The Fire Self Adrin Villasenor Galarza living-flames.

com Fire played a key role in the work of visionary scientist and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1951), helping him usher a comprehensive perspective of spirit and matter and the place of humans in cosmic evolution. Teilhards personal life and comprehensive ideas were infused by fire, conceived by him as a psycho-spiritual presence that dwelt within him and the world. He tells us, The world gradually caught fire for me, burst into flamesuntil it formed a great luminous mass, lit from within, that surrounded me.1 Fire, for Teilhard, signified the Spirit present in all (the Godhead, Brahman), the inner dimension of matter. Fire may help us shed light to the depths of our being, the Fire Self, by looking at Teilhards work and parallels found in Hindu philosophy. Fire and Self-reflection Fire came to represent the intrinsic essence of the world, the force of the Cosmic Christ in its journey toward a state of infinite consciousness and complexity known as the Omega Point. The essence of being alive manifests in fire. It can be said that to be alive is to be on fire and the movement of its inextinguishable flames fuels the entire cosmos. The energies that pour into us and invite us to rekindle our participation with the primeval forces of the cosmos are different manifestations of fire that stem from the ultimate, unnamable fire. A key expression of the ultimate fire is that of self-reflection. The fire of self-reflection is an evolving and ever-growing loop of mind enfolding on itself. Mind folding unto itself results in an ongoing state of reflective consciousness characteristic of the human species. In our evolutionary journey, the fire of self-

reflection has intensified at various stages thus deepening the collective degree of awareness and enabling a greater coherence amongst the members of our species. A clear expression of a deeper awareness and the higher interconnectivity it represents can be seen in one of Earths most recently formed layers, the noosphere or sphere of mind. At a personal level, a conscious reflective awareness has the potential to fuel a fullness of being where obstructive constituents of the mind may burn away and give rise to wider, more refined states of being. For Teilhard, the increased self-reflection necessary to awake to deeper levels of awareness was key in our evolution and referred to it as centration. The convergence of the energy of mind unto itself gives birth a center that enables the emergence of new organic structures and an awakening to higher levels of awareness. I see a correlation between the constant renewal of awareness that centration and self-reflection entail and the Indian notion of atman or self and its witnessing qualities. Fire and Witness Consciousness In classical Hindu philosophy, atman is said to be beyond time and space, an indestructible truth whose existence lies beyond the confines of the known. Boundless and eternal, atman constitutes our true nature and the highest potential to be sought after and actualized. The Vedas maintain that our inmost true nature is equated with the ultimate ground of existence (Brahman). By becoming fully conscious of the participation of atman in Brahman, often referred to as self-realization, the road to final liberation becomes available. Related to atman, the concept of saksin often translated as witness or disinterested onlooker is found in Advaita Vedanta. The notion of saksin is similar to atman in that it sees thoughts, feelings, emotions, and events arise, but does not get involved in them. Saksin is the ultimate seer, the passive spectator of the display of the cosmic drama (lila), as suggested in the Upanishads. The

Mundaka Upanishad speaks of two birds perched in a tree; one eats the surrounding fruits and the other one remains passive, witnessing. The active bird is engrossed with the endless permutations of the manifest world and is associated with the feminine principle (prakriti). The passive bird, represented by the masculine principle (purusha), is said to remain unmovable amidst the parade of the world. The Three Fires From an integrated perspective, such as that of Teilhard, the feminine and masculine principles of reality are implicated in such a way that they are both required to kindle the fiery journey of humans and the world. While atman and purusha traditionally designate the interior and ultimate reality of humanity and the masculine principle what I have referred to as the ultimate firethere is also an outward expression of fire, the manifest world (the feminine principle). These two may be joined and seen as participating in a continuum by means of a third kind of fire, that of self-reflection. Self-reflection holds the potential to bridge the unmovable, witnessing aspects of our being with the more dynamic ones, setting saksin into motion. What I am suggesting here is the conscious resting of our awareness in the incendiary loop of self-reflection and perennial change as the means to achieve deeper states aligned with the ideal of self-realization and inner transformation. The paradox of embracing the infinite loop of centration and increased self-reflection signifies surrendering to the seemingly passive yet infinitely changing fire of spirit. The act of surrender would in turn signify a gradual expansion of our sense of self, enabled by the transformative flames of spirit, to include the cosmos itself in all its beauty and terror. The stretching of our consciousness would be such that perhaps we would promptly ask for a ground in which to settle and rest but the felt-sense of a new center, the Fire Self, would become available. The Fire Self burns with the same flames that the world is set in motion and the same

flames that reach well beyond into the unknown. By focusing on the self-reflective capacities of the Fire Self we submit to the enfolding of consciousness time and again. The enfolding fire, the intrinsic dimension of evolution, has proven necessary for our physical and psycho-spiritual unfolding, particularly expressed in the continual loop of self-reflection. With its heat, the Fire Self invites us to come closer to our essence and burn to the rhythms of the cosmos, to the flames that fuel life itself.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Heart of Matter. (Orlando, FL: Mariner Books, 2002), 15.