Monday, August 2, 2021

If Heaven is reabsorption, then Creation had no point

In vain produced, all rays return;
Evil will bless, and ice will burn.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Uriel"

The return to the Father, by resurrection, is like reabsorption into one's source. Just as you are not consciously awake while sleeping, so you will have no conscious recognition of this ultimate glorification. . . . Imagine for a moment that God is a pond of clear water, so still and smooth that it is not visible; one cannot see the still clear water, but can only see through it. It seems invisible. But when conflict is introduced the surface of the pond is violated and waves run counter to each other and there is splashing and chaos, a scene of violence, making the pond very visible. . . . Ultimately, the redemption of the world will be a cessation of the splashing, of such changing, and there will only be the nature of God left.
-- Roger Hathaway, The Mystic Passion

God's gonna trouble the water
-- Negro spiritual

It is a very common idea among mystics, including Christian mystics like Roger Hathaway, that salvation ultimately means losing one's individuality and being reabsorbed into God. In Heaven, Hathaway says, "There is no longer a self, nor even a history of one . . . . The conscious individual self doesn't exist, even in memory. There is only 'Godness.'"

This is basically the Indian idea of nirvana, expressed in theistic terms. The ideal of nirvana arises from the recognition of the futility of the merely cyclical. Samsara -- the endless cycle of birth and death, birth and death -- is intolerable. Why gain only to lose? Why grow into maturity only to decline into senility? Why be born only to die? The point, then, is to escape from the wheel of samsara and enter nirvana -- or re-enter it, rather, since it is from that state that we originally came. This of course implies the corollary that samsara-and-nirvana is just another pointless cycle like birth-and-death -- a sort of higher-order "meta-samsara." A Taiwanese Buddhist friend of mine once explained that we were all originally Buddhas but had fallen into the world of maya, and that Enlightenment and parinirvana were a return to that original state. "But if Buddhas can fall into maya," I said, "how is becoming a Buddha a permanent escape from maya and samsara?" The answer of course is that it isn't and can't be. If state X led to state Y, then a return to state X is obviously no guarantee against Y. In vain produced, all rays return.

Returning to the Christian version of this doctrine, as expressed by Roger Hathaway (but certainly not only by him!), if there is "no longer a self, nor even a history of one," then the reabsorption -- the return to a former state -- is complete; and whatever it was that caused our "fall" from that former state to this present one, it can be expected to happen again. This is the myth of Sisyphus -- generally understood to be an encapsulation of hell, not of Heaven.

But suppose that what originally caused our "fall" from Heaven was God's free choice to create us as separate beings -- and that upon our return God will choose never to do so again. The Sisyphean cycle is thus avoided, but we are left with the question -- What was the point? Why create in the first place beings whose only purpose is to return to their pre-created state? It seems to reduce God to the level of the G.O.D. of York -- who, you will recall, marched his ten thousand men up a hill and then marched them down again.

There is certainly a sense in which Heaven is a "return" to God, but it cannot be entirely that. Nothing makes sense or has any point unless Heaven is a fundamentally new state.

11 comments:

William Wildblood said...

I am completely with you on this. Mystics like Roger Hathaway misunderstand the nature of the spiritual path, the purpose of which is to include all the gifts of creation and bring them up into the divine world thereby enriching it with love and beauty and goodness, none of which have any meaning in his featureless pond of clear water. His is a form of mysticism that starts and ends in mist. (I should probably leave the wordplay to you).

Bruce Charlton said...

Yes - exactly.

(I think even Mormonism gets uncomfortably close to this error when too much emphasis is placed on the goal of mortal life being to 'return' to Heaven; with earth-life merely as a series of generic trials that can be failed - rather than emphasizing the more true linear and evolutionary aspects of the positive Mormon theology.)

So why do modern spiritual people Want this reabsorption - and Not want resurrection into Heaven? Why do they seek annihilation of the self (including the body - such persons do not want actual resurrection but to become pure spirit)?

And - if they really do seek annihilation of the self; why do they wait for a natural death?

Any answer to these questions seems to entail theism with a personal God who created for reasons, and wants things of particular Men. Thus suicide is proscribed for Hindus and Buddhists because it would adversely affect knarma/ reincarnation - yet why should suicide matter unless there was a personal plan for creation? And that has been denied.

In other words, this kind of deism is fundamentally incoherent, and always has been - and this is why it so easily takes the side of the devil in the spiritual war; and begins In Practice to focus on rejecting a person God, Jesus Christ as divine, and the personal life in Heaven.

More deeply, I think reabsorption is a symptom of those whose 'love' is not sufficiently personal. Those who 'love' abstractly, every-thing and every-body - whereas Christian love is of actual and specific persons.

