Human beings have always been fascinated by and obsessed with power. In fact, if one accepts the Bible as being historically valid, it might be deduced that this age of man began with a power grab when our primal ancestor fell prey to the temptation of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and his eldest son then proceeded to murder his brother in a field. And when viewed this way it makes sense that the rest of the age has been largely defined by the human obsession with power.
But even if one does not subscribe to the historical validity of the Bible, it cannot be denied that men and power have been bed partners since as long as we can remember. So let us take a closer look at this phenomenon.
First of all, let us ask ourselves what the Bible might be trying to teach us by putting forth the allegory of a tree and its fruit being able to alter the entire chemistry of the human race. Literally speaking, Adam took one bite of the fruit and was forever changed inwardly after that. But allegorically it is obvious that there was more going on than that. Allegorically, the temptation of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the temptation of power.
The next question is: How? In what way did this act of biting into a piece of fruit speak of the temptation of power? The answer is that for human beings the knowledge of good and evil is actually synonymous with mental power. It is not only the power to differentiate between good and evil; it is the power to rule, to dominate, and to control. And because these instincts tend to have a corrupting influence upon the human psyche, its outworking has most often been cruel and tyrannical.
And so when we think of power this is what we usually have in mind. We think of human beings that are mentally so strong and cruel that they have no qualms about lording over masses of people and imposing upon them all manner of restrictions and controlling energies. They even resort to brands of bodily torture that maim and kill. That is the true nature of war. It is simply the result of one or more individuals carrying out their agenda for accruing more power.
The societies of men are therefore largely characterized by this impulse to possess and get more power. And not only are rulers and dictators moving in this dynamic; virtually all the citizens are too. Even the weakest of men have adopted this orientation, so that it often plays out in personal relationships such as husband and wife, parents and children, friend to friend, etc. Power, control, manipulation, dominance—these have come to characterize most relationships, albeit sometimes subtly. And it is this power-lust dynamic that has turned our society into a Darwinian, dog-eat-dog arena.
Based on this assessment of the world of men, it would seem then that there is only one kind of power at work in our universe. But fortunately, this is not the case. There is another power at work, and this power not only permeates the universe; it also happens to live inside of men. It is the power of love. I know it sounds like an old worn out cliché. But again, let us look more closely at how the power of love works.
In religious circles it is often taught that God is love. And that is true. But again we must ask: How? How is God love? And the best way to answer this is to ask another question: What is God? Amazingly, not many people can adequately answer this question, despite the billions that practice some form of religious devotion. Most people have a rather vague idea of who or what God is. And when it comes to the equation: God is love, again this is usually accepted without much in-depth understanding. But when we gain the revelation that God is consciousness, things begin to come into better focus.
If God is consciousness and God is love, it is really consciousness then that is love, not some vague image of an old man with a long white beard smiling down on us from heaven. Consciousness is the perfection of being. It is divine, deathless, immune to disease, overflowing with abundance, limitless in potential, and it is love. Furthermore, love is power. In fact, love is the greatest power in our universe.
The power of consciousness is the power of love, and this power is at work in men. How can this be? Because the rightful identity of man is actually divine spiritual consciousness. True, we have minds and bodies, but these are merely biological created aspects of our being. As such, they are temporal and far inferior to consciousness, which is eternal and indestructible. But by falling prey to the temptation of power in Adam we have, perhaps inadvertently, come to elevate our biological function of mind above our endowment of spiritual consciousness. In fact, we have become so mind oriented that we no longer see consciousness as a power at all. That means that we also tend to scoff at the notion that love is a power.
The Bible says that God created man in His own image. This is very important to remember. For, if God is consciousness and He created us in His image, then we are consciousness too. And if the divine consciousness is love, then so also is human consciousness. And if the love inherent in divine consciousness is power, then so is the love inherent in human consciousness.
Why then do we not recognize this love as a power? Why do we view mental power as the greatest power in the universe? It is because the power of love is not like mental power. In fact, it is nothing like mental power. It is neither forceful nor clever. It is not manipulative or controlling. And never is it cruel or overbearing. Mental power is highly demonstrative, while love is quiet and unassuming. And so, we mistake mental power’s showy demonstration for true power.
If the power of love is not forceful or demonstrative, how then can it be said to be a power? The answer is that love is an attribute of consciousness. and consciousness is the perfection of being. It is eternal and divine. Therefore it endures forever. That is its power. Mental power is a product of mind, and mind is a biological function, nothing more. It passes away in time. Therefore it is mental power that is not a true power. Consciousness is Spirit. It is the power of an indestructible life—the power of the resurrection of the Christ. And so it also holds true that God is a higher power than man because God is pure consciousness-Spirit while man is partly biological in his makeup.
