Floating on Truth while Watching the Lies Roll By

Chapter XX, The Judgement. Or as we say in America, Judgment.

We remember Schuon writing something to the effect that there is birth, death, and judgment. Elsewhere he writes that "Human life is studded with uncertainties," and that "man loses himself in what is uncertain instead of holding onto what is absolutely certain in his destiny: death, Judgment, Eternity."

But there is a fourth certainty, always accessible to man, that partakes of the other three. It is none other than "the present moment, in which man is free to choose either the Real or the illusory..."

Thus, in our fractally organized cosmos, each moment is birth-death-judgment-eternity, rooted in Freedom and Truth (which are two cidens of the same coin-).

Yes, it would take a whole lifetome to do justice to judgment, which I suppose is why we have one. It's difficult enough to know what happens when we live, let alone when we die, and we claim no first hand knowledge of the latter -- although we did the other day catch a glimpse of Barbara Walters on TV. Rumor has it she uses Larry King's mortician.

Still, if we were to say anything more definitive about the post-biological judicial system, we would be pretending, which would make us be no better than our grubby competitors. It would violate the sacred trust with readers if we were to merely spookulate and call it truth.

There are more than a few dilettantric yokers who obtain a nugget of genuine occult (which simply means "hidden") knowledge, and then proceed to fake the rest, sometimes without even being consciously aware of it. The result is that truth is mingled with falsehood in an indiscriminate manner, making it impossible to separate the ice cream from the pøøp.

The One Cosmos flavor may not be as exo-tic, but we use only ingredients that can be independently and esoterically tasted by readers.

To put it another way, we eliminate the oogedy-boogedy factor, but try to compensate by emphasizing the guffah-HA! experience of the Ho-ho-holy jest -- and laughter is the best medicine for a dedalus nightmare, so long as it's not the hollow and bitter kind.

Theology is formally no different than any other field, in which so-called experts routinely exceed the limits of their competence and bloviate on all sorts of subjects, thereby rendering themselves buffoons -- Paul Krugman, Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, movie stars, MSM journalists, etc. Likewise, for every one of these secular unworthies there is a Spongworthless Rowan Williams or Jeremiah Wright.

It's quite easy for intelligence to be hijacked by narcissism in the service of omniscience. I could do that! But being a master of one area confers no guarantee of competence in another. And this is news?

Much of what our unKnown Friend says about the Akashic Record makes sense, but for us personally it is nevertheless (k) and not (n). While there is nothing objectionable about the idea that all of history is somehow "preserved" in a manner we cannot comprehend -- indeed, this was one of Whitehead's conclusions, and it is certainly true of biology -- we are content to leave it an unsaturated mystery.

The bottom line is that since we have a memory, there is no reason why the cosmos shouldn't. In fact, if memory weren't woven into the fabric of reality, there could be only a random chaos. Memory, among other things, always unifies the disparate strands of existence, both in space and time.

Is it true that the Book of Life is the "moral memory of the world?" This also makes sense to us, but we are content to know that the purpose of life is to hold fast to truth, beauty, and virtue, and know that there will be post-mortem consequences for how poorly or how well we have accomplished this. As Schuon writes,

"If someone asks us what are the most important things a man should do, placed as he is in this world of enigmas and fluctuations, we would reply that there are four things to be done or four jewels that should never be lost from sight: first, to accept the Truth; second, to keep it in mind continually; third, to avoid what is contrary to Truth... and fourth, to accomplish whatever is in conformity with Truth."

The unredeemed assoul has an impulse born of narcissism to make life more complicated than it actually is, and then to swim "in the water of worldly agitation."

Conversely, "instead of swimming in the water of illusion, the saint himself becomes spring or stream; illusion swims in the stream of his knowledge, and not the other way round" (Schuon).

So, either you're drowning in lies and grasping at straws of truth; or, floating on truth while watching the lies drift past like bits of straw. If memory surfs.