And God Said, "Let There be Atheists!"

The entire Universe is condensed in the body, and the entire body in the heart. Thus the heart is the nucleus of the whole Universe. --Sri Ramana Maharshi

As we were saying yesterday, the cosmos is within the soul, not vice versa. This is another way of saying that the soul is the final cause of the cosmos, or that the cosmos is structured vertically from the top down. "In the formula 'I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last,' alpha is the symbol of the divine man, or Divinity, before his fall into matter; and omega is the symbol of the perfected man" who has regained spiritual consciousness. Thus, as Boehme wrote, "The seventh day of creation is the origin and beginning of the first."

When we say that the world is created, we -- at least Jake and I, and probably Will -- mean that it is a vertical emanation of the sovereign Good, which is what it means to to say that the sun and stars are allegheirically moved by love, or that evil is a deprivation of the Good, or that beauty is an echo of the creation, etc. Nothing quintessentially human can be understood "from the bottom up," for there is no unity there, only diversity, and man is fundamentally a little unity-in-diversity capable of mirroring the great diversity-in-Unity. Or, man is woven of diversity and unity at that intersection of the Cross we were discussing yesterday, as he gathers all of existence into the heart -- which is ultimately His heart. This is both a collection and re-collection, or a joyful reunion of Father and Son. Which is also why this Cross is a Throne.

To quote Eckhart, "When I saw into myself I saw God in me and everything God ever made in earth and heaven.... The narrowest of the powers of my soul is more than heaven wide. To say nothing of the intellect wherein there is measureless space..." Again, the scientific atheist believes this no less than the theist, i.e., that his mind is a mirror of reality. If he didn't believe in this mirrorcle, then why would he even bother to listen to his own babbling and take it seriously? Obviously he believes that he may know reality. It is just that, for whatever reason, he severely delimits the nature of reality, including the subject who is central to knowing it. Only man gets to name the animals, even if he is a Darwinian who will never know how he does it. Every plane of manifestation is a plane of Intellect, and knowing total truth requires participation of man's total being, including, body, mind and spirit -- or will, sentiment, and intellect.

The "beyond-comprehension" is the foundation of truth, before the one Truth bifurcates into a knower and known. This is inverted by scientific atheists, who also root truth in ignorance, except that it is a total ignorance from below instead of a blinding light from above. The gap between matter and Truth is infinite if one tries to get there from the bottom up. But if we look at existence from the right side up, then the truth -- and divine life and conscious light -- embedded in matter are not only comprehensible, but necessary and inevitable. Indeed, Truth is true because it is inevitable, or it would not be truth but relativity. Conscious Truth must be, or there could be no manifested cosmos.

This conscious truth is a paradoxical (but not really) combination of total freedom and absolute necessity: "In the Godhead itself, the most perfect freedom and the most absolute necessity are joined together in a Marriage, to which the whole Heavens and Earth, with unutterable joy [ananda-bliss], sing eternal Marriage Songs." (Which is why we say that the matterimanyall gift of existence was totally unnarcissary on God's part.)

Here comes the bride, all dressed in white! She is pure sophia-wisdom, waiting to be impregnated by the word-light of eternal truth. Or, you could say that existence is the marriage-play of Absolute (1) and Infinite (0), or Purusha and Prakriti-maya, or form and substance, or wave and particle, or sun and moon, or cats & chicks, or Adam & Evolution.

Let us further confound the unworthy, and throw them off the trail! Brahma, when purusha comes to shiva with an unmentionable demiurge (the unspoken Word), how Lo can He go? How about all the way inside-out and upside down, a vidy long descent indeed to the farthest reaches of sorrow and ignorance?

So never ask why people are sad and stupid, for such a realm "must needs be" in a cosmos made of intelligence and joy, just as bitter and envious liberals must exist in the most affluent nation in the history of the world. The Divine Ray does not arbitrarily stop, but, like the man said, descends all the way down. As Will has mentioned a number of times, thank God we have the coagulation of matter to keep most of us from plunging all the way to the bottom! Indeed, this is what keeps most, but not all, atheists out of real trouble, i.e., the Eternal Church of Dumb and Blind Matter.

It is true, O ringtailed ones! I don't want to get sidetracked, but one of the reasons borderline or psychotic people burn cigarets into the arms, or slash themselves, or bang their heads, or become Celtic fans, is to try to prevent themselves from slipping down into the Formless Infinite Void, which is Dread Itself, by focussing on the finite pain of the material body, as it is preferable to the Infinite pain of the Void. Problem is -- as I mentioned in the book -- this is an inverse mirror of the Infinite Void above, and it is the Human Duty to conquer this lower void in the name of the upper. This is why, don't you know, Jesus descends into hell after the Crucifixion. In other words, his descent into man did not merely cease at our material situation, but went all the way to the bottom, to the infinite hell of total divine abandonment. Which is why he even saves atheists!

There is obviously a lesson there. As Mouravieff writes, most men cannot generally "turn things around" until they have reached a condition of "spiritual bankruptcy," sort of like the Lakers last Sunday (don't be like them and wait too long, for there are only "seven games" of creation, with sudden death).

Metanoia -- which is to say, re-pentance -- literally means to "turn around," and this is what it refers to. The more of the "minus space" of the psyche you can domesticate and colonize, the more of the upper vertical you can stably inhabit. The deeper the plunge, the higher the ascent. This is expressed in some form or fashion in every venerable tradition, from the Upanishads to Spiderman.

Now, Where Was I? I have No Idea. I'm just here Swimming in the Void, waiting for a Current to Take me Up.

Oh, There's One. Ooh! It Tickles!

Now, the moment of metanoia is an ontological discontinuity, a caesura, a rubicon, a leap of faith. However, it only looks like a discontinuity from the "dark side" of things. Once you make the leap, then you see that the continuity was there all along -- that there are secure "lines of communication" between God and man that were always there operating in silence. It is only for us to grab one and hold on tight. Let Perry explain:

"This moment -- absolutely unique in character -- is when there occurs, through the action of the 'Celestial Ray' operating on a plane of reflection, the vibration which corresponds to the cosmogonic Fiat Lux ["let there be light"], and which illuminates through its irradiation the whole chaos of possibilities. Starting from this moment, order replaces chaos, light replaces darkness, act replaces potentiality, and reality replaces virtuality." You become someOne!

Where have I heard this before? Oh yes, Tomberg: "The fiat lux of the first day of creation and the fiat lux of the awakening of faith in the soul are of the same essence. In both cases it is a question of the creative act of 'Let there be Light!'"

So.... What have we learned today? I'll just leave off with a cryptic but wise crack by Petey, and let you figure it out:

A little metaphysical diddling between a cabbala opposites, and Mamamaya! baby makes Trinity, so all the world's an allusion (that's the key to His fiat, if you know how to derive). Viveka la revelation!