CREATIVE EMANATION

    While vast creative powers are recognized by many as potentially present, most do not understand why they are not generally accessible. Suppose one pictures a single, superhuman Creator who Jehovistically – lawlessly and arbitrarily – manufactures a universe. Then one will see the whole of Nature simply as a capricious catalogue of created things which have no innate power of creativity, but are merely inert objects spewed forth from this gigantic being, this sultan in the sky who is conceived as an anthropomorphic God. One would then view every man or woman as a helpless creature for whom the beginning of wisdom is abject fear of that almighty potentate. This is a dismal picture of the world, but it is one that cannot be discarded easily. People may say they do not believe it any more, but it has infiltrated their consciousness. As a result, it is difficult to dislodge, especially when one takes into account previous lives of involvement with gross and degrading conceptions of this kind. Instead of rejoicing in the richness of material nature, one tends to regard it as insentient. Instead of celebrating the creative energy of the Logos, one grovels before a grotesque image and sorry substitute for the Godhead. Instead of seeing oneself as a creative being responsible for the entire stream of emanations flowing from oneself, one attempts to abdicate responsibility, seeking scapegoats because of feeling that one has lost before having started. As an original sinner, a weak worm who somehow needs to be saved, one is afraid of being damned, and pursues a frantic lifestyle unconsciously based upon a paranoid theology where Big Brother is watching and His name is interchangeably 'Devil' or 'Gods – one is never quite sure which. Such human beings become so furtive that they have scarcely any relation to the dignity and stature of the mighty benefactors of mankind.

    A radical revision of facile theocentric thought is necessary. If we can conceive of a realm of unmanifest, primordial matter that is ontologically prior to all energic fields, then we could view heat, light, electricity, magnetism, sound, colour and number as interrelated expressions of a single source. In its deepest and subtlest aspect, this primordial substratum of matter is suffused with a vast potential which partly manifests as what we call the universe. Thus there is much more energy in the cosmos than the whole of humanity can use. Electricity existed long before men invented ways to harness it, and is in fact coeval with manifestation. Long before men constructed thermodynamic theories, heat energy existed, subject to definite laws. It was also always true that everything that came into existence could not be easily converted into another form of energy with perfect efficiency. Every time something is given out, it cannot be taken back in its original form. Generally, before men were able to formulate theoretically their own approximations of the laws of Nature, the processes of Nature worked in accordance with archetypal principles which had a fundamental logic that was fully understood by Adepts. Their wisdom suggests that each and every person can benefit by calmly reflecting upon his own inherent potential power of creativity and also upon the fact that he has unlimited access to the undifferentiated field of primordial matter. One can activate in that homogeneous noetic substratum whatever great idea one chooses as the subject of disciplined meditation and release it as an emanation, by the force of an impersonal and unselfish desire, into a universe of manifestation.

    In regard to all such acts of creative will, unselfish motive is crucial. Without an understanding of metaphysics, the precondition of altruism would appear to be an arbitrary moralistic injunction. This, however, is to be mistaken in one's comprehension of the cosmos. A person who is handling explosive material, regardless of how he acts in other contexts, must be cool and deliberate. If he is nervously thinking of himself while handling it, he is liable to be blown up. Even a selfish manipulator makes allowances for other people when driving on the road. One may say he does it out of necessity. Sometimes he may do it with panache; sometimes he may do it simply to show that he is human. There is no reason why, whatever the smallness in a person, if he has some familiarity with immense forces, he cannot summon a modicum of coolness, calm and self-forgetfulness. A man concentrated on doing a complex repair job has temporarily to forget himself. A person intent on handling potent forces has to have both knowledge and calmness at some level. It is no different in regard to the far more awesome powers of invisible Nature which operate under laws that are extraordinarily difficult to grasp, but which are known and mastered by wise beings who belong to the secret Brotherhood of Bodhisattvas.

HERMES, March 1978
Raghavan Iyer