15) The Chicken or the Egg

Which came first?  A very old question about origins.  And no matter the species and how it evolved, it seems that the chicken and the egg arose together, had to.

In standard metaphysics, the story is that the source consciousness (SC) found itself alone and needed 2 things:  1) to know itself, and 2) to be loved.  So it divided itself into consciousness subsets and said to each to interact with the others and let it know what happened, in that way, by examining the subset interactions, the SC could come to know itself.  And the second need, to be loved, required that free will was available in varying degrees to each entity, the free will to follow the SC's plan, the Tao, or to deny it.

So from the 3 spiritual levels of consciousness, the actual plays are performed in the 3 lower levels.  In other words the material world entities are formed by the spiritual world entities, we call it "manifested".  This is standard metaphysics.  The spiritual comes first and is a far better place to hang out than the 3 lower material worlds.  A lot of religions have that belief.

Now back to the chicken and egg.  Which came first?  The spiritual and the material, which came first?  The standard answer is the spiritual.  But what if they arose together?  What if the dances of life are impossible without the material world?

In that case both the spiritual and material are 2 parts of a whole.  And now we can't assign a better or worse to either.  Which is better, the chicken or the egg?  The egg is life's potential and the chicken is life's activities---can't have one without the other.  Personally I can't see where one is superior to the other, just different---one can't exist without the other.

If this is true, then what is the purpose of trying to leave the material behind?  In this light, it doesn't make any sense.

Now we are back to advanced metaphysics:  as spiritual souls we have a need to incarnate into material bodies, in order to play out a lifetime with a purpose or purposes, which we choose ourselves, arranging with other souls to have their physical incarnations be our lovers or foils.  Why would we want to leave a lifetime which we were so excited to get into in the first place?

I first learned this concept from Alan Watts "This is It" and Ram Dass's "The Only Dance There Is".

This is IT.   Sure it might be difficult, but we chose it.  If we can forget about trying to become more spiritual, perhaps we will do better at making this lifetime pleasant and rewarding.  And of course the way to do that is to pay attention to the HERE and NOW.

Chicken or egg?  The potential or the actualization? The spiritual or the material?  Who can say which is better?