The One Light - (Introduction, Part 4)

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The One Light - (Introduction, Part 4)

 

The Evolving Myth

 

(p.16) Can we identify a continuum that joins these successive phases? Can one

figure be discerned throughout the development of Bede's thought? This ambitious

question invites preconceived paradigms and personal interpretations, but the

risk is worth taking. It is less hazardous because Bede has been so generous in

expressing his personal experience as well as his thoughts.

 

(p.17) One vigorous and decisive movement stands out in Bede's early life: he

rejects one world and sets out in search of another, more adequate world. This

movement, I believe, determines the shape of his life and offers a perspective

for interpreting the evolution of his thought. Bede rejects the civilization and

culture of the modern West; he turns away from the world into which he had been

born. At the same time we find him looking eagerly for an alternative world and

beginning to elaborate a vision - a 'myth'[18] - of such a world. This double

movement -and a third which follows - will define his life. The third movement

is a re-integration of that which had been rejected. This further integration,

however, originates from a new viewpoint and aspires to comprehend all reality.

This is evident as Bede justifies his rejection of the modern western mind. The

materialist reductionism of this culture has lost the primordial fullness,

exchanging the 'great chain of being' for a flattened consciousness and

flattened world.[19]

 

Bede himself could seem a godlike stranger in this world. His stature and

striking good looks, refined charm and brilliant intellect helped to create a

mythic aura around him which grew in his later years and nurtured the privileged

atmosphere of Shantivanam. His spiritual-theological myth flowed forth as a

natural further expression of his personality. A few perceptive friends pierced

through the myth; his many critics had never succumbed to it. Bede, with his

soaring, unbroken spirit, 'lived' the myth. From time to time, and particularly

toward the end of his life, intrusions of a rougher reality would alter the

stream's course, but never arrested it.

 

As Bede rejects one world - the world that is in front of him and then quickly

behind him - he creates another world. Already at Oxford we find him developing

a 'perfect alternative world', with the help of the English Romantic poets, then

attempting to live out the myth a little later with his two friends. This

myth-making activity will be a permanent and dominant element in Bede's

personality, while its direction moves through a series of successive creations.

The essential nature of Bede's perfect alternative world appears very early in

his life. It is a unitive world, where all reality is experienced in the one

divine ground.[20] This unitive world is Bede's personal myth. (p.18) Its basic

and enduring form is the primordial wisdom or perennial philosophy, which Bede

sees as the common core of all of the great religious traditions of the world

and which he believes to have prevailed everywhere in human culture prior to the

time of the modern West. In addition to this basic expression, the myth assumes

a series of more specific forms, corresponding to the successive stages of his

life and thought (which we have schematized above).

 

The first specific form of Bede's unitive myth is found in his 'religion of

nature', supported by Wordsworth and the other Romantics. He brings forth some

lines from Wordsworth to express his notion of the Unitive in this pre-Indian

phase: it is the immanent " spirit of nature. " [21] In the second phase, the Roman

Catholic Church assumes the mantle of the unitive myth.[22] In the third phase

of Bede's thought, as we have outlined it, the unitive myth finds its site and

expression in the Vedanta. It is nonduality, the advaitan experience, and is

identified with Bede's basic myth of the perennial philosophy. Soon the specific

myth is located in the spiritual experience which Bede finds at the heart of the

Vedantan tradition: the realization of the atman, or Self. The myth, however,

necessarily embraces the whole of reality, the 'three worlds' of Bede's

sapiental [wisdom] vision. A further transformation of the unitive myth occurs

within this same 'Hindu' period of Bede's thought. The center of gravity of the

myth migrates from atman to purusha, from Self to Person. We can see this in the

change of perspective between 'Return to the Center' and 'The Marriage of East

and West' on the one hand, and 'River of Compassion' and 'A New Vision of

Reality' on the other hand. In the two earlier books, it is the unitive mystery

of brahman and atman - and particularly the interior experience of atman - that

is central. In the two later books, purusha, as the Cosmic Person, is emerging

as the center of a vision which is no longer oriented so predominantly toward

the interior of the human subject but moves outward to embrace the whole of

humanity and the cosmos. As the focus of the unitive myth shifts from interior

Self to cosmic Person, the continuity of the myth itself persists: we are

presented with a perfect alternative world, and with a central point at which

all of reality can be grasped as one.

