Synopsis

 

Ancient wisdom: Creation indicates an unsatisfied desire on the part of the creator. If the Ultimate Reality be complete or perfect in itself and self-satiated, then the act of creation can never be predicated of it. But if there be no creation how can one explain the multiplicity of empirical experience in the universe? Because this is the very nature of the Effulgent Being

Are heat and light attributes of sunshine? Of course, but they are not in themselves sunshine. Neither are they different from sunshine. In the same way embodied beings are attriutes of the Ultimate Reality, the undivided being. They (we) are not in ourselves the undivided being, the Ultimate Reality. Neither are we different. We are, as attributes, markers, manifestations of that from which we owe our relative existence. As such we can also be said to be the means by which that Ultimate Reality, undivided being is, or can be, known, understood. So! In the same way heat and light are ways of knowing or understanding sunshine, embodied beings, you and I, are ways of knowing or understanding Ultimate Reality, undivided being.

Jesus was, is an attribute of God, the Father. He was, is not God, the Father, but neither was, is he different from him. What he was is a way of knowing or understanding God, the Father. Jesus was - is - God as man. He was, is a Man-God.

Heat and light could also be said to be, besides mere attributes, instrumentation by which sunshine exercises a creative force. Heat and light make life, grasses, trees, creatures, possible.

We sentient life forms are like that, too. We can be said to be co-creators of the Ultimate Reality, undivided being, instruments by which God has self experience and by which he grows, cultivates the manifested universe because we share his very nature as an effulgent being. Notably, the emergence of sentient life runs concurrently with the emergence of things like love, truth, wisdom, liberty, justice, and beauty. What else is waiting in the wings to be made manifest? We have only just begun!

The realization of the non dual nature of the Ultimate Reality - that it is undivided being - is the condition for understanding what is said here. From that standpoint the relative existence of the world(s) of manifested beings, the phenomenal universe, is illusory, not real in itself, neither is it different from the phenomenal universe, but exists as an aid to realizing its true nature, our true nature, God's true nature.

God appears as the world without forfeiting his essential nature.