THE NATURE OF REALITY - PART II
 
 An essay by John W. Hawkins
________________________________________________________
 
Recapitulation of Part I:
 
 My approach to the nature of reality is a ternarian 
one as opposed to a monist, dualist or pluralist one. A 
monist tends to focus on one aspect of reality and ignores 
or denigrates other aspects. A materialist, for example, 
believes that all reality is based on what can be 
perceived by the five senses and all else can be subsumed 
under one or more classes of matter. A dualist, on the 
other hand, believes there are two irreducible types of 
reality (usually mind and matter) neither of which can be
derived from or be considered superior to the other. A
pluralist is, quite simply, one who believes in the 
multiple nature of reality. Given a choice between the 
classical problem of the "one and the many" he opts for 
the "many".
 
 A ternarian is one who believes that reality is best 
described in groups of threes rather than by a single, 
dual or multiple approach. The reason for preferring this 
approach over one of the others was due to a very moving, 
subjective experience which occurred to me when I was 
thirty-six years old while reading about the nature of the 
Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Ghost). I called this 
my "Eureka" experience from the Greek word meaning: "I 
have found it!" Archimedes supposedly discovered while 
taking a bath the principle that an object submerged in a 
liquid has its weight reduced by the weight of the volume 
of liquid which the object displaces. Whereupon he leaped 
from his bath and ran naked through the streets shouting 
"Eureka! Eureka!". Fortunately, when I had my "Eureka" 
experience, I was fully clothed. There is truth to be 
found in any approach, but this one, to say the least, 
captured my imagination.
 
 In the world of every day experience this ternarian 
mode of thinking can be expressed as the familiar 
spirit-mind-body triad in which our own unique perception 
of "I-ness" or self acts as a surrogate for "spirit".
In Part I each of these three realms was again subdived 
into threes for purposes of exposition: the realm of body 
into the anabolic, metabolic and catabolic processes of 
living things; the realm of mind into Freud's now familiar
triad of libido, ego, and superego; and the realm of the 
spirit into Jungian terminology of the Persona (or outer
self), the Ego (or self-conscious self), and the Self with
a capital "S" (or inner self), which is similar in concept 
to that of the Atman in Hindu teachings and to the "Christ 
within us" in Christian teachings.
 
 Jung's psychology and concepts are probably closer to 
my own than any others I have discovered. However, the
Chinese system of "I Ching" devised by Emperor Fu Shi of
China's legendary period (circa 2900 BC) is also similar
although largely incomprehensible to the Western mind.
(Incidentally, Carl Jung was also fascinated by this 
ancient Chinese system. He even wrote an introduction 
for Richard Wilhelm's translation.)
 
 
 Another schema which is closely akin to my own 
conception of the nature of reality is the Hindu cosmology 
with its trinity of persons: Siva, the destroyer; Vishnu, 
the preserver; and Brahma, the creator. All three persons 
of the Hindu trinity, like the more familiar (to us) 
persons of the Christian trinity, are all aspects of one 
Godhead, called by the Hindus: Brahman (neuter gender).
Siva is a surrogate for Brahman when speaking of Brahman's 
threefold aspects just as God, the Father,stands for the 
one God from whom both the Son and Holy Spirit are 
begotten in the Christian trinity (Unitarians excepted, of 
course). Similarly, Vishnu is the Son of the one God while
Brahma comes into being through the agency of Vishnu just
as the early Christian fathers taught that the Holy Spirit 
proceeds from the Father and the Son. (The Eastern 
Orthodox church rejects this teaching, however, preferring 
to say that the Holy Spirit comes from the Father through 
the Son.) In Taoism we find another parallel to these 
ideas. From the Tao Te Ching written by Lao Tse:
 
 Out of the Tao, One is born;
 Out of One, Two;
 Out of Two, Three;
  Out of Three, the myriad things. (Chptr. XLII)
 
 - - End of recapitulation of Part I - -
 
 In the "I Ching" (The Chinese Book of Changes), in 
Taoism, in Hinduism, in Plato, in Judaism, and in 
Christianity there exist two distinct realms: heaven and 
earth, the inner and the outer worlds, the subjective and 
the objective, the world of Ideas and the world of the 
senses. To Western minds the emphasis is on the outer 
world while to Oriental ones the emphasis is on the inner 
world with the outer considered only as Maya (i.e. 
illusion).
 
 St. Paul tells us that all that is visible arises 
from the invisible. Jesus reminds us that His kingdom is 
not of this world and that the kingdom of Heaven is within 
us. Socrates tells us (in "The Republic" Book VII) about
men being confined to live in a cave with their heads 
constrained from looking toward the opening. The 
characters that they imagine to be real are but shadows 
thrown on the wall of the cave by figures moving on a 
parapet behind them. Thus their world is only shadows of 
the real world that lies behind them.
 
 Carl Jung, based on his many years as a practicing 
psychiatrist and psychologist who dealt with the dreams 
and contents of the unconscious minds of his patients, 
concluded that there exists a collective unconsious in the
psyche which we all inherit just as much as we inherit our 
physical bodies from the genetic material of countless
ancestors. In other words there exists a collective 
psyche of the species within each of us no less than the 
inherited genetic material that is in each and every cell 
of our bodies.
 
 Modern day physicists tell us they have discovered two 
fundamental types of particles underlying the universe: 
matter and anti-matter. For every particle of matter 
there exists its counterpart particle of anti-matter. 
They even conjecture that a whole universe of anti-matter 
may exist. (Only scientists could come up with a name like 
"anti- matter" for what others have called "spirit" for 
thousands of years.)
 
 Man, as a conscious being, with his relatively 
recently acquired sense of "I-ness", his consciousness of 
self, finds himself poised midway between these two 
realms. The trinity for man then becomes: spirit-man-world 
or subjective world- consciousness- objective world. 
Shortly after I received the 54 volume set of the "Great
Books" years ago I was struck by the words on the outer 
cover of the two volumes called the "Syntopicon" which 
indexes the materials covered in the 54 Great Books by the 
102 great ideas contained in them. Volume I contains a 
summary of what the authors of these books had to say on 
ideas beginning with "Angel" and ending with "Love" while 
Volume  II summarizes their ideas starting with "Man" and 
ending with "World".
 
 Angel-Love-Man-World. That just about says it all: A 
to W. Of course, there are four elements in this 
continuum instead of three, but remember that man has a 
foot in both the realm of Spirit (represented by the word, 
"Angel") and the realm of matter (represented by the word, 
"World") His connection with the spiritual realm then is
represented by the word, "Love". To elaborate on the 
relationship between Man and Love would require an essay 
all by itself. However, two familiar quotes from the New 
Testament will suffice at this point to make the 
connection clear to you: "God is love." and "For God so 
loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son to the 
end that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, 
but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)
 
 Man, therefore, has two natures: one carnal (i.e. 
belonging to the earth) and the other spiritual. One is 
mortal (i.e. it perishes at death), the other is immortal, 
like God Himself. "For since by man came death, by man 
came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam 
all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." (I 
Corinthians 15:21-22). "For this corruptible must put on 
incoruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." (I 
Corinthians 15:53).
 
 Many men (and women) remain unaware of this dual 
nature for their entire sojourn on this "mortal coil" (as 
Shakespeare so eloquently describes this material world ). 
Such men are asleep. They know not (the reality of the 
spiritual world) and know not that they know not. Others 
have awakened to the reality of the spiritual side of 
their nature (or at least are willing to consider the 
possibility of its existence) but they are double-minded. 
They are like St. Paul's description of the effect of the 
law of Moses on him and all those who are under the law. 
He found the Spirit telling him to do one thing while his 
body was telling him to do exactly the opposite.
("For that which I do, I allow not; for what I would, that 
do I not; but what I hate, that I do." - Romans 7:15)
Such men know not, but know they know not. They have 
begun the climb out of darkness of Matter into the light 
of Spirit. They are struggling to find the Truth.
 
