The God Who Created the God Who Created the God

Religious philosophers tend to argue in favor of an original, intelligent cause as an answer for the question of our origins. It stands to reason, they argue, that an original cause be accepted to avoid the paradox of beginninglessness. The original cause being of course a monotheistic god, who is assumed perfect and benevolent.

From these roots come the marked difference in the linear and finite versus cyclic and infinite models of the Occident and the Orient, along with some wildly varying concepts of god or its equivalent. When it comes to god and gods, much is assumed and little is certain.

The pursuit for an original cause is much like a walk in Escher's paradox.

Original Cause as a Non-Solution

Proposing that there is an original cause is philosophically unsatisfactory, inasmuch as the original cause always remains incomprehensible to us smaller units, its originality unproven in the face of the possibility that our original cause is but the a link in a chain of causation. The concept of a greater creator merely begs the question whether there might be more creators at work somewhere up the pyramid of creations.

If there is one creator god for the existence we know, it is in fact entirely plausible that there may be any number of other, more compassive gods further up the line of creations, the extent of which we'd never be able to decipher as either infinite or finite. The seemingly definitive solution of an original cause now effectively returns to square one, once again face to face with the paradox of infinity and beginninglessness.

Brahma, the Hindu demiurge, is born from a lotus growing from Vishnu's navel.

Hierarchy of Creator Gods in Indic Lore

The Vaishnavite mythology, found throughout the Puranic lore, posits the existence of a single eternal transcendent deity, Vishnu, who dwells beyond the world of creations, and also permeates the creation as its supporting substratum. At the dawn of creation Vishnu, lying at the bottom of each of the universes he created, let a lotus sprout from his navel, atop which awoke Brahma, the creator god of the Hindu trinity, set to organize the elements of the cosmos provided by Vishnu.

This prime creator, in turn, set forth a number of Prajapatis, progenitors of mankind and diverse species, along with a number of sages to impart wisdom to the creation. In a fair number of epics the lesser gods, created by Brahma, mistake their immediate creator to be the supreme creating deity and the original cause, and in fact he is found to be so deluded on a number of occasions himself.

The god Brahma also features in early Buddhist lore as one among a number of Brahmas, each presiding over their own Brahma-worlds, fancying themselves as creator gods, frequently original causes in their own right. These Brahmas feature in a number of legends from the Buddha's cosmic adventures, and it was in fact Brahma Sahampati who urged the Buddha to go forth and preach the dharma in the wake of his enlightenment.

The theology of some Vaishnavas, most notably the Gaudiya tradition and the Hare Krishnas, further posits that Krishna is, rather than an avatar of Vishnu, in fact the original source god, of whom Vishnu is an extension for purposes of creation. Yet they are in some respects identical, one deity and one mind, and yet again different in some minute manners. Overall, I get the effect of calling to an office for the person responsible, only to be routed around in circles until the line breaks. No wonder some prefer speaking face to face, whether it's gods or service personnel.

Not surprisingly, adherents of the Shaiva school likewise claim Shiva to be the supreme god, as again the Shaktas insist that Shakti is the ultimate mother-godhead, of which Shiva, Vishnu and the rest spring forth. Faced with the immense plurality and conflicting opinions of the Indic gods, good old Christian monotheism might begin to seem like a welcome breeze of fresh air. If so, please breathe to your liking before starting the following section.

David Tarleton: The Aeon Sophia at the Birth of the Demiurge

Gnostic Demiurge and Judeo-Christian Creator God

I recall a lively conversation I once had with an elderly Jehovah's Witness. He was adamant that the mainstream Christian Church was wrong in claiming that Jesus was God, while he was in fact the first creation, as also god's instrument for the making of the creation that sprang forth — all standard Jehovah's Witness theology.

Incidentally I was also once filled in into the higher secret of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, again by an elderly gentleman somewhere in northern Finland. All was fine with my theology, but the fact that I was a monk at the time. Skipping the preliminaries, he related how we, as married couples, are to evolve and one day become creator gods and goddesses of our own universes.

