A Contemplation of the Individuated Deity
Author: Faisal Muqaddam
In this article, Faisal Muqaddam, the founder of Diamond Logos Academy, describes why, after awakening to the essential self (Point of Light), we remain as an individual self. In further turning to God, as Faisal describes very personally, divine love can finally be experienced, redeeming the deep-seated sense of abandonment and revealing accountability in the world we have created.
We are talking today about a very broad, significant subject, about the Absolute, about God and our task here. This can be confusing because there are so many religions, systems and teachers, and they each have such different views. What universe, what creation do we live in, where do we come from, what is it all about!!!?
My feeling is that many ways of thinking stick to a single perspective: Being or Absolute as Alpha and Omega, as Source, Creator, Manifestor, One and All, which leads in a very subtle way to a negation of individuality – a denial of personal being, a negation of you and me. There is so much talk about the ocean (the impersonal source) and very little about the fish (the individual personal self; additions from the translator), indeed, the fish is considered unreal, a mere manifestation of the ocean: we are nothing more than a manifestation of Being.
DUALITY OR NON-DUALITY?
For many years, I too was an “absolutist” (an advocate of non-duality). I thought that being does things. However, at some point this presented quite a challenge to me.
For if Being does things, then I have no free will. I am only a product, even a victim, of its intention and imagination.
It can do with me what it wants. Let’s assume, for example, that being has not yet had the experience of being a murderer and therefore manifests itself as a murderer, rapist, war criminal. It becomes a bestial creature in order to learn something about this bestial creature-being. And is at the same time the victim, because it also becomes the little girl or woman who is killed and raped, or peoples and countries in ruin. It is being that manifests itself in different forms in order to learn about itself. It wants to learn not only about love, but also about cruelty. So if it were, Being is now raping the earth, destroying millions, billions of insects and animals, polluting the water and the air. And in a very subtle way, without making itself known or showing its colors.
As if Being wanted to tell us: “I have nothing to do with it, I am just an expression of God. God made me this way. I can’t change it, I want to destroy, I want to steal. I want to do all these destructive things that humanity suffers because God wants me to.” However, when I consistently engage in this view, I encounter enormous challenges and difficulties.
And now I remember the moment in 1986/87 when I left my old friends and our common school (Ridhwan) to which I belonged. It was fermenting in my being, in my soul: “Is the Absolute really what does everything? If my suffering is caused by the Absolute, I am a victim.” I was not well with that.
THE BEING OF THE DIVINE ENTITY
When I arrived at this point, as I remember, a divine presence, a divine entity appeared. It was not the Absolute, it was a person.
And this person had a human form, but not of flesh, but of spirit, of light, created from very condensed material like jewels, diamonds, crystals, gold. A very condensed jewel entity of extraordinary splendor and glory.
I have met wonderful high beings like the Karmapa, the Dalai Lama, the Qutb (a Sufi teacher). And when you really feel them and their presence, they touch you. Touch you in a way as if your soul is awakening to its full potentiality and evolution.
However, when I was in the presence of this One, every bone in me bowed with the greatest grace, with the greatest love.
It was like seeing the most sublime. The perfected human being, who is divine, is humanly divine. And you feel that this being, this entity, this soul has reached its unique position. Not because of the stories about God being the highest. No, this entity – or this God – has reached this level through what you and I are going through. Through a tremendous struggle with existence, through evolution and learning. This is a soul that has matured, evolved, suffered, just as you and I are suffering.
God, Being and Man A reflection on the individuated Godhead© Adobe Photostock
In my understanding, the spiritual path to enlightenment, as well as enlightenment itself, is about the functioning of the mind and its content. Our mind is like a television set. There is so much going on that we don’t even know its nature. Enlightenment means seeing all that, sorting it out, and ultimately being free of it.
However, liberation or enlightenment is not enough for man. There is a continuation, the path of salvation. It has to do with which path to take and how the path is taken. Or, as the Indians say:
“When the eagle flies, it leaves no tracks.”
How can my soul navigate this existence? It’s not just about enlightenment, feeling free to pursue any idea I want about the Absolute or about myself. The Absolute, this mind, is so powerful that you can create anything you want from it. Angels and devils, distortions and fame.
The text is based on the interview “God, Being and the Human” conducted by Michelle Pearce with Faisal Muqaddam in February 2020.
This article appeared originally on the German Homepage of Tattva Viveka: Gott, sein und der Mensch