 Still others ( regardless of their religious 
affliation or church attendance record) know the reality 
of the spiritual realm and view the material world and our 
life in it as but a shadow of the real world that exists 
beyond the grave. They may "see through a glass darkly" 
as St. Paul says, but they know that life continues in a 
fuller and more wonderful way after the experience we call 
death. These people know and know that they know.
 
 One of the most important lessons for us to learn, 
therefore, is to move from the consciousness of darkness 
to that of light, from the state of being spiritually 
asleep to being fully conscious, to progress from a state 
of not knowing to one of knowing and knowing that you 
know. An allegory of this process is found in the history 
of the people of Israel described in the Old Testament.
 
 You remember the story of how Joseph's brothers sold 
him to a caravan of Arabs headed for Egypt for twenty 
pieces of silver because of his strange dreams of becoming 
a person to whom they would all bow down someday. When a 
great famine occurred throughout the whole Middle East, 
Egypt was not affected because they had been storing up 
grain during the preceding seven years of plenty because 
of Joseph's ability to interpret the dreams of the 
Pharaoh. He thus became very influential with the Pharaoh 
and indeed was the cause of his whole family moving from 
the land of Canaan down to Egypt. After the Pharaoh that 
knew Joseph died the Israelites became slaves of the 
Egyptians. During the more than four hundred years of 
their sojourn in the land of Egypt they grew to be a 
great body of people (probably around three million in 
number).
 
 This period in the history of Israel represents their 
state of ignorance of things spiritual. The word Egypt 
signifies a dark land where they were in spiritual 
darkness as well as in the darkness of physical bondage.
When Moses, who was to lead the children of Israel out of 
bondage, heard God speaking to him from the burning bush, 
he was not in Egypt, but across the Red Sea at Mt. Horeb 
in the Sinai Peninsula. When Pharaoh refused to let his 
people go, Moses caused plagues of frogs, lice, flies, 
boils, hailstones and darkness to descend on Egypt and 
when all of these measures failed, Moses was led by God to 
prophesy that all of the first born in Egypt would be 
killed if Pharaoh did not let the people of Israel go.
 
 Moses instructed the people of Israel to prepare to 
leave and to mark their doorways with the blood of a 
sacrificial lamb (the symbol of Aries) so that God would 
pass over their dwellings when He smote the firstborn 
throughout the land of Egypt. True to His word, all the 
firstborn in Egypt, including all the firstborn of their 
animals, were slain, from the House of Pharaoh to the 
lowest servant in the land, and the firstborn of Israel 
were passed over. (This is why the Jews to this day 
celebrate the feast of the Passover.)
 
 Pharaoh finally relented and Moses set out with 
600,000 men besides women and children for the land on the 
East side of the "Reed" Sea. The story told in the Bible, 
of course, is about Moses parting the waters of the "Red" 
Sea with his staff for the people of Israel to cross in 
safety. Once they were safely across with the armies of 
Pharaoh in hot pursuit (he changed his mind about letting
all that free labor go), Moses lowered his rod and the 
army of Pharaoh was drowned by the inrushing waters.
(The actual event may not have been quite so dramatic, 
however, since the Hebrew words usually tranlated "Red 
Sea" are "Yam Suph" where "Yam" means "Sea" and "Suph"
means "Reed" or "Papyrus". Hence a correct translation 
would have produced the "Reed" Sea or the "Sea of Papyrus"
probably in the marshy area on the East side of the Nile 
River.)
 
 In any case it was the central experience in the 
history of the Jewish people. The God of Abraham, Isaac 
and Jacob had intervened directly in making possible the 
release of His chosen people from the bondage of Pharaoh.
He continued his visible presence with them in the form of 
a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night.
When they were short on food he provided manna (bread) 
from Heaven (which they gathered daily), and when they 
were thirsty from lack of water, he provided water out of 
solid rock.
 
 The story of Moses going up on Mt. Sinai where "I AM
THAT I AM" , the Lord God of Israel, gave him the ten 
commandments inscribed on the stone tablets is a familiar 
one. [The word translated "The Lord" in Hebrew is "YHWH", 
the third person singular of the verb meaning " to be" or 
"to happen". Thus, a good translation of "YHWH" is: "He 
will be" or "He causes to be". Since the ancient Hebrew
written language contains no vowels, the reader is 
supposed to fill them in for himself when speaking the
words. Because words to primative people have always had 
something magical about them, the spoken name of God was
only known to a few people. However, an "a" and an "e"
are often assumed to be the missing vowel sounds thereby
converting YHWH to "Yahweh".
 
 The Hebrew consonants for "The Lord" are sometimes 
also rendered in English by JHVH. When the early 
translators went from Hebrew to Greek they used the first 
three vowel points in the Greek word for "Lord" , which is 
"Adonai", to fill in between the Hebrew consonants giving 
them the transliteration: "Jehovah". In any event The 
Lord, Yahweh, Jehovah, or God is the "Ground of all 
being", He who always has been , is, and will be. [I 
dwell on the identity of the name of God with the verb "to 
be" (in Latin, "esse" from which we derive words like 
"essence" and "essential") because it is the missing link 
in the Einsteinian space-time continuum. As we shall 
discuss later, this should in reality be thought of as the 
space-time-being continuum because there is no "space" or 
"time" without "being" underlying it.]
 
 In spite of the many signs and wonders performed by 
Yahweh while the children of Israel were in Egypt, during 
the exodus from Egypt, and during the forty years in the 
wilderness there were many murmurings against Moses and 
even those who desired to return to the flesh pots of 
Egypt rather than face privations and uncertainty in the 
desert. When Moses first brought the two tablets down 
from the mountain with the law inscribed by Yahweh, he 
found the people had prevailed upon the chief priest, 
Aaron, his own brother, to fashion a golden calf (the sign
of Taurus from the previous age) and to place it on an 
altar so they could worship it. Moses wasted no time in 
creating a showdown. Those that supported him and Yahweh 
were told to put to death all those responsible for this 
reversion to idol worship and three thousand men were 
killed that very day.
 
 Moses in anger broke the original tablets and had to 
go back up Mt. Sinai in order to obtain Yahweh's 
forgiveness for his people and to obtain a new set of 
tablets. Not only were 3,000 killed by their own people
on this occasion but if we can believe the literal reading 
of the wilderness experience, the whole generation of men 
that left Egypt (about 600,000 in number) perished in the
wilderness except for Caleb and Joshua (Book of Numbers,
Chapter 14). Even Moses himself was not allowed to cross 
the river Jordan, which separated the wilderness from the 
"Promised Land" of Canaan.
 
 Metaphysically, the forty years in the wilderness 
represent the emergence of self-consciousness in the human 
race. As documented by Dr. Bucke in "Cosmic 
Consciousness", by Carl Jung and others, this occured 
relatively recently in man's evolution. It corresponds to 
the phase of those who know not, but know that they know 
not or to the state of mind St. Paul expresses when he 
says: " For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil 
which I would not, that I do." (Romans 7:19) He finds two
separate natures at work within his being: one carnal and 
the other spiritual. The purpose then of the giving of 
the law, as St. Paul tells us, is to convict us of sin, to 
convince us that " all have sinned and fallen short of the 
glory of God", and to confess: " O wretched man that I am!
who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Romans
7:24).
 
