The Fundamentals of Absolute Alchemy
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Today I want to talk to you about what’s different. There is a core issue in every ego-mind between the valorization of sameness and difference. And people are always, at the ego level, noticing what’s different, and at the soul level they’re looking for what’s the same. And this conflict between these two values consists and creates the major obstacles to liberation. But it’s very important that you recognize that the obstacles to liberation constitute the path to liberation.
So, I was going to come at 4am, but I was told to take down more dictation, so I’m just going to transmit it to you, and we’ll see where it goes.
The ego structure and the ego values and the ego dynamics have morphed over time in Kali Yuga. In earlier yugas, you didn’t even have ego; you had soul consciousness, and then beyond that you had pure Spirit. But in Kali Yuga—in early Kali Yuga—in that period they call the “Axial Age”, what was valorized by sages and the social order—that was in a sense governed by, or at least led by, the wisest beings, and the values that enabled society to become harmonious, and be sustainable, was originally the value of the Unmanifest.
So, because every manifest being was serving the Unmanifest, it provided a kind of sameness that accepted all the differences of the people within the society, who were all loyal to a particular unmanifest Real, that was the energy and the intelligence that they accepted was the glue that holds us together. And then by the time we get to middle Kali Yuga the Unmanifest drops out for most people in the world, and the values become that of—the chief value, becomes that of sameness and consistency, right?—because you have to have a consistent dharma to be able to create a society, or a community, in which promises can be kept, in which expectations can be met, in which everyone knows what they have to do in order to be approved of, in order to be adequate, in order to be good, in order to be appropriate within the context of that social order, right?
So that produces, then, that value of acting in accord with a standard—with an archetype—and there were a variety of archetypes available, as the society became more complex, from a simple tribal organization into a society with the division of labor, and then you would have various different archetypal forms, but each caste, each guild, each level of society, and the two genders, were all in accord with the archetype that signified the ideal form that they were to manifest. And this was the basis of worship—because worship, you know, is a contraction of the words “worth” and “shape”.
So, you went to the temple or to the gathering place, the council meeting, in order to shape your worth in accord with the archetype that was being given to you when you entered into adulthood, and into your profession, or your calling, your vision quest, whatever—but you understood clearly what it meant to be whoever you were to be. You had a role that was defined, not by the manifest group, but by the archetypal beauty, sense, dharmic criteria for what was excellence. And you knew what nobility was, and you knew what ignobility was. And so, it was very clear how to live; there weren’t any doubts or any questions or any kind of alienation.
But then, in late Kali Yuga, sameness fell away as a value, and difference became the primary value. And this happened with the rise of the West. The East stayed with sameness as their primary value, whereas the West chose difference. And so naturally, the West evolved differently—faster—it changed, it kept on changing, because it was based on change, on becoming different from what it was a moment ago. Different, always different, growing, changing, developing technology, and therefore developed a capacity to dominate the East and the South, for that matter. So, the West, which is also the North, became the dominant power during that imperialistic period that has also now fallen away, or is in its last legs that are now being fought out. But we have—and difference at its ultimate phase becomes total chaos, in which there is no longer any pattern that can be sustained, right? So, this happens at the macrocosmic level, and it happens at the microcosmic level, and until one can understand and integrate that conflict it’s very difficult to be in harmony with yourself, because you are split between these values.
So, the ego in late Kali Yuga is constituted by the love of difference; perhaps I should say the desire for difference. The ego wants to be as different from everyone else as possible—this is the whole individualism complex of the West, OK? However, within that, in the early modern period when the genders were still regulated, the role of the man was to hold a place of sameness, and the role of the woman was to be difference, right?
So, women would want different kinds of dresses and clothes and styles. The man is still these days wearing the suit and tie, and very boring, right, always the same. Every woman is different, and all men are the same. That’s no longer the case now that we’re in a transgendered reality, but there’s enough remnants of it that you can still relate to it, and that’s why, of course, you know, a man can eat the same meal every day of his life, he doesn’t care, but a woman, one night it has to be French cuisine, the next night it’s an Italian dinner, the next night she wants Chinese food, you know, it doesn’t stop. The woman has to have something different and new, because she’s bored with sameness. And so, she gets bored with her man very easily.
