Fear not to build

"And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine."

His lord answered and said unto him, "Thou wicked and slothful servant!"

-- Matt. 25:25-26

I recently read this passage in Roger Hathaway's The Mystic Passion.

Now, entertain in your imagination for a moment, a world of diverse spiritual people who have such confidence in their own spiritual truths that they can permit others to differ and grant truths might be understood differently by other persons. Since the Spirit of God motivates within a seeker such insights for the purpose of that person's path of enlightenment, is it not incumbent upon us to stand aside and permit the God to do His own work? In such a world of loving and communing and worshiping of our eternal Father, there might be many differing opinions, many discussions, sincere arguments, formulations of defenses (apologies), and intense studies. 

So what if one person believes the Holy Spirit of God to be a separate person from the Father while another believes it to be the extension of the essence and power of the Eternal Father himself? So what if one person believes Jesus to be co-eternal with the Father for a three-person-God while another person believes him to be begotten as a Word spoken in time? So what if one person believes Baptism should be by immersion and another by anointing? Spiritual fellowship need not be endangered but could be enhanced as the sharing of speculations and discussions! 

There would be no hatred or anger, no insistence upon agreement, no condemnations of fellow seekers, no inquisitions, no organizations claiming exclusive rights of salvation. What there would be: implicit confidence that God is great enough to guide His own children to Himself in His own way. This God of all-that-is has never been so emotionally sensitive that He cannot tolerate the stumbling of his children while they learn to walk. As any mother reaches down to help a baby who has stumbled, so does God pull into His heart with special love a child who sincerely reaches toward him. It is hardly comprehensible to my mind that the so-called church of a loving God could fail to recognize the simple love that a mother knows instinctively.

Shortly thereafter, as part of my project of listening to the entire Bible read aloud, I listened to the following passage in Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (3:10-16).

According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.

If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.

If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? 

Christ never intended that we should take his teachings as some finished and inviolable Temple, complete in every way, to be passively received, codified in creeds, and propagated. The Sower has sown his Word, and we who receive are to bring forth fruit -- new Word -- some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some an hundred.

Some are hesitant to build on the foundation that is Christ, hesitant to think "beyond what has been revealed." Yes, much of what we build will turn out to be stubble and straw -- are we better builders than the incomparable Thomas Aquinas? -- but that is a finite loss, a risk well worth taking. We ourselves will be saved, and who knows if some of what we have built will survive as a precious stones in the Temple of God. In John's vision of the New Jerusalem descending from heaven, he notes that "the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones" (Rev. 21:19) and goes on to list specific stones which his readers would have recognized as symbols of the twelve tribes of Israel -- that is, of God's people scattered throughout the nations. We -- we mere mortals -- are to be the precious stones garnishing the foundations.

The only danger is in becoming too attached to one's thoughts, in identifying with them, and thus being unwilling to part with them when the time comes. (See "No mercy for sin.") That is to say, the danger is in pride. Paul speaks of the day that will test every man's work and burn up all that can be burned of it. The structures of stubble we have built will be consumed, but we ourselves will be saved. What of the proud, though, those who have become so attached to their structures that they feel as if they are that stubble? Malachi has the answer.

For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall (4:1-2).

That final clause is ambiguous in the Hebrew; another possible reading is "and ye shall go forth leaping like calves released from the stall." To those whose hearts are rightly centered, the burning of all that burns will bring only freedom release.

Aquinas was, by a happy coincidence, nicknamed the Dumb Ox. When he was granted his heavenly vision, when he saw that great Sun of righteousness that burns as an oven and tries every man's work, when he was moved to say of his own life's work, "All that I have written is as straw," I like to think that, saint that he was, he left it all behind lightly and went gamboling forth as a calf released from the stall. And it was not all straw, far from it. Surely some of the glittering gems in the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem are his.

As Malachi says elsewhere, "And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him" (3:17).

John the Drowner

Yesterday morning, I read this passage in Roger Hathaway's The Mystic Passion.

When Jesus went through the drowning of his human self, before John the Baptist, He knew the significance of yielding to the flood of drowning water, and that is why God spoke and said He was well pleased. Most of the people that John was baptizing were having their sins washed away, experiencing a cleansing, but Jesus was yielding the human nature to a death.

