The One Light - (Introduction, Part 7)

[Guest guest]

The One Light - (Introduction, Part 7)

 

BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE NEW WISDOM:

GOSPEL AND PERSON

 

(p.24) The western world into which Bede was born and in which he was educated

had been travelling through a spiritual desert - a sapiential parenthesis - for

centuries. Apparently we had to lose one wisdom, the 'old wisdom,' in order to

discover another wisdom - the new wisdom of which Bede is a prophet. During this

eclipse of the sacred and of contemplative consciousness, a process had been

moving swiftly forward. Something has been emerging - the 'human person'. We can

see the waves of this emergence moving through Bede's developing vision. It is

not only the collective or cosmic person that is emerging, however, but also the

individual person: the personal 'subject' as conscious, free and differentiated

- differentiated even from the matrix of the old wisdom. Here emerges the

tension between Vedanta and Gospel, between Beginning and End, between atman and

the human person as 'new creation,' free and creative in this world and its

history.

 

The old wisdom - whether in the East or in the Christian West - tended

invariably to enclose itself once again within the structures of the old cosmic

order, to return to a containment within the static, non-historical architecture

of archaic religion and classical thought. The human person returned to its

condition of prisoner within the iron order of the 'great chain of being.' But

Paul proclaims that something has happened to this older order, to 'the poor

elements of this world,'[30] in the light and energy of the Christ-event.

According to the New Testament, when Jesus came into the world the old

structures of the cosmic order surrendered their sovereignty to the Son of Man -

and thus to the human person. The Incarnation generates a new creation according

to its own intrinsic principle.

 

Something new is happening: the birth of the human person. That can be observed

in the history of the western world, perverse as it may often seem. With the

coming of the Gospel and the gift of Pentecost the person is freed at its

center. (p.25) This human person then becomes a luminous, creative center within

the world. The world is being recreated out of the human person. This is the

wisdom of the West, of which the West is only superficially aware. A new

Christian wisdom must incorporate this dynamic with its expansive and creative

energy.

 

We become aware that it is no longer possible to put on the old clothing of a

venerable tradition - even a Christian tradition. The human person cannot be

adequately held within a static container, Jesus teaches, and the inexpressible

lightning flash of the Gospel and of our own inner being verifies it. Bede

wrestled with this problem throughout his life. Once again, at the time of his

commentary on the 'Bhagavad Gita', as he begins to turn back toward the West, we

can feel the newness stirring within him. The awareness of the new thing that is

the human person moved beneath the surface of his mind like a child within a

womb, swimming toward birth. The tensions that we find in his life and thought -

between East and West, old and new - may be centered in this progressive birth

of the person, which was only gradually emerging into his awareness.

 

BEDE'S DUALITIES

 

Bede Griffiths is a man of many contrasts and polarities, held within a deep and

powerful unifying energy. Let us note some of the dualities the reader will find

in Bede and in his work, and that he works to integrate in his thought. First

and most obvious is that between East and West. This leads us to a second

dialectic between Christianity - a particular revelation at a concrete point in

time and space - and the 'cosmic revelation' represented by Hinduism and

Buddhism. Sometimes Bede will write in the language and logic of the biblical

Word, and sometimes he will follow the logic of nonduality, of 'advaita' and the

'atman'. We shall find two contrasting expressions of unitive mind in Bede's

writing, one more interior and spiritual, the other more imaginative and

intellectual. If on the one hand he writes again and again of the interiorizing

journey to the 'center' which is the realization of the Self in pure nondual

consciousness, on the other hand he will more and more turn outward toward an

all-comprehending 'gnosis', an intellectual vision which integrates the three

worlds of cosmos, humanity and absolute Spirit.

 

(p.26) A further polarity, closely related to the East-West polarity, is between

past and future, between a backward and a forward perspective. We may be

astonished to find Bede looking in both directions at once: toward a new

Christianity and toward a recovery of the pre-Christian spiritual traditions.

For him the two are inseparable; they are one thing. To look ahead is to look

back. Bede's thinking is bold and creative, intuitively synthetic - yet its

intuitions remain visibly circumscribed. His innovations are often new

combinations of traditional ideas. Sometimes Bede's work has a patchlike or

mosaic structure in which distinct blocks of thought - old and new - are placed

side by side. This is particularly true of 'A New Vision of Reality'.

