14 QUESTION: I asked last time why Hindu philosophy does not have the fall of the angels. You promised that you would answer it tonight.
ANSWER: 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, my friends. 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. I once gave a lecture about the two main aspects of God: the active or male aspect and the passive or female aspect [Lecture #29 The Forces of Activity and Passivity – Finding God’s Will]. I explained that 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.
QUESTION: 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?
ANSWER: 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.
21 QUESTION: Could I hear a few words about bodhisattvas in relationship to Jesus Christ – is there any relation?
ANSWER: There is no relation in a direct way. The word you use – we have different terms – designates a special type of being in the Divine World. All created beings had originally a particular divine aspect, specially developed, and the purpose of Creation was that each being would complement the Creation by furthering other aspects through development, so that perfection would be reached not only in one aspect, but in all.
This is how the power of Creation could have been used by all beings, but was only used by those who did not abuse this power. Absolute perfection exists only in God and in Christ, who has most of the divine substance. The perfection of all other beings is a relative one, but it could become perfect by their becoming co-creators.
The so-called bodhisattvas are beings endowed with certain particular aspects of divinity, each representing a different one. This one aspect is their particular force with which they help in the great Plan of Salvation in very special ways and by various and special means. But until the plan reaches its completion, the pure beings use their efforts to help others with their particular strengths.
The plan of Creation will only come to its full conclusion as each being perfects himself or herself in all ways. Now, only Christ, except, of course, for God, is perfect in all ways, and has all talents completely developed. All other beings have their characteristics with which they were created – God leaving it up to them, that is, all of us – to continue his Creation ourselves, by developing all other characteristics, aspects or talents in a perfect way.
So it is not quite correct to say that all created beings were once completely perfect, as the Absolute is. We were perfect in our own ways which, of course, is always relative. You can be perfect within the frame of your present development, for instance, but that does not mean that you are absolutely perfect.
Someone of a much lower development than anyone of you here can be relatively perfect compared to others of whom more can be expected. So perfection remains relative as long as the plan of Creation is not fulfilled, except with God and Christ. And this should answer your question, for the beings you have mentioned are perfect only in some ways, while Christ is perfect in all ways.
23 QUESTION: Are the god and goddess Shiva and Kali in any way connected with Lucifer?
ANSWER: That is a different variation. They certainly represent evil. They may not represent Lucifer himself, but the evil forces. So there is a part of that.
QUESTION: Has Lucifer been incarnated as Christ was?
ANSWER: No, my friends, how could he? Before you can be incarnated, you have to have reached a certain development. There are many, many, many other spirits, who have not fallen as deeply as Lucifer, who are not ready for incarnation either. And much time will have to elapse before they can incarnate. The worst criminals on this earth must have already some sense for good, somewhere inside them. For otherwise they could not be human. They would not be ready for incarnation.
Lucifer must be the very last to incarnate, in theory. In practice, of course, since he would be the last, his development will proceed in a different way as the others and will not go through this form of human incarnation. If he would be the only man living on earth, there would be no point to it. And he must, perforce, be the last. The first will be the last!
And he was the first to fall, so he must be the last to come back. And he will be the last to come back, because he is farthest away from God in his attitude. So if it were logical for him to be incarnated at all, he would be the last one. But since there would be no purpose for such an incarnation, his development will proceed differently.