I found this striking because, though I have often heard baptism described as a symbolic death and resurrection, the figurative language tends to focus on burial ("buried in the waters of baptism"); I had never heard anyone call it a drowning before.

On the evening of the same day, I received an email with a link to a YouTube video of a conversation between John Butler and Rupert Sheldrake, and I watched most of it. Beginning at the 14:29 mark, Sheldrake proposes that John the Baptist was literally drowning people.

And I personally like John the Baptist because I think John the Baptist was really involved in powerful rites of passage. Basically, I think he was a drowner, and I think he held people under in the Jordan just long enough to induce a near-death experience by drowning.

And as you know, people who've had near-death experiences often say their lives totally changed. They've gone out of their body. They've gone into a totally different realm full of joy and light and meet dead people who are now gloriously resplendent with light, and they love being there, but they have to come back because it's only a near-death experience. And many of them have their lives changed by this. They've died, and they've been born again.

Now that's exactly what John the Baptist was doing to people. We know he was holding them underwater, not sprinkling them with water. He was actually holding him underwater by total immersion. They were transformed by this process, and it's usually considered to be just symbolic. But my view is, Why would you do something that's just symbolic when just for another minute or two underwater you could have the real thing, a near-death experience?

And I think our Lord had that at the baptism, which is when the first moment of the revelation to him of his divine affinity was, according to the account in the New Testament. So I think John the Baptist was an initiator who was leading people through a life-transforming rite of passage.

I'm not sure what I think about Sheldrake's theory, but it was quite a coincidence to run into such similar descriptions of Jesus' baptism in a single day like that.

The loneliness of the way

And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.

-- Genesis 32:24

The synchronicity fairies led me today to this passage from The Mystic Passion of Roger Hathaway.

How can God expect us to find the way if he gives us no guidance?

Hear me! If you genuinely ask questions like those, you have taken the first step. Your concern about your spirituality is the oil for your lamp and you won't be found wanting. Your concern will develop and you will find yourself feeling ever closer and closer to God. As for answers to your questions, there aren't many answers. And certainly the preachers don't have them. But your intensity of devotion will bring you understanding that will comfort you and bring you bliss. Continuance in your devotion will cause the sun to shine for you in the kingdom of heaven and you will come to see and know the place as home, and it will become your home -- even while you still lug around your heavy body. Heaven is not another place, distant from you; it is merely on the other side of appearances, a state of being that is within your grasp, a oneness with God in which you don't look up in the sky for him, but rather know that you and He are the same in a very special way. Jesus tried to tell us this, and portrayed the best example of spiritual awakeness.

And just as He did it alone, so must you do it alone. There have been many through history that have walked that lone path and found the tree of golden apples -- most of them unknown individuals who never knew any fame or material wealth, but who stepped far beyond this world in their spiritual development. Some that we do know of would be some of the Mystics, some of the philosophers. I recognize one as the Buddha, author of the Dhammapada, a Mystic of the highest order and one who certainly did not promote the organization of the spiritualistic religion which purports to follow him. There have been many with words of spiritual wisdom: Zoroaster, Milarepa, St. Francis, Augustine, Herman Hesse, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacob Boehme, Thomas Merton, Tennyson, Nikos Kazantzakis, Francis Thompson, and others whom you should watch for. And in the end, there still are no teachers; the Spirit of "all that is" lives within you, is you, and is awakened by words that you read, as seen through your eyes, whatever the material may be -- daily newspaper, magazines, Bible, poetry, whatever. Inspiration is a two-way street; it isn't just black words on white paper, but is a happening in your reality, a symbiotic event, a spiritual stirring within you.

"Every man must always suffer, die, go to heaven in the Body of Christ himself, and none can suffer, die, believe, or be a Christian for any other" (Sebastian Franck, "heretic," 1499-1542).

In these evil times, we feel more acutely than ever that we are alone -- and yet, like Jacob, not alone -- for he be not far from every one of us. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.

Selah.

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.

Silent and spoken prayer

Who teaches children that times of quietness are doors to heaven, to bliss, to peace and happiness beyond all understanding? . . . Who teaches that quiet contemplation is really prayer? The church teaches that prayer is an activity, something you DO.

