What longs to transform?

Now, here, in a way, I don't know whether one can have a completely rational answer to this, partly because vast numbers of people in humanity are really almost too occupied with just making it living, just surviving, or even living better than the neighbors living. So that takes most of their life and energy, and I'm not sure that many people really are concerned about any kind of a serious inner transformation. However, throughout human history, there have always been some people searching for it, and what prompts it, now, this is a manner of speaking that if I can recognize the obvious fact that I did not create myself, my body, or my breathing apparatus, or anything else, that then means one wonders why have I been created, and now the general remark from the spiritual teachings is that the whole manifested universe, including you, me, every material object, every animal, every tree, plant, everything comes from the highest level of consciousness, usually labeled God, or the Absolute, or some other label, then that a particle of that divinity, which is really what we call soul, takes on a body. Because in order for that soul to go further up, if you like, back to the Creator, it needs to undertake some action. And in order to undertake some action, it needs a body, including the mind.

I'm just using one word, but the whole level of the planetary level. Then if one can actually undertake the right kind of transformative discipline, then this soul or the particle of divinity can go at a higher level. Therefore, the suggestion really from all the serious teachings is that the very fact that I am alive means that there is a soul which has taken on a body, my body, my mind, and that it is eager to evolve. But here we need to be very careful taking it merely as a metaphor. We could say that almost the only characteristic of the soul is a wish to return to God.

But then if we take the metaphor of a magnetic needle whose only characteristic is to point to the magnetic north, but if there are other distracting magnets around, it cannot point to the magnetic north. So this is really where our worldly situation is, that the soul is in each one of us, or an element of divinity, particle of divinity, there are different ways of expressing it. Or sometimes we say our real I, or the real being, varieties of ways of expressing it. It has this characteristic, in fact, the only characteristic that it wishes to evolve, come back home to where it came from. But there are many distracting magnets around.

In fact, almost all of our education, the whole pressure of the social success, etc., interferes with it. So one needs to be there for, this is the reason I said earlier, that very few people are in fact able to devote any time or attention or energy to searching for how to evolve. Sometimes we say searching for spiritual truth, or searching for God, varieties of words get used, not to get so taken by one word or the other. Because there are so many distracting magnets. In general, one can look around, all our great political leaders in any country, hardly helping one's spiritual development.

The whole thing becomes a matter of more power, more material goods, how can we conquer the others or at least be superior to them, etc., how can we dominate the others. So these are of course, as you know, the classical, sometimes express less temptations, even the Buddha is ultimately having to face these, Mara, which is the Buddhist equivalent of the devil. What does he do? Similarly with Christ or any of the other prophets, they are always tested by the devil. Devil we could really say, if you like, is the shadow side of ourself.

But usually the tests are either creating fear, so Mara tries to kill the Buddha with his armies or threatens him, or temptation, and the temptation is always, almost always of either power. So Mara says, I will turn this, I'll give you sovereignty over all the three worlds, or wealth. So Mara says, I will turn this mountain into a mountain of gold, or sexual seduction. So he sends his own daughters to try to seduce him. These are the classical distracting magnets that our soul faces.

And our society is essentially creating these. If you do well in your business, you are approved, you'll be given more money, more bonus. If you don't do well, you'll be either fired or demoted or something. So fear and desire, fear and temptation everywhere. So one can see that the difficulty why the very few people can actually engage with this is precisely because of so many distracting forces, energies.

In fact, sometimes many sages actually say that the whole world is just, actually this is the remark of Christ, the whole world is in the sway of the prince of darkness.