Darwinism or Creationism.
Darwinism or Creationism…
…or something else?
A Chimp sat in a library with two books in front of him. One was the Bible, and the other was Darwin’s Origin of Species. Puzzled, looking from one book to the other he wondered, “Am I my keeper’s brother, or my brother’s keeper?”
There has been confusion about creation that can never be resolved, because the arguments come from different points of view. Rather than, “Did we come from this or that?” it’s a question of what is meant by…we!
Darwin says ‘we’ evolved from lower life. He is talking about this physical body, meaning that we are only this physical body. The Bible says ‘we’ came from God, referring to spirit/consciousness, meaning that we are not just this physical body.
The body and consciousness will be seen as the same or different things, depending on the point of view, but this consciousness will be unique to this body. If we are confident and happy in our view, then we should allow others to be confident and happy in their view. True, our view may be clouded, but if we use intelligence, we may refine our understanding – or , unfortunately, cloud it even more.
The questions are: Are these views so different, and is there another factor?
Evolution is cause and effect: life adapts and changes. Mankind can now accelerate this by Genetically Modifying the DNA of plants, animals and the human body. Bodies are the result of DNA, which may be changed by chemicals, or even by consciousness.
Theists might say, “Well, God created everything.” But it is our consciousness that has created everything in the world: even to use chemicals, one needs consciousness!
One might then ask, “What created nature and the planets?” Planets are also formed by causes and conditions, in the same way as plants and cells. Theists will reply, “God created the heavens and the earth.” Was that God, or God consciousness – or was it just consciousness – a collective consciousness?
Collectively we create.
Collectively we destroy.
Collectively we desire
Collectively we hate.
Collectively we ignore
our true nature….
pure awareness.
That is the other factor!
Here comes the tricky part of using language: we have to switch context. Awareness is not the same as consciousness. We are pure awareness and have consciousness – this is the faculty of the conceptual, thinking mind. Consciousness has perception, but is not pure perception. This is a very subtle difference.
It is that which is known as consciousness (the mind creator) that may be called Universal principle, or God. But this only manifests through sentient consciousness: without our awareness, nothing would be known….consciousness would not be known.
There are infinite conscious beings and atoms in the universe, obeying the universal laws of attraction, aversion and inertia. This is the law behind this relative, illusory world where nothing lasts. Creation and creating is a wonderful thing when it benefits the well-being of all inhabitants. But when creation creates wars, famine, poverty, bad health, suffering then it is not beneficial to well-being of its inhabitants.
Creation is in our own hands, created by our consciousness. We might say, “Well, I didn’t create that war.” Subtly, we consent to it by not looking at the build up, or blindly believing what we were told. To do nothing, when something is plainly wrong, is to consent. Wars are a collective effort where the decisions of the few kills the many.
We can speculate and argue about how we got here, until the chimp understands its true nature, but it’s what we are doing now that counts.
We are neither body nor consciousness.
We have a body and we have consciousness.
Sitting in this body,
aware of consciousness,
we will find nothing but pure awareness
This pure awareness
will always be there unnoticed,
while the Darwinists and Creationists argue.
.
BUDDHA IN THE MUD is a blog - a living book based on the Dzogchen teachings. Our teacher is life, and life is karma. We are all Buddhas in the mud of concepts. 