suffering behind pain, otherwise it is merely sensations and vibrations, pulsating in consecutive moments we perceive as occurring in linear time and thus creating the illusion of a continuous sensation, which added up can accumulate to pain, according to its intensity, or any other sensation. Not to say these sensations do not exists, they do, but on a level which we can consider illusory, or very mundane. The future time continuum exists only in our minds, and does not exist in the truth of things. The only moment which can possibly be present in fact is the present one. All else is the projection of the mind. This deep insight allows us to see behind the matrix, in this case being our automatic patterns of reaction to external stimuli. Once that veil is removed, we can be free from time and thus from the projection of our own experiences which produce suffering.
The beauty of it though is that this cannot be seen and cultivated by thinking all these things out and saying: “right, this sounds logical, i'll do that”. It just doesn't work like that. We have to cultivate a actual experiential seeing into the nature of reality, again and again, so our mind body gets the hang of it and starts doing it on its own, spontaneously. The more we are able to experience moments of full presence in meditation or in doing something we love doing with deep awareness, the more those moments of pain will not seem so bad. It develops an inner-seeing, an innate quality in us which will slowly transform our way of thinking and reacting to things. These is no way we are supposed to react or not react or try to convince ourselves mentally the pain is just pain and is not really that bad, it a cultivation of deeper insight which naturally and organically becomes our nature.
This quality is what allows healing as well. It's the same quality which enables us to come into contact with the higher aspects of the universe and the forces working behind it. When we are not caught up in future projection, in the continuity of space and time, we realize what lies beyond it, and that has tremendous amount of energy, since it is the source of all energy and manifestation. It's the source of who we are, the atoms of which we are made of and source of healing any physical or psychological disharmony we may have. It's worthwhile to take a period of time each day and dedicate it to this aspect of reality.

Shabbat Shalom. Happy new year!