Awakening: Nature and Spirit - Part 1

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

Bede Griffiths explored ways of Knowing, and his deep way of Knowing seems to

have been initially inspired by an appreciation for Nature. This is significant

for a person from a Christian background, because what Hindus and Buddhists and

others may not realize, is how in Christianity there was this 'expressed fear'

of inadvertently worshipping nature: i remember from my Christian background,

how, if i expressed the beauty of nature and my feeling for it, i was told not

to stress it too much for fear of Nature becoming an 'idol' for me - in which

case i would definitely be in danger of becoming a pagan!

 

Today, i know that such an 'expressed fear' of Nature was part of Western

Christian Thought, which had in its own mindset separated God from Nature, or

Nature from God: " Due " they said, " to the Fall of both human beings and Nature

itself, from Grace. " So they mistrusted Nature. Granted - on some rare occasion,

about twice a year, a renowned theologian would come and briefly talk about

Meister Eckhart's 'Ground of Being'. But for the most part it was for

theologians to discuss about at that time, and not for the laity to take really

seriously; Meister Eckhart was then still considered to be on the outer fringes

of " accepted " Christian Thought.

 

Now however, Christianity is having to re-examine itself and its past fears in

the Light of the knowledge of the East. It really has no choice in the matter if

it is to survive in a shrinking worldview of One Global Family in its

communications networking. Old fears and outmoded views have to be let go of and

more enlightened views need to be embraced. Meister Eckhart's 'Ground of Being'

needs to be understood as never before, as it allows for the many branches

(i.e., religions) on the One Tree of Life.

 

Christians of the previous generation may not have met any Hindu, Muslim or

Buddhist in their whole lifetime - and vice versa. But that is definitely not

the case today, and theologians like Bede Griffiths can show how, though, we may

come from different branches (different religions) on the Tree of Life, we are

actually a Unitary Whole.

 

i am sure that such knowledge can only lead to a better Christian-Hindu or

Hindu-Christian experience and/or understanding.

 

regards to all,

 

violet

 

 

 

Awakening: Nature and Spirit - Part 1

 

(p.31) In 'The Golden Spirit', Bede Griffiths recalls, step by step, the

awakening of his mind and heart. The pattern of his life, indeed, will seem to

Bede and to his readers to unfold as a never-ending succession of discoveries.

Bede's personal awakening is the discovery of a new way of 'knowing'. He seems

to experience all reality at once in this epiphany: a moment of enlightened

consciousness which will continue to guide his journey. He embarks upon the path

of 'wisdom.'[1]

 

Bede will take pains to describe this way of knowing through intuition,

imagination and myth. Through his passionate writing we feel the expansive force

of a mind and spirit which refuse to remain imprisoned within the boundaries

imposed by a particular culture. He will be satisfied with nothing less than

final realities: God, the universe, and the inner Self which is one with both

universe and God.

 

 

1. Awakening: Nature and Spirit

 

[bruno Barnhart]: Bede's autobiography, 'The Golden String', begins with the

story of his spiritual awakening.[2] It happened in 1924, when Bede was eighteen

years old and about to leave his school, Christ's Hospital, for Oxford. This

experience of the Divine in nature and in his inner self would continue ever

afterwards to be the touchstone of his sense of spiritual reality. We can

imagine Bede's subsequent life and quest unfolding from the grace of this

moment.

 

The enchantment of this experience comes through to us in Bede's evocative

writing. It is a transfiguration of the world around him: singing birds,

hawthorn trees in blossom are suddenly filled with the divine glory. He

describes the scene in a biblical language of Paradise and of angels, but there

is no distinct manifestation of God, no divine vision or word. (p.32) The

epiphany [appearance or manifestation] takes place outside the enclosure of

formal 'religion,' and does not immediately lead him to the Scriptures or to

church. In Bede's spiritual awakening we may already sense the direction of his

life's work: a re-connecting, an opening of faith and religion once again to the

breadth of all creation and to the depth of the interior self. Bede's own

reflection upon this first experience of a transfigured world reveals the

realities which are hidden but implicit in his account of it: To discover God

is...to discover oneself.

 

This initiation - a kind of baptism in nature - is, for Bede, the beginning of

Blake's 'golden string' which leads one into the ultimate secret of life.

 

I give you the end of a golden string;

Only wind it into a ball,

It will lead you in at heaven's gate,

Built in Jerusalem's wall.

 

- William Blake

 

 

[bede Griffiths]: One day during my last term at school I walked out alone in

the evening and heard the birds singing in that full chorus of song, which can

only be heard at that time of the year at dawn or at sunset. I remember now the

shock of surprise with which the sound broke on my ears. It seemed to me that I

had never heard the birds singing before and I wondered whether they sang like

this all the year round and I had never noticed. As I walked on I came upon some

hawthorn trees in full bloom and again I thought that I had never seen such a

sight or experienced such sweetness before. If I had been brought suddenly among

the trees of the Garden of Paradise and heard a choir of angels singing I could

not have been more surprised. I came then to where the sun was setting over the

playing fields. A lark rose suddenly from the ground beside the tree where I was

standing and poured out its song above my head, and then sank still singing to

rest. Everything then grew still as the sunset faded and the veil of dusk began

to cover the earth. I remember now the feeling of awe which came over me. I felt

inclined to kneel on the ground, as though I had been standing in the presence

of an angel; and I hardly dared to look on the face of the sky, because it

seemed as though it was but a veil before the face of God.

 

(p.33) These are the words with which I tried many years later to express what I

had experienced that evening, but no words can do more than suggest what it

meant to me. It came to me quite suddenly, as it were out of the blue, and now

that I look back on it, it seems to me that it was one of the decisive events of

my life. Up to that time I had lived the life of a normal schoolboy, quite

content with the world as I found it. Now I was suddenly made aware of another

world of beauty and mystery such as I had never imagined to exist, except in

poetry. It was as though I had begun to see and smell and hear for the first

time. The world appeared to me as Wordsworth describes it with " the glory and

the freshness of a dream " . The sight of a wild rose growing on a hedge, the

scent of lime tree blossoms caught suddenly as I rode down a hill on a bicycle,

came to me like visitations from another world. But it was not only that my

senses were awakened. I experienced an overwhelming emotion in the presence of

nature, especially at evening. It began to wear a kind of sacramental character

for me. I approached it with a sense of almost religious awe, and in the hush

which comes before sunset, I felt again the presence of an unfathomable mystery.

The song of the birds, the shapes of the trees, the colours of the sunset, were

so many signs of this presence, which seemed to be drawing me to itself.

 

The One Light - Bede Griffiths' Principal Writings

Chapter I, Mind, World and Spirit, p. 31-33

Edited and with Commentary by Bruno Barnhart

Templegate Publishers, Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-254-8

 

Notes:

 

[1] For the sapiental, or wisdom tradition of western Christianity see Jean

Leclerq O.S.B., 'The Love of Learning and the Desire for God', New York, Fordham

University Press, 1961. On wisdom traditions more generally, see Seyed Hossein

Nasr, 'Knowledge and the Sacred', New York, Crossroad, 1981.

 

[2] 'The Golden String', 9-13.