 Just as none of these double-minded Israelites was 
allowed to cross into the promised land, so no one who has 
not given up his old life and crucified the man of flesh 
is allowed to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (i. e.
the Promised Land)."He that findeth his life shall lose 
it; and he that loseth his life for my sake, shall find 
it." (Matthew 10:39); "Except a man be born again .." ;
"You cannot put new wine into old wineskins ..." etc. etc.
The self-conscious man is a man no longer under the sway 
of instinct and unconscious tendencies. He now has a 
measure of free-will. He can choose to follow the 
spiritual path or follow the dictates of the flesh.
He has eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and now
knows the difference between good and evil. "I have set
before you life and death, blessing and cursing. 
Therefore choose life that both thou and thy seed may 
live." (Deut.30:19).
 
 According to some philosophers you can even choose
the direction of your future lives:
 
 "Thou constrained by by no limits, in accordance with
 thine own free will in whose hand we have placed
 thee, shall ordain for thyself the limits of thy
  nature. We have made thee neither of heaven nor of
 earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with
 freedom of choice and with honor, as though the maker
 and molder of thyself, thou mayest fashion thyself
 in whatever shape thou shalt prefer. Thou shalt
 have the power to degenerate into the lower forms of
 life which are brutish. Thou shalt have the power
 out of thy soul's judgment to be reborn into the
 higher forms which are divine."
 
 Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
 
 Those who would cross the river Jordan and enter into
the Promised Land, to join those who know and know that 
they know, must undergo the experience of death and 
rebirth and receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
 
 "I [John the Baptist] baptize you with water for 
repentance but . . . . he [Jesus Christ] will baptize you 
with the Holy Spirit and with fire." (Matthew 3:11). "I 
came to cast fire upon the earth" (Luke 12:49). "Truly, 
truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the 
Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. That which is 
born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the 
Spirit is spirit." (John 3:5-6). To reach this land, this 
state of being, is to obtain the "pearl of great price" of 
the New Testament, the "philosopher's stone" of the 
alchemists, Nirvana of the Hindus, the "summum bonum" of
the philosophers, and the salvation of the Jews and 
Christians.
 
 The journey that is open to every man and woman there-
fore, is from darkness into light, from being enmeshed in 
the world of the senses to dwelling in a world of the
Spirit, from being a slave to being truly free, from
living in a state of sin to living in a state of grace,
from living in a state of illusions to one where there
are no shadows, from the realm of mortality and death to
one of life eternal where there are no yesterdays or
tomorrows but only the eternal "now".
 
 Although achieving this state of being is everyone's 
birthright, we are given the power to choose our own
destiny. Even if we make the choice of life over death, 
blessing instead of cursing, we must still undergo a long 
journey, a pilgimage, before crossing over to the Promised 
Land (Yes, "Grace is a gift of God, lest any man should 
boast", but there is also the judgment where we are held 
accountable for all of our deeds while here on earth and 
even for every word that we speak.) "Many are called,
but few are chosen". "For the gate is wide and the way is 
easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it 
are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that 
leads to life, and those who find it are few." (Matthew
7:13-14). "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one
comes to the Father, except by me." (John 14:6).
 
 St. Paul tells us to "Work out your own salvation with 
fear and trembling." (Philippians 2:12), but we are 
enjoined by Jesus not only to seek salvation and the 
Kingdom, but to "Be perfect even as your Father in Heaven 
is perfect." (Matthew 5:48). To become perfect is not 
simply a matter of choosing life over death. Rather it is 
a continual day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment 
choice to follow the upward and spiritual path rather than 
the one that leads to sin and death.
 
 In a sense we each must find our own path . Even
though Jesus insists that "No one comes to the Father 
except by me", he also tells us that "In my Father's
house are many mansions . ." (John 14:2). and to "Take
up your cross and follow me." (Matthew 16:24) . . not
someone else's cross, but your cross. Your cross repre-
sents all of the unregenerate elements that are still 
clinging to you that must be overcome before the prize
of entering into "His rest" can be obtained, or to use a
Bhuddist and Hindu concept, until we can escape from the
"wheel of birth and rebirth" (i.e. reincarnation).
 
 All of these unregenerate elements must be brought to 
the surface (i.e. consciousness) before they can be 
purged. "Cleanse first the inside of the cup, that the 
outside of them may also be cleansed." (Matthew 23:26) Or 
as the alchemists taught concerning the location of the 
philosopher's stone: "In stecore invenitur." (It is found 
in filth.) That which you have repressed, that which lies 
dormant in the unconsious mind is to be emptied out, dirty 
or filthy as it may be, in order to facilitate and make 
possible the cleansing process.
 
 For those of us who can't afford the psychotherapist's 
couch or who do not make confession a part of our regular 
religious practice there are fortunately the time-honored 
methods of prayer and meditation. After all, as Jesus 
tells us: the kingdom of Heaven is within you." and Robert 
Browning in his Paracelsus says: "Truth is within 
ourselves . .". Solomon, the wisest of men, admonishes: 
"With all thy getting, get understanding."; and Socrates 
tell us simply: "Know thyself".
 
 This advice is particularly important for twentieth 
century western man with his over-reliance on the world of 
things and the efficacy of the scientific method. In the 
process of overthrowing the superstition and prejudices of 
scholasticism and the revealed truth of the early church 
fathers modern science tends to denigrate, or even deny, 
the reality of the soul and the spiritual side of man.
 
 Although "few are chosen", we are also told to ask 
that we may receive, seek that we may find, and knock that 
the door may be opened. Also we are told that the Father
desires that not one should perish. The opportunity is 
open to all. The choice, however, is ours to make.
 
 Even though the road be a long and difficult one, it
can be full of joy. We can raise our consciousness to
the spiritual level in spite of the pain and suffering
attendant upon "taking up your cross". As King David
sings in the 110th Psalm:
 
 "The Lord says to my lord: [the Christ within you]
 'Sit at my right hand till
 I make your enemies your footstool.'" (v.1)
 ----
 "You are a priest forever
 After the order of Melchizadek." (v.4)
 
 Who this Melchizadek is, is told to us by the author 
of the letter to the Hebrews:
 
 "For this Melchizadek, king of Salem, priest of the 
 most high God, met Abraham returning from the
 slaughter of the kings and blessed him; and to him
 Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything. He
 is first, by translation of his name, king of
 righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem,
 that is, king of peace. He is without father or
 mother or genealogy, and has neither beginning of days
 nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he
 continues a priest forever." (Hebrews 7:1-3)
 
 The identification with "the Christ within you" will 
enable you to to endure the spiritual journey with 
patience and fortitude. As someone has wisely put it: 
"God is forever begetting the only begotten."
 
 To recapitulate (hopefully, not "ad nauseum"): Man was 
created a spiritual being in the image of God ("imago 
Dei"). In a long process of involution spiritual man 
involves himself in ever grosser layers of matter until at 
last he forgets his original god-like state. The familiar 
story of Adam and Eve being driven from the Garden of Eden 
after eating the apple from the tree of knowledge is 
symbolic of this process. After eons in a state of 
darkness and ignorance man begins the equally long process 
of evolution from the world of densest matter back again 
to the realm of spirit.
 
 The ancient religions of the East (primarily Hinduism 
and Buddhism) teach that this path involves many births 
and deaths (i.e. reincarnations in a physical body) in
order for the human soul to experience life in all its 
aspects: rich and poor, male and female, saint and sinner, 
etc. The Christian religion, however, (with minor 
exceptions) teaches that man has only one earthly 
experience and he (or she) therefore must learn all of 
life's lessons in a short span of time. (The teaching of
reincarnation was officially made a heresy by the Church 
in the middle of the sixth century A.D. Of course, the 
Church also condemned Galileo for teaching that the earth 
revolves around the sun.) In either case, however, a 
growth of consciousness and knowledge of spiritual 
realities is required in order to prepare oneself for the
Judeo-Christian's entry into the Father's house or for the
Eastern state of "samadhi" whereby one enters into union
with Brahman.
 