Returning to the Garden of Eden, we see the man created in the image of God with an endowment of divine spiritual consciousness within him falling prey to the temptation of mental power. On the one hand, this makes sense. For, Adam is not like God, in that he has a biological makeup. And it is this biological makeup that deceives him. He is beguiled by the idea that with and through his biological mind he can wield a greater, more demonstrative form of power than the quiet unobtrusive power of love. But what he did not foresee was that by making the biological function of mind into an instrument of power, he was also elevating it above his created endowment of spiritual consciousness. This subsequently led to a false identification with his mind. And the moment this happened, death entered into the picture for our species. How? Through Adam identifying with a strictly biological aspect of his being. And so, the temptation of mental power led to man becoming a dominantly biological creature. And all biological life forms are subject to dissolution and death.
So it was that this entire age of human endeavor on the earthly plane became bound up with one man’s decision to elevate his biological function of mind above his endowment of spiritual consciousness—a wrongful order in the psyche of man that results in many forms of dysfunction and disease. Through falling prey to the temptation of mental power Adam came to identify with his biological function of mind, which, in turn, led to him becoming disconnected from God and alienated from his own spiritual consciousness. He also became mortal. Indeed, this turned out to be a Pandora’s box with an almost endless list of curses upon the human race. For, the fear of death then became the mother of all lesser fears, while the instinct for self-preservation came to dominate human consciousness to such a degree that laying hold of true spiritual life has become nearly impossible for us.
Though those who are moving in the human strength of Adam and Cain often downplay their sense of disconnect from God and consciousness, this outworking has been far more harmful to our species than we tend to believe. We think that making things right is just a matter of deciding to return to God by taking up a spiritual practice. But really it is much more problematic than that. What we fail to take into account is the conditioned psychological imprint that forms in us after years and years of hardening our hearts and pursuing the path of mental power. Thus even if we make the sincere decision to return to God, we find this imprint of wrongful psychic order and identity continuing to hold sway in our psyche, as if on auto-pilot, thereby demanding that we go in and do the difficult work of erasing it and rooting out its influence permanently. This work can take literally years of dedicated sadhana.
The moment Adam said yes to the temptation of mental power, the definition of what it means to be a human being was altered beyond recognition. We went from being creatures created in the image of God to being creatures with virtually no connection to God. We went from being creatures of light to being creatures of darkness—from moving in the harmony of spiritual communion to the discord of emotionally charged biological instincts. We traded the pure benign power of consciousness and love for the cruel and destructive power of mind. We went from a life orientation based on rest and trust to one of anxious self-reliance. We went from being spiritual creatures to being mental creatures. And when all these changes kicked in, we became enslaved to them through the forming of an indelible subconscious imprint. Thus we became enslaved to our own biological workings.
But the good news is that the power of consciousness-love is greater than the power of mind. And that power lies in its indestructible, eternal quality. So, whereas the cruel power of mind may seem like it has no rival, the fact is that its rival, love, is always present, waiting in the wings. Though the cruel power of mind may very well dominate our psyche for an entire lifetime, the day invariably comes when it loses steam and begins to diminish and relinquish its hold upon us. How does this come to pass? It happens naturally as our biological makeup gives way to the dictates of time and begins to decay and move toward the grave. That is the trump card of true love. It need not be forceful or proactive. It only needs to be patient and kind—to wait and watch as mind’s power wanes and is laid low in the grave. Human biological death is therefore the genius of God in action. For, not only do we human beings have the power of love at work in us, waiting in the wings; we also are indestructible and eternal beings. Though our biological makeup will always be subject to death and dissolution, our endowment of spiritual consciousness lives forever.
So lifetimes may come and lifetimes may go, in which we live as mortal mental creatures. But eventually our karma plays itself out, to where we begin to see that the human mind is not the God-ordained ruler of our psyche. It is only a biological aspect of our being, and as such, is both mortal and easily corrupted. Thus mental power may rule for a lifetime, but when it succumbs to the grave it is a power no more.
Meanwhile, our consciousness endures forever. It reappears even as we are born into new incarnations, and this cycle may repeat itself for a long time. But eventually, consciousness rises up and receives the truth, and when that happens we are set free from the delusion of Adam—the delusion that made us believe that mental power was desirable. Then comes the day when we actually rebuke and renounce our blind ancestral allegiance to Adam—when we reject the entire wrongful order of the biological Adamic mind elevated above spiritual consciousness. And that is a day we shall never forget. For, it is the day when the power of love triumphs in our karmic experience.