The Dharma: 3 stages of universal Initiation

Dharma and physical intelligence:

From the introduction to the acceptance, that is, from aspirantship to Apprenticeship

The Dharma is a natural and intelligent function of the being. It is expressed in the acknowledgement of duties that can be of a superior nature, such as the spiritual ones, or impersonal such as those destined to sociality, or personal or familiar. The highest form of duty is «for the benefit of humankind». Its first impulse is characterized by confused spontaneousness that must be replaced by a form of synergic coordination among every participant and the creative use of intelligent analysis.

Such service can't be but unselfish, refusing any partial, factious or ideologically compromised role. In other words the service for the benefit of humankind must religere (join) and not separate. It must make any conflicting diversity tolerable at first and then understandable and acceptable.

The most unifying factor is to make understandable for everyone the sense of the meanings that cultural dissociation, through their languages, have made distant and apparently different.

Therefore the Dharma at its highest level implies the sense of inner justice that can express the fair judgment through the ability to discriminate by separating, for example, real from unreal, steady from unsteady or useful from ephemeral. Before getting to this point, though, there are many choices to be made. As we will see, the Dharma can be expressed through two different levels of conscience that act in two mental positions quite far from each other.

The narrowest conscientious level is the free choice based only on the knowledge of the physical mind that, as an independent entity, is still relatively unable to understand and to want. This is the point when the aspirant must decide if he stays himself after having reached the top of the abilities of the physical mind. Otherwise he must abandon any integration (disintegration) with old cultural models, of any nature, in order to conciliate his own mental model with the abstract models proposed by the realistic application of the initiatory model (not to be confused with symbolical or merely representative models).

Dharma and intuitive intelligence:

The small Initiation

Through practice we can develop many intuitive abilities through which we can increase the sensorial limits of the physical mind. Intuition is a phenomenon originated by the precariousness of the contact that should link the physical mind (the content) to the superior conscience (the container).

By addressing the psychic balance (the center of attention) towards the field of perception of conscience (inner answer) rather than leaving it under the manipulation of the exterior senses, we can make a more frequent appearance of intuition possible. A psychic phenomenon seldom occurs. It usually happens in occasion of psychic events particularly filled with tension or expectations.

The characteristic of intuition is intermittence. It is a discontinuity that must be re-composed by reaching a steady and balanced continuity among sensitiveness, thought and feeling.

Being able to oppose the intermittence means that we can rely on the practically consistent support of intuition. Once reached a substantially steady form a nucleus of conscience called intuitive mind is formed.

By widening the abilities of the intuitive mind we can turn our center of attention from a first stage of awaken conscience to a more advanced one, closer to the much bigger context called super-conscience.

Dharma and metaphysical intelligence:

major Initiation

The “stability” between thought and feeling is the bridge between physical mind (called earth) and the superior conscience (called heaven) originating a “sentient combination” between exterior sensitiveness and inner perception.

The integration between the two poles of the same conscience, the physical and the metaphysical ones, widen the nucleus of self-realization up to the point of being expressed in the superior mind.

Therefore it is not the development of the physical intelligence that determines the mental expansion, but the interaction among the personal self, the super-conscious and the superior Ego. The synchrony among these intelligences joins in a unique element originating the psychical element called “ illumination” . In this case the word is more than appropriate to represent the concept.

To light the Shadows of Ideas (Giordano Bruno, op.cit.) through the potentialities of the Ego is not everything.

The “alliance” between heaven and earth, that is between conscious and super-conscious, fulfils other needs as well. For example, it provides a better depth of analysis and ability to judge. Here is Free Will.

On the opposite of the freedom of choice , found in the limits of the personal self, the Free Will uses the intelligence of the Ego and follows the will of the soul.

Athos A. Altomonte