To make things even more confusing on the Judeo-Christian front, we are confronted with the question of their god being perhaps a legion of gods, as the plural address Elohim and covenants to "not have any other gods" indicate. How much do the Elohim have in common with the gods of the Olympos mountain, the Egyptian Pantheon and the Hindu gods of Himalaya?

It was the Gnostic tradition that first identified the Judean God as a so-called Demiurge, an inferior and imperfect deity responsible for the creation of an imperfect world. Gnostic estimates of the lesser deity span from an embodiment of evil to merely an imperfect yet benevolent being. The Gnostics view the birth of the Demiurge as an accident that was never meant to happen, in effect describing an unplanned pregnancy leading to the birth of a defective god.

In contrast to demiurge are the eternal Pleroma, self-manifest beings transcending our dimension, ascension among whom is the final destination of the humans. As fascinating as it is, one can't help but wonder whether there might be yet another layer of causation beyond the supposedly eternal Pleroma, who as a matter of fact sound remarkably similar to the residents of the Immaterial Realms of the Buddhist cosmology, who are again superceded by the cryptic nirvana.

The Judeo-Christian God's wrath in the Genesis incident over Adam's acquisition of classified knowledge is interesting in its own right. We even find the following admission in God's own words (3.21): "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." Interestingly, the serpent was right over the fruit's effects, while God was in fact trying to prevent access with threats of death upon eating. Now that ought to get the conspiracy theorists running!

Left: Intimidating Jaffa servant of an Egyptian Goa'uld. Right: The Ori grant supernatural powers to their Priors.

Evil Gods of Science Fiction

The well-documented traits of the God Institution have also found their way into popular entertainment. For an example, the popular TV-series Stargate features two separate races of malevolent beings posing and worshiped as gods, only to be overthrown by their subjects in due course.

The Goa'uld, evil and technologically advanced power-hungry parasites, used humans for slavery for millennia in the guise of various Egyptian, Greek and Oriental gods, posing as immortal lords and the creators. The Goa'uld were snake-like creatures who bonded with human hosts, integrating themselves with the hosts' spinal cord and the brain. (Incidentally the often-controversial kundalini-energy of Hindu Tantrics literally means "female serpent" and, when activated, rises up the spinal cord and yields psychic powers.)

Again the Ori, an ascendend incorporeal species, inspired massive crusades to have everyone worship them, for they gained power through the energy sapped from lower sentient beings. For them, the religion is a conduit for transferring upwards the energy expended by the worshipers. In return for worship and absolute dedication, they offered their followers a false promise of ascension, unwilling as they were to share of their power. Really, exactly how many of the available promises of afterlife are guaranteed real deals? It's a pity religions don't come bundled with a money-back guarantee.

While there would be a number of other juicy examples to illustrate the concept, let's focus on the gist of the idea, namely the assumed integrity and benevolence of the said god or gods. There is no reason to assume that a more powerful being would have also evolved in benevolence, even if the religions of the world do tend to take the goodness of their gods for granted. Hey, the gods of the Zoroastrians being the demons of the Brahmanas and vice versa, one or other of the gods out there has got to be evil! And evil or not, faithfully worshiped by devout followers.

Something is fundamentally wrong with the above scenario.

Final Thoughts

The final day of reckoning pending and yet to be proven, there are few compelling reasons for worshiping one authoritarian god or the other. Given the insubstantiability of the said claims of absolute originality, omnipotence and omniscience, there is little reason to accept demands of allegiance. Neither claims of rightful ownership of our souls or threats of damnation or annihilation can serve as a basis for a healthy, working relationship. If there's one thing that puts me off on so many levels, it is intimidation.

If some choose to voluntarily pursue the worship of a god or several gods or goddesses, whether it be for solace, pleasure, profit or wisdom, I don't see it as objectionable as long as the relationship remains non-abusive. If a god or the gods are real, existing and sentient beings, it stands to reason that our free will ought to be respected, and all forms of life, regardless of evolutionary level, ought to have certain rights. Just like we also treat nature and animals, eh? Do unto them as he did unto us...