 My own belief, although raised within the traditional 
Christian point of view, is that all religions of whatever 
time or place attempt to teach and describe the same 
reality. ("In my Father's house are many mansions. If it
were not so, I would have told you." - John 14:2) Not
only religion but art, poetry, philosophy, and even
science attempt to describe the same reality, each in
their own medium of expression. ("All are parts of one
stupendous whole, whose body Nature is and God the soul.")
Therefore, whatever one's religion might be, regardless of
time or place, background or level of understanding,
avenues exist by which the evolutionary path toward
realizing the divine within can be discerned and followed.
("To thine own self be true, and it follows as must night
the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." -
Shakespeare.)
 
 Contrast the belief held by many Christians that those
who are not Christians (by which is usually meant those
not belonging to their particular sect) cannot be
"saved" with the words of Jesus himself when asked about 
the way to salvation by one of his own people, a Jew. He 
replied: "What do your scriptures tell you?" Whereupon 
the Orthodox Jew said: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, with all thy strength , with all thy 
mind and thy neighbor as thyself." Jesus then tells him: 
"This do and thou shalt live." (i.e. be saved). (Luke 
10:25-28). Loving God, in other words, with your whole 
being and your neighbor as yourself is equivalent to 
saying: "Take up your cross and follow me."; "No man comes 
to the Father except by me."; "Except a man be born again 
he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven."; etc., etc.
 
 Notice that a trinity of persons is involved in the 
above summary of the Law and the Prophets: God, your 
neighbor, and yourself. That is to say, you must seek to 
identify yourself with that which lies within you (i.e. 
Spirit) as well as that which lies outside you (the world 
of other people and all things created). Jesus states 
this desire to obtain unity between the realm of spirit,
himself and others thusly: "That they all may be one; as 
thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may 
be one in us." (John 17:21)
 
 The three stages in the path of evolution from bondage 
to salvation discussed above can be likened to the 
development from infancy into adolescence and finally into 
the fully mature adult. The infant starts life with no 
sense of itself as a separate ego but rather as one 
completely dependent on its mother and others to provide 
it food, clothing, shelter and tender, loving care. While 
this state may be more akin to bliss than to the darkness 
of ignorance and slavery of the Israelites under the yoke 
of the Pharaoh, they are both in this stage of development
at the mercy of others for their very life and well-being,
a state characterized by dependence.
 
 As the child grows and develops, he acquires a very 
definite sense of himself as a separate person and as 
being in a world where he must compete with others to
attain what he desires. He also acquires knowledge and
skills that enable him to stand on his own feet and break
away from the bonds of juvenile dependency on parents and
others. The attainment of this stage of life is analogous
to the escape from Pharaoh into the wilderness of Sinai.
It is a world of independence rather than one of
dependence,but it is also characterized by an attitude
of "every man for himself" and by "an eye for an eye, and 
a tooth for a tooth". It is a time of testing and 
proving, for climbing the ladder of success, for acquiring 
money, power and position. This stage lasts for a 
considerable period of time. (For the children of Israel 
it lasted forty years.) Some individuals never go beyond 
this stage just as some never outgrow the stage of 
childlike dependency on others or on society as a whole.
 
 After one has made his mark in life or has outgrown 
the adolescent need to prove himself another stage in his 
growth occasionally emerges, one characterized not by 
dependence or independence but by "interdependence". The 
characteristic of this phase is the realization that all 
men are brothers and the belief that "but for the grace of 
God, there go I". Since you have already made your mark in 
the world by the acquistion of wealth, knowledge, and/or 
spiritual insights, you are always willing to share with 
others that which you have accumulated over the years. 
This can take the form of sharing material wealth with
those less fortunate but it can also take the form of 
giving moral support and words of wisdom to those still 
living in the phases of dependence or independence.
 
 The person entering this phase of life continues to 
receive from and exchange with others as well as to give 
freely of himself and his material wealth. He realizes 
that every individual possesses different talents, 
knowledge, and experiences. Therefore, he can willingly 
receive from those more knowledgeable about a given 
subject than he and can exchange ideas and viewpoints with 
those with whom he is on an equal footing. He realizes 
that for him to make progress in his spiritual journey he 
must needs offer to share himself and his possessions with 
others. Furthermore, he will take only as much from the 
world's stock of things as he needs and not attempt to 
accumulate more of them out of a spirit of greed or a lust 
for power. In short he will act according the Socialist 
ideal: "from each according to his ability and to each 
according to his need". (One need not be a Socialist,
however, in order to accept such an ideal.)
 
 If all society and nations were at this stage of 
maturity, there would not be a need for heavy-handed 
government, nor huge defense budgets, nor huge outlays for 
lawsuits and welfare. (According to Karl Marx the state 
at this point would simply "wither away".) This is the 
evolutionary stage prophesied by Ezekiel for the people of 
Israel:
 
 "For I will take you from among the heathen, and 
gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into 
your own land. . . . A new heart also will I give you, and 
a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away 
the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a 
heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and 
cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my 
judgments, and do them." (Ezekiel 36:24-27)
 
 It is also the state of grace as taught by St Paul and
the other apostles:
 
 "Through him [the Christ] we have obtained access to 
this grace in which we stand" by means of which "God's 
love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy 
Spirit which has been given to us." (Romans 5:2-5 RSV)
 
 Unfortunately the great mass of humanity has not 
attained such a state of mind and being as described by 
Ezekiel and St. Paul. Most utopian schemes, therefore, 
that have been tried in real life situations have failed 
to achieve their intended result. Nevertheless, 
communities such as the Amish and Mennonites come 
reasonably close to the economic, social and moral ideal 
of true interdependence; but they live in a carefully 
structured environment which attempts to continue life as 
it was in a rural setting of the nineteenth century and 
therefore limits interaction with the rest of the world as 
much as possible.
 
 On a larger scale countries such as Sweden have 
adopted such Socialist policies as "free" medical services 
to all their citizens and state ownership of some 
industries but at the cost of extremely heavy levels of 
taxation, which destroys much of the incentive for people 
to increase their productivity and work harder.
Perhaps the best current examples of large-scale 
interdependence, it seems to me, are the European Common 
Market and Japan. Nearly all of the Western European 
nations have now banded together to create a free-trade 
zone among themselves and to set common policies in 
trading with the outside world. We are seeing the model 
of behavior for the future of the world unfold. Nations 
of diverse languages and cultures are subordinating (to 
some degree at least) their sovereignty (i.e. their 
independence) in order to achieve a greater good for all.
Many of these same countries also belong to the NATO 
alliance and therefore are also working together on a 
common system of defense against that "evil empire" (as 
Ronald Reagan calls it), the Soviet Union.
 
 I use Japan as the best example of a country 
exhibiting the ideals of an interdependent society 
(although they have an economy based on capitalism) 
instead of the United States because the United States is 
still caught up, by and large, in the second phase (i.e. 
the phase of independence) of its development and has not 
yet reached as a society the more mature stage of 
interdependence. After all we as a nation are scarcely 
two hundred years old compared with a thousand and more 
for countries like Japan and those in Europe. In Japan, 
which is enjoying the greatest prosperity and the lowest 
unemployment rate in the world today, management, workers 
and the government work together to achieve commonly 
understood goals and objectives. A sense of harmony and 
cooperation predominates - a true feeling of being 
"interrelated". In America, on the other hand, Labor sees 
"Big Business" as an adversary to be confronted by big 
labor unions while government sees its role largely as 
harassing and restraining business, not in cooperating
with it. Another indication of the adversarial nature of 
our society is the proliferation of lawyers and lawsuits. 
(For example, we have forty times more attorneys per 
capita than does China.) Fortunately, there are signs of 
increasing cooperation between management and labor and 
between business and government in America, but we still 
have a long, long way to go. Perhaps the networks now 
being establihed by the "Aquarian Conspiracy", as Marilyn 
Ferguson labels it, will provide the necessary impetus to 
bring more of us into the higher consciousness of 
"interdependence".
 
