THE HUMAN STORY – THE STORY SO FAR
Okay. So we’ve summarized what we might call the universal spiritual philosophy or mystic path. There is One Being, and He comprises everything. He is the essence of our true selves, and the cosmos is a part of Him. Everything is a projection or emanation of Him, and nothing exists apart from Him.
Under the influence of our minds, which give us a false sense of who we are, most of us lead pretty humdrum lives, sprinkled with occasional joys and punctuated by periods of trouble and distress. And, as a final insult, we are then held responsible for our actions, and end up going round and round in a cycle of birth after birth, not necessarily as human beings.
It’s a tough life, but the good news is that the One Being can be contacted within by means of meditation or true spiritual prayer. This makes life much sweeter. In fact, with the right kind of meditation and the right kind of guidance, we human beings can even come to understand what death is all about (while still alive). And with a bit of luck, and a great deal of effort and divine grace, we can even escape rebirth, and return to the One Being. And that’s the divine purpose in the whole affair.
So that’s the basics, and for the remainder of this little book, we will look at how this take on things illuminates first some aspects of our human situation, and then some modern scientific perceptions of what life is all about.
And I suppose it should be made clear at the outset, that just as words and descriptions are quite incapable of conveying the experience of the beauty of a sunset or the taste of a carrot, so too are they utterly inadequate to truly convey the nature of the One Being and the spiritual or mystic Reality. This means that words can be both a hindrance and a help. So it’s best not to get hung up on them – they’re just noises in the air or marks on paper.