*The two nature orders*
Now that we have given a brief description of some of the basic ideas, lets go into some of these ideas in more detail. The first idea to discuss is the concept of the two orders of existence -- two distinct systems of laws and conditions which we call 'the two nature orders.' If we can understand how these two systems work, we will be able to understand more clearly why our search for absolute values -- for truth, pure love, absolute wisdom and so on -- has not yet met with success. Our nature order -- the world of 'dialectics' The evidence of our senses tells us that everything which comes into existence in the world we see around us will someday turn into its opposite. This constant interchanging of opposites is the fundamental essence of our world. In our yearning for absolute values -- for lasting peace, love, and truth -- we often tend to overlook that inescapable fact. Nevertheless, logic alone is enough to tell us that everything which comes into existence is going to disappear someday; it is only transitory, never absolute. Think about this for a moment. Nothing we are, nothing we do, nothing we can create is going to last; sooner or later, it will all decay and return to where it came from. We are transitory creatures of an ever changing world. We begin to age and decay even before we leave our mother's womb. Nothing is perfect in our world. Nothing can last in our world. Change and death are the only two laws we can absolutely rely upon. They surround us inexorably, like prison walls. This fact is confirmed by Lao Tzu, Buddha, and all the world's great religious teachers. So hasn't it ever struck you as strange that, in spite of the inescapably of imperfection, change, and decay, we still yearn for a perfect life? Haven't you ever wondered how it is possible, in view of the facts of life, that human beings can even have any notion of absolute values? How did the idea of the absolute, of perfection, even enter our heads? Where did it come from? Certainly not from the world we see around us. Look. Someday, every one of us is going to die, and yet we maintain a kind of conspiracy of silence, a shared fantasy, in which we live our lives as if death did not exist! And if you have ever experienced the loss of someone close to you, you may have observed that there is a part of you that will never accept that this person has gone, no matter what beliefs you may or may not have about an afterlife. Wherever do we get these passionate longings for the everlasting, for the absolute, when all the evidence of our senses tells us that they do not exist? Well, the concept of the 'two nature orders' offers an answer to this question. We often refer to the nature order in which we live as the world of 'dialectics.' We use the word 'dialectics' because our world is characterised by constantly interchanging opposites. This 'dialectical world' includes not only the material, visible world we see around us, but also the realm our subtle bodies inhabit when we are asleep, and even in the after-death state. Apart from, separate from this 'dialectical world,' but occupying the same space, is another, quite different nature order. This second nature order is characterised by perfection, absoluteness, eternity. This is called the second nature order the 'immovable kingdom,' because in it, duality and the interchanging of opposites do not exist. There is only an eternal growth and development, from glory to glory, and from power to power. So you see, the eternal values, the absolute truth, freedom and love we long for really do exist, but not in our world, not in the world we belong to, the dialectical world. Why does the dialectical nature order exist? To understand why this dialectical world exists, it helps to remember that there is a plan underlying creation. 'The Divine Plan.' You could imagine the divine plan flowing like a stream, with a certain direction, momentum, and destination. Every creation is free to move in and out of the stream at will, gathering experiences along the way. However, as long as the creation always returns to the stream and remains, overall, in harmony with it, it will be carried along by the current, and all will be well. But if, in free will, a creation wishes to maintain itself permanently in a state not in harmony with the stream of the divine idea, what happens then? Let us try to see the logical answer to that question. We can imagine what happens if we continue with our analogy of a stream of flowing water. If a creation seeks to exclude itself from the flow of the divine current, because it wants to hold onto some aspect of it, and make it permanent rather than allowing it to flow, it can only do so by becoming crystallized, like a heavy stone in the water. Then, because it is crystallized, heavy, it can no longer experience the helping, carrying effects of the current, but will experience its flow as a series of buffetings, just as any obstruction does when placed in flowing water. This is a much simplified image of how the two nature orders have come into existence: the divine nature order -- where the helping, carrying, continuously developing effects of the divine stream are experienced; and the dialectical nature order -- the world we know -- in which the correcting effects of the divine stream are experienced, so that nothing is allowed to last and everything is constantly brought back to its starting point. Now can you see that becoming subject to the second system of laws -- the correcting system -- effectively isolates the creature from the world in which the first system of laws -- the divine system -- operates? And can you see that such a creature, that has deviated from its underlying plan, will remain isolated from the order of nature to which it originally belonged until such time as it chooses to return to the divine plan? The Universal Philosophy teaches that, in the distant past, a large group belonging to the human life-wave did indeed decide, in free will, to deviate from the plan underlying their existence. In this way, they isolated themselves from the divine nature order and became confined to the dialectical order of existence. The result was that, eventually, all the faculties they had been able to use while still subject to the first, divine system of laws, atrophied, and they fell into a dormant state, in which they could not die, because they were eternal, but in which they were inactive, asleep. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
