All perception must be processed by mediums of perception. Mediums of perception are necessarily limited in what they can perceive. That is why all our experience with reality is indirect. Mediums of perceiving reality such as the eyes, ears, nose, feel, taste, are but mechanisms through which we can arrange reality and life into digestible units–safer, more controlled, more tangible. In this sense, mediums of perceiving reality become an advantage to us. It becomes our defense against the immense mystery out there which is REALITY. They keep us intact and secure and safe. At the same time, it becomes a disadvantage because it limits the scope of our perceptions. It binds us to a limited version of reality. In the end, this limited version is what we accept as The Reality when in fact it is only reality as we perceived it in a limited way. Reality is always larger than our best interpretations. That is why life is always larger than we are. And experience teaches some new things about reality which we have not yet considered before. When we consider that which we perceive as THE REALITY, we become attached, baffled, and mesmerized in this limited reality as we become embroiled in ignorance and self-important pride. This is what eastern philosophy consider as Maya or ignorance or illusion.
Our experience with reality as such always passes through the medium of our perceptual faculties. What we perceive is already a distilled version of the great reality out there. Then our minds organize this reality into meaningful and palatable chunks. The major mistake of our time is to consider these chunks as The Reality when they are only chunks of reality created by our limited capacity to perceive reality. Then we become attached to these chunks, become mesmerized by them, and wallow in our ignorance and anthropocentric pride as if we are the only thinking beings in the universe. Since our experience with Reality has to pass through mediums of our perceptual faculties, our experience with Reality is not direct. What we call experience is in fact a recollection of what has been arranged by our perception. A direct experience of Reality can be frightening if we have no sufficient energy to survive the encounter. This is why the mystics say that no one can see the face of God and live.
If our experience with Reality is indirect and second hand and only a recollection of what has been arranged by our senses, what does it make of the world then? Is it merely an illusion that must not be taken seriously? What about history, injustice, human life? Do we just consider them as fragments of one’s imagination? This life, this body, this earth, is important in the sense that this is the fullest manifestation of matter, consciousness, and spirit. Our task and the intent of the universe is to manifest fully in this life the beauty and perfection of all creation. And this is the ultimate goal of the historical process—the perfection of evolution or the evolution of perfection. This is why humanity has been given the power to seek and find no rest; to shape life and to create it, to complete and to fulfill all things… Most of the time we do not act out of harmony—but this is a consequence of the narrowness of our perceptual abilities that is attached to gross matter and raw survival and blind to the eternal urging of the great “beyond”. This is what we call the force, the spirit behind the evolutionary process. And because we have placed in matter and flesh our utmost values and concerns, death becomes an inevitable consequence. For all that lives must die. All matter has to be transformed one way or another.
Although the inevitability of death is undeniable, I don’t think that this was the original design. I believe the intent was simple–to reflect perfection in all things especially in gross matter. The narrowing of our perceptual abilities to the point of disconnection is a result of our focusing on the fragmentary nature of things and limiting our sensitivity to the five senses alone. The gift of the freedom of choice is not tantamount to disconnection. In fact, disconnection is artificial because the lure of our senses is so great that we become blind and deaf to our ancient connection which was never removed in the first place. We have larger perceptual abilities that can receive directly from the Source but we have chosen to rely only on the senses, on materiality, on reason, and so therefore we are the ones who have limited ourselves to a dimension where death becomes inevitable. Just as our disconnection is artificial, so therefore is our death artificial.
If our disconnection from the universe is artificial, so is our death artificial. Fear and self importance preserve the artificiality of our death and isolation. We only imagine that we are separate when in fact we are all one. But if we can acknowledge our ancient connection, we can claim our divinity and death cannot touch us. This is the message of various genesis stories, of the reason for atonement, and the voice of the mystics. But even if we strayed and lost connection, our pursuit of reason and the senses is leading us back to where we started. And this makes us all the more stronger-where once only silent knowledge is sufficient, now reason and language is nearing the articulation of silent knowledge. We have expanded our consciousness back to the divine–and after all the long journey and misadventures, all would redound in the end to the glory of God’s work.
