One big problem with this divine creation, the "primary" creation, the one we inhabit here-and-now; is that it depends upon an inevitable degree of compulsion and unconsciousness.
This is a problem that God acknowledged implicitly; by sending Jesus Christ to make a Second Creation, and ensure that all who wanted-it and chose-to, would be able to move onto that Second Creation after their biological deaths.
God began with a universe of Beings, living without mutual awareness, without cohesion. Creation proceeded by God endowing these Beings with the beginnings of conscious awareness, and by coordinating them with His own divine love - binding them together and providing a direction, and principles of interaction.
In this, it resembles a Man's young childhood with loving parents.
The child is born-into this world mostly unconscious, and his life is given shape and direction by the parents' love. (In an idealized childhood...) While still hardly conscious the child lives and develops immersed in the atmosphere of parental love - and the child is required to do little more than return that parental love, and therefore be obedient to the greater wisdom of his parents.
(This corresponds to the situation of early Man, and the earliest phases of true religions - obedience to God was core.)
In a negative sense, the child is compelled to go along with parental guidance; but this compulsion is concealed by the child's unconsciousness of it.
In other words, a young loving child in a loving family just accepts the situation in which he finds himself.
However, it is a common destiny of babies to develop and mature, to become more conscious; and often to become aware of their situation.
In other words, as a child becomes more conscious, he becomes aware that he is living in a world he did not choose, and which he is compelled to fit-into - if he wishes to survive and thrive.
This is a microcosm of the situation in this divine creation that we currently inhabit. Insofar as Beings are unconscious and immersed in divine loving-guidance, they simply go-along-with divine creation.
But as a Being becomes more conscious, he becomes aware of the essential element of compulsion in this world, this creation.
This happens in the development of a human, and it has happened to Mankind (overall, on average) throughout history. Primordial Men were more like young children, with little self awareness or freedom of will; and knew God (and the spirit world); and when capable of love - they went along with it, hardly aware there was any alternative.
However, through recorded history, there has been an increase in Man's conscious awareness analogous to the development towards adolescence - Man became more conscious that this universe was based on a compulsion, that he need not obey.
More conscious Man could, and sometimes and increasingly did, opt-out of creation.
Thus; Men ceased automatically to ally with God's creation - it became a choice whether to join-with God's creation - or else to oppose it, exploit it.
Or sometimes the reaction was a desire to opt-out of Primary Creation altogether - and return to that primordial unconscious separateness which prevailed before creation began.
This is, by my understanding, the ultimate but implicit teleological basis of Buddhism, and some kinds of Hinduism -- as well as of some who would call themselves Jews, Christians, or Muslims (I mean the traditions respectively of Qabalah, Via Negativa, and Sufism - for instance).
I presume that this development was foreseen by God as an inevitable consequence of Man (and other Beings) increasing in consciousness.
Sooner or later; the First Creation would be know for what it was, which is a top-down and imposed scheme - and as consciousness increased in created-Beings, sooner or later some Beings, some Men, would desire to opt-out of it.
Therefore; the divine plan was for there to be a Second Creation, which would be individually chosen, an opt-in scheme.
This happened with the work of Jesus Christ; and the way-into Second Creation was to follow Jesus through death into resurrected eternal life. The Second Creation is, therefore, Heaven.
The Second Creation both required, and was necessitated by, the increase of consciousness of Beings that was a consequence of ongoing divine creation.
In sum: This "first" creation we inhabit here-and-now depends upon compulsion and unconsciousness; but Man (and other beings) are destined to increase in consciousness - hence the need for Jesus Christ and the Second Creation.
We now can choose the Second Creation - but the Second Creation can only be chosen - it is not, and cannot be, imposed.
And choice must be free, which entails conscious.
2 comments:
Very clarifying. I've struggled with the notion of pre-Creation compulsion and unawareness because the idea that God forced Beings into Creation is antithetical to freedom.
However, the more I have thought about it, the more I have come to realize that the freedom Beings possessed before Creation must have been "absolute" sort of freedom in the negative sense, sort of like unconsiousness or a low-level of semi-consciousness adrift in an open ocean, theoretically able to "do" or "think" anything, but lacking any reference points or others through which to discover the "self," ultimately unable to do or think much at all.
Seen in this way, the compulsion part does seem inevitable. How could Beings who were free but unconscious of that freedom freely consent to entering Creation? I suspect they could not even begin to envision or comprehend what was being offered.
It seems Beings only become aware of the freedom they posses after they became a part of Creation. As you note, this awareness also leads to the awareness of the original "compulsion," which may lead some to harbor certain levels of indignity or resentment (the "I didn't ask to be here" mentality), making the opt out possibility viable.
Unlike Primary Creation, Jesus' Second Creation is strictly opt-in, which gels perfectly with the honing of freedom and agency in order to align with divine purposes in resurrected life. There is no compulsion at all in Jesus' offer. Nothing is forced or dictated. "I didn't ask to be here" does not and cannot exist in Heaven.
@Frank "the compulsion part does seem inevitable."
It seems inevitable to me, just as with young children.
"which may lead some to harbor certain levels of indignity or resentment" - Yes, I think this is a trigger, or excuse, for such people.
Evil is when the response is resentment, spite etc and an attitude of anti-evil that tries to destroy or exploit creation involving other Beings.
In theory the desire to opt out (as with Buddhism) may be a valid response - if the desire is simply oneself to return to primordial unconsciousness. But in practice this is rarely pure, and "a-creation" becomes instead anti-creation, which is evil.
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