I’m actually going to focus on spirituality in my writing for a while, no matter how intense things are outside, if you’d allow me.
It provides me with a break from the intensity of events and the flood of news releases, which I feel the need for right now.
The Updates provide news on what’s actually happening and I’m seeking a counterweight, a place more uplifting than what a British comedy group called “news of fresh disasters.” (1)
Hopefully the two – the Update and my daily column – will balance each other off in energetic terms. May I?
***
I have, for a long time, tried to fathom the relationship between Knowledge and Love. So far, I see Love as attracting us to Mother/Father One and Knowledge (Recognition, Remembrance, Realization) as causing our mergence with it/them. (2)
But it was mere intellectual knowledge at the time. And that’s as far as I’d gotten.
And then today, I bumped into a quote from Sri Ramakrishna that took my knowledge from being mere intellectual speculation to being perceived truth, recognition, realization and certainty.
This was not a major realization (i.e., enlightenment) but it was an important realization nonetheless.
Sri Ramakrishna said:
“In an Incarnation of God (i.e, an avatar) one sees at the same time, the sun of Knowledge and the moon of Love. ” (3)
What an apt metaphor. The Sun sheds light on things. It leads to knowledge. And love attracts us to its object. The two working in combination draw us “closer” to the One and then illuminate It. And, when we know it as ourselves, we merge.
***
But wait a minute. For what end? For what purpose? Why is there a process like this that we all must go through?
Let’s spend a few moments, listening to Earth’s enlightened sages on what the One’s purpose was in creating and mandating this journey for us all.
I’ve said that the One gets to meet itself in a moment of our enlightenment and for this meeting was all of life created. Let’s see what the sages say. Let me arrange their views to form a complete and fluid discussion.
Krishna: To reach [Brahman, God the Father] is said to be the greatest of all achievements. (4)
Julian of Norwich: The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything [I.e., the conscious state of Sahaja, Vijnana, or Ascension]. (5)
John Ruusbroec: [For] the rational creature to attain the sublime beauty of God and to possess it in [a] supernatural way … is [the] reason that God created heaven and earth and all that is in them. (6)
Sri Ramakrishna: The only purpose of life is to realize God. (7)
Ibn Arabi: I was a hidden treasure and I loved to be known, and I created the creation so that I be known. (8)
The Koran: It was not in sport that We created the heavens and the earth and all that lies between them. We created them to reveal the truth. But of this most men have no knowledge. (9)
Sri Aurobindo: There is no I nor thou, but only one divine Self equal in all embodiments, equal in the individual and the group, and to realize that, to express that, to serve that, to fulfill that is all that matters. (10)
Swami Vivekananda: Find God. Nothing else matters. (11)
Zarathustra: He who has not yet won the soul has gained nothing. (12)
Rumi: There is one thing in this world which must never be forgotten. If you were to forget everything else, but did not forget that, then there would be no cause for worry; whereas if you performed and remembered and did not forget every single thing, but forgot that one thing, then you would have done nothing whatsoever.
It is just as if a king had sent you to the country to carry out a specified task. You go and perform a hundred other tasks; but if you have not performed that particular task on account of which you had gone to the country, it is as if you have performed nothing at all. So man [humanity] has come into this world for a particular task, [enlightenment] and that is his purpose; if he does not perform it, then he will have done nothing. (13)
Annie Besant: The ‘end of knowledge’ is to know God — not only to believe; to become one with God — not just to worship afar off. Man must know the reality of the Divine Existence, and then know — not only vaguely believe and hope — that his own innermost Self is one with God, and that the aim of life is to realize that unity. Unless religion can guide a man to that realization, it is but ‘as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.’ (14)
Mother/Father One created life and the world so that they could experience the bliss of meeting themselves in a moment of our enlightenment. For me, this is the long and short of it.
Since you and I are God, since everything is God, “their Plan” is also our plan.
The journey is not only wonderful at the end but wonderful all along the way – as soon as we begin to experience this higher form of live.
The Moon of Love will draw us home and the Sun of Knowledge will allow us to realize our identity with the Mother/Father One: “O Thou I!” (15)
Thus, for us sentient beings, the purpose of our lives is enlightenment, to know ourselves as God. In that moment God meets God and for that meeting … was all this created.
Footnotes
(1) “Her diary at this point reads, in its own way, like the second world war newscasts parodied by Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore in Beyond the Fringe: ‘This is Alvar Lidell bringing you news of fresh disasters.'” (“The Blackbird Diaries,” at https://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2018/01/the-blackbird-diaries/.)
(2) Archangel Michael asks: “We do not want anything capitalized.” (Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Aug. 12, 2016.)
(3) Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 351. (Hereafter GSR.)
(4) Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 77.
(5) Julian of Norwich in Brendan Doyle, ed., Meditations with Julian of Norwich. Santa Fe: Bear, 1983, 60.
(6) John Ruusbroec in James A. Wiseman, John Ruusbroec. The Spiritual Espousals and Other Works. New York, etc.: Paulist Press, 1985, 72.
(7) Paramahansa Ramakrishna in GSR, ibid., 273.
(8) Muhyideen Ibn Arabi, Kernel of the Kernel. trans. Ismail Hakki Bursevi. Sherborne: Beshara, n.d., 3.
(9) N.J. Dawood, trans. The Koran. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964; c1959, 145.
(10) Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1983. , 316.
(11) Swami Vivekananda in Swami Chetanananda, God Lived with Them. St. Louis: Vedanta Society of St. Louis, 1997, 48.
(12) Zarathustra in Duncan Greenlees, trans. The Gospel of Zarathushtra. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1978, 112.
(13) Rumi in A.J. Arberry, trans., Discourses of Rumi. New York; Samuel Weiser, 1977; c1961, 26.
(14) Annie Besant, Esoteric Christianity. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1953; c1901, 21-2.
(15) “I went from God to God, until they cried from me in me, ‘O thou I!”‘ (Bayazid of Bistun in Aldous Huxley, ed., The Perennial Philosophy. New York, etc.: Harper and Row, 1970; c1944, 12.)