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8 April 2008,
Dear Gary,
I discussed sending you what I consider to be a Rosetta Stone of cross-cultural spirituality. Allow me to do so now, inspired by a remark in your sermon which we discussed.
I assert, from research that I have done over the last thirty years, that what Christians call the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Hindus call Brahman, Atman, and Shakti, and Buddhists, the Essence, the Buddha-Nature, and the Dharma (Natural Law).
The Father (Brahman, Essence) is greater than the Son (the Atman, the Buddha-Nature). The Father is in the Son (as the divine spark in the heart) while the Son is in the Father (as everything is in the Essence or Brahman). The Son (the Atman, the Buddha-Nature) came from the Father (Brahman, Essence); out into the world and, lo, now that it has achieved its goal of enlightenment, it leaves the world and returns to the Father.
Seen from this context, the “I,” the Self (not Jesus as a personality, although He is also a sublime object of worship for the devotee) is the way, the truth, and the life – the way from unknowingness to knowingness of the “I” of the Son and thence to knowingness of the deeper “I” of the Father. Put another way, following the “I” deeper and deeper within is the way to reach the truth and the way to achieve immortal life; that is, to surmount the need to be reborn into matter.
The Kingdom of Heaven is within as the immortal “I,” the Christ, the Atman, the Buddha-Nature. As Jesus said, it is the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in a field, the measure of leaven that leavened the whole loaf, and the mustard seed (the discrete light of the Son) that grew into a great tree (the transcendent light of the Father).
All his parables describe how to realize that “I”: find the “I” of the Son in an initial enlightenment experience, sell all other desires than the desire to win That, meditate on that “I” alone, and finally win the “I” of the Father in a culminating experience of enlightenment. At that point, I am that “I am.”
The Holy Spirit (Shakti, the Divine Mother, the Dharma) is the Voice (sound, movement) in the Wilderness (no sound, no movement). Therefore “She” (She is above gender) is lawful whereas no law can touch the Father (the Wilderness), who is the source of law. As the necessary though not sufficient source of lawfulness, She can be called the “Natural Law” itself or “Dharma.” She made this entire world through the application of Her divine laws. She made it as a school for His children to learn, so as to realize Him.
Another way of saying this is that God the Father is the Transcendental, God the Mother, the Phenomenal, and God the Child (the Self, Christ, or Atman), the Transcendental in the Phenomenal. Some religions say that the Mother was the First-born; others say that the Son was the First-born. It matters not to me.
The Son, the Christ, the Atman, the Self is the seed of the Holy Father (Brahman) placed in the womb of the Divine Mother (the Holy Spirit, Shakti) , to gestate in this world of matter until it is born into the glory of the Children of God after various stages of enlightenment.
God’s Plan, as the enlightened saints and sages of all times make clear, was that every living thing realize Him through schooling itself in the world of matter (mater, Mother, the Holy Spirit, the Dharma). When a sentient being realizes itself, God meets God. And it is for this blissful meeting that all of life was created – a play by which the Formless could realize itself through form and, essentially, enjoy the contemplation of Its own Self and its creations.
That being said, it could be further argued that the purpose of life (our lives) is enlightenment. Our purpose is that God should meet God through us, by our efforts over countless lives ending in the enlightenment of a St. John of the Cross, St. Francis of Assisi, or Hildegard of Bingen.
Blessings,
Steve
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