Theos-Talk Archives (November 1993 Message tl00083)

Bliss is one of the most sought-after experiences in life, an
experience that is both one of the most common, yet one of the most
rare to be found.

With bliss, one is filled with something greater. He is swept out of
the world and forgets himself. He is engulfed in beauty, ecstacy,
something vast and grand.

There is a sense of a remembered reality. Something elsewhere, long
forgotten, dearly wanted, is seen again. One experiences a
combination of an emotional intensity and extreme quiet at the same
moment.

We could be in the arms of a dearly loved family member, long lost,
but now reunited with us. We could be saying a sad farewell to a
beloved friend, at his death bed. As a teenager, we could be having
our first experience of sex, with a strong sense of deja vu, of
knowing that this is something that we've known before, something
beyond the personality of the day. We could be swept into a deep
reverie through a poignant passage of music. We could be diving into
writing or painting, lost in the wonder of the creative process. Or
perhaps we're shaken by a brilliant idea, one that opens up wondrous
vista of though in our minds.

We are seized, taken captive, filled with the sweep of a higher power.
There is a momentary sensation of perfection, completion, where we've
obtained a glimpse of a higher reality.

At a lower level, bliss comes from the achievement of the object of
desire. We are fulfilled for an instance. We have cast out a desire,
and drawn it back in. It has been fulfilled. Something has been
created and achieved its purpose in life. In this momentary sensation
of completion, we have become bigger, better, more complete. A part
of ourselves, which we lost when casting it forth as a desire in the
world, has returned, and become united with us again. Now if we could
only not cast it out again!

To fully understand something, now, requires us to know the opposite
as well. We must understand anger, rage, and evil as the polar
opposite to bliss, which comes from perfection and transcendence.

The opposite to bliss is horror, regret, shame, emptiness, a total
lack of value and meaning. We have gone down, become abandoned by the
higher nature, and corrupted in some new way. This corruption is to
lose an essential quality, to have the effects of the higher nature
diffused, weakened, dispersed, disassociated with our lives.

The evil side to nature would tear apart ourselves, the destructive
forces would rip us apart. We would be left, in our hearts, with but
regret, shame. With the uplifting of bliss, of the holy side of our
spiritual natures, our lower natures are changed, transformed, and
also destroyed. But in this case the destruction leaves the seeds of
growth, green shoots of future grander selves. Evil, though, leaves
us with future shoots of evil, a bud, a sapling of corruption.

At the level of the personality, the evil side to life is experienced
as a burning rage, fierce in its lower aspect, burning hot, fiery,
destructive. It's emphasis is self-destruction, as opposed to
self-sacrifice. We die to achieve our revenge, our vengeance, in
honor of teaching others 'a lesson.'

Slights against us, small harms that others have done us, are
magnified in our hearts to matters deserving of killing ranges. Like
the enraged motorist who slams his car into yours, he is consumed with
the fulfillment of universal evil. The opposite tendency, to contrast
it with this, is where a small act of kindness of another is magnified
in our hearts to a wave of love and kindness and appreciation in our
hearts.

In either case, for good or evil, we are embraced by something higher
than our personal selves. And it comes at many different levels. For
the personality, bliss is pleasure, joy in doing activities. And in a
still higher part of our natures, it is joy in being, in pure
selfhood, in pure relation, unqualified relation, with others.
Likewise, evil, at its highest, is joy in pure selfishness, pure
destructive relation, unqualified by any sense of one's personal self,
in pure relation to the others.

Bliss is, in one aspect, a cyclic experience. At the end of a cycle,
the goal or reward for the experience of life is bliss. Bliss is also
a background consciousness, something that stands behind and colors
our every moment of manifest life. And a third aspect to bliss is
that it represents the joy of reaching something higher, to breaking
through to a higher stage of life, to achieving manifestation on a
higher plane of nature than before. There is a sense of beauty and
rightness to it.

As a periodic experience, bliss comes to us, we are filled with it,
and experience it in a passionnel sense. It can be very emotional,
but the fiery energy exhausts itself, and we are left drained, feeling
better, cleansed, uplifted, but at the same time it has departed. It
will return, when our energy has picked up again, but it has for the
moment left us again. We are back to our ordinary lives and it is
gone.

The higher bliss, though, is cool, quiet, a background to the
experience of life. It does not exhaust our vital energies but like
the gentle radiance of the sun, it shines on us through the myriad
experiences of the day.

The same is true, unfortunately, with spiritual evil, as well. The
coolness is an attribute of the spiritual, be it good or evil, and the
higher levels of spiritual evil come with an icy coldness that is
awful to experience.

With spiritual evil, there is an enjoyment of the sense of doing
cruelty, of doing harm, of hurting others, and feeling nothing! The
more violent the pain, the injury inflicted on another, and still
feeling nothing but the icy sweet coldness of not caring, the greater
the experience of spiritual evil. It is really anti-Buddhi, the
shadow side of the buddhic principle.

Instead of acting as co-creator of the world, one is acting as co-
destructor, manifesting isolation and more separateness beyond the
material world, raising those qualities, those elements of evil, into
the higher principles, making them self-conscious at spiritual levels.

Individuals on the path of evil, the Left Hand Path, are really on the
track of separation from our world, and not just separation from the
other people of the world. The ultimate result is a Avichi Nirvana,
an annihilation of unspeakable horror, and a following manvantara of
abject misery as a Mamo Chohan. One has left the school of life and
suffers an existence in nature's reform school.

The path of evil is not a natural thing. It is not a mere symmetry,
an equally-valid opposition direction that we could take. It is not
the second of two valid choices in life. It rather represents a
temporary failure, a malfunction, a lack of success in life.

On the bright side of life, on the side of bliss, we find a perfection
where a much grander scale of being has been obtained. The ray of
consciousness has been withdrawn into the Monad, and one's existence
has been grandly fulfilled! A personal self was fashioned out of the
substances of nature, filled with life, and given consciousness, then
returned home in glory, with the treasure of self-consciousness! It is
a beautiful thing to behold.

This perfection, which is experienced as bliss, is the natural course,
the natural order to things. Nature is moving in this direction. We
are on the Upward Arc, ascending into the spiritual, and it is the
natural course of things to raise ourselves, to ennoble ourselves, to
experience the bliss of the achieving of perfection. Let us follow
it. Let us deeply experience it. And let us lead our fellows about
us to find it as well!

                                    Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com)