Christian Mysticism in Relation to Eastern Mysticism - Part 4

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Dear All,

 

We concluded Part 3 with:

 

(P.234) " Origen has also a profound conception of the world as a spiritual

being. (P.235) He speaks of this world as an " immense, gigantic world which

should be regarded as one being, kept alive by God's power and the 'logos', as a

single soul. " This is particularly remarkable today because increasingly we are

coming to understand that the entire universe is an integrated whole. It is one

being where everything is interrelated, from the electrons to the furthest stars

in the galaxies, and where intelligence or consciousness is present in some way

from the beginning. There is a total integration, a total unity. As David Bohm

expresses it, all things were originally implicated or enfolded in one and they

become explicated or unfolded in the universe as we know it. So Origen, and the

ancient world generally, had this vision of a world which is one being, kept

alive by the power of God and the 'logos' or wisdom of God, as a single soul, a

single living entity. Teilhard de Chardin in our day has done much to recover

this vision of the universe. "

 

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

Chapter 11, P.234-235

 

Here now, is Part 4.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

Christian Mysticism in Relation to Eastern Mysticism - Part 4

 

(P.235) Origen goes on to say that " the sun and moon and other

heavenly bodies are living beings. " Perception of this truth is beginning to be

recovered today. We no longer see the material world as separated from the

spiritual, but rather we are coming to grasp that the whole material world is

pervaded by consciousness. David Bohm, for instance, also says that ultimately

you come to a field of energies pervaded by consciousness and having the nature

of compassion or love. So that is Origen's vision that the sun, the moon and the

stars are living beings, not just dead matter. There is no such thing as

non-living matter; all matter is alive in some sense. As has been repeated so

often, everything has a three-fold character. Everything has a physical

character where it obeys mechanical laws and can be studied by the physical

sciences. Then every material thing has a psychological or psychic character, a

relationship to the human psyche and a kind of latent consciousness in it.

Examples of this are sensitivity in plants and the kind of relative intelligence

of animals. (P.236) This is leading more and more people today to recognise that

the planet is a living being, now called Gaia, and that we are all members of

this living whole.

 

Returning to Origen, beyond the physical order of living beings is the order of

the angels and this, as has been made clear above, corresponds to the world of

the gods, which is the cosmic order in Hinduism and in all ancient tradition. In

Origen's understanding angels watch over the elements, the world and everything

in it. So the whole universe is ordered by the angels. This became traditional

doctrine and it was only lost at the Renaissance. We must always remember that

until the Renaissance it was generally understood that this physical world is

pervaded by consciousness, by what Aristotle and the Arabian philosophers

following him called " intelligences " , and which in the Christian tradition were

referred to as angels. In this way angels were seen as ministers of God which

order the cosmos. Origin goes on to spell this out, saying that the growth of

plants and trees, springs and rivers, animals and land and sea are all under the

direction of the angels. It is interesting that there is a community at Findhorn

in Scotland where events certainly appear to substantiate something like this.

The leader of this community was highly sensitive and she learnt to grow all

kinds of plants by communicating with the spirits or devas, as she called them,

of those plants and of the trees and of the earth. As a result of this the

community had the most remarkable results in that magnificent vegetables,

flowers and fruits were produced from the otherwise infertile, sandy soil. So

there is a growing realisation today of this psychic world as people are

rediscovering facts which had been lost.

 

For Origen and his generation, then, it was quite clear that the angels were

present in all the cosmos, ordering its course. Angels, of course were regarded

as both good and evil and this was held to explain the evil and the violence

which are so evident in the cosmos. (P.237) There are thus two contrary forces

at work in the cosmos, angelic and demonic. In Origin's view angels are set over

people and over nations. Every person has his angel, and Origen believed further

that we each have both a good and an evil angel. There are good angels which are

motivating us to good and evil angels which are tempting us. These angels belong

to the psychic world and we can speak of them in, for instance, Jungian

terminology, as forces in the unconscious. Seers, like Sri Aurobindo of

Pondicherry, have explored and studied the psychic world, and Sri Aurobindo's

conclusion was that the psychic level has a system of laws as coherent as those

operating in the physical world. This then was the world of thought to which

Origen belonged, and to understand him we must remember that the whole ancient

world generally accepted this vision of the physical world pervaded by the

psychic world and that beyond all these is the supreme Reality which embraces

both the physical and the psychic, creating the unity of the whole.

 

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

Chapter 11, P.235-237

Bede Griffiths

Templegate Publishers - Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-180-0