(c) John, Rekesh 2004-2008. No part of this work may be copied or reproduced without the author's permission
9. Tree of Life (Part 3)
“Quite so, Emma. It is but another beginning. A branch that does not set fruit and in the end fails to create more trees has wasted its flowering. It would have been admirable, but would still fall short of its calling.”
“I would have been more inclined to associate flowering with the expression of one’s latent talents and abilities, not enlightenment.”
“That would also be true. What you see in the tree is but a pattern, a ‘universal,’ if you will. The same pattern repeats or reflects itself in many avenues of life. Remember our discussion of your car and the patterns it represented? The flower does not represent spirituality only, but many other things. When it is mapped by analogy to spirituality, the meanings derived from the rest of the pattern also hold. That is why I call these patterns universals.”
Emma was quick to catch on to the significance of what Aliyah was saying.
“Does this mean that one can predict our future by studying these patterns?”
“Well, yes and no, I would think. One can understand the general plans or patterns that order our lives, painting a picture at higher levels. The choice of following one plan or another is probably left to individuals.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“Let’s take humanity, for example. We have progressed from our distant origins of innocence and beauty, reflected in the garden of Eden, into a very difficult learning phase, represented in the scriptures as consuming the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. By our own analogy of the tree, after the learning phase, which is represented by the activity of the leaves, comes the flowering and then setting of fruit.”
“What does it imply?”
“The flowering can be likened to a spiritual birthing of the human race, call it Christening if you like, followed by a period where our learning and experiences gathered from our difficult journey through life are placed into the service of the greater universe. Do you not see a grand plan here? Whether it is the seasons, the colors of the fall, the lifecycle of a tree, or our own progression from childhood and schooling to mature service and death, the grander implications of the pattern are the same. The fact that vegetation surrounds us everywhere is also the hint of a pattern, pointing out that this indeed is the ordained path for the race. But we seem to have our individual choices, whether to follow this plan or align ourselves with another.”
“But what other plans are there to align ourselves with? I am not aware of any.”
“Well, let’s look at a forest and see what happens there. Besides the trees and plants you normally see, there are the parasitic plants and the poisonous ones that kill. There are also trees that are infected, diseased and which fall prematurely to the ground. Some trees are shaped into all kinds of useful things, such as this chair I am sitting on. A big tree in the forest is often a home and a shelter to a large number of creatures, just as the earth is a home to us. All these manifestations are but natural parts of an ecosystem, and one can read alternative paths of development from these. They are reflections not only of what happens in human societies, but also point to levels above, and perhaps below, as well.”
“But why go through it all? Isn’t it better to finish it and return to the ground?”
“Emma, the return of the tree to the ground is sure, but that is after fulfilling its greater purposes. A tree that seeks to return to the ground is sick, and it would have wasted its life. We live life because we really want to, deep within. Perhaps it is better to say that the soul or higher self wants to, or that the life-stream wants to. We are not separate from the Godhead, but an expression of it. And we as personalities speak from some of our traumas in life, making us wish we didn’t have to go through these. If our purposes as individuals and as a life-stream were not worth the troubles we go through, we simply would not have taken these steps in the first place. The perspective on life is vastly different at higher levels.”
Emma was silent for a while. Presently she spoke.
“Aliyah, what is it that you call the Body of God? Obviously you compare it with the Earth. But what does it mean?”
“I think it can be understood better if we look at the function of soil. The biological processes within a tree are driven by minerals and water from the soil. The mass of the tree, or most of it, is built from the air (1), but the processes that make it happen are driven by enzymes built from various minerals. These enzymes are the catalysts that build the tree, literally creating everything that makes up what we see as a tree. And these enzymes are built from minerals which are generally dissolved in water and carried up into the tree. Now take a closer look at the soil. You would see what may be called raw material, and also the remnants of old plants, trees and organisms which are being broken down and recycled.”
Aliyah looked closely at Emma, wondering if she was following the discussion. Emma appeared to be listening intently.
“The analogy with the Body of God should be then obvious. This body of God is spiritual stuff, in which are present latent desires, tendencies, inclinations, emotional natures and so forth that seek expression. These ingredients may also be from prior expressions which were broken down and recycled. They are all jumbled up, mixed around and unfocused, just like the soil. Through manifestation, these tendencies are drawn-out selectively and allowed to express themselves in various forms. That very expression is creation. The primary material of expression is the mind which creates matter, corresponding to the body of the tree being precipitated primarily from the air.(1) And this mind itself is a single mind, corresponding to the atmosphere of the planet. It is an ancient mind, if you will, quite ancient, and it takes expression in every soul and in every individual that manifests from the creative process. So this ancient mind, together with the spiritual stuff replete with latent emotions, desires and other proclivities are part of the Body of God. Creation as we know it is the expression of this Body of God. This expression is, of course, driven by the energy of the Creator, represented by the Sun itself.”
“So the Creator exists apart from us?”
“The Creator, as represented by the Sun, is the remnant of the original one source after the initial creative process. He is thus both an emergence as well as the supreme creator of all that is. The rest of creation is but His body, or His various aspects. All are one, but all are also different. The way He constantly relates to individuals can be understood by the way every leaf is nourished by sunbeams. And He appears just as silent and unnoticed in His action, as the Sun itself in planetary processes, like the seasons, the growth of a tree, or the opening of a wild flower.”
“How do you know all this is true, Aliyah?”
It was Aliyah’s turn to be silent. How could she convey this to Emma? From her silence she spoke:
“Personal truth is something you may not be able to relate to, Emma. But there is also objective truth. You are asking how processes at one level can reflect those at a seemingly different level. But if the Godhead exists, and life is one, how could it be otherwise? How could a tree be some freak of nature? Or the Earth simply a ball of dirt moving in the emptiness of space? Perhaps you are beginning to see a glimpse of the true nature of creation. There is much, much more we can learn about the Godhead and its ways by studying our earth. Things like, how the atmosphere came into existence and how it is sustained, the significance of gravity, the programmed death built into cells, the recycling of minerals, the weathering of rocks, the water cycle and innumerable other processes on the earth. They all have their meanings and stories to tell. That is something we can explore ourselves objectively.”
(continued
here)
(1) See chapter
Sky