Coming from a god who created hell, a promise that he can save me from going to hell isn't exactly playing it fair. You cannot create a threat and then play the good guy for alleviating the threat! When a threat is produced to gain advantage from the object of threat, it is called coercion. Use of coercion with self-produced ultimatums spanning infinity cannot be the work of a a truthful, loving and benevolent being.

Not that I'm an atheist. Atheism as a concept is far too limited, as is theism along with its bretheren ideologies. Pantheism and monistic nondualism are high on my chart of working elements for a coherent overall picture of existence. No single theory in itself seems to be adequate for capturing the essence of existence, and a comprehensive Theory of Everything is yet to be written. Be that as it may, it seems evident that the era of authoritarian creator gods is nearing its inevitable end.

Further Reading

Brahma (Buddhism): A fascinating gloss on the role of the god Brahma in Buddhist lore, little known to many Hindu adherents who fancy Brahma as a Hindu deity. Ironic as it is, the god of the Brahmanas was identified as one of the Brahmas known to the Buddha long before the Puranas began to grow into their current renditions!

Brahma (Hinduism): A good overview of the Hindu lore of creation, the birth of Brahma, who was to become one of the popular Hindu trinity, and the subsequent gods he created for the sake of expanding his domain. Path to Deification: How we evolve into gods, as understood in the theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Gnosticism: Pleroma and the Demiurge. Goa'uld and Ori: Two fictive races of false gods in the Stargate universe.

Karma: Universal and Buddhist Interpretations

The word karma, in its simplest sense, means action. In a broader context, it features the causal relationships brought about by the action, likened to seeds awaiting to ripen in the future. Karma is generally understood as the sum-total of one's activities and their latent effects, weaving a complex causal web leaving even the wisest perplexed over matters of predetermination and free will.

The exact course and formation of causal relationships can be hard to decipher.

The concept has been broadly popularized in the West by Buddhist and Hindu teachers over the past century. The Buddhist tradition has excelled particularly in its presentation of the underlying ethics, while the Hindus, and in particular the Vedantic tradition, have done some interesting groundwork in estimating the subconscious mechanics of karmic ripening.

A comprehensive gloss on the treatment of karma in Buddhism and Hinduism, along with Jainism and Sikhism, the other two main dharmic religions, is beyond the scope of this article. In the following, I hope to first distill the essentials of what determine the nature of the effect arising from a particular cause, and then gloss the Buddhist ethical analysis of action and offence as applied in their old monastic code.

A number of universal factors affect the causal content of each action.

Universal Karma

Karma is the sum total of several variables instead of the outcome of a single factor. Cause here means all direct and indirect, often far-reaching consequences born from the action. First and foremost, karma is born of the desire and intent of the doer. The consequence befalling each action are defined, among others, by the following:

1) Intention. Was the intent positive or negative, good or evil? Was the act done impulsively, with contemplation or by accident?
2) Implementation. Was the act fulfilled in accordance with the intention, or to a contrary result? Was the good or evil act brought to a conclusion?
3) Effects. Are the factual effects of the act positive, negative or mixed, individually as well as collectively?
4) Object. Was the object of a good deed particularly wanting or without need? Was the object of an evil deed helpless and innocent, equal and neutral, or greater and evil itself?
5) Circumstances. Was the act done out of a real need, or whimsically? Was the doer in a forced situation or faced with a free choice?
6) Atonement. Did the doer of an evil act try to make amendments by attempting to correct its consequences? Was the repentance superficial or genuine?

We can all form examples of the above for ourselves, the principles ought to be clear enough. In examining the factual consquence of the act and its effect on its object, the collective effect of the transformation effected in the object, and the underlying intents, we all begin to fathom just how complex the network of cause and effect really is.

I would assume the above to be largely universal, and for the most part also applicable in a court of law as in ethical measurement, even if it is evident that analysis and interpretation of the variables involved is an inherently subjective venture. Religions have certainly all had their say on the matter, and particularly so among Indic religions, where extensive theories of personal causation have evolved.

Buddhist monks of Thai and Tibetan traditions gathered in Lumbini, Nepal.