 (A number of weeks after writing the above section I 
ran across some similar thinking in the November 9, 1987 
issue of Time magazine, p.21: "The Japanese, virtually 
tribal in their consensual citizenship, have a fairly 
smooth decision-making process. The Prime Minister . . . 
reports weekly to the legislature in an environment of 
interaction, conciliation, and accountability. In 
addition, Japanese politicians engage in continual and
intense negotiation with the private sector. In America, 
the President and Congress constantly collide, as do the 
Government and business. America is individualistic and 
pluralistic, alive with thousands of competing 
constituencies and interests, and every one of them, it 
seems, is flanked by a team of lawyers.")
 
 The dilemma the world community of nations (if we may 
call it that) faces today is the clash between the concept 
of nations being little changed since the eighteenth 
century and the status of modern science which has grown 
by quantum leaps in the last hundred years into an age of 
space ships, nuclear weapons, computers, lasers, 
television, and world-wide communication by satellites. 
It is a commonly accepted maxim of psychologists that 
large groups of people behave more after the fashion of 
the lowest common denominator than of the highest. That 
is to say, a country typically behaves at a stage of 
development even lower than do the typical individuals 
comprising it. Therefore, we are in a situation not
unlike rival gangs of teenagers who find themselves in 
possession of nuclear weapons. We will be fortunate 
indeed if we can keep from annihilating each other while 
we as nations grow from the adolescent phase of 
independence into the mature and much safer phase of 
mutual respect, cooperation and interdependence.
 
 Many Christians believe that we today are living in 
the "end times" forecasted by the Old Testament prophets 
and also in the New Testament by Jesus and the Book of 
Revelation. This is known as the end of the "time of the 
gentiles" and the "time of Jacob's trouble"; a time when 
"the heavens will tremble and the earth will be shaken out 
of its place." (Isaiah 13:13). "For then there will be 
great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning 
of the world until now,, no, and never will be. And if 
those days had not been shortened no human being would be 
saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be 
shortened." (Matthew 24:21-22). Following these dark days 
and battle of Armageddon the Messiah (Christ) will return
to earth to rule for a period of one thousand years (the 
millennium) in a golden age of peace and prosperity world 
wide.
 
 Time alone will tell whether these prophesies are 
right or wrong. Suffice it to say that from the time of 
the disciples until the present every generation of 
Christians has believed that the end of the "world" would 
occur in its lifetime. Jesus himself said that many of 
the generation that were alive when he was on earth would 
not taste death before the tribulation period and his 
coming again would occur. In order to judge for yourself 
whether we are approaching the "end times" read 
thoughtfully Matthew, Chapter 24 and Second Timothy, 
Chapter 3 about signs preceding this period (e.g. wars and 
rumors of wars, unruly chilren, perversion and unnatural 
affections abounding, the proliferation of knowledge, etc. 
etc.). Also books like Hal Lindsay's "The Late Great 
Planet Earth" will give you some food for thought.
 
 The "flower children" say this is "the dawning of the 
age of Aquarius". They base this not on biblical 
scriptures but on a well-known fact of astronomy - the 
precession of the earth about its axis every 25,800 years 
or so. You may say, and correctly so, that no one knows 
exactly what was happening on earth 25,000 years ago, but 
the heavens are divided up into twelve zones by 
astrologers called the twelve signs of the zodiac. 
Therefore, as the earth precesses (i.e. wobbles) around 
its axis, the sign with which the earth and the sun are 
aligned at the time of the vernal equinox (the first day 
of Spring) each year precesses also so that every 2150 
years or so (25,800/12) the earth passes from the 
beginning of one sign into the beginning of another.
 
 The signs are named beginning with Aries, the sign of 
the Ram, moving East to West through the heavens and 
ending with Pisces, the Fish, the twelveth and last sign 
before beginning the cycle all over again. The nature of 
the earth's precession, however, is retrograde. This
means that the movement through the zodiac due to the 
earth's precession about its axis moves backward through 
the signs of the zodiac. Thus, 2,000 years ago the sign 
lying behind the sun at the moment of the vernal equinox 
was near the cusp between the signs of Aries and Pisces, 
while now, 2000 years later, at the beginning of Spring 
the alignment is near the cusp between the signs of Pisces 
and Aquarius.
 
 The symbol of Aries is the ram. During the 2,000 
years before Christ was born, the Jewish people came forth 
from Mesopotamia, settled in ancient Palestine, migrated 
to Egypt and after more than 400 years finally returned to 
their "Promised Land". Their symbol, based on their 
miraculous exodus from Egypt, is the lamb, which is a 
young sheep or ram. As discussed earlier, their most 
sacred, holy day is Passover, which commemorates the event 
when God killed the first born throughout the land of 
Egypt but passed over the houses of the Israelites which 
had been marked with the blood of a lamb.
 
 In the Christian era, now nearly 2,000 years old, the 
symbol the early Christians used to identify themselves to 
others was a fish, the sign of Pisces. Even today it is 
widely used, second only to the cross, which is 
Christianity's quintessential symbol. (For the widespread 
use of the fish symbol by Christians read Carl Jung's 
essay entitled "Aion" from his "Collected Works.")
 
 What religion or movement will come to the forefront 
in the next 2,000 years only time will tell. However, if 
the precession of the equinox into the sign of Aquarius 
can be used as a harbinger, its symbol will be the 
water-bearer. (According to J. E. Cirlot: "Aquarius
symbolizes the dissolution and decomposition of the forms
existing within any process, cycle or period; the
loosening of bonds; the imminence of liberation through
the destruction of the world of phenomena." "All Eastern
and Western traditions relate this archetype to the
symbolic flood which stands not only for the end of a
formal universe but also for the completion of any cycle 
by the destruction of the power which held its components 
together."- A Dictionary of Symbols, p.14-15). "Mankind in 
Amnesia" by Immanuel Velikovsky published in 1982 and 
Marilyn Ferguson"s "Aquarian Conspiracy" referred to above 
may give you some insights into the events and philosophy 
of the coming age.
 
 Two more observations should be made about the 
scriptural references to "the end of the world":
 
 1. The Greek word translated by "world" is "aion" 
which would better be translated "eon" or "age". These 
references then become: "the end of the eon" or "the end
of the age", which accords with the idea of the precession 
of the equinox. (The Revised Standard Version translates 
it as "the close of the age".)
 
 2. The Old Testament prophets refer to the "time of 
Jacob's trouble" preceding the battle of Armageddon, which
occurs at the end of the "time of the gentiles" (See 
Eziekiel Chapters 37-39 and Revelation 16:16.) The 
current period could certainly be thought of in these 
terms since none of the prophesies concerning the battle 
of Armageddon could have happened before the 
re-establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Ever 
since the dispersion of the Jews following the destruction 
of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D., the Jewish people 
have had no country of their own. Hence there could have 
been no possibility of a great battle between Israel and 
the countries surrounding her as described by the prophets 
Ezekiel and Daniel unless there was a nation of Israel.
 
 Instead of dwelling on such weighty matters as the
Apocalypse and the end of the current world period let us 
return to the world of the microcosm - the world of the 
individual human being. Thus far we have been developing 
variations on a theme of the evolution of consciousness: 
up from the darkness of bondage and unknowing, through the 
wilderness experience of seeking and striving, to the
shore of the Promised Land where the "pilgrim" may at last 
be free and rest from his labors. We have made another 
analogy of this evolution to the normal growth and 
development of an individual from the childhood state of 
dependency to the adolescent state of independence and 
finally to the mature state of interdependence. In 
developing these analogies references have been made which 
are (or should be) familiar to those raised in the Judaeo
Christian tradition. It should strengthen our thesis, 
therefore, if similar ideas can be found in a completely 
different culture and tradition.
 
