The Mystery of the Human Self
The appearance of life at the human stage was a tremendous leap over all the creative stages of life that had appeared so far. Up to the animal stage, life was not aware of its own self as a distinct individuality, and as such an animal could know its immediate surroundings by dividing them into different frames, each frame revealing different values as picked up by animal senses.
However, on attaining self consciousness, man’s mental processes overshadowed the limited approach of animal senses and covered the whole universe. The reason was that the self of man which became aware of itself as a single indivisible unit was apt to see the universe also as a single unit. When he looked into the various creative stages of the universe, he saw them lacking in self-freedom and self-consciousness. Each creative stage was disciplined to limited activity as determined by its conscious values.
At the Vegetative Stage, life was recasting or molding the material or physical formations in the light of its new conscious level as determined by the stage, and was forced to preserve its life under the fixed and limited conscious values of the stage. Similarly, the animal was compelled to preserve its conscious life as determined by its senses. As man saw the life acting strictly according to its fixed conscious values at each stage, it assured his superiority over them as a Self-Conscious Being.
The Human soul reflects the history of the universe. All the stages of the creation of universe preceding the human stage are the stages of Man’s making. Had it not been so, man would never have understood the phenomena of the universe. He understands the cosmos and the great expanse of the universe because these events are not foreign to him. He has himself passed through those stages, and hence those stages very much live in him.
Man is unique in the universe; nay, he himself is the universe. Therefore, in vain we are looking for human beings elsewhere beyond this planet. Those who feel lonely in the universe are not ‘normal’. We are not alone; we are so many on this planet. Better, we should live in peace and harmony, instead of looking for human life in other planets.
If some people are hankering after human life in other planets to exploit them or establish colonies there, as they are doing on this earth, they will never succeed in their trials as life in human form does not exist elsewhere. The purpose of human life at this stage is not to capture the stars and planets. In fact, the whole universe, through which man has passed, already stands conquered. What he really needs to conquer at his present stage is the animal instincts and greed which are the cause of human misery and bloodshed. However, if he wants to capture those stars to store energy for the rockets, or wants to extract uranium for making atom bombs to wipe out the humanity from the face of this earth, he is utterly ignorant of the urge of his soul, which constantly demands love and sacrifice for his fellow human beings.
As is the fundamental principle of the creative process, whenever life starts with its new values, it never comes down from that level, nor does it lose the values so achieved by it. Accordingly, the human soul, which is the essence of the universe, and which has come to recognize the Entity, can neither come down from its self-conscious level nor can it die. Its death means the death of the Entity.
Man lives in a non-material state in his mental body. His future development, therefore, must be on the mental level only. At his present stage he remains attached to the physical body of the animal, so that he may peep into the universe by using material senses, and through that analyze his past journey in the light of his self-consciousness. The animal senses, which are material in nature, become readily available to him because of his attachment with the physical organism. However, the human self lives beyond the time and space barriers, and after the physical death of his organism, man would completely settle down to his mental state. Accordingly, the mode of his activity would change from material, symbolic motion to mental states through which he would build his own universe.
In fact, man already lives in his mental body. His physical body belongs to the animal stage, which is confined to the limited world of time and space. The human soul comes to its real own by releasing itself from his physical organism on death. Just as the animal life remains confined to a limited material world, but at the start of the human stage, the human life knew no bounds, similarly the next mental state of man would be beyond the reach of the present universe, which is confined within the time and space dimensions.
In a way, the absence of physical body may create a temporary obstacle in the progress of self-consciousness, but this temporary obstacle may help awake the human soul from its present mental state to the real self-conscious state. In other words, the urge of the human self, thwarted by the sudden change of its physical organism, turns to its own mental potentialities for real satisfaction of its spiritual love for the Creator. This could be imagined by the crude example of dreams. When the physical organism becomes inactive and thwarts the biological pressures; the animal life reflects the biological pressures in the form of dreams.
It will not be out of place to mention here that modern knowledge also sees the universe as a single whole, and in order to study it more deeply, it divides the creation of the universe into three departments of knowledge or three sciences as under :-
1) The physical science, which explains the laws of matter;
2) The science of the animal, or biology, which explains the laws of the animal body; and
3) The science of man or psychology, which explains the laws of the human mind.
Since the appearance of man on this earth, he is intrigued to know the secret of life. He wants to know how did life emerge, what is its reality, and what its ultimate purpose is. Man has however, not been able to give satisfactory answers to the above questions.
The main reason for this seems to be that although man, by virtue of being self-conscious, has realized that behind the creation of the universe there exists a Self-Conscious Entity like his own self, yet, as he is not fully aware of Him, he tries to search for Him in the universe. He forgets that, in fact, it is he himself who is the essence of the universe, and as such the answer lies within him, and not elsewhere.
What was being created in the shape of the universe was his soul. Therefore, the reality of the universe is nothing except that it served as a temporary abode of man through which he was gradually fashioned. In other words, the universe represents only the preliminary creative phases of the birth and childhood of the human soul. Beyond that it does not exist as an entity except that in so far as it reflects the attributes of the Creator, it inspires the human spirit of the greatness of his Creator, and through that his own greatness. Not aware of his own self, man explores the depths of earth and stares at the heavenly bodies above him. He can never find any clear-cut answers from these celestial bodies, which are not even aware of their own selves. Man sees these heavenly bodies moving according to their fixed pattern. It is because of their fixed tendencies that they cannot share the secrets of human self.
However, the disappointment of man is short-lived, as simultaneously a voice full of faith and determination rises from within the human soul, assuring him that there does exist a Self-conscious Entity like his own self, which has created and fixed these heavens and that,,,,,, that Entity is also his Creator, as otherwise man would never have sought Him.