 

(p.19) 'River of Compassion', Bede's commentary on the 'Bhagavad Gita', seems to

reveal more precisely the turning point between these two phases, as Bede guides

us through the reorientation of Hindu spirituality that takes place from the

'Upanishads' to the Gita. We seem to observe, at the same time, this pivotal

transition in Bede's own perspective. The actuality of this personal

re-orientation is borne out by the further course of Bede's life and thought.

Earlier forms of the myth will always remain alongside the later expressions,

but without their old centrality and power.

 

The One Light - Bede Griffiths' Principal Writings

Introduction, p. 16-19

Edited and with Commentary by Bruno Barnhart

Templegate Publishers, Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-254-8

 

Notes:

 

[18] The positive sense in which Bede himself understood myth is abundantly

evident in 'The Marriage of East and West'. See especially 170-171 (text n. 5).

 

[19] See text n. 7.

 

[20] 'The Golden String', 11.

 

[21] 'The Golden String', 33.

 

[22] 'The Golden String', 14; see text n. 21, 'The Myth of the Church.'

 

 

 

, " violettubb " <violettubb

wrote:

>

> The One Light

>

> PHASES OF THE VISION

>

> (p.10) Bede reflected upon his own intellectual development again and again.

We find this self- conscious process already taking place in 'The Golden

String', and continuing explicitly in 'The Marriage of East and West'. The

process will reach its synthetic culmination in 'A New Vision of Reality'. Often

Bede takes a fresh look not only at the 'objective' world of the spirit and its

evolution, but also at the successive stages of his own journey. (p.11) The

evolution of Bede Griffiths' vision, in the light of this continual reflection,

appears with great clarity. We can distinguish five phases.

>

> I./ Awakening: the Divine manifest in nature, in poetry; the wisdom of myth

and imagination

>

> We have mentioned the experience which was Bede's spiritual awakening and

which would remain a central point of reference throughout his long life. This

was a revelation of the divine presence in nature. Already, he had embraced the

English Romantic poets as kindred spirits. Bede (then Alan) was awakening to

wisdom, and thus to his lifelong vocation and search. Wisdom was a knowledge

which was more and other than rational: a knowing through intuition,

imagination, symbol and myth. He was to find it not only in his beloved poets

but in the literature of primitive religions.[9]

>

> Bede rejected a modern West which had abandoned the timeless wisdom of

antiquity for an empirical and purely cerebral knowledge. While still at Oxford,

Bede proclaimed a 'religion of imagination' which he found emerging in the

writings of the English Romantic poets, particularly Wordsworth. Associated with

this orientation toward the intuitive or 'feminine' side of consciousness, and

with his rejection of the rationalist and industrialized West, were a

constellation of other attitudes. From those early years he was concerned with

social justice and the rights of working people, espoused socialism, and then

attempted an alternative to the western economic system in his quasi-monastic

experiment with two friends at Eastington. The orientation which emerges in

these early experiences and choices will re-emerge later, characterizing Bede's

life and thought until the end.

>

> II./ Christian conversion: revelation, Christ, the Church

>

> A first major transformation of Bede's perspective came with his dramatic

conversion to Christ and the church. Now his consciousness and vision could be

centered emphatically in the biblical, historical revelation. His further

awakenings would occur along the way of an explicitly religious journey. (p.12)

Bede's perennial criticism of western civilization, following his conversion,

became a theological judgment on history. He came to see the violence and

confusion of the twentieth century West as the direct result of a general

abandonment of Christ and the church in the era of Renaissance, Reformation and

Enlightenment.[10]

>

> This conversion was costly for Bede: he found the surrender of his personal

autonomy - his 'reason' - extremely painful and difficult. The Christian

experience, further, planted deep in Bede's psyche and consciousness an enduring

foundation of faith which would assert itself in strong - if usually unspoken -

tension with the more characteristic movement of Bede's personality and thought.

Jesus Christ and the church - and the historical particularity which is

intrinsic to both Christ and church - would stand as a permanent counterpole to

the universal and unitive wisdom toward which Bede was so powerfully drawn as he

found it expressed in nature, in poetry and in the eastern traditions.

Associated with his Christian experience was an awakening to the primacy of love

and a discovery of the principle of self-sacrifice. Bede's Christianity, in his

writings, often remains implicit. This is true especially when he is looking

East, presenting the 'Vedic Revelation.' Bede's attention is most frequently

focussed on the new and unexplored country rather than on that which is already

known. Sooner or later, however - and almost certainly at the end of the

reflection - the invisible matrix of Christian faith will become explicit

together with the eastern wisdom, and a theological integration will be

attempted.

