Cellular Fission on the Positive Side

Can anyone recall a time in your own life when you sensed a bit of the light / power it describes, and how it affected you?

Reflecting on its meaning in your own life, how do you live "the principles that make life unfold spiritually?"

The Ultimate Buddha Obligation

MANLY P. HALL

    [manly P. hali. founded the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles, California, in 1934 and the Society's quarterly PRSJournal in 1941. The Philosophi­cal Research Library is famed for its collection of rare manuscripts, artifacts, and objets d'art gathered from all parts of the world.
Since youth Mr. Hall has been a student of comparative religions and philoso­phies including The Secret Doctrine of H.P. Blavatsky. For over half a century, in his lectures and books, he has emphasized the oneness of truth, convinced that "world civilization can be perfected only when peoples everywhere meet on a common ground of intelligent cooperation and worthy purpose."
Through the courtesy of the Philosophical Research Society, we take pleasure in sharing with our readers the following excerpt from a lecture by Mr. Hall delivered August 29, 1982, titled "The Buddha and the Bomb." — Ed]

IN THE STORY of Buddha, the most interesting and important event is of course the great enlightenment. The illumination of Gautama under the Bo tree is described in the sacred scriptures of the Buddhists as an almost inconceivable vision. Nearly all great religions report such visions in connection with their spiritual leaders. In the case of Buddha, the earth opened, beings arose from the deep; hordes of devas descended from the ten regions of space; every type of living thing was revealed in an enormous burst of light. A tremendous explo­sion shook the earth to its foundations; fountains in cities a thousand miles away reversed their course, oceans retreated, rivers ceased to flow, and mountains trembled and fell. In the midst of it all the aspirant, the ascetic Gautama, remained quietly at peace.
Does this story suggest what we might call a nuclear fission on the positive side of life? Is there locked in all things a tremendous potential of divinity? Can the release of a cosmic power through a profound mystical experience be compared to a beneficial nuclear reaction? This would mean that the "cell" of consciousness within the individual had split — and out of that had come the illumination of soul, the release of the Overself carried to an extraordinary degree.
Buddha hints he will not return again as a person, but will take up his abode in everything that lives. This may explain also the statement of Paul to the Colossians regarding "the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest, . . . Christ in you, the hope of glory." This Christ, or Buddha, in us may be the cosmic cell of divine consciousness at the root of individual existence and the fission of that cell the most powerful religious experience of which a human being is capable. It is quite possible that evolution is the gradual fission of a consciousness cell within evolving creatures and that each has locked within itself the infinite power of the complete universe. Perhaps we too are linked to the universe by a cell in ourselves that can expand and become more wonderful than anything we can imagine in terms of spiritual integrity. Suddenly the individual's con­sciousness becomes diffused through all living beings. This is the final renunciation, the fulfillment of the ultimate Buddha obligation, namely, that the power of an enlightenment shall pass from the individual to become part of the consciousness of everything that lives.
Mystical experiences are recorded in a great many books and in a great many systems of thought. At a certain point in the life of the disciple there comes the power or ability to transcend the factor of self. Is it, then, the factor of self that stands between us and our own universality? by which we lock ourselves into our personalities? and is there any ultimate liberation from the self-centeredness within us? What is this self? Buddha says that it is an aggregate, the result of the sensory perceptions of the mental coordinator. The self is therefore not a being but a focal point between us and our inner realities. This focal point has become what we like to call the ego, the basis of our egoism and egotism which enable us to sense ourselves as separate beings, divided

one from the other. Each one of us has this selfness that is the aggregate of experience built over many lives into a pattern which we know as our personality and by which we separate ourselves from all others.
Life is universal, form is particular. That we live in a body makes us separate beings. When we transcend the body either through an act of consciousness or through the slow process of evolution, we are moving toward union. All evolution is the binding up of the wounds of separateness. All evolution is our consciousness expanding to encom­pass more and more of the life around us. Eventually each individual will include every living being within the aura of his own perceptions and know how other creatures feel and how other people think. We shall experience it not through the strange insecurity of words, but through the gradual unfoldment and expansion of the inner life until we become universal. Finally we shall carry light to the furthest parts of existence, and with that light our own comprehending power: the power to escape the isolation of our selfness into the greater union of common insights and common understandings. It is only when insight increases and expands in a sufficient number of concerned people that we can hope to solve the problems of society. We cannot solve them by trying to convert each other, but only by releasing light from within, a mysterious spiritual kind of light that permits us to see other people inwardly as we now see them outwardly. As we see them qualitatively, by the light of consciousness, we will understand their motives, their peculiarities, and their difficulties, and we will find the necessary char­ity to build a better world.
As far as we know nuclear fission has come the closest of anything we have experienced to the infinite power at the source of existence — a power that is not only immensely potent, but also calls for a great moral code. Everything we discover we either use or abuse: if we use it well it advances us; if we abuse it it destroys us. Religion and philosophy can help us, but they cannot compel us to apply in daily living the principles that make life unfold spiritually. The more we become thoughtful, careful, wise, and gentle people, the more our inner life expands until it culminates in the great mysterious illumina­tion of a Buddha. In the depths of ourselves is the same inconceivable light — a light that is our very life, for without it we could not live.

Students of history must often be amazed to note the recovery of races of mankind from catastrophes which would seem to have overwhelmed them in final disaster. But in the slow procession of the years the hideous scars of battle are grown over by a mantle of green turf and poppies swaying in the wind, and fields where armies grappled are now the pasture grounds of flocks and herds. Cities whose towers were leveled in the dust raise once again their domes and temples to the morning sun, and countrysides that once resounded with the thunder of the guns are vocal with the mating songs of blackbirds and of larks.
    The law of rhythm and recurrence is everywhere at work, and is in operation in our individual lives as elsewhere; and though the cosmic life is inexhaustible it his its periodic ebb and flow and must not be ignored. There are neutral periods
when utter deadness supervenes, and these are the pauses, the stagnation points, when the ebb has ceased and yet the flowing tide has not resumed its forward sweep. These periods may be very trying to the inexperienced, who are apt to
feel alone and forsaken, while cold despair seems waiting to engulf them in a fathomless abyss. But let them carry on with patience for a while, for presently the surgeless, silent sea will rise again and sweep them onwards once more upon their voyage that has no end.    — H. P. Leonard