In Buddhist Monasticism

The ancient Buddhist monastic rules (vinaya) make for a particularly fascinating read in this context. This owes largely to the excessively detailed and thorough philosophy of offense featured in the commentarial tradition, primarily assessing an offense against the criteria of motivation and implementing act. The system of Vinaya Pitaka doesn't discuss the variables of the offense with regards to its possible consequences; its sole intent is to judge whether an offense has occured, and if so, at which degree of severity.

There are four parajika-offenses or unforgivables for the Buddhist monks, committing which a monk is unconditionally exiled from the monastic community for the remainder of his life. They are as follows: 1) sexual intercourse, 2) homicide, 3) theft, and 4) exaggeration of spiritual status. These offences are applicable at this severity only while living as an ordained monk; should the monk for example be unable able to control his sexual urge, he may forsake monkhood and live in a relationship for as long as he wishes, and later in his life again become a monk. However, having sex while still ordained is unforgivable.

The monastic tradition, rich in its abundance of rules, naturally gives the bulk of its attention to these four severest offences. As an example, the tradition defines theft by four criteria:

1) Object: Anything belonging to another or a group of people.
2) View: The object is understood as belonging to another or a group of people.
3) Intention: One decides to steal the object.
4) Effort: One steals the object.

In the above, in absence of factor 2) no ethical violation has occured. (The object accidentally stolen must of course be returned once understood as such.) In absence of factor 3), where the thief has accidentally stolen an object he has contemplated on stealing, a full offense is not committed, neither is it in absence of factor 1) where the thief has stolen no-man's property or something of his own. Additionally the value of the object is in direct proportion to the severity of the crime.

Homicide, in turn, is judged according to the following criteria:

1) Object: A living human being. (Commentarial tradition includes featus here; the rule was born consequent to abortion medicines administered to nuns.)
2) Intention: To knowingly, with understanding, contemplation and intention wish to terminate a person's life. "Knowingly" also includes the following:
3) View: A perception of an object as a living human being.
4) Effort: Whatever may be done in order to terminate an individual's life.
5) Outcome: Life is terminated as a direct consequence of the act.

In the above, in absence of factor 2), for example in an accidental shot, no ethical violation punishable as homicide has occured. In absence of factor 3), for example in the accidental killing of an animal or another human instead of the object (not however if the other is viewed upon as the object), a full offense has not been committed. In absence of factor 4) a full offence has also not been committed, for the transition from will to action has not occurred. A death caused without intention, and thereby also without effort, does not lead to an ethical violation.

Those interested in the Vinaya-tradition may want to study Thanissaro Bhikkhu's Introduction to the Patimokkha Rules and Buddhist Monastic Code, freely employed in this article. In the latter, particularly the fourth chapter discussing the parajika-offences makes a thorough study of ethics, coupled with illustrative examples.

Continued in The Banishment of the Watch-Maker....

Metric Soul and Divided Minds

The following text is drawn and expanded from my reply to a friend's query on the Upanishadic descriptions of the soul being the size of a ten-thousandth of the tip of the hair, and at the same time pervade the body; in general, the diverse depictions of the soul to be of a particular measure can come across as confusing. The second half of the post discusses the greater "divided spirit" issue of God and soul.

A Metric Soul

The soul, if we choose to believe in one that is, being an immaterial spirit-substance, cannot have a scale of comparison with matter. It is no more the size of a proton than it is the size of a hamburger or a Polish truck-driver. It is neither proportionate nor disproportionate to the object it appears to animate, for it has no proportion in common with inanimate matter.

Of course one might compare the soul to a lamp and the pervading of the body to its rays in a room, and that's a rather appropriate analogy as long as we forget about our attempts to pin it out on the metric scale. Both the lamp and the rays are finite objects, as are the individual jiva-soul and his field of awareness; hence the metaphor works in this application.

Technically speaking, the soul pervades and animates the body through the conscious mental functions (citta) filtered through the medium of ahankara conjointly with Antaryamin, the Inner Regulator or the so-called "super-soul". The antaryamin is variously identified as ishvara or atman itself in different schools of thought.