>

> III./ Eastern wisdom: Vedanta, nonduality, the Self

>

> When Bede discovered the sacred writings of India, he rediscovered the

intuitive, imaginative consciousness which he had found in the English Romantic

poets. But now it was as if were drinking this wisdom in full purity and

strength at its source. It is clear that in the discovery of the Vedanta and its

unitive wisdom Bede has found a language for the deepest movements of his

thought.

>

> During his early years in India, Bede was much concerned with the uniqueness

of Christianity, insisting repeatedly on the essential differences between the

great religions. (p.13) He saw the relationship between the traditions of East

and West emphatically in terms of the 'fulfillment' of Indian religious

traditions by Christ. In a dialectical relationship [i.e., theologically

argumentable] with this position was his conviction that a 'common core' exists

within all the great religions; in Bede's writings one experiences a frequent

shifting between these two views. This mobility is characteristic of the

'alternating current' of Bede's thought, capable of following the logic of each

principle through to its implications, without immediate confrontation with

other viewpoints. While Bede's position will gradually evolve from fulfillment

toward complementarity, both perspectives are there from the start and continue

together until the end.

>

> By the 1950's, the 'Perennial Philosophy' was emerging at the center of Bede's

thought as the common core of all religions. In the following decades this

'universal tradition' would be more and more clearly identified with nonduality,

the 'advaitan' reality. Alongside this first principle of nonduality, there

emerged a second within the 'Vedic Revelation' in which Bede immersed himself:

the search for the 'Self,' the 'atman'. This personal journey becomes, for Bede,

the heart of the eastern wisdom and he will often speak of it as the central

axis of spiritual life. Bede's early quest of intuitive wisdom has, at this

point, become the journey toward realization of the unitive Self. Bede will make

a series of correlations between elements of the Vedanta and elements of

Christian faith. 'Sat (being) - 'cit' (knowledge) - 'ananda' (bliss) becomes an

expression of the Trinity of Father, Word and Holy Spirit[11]. 'Purusha' is

correlated with Christ, particularly as 'Cosmic Person.'[12] 'Atman' is equated

with the Holy Spirit. Vedanta has become the interpretive lens through which

Bede understands the Christian experience.

>

> Within this 'Hindu' phase, a change in direction takes place. As Bede comments

the 'Bhagavad Gita' in the conferences which would be published as 'River of

Compassion', we can sense an inflection of his own spiritual orientation away

from the strict interiority of the 'Upanishads' and toward a balance of spirit

and world which is closer to that of the Gospel. The exclusive grip of the

'center' and of 'atman' upon Bede's psyche, so evident in 'Return to the Center'

and in 'The Marriage of East and West', loosens. (p.14) As that period of

intense interiority and renunciation of the world comes to an end, a phase of

integration begins.

>

> IV/. Wisdom and science: cosmology, consciousness and evolution

>

> (p.14) It was around 1980 that Bede's rediscovery of the West took a pivotal

further step: an encounter with the " new science " articulated by such innovators

as Fritjof Capra, David Bohm and Rupert Sheldrake. Moving from his earlier

categorical rejection of western science and technology, Bede began to

incorporate the insights of contemporary physics, biology and transpersonal

psychology with the ancient wisdoms, into a new and comprehensive vision of

reality. This fresh horizon would call forth Bede's 'New Vision of Reality'

(1989). Here he brings the ancient religious traditions of Christianity and the

East together with conceptions of the contemporary sciences in a new

evolutionary perspective. Bede now develops a coherent cosmology, bringing

elements of the 'perennial philosophy' together with classical hylomorphism[13]

and principles of the holistic new physics. Here matter and consciousness are

not distinct entities but two manifestations of a third primary reality which is

unitive spirit.

>

> In turning towards the modern West and its culture, Bede begins to assimilate

not only the scientific perspective but a dynamic principle of development:

'evolution'. He sees the principle of evolution operative first in the physical

and biological world and then in the progressive development of human

consciousness. This vision of a continuing positive movement beneath the surface

of human history is a radical turnabout from his position in 'Return to the

Center', where the only meaningful journey was a return to the Source. Bede

largely adopts the vision of the evolution of consciousness conceived by Ken

Wilber - who, like himself, understands consciousness as essentially unitive,

'nondual'.

