20-12-2020
The Second Coming of the Christ is a Christian eschatological concept. Buddhism also has a kind of eschatology and a concept similar to the Second Coming—a concept of the future Buddha named Maitreya. There exist several standard interpretations of both the Second Coming and the future Buddha Maitreya. Here we are not interested in the academic study of these concepts but their existential significance to us, the humans living in the 21st century.
Today we face an unprecedent challenge of change. Two and half millennia ago, Heraclitus said: “The only thing that is constant is change.” What is unique today is the exponential rate of change, which results in the change in the nature of change itself.
The unprecedented evolutionary challenge that the human species faces is twofold: (1) the challenge of nonlinear exponential change and (2) the challenge of geometrically increasing complexity (structure) and abundance (quantity).
Stress is known as one of prime catalysts of biological evolution. This twofold challenge is placing upon humanity a great evolutionary stress that can and probably will catalyze an evolutionary transformation or transmutation on the species level.
The visionary psychologist Julian Jaynes in his The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976) describes a radical shift that took place three millennia ago to human consciousness in order to meet the challenge of increasing social complexity. A similar but even more radical transformation can take place in meeting the evolutionary challenge of change and complexity.
The Second Coming of the Christ or the Future Buddha Maitreya can be conceived in this evolutionary context. Human consciousness and society have evolved in the last three millennia to the level that neither the “Divine Savior” model of the Christ nor the “World Teacher” model of the Buddha applies to the present and the future humanity.
The new model that is proper to us is the ‘Authentic Sovereign’ model, instead of “Divine Savior” model, and the ‘Awakened Friend’ model, instead of the “World Teacher” model (etymological root of Maitreya is “friend” or “friendship”).
The Christ Consciousness is within us as the Cosmic Sovereignty, which is the spiritual essence of our awakened individual sovereignty that distinguishes us as individulas. The Buddha Nature is within us as the Cosmic Awareness, which is the essence of our awakened individual consciousness that unites us as friends.
Now, the world in which we live is extremely complex and its complexity is non-linearly increasing. All of its parts, complex in and by themselves, are interconnected and interdependent. No problem in the world exists in isolation from other problems. Therefore, all possible solutions are also interdependent and interrelated. Thus, solving one complex problem involves simultaneously or synchronously solving all the other problems.
Solution is an evolutionary movement towards the ultimate resolution, where no ultimate resolution ever exists except as the evolutionary ‘strange attractor’. Solution is an integral evolutionary movement itself towards ever greater wholeness, coherence, and integrity of the whole. In one of my essays (2000) I stated the following:
“We may long for a utopian state of life, ‘heaven’, wherein no problems exist at all, but in point of fact, heaven without evolutionary tension is tantamount to hell. Problems are a manifestation of evolutionary tension inherent in life. Heaven is not a static cloister wherein problems never arise but a dynamic field wherein we consciously create new problems as an expression of our creative vision and evolutionary passion.”
This evolutionary movement is a synergetic movement that emerges out of multitudinous revolutions of its subsystems all the way down to the consciousness of every individual constituting the world. From a different perspective, the consciousness of each individual contains the world, and that world changes as the consciousness evolves. This is where social transformation and spiritual transformation meet. These two perspectives together create a unified vision of social and spiritual transformation.
The phenomenal universe is binary through and through. Therefore, the dyadic dialectics will always exist. In fact, a real dyadical dialectic is the very pulse of freedom. That of which we must be aware and cognizant is false dyads, false dichotomies. The Right vs. the Left, the Conservative vs. the Liberal, the Republican vs. the Democrat—all of those dyads or dichotomies are false because no real meaning is contained by any of those terms that are mere labels or names without real significations.
The real dyad with meaning is Liberty versus Tyranny. The Right and the Left, the Conservative and the Liberal, or the Republican and the Democrat all share elements of liberty and tyranny, though the balance is heavily towards tyranny. The Libertarians originally intended to be the party of Liberty but ended up being a mere academic exercise without any real strategy for the achievement of Liberty. They lack both the mind and the will.
The degree of evolution of individual consciousness or collective consciousness (society) is proportional to the degree of freedom or liberty the individual or society has. The more evolved the individual and the society is, the freer the individual is and the more liberty the society has. Therefore, when you evaluate yourself and your society in terms of evolution (development/advancement), you want to measure the degree of internal freedom and external liberty.
In evaluating a policy proposed or enacted by the elected officials, we should ask the question: Does this policy move our society more towards liberty or more towards tyranny?
In evaluating a politician, we should ask the questions: (1) Is his/her basic ideological orientation more aligned with liberty or tyranny? (2) Has he/she shown the integrity and the strategic acumen to fulfill his/her promises?
In evaluating your spiritual path, you should ask: Has this path helped increase my inner freedom? Am I freer, in my being and thinking, as a result of pursuing this path?
Tyranny exists everywhere, and within as well as without. Tyrants come in many guises and disguises. They first indoctrinate you so that you become a victim of the Mass Stockholm Syndrome. That is, they make you a supporter of the tyrannical ideology and system.
An insidiously clever part of the indoctrination is that by virtue of subscribing to the particular ideology and supporting the particular system, you are morally more superior to those who do not. By virtue of belonging, of your “membership”, you gain a high moral status, and if you prove your greater loyalty, then you gain a higher career/professional status as well.
People must wake up from their indoctrination and recover from the Mass Stockholm Syndrome. The mass indoctrination or “hypnosis” happens collectively, but the awakening happens only individually. And yet, this individual awakening, when it gains a critical mass, will impact societal transformation.
That will be the time of the collective Second Coming when we meet and work together as friends, as Maitreyas—fellow revolutionaries of consciousness and society.