Atisayokti - Literary Exaggeration

Everything in the scriptures is a mixture of literal and metaphorical. There is svabhavokti (ukti or statement reflecting object's own nature) and there are the atisayokti (statement of exaggeration). All the four standard atisayoktis in the alankara-shastra (e.g. Alankara-kaustubha: 8.23), or the classical Indian theory of literary composition and criticism, feature departures from the literal meaning.

The third one, where the impossible is being stated, is the one we are primarily after at the moment, for the soul has no material scale; hence the statement of comparison is an impossibility. The two first atisayoktis are comparisons to other objects (and I suppose taking this as a hyperbolic diminutive would be every bit as valid), the other overt and the other covert, and the fourth features effect as simultaneous with or preceding the cause.

If we were to indeed indeed pursue this literally, as fundamentalists frequently do, we would have to first ask whether this proverbial hair is Afro-American, French or Vedic Indian — perhaps the sage in question split his own hair tip into 10,000 pieces and compared it to his soul, discovering it was an exact match under his microscope? Did he split it with a Vedic hair-splitter? Perhaps everyone's soul is 10,000 tip of their own hair? This again is problematic for men with thinning hair or baldness; their souls must be approaching limbo...

God and Souls - Divided Minds

A whole other subject is the supposed division occurring between the jiva-atman and the all-pervasive brahman or ultimate God. From where I look at things, Advaita-vedanta is quite right in insisting that the atman (which is equated in the realization-stage with the brahman although brahman and brahman alone was the atman was all along) cannot be factually divided into individual soul-units, and that the individuality in question is only a temporary illusion rooted in ajnana, or primal ignorance. This is of course solved with the acquisition of jnana, or knowledge proper.

Let us assume the presence of an individual "soul fragment", a separate conscious unit. Fragments by definition cannot have the same quality as an unbreakable whole, for they differ in the quality of being fragmentable. Again, if the great whole can be divided into fragments, a second is thereby posited next to the non-dual, leading to a number of questions on the unique nature of the supposed one and the greatest non-dual spirit proclaimed across the Upanishads.

The Gaudiya Solution

Gaudiya Vaishnavism proposes a symbiotic difference-cum-non-difference solution to the issue. Aristoteles would insist things either are or are not, for they cannot be both. A follower of Jiva Goswami's would then employ the acintya-shakti defence: You need to believe that God has the power to not make sense to make headway with the dilemma.

All too often, the inconceivability card is a handy answer to each and every equation that doesn't exactly add up; issue transcendent is beyond your logic and perceptions. (Which leaves me wondering whether, stretching entirely out of our objective human grasp, this God does not become irrelevant altogether.)

Now, of course there is the standard explanation with the shakti-vada and the nonduality between the energy (shakti) and the energetic (shaktiman), the former of which would include all of us and the inanimate world. Not the least of the problems is the fact that shakti-vada has nothing to do with Vedanta and everything to do with the tantric tradition.

That notwithstanding, the problem of evidently divided consciousness between us and God remains. I for one do not possess all the knowledge of god, indicating we are clearly separate units of consciousness; there is no practicality to the proposal of my being one with a personal, actively omniscient God.

Like Sun and Sunshine?

Omniscience indicates a flawless and all-pervading entity or state of being. This one, all-knowing and all-encompassing God is all that is. Shakti cannot be classified as a second separate unit, even as dependent and subordinate, for this would be introducing dualism, the existence of a second beside God; assuming the non-duality of God and creation, one would expect us souls to share of the same pristine strata of undivided and omniscient existence.

The simile of the sun and the sunshine should be understood for what it is: a simile. A simile does not constitute proof in and of itself, it is a manner of illustrating a more abstract principle. The problems we run into applying this to the case at hand are manifold.

The most obvious of all is that sun and sunshine do not feature a conscious property, whether unified or divided; both are mechanical, passive factors incapable of decision-making, unlike soul and god. Independent decision-making and limited or unlimited fields of awareness, in turn, are the very factors begging the question to begin with.

If a simile is employed in illustrating simultaneously one and different consciousness(es), and especially in the capacity of proof, it should be a comparison of equals.

A Monistic Angle

There is a very vivid and distinct duality here, indicating we need to either admit to the non-reality of duality and divided consciousness, labeling them as a mere illusion (and moreover an illusion occuring in brahman with no existence to its occurence), or do away with an undivided and omniscient, yet eeriely antropomorphic God.