>

> V./ The feminine, descent into darkness and body; unitive experience

>

> Bede Griffiths' consciousness underwent a dramatic change in 1990, after his

first stroke.[14] He did not, as after earlier transitions, bring forth a book

in which his vision was recast in the light of this new experience, but he often

spoke about what had happened to him. (p.15) Bede declared repeatedly that at

the time of this physical trauma, 'the feminine' or 'the mother' broke into his

consciousness and life in a decisive way. At the same time he was initiated into

the nondual experience which he had sought for so long. Woven with these two

threads was a third: a new experience of darkness and chaos, of disorientation

and a shadow of death which accompanied his illness.[15] In this stage we

witness a second 'descent from the mind' parallel to that which Bede experienced

in his conversion to Christianity. Once again we have the sense that thought -

the continual activity of this vigorous mind - has given way to another, more

powerful reality which is invading Bede's person as if from outside. Here there

is also a strong recollection of the first phase, with its preferential

orientation toward the 'feminine' side of consciousness. The unitive core of the

third phase is also realized after the stroke in what Bede called his 'advaitan'

experience. While the ambitious intellectual construction of the fourth phase is

not reflected here at the end, Bede's existential return to the world of the

body recalls his late acceptance of natural science. Our final phase, however,

is a realization on a level distinctly other than that of conceptual reason.

>

> From beginning to end, Bede Griffiths' life was a quest of 'wisdom', of

spiritual 'knowledge', of the knowledge that is experience, love, union. At an

early point he realized that this knowledge is essentially 'unitive': that it is

a participation in the one, absolute reality which is the source of all things.

He followed the track of this unitive knowledge to India, settling in that

'Orient' as the homeland of wisdom, the place of the primal Source. The clarity

itself of Bede's reflection upon his spiritual journey and of his distillations

of the spiritual literature of India is significant, however. We become aware

that, throughout these many years of his dedicated monastic life 'on the

ground,' what Bede has been able to share with us of his journey has remained

largely on the plane of the mind. It is here at the end, while he is living on

the edge of bodily collapse, that the level of Bede's own enlightenment deepens.

At this point, the unitive realization accompanies and reflects his personal

integration of body, psyche and spirit. Now it is more apparent than ever that

what he is able to understand and to put into words for us is the merest trace

of what is happening.

>

> These phases of Bede's overall theological development can be resumed briefly

as a progressive integration of different 'ways of knowing'. Rejecting the

rational-empirical mentality which had been dominant in the West since the

Enlightenment, Bede begins to develop his personal theory of knowledge. The way

of knowing proper to the human person is not abstract and analytical reason, the

'masculine' and 'left-brain' activity of the mind, but rather an intuitive

knowing through participation in that which is known. The key terms are

'intuition' and imagination, symbolism and myth. In a second phase, explicit

'faith' dramatically appears and takes up its central place in Bede's life. In a

third phase, as Bede is more and more immersing himself in the tradition of the

Vedanta, contemplative knowing ('jnana', Bede will call it[16]) becomes central

in his thinking. This is 'unitive' consciousness and insight on the level of

spirit or atman, an immediate participation in the divine Absolute. It is

experienced especially in meditation, and becomes the light in which a spiritual

philosophy is conceived and developed.[17] In a fourth phase, scientific

'reason' returns, but now within the intuitive and organic vision of the 'new

paradigm.' This level of science is not directly empirical but intuitive and

synthetic; it integrates without too much strain into Bede's own intuitive

philosophy. In Bede's final theoretical synthesis, the perennial philosophy has

been fused with an evolutionary scheme which proceeds from elemental matter -

the stuff of positive science - to the heights of unitive consciousness. In his

final phase of life, body and unitive spirit are both present to Bede's

consciousness in a very simple way, while knowledge and love, too, have become

inseparably fused.

>

> The One Light - Bede Griffiths' Principal Writings

> Introduction, p. 10-16

> Edited and with Commentary by Bruno Barnhart

> Templegate Publishers, Springfield, Illinois

> ISBN 0-87243-254-8

>

> Notes:

>

> [9] See Bede Griffiths, 'Pathways to the Supreme', 1-19.

>

> [10] See, for example, 'The Golden String', 170.

>

> [11] See, for example, text n. 86, p384-385.

>

> [12] See, e.g., texts 43,44.

>

> [13] 'hylomorphism': the Aristotolian and Thomistic view of the universe as

composed of the two principles of 'form' and 'matter.'

>

> [14] See 'Beyond the Darkness', ch. 18, 227-235.

>

> [15] See 'A Human Search', 100-101.

>

> [16] 'River of Compassion', 111.

>

> [17] See texts 64 and 65, and Wayne Teasdale, 'Toward a Christian Vedanta',

63-64.

>