 To illustrate the universality of these ideas, which 
Aldous Huxley has labeled "The Perennial Philosophy",
since it occurs in many religions and philosophies, we 
could have chosen the teachings of Lao Tsu, the founder of 
Taoism, or the writings of the Islamic Sufis of Ancient 
Persia, the precepts of Gautama Siddhartha, the Buddha, or 
even the dialogues of Plato. However, let us consider 
instead a tradition older than any of these: namely, the
beliefs and teachings of Hinduism.
 
 The writings of Hinduism go back at least 4,000 years 
and the oral traditions undoubtedly go back several 
thousand years more. Although the religion of Hinduism is 
largely a mystery to the Western mind, in many ways it is 
the simplest of all religions. As the Time-Life Books', 
"The World's Great Religions:, puts it:
 
 "It boasts no central authority, no hierarchy, no 
direct, divine revelation, no rigid, narrow moral code....
It is not a sect but a fellowship of all who accept the 
law of right and earnestly seek for the truth."
 
 It is not quite correct that you can believe whatever 
you wish and still be a Hindu, but its long history has 
produced many branches from the original tree (including 
Buddhism). It acknowledges that people are at different 
levels in their understanding of spiritual things and thus 
tolerates the worship of many gods and even idols if that
is the stage of their awareness. (By having an origin 
5,000-6,000 years ago during the age of Taurus it is not 
surprising they still hold the bull and the cow to be 
sacred.) On the other hand, Hinduism has shown a great 
capacity over the years for absorbing ideas from other 
religions. For example, Hindus accept the fact that Jesus 
was God incarnate, but for them this is just another 
incarnation of the god Vishnu, who periodically takes on 
the body of a man. According to Hinduism there have been 
nine incarnations of Vishnu, but the ones most celebrated 
by them are those of Rama and Krishna.
 
 "If we were to take Hinduism as a whole", says Huston
Smith in "The Religions of Man", " - its vast literature,
its opulent art, its elaborate rituals, its sprawling 
folkways - if we were to take this enormous outlook in its 
entirety and epitomize it in a single, central affirmation
we would find it saying to man: You can have what you 
want." [A later and more familiar religious figure tells 
us: "Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find,
knock and it shall be opened unto you."]
 
 Since men are found at all levels of spiritual
awareness, what they want or desire also varies greatly.
However, Hinduism separates what men want into two
categories or paths: the path of desire and the path of
renunciation. The one is concerned with pursuing worldly
desires and ambitions while the other involves renouncing
the world and personal self in favor of service to others
or to God. In Judaeo-Christian thinking the path of
desire leads to death while the path of renunciation leads
to life. ("I have set before you life and death, blessing
and cursing . . .") In Hinduism, however, there is no
injuction against following the path of desire. In fact, 
Hindus consider it normal that men at an early stage of 
their development will desire to experience pleasure 
through our five senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, 
tasting and touching. (The "lusts of the flesh" our 
culture would call them.) Even though hedonistic 
pleasures, when pursued to excess, often lead to
unpleasant consequences (e.g. drunkenness, gluttony, 
veneral disease, etc.), Hinduism would encourage you to 
pursue pleasure to the fullest if this is what you want to 
do. (This corresponds to those discussed earlier who are 
in a state of darkness and dependency, who "know not" but 
know not that they know not.)
 
 Sooner or later though (in this life or in a 
subsequent one according to Hindu beliefs) there will come 
a time when the focus of desire changes from gratification 
of the senses to gratification of the ego: the pursuit of 
wealth, power, and fame. (This stage corresponds in our 
previous analogies to the adolescent phase of 
independence.) Here again Hinduism has no objection to 
anyone who wishes to pursue these goals for as long as 
they find them satisfying. Sooner or later though, as was 
the case in pursuing sensual pleasures, a man or woman 
reaches the point (in this life or a later one) where the 
desire for worldly success is no longer satisfying. This 
dissatisfaction results when one finally understands that:
 
 1. One's gain in wealth, power, or fame too often 
 comes at the expense of someone else's loss. It is 
 what is known in game theory as a "zero sum" game. 
 If I win, you lose.
 
 2. The more you have of it, the more you want. As the
 Hindus would say: "To try to extinguish the drive
 for riches with money is like trying to quench a
 fire by pouring butterfat over it." (ibid)
 
 3. Wealth, power, and success are never lasting. They
 are like trying to buy happiness. Remember the
 story of King Midas who was able to turn everything
 he touched into gold. At last, by accident, he
 turned the one thing he loved the most, his own
 daughter, into gold. Jesus asks: "What profit is
 it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses 
 his own soul?"; or as the author of Ecclesiastes
 says: "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!"
 
 When the evolutionary point is reached where sensual 
pleasures and worldly success no longer captivate the 
individual, he leaves the Path of Desire and turns to the 
Path of Renunciation. The first stage along this path , 
however, is not a total renunciation of the world in favor 
of the contemplative life of the yogin. Rather it is a 
realization that there is something that lies beyond the 
personal self. At this point the individual begins to 
think more of duty than desire, more of what he ought to 
do rather than what he would like to do or possess. His 
new direction then becomes serving his fellow man and his 
community. He has completed his adolescent phase of 
independence and is ready to enter the more mature and 
larger phase of interdependence.
 
 While this is a step forward in consciousness, it 
still is focused largely on the outer side of reality, the 
world of people and nature rather than on the ultimate 
things of Spirit and immortality.  We could define this
phase in more contemporary terms as "secular humanism"
without in the least meaning to diminish the worthiness of 
its ideals. God, however, does not even have to exist in 
one's mind at this point but only the realization that the 
world was not created just for the benefit of the 
individual alone and that we should at some point start 
giving back to others what others have done for us.
 
 At this point it should be obvious that there is a 
close correspondence of these Hindu ideas about the 
evolution of man and his consciousness with those 
discussed earlier, which were largely based on our Judaeo
Christian traditions. It might give you even a better 
sense of these Hindu notions to quote a few passages from 
one of their sacred books, the Mahabharata. Like the Old 
and New Testaments it is not the work of a single author, 
but a collection of narratives. It consists of about 
100,000 verses and is said to be the longest poem ever 
written. To give you an ideas of its size it contains 
more than three times the number of words in the Bible.
 
 One of the better known portions of the Mahabharata is 
called the "Bhagavad-Gita" or "The Song of God". It is 
believed to have been written sometime between the second 
and sixth century B.C. and was not part of the orginal 
24,000 verses of the Mahabharata. "Nevertheless, it is 
the most popular book in Hindu religious literature;the 
gospel, one may say, of India. It has profoundly 
influenced the spiritual, cultural, intellectual and 
political life of the country throughout the centuries, 
and it continues to do so today." (From the preface to the 
translation of the "Gita" by Swami Prabhabananda and 
Christopher Isherwood.) The Bhagavad-Gita is primarily a 
dialogue between Sri Krishna, an incarnation of the Hindu 
God Vishnu, and the warrior, Arjuna, who is about to 
engage in a great battle against his own kinsman, a civil 
war involving the whole of India. The battle that 
followed lasted eighteen days after which Yudhisthira (on 
whose side Arjuna was fighting) became ruler of all India 
for 36 years.
 
 The selection chosen follows a soliloquy by Krishna on 
the nature of Prakriti and the supreme God, Brahman. In 
Hindu literature the primal pair are often referred to as 
Purusha (Spirit) and Prakriti (Matter). The translation 
of "Purusha" in Sanskrit is "person" or "man", but he is 
also associated with Brahman, the total Godhead. (Spirit 
and matter as the ultimate duality is similar to the 
concept of "yang" and "yin" in Chinese philosophy.)
Brahman cannot be said to exist since Brahman is 
existence. Being within all that exists he is also known 
as the "Atman", who dwells at the center of all that 
exists. ("the circle whose circumference is nowhere and 
whose center is everywhere", as Pascal aptly attempts to 
describe the indescribable).
 