There is a kind of self-damned psychopath who is incapable of inter-personal love or else rejects it; and some of these present themselves as example of a Higher Type of person whose love has transcended mere people like parents, spouses or children - and embraces all of everything...

They don't want resurrection to Heaven and would not, of course, be eligible for it - since their idea of love is a fake.

William Wildblood said...

To follow up on Bruce's points, I see this kind of spirituality as not just intellectually mistaken but morally wrong too. It amounts to a rejection of the true God and his replacement with an abstraction or, even worse, myself as God.

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Good comments, Bruce and William, but I do want to make it clear that choosing nirvana is not the same as choosing hell, and I would hesitate to call it "morally wrong." I know a lot of serious Mahayana Buddhists who are genuinely good and compassionate people. Their problem is not that they do not love, but that their love is negatively focused; they typically formulate their goal as "an end to the suffering of all sentient beings." It is a Cool/Devic religion, in contrast to the Hot/Ahuric religion of Jesus Christ.

Ultimately, each person has to decide what he really wants -- and it appears that many people really do want nirvana and do not want Heaven. It's a legitimate choice to make -- but one consequence of it is that this life -- this whole world -- was a mistake all along and has no meaning, purpose, or value.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Wm - I certainly agree wit you in theory - and such theory may hold in isolated non-Western cultures, I don't know. But in practice, here and now in The West - only seldom. Perhaps because it does not provide sufficient motivation and courage. But I can think of an exception which proves the rule wrt. the birdemic, climate change and antiracism: David Icke. However, he does fail on the sexual revolution and leftist ideals more generally - and at some point (tho' not yet) I think this will prove an Achilles heel.

William Wildblood said...

I was talking about Westerners who make this choice and I do think it is a moral failing because it does amount to a rejection of God who is a central part of Western culture in a way he is not in Buddhist countries. There different rules may apply. Nirvana may be a legitimate choice to make or it may not. But it is clearly not the choice God wants us to make for the reasons you give, i.e the whole merry go round of creation. Also, I think the Mahayana came about because of this original mistake in Buddhism. It basically snuck God and a saviour figure into the religion.

William Wildblood said...

But I agree it's certainly better than the choices most people make who completely reject any kind of spiritual goal or purpose.

By the way, snuck/sneaked, I don't know.

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

For obvious reasons, all the Buddhists I know personally are ethnic Chinese and follow the Chan/Pure-Land school of Mahayana. I know original (Theravada) Buddhism only through books. Although Amitabha and Guan Yin (Avalokiteshvara) have acquired somewhat god-like roles, I would say that Chinese Buddhism as practiced by those I know is still very, very far from Christian theism. Notable by its absence is any real concept of Providence.

Upon further reflection, I think I agree that real love is incompatible with choosing nirvana. It's easy enough to say -- and to sound saintly saying -- that I renounce my self and wish it to dissolve into God and the very memory of it be erased. Now think of someone you love and imagine expressing the same wish about him or her. It's obscene.

William Wildblood said...

Or your children. Reabsorption is for monastic celibates only really as early Buddhists were.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Wm - One difficulty is to acknowledge that only very few may want Heaven - and therefore few will attain it. Having said that - what about all the rest? Well, they have implicitly acknowledged that this mortal life is a complete waste of time.

I suppose that their decision will come after death, when they discover/ rediscover that this life is created and tailored. What will they infer about the creator? Will they be delighted, and follow Jesus? Or will they regard God as evil, for having inflicted life upon them - and join the party of the devil?

Or will they say that they have found consciousness to be a misery - and ask to be returned to a primordial state of aliveness but no consciousness - in a state of bliss? If someone really wanted this - God could do it, and might well make it happen. God wants the best for each of his children. I don't see that as a problem.

The question for me is whether many people *really* want that; or whether it is masking some underlying resentment and hostility against God and the plan of divine creation. These end times do seem to be resulting in a very clear division of pro- or anti-God; and this itself also seems to be collapsing into pro- or Anti-Christ. The other possibilities seem to be off the table - due to Man's own choices.

William Wildblood said...

"These end times do seem to be resulting in a very clear division of pro- or anti-God; and this itself also seems to be collapsing into pro- or Anti-Christ. The other possibilities seem to be off the table - due to Man's own choices." I agree with that and I notice it even in myself. When I first started out on this journey it was spirituality that interested me in its many forms, all of which seemed to be pointing in more or less the same direction. But this eclectic approach no longer seems to be an option. Increasingly, the decision is becoming first pro- or anti-God and then pro- or anti-Christ. I believe this is intended and it is intended to bring out something in every individual. Or not as the case may be.

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