Drawing Life into Being, Part III

I’m sure that my statement must cause some confusion: the aim of our existence must first be to draw our life as deeply as possible into our Being.

After all, what is life? And what is Being? What is the difference between the two? This is probably unclear; and since different people use terms to mean different things, what I recommend here is perhaps too easily misunderstood.

By life I mean everything that is outside a person, all of the things that take place regarding objects, events, circumstances, and conditions. All of creation, in its essence, lies outside personhood and is received by it. In this way life is creation itself, which flows into personhood.

Being is personhood. 

The word person derives from the Latin persōna, originally meaning human being, possibly borrowed from the Etruscan phersu, meaning mask. Combining the other root early (circa 1200) English meaning of person — role, or character, as in a drama — we realize that the idea of a person, a human being, is one who takes on a guise through the action of being. 

This complex and very rich set of associative meanings reminds us that a person, a human being, is an embodiment of the divine. We might understand it (the way that so-called primitive societies do in mask-dances, once found throughout the world) as the action of the divine taking on an aspect of Being in order to express itself.

This idea of the divine expressing itself within the nature of personhood and a human being is scattered throughout Meister Eckhart’s sermons; and so we come to this idea of life — creation — flowing into personhood, or Being.

These are the technical and theoretical considerations; yet this morning I want to discuss the nature of Being and how it drinks life in, how it exists as the fundamental fact of existence.

We exist, as we are, within the range of our own consciousness (so far as we may experience it) and the world flows into that consciousness. 

Being receives life in the same way that a vessel receives water; and the mystery of water changing into wine relates to the transformation of life, received into Being, into a much richer kind of food. Life flows into this vessel of Being; and the more deeply it flows in, the richer and more intense the flavor. This is the practical aspect of Gurdjieff’s food of impressions.

All of existence must have an aim of some kind. One person commented recently that everyone subjectively interprets the aim of their own existence. The implication, of course, is that everyone has a different aim regarding their existence. And of course there is some truth in this, although it is a secondary and subsidiary truth. We are trying to get to the root aim of existence, the fundamental aim which all other aims must serve if Being is to be properly served and developed. That root aim has to be objective.  

At the risk of sounding pejorative, all aims that come after this root aim are what I would call stupid aims — and I say that simply because I see my own aims in this context and understand how far they fall short of the real purpose of existence. Until one sees and experiences this directly, one will most certainly continue to believe in one’s subjective aims, one’s stupid aims, and be absolutely convinced that they are all that there is and all that matters.  I regret to say, reading this particular material— or any other material related to it— will probably not help much in this regard. Yet we must try.

 This root aim centers around the action of life feeding Being. That action takes place as an organic, fundamental, vibrational and harmonic activity which exists before anything else takes place. Indeed, one can strip personhood of all of its external aspects, and still be receiving this fundamental vibration within a stillness that is completely empty and speaks of it for itself through the action of life and divinity alone, with no other unadulterated aspect of thought or identity contaminating it.

This alone, however, is an obliteration of the individuality — the undivided this — of divine awareness, which by its nature takes on character through the receiving of the impressions of life. (It wears a mask, phersu,  and plays a role through Being.) Individuality can be obliterated—and it’s possible to taste the fundamental state of reality through this nothingness of personhood—yet personhood itself arises from the action, and becomes the instantaneous and immediate adjunct of this first aim where life flows more deeply into Being. 

Personhood forms from what Gurdjieff called conscious awareness; and although there are of course an innumerable number of gradations of awareness, conscious or otherwise (many of which lack consonant vibration and are generally referred to as sleep) personhood is always at the root of the action. So when I drink life more deeply into Being, personhood is more wholly formed.  If life does not flow into Being at all in the first place, there is no personhood. 

Life and Being are reciprocal. One is outward; the other inward.  The inner receives the outer. In fact, without the inner to receive it, the outer cannot even exist. There can be no existence without a consciousness to receive it. Everything begins here; and so to entertain the idea that the aim — the original and root aim — of existence consists of all the absolutely trivial, life-driven pursuits we dream up for ourselves misses the point, which is only revealed where everything begins.

Wishing the best for you on this day,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.