 When Brahman begins a new cosmic cycle (a "kalpa"), he 
is known as Ishwara (God with attributes) and has three 
major modes of being: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva (the 
Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer respectively). The
creative power of Brahman is also called Prakriti by means 
of which the material world is formed. Prakriti has three 
modes of being known as "gunas". The three gunas are 
called in Sanskrit: "sattwa","rajas" and "tamas". 
Although these were translated in Part I by their action 
in Nature as "law","energy", and "matter", consideration 
of their roots in the Sanskrit language would produce 
translation of "sattwa" as "goodness", "rajas" as 
"passion", and "tamas" as "darkness".
 
 "In the physical world sattwa embodies all that is 
pure and fine, rajas embodies the active principle, and 
tamas the principle of solidity and resistance. All 
three are present in everything, but one guna always 
predominates. For example, sattwa predominates in 
sunlight, rajas in an erupting volcano, and tamas in a 
block of granite. The gunas also represent the different 
stages in the evolution in any particular entity [emphasis 
added]. Sattwa is the essence of the form to be realized; 
tamas is the inherent obstacle to its realization; and
rajas is the power by which that obstacle is removed and 
the essential form becomes manifest."
 
 "In the mind of man, sattwa expresses itself 
psychologically as tranquillity, purity and calmness; 
rajas as passion, restlessness, aggressive activity; tamas 
as stupidity, laziness, inertia. Sometimes one guna is 
predominate, sometimes another; and a man's mood and 
character vary accordingly. But man can cultivate any one 
of the gunas, by his actions and thoughts and way of 
living. We are taught that tamas can be overcome by the 
cultivation of rajas, and rajas by the cultivation of 
sattwa. However, the ultimate ideal is to transcend 
sattwa also and reach the Atman, which is above and beyond 
the gunas." (From "The Cosmology of the Gita" as found in 
the appendix of the translation cited above.)
 
 Now finally, with our introduction to Hinduism and the 
definition of some Sanskrit words at an end, we are ready 
to listen to what Lord Krishna has to tell Arjuna about
the three gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas:
 
 "Once more I shall teach you that uttermost wisdom:
 The sages who found it were all made perfect,
 Escaping the bonds of the body.
 
 In that wisdom they lived, made one with my holy
 nature:
 Now they are not reborn when a new age begins,
 Nor have they any part in its dissolution.
 
 Prakriti, this vast womb, I quicken into birth
 with the seed of all life:
 Thence, O son of Bharata, the many creatures spring.
 
 Many are the forms of the living,
 Many are the wombs that bear them;
 Prakriti, the womb of all wombs,
 And I the seed-giving Father.
 
 From Prakriti, the gunas come forth,
 sattwa, rajas, and tamas:
 These are the bonds that bind
 The undying dweller imprisoned in the body.
 
 Sattwa the shining can show the Atman
 by its pure light:
 Yet sattwa will bind you to seek for happiness,
 Longing for knowledge.
 
 Rajas the passionate will make you thirsty
 for pleasure and possession:
 Rajas will bind you to hunger for action.
 
 Tamas the ignorant bewilders all men:
 Tamas will bind you with bonds of delusion,
 sluggishness, stupor.
 
 The power of sattwa enslaves the happy,
 The power of rajas enslaves the doers,
 The power of tamas enslaves the deluded
 and darkens their judgement.
 
 When sattwa prevails over rajas, tamas
 Man feels that sattwa:
 When rajas prevails over sattwa, tamas,
 Man is seized by that rajas:
 When tamas prevails over rajas, sattwa
 Man yields to that tamas.
 
 When understanding shines in through the senses,
 The doors of the body: know sattwa is present.
 In greed, in the heat of action, in eager enterprise,
 In restlessness, in all desire, know rajas the ruler.
 When the mind is dark, bewildered, slothful
 And lost in delusion: know tamas prevailing.
 
 That man who meets death in the hour of sattwa
 Goes to a sinless home among the saints of God.
 He who dies in rajas will be reborn
 Among those whose bondage is action:
 He who dies in tamas will return to the womb of a 
 dullard.
 
 Fruit of the righteous act is sattwa, purest joy:
 As for the deeds of rajas, pain is their fruit:
 Truly, ignorance is all the fruit of tamas.
 
 Of sattwa, knowledge is born;
 Of rajas, greed;
 Tamas brings forth bewilderment, delusion, darkness.
 
 Abiding in sattwa, man goes to higher realms;
 Remaining in rajas, in this world he remains;
 Sunk in tamas, his lowest nature,
 He sinks to the underworld.
 
 Let the wise man know these gunas 
 Alone as the doers of every action;
 Let him learn to know That which is beyond them, also:
 Thus he will reach my oneness.
 
 When the dweller in the body has overcome the gunas
 That cause this body, then he is made free
 From birth and death, from pain and decay:
 He becomes immortal."
 
 While there is not a one-to-one correspondence with
these Hindu notions of the three gunas and the stages in 
the evolution of consciousness described above, the 
similarity is nevertheless substantial. One begins in the 
darkness of ignorance, bondage and dependency (tamas), 
rising eventually to the competitive struggle and activity 
characterized by independence (rajas), and finally to the 
stage of interdependence which transcends the individual 
ego (sattwa). But the greatest adventure for the human 
traveller, as Lord Krishna tells us, comes in getting to 
know "That which is beyond them" (i.e. the Atman at the 
center of all existence which is one with Brahman.) If 
this reminds you of the Christian concepts of "Christ 
within you, the hope of glory" and "I am the Way, the 
Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by 
me" (i.e. the Christ within you), it is because all 
religions at their deepest and truest levels teach the 
same basic truths.
 
 Other passages from the Gita remind one of the words 
of Jesus in his divine incarnation as the Christ. For 
example, Vishnu tells Arjuna:
 
 "For I am Brahman within this body,
 Life immortal that shall not perish:
 I am the Truth and the Joy forever."
 
or in another section:
 
 "In every age I come back to deliver the holy,
 To destroy the sin of the sinner,
 To establish righteousness."
 
and yet again:
 
 "Though a man be soiled with the sins of a lifetime,
 Let him but love me, rightly resolved in utter
 devotion:
 I see no sinner, that man is holy.
 Holiness shall soon refashion his nature to peace
 eternal;
 O son of Kunti, of this be certain:
 The man that loves me, he shall not perish."
 
 The quest for the spiritual self is a highly developed 
science and art in Hinduism. The general method comes 
under the heading of "yoga", which means to join and unite 
(man with God) as well as to place under discipline and 
training. Hinduism recognizes that there are many types 
and temperaments among human beings. Therefore there are 
a number of different types of yoga. Some of the better 
known are:
 
 (1) Hatha yoga with its emphasis on control over the 
 physical body
 
 (2) Jnana yoga for those with a strong intellectual 
 nature and philosophic turn of mind
 
 (3) Bhakti yoga for those with a strong emotional 
 nature with its emphasis on devotion and loving 
 God with all your heart, with all your soul, and 
 with all your mind
 
 (4) Karma yoga, the path to God through work
 
 (5) Raja yoga for those with a scientific temperament 
 with its emphasis on seeking God through 
 psychological experiment
 
 While all forms of yoga have a different starting 
point or approach to join man with his spiritual center, 
the Atman, they all take into account the threefold nature 
of man: his body, his mind, and his spirit (or 
self-concept). To illustrate the involvement of the total 
man which is necessary to achieve this union with the 
Atman ("Christ within you") consider the step by step 
procedure used by raja yoga:
 
 1. The practice of the five abstentions ("yama"):
 from injury, lying, stealing, sensuality and greed.
 
 2. The practice of the five observances ("niyama"):
 cleanliness, contentment, self-control,
 studiousness, and contemplation of the divine.
 
