Photo courtesy of Nigelle de Visme (Sita Devi)
December 17th is the birthdate of Father Bede and I started writing this piece with that in mind, growing out of what I was trying to articulate for this month’s Zoom Ashram theme, on a link between Advent and the purnamadah purnamidam Shanti mantra that leads into the Isa (or Isha) Upanishad. Fullness is proceeding from Fullness into the fullness of our humanity, with no loss to its source, despite it filling that into which it was poured. That which is transcendent is expressed fully in this, this fully human form.
I decided to follow this string into Bede Griffiths’ introduction to Universal Wisdom, this leading from the Isa Upanishad through the roots of Guru Nayak in a form of Hindu monism, into the revelation of the Word that became flesh and lived amongst us. In writing these few paragraphs out, I’ve been in the presence of a man with incredible breadth and depth of vision, able to communicate the joy of living in truth, compassion and lightness. I’ll start with another book, The Cosmic Revelation, Father Bede reflecting on the interplay of the teachings of Vedānta with his own deep faith in a God of Love and Truth. He begins the chapter, The Revelation of the Cosmic Person (Purusha):
Om purnamadah purnamidam
Purnat purnam udachyate
Purnasya purnamadaya
Purnam eva avashishyate
Om Shanti Shanti Shantih
“That is full, this is full. From fullness, fullness proceeds. Removing fullness from fullness, fullness alone remains.”
Into his second paragraph, Bede writes:
‘For Christians, God is essentially a person. God in the Old Testament, Yahweh, is a personal God above everything. But with the Hindu Brahman and Atman we don’t know, at first, whether a person is referred to or not. The words seem to imply an immanent Presence. The Hindu sage, starting from this world, and from the Divine Presence in the world, is the seer who has seen beyond this world, beyond the world of the senses, beyond the world of human understanding. He has seen ‘That.’ He sometimes will not give it any other name, just tat, ‘That.’ And then he will say that ‘This,’ this world which we experience, is ‘That.’
‘Now, what is the relation between this world and That? We ask that question all the time. What is the relation between Man and God? All sorts of answers are given today. In the fifth century BC in India men faced this problem at its deepest level. To my mind they reached the deepest understanding of all.
Purnam adah, purnam idam means, “‘That’ is God, the infinite Beyond,” which is a purnam, a ‘fullness’ or, as the New Testament calls it, a pleroma, a ‘fullness of Being.’ “This” world which we experience is also a purnam, or fullness. Take the fullness of this world from the fullness of God, and He remains eternally the same. The world neither adds anything to God nor takes anything away.’
Bede Griffiths summarises the Isa Upanishad, which follows on this mantra, in his introduction to Universal Wisdom:
‘It was this experience of the self in its ground or source, in its original being, which was the discovery of the Upanishads. They called this self atman from the root an (as in animus and anima) to “breathe”. In meditation it is through the breath that one learns to go beyond the senses and the mind. By concentrating on the breathing all images and thoughts and feelings are brought to rest, and then in the silence, in the emptiness of all thought, the knowledge of the spirit dawns, the pure consciousness from which all conscious knowledge comes, the source of all the activity of the mind. The Isa Upanishad speaks of seeing the “self” or “spirit” in all beings and all beings in the “self”. It then goes on to show the danger of dwelling either on transcendence, that is consciousness of a transcendent reality above this world, or on immanence, that is experience of the world as immanent in human consciousness. It is only when we learn to see the immanent (the material world) in the transcendent (the divine) and the transcendent in the immanent, that we find the truth. Both materialism and idealism can lead us astray. It is the consciousness which transcends the opposites and all dualities that reaches the truth.’ (p20)
Father Bede picks up this theme again when introducing the teaching of Guru Nanak:
‘In order to uphold the transcendence of God, the supreme Being, monotheists feel impelled to see the world as separate from God. Thus religions tend to fall either into dualism or into monism. In order to avoid saying that God and the world are Two, the monistic will deny the reality of the world and hold that all multiplicity is an illusion. But the monotheism of Guru Nanak and all authentic religion holds that God, the absolute Reality, is both transcendent and immanent. The world has no reality in itself – as such it is maya, an illusion – but its reality is from God and