"You who does rule the Universe
with everlasting law,
founder of earth and heaven
alike,
who has bidden time stand forth
from out of Eternity,
for ever firm Yourself, yet
giving movement unto all.
No causes were without You
that could then impel You to
create this mass of changing matter,
but within Yourself exists the
very idea of perfect good,
which grudges nothing, for of
what can it have envy?
You make all things follow that
high pattern.
In perfect beauty You move in
Your mind a world of beauty,
making all in a like image,
and bidding the perfect whole to
complete its perfect functions.
All the first principles of
Nature You do bind together by perfect orders as of numbers,
so that they may be balanced each
with its opposite:
cold with heat, and dry with
moist together;
thus fire may not fly upward too
swiftly because too purely,
nor may the weight of the solid
earth drag it down and overwhelm it.
You make the soul as a third
between mind and material bodies:
to these the soul gives life and
movement,
for You spread it abroad among
the members of the Universe, now working in accord.
Thus is the soul divided as it
takes its course,
making two circles, as though a
binding thread around the world.
Thereafter it returns unto itself
and passes around the lower earthly mind;
and in like manner it gives
motion to the heavens to turn their course.
You it is who does carry forward
with like inspiration these souls and lower lives.
You fill these weak vessels with
lofty souls,
and send them abroad throughout
the heavens and earth,
and by Your kindly law do turn
them again to Yourself and bring them to seek,
as fire does, to rise to You
again.” . . .
—from
Book 3, Poem 9
Of
course I know that the trendy philosophical fashion of the age is to deny God,
anything greater than ourselves, or anything that might give us a meaning and
purpose beyond our own preferences.
I no
longer choose to fight with people over such a point, because I know what a
task it was to fight with myself over such a point. Being in conflict with
myself never made it any better, though sincere and humble reflection made all
of the difference.
I can
hardly blame people for their doubts. How often have you heard people tell you
that what they want from you is, of course, God’s will, or that you must give
all that you have to an invisible man in the sky? Somehow, all that you have
ends up in their pockets. How convenient for them! They claim to know what you
don’t know.
Yet I
suggest the problem is not from believing in something greater than us, but
rather from not believing in what is the greatest. Your boss, and your banker,
and your lawyer, and your priest are in a sense, more than you, since they have
more power than you; the conventional image of the stern fellow with a big
white beard, sitting on a glowing throne, is hardly any different. Those people
may be something, but they are not everything. Look to what is itself
everything.
No, the
great difficulty with conceiving of the Divine, in whatever form we may
understand it, is not that we are thinking too big, but that we aren’t thinking
big enough. Think bigger, to the point where you have reached the biggest, that
beyond which you can conceive of nothing more.
I don’t
just think of a mighty warrior, or an influential bureaucrat, or a powerful
politician. I think of that which has no limits and borders, which allows no
weakness or imperfection, the very measure and standard of all existence. I
think of the infinite, and I think of what is boundless, with no beginning or
end. It isn’t a part of creation, one piece of the whole, but rather the source
of creation. It isn’t even a being,
but being itself. All other passing
things are effects, shadows, or aspects of its immovable permanence.
Does
this seem like a pie on the sky? I have sometimes thought so, until I actually
put on my thinking cap. If I see what is changing, it is only possible through
what is unchangeable. If I see what comes to be, it is only possible through
what already is. If I see what is incomplete, it is only possible through what
is complete.
If I
tell myself I can’t see it with my eyes, I am fooling myself. I see it in, and
through, and with everything I see around me. The cause is apparent in the effect. I feel the light directly, which requires the source of the light. I
have come to be, and I will end, and that means there is somewhere I have come
from, and somewhere I am going to. I know all creatures are somehow lacking, in
constant search for what fulfills them, the end for which they were made.
An
awareness of the Divine is not a matter of blind faith; I have come to consider
it a necessity of reason.
There
are days I don’t want this to be true at all, but there are also days I want to
not get out of bed either. I found that what bothered me about God was not God
Himself, but what small-minded people chose to make of God, serving not the
Image of all things, but only their own image. I was quite busy hacking away at
the members, and I ignored the root. I saw the malice in the messengers, and I
neglected the message.
Everything
in Nature has its function, an all function demands purpose, and all purpose
reveals Mind—not just any mind, but Perfect Mind.
If I am
seeking something constant, stable, and absolutely reliable, should I not look
to what is in itself constant, stable, and absolutely reliable? I don’t mean
this or that school, or ritual, or cult. I mean that which is permanent through
all impermanence.
Does the
name bother me? Let me then change the name, at least for the moment, if it
brings with it too much uncomfortable baggage. Let me never, however, close
myself to the Divine reality of which I am only a part.
I am
piece of a world. The world is itself something in a state of flux. What stands
behind it and makes it what it is?
Written in 9/2015
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