Anthony J. Fisichella...
Let There Be???
If you would know the beginning of things, cast your consciousness back beyond history, telescoping countless billions of years and touch the night of time. Genesis 1:2 tells us in the beginning "the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep". Darkness, solitary, impersonal and alone broods over "the deep". "In the beginning," meaning before the advent of the phenomenal Universe, for the Infinite Source of all existence, unborn and undying, could never have a beginning nor will it ever have a conceivable end. How this is possible is beyond the purview of the human mind. The Gospel of Thomas, discovered at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945, says, "Blessed is the one who came into being before he came into being." Here we have a truly enigmatic statement that requires exploration which we shall attempt in section 5 of this Chapter.
The countless forms, periodically born and dissolved by this indefinable Source have a definable beginning and consummation. Beneath the sun all things must eventually wear to an end. However, it is important to understand that the end spoken of is merely the end of a particular form of expression. Planets, solar systems and galaxies will end. The Essence of existence persists beyond the forms to which It has given phenomenal existence.
Immediately, without hesitation, we are led by those brilliant Hebrew mystics who, putting quill to parchment brought us to a contemplation of First Principles. How often have you heard it said that God is light? And yet, here we have been told, quite clearly, that the Divine, in Its Pristine, Aboriginal Nature, is embodied in Darkness. Following the description of the creative process in Genesis we read that light, as we understand it, was not created until the fourth day. The initial act of creation originated in the universe’s “Body of Darkness” – call it Cosmic Night, if you will. But, is it truly darkness or Light ineffable and not cognizable?
According to the tenets of the Ageless Wisdom, Darkness is the one true Actuality, the basis and the root of light. The Essence of Darkness is, in fact, the nature of Absolute Light. Darkness is merely perceived as an appropriate allegorical representation. “The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehendeth it not.” (John 1:5) It is Light invisible save upon the inner spiritual planes and as seen by the awakened eye (I). Darkness is taken as its appropriate symbol as it appears to our finite minds. Actually, Darkness and Light are identical in and of themselves, being only divisible in manifested form and as perceived by the faculties of consciousness. Consciousness in and of itself is the separator of the one into various contrasted aspects.
Darkness in Its pristine Nature is Absolute Light, while what we term light, in all its seeming radiance, as seen by the human mind, is merely shadow and illusion or Maya. The mystics of old described the phenomenal world as a shadow cast by an Ineffable Light. Every living phenomenon is, first and last, a symbol. We must ever bear in mind, as we proceed, that the Ageless Wisdom regards the phenomenal Universe, on whatever plane of reality under consideration, even the loftiest, as a great Illusion, and the nearer a phenomena is to the Unknown Essence that is its Source, as in the light at the entrance to the cave in Plato’s metaphor the more it approaches Actuality/Reality; the further away, the greater the veil of illusion that clouds the vision.
This position in no way contradicts modern science. Sir James Jeans, the prominent physicist and mathematician tells us, “The essential fact is simply that all the pictures which science now draws of nature, and which alone seem capable of according with observational fact, are mathematical pictures….” “They are nothing more than pictures – fictions if you like, if by fiction you mean that science is not yet in contact with ultimate Reality” (Author’s capitalization). “Many would hold that, from the broad philosophical standpoint, the outstanding achievement of twentieth-century physics is not the theory of relativity with its welding together of space and time, or the theory of quanta with its present apparent negation of the laws of causation, or the dissection of the atom with the resultant discovery that things are not what they seem, it is the general recognition that we are not in contact with ultimate Reality. We are still imprisoned in our cave, with our backs to the light, and can only watch the shadows on the wall.”
Light is inconceivable except as coming from some Source and must be self contained within that Source. The whole Cosmos must necessarily exist in the One Source of Energy from which this light emanates. In as much as that Source is unknowable to our limited senses we call It Darkness – the eternal Matrix from which the light appears and into which it disappears at the end of each cycle. Because It contains all pairs of opposites, unmanifest, and, to the eye of reason, these pairs annihilate themselves and vanish, It seems a Void. But in truth, as endless systems arising within It testify, It is a Plenum.
Observe a clear blue sky. Out of apparent nothingness a cloud appears before your eyes. Just as magically it disappears into seeming nothingness. Our scientific knowledge assures us that it was truly not a vacuous void from which the cloud appeared and into which it returned. The essence of the cloud, water vapor, existed before the cloud and will exist after its disappearance. As it is above, so it is below. We are witnessing a microcosmic correspondence to a universal process. If we possessed the necessary spiritual vision and wisdom we would understand the Essence in the Void from which, like the cloud, all else emerges and into which all shall inevitably return. And we would understand the beauty and wisdom of our own comings and goings as well.
If we wish to define manifested deity as Light, then clearly something, some Absolute Essence, at large in the “Darkness,” preexisted and gave birth to this God/Light. Even to call It “Essence”, however, is to mislead and befoul the Reality that we are attempting to identify and contemplate. Though the noun may be derived from the verb esse, “to be”, yet It, the Eternal Essence, cannot be identified with a being of any kind or form, subject to human conception. We define darkness as the absence of light. But “Darkness” is the all in All. “The one Universal Light, which to man is Darkness, is ever existent,” says the Chaldean Book of Numbers. The Ray of the Ever Darkness becomes, as it is emitted, the rays of radiant light that cast the shadows upon the cave wall that we perceive as the material world. Man is powerless, by the very nature of his consciousness, to raise the veil that shrouds the majesty of the Absolute. The “Mysterium Magnum” of Paracelsus is an absolute mystery to the human mind. Only the liberated, ascended soul is able, to a limited degree, to realize the Nature of the Source from which it issued and to which it must inevitably return.
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