 

Still further polarities will be found between reason and intuition, conscious

and unconscious, masculine and feminine consciousness. These dualities are all

related for Bede, as if aligned in two parallel columns. There is obviously some

approximation in global conceptualizations of this kind. An additional polarity

in Bede's thought is between a spirituality which ascends into unitive spirit

and a descending or incarnational way. Here too there is a development in his

thought. Finally, there is the underlying struggle between an unchanging cosmic

'order' (exemplified in the various schemes of spiritual development which Bede

brings forward from Hinduism - and implicit in his conception of the perennial

philosophy itself) and the 'person', as it emerges in the New Testament and in

the history of the West.

 

In Bede we find, coexisting, nonviolence and aggressiveness, contemplative

detachment and protest, obedience and fierce criticism of authority. Bede's

personality exhibits a paradoxical co-existence of naivete and critical acuity.

Bede does not see the shadow of people that are close to him and he often does

not see the shadow of his own ideas, nor the other side of the argument. On the

other hand, he is acutely conscious of the shadow of western civilization and of

the church. He moves by passionate intuition rather than by the detached and

even-handed survey of alternatives which we observe in a Thomas Aquinas. (p.27)

Yet, in 'River of Compassion', we find him patiently and judiciously weighing

different spiritual paths and different interpretations of the 'Gita'.

 

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE READER

 

These observations about Bede's thought and writing suggest a few general

principles of orientation for those who are encountering his work for the first

time. The points that follow are closely related, one flowing from another.

First of all, one needs to allow for the theological-literary, or mythic factor.

We must distinguish between Bede the spiritual pilgrim and subject of

experience, and Bede the interpreter, theologian and writer. Often the human,

experiential reality with its irregularities and obscurities is not accurately

reflected in the seamless and limpid theological discourse. It is important to

keep in mind the continual gap between reality and ideal, experience and

thought, existential fact and literary expression. Bede's clarity itself can be

deceptive when he is writing of mysteries, and he is writing of mysteries most

of the time.

 

Secondly, when reading Bede's earlier writings, it is helpful to recall the

general lines of development of his thought which we have reviewed. Often the

early enthusiasm was later replaced by a more critical attitude or simply

tempered by his subsequent experience. Elements of the Vedanta (the interior

path to the Self, for example) which he wrote about with an unconditioned

admiration in 'The Marriage of East and West' were realized only to a modest

degree in his own spiritual journey.[31] While he never completely abandoned the

personal myth of a past age of universal wisdom, Bede came to look more

hopefully toward the future and even to find many expressions of the Spirit

around him in the once unacceptable modern world.

 

Thirdly, an iceberg principle should temper our judgment of Bede's passionate

affirmations and negations. We have seen some of the polar opposites which

co-habit his consciousness. There is always much more of him than is visible at

a given moment. The mystery of Bede, the indeterminate and dynamic fullness that

is just beneath his surface, is always greater, more alive and more intelligent

than any particular affirmation. (p.28) Moreover his affirmations are often

impulsive, occasional and enthusiastic - and consequently one-sided. The

essential point that he is completely ignoring will probably appear at another

moment, duly underlined.

 

Finally, therefore, one will need a generous tolerance for mystery and for the

unresolved. It is better not to demand the wrong kind of consistency from Bede.

One needs to allow plenty of space for that which has not yet emerged into

clarity - or which is essentially beyond rational comprehension. If in reading

Bede we are frequently dealing with a dynamic paradox, this derives from the

unitive wisdom underlying his thought - and from the boldness with which he

grasps both horns of a colossal problem. He could pursue the logic of one

principle at one moment and follow the logic of another principle at another

moment, with no anxiety about the compatibility of the two principles and their

implications. He trusts in a unity which is deeper than the explicit

correlations and deeper than the contradictions.

 

One will do well therefore, in reading through Bede Griffiths' life work, to

cultivate a continual awareness both of the single mystery at the heart of all

of his writings and, correspondingly, of the unitive 'center' beneath the level

of one's own consciousness. It is from that luminous core that Bede's thought

has come, and he would probably feel well rewarded for his labors in having

awakened us to it. To dwell there calls not only for reflection but for silent

meditation. From that invisible point of rest where the opposites are balanced,

we can accompany him with delight on these adventures beyond the familiar

boundary marks.

 

The One Light - Bede Griffiths' Principal Writings

Introduction, p. 24-28

Edited and with Commentary by Bruno Barnhart

Templegate Publishers, Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-254-8

 

Notes:

 

[30] Ephesians 4:9.

 

[31] See note 29 above: Trapnell, Part III, p.246, note 65.