-- Roger Hathaway, The Mystic Passion

I at length came to the determination to "ask of God," concluding that if he gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom, and would give liberally, and not upbraid, I might venture. . . . It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally.

-- Excerpts from the History of Joseph Smith, the Prophet

Isn't it surprising that -- at the age of 14, and living in a place where there was "an unusual excitement on the subject of religion" in which many of his immediate family members were involved -- the young Joseph Smith had never once "made the attempt to pray vocally"? Not so much as a "now I lay me down to sleep"? Having children pray vocally is a virtual universal in Christendom, and surely must have been even more so 200 years ago. Smith was raised in a solidly Christian, if unchurched, family and was a serious and careful reader of the Bible from a very young age. He was not in any way irreligious -- and yet he had never prayed aloud.

The results of this first vocal prayer were spectacular.

I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.

But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction -- not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being -- just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.

It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other -- This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!

Two things stand out about this. First, this vocal prayer seems to have been much more "powerful" than his earlier, non-vocal, prayers in terms of getting a response -- first from a demonic power and then from God himself and Jesus Christ. (This is echoed in the sacred drama of the Mormon temple, where Adam prays -- laying special stress on the fact that he is doing so vocally, with his mouth -- and is answered first by Satan and then by heavenly messengers.) Second, the fact that Smith had never prayed vocally before was apparently no big deal to God. He was not told to repent for having been lax in his prayers or anything like that; it seems that his general habit of non-vocal prayer was perfectly acceptable. Vocal prayer is, in some situations, uniquely effective, but it is not required that it be habitual. "Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few" (Ecclesiastes 5:2).

This fits with my own prayer life.

I think we can distinguish between two types of non-vocal prayer. It is possible to "pray silently" the way one reads silently -- that is, verbally, in clearly defined words and sentences, but checking the articulatory mechanism so that no sound is produced. I used to attempt this regularly, but it never came naturally, and I would always find myself lapsing into non-verbal contemplation. Nowadays my occasional silent-but-verbalized "prayers" are really more mantras than prayers properly so called. For example, I might silently repeat the Hail Mary or some other formula, not as a form of communication ("not as the heathen, who think they shall be heard for their much speaking") but as a way of focusing my mind and spirit and keeping the devil at bay.

True silent prayer is non-vocal because it is non-verbal. It is neither speech nor an internal simulation of speech but the deep silence of contemplation in God -- not an activity, but a mode of being. It is surely this sort of prayer that Paul had in mind when he wrote, "Pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17) and advised "praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit" (Ephesians 6:18). Valentin Tomberg expresses it well in his Letter on the Magician:

With time, the silence or concentration without effort becomes a fundamental element always present in the life of the soul. It is like the perpetual service at the church of Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre which takes place, whilst in Paris one works, one trades, one amuses oneself, one sleeps, one dies.

"The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord" (Proverbs 20:27), and sometimes I visualize this in literal terms -- in the center of myself, invisible, a candle, burning perpetually with its slow and steady and silent light. This is secret prayer, silent prayer, prayer without ceasing.

As for vocal prayer, I recognize its unique power and believe it should be used sparingly. Very occasionally, my private prayers take vocal form -- once or twice a year, maybe. And although my experience with such things is very limited, such experience as I have suggests that when "miraculous" results are needed, vocal prayer -- and especially prayer in Latin, for some reason -- is uniquely efficacious. Exorcists reportedly say the same thing.

The need for vocal prayer in exorcism may tie in with Joseph Smith's first vocal prayer -- the immediate effect of which was to trigger a demonic onslaught. When we speak, the devil hears. When we keep silent, the candle of the Lord is invisible to him. "Yea, I tell thee, that thou mayest know that there is none else save God that knoweth thy thoughts and the intents of thy heart" (D&C 6:16).

The "self-righteous humility" of constantly begging forgiveness

Shortly after I posted "Repentance, forgiveness, and damnation in the Fourth Gospel," the synchronicity fairies saw to it that I read this passage in The Mystic Passion by the late Roger Hathaway.

