“The path of immortality is hard, and only a few
find it. The rest await the Great Day when the wheels of the universe shall be stopped and the immortal sparks shall escape from the sheathes of substance. Woe unto those who wait, for they must return again, unconscious and unknowing, to the seed-ground of stars, and await a new beginning.”
-AEP
“Perils, and misfortunes, and want, and pain, and injury,
are more or less the certain lot of everyone that cometh into the world. It behooveth thee, therefore, O child of calamity! early to fortify thy mind with courage and patience that thou mayest support, with a becoming resolution, thy allotted portion of human evil.”
-AEP
Udja
Your assignment post is essentially correct. This teaching of truth is important to be understood. Firstly, any knowledge that can be perceived by the mind in the realm of time and space is necessarily relative because time and space (the Creation, the universe) is itself relative; relative to what? –relative to the absolute which is beyond time and space. A human being needs mind in order to understand successive higher levels of truth in time and space and when ready, the human ceases to use mind and intellect (Djehuty) to understand things and instead uses intuition (Aset) to go beyond time and space and discover the ultimate, which is also known as the absolute, Neberdjer, neter an ren (divinity with no name or form), etc. Having discovered this level of consciousness then there are no more truths to learn and all that is to be known has been achieved.
So just as a child in elementary school is taught arithmetic and one in high school is taught algebra and one in college is taught calculus and one in graduate school is taught quantum physics, in the same way there are levels of spiritual aspiration but the study is not all acquisition of higher knowledge, that is part of it; the other part is purification to clear the egoistic blockages preventing understanding. One who like worldly life, having more children, more money to travel and experience sense pleasures, more opportunities for sex, more feeling of pride in culture, political power, etc. will not allow their mind to contemplate issues that impinge upon or curtail their belief system and self-serving philosophy that allows them to pursue those egoistic goals.
One who has reached a certain level of maturity to start realizing the folly of the aforesaid, well this person is called a maturing spiritual aspirant and is worthy to be initiated into the wisdom of the temple. So those who may read this brief essay and react in thought and feeling saying “yes right on”! Then they are aspirants worthy of the teaching! Those who say “well I have to think about this more” or “maybe I will adopt it later”, and the like; those who pursue “absolute vodka” instead of absolute and abiding higher consciousness, well those need more time with the partner of the preceptor: the school of hard knocks!
(i.e. hey need more worldly experiences of pursuing desires only to experience frustration and ultimate loss in the end before they can settle and accept the truth of the human predicament and apply their energies to the solution of spiritual enlightenment)
HTP
