Christ could be born a thousand times in Galilee—but all in vain ...

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" This book is written with certain assumptions and attitudes, which

together specify what may be called " the method of vertical

reasoning. "

 

The first assumption is that the Gospel According to St. John is not

on test. If anyone or anything is on test, , it is we ourselves and

our sensitivity. The text has proved itself: many times, in many

places, and to many very intelligent and sensitive people. It is one

of the most sacred texts of a great religion, and it has provided

spiritual nourishment to an entire culture over centuries. If it does

not speak to us, alas! too bad for us! It is not for nothing that so

many great teachers have said words to this effect: " You have ears

but you do not hear; you have eyes but you do not see. " If we cannot

hear, we must surely be hardened and closed of heart, and in a

defensive posture of narrow-mindedness. There are some people in whom

such a posture has been formed in reaction to the extreme

insensitivity and bellicose aggression of others who proclaim

adherence or opposition to the Gospel and its message. Still, if we

can free ourselves of such reactions, the beauty of the Gospel will

be apparent.

 

The second assumption is that the Gospel has come down to us from a

higher mind than ours. If there is something in it that we do not

understand, the difficulty is likely to be in us and in our

limitations. One cannot be blind to the fact that there are several

places where later editors, compliers, translators, and others with

various interests have added words or stories to the Gospel that

change the original meaning or intention. This was perhaps done

sometimes unintentionally and sometimes with a view to a doctrinal

dispute. Wherever scholarship has revealed several alterations or

additions in the text, a note has been made if appropriate and

helpful in understanding the heart of the matter. Otherwise, in

attempting to make sense of the text, whenever there is any question

about its intelligence, there is no doubt that the Gospel comes from

a higher intelligence that ours. In fact, precisely at the point

where our best efforts do not yield a satisfactory sense in the

Gospel, there is an opportunity for us to listen quietly with

humility so that we may hear what we are not accustomed to hear and

may allow the Gospel to work its magic in uplifting us above

ourselves.

 

I am convinced that scriptures and teachers are not among us for them

to be intelligible to us while we remain as we are; on the contrary,

I believe that they are here so that we may rise above where we

ordinarily are. All religions everywhere insist that we do not live

as we might: from our right mind. Thus we live in sin, or in sorrow,

or in illusion, or in a dreamlike sleepy state; and not in grace,

with joy, in reality, wakeful. The teachings from above, of which the

scriptures are an example, cannot be for the purpose of adding more

knowledge or comfort or dreams to our sleepy state; they can nudge us

a little toward wakefulness if we do not undo their effect by

dragging them down to our level—where we win or lose theological

arguments, convert others to our doctrines, and exercise control over

them while remaining as we are, untransformed.

 

The third assumption is that the Gospel belongs to the whole world,

and in particular to those who feel called by it and find some help

in it, even if they are not nominally Christian and have no need of

so labelling themselves. It is a great classic of world spirituality,

and it is too important to be relegated to an exclusively sectarian

reading. I detect a curious attitude among many of the Christians I

have met, scholars and non-scholars alike. They find it a little odd

that anybody who is not a Christian should be seriously reading

Christian books. It is understandable to them that one might read

such books to become a Christian, or even in order to engage in

polemics against Christianity, but it is expected that one must

choose and take sides. Commitment to Christ seems to imply for them

either an enthusiastic to mild commitment against other teachers and

teachings or a certain degree of tolerance and allowance for the

coexistence of other religions, but it does not very often allow any

conviction that these other teachings could be useful for one's own

salvation. And those Christians who find something of value in other

teachings often find it necessary to put Christianity down and to

deny that they are Christians. Perhaps this either/or attitude arises

from an overliteral interpretation of a fragment of a saying of Jesus

Christ, " He who is not with me is against me " (Matthew 12:30; Luke

11:23). For myself, I am happy to find light wherever I can, without

thereby having to deny other sources of illumination or other colors

of the spectrum, which together can more fully express the glory and

abundance of the Vastness than any one can alone.

 

The fourth assumption is that there is a characteristic, which I call

spiritual sensitivity, that perhaps all human beings have a

rudimentary form and that is highly developed in some. This spiritual

sense is able to comprehend subtle ideas, suggestions, and phenomena

that are not comprehensible to the other senses or to the rational

mind. To me it appears obvious that scholarship, erudition, and

mental acumen by themselves are not sufficient for approaching the

scriptures, although they justly have a high place and could be most

illuminating. This extra dimension of spiritual sensitivity seems to

be a much more important requirement. As is said in another

tradition, just as a donkey bearing a load of sandalwood knows its

weight but not its fragrance, so also the scholar may know the texts

of the scriptures but not their significance. It is clear, however,

that ignorance of what scholarship has to say about any matter

pertaining to the scriptures is by itself no guarantee of spiritual

sensitivity!

 

My interest in the Gospel is not doctrinal or dogmatic in the

ordinary sense of these words. Nevertheless, we may recognize and

understand what Jesus the Christ said: " Whoever chooses to do the

will of God will know about the doctrine—namely, whether it comes

from God or is merely my own " (John 7:17).

 

There are many levels of the quality of being Christian—from Jesus

the Christ to Torquemada the inquisitor. In pointing to this

variation, my purpose is not to belittle Christianity or to elevate

it; a similar qualitative range exists in every religious tradition.

My interest in this book is to discover a subtler and less churchly

level in the Gospel than is usual, which is lost to many thoughtful

and sensitive Christians as well as non-Christians simply because

they have not been taught to appreciate the various levels of being

within each person or of the corresponding levels in Christianity. As

we grow spiritually, it is natural and necessary to move past the

level of religion that we know and in which we dwell; in clinging to

that level, we accept a stunting of the natural process of

development. Unfortunately, far too often there is a fixed,

externalized notion of what Christianity is that does not permit

people, especially disgruntled ex-Christians, to see its immense

spiritual wealth or its dynamic elasticity, which is adequate to the

full measure of the most developed soul. Many years ago in one of my

classes, while disputing an interpretation of one of the parables in

the Gospels, an ordained minister of a Protestant church

declared, " Mysticism has nothing to do with Christianity; it is just

a Catholic heresy. " To be sure, he later regretted having made that

remark and wished to withdraw it because, as he said, he had spoken

unconsciously. After the class, a Sufi Muslim and now a well-known

professor of religion, said to me with tears in his eyes, " How sad!

So many Christians don't know what treasures there are in the

Gospels. "

 

This book is written in the hope of letting the inner Christ grow in

us; for me it is a form of prayer and meditation. I am called by, and

heartily endorse, what the seventeenth-century mystic Angelus

Silesius (translated by Frederick Franck) wrote:

 

Christ could be born

a thousand times in Galilee—but all in vain

until He is born in me. "

 

 

The Gospel of John in the Light of Indian Mysticism, pp. 4-7

Ravi Ravindra Ph.D.

Inner Traditions; Revised edition (August 16, 2004)

ISBN-10: 1594770182

ISBN-13: 978-1594770180

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