God and the World - Part 11

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

In Part 10, we concluded with:

 

(P.172) In this process of being drawn back in that way to the source, sin is

the refusal to respond. Sin is the refusal to love. Love is drawing us back to

itself. It has given us our being, put us in this world with all its problems,

but it is always drawing us back. This instinct of self-transcendence is the

movement of love. Also each person's creation is a movement of love. The Father

wills us, loves us into existence. He conceives us in the Word and wills us in

the Spirit, and he expresses his love in bringing us forth. We are an effect of

that divine love, and the very love which sends us forth from him draws us back

to him all the time. If we respond, then we grow in this world and gradually we

are transformed, as Jesus was in the resurrection, and we return to the Father.

Sin, on the other hand, is the refusal to go back to the source. We want to stay

where we are and we cling to ourselves, or we cling to our mother or the earth

or to money. Clinging to anything stops our return. Grace is when we open

ourselves and allow ourselves to be drawn out of ourselves, to return to God in

this movement of love. Sin is always a refusal of love and grace is always a

response to love. Love moves the universe as Dante put it, " The love which moves

the sun and other stars. " The universe comes into being though that motion of

love in the Godhead, that 'spanda' or pulse of will, which wishes to express

itself in love and in the desire to be loved. (P.173) God wants to make himself

known and he wants us to know him, to return to him in knowledge and love.

 

A New Vision of Reality (Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and

Christian Faith), Pg.172-173

Bede Griffiths

Templegate Publishers - Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-180-0

 

Here now is Part 11 which concludes " God and the World " .

 

Enjoy!

 

violet

 

 

God and the World - Part 11

 

(P.173) In the final state creation and humanity return to God. That movement is

taking place and, while sin obstructs it to some extent, redemption overcomes

it. Redemption in Christ has overcome the disintegrating forces of sin and has

restored mankind to unity. In him we are able to return to the source. We are

able to return to God and to exist eternally in God, each participating in the

one divine reality, yet remaining distinct. This is the Christian vision. We do

not merge in the Godhead like a drop of water into the ocean as is sometimes

said, but we enter the Godhead. We are transfigured by God, as Jesus was in the

resurrection, and we become one with God, but we do not lose our distinction.

 

There is a very interesting illustration of what this means in the work of

Beatrice Bruteau (10), where she emphasises that love is the instinct by which

we go out of ourselves to another, and identify ourselves by our participation

in another. In doing this we develop and grow. A person is a dynamism of love

and we become a person as we give ourselves to others. In other words, we grow

by relationship with others. The world is in fact a web of relationships, and

each one of us is a centre of relationship. If we isolate ourselves we die; we

are breaking the rhythm of the universe and that is sin. On the other hand, if

we open ourselves in love we go out to the other. As we relate to another

person, when we first encounter them they are an object, but as we begin to know

them we begin to share their thoughts, feelings, desires, fears and hopes. We

begin to share with one another. Bruteau says that our ultimate desire is to be

totally one with that other, so that we share and participate in unity. But this

certainly does not mean that we dissolve into the other. Here, as Pierre

Teilhard de Chardin emphasises, " union differentiates. " This means that the more

we are united with others, the more we become ourselves. (P.174) So each is in

the other and in the One who unites all the others together. The basis of this

is the Christian understanding of the Trinity. The Father is in the Son in a

total self-giving to the Son, and the " I " of the Son is one with the Father.

Similarly, in the Holy Spirit the " I " of the Father and the " I " of the Son are

united in the " I " of the Spirit. It is a total interrelationship of unity; in

other words, total non-duality and yet with this profound differentiation. That

is also what we experience in our lives in the experience of love, when we can

share and participate in the identity of the other. The ultimate state is when

we all reach that state of pure identity in difference.

 

A good illustration of this in the Hindu tradition is the " net of Indra " , which

is a network of pearls so arranged that every pearl reflects every other pearl

and the whole of which they are parts. So in the ultimate state each person

reflects the One who is present in every person and in everything. This is a

total interrelationship of interpenetration and of transparency. These are only

words that we use to try to present this mystery to ourselves but they are

important because all the time, particularly in India, one is faced with the

opposite tendency, which is to think that when one reaches that ultimate state

all differences disappear. It is thought that there are no more individuals and

no longer a personal God, but only 'saccidananda', being, knowledge and bliss.

That is a profound mystical intuition and Shankara, certainly, realised the

unity of all things, but he was not able to reconcile it with differentiation.

On the other hand, as we have seen, Kashmir Shaivism, Buddhism and Sufism have

all been able to discern how the differentiation is part of the unity. All hold

in different ways that the One differentiates himself and yet remains

undifferentiated. That is the mystery.

 

All this has a very practical meaning, which is that our life in this world has

eternal value. (P.l75) Each one of us as a person is a unique manifestation of

the One, and each has a unique destiny to experience the divine and to

experience unity with all the others. It means also that our life in this world

day by day, and hour by hour, has eternal value. And it means that history

itself, the evolution of humanity and of the world, is all part of this divine

drama. The whole universe is to be taken up into the divine along with the whole

of humanity in all the stages of its history. All is part of this movement of

the divine in matter, in life, in humanity, and we are all being drawn into

that, such that our ultimate state is a total fullness of being as we experience

the whole.

 

Again, modern physics affirms that the whole is present in every part. When we

begin consciously to enter that state we become aware of ourselves as parts, as

it were, of that whole, but also the whole is present in each one of us. Each

one is a microcosm, and the macrocosm is present in each one. We are all within

that total unity which is ultimately non-dual. This is an absolute unity and yet

it embraces all the diversity and all the multiplicity of the universe. It must

always be remembered that these are only words which we use to describe a

reality infinitely beyond our conception, but they are useful in so far as they

point us towards that reality, both theoretically and practically. It is

important not least because this affects our practical lives. If we think that

the universe is ultimately unreal and that our own lives are unreal we will live

accordingly. But it will make all the difference to how we live when we realise

that this universe is created by God, that it has infinite eternal value, that

each one of us has an infinite eternal value in the sight of God and that we all

form a unity which yet embraces all diversity. So we are fulfilled in that

Absolute in our own individual being, and in the whole cosmic order and the

fullness of Reality.

 

(10) Beatrice Bruteau, " Prayer and Identity " , Contemplative Review, 1983.

 

A New Vision of Reality (Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and

Christian Faith), Pg.173-175

Bede Griffiths

Templegate Publishers - Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-180-0