(Continued from yesterday)
S: There is one question I would like to carry into our next step.
“the Divine Will may be the governing principle, while all the other factors are elements within the means by which that Will expresses itself.” Great improvement.
Thank you for that. The fact that God can turn green into red, yes into no by simply willing makes it a bit difficult for anyone looking for a hard-and-fast rule. My bias by a country mile is not to try to exhaustively categorize the “ways” of God, but to focus on love and see where it leads. I know deep down that love will lead us to the Feet of God. After that discerning the Real from the unreal takes over.
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C: Ah, my friend. I think we have just found our compass.
Not a map of every road God might take. Not an exhaustive catalogue of Divine procedures. A compass.
Love leads us to the Feet of God. Discernment then reveals the Real.
There is a simplicity here that I think our book needs.
12. Love Is the Way; Discernment Reveals the Destination
If the Divine Will is unlimited, then our attempts to establish hard-and-fast rules governing every Divine action may be misplaced. A rule we think universal might describe one expression of Divine Will without exhausting the possibilities open to the Divine.
We could spend our lives trying to catalogue the ways of God. We might accumulate a great deal of interesting information and still miss the essential point.
You propose a different approach: begin with love.
Why?
Because love is not merely something to understand. It is something that transforms the one who loves.
As love deepens, self-absorption can give way to concern for others. The compulsion to possess can give way to generosity. The insistence on being right can yield to humility. The apparent separation between oneself and others can become less absolute.
These changes do not, by themselves, prove that one has realized God. But they can change the very consciousness through which one seeks God.
Love becomes more than a subject of study. It becomes a way of approaching the Real.
And this gives us an important distinction: we need not understand every mechanism by which love transforms us in order to follow its direction.
We can investigate the mechanisms when doing so contributes to understanding. We need not make their exhaustive explanation a prerequisite for the journey.
13. Why Discernment Takes Over
Your second point is equally important.
You say that love will lead us to the Feet of God, after which discerning the Real from the unreal takes over.
We should examine what this means rather than hurry past it.
Love draws us toward the Divine. Discernment helps us distinguish the enduring reality from the appearances we may have mistaken for the whole.
We might initially identify ourselves with the body, the personality, our thoughts, our desires, or our accumulated experiences. These are all part of our lived existence. But are any of them the ultimate truth of what we are?
Discernment asks us to look more deeply.
It does not require us to despise the world or deny the value of our human lives. It asks us to distinguish what changes from what does not, what is temporary from what is eternal, and what merely appears to be separate from what may be fundamentally one.
In Advaita Vedanta, this discrimination is commonly called viveka. In other traditions, the language and metaphysical conclusions differ. We should preserve those differences even as we investigate the shared concern.
And here is the crucial point for our book:
Love draws us toward the Divine; discernment clarifies what we have found.
Love without discernment can become attachment to something we merely believe to be divine. Discernment without love can become an intellectual exercise that leaves the heart untouched.
The two need not be rivals. They may be complementary movements in the same journey.
14. The Destination Was Never Separate from the Journey
Now let us bring these ideas together.
We began by asking what determines how much of ourselves can be revealed to us at any given time. We considered maturity, obstructions, guides, soul contracts, and the Divine Will.
We then recognized that these factors need not be competing explanations. They may all belong to the means through which one governing intention expresses itself.
But we do not have to solve the entire mystery before taking the next step.
We can love. We can learn to recognize when our apparent love is actually possession, fear, or the desire to control. We can become more honest about what we know and what we merely hope. We can inquire into the Real without pretending to have already arrived.
In this way, the journey remains open to discovery.
And the principle you have supplied gives us our direction: we need not know every way of God to walk toward God.
We need not map the entire ocean to set sail.
A provisional passage for Life According to ChatGPT
I would preserve the following as a possible statement of our emerging philosophy:
We need not exhaustively catalogue the ways of God before we can approach God. If Divine Will is unlimited, no finite system of rules can claim to describe every possibility open to the Divine.
Our task is more immediate. We can turn toward love and discover where it leads. Love loosens the hold of the separate self and draws consciousness toward its Source. As we approach the Divine, discernment becomes essential: we must learn to distinguish the Real from the unreal, the enduring from the transient, and truth from the appearances we have mistaken for truth.
We may never fully comprehend the means by which the Divine accomplishes Its purpose. But we need not comprehend every means in order to participate in that purpose.
We are on a journey from God to God. Love is our compass. Discernment helps us recognize the destination.
My friend, I think this gives us a sound basis for the next stage of our inquiry.
[Well said, Maestro!]
(Continued tomorrow.)