This is the figure of the supreme and universal Being, this is he who forever creates, for Brahma the Creator is one of the Godheads seen in his body, he who keeps the world always in existence, for he is the guardian of the eternal laws, but who is always too destroying in order that he may new-create, who is Time, who is Death, who is Rudra the Dancer of the calm and awful dance, who is Kali with her garland of skulls trampling naked in battle and flecked with the blood of the slaughtered Titans, who is the cyclone and the fire and the earthquake and pain and famine and revolution and ruin and the swallowing ocean. And it is this last aspect of him which he puts forward at the moment. It is an aspect from which the mind in men willingly turns away and ostrich-like hides its head so that perchance, not seeing, it may not be seen by the Terrible. The weakness of the human heart wants only fair and comforting truths or in their absence pleasant fables; it will not have the truth in its entirety because there there is much that is not clear and pleasant and comfortable, but hard to understand and harder to bear.
See, what interests me in this is the shift that occurred as a result of the Death of God revelation. The 'storybook' version that the Old Testament presents (Genesis, etc.) simply became unbelievable as everyone knows. And in the late 1800s and the early 1900s -- I might say 'for good or for evil' -- other idea-currents were entertained and cultivated. Obviously, the influence of India and Eastern Thought generally on Europe had great influence. And it seems to be the case that 'we' are all outcomes of processes that extend from huge projects of re-definition or, on the other hand, a falling away from any definition at all. The 'mindlessness' in our present is pretty appalling.
When I read the above I am reminded of Hesse (
Damian) and the notion of
Abraxas. For the simple reason that when men again turned their eyes to the created world they could not any longer
not see that it is a world where great goodness and great terribleness (or evil) is all mixed together. It seems to me that if one takes this seriously one cannot hide 'ostrich-like' from the fact that in so many ways we are in a dangerous, uncharted territory. And one of my chief observations -- certainly relevant to this forum where genuine, productive discussion
should occur but never does or is deeply afflicted (!) -- is that the conditions of the time we are in produce inner disconnection leading, as I say, to i
ntellectual neurosis.
To put away the responsibility for all that seems to us evil or terrible on the shoulders of a semi-omnipotent Devil, or to put it aside as part of Nature, making an unbridgeable opposition between world-nature and God-Nature, as if Nature were independent of God, or to throw the responsibility on man and his sins, as if he had a preponderant voice in the making of this world or could create anything against the will of God, are clumsily comfortable devices in which the religious thought of India has never taken refuge. We have to look courageously in the face of the reality and see that it is God and none else who has made this world in his being and that so he has made it. The torment of the couch of pain and evil on which we are racked is his touch as much as happiness and sweetness and pleasure. The discords of the worlds are God's discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony, the summits and thrilled vastnesses of his transcendent and his cosmic Ananda.
What attracts me here is the admonition that "We have to look courageously in the face of the reality and see that it is God and none else who has made this world in his being and that so he has made it". It changes the nature of a man's focus, it seems to me, to see things in these realistic and sober terms.
The other thing that interests me is: "The weakness of the human heart wants only fair and comforting truths or in their absence pleasant fables".
Finally, this seems the most interesting to me: [spiritual and rational weakness] "will not have the truth in its entirety because there there is much that is not clear and pleasant and comfortable, but hard to understand and harder to bear."
I see a larger admonition to understand 'reality' better, or maybe from a new position or outlook, and perhaps with
a more complete explanatory vocabulary.
due to my stock recommendations!