Why does Hindu philosophy, along with other eastern religions, not include the Fall of the Angels, as the Plan of Salvation does?
The Guide: There are about three reasons for that, and each reason is a good one.
The first reason is that Eastern philosophy rightly puts spiritual progress above all. Everything else that has ever happened in Creation is only of secondary importance, and this is very true. However, it is useful in some cases that light be shed on certain facts that occurred in the distant past, because the reason of existence on Earth, the reason for evil, and answers to other questions, are necessary for some people to know.
The understanding of certain facts, even if they can only convey a very general and broad picture, will eliminate doubts that may stand in the way when deciding on the path of perfection and purification. For the most part, the souls incarnated in the East do not feel as strong an urge to probe and search in this respect as does the Western mind. Therefore, they say: we do not need to know anything else; the important thing is how we develop.
The second reason is a little bit more complicated to convey to you. Lecture #29 The Forces of Activity and Passivity – Finding God’s Will talks about the two main aspects of God: the active or male aspect and the passive or female aspect. In the active aspect, God is personality: active, thinking, planning – the Creator. In the female aspect, God is in a state of being.
From the explanation in that lecture, it will be easy for you to recognize that Eastern teachers and philosophers have experienced God in the female and passive manifestation. That is a partial answer to this question. The Fall of the Angels shows the events in Creation where God manifested as Creator and therefore in his male aspect. In this tragedy, God was enacting and creating new conditions whereby the return to him would be assured eventually to all creatures.
It is, therefore, understandable that a philosophy experiencing God in the female aspect would be less likely to receive enlightenment regarding God’s male aspect, while Western philosophy, open to the experience of God’s personality aspect that is active, would be blind to the experience of the female side of God and enlightenment in the Eastern sense.
The third reason refers to the Fall of the Angels as having a great deal to do with the spirit of Jesus Christ. He plays a major part in the Fall of the Angels. Eastern religion, having received a number of emissaries of its own – often very great, very exalted, and very highly developed spirits – is reluctant to recognize that others, in many respects not as spiritually advanced as themselves, may have received an even greater one: in fact, the greatest of all created beings. This is understandable and typical of human nature. Your logical conclusions can be very limited, and then you miss the complete picture.
Is that perhaps the reason why the female aspect of God is recognized more there, and the male aspect of God more in the West, and that is why East and West ought to get together?
The Guide: Certainly. It also explains that in the East, spiritual development is much farther advanced, and it is usually the woman who is spiritually more awake or easier to guide. In the West, technique and material progress are farther advanced because this, in turn, is typically a male aspect.
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