This is a serious matter, and I tell you that there is no virtue or nobility in playing the sinner's role, of beating the chest and crying, "I am a sinner". That is not a display of humility; that is a brazen statement to God that you identify with your old human nature and don't accept the forgiveness, that Christ couldn't have included you in the redemptive plan because your sins are too great, that God isn't great enough to make the atonement include you, but that you are great enough to atone for yourself and this show of humility is your offering.

See what an affront such hypocrisy can be? After God accomplishes the plan and announces to you that you are forgiven and free, you respond by saying, "No, not me; I have my guilt and I am hanging on to it; I will cry and wail and beat my chest and lash my back and crawl on the ground and walk with shoulders stooped and confess every Sunday that I am a sinner, and I won't give up my guilt."

You might respond to the above by saying you have sinned since you last prayed for forgiveness, and that each week there are a few more that should be added to the list, that forgiveness is something you must beg for over and over again, that God didn't forgive YOU "once and for all."

Listen again. What you have done this past week or year does not count, does not show on any list, is not remembered by God AT ALL. Like the New Testament says, "A Christian can do no sin." You are a new creation, a new person, God's perfect child, clean, pure, forgiven, holy, righteous, a saint! That is the way God sees you, -- unless you reject Him and insist on identifying yourself with sin.

Sin has unconscionably become a chief tool of religion, by which the priest/businessmen manipulates and exploits Jesus' sheep in order to maintain financial solvency and exercise fearful authority over them. The church (religion) has not accepted the concept of God's forgiveness "once and for all", and each Sunday has you confessing your "sins" and pleading for forgiveness anew. It acts no different than did the Old Testament church, under the condemning law. It is as though Christ never brought his message of good news that you are free. The church still views man as sinner and teaches its followers to walk with shoulders stooped, head drooping, shuffling along in a kind of sickening sweet, self-righteous humility that makes an observer want to puke. Now, think, is that debased religious posture any way for a forgiven child to stand before his Father who wants to see a smile, joy, appreciation, exuberance?

This puts into words something that I have felt for a long time -- the fakeness, yes, even the pretentiousness, of begging for forgiveness again and again.

In my years as a Church-Mormon, my understanding of repentance and forgiveness was that expressed in Doctrine and Covenants 58:42-43. "Behold," it begins, "he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more." But then it continues, "By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins -- behold, he will confess them and forsake them."

In other words, you are forgiven if you repent -- but repentance means, in part, never doing it again. So when you do do it again, it means you didn't really repent the first time and therefore need to repent harder. I have many memories of trying to do just that, of kneeling down beside my bed, trying my hardest to work up the "godly sorrow" I had been taught was necessary, and then, well, wallowing in it -- and praying, "Please, please, please forgive me, and this time I really, really won't do it again." Please pretty please with sugar on top? In order to muster up an adequate amount of redemptive guilt, I would review in my mind the tortures inflicted on Jesus by his Roman executioners and tell myself that each was somehow my fault, that the scourge and the nails and the lance and all the rest had been because of my own petty misdeeds.

Did God reject these mawkishly juvenile prayers? No, I don't believe that he did. But they weren't what he wanted, and it was hoped that I would outgrow them. True repentance is not an emotion any more than the pure love of Christ is an emotion, and obviously repentance doesn't mean never doing anything bad ever again. God would have designed this world rather differently if that was what he expected!

What is repentance, then? My current understanding is that repentance is confession. No, not confession in the sense of saying, "Bless me, Father, for I have committed adultery in my heart 700 times this week." Confession doesn't mean rattling off an itemized list of one's recent misdeeds to God or a priest. It means acknowledging sin as sin. The unrepentant are those who make excuses for themselves, who deny that their sins are sins and are therefore unwilling to give them up. Willingness is all; the flesh is weak, but the spirit must be willing. Daily repentance does not mean daily groveling for forgiveness like a beaten dog; it means reminding oneself what is good and what is evil, what is of God and what is not, and then going on with life, confident in the knowledge that "he that believeth is not condemned."

And yes, of course we should try to be virtuous and to sin less, but in the end no such projects can really succeed in this present life. They are not what repentance is, and they are not that on which salvation depends.