Advaita-siddhanta considers Isvara (personal god) to be the most you can see of the nondual absolute through the veil of maya; as ajnana or individual ignorance is dispelled, the ignorance concerning duality is dispelled, and the one atman alone remains aglow. The doctrine of atman then becomes a de-facto doctrine of anatman, for there was no everlasting individual soul to begin with.

Neither duality nor nonduality are entirely satisfactory for a philosophical answer. I don't have an exact answer for the way all stuff works, though I do have some cool ideas I need to explore a bit further. The citta-matram doctrine of the Yogacara-school of Buddhism, the theory of an unified mind-field and repository consciousness or alaya-vijnana, comes across as rather fascinating to me, and also correlates with some of my experiences.

Summa Summarum

My preferred approach to the question, independent of any scriptures, is to conceive of a single mental field in which both the Ishvara and the jivas are fluctuation in greater or smaller degrees. The only factual omniscient potential is in the universal mind-field, an uninvolved, egoless all-containing entirety, where no catalyst (ahankara) for individuality exists; hence seeing without a seer is actualized. The concept appears to make seamless sense to me, independent of conformance to any ancient or contemporary theories.

In the end, fiddling with lofty philosophical formulations amounts to little more than an entertaining mind-game fulfilling our intellectual urges. Otherwise, assumptions of mastery of a theory may help one to comfort himself and bring order into the surrounding chaos, or to command and conquer existence through comprehension. Nirvana and God remain lurking in the fabric of the harmony, peace, clarity and joy of an independent nature we discover within ourselves through personal experience, introspection and natural immersion, and even if we all have the philosophy a wee bit different, it really doesn't matter a damn thing in the end.

Dichotomy of Light and Darkness

Winter solstice, past by a mere moment now, marks the transition from darkness to light, from death to new life. Yet one more cycle in the grand order of nature has rolled its course and revolves anew, the time of renewal is at hand. While the Indians were also very aware of the peaks and transitions in the universal cycles, especially so in the ancient Vedic times, it was in the North where the extremes stated their presence.

Many of you may have been following Uma's series on the old pagan celebration of Yule, the rebirth of Mother Nature, later remodeled into a grand Christian celebration with an eerie abundance of pagan symbols and practices. While the celebration of these transitions of universal reach indeed has its place in the mesocosmic sphere, a natural turn in the human fabric of old, it is not those I write of today. I'm about to dig deeper into the superficiality of the good-evil duality often imposed on worlds of light and darkness.

The Ancient Aryan Divide

The division into good and evil is regrettably not as clear-cut as God versus Lucifer or Christ versus Antichrist, a lesson well learned from the ancient Indian evolution of religion. Vasistha was among the leading Vedic seers, while for the Zoroastrians he was among the villains. While asuras were the bad guys for the Vedic seers, Ahura-Mazda (or Asura-Maya in Sanskrit, a close relative of the Avestan language of the Parsis) was the lead monotheistic deity of the Zend-Avesta scripture.

These two polar religions came to plant the seeds of two very different religious traditions. Zoroaster was a grand-ancestor for the doctrines of a dual god and anti-god, the expectance of a messiah and a linear approach to the cosmic order. The Abrahamic tradition, or Judaism, Christianity and Islam, evolved in a mixture of Zoroastrian ideals and the ongoing evolutions in Egyptian and Middle-Eastern native polytheistic systems.

A whole different branch and orientation of religion, the greater part of which goes under the loose label of Hinduism in the contemporary world, evolved from the root of the ancestry of Vedic seers. Hinduism as we know it is a loose amalgamation of distinct traditions that evolved under shared cultural premises, a most heterogeneous compilation held together with unitarian texts such as the Bhagavad-gita.

The fact that the two religious divides forming the vast majority of the Earth's population is on a deep level divided almost as deep and fundamentally as the grand cosmic order of the ancient cultures is every bit as exciting as it is scaring. It is then little wonder that the Abrahamic dualist heritage has always sought to reform all known cultures and peoples into the faith of the one true savior, one supreme deity and one word of god, or a succession of subsequent revelations in the case of later traditions.

The Indic tradition, on the other hand, unsubscribed from an ontology that assigned them among the evil, in both its root movements. While the direct descendant of the brahmana-tradition, the heritage of the Vedic seers, maintained a sense of duality evident in the legends of the Puranas, it was against a canvas of higher, nondual ideas evolving from the old Upanishads, tense and often asystematic philosophical discourses that sought the deepest essence of the Vedic sacrifical religion. The Sramana tradition, to which the Buddhists and the Jains are the only surviving heirs, sought to eliminate the realm of duality altogether, and in doing that went so far as to do away with the supreme deity himself.

The roots of the ancient good-evil divide appear to lie in an ancient conflict tearing apart a single cultural heritage, a world where the devas and the asuras dwelled together. Mitra and Varuna, a dual deity of whom the latter is well known as an oceanic deity in the Puranic lore, are in fact among the asuras of the Rig-vedic tradition — asuras receiving oblations just as the devas did. The details of the evolution effectively reduce the concept of an absolute, primordial divide into a partition much more complicated and human, into the internal disagreements of an ancient sacrificial, fire-worshiping culture.

Powers of Light and Darkness

Neither light nor darkness possess inherent ethical value; they are neutral potentials reposed in their own nature. As darkness clouds, creates mystery and brings towards unity, light unveils, explains and exposes a vast arena of plurality prior to growing so bright as to grow all-engulfing, thereby becoming essentially one with darkness again, a field of a single, undivided nature containing all of reality in its ever-vibrant lap. (Udesidning: An ancient Nordic way of integration in darkness.)

Nothing is good or evil of its own nature; all depends on the application, and moreover the applier. Magic is neither good nor evil owing to its technical procedure of conjuration, whether born of light or darkness, white or black. The divider of good and evil is in the human choice between benevolence and malevolence, between sacrificing and feeding the egotic drive consuming its objects to grow stronger.

A transcender of duality wields light and darkness with equal might, regardless of his preference, a preference that in its fundamental essence is only a latent sensation of the past, a game or an amusement of sorts, unbinding to the player who has ascended from a participancy to entertained spectatorship. Having seen the pinnacles of light and darkness under the ancient egotic drive, one evolves into a seer of non-duality, experiencing the inherent voidness of reality as we know it.

With the diffusion of apparent essence and substance into ethereal streams, one transcends stereotypic moral assessments and dwells in a lasting perception of inherent and foundational unity, even while an adept conventionalist as needed in the common world. The art of life has now been mastered.

The Old Pagan Approach

While the philosophical sophistication of Indic traditions is often lacking in ancient native religions, they do an amicable job in the practical transcendence of duality in living in a seamless harmony with nature and gods in their own world of mythos. In fact, many ancient native traditions supersede the seclusion-seeking Indic mystics in their ability to interact with plurality in a state of active integration, perhaps with a flavor of the smooth and flowing natural Tao of the Chinese — a quality I've always been in tremendous awe of!

The action-in-knowledge tradition also found its exponents among the Buddhists with the gradual evolution of Buddhism first into Mahayana, and onwards into an admixture with the tantric tradition especially prominent in Tibet. In the Tibetan model, Hinayana and Mahayana, or the lesser and the greater vehicles, are stepping stones into the highest dimension of vajra-sattva, the lightning-strata, where one becomes a wielder of cosmic powers, conquering and subjugating the energetic release produced in the meeting of the fundamental dualities of nature, the energetic bases of archetypal male and female energy, personified as the man and the woman of the human world.

Transcending and mastering the fundamental fabric of existence, the conscious being evolves into a god-like state of integration with the flow of the cosmos, unveiling the infinite peace and inner ecstasy ever-present in the ultimate non-dual god-experience. Consciousness employs a third strata beyond light and darkness, the infinite halls of existence itself. Night turns into a day and day yet again into a night. Winter falls over the fertile summer fields, spring awakens Mother Nature to life anew. Light and darkness rise and fall time and again of their own accord; the wheel of existence revolves forevermore.