 3. The stilling of the body by use of "asanas"
 (Hindus prescribe over eighty body postures, the
 best known of which is the "lotus" position.)
 
 4. The regulation of breathing ("pranayama")
 
 5. The restraint of the senses ("pratyahara")
 
 6. The firming of the mind ("dharana")
 
 7. The turning inward of the self ("dhyana")
 
 8. The union of the self with the Atman ("samadhi")
 
 
 
 While the Judeo-Christian bible merely tells you
to "Be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10), 
Hinduism prescribes detailed instructions not only for 
stilling the mind, but for stilling the body, the senses, 
the breath and the self as well. Nevertheless, it is not 
an easy task, and very few are the yogis who reach the 
last stage of "samadhi" or union with the Atman. Even 
these few are rarely able to achieve it more than a few 
times in a lifetime of effort. No effort is wasted, 
however, and eventually, in this life or a subsequent one,
the ultimate goal is attainable by diligent practice. As 
Vishnu tells Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita, some "realize 
the Atman through contemplation. Some realize the Atman 
philosophically. Others realize it by following the yoga 
of right action. Others worship God as their teachers 
have taught them. If these faithfully practice what they 
have learned, they will pass beyond death's power."
 
 Two additional concepts need to be developed before 
leaving our short journey into the vast world of Hindu 
thought: (1) the concept of "maya" or illusion; and (2)
the concept of "marga" or path. It is scarcely surprising 
that Hinduism with its emphasis on Spirit as the ultimate 
reality considers everything else to be an illusion. It 
is at root, therefore, a monist viewpoint in spite of its 
pantheon of gods and goddesses, its demons and nature 
spirits. Brahman through its creative power (Prakriti) 
produces all of the visible world which periodically 
appears and disappears (the "day" and the "night" of 
Brahman). Recent discoveries by astrophysicists of vast 
amounts of dark material in the universe have led them to 
postulate that many billions of years from now the 
universe will stop expanding and start collapsing on 
itself as a result of the universal force of gravity thus 
eventually annihilating the visible universe. Thus, the 
concept of a pulsating universe is once more becoming in 
vogue in Western thought although it has been taught in 
the East for thousands of years. With the advent of 
nuclear fission, Western science has also discovered the 
impermanence of matter and its equivalence in terms of the 
intangible realm of energy.
 
 Not only, however, does Hinduism teach that the 
visible world is an illusion but also that the unseen 
realms of our minds and our selves as separate beings are 
an illusion as well. Thus, the entire human being as we 
know him (body, mind, and ego) is an illusion - nothing 
but a reflection of the One body, One mind and One ego 
which created him. Just as the one sun shining on water 
that is being agitated by the wind appears to break into 
thousands of little suns, so does the One Life manifest 
itself in countless numbers of created beings and things. 
(The Atman lies above and beyond the three gunas.)
 
 The last Hindu concept to be explored here is that of 
"marga" or path. We have seen that there are a number of 
different avenues or approaches that lead one to the Hindu 
goal of "samadhi", i.e. union with the God within you. 
However, they can all be subsumed under three major 
headings:
 
 1. "Karma marga" - the path of knowledge (or action)
 
 2. "Jnana marga" - the path of reason (or wisdom)
 
 3. "Bhakti marga" - the path of devotion
 
 In terms of our Western culture we more readily would 
define these "margas" as simply the pursuit of science, 
philosophy, and religion respectively. Furthermore, each 
of these three paths is connected with one of the three 
forms of illusion discussed above: body, mind and ego. 
Thus science is primarily concerned with knowledge which 
can be perceived by the five senses; philosophy is 
primarily concerned with ideas and concepts using the mind 
or the process of reasoning; and religion is concerned not 
only with devotion to God but it also involves losing 
one's own identity and ego in that of the beloved.
 
 Although these three paths or pursuits appear to be 
separate, they all eventually merge into the one and only
true reality. Just as the Holy trinity is three persons 
in one, so do the three "margas" or paths merge into one. 
Reality and Truth, once the blinders have been removed, 
have only one source. ("I am the Way, the Truth, and the 
Life. No one comes to the Father except by me." - Jesus. 
"All are parts of one stupendous whole, whose body Nature 
is and God the soul." - Pope. "Little flower in the 
crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies. If I 
could understand what you are, all in all, I could 
understand what God and man is." - Tennyson).
 
 Dr. Annie Besant in her book, "The Three Paths". 
writes (pages 1-2):
 
 "Three Paths have been traced by the Sages, along any 
one of which a man may tread and, by following, may obtain 
liberation. Three are the paths and yet, in a sense, they 
are one. Differing in their methods, their end is one and 
the same. Differing in their external conditions they all 
lead to the One Self. . . They all seek the same goal. 
These three paths - the three Margas, as they are called 
in Indian philosophy - that of Karma, or Action, Jnana or 
Wisdom and Bhakti or Devotion . . . finally blend into 
one, each of them acquiring the qualities of the others, 
each of them passing, as it were, into the other two, 
blending into one the characteristics of the three. . . 
Let men travel along one or the other, they seek the One 
Self, whether by Action, or by Wisdom or by Devotion, and 
those who seek shall surely and inevitably find Him, for 
the Self of all is One and the goal of all the three Paths 
is the same."
 
 Thus as one progresses along any one of the paths, the 
veils of illusion disappear along with the idea of 
separation. By following the path of knowledge one 
expands his consciousness of the world about him and the 
effect of his actions on others. By following the path of 
reason one discovers what a wonderful instrument is the 
mind with its ability to construct philosophical and 
abstract concepts. By following the path of devotion one 
is able to expand his self-concept to realize that "no man 
is an island" and that there is an organic unity between 
all creation. One progresses from relative ignorance to 
knowledge, from knowledge to wisdom and from wisdom 
eventually to illumination.
 
 One last point before ending this little essay: "Thou 
canst not travel on the Path until thou hast become that 
Path itself." ("The Voice of the Silence"). Or to use the 
more modern metaphor of Marshall McLuan: "The medium is 
the message." The Path is the pilgimage that we all take 
through life. Every step of the way we are presented with 
opportunities to be grasped and obstacles to be overcome.
And gradually as we seize opportunities and overcome 
obstacles, we are actually achieving the goals that we 
seek. As someone (William James ?) once said: "You become 
what you think about all day long."; and another man, who 
has become the Path for us all, said: "As a man thinketh
in his heart, so is he."
 
 You will recall also Dorothy and her three companions
in the "Wizard of Oz", the cowardly lion who wanted
courage, the scarecrow who wanted a brain, and the tin man
who wanted a heart. (Notice the correspondence of
acquiring courage to the path of Karma - action, of
getting a brain to the path of Jnana - reason, and of
obtaining a heart to the path of Bhakti -devotion.) As
they traveled down the yellow brick road (their path)
in their quest for the witch's broomstick, they
encountered all sorts of adventures which required courage
intelligence, and compassion. In the book (but not as
clearly in the movie) the cowardly lion was always the one
who took action when courage was required, the scarecrow
when a problem had to be solved, and the tin man who
always showed compassion. When they finally obtained the
broomstick and went back to the Wizard for their reward,
they found out he was a fake, a humbug; but they had 
already obtained what they were looking for in overcoming 
situations along the path.
 
 Finally, a little verse we learned as children (or 
should have learned) in Sunday School that reminds us also 
of this threefold path of reason, devotion and action:
 
 "Day by day dear Lord these three things I pray: To
 
 See thee more clearly,
 
 Love thee more dearly,
 
 Follow thee more nearly
 
 Day by day."
 
 
  Amen!