So, the one who is centered on the value of difference has fear of boredom. The one who is centered on sameness has fear of lack, because, in a way, he’s being left behind. But it’s also true the other way around, that the more different one becomes when one shifts out of a certain context—like, for example, women can be different in the sense of no two women want to wear the same dress to the ball, right? That’s a horror, right? You have to have a different one, but you don’t want to be so different that you’re not recognizable as the woman, right? So, you want to stay within a certain sameness that is the archetype of feminine beauty, but you want to be able to be in that with an entirely unique style, because there isn’t one form of beauty; there isn’t one, like, there is with the male form of sameness who, you know, the woman just wants him to be consistent, make a living, you know, support the family, and it’s fine that he eats the same gruel every day, and it makes it life easier for her—but she’s decorating the house all day and making it different, right, and doing all of that—but difference gets to be flighty, whereas the man has to be grounded and boring, and make sure the bills get paid. But the woman doesn’t—in the traditional household, we’re talking—that the woman doesn’t have to do all of that and can focus on flights of fancy.
So, these days, every ego wants to be in a flight of fancy and doesn’t want to be grounded, and can’t deal with Real 1, so the ego is totally obsessed with difference, but the soul still loves sameness, because difference, when it loses touch with sameness, it feels too ungrounded, so, it wants to have—to be able to touch base with someone who is consistent, but not have to be consistent themselves, but know that there is a home they can return to, where they’ll always be accepted, no matter how different they’ve become, right? And the parents will always take you back in, you know, and you can always be accepted, no matter if your hair is pink or purple or you’ve shaved it or whatever—the difference is irrelevant to this system that sustains the sameness, right?
So, the Self is unconditional love. The Self is love in itself. It doesn’t love sameness or difference, but it’s in a state of acceptance. But the lover of difference does not want sameness, and to the ego that loves difference, liberation is a boring sameness, you know? There are no great parties in nirvana! There’s no rock music there, there’s not even classical music, right? It’s boring, silent, stillness—who wants that? Right? So, when you are told to meditate and reach stillness, the ego says, “What? I’m going to just start chattering to myself! I don’t care what he’s saying, I’m not going to stop my thoughts because my thoughts are much more interesting to me than just having a silent mind.”
How many people feel that way? We have some honest people here, that’s good. So, it’s not an inability to have stillness, it’s just the ego is not interested in it. OK, so the ego doesn’t want liberation—that’s the last thing on its agenda. In fact, it’s not even on its bucket list—after it kicks the bucket it might be interested in that, you know, but not before. So, it will listen to the Tibetan Book of the Dead after it’s left the body and say, “OK, maybe I’ll try in another life.” But even there, you know: “Nah, nah it’s too boring. I’ll come back and do another life, and you know, and have another party”, right? So, the ego cannot abide stillness, because that’s death.
But eventually the ego reaches a point of the exhaustion of its creative potential to continue to become different. It becomes stale and stagnant, and it begins to fall from that rajasic state of constant difference into the tamasic state. And in the tamasic state, it starts to lose its flexibility, it gets rigid, it gets more angry and bitter, and it loses its life energy. And when that starts to happen, then it begins to change its attitude. Then it feels like it wants something different, it would prefer sattva to tamas. But in that state, it’s terrified that because of all of its rejection of God—who is represented by sameness to the ego-mind—that because it knows it cannot be liberated on its own power, it has to depend on grace. It feels, “I’m never going to get God’s grace. I don’t deserve it. Why would God give me grace? There’s all these saints around me. Me? I’m a sinner. I’m bad. I went into all of those marginal places in life and didn’t follow the dharma for one day, you know, and screwed all authority, was completely antagonistic to order, you know, God is not going to find me delicious or want to swallow me. No way! He’s going to leave me here.”
So that question of difference then…