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Better to be Down Here By Maurie D. Pressman, M.D. I had a meditation and suddenly realized that maybe it is better to be down here rather than to live perpetually in the upper planes. I often think that we aspire to be in the Godly realms, to sit on Mount Olympus, blessed with power and love, superpleasure and peace. But in this meditation it came to me, that maybe it is better to be down here. To have everything all at once and without struggle is no fun. Indeed, it must be boring. To come down here and struggle for what we achieve brings pain–– but also the pleasure of growth, of personality “muscles,” of creativity and pride in our creations. Undoubtedly we have been made “physical” for a purpose–– and in our larger life we participate ever more in both planes of experience. On the one hand, we develop as much as possible in this five-sense, sensory world, and on the other hand, we realize more and more the ever creative, ever spiritual, ever holy existence of the higher and higher planes of return. When we dance between the two, we live in the best of both worlds. When we use the two in an altruistically constructive way, we are living ever closer to our intended spiritual life, in which we bring both the physical body and the spiritual body into the flow of communion. The more we can train ourselves to have lucid dreams, the more advanced we become in mind, body, and in spirit. The idea is not only to be awake in the dream, but to have the dreamlike super knowledge, and the dreamlike serenity, as we live our waking lives on earth. This is the meditation: Synesthesia and More I saw and heard sights and sounds going together, fused–– and I realized that this was synesthesia. I realized that instead of this being a confusion, it was an instant comprehension such as occurs in the higher realms. The higher Nature grasps all at once. I saw a dream in which a lady was at the podium, next to a speaker. She was the caretaker for an old man. She said that she was not a member of ISSSEEM (International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine), but she is now ready to convert. I wanted to understand that, but what was the necessity to understand it? It was enough just to be. But no! To live up there in synesthesia, comprehend and just be, is a kind of inert-ness. There is an urge to descend, to know, to separate–– and also a need to create materially, for that is another kind of existence which is fraught with struggle and effort and will and determination–– and satisfaction for what is created. So there is a pulsating dance between the two: Just to be in the pleasure of just being (if indeed pleasure is a good description of the kind of total peace up there, for pleasure is a manifestation of the manifest)–– and on the other hand, the struggle and the pleasure of creation on the lower planes. Possibly, there are different levels of creation: The creation of the imagination; the creation of the dream; the creation of constructive visualization, such as in architecture. But in the end, it is good to bring it down to this material level of manifestation. In another meditation, I had the realization of the enlightened joy of being in the Now. But that, too, is the same thing. It is the lucid dreaming/lucid meditation state of living in both realms at once–– as in the following meditation: Now Now is everything there is. Being sleepless, I realized that “Now” is everything. It is the acute realization of reality–– all there is. Everything is contained in it. It is a stark realization. I might remember what happened yesterday, or last year, or in childhood; I might anticipate what will happen next, or in the future. But even as I do, I find it is all wrapped up in the Now in which I am thinking these things. Time is all one thing–– all wrapped up in the “Now.” And the Consciousness that the “I” is Everything My consciousness embraces all things. I can enclose the Cosmos itself within myself as I realize it. I am, therefore, Brahma, the All-Containing, the All-Creating, the All-Manifesting. And with that, there is the counterpart within me of utter helplessness, realizing the smallness of the “I”–– contained in everything, even as it contains everything–– the utter helplessness to really understand, revealing our smallness. As I try to understand that helplessness (which in itself is a surrender, a realization, a “Now”), I open again to receptivity and awaken to new insights, new gifts of inspiration. What is this matter of realization, of realizing and being in the Now? It is a matter of experiencing it. But how do we do that? Through surrender, which means letting go while being expectant and patient, waiting, surrendered to the Now, and willing to not be visited by insight–– whereupon the realization that everything, including me, is in the Now–– and it comes as a surprise. It is important to know that even Aurobindo himself, the great sage and probable Avatar, sometimes waited a full six months, lying fallow in his meditations, before realization. If it is good enough for Aurobindo, it is good enough for me.
Contact Dr. Pressman by writing to: Maurie D. Pressman, M.D., 200 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106, or call 215-922-0204, email: mauriedavid@earthlink.net, or visit his website, www.mauriepressman.com.
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