Archives at Zinester: Weekly Quotes by Sri Raghavan Iyer. Weekly Quotes by Sri Raghavan Iyer. Inspirational

__It is fruitful to consider the Ever-existent Absolute and everything that is intrinsically relative in the light of the distinction between unity and infinity, eternity and periodicity, the relationless and that which is inextricably bound by relations. First of all, absolute unity is beyond infinity as spatial or temporal extension, even if boundless and endless, for it transcends polarization into infinite and finite, unbounded and bounded, which are correlative terms. It is important to grasp this truth fully and clearly, and to assimilate it completely, so that anyone can readily acknowledge the Rootless Root which is beyond perception and conception, images and ideas, beyond the fleeting and fickle awareness of objects and subjects, and even beyond the Creative Logos, the One Source and Ground of all manifestation. Each and every human being can say truly within the silence of the inmost heart:

I am I. I am the perceiver, the spectator, the eternal witness, intact and unmodified, attributeless, sui generis. I am Brahman, Brahman am I. I and the Absolute are one, always and forever, in all spaces and conditions and contexts. I am No-Thing, absolute voidness, shunyata, nirguna brahman, in a constant state of nir-vikalpa samadhi, changeless amidst all change, beginningless and endless even amidst births and deaths, in a state of parinishpanna, supreme self-awareness as the One Self-Existent.
Oral Instruction, Maitreya Seminar, September 25, 1987

__Secondly, Universal Kosmic Mind ever abides, both during pralaya and manvantara. It is immutable, unmodifiable - the plenum of infinite potentials. This unconditioned consciousness becomes relative consciousness or mahat periodically at every manvantaric dawn. The Mahatma, who is not only one with mahat - the mind of the cosmos - but also attuned beyond mahat and primordial ahankara to the Universal Mind, is in a state of serene turiya, supreme, total, spiritual wakefulness. He is undistracted during manvantaras, undisturbed during pralayas, ever retentive - smartava - of the pristine vibration of the manvantaric dawn during cosmic and human evolution. This state of serene, absolute awareness is beyond the relativities and polarities of consciousness, which are merely modifications and manifestations of the One chit, the Supreme Ideation behind and beyond all creation, all change and all transformation.

__Thirdly, if one of the ways in which we can distinguish the Absolute from everything relative is that the Absolute always stands out of all relation to anything, and the relative is always in some relationship or the other, then mind at any level of manifestation will be inextricably involved in relations and relativities. Thus, understanding and mastery of the nature of those networks of relations matters a great deal to one's effective capacity for self-transcendence. True knowledge or the highest wisdom ever sees what is essential among hosts of inessential, secondary and tertiary emanations, whilst rejecting nothing and assigning a proper place and new significance to each and every form, colour and number, polarity and relativity. Always aware of the quintessential distinction between internal and external relations, and the continuous modification of each through the other, which determines the regulated flow of kundalini shakti within the etheric astral spine, the Mahatma is fully able to overcome the process of transmigration, as well as to transmute it during voluntary and partial incarnations into this world. This is tattvajnana - the knowledge of tatvas or essences - but especially in relation to the adhitatva, the one Supreme Element, the one Fohatic Force behind all forces, the one Reality behind and beyond all appearances, from the most sublime, the most rarefied, the most ethereal, to the most mundane, the most tangible, and the most immediate.

__Given all this, anyone can see how human consciousness must move to higher levels through a steady increase in its reflective awareness of its own relations and relativities, as well as through the progressive awakening of its own fundamentally unmodified nature. In practice, these two processes are inseparable. The Immortal Spectator goes through a series of progressive awakenings from lesser to greater horizons of awareness, from derivative causes through primary causes to the Ceaseless, Causeless Cause, and from primary relations to the Three-in-One, which radiates from the Ever-concealed One. The Self-moving Soul graduates through identification and attachment to the transient to greater identification with the "One without a second", beyond form, beyond colour and beyond all limitation. The sovereign means of egoic self-mastery is through threefold meditation upon indivisible mulaprakriti - the indestructible Root Substance - upon the unmanifested Logos, the source and synthesis of the primary seven Logoi, and upon the one Fohatic Force of universal ideation behind and beyond cosmic electricity and cosmic eros, cosmic magnetism and cosmic radiation. Such meditation is a constant abidance in the never-manifested but ever-existent Three-in-One, beyond the divine dance of the One Logos or Krishna-Shiva-Christos, and the seven planes or forty-nine states of conscious existence.

__Karma is Deity in action - the eternal, divine pulsation and breathing of the Absolute. It is the Unknowable at its Rootless Root, but it is partly cognizable as a law of eternal causation and ethical retribution, mirroring and maintaining the universal unity and total interdependence of all gods, monads and atoms. On the three formless arupa planes, and on the four planes of conditioned consciousness and modified ever-changing matter, it reflects absolute harmony, justice and compassion. These are ceaselessly mirrored in the workings and manifestations of karmic sub-totals, embodied in the vestures, the ideational causation of all beings, the networks of interrelations between the seven kingdoms and all the beings therein. Karma is the progressive driving force behind cosmic and human evolution and involution, and, as such, it is inexorable, impersonal, universal, irresistible, omnipresent and omnipotent. Self-conscious monads can cooperate with this Law, but they cannot cancel or supersede it. Every instance of working against the Law, consciously or unconsciously, is an inevitable precursor of pain and suffering, disillusionment and disappointment, persisting ignorance and delusion, which must eventually culminate in self-alienation and the doom of total self-destruction. For finite minds, the operation of karma must be understood as relative to past and to future, to context and condition, to planes of consciousness and states of matter. This intrinsic relativity is due to the subject-object relationship, which must vary with all planes and sub-planes, with all states and sub-states, with all globes and vestures, with all degrees of apprehension, and all levels of awareness, ranging from atoms to worlds, from infusoria and living organisms to the myriad stars and galaxies. Thus, the vast order of relations is inclusive of all possible worlds, all orders of being, and also the cosmic hierarchies extending downward from Dhyanis to devas and devatas, from the Demiurge and the Divine Host of Builders to all the elementals that belong to the invisible cosmos behind the visible universe.

__Anyone's understanding of the Absolute and the relative, as it applies to the philosophy of perfection, depends upon the grasp of this fundamental theory, difficult and abstract though it may be. Perfection must be relative to the vestures and conditions experienced by monads, as well as the degrees of unconsciousness, partial self-consciousness, and even universal self-consciousness of thinking beings - ideating selves - in a world of differentiating objects and multiple agents and selves. There can be no static final perfection. Humanity can and should understand and enjoy the host of perfections as consummations of the repeated use of skills, of faculties, and of instruments of cognition and action. Such growth and maturation come through self-correction, through learning from the lessons of life, and as the result of experiments with limited truth in changing contexts. Absolute perfection must pertain to universal self-consciousness in the highest possible and conceivable sense. It is meaningful precisely because of the existence and living reality of Those who have attained to that state. But even such Beings, when embodied in available vestures at any given time, and when working with the available materials on any globe or in any period of evolution, must take on the relative imperfections of the race or the age in which they incarnate. At the same time, Their voluntary incarnations vindicate the promise and the possibility open to all egos of perfecting conditions and vestures, whilst honouring, serving and reaching out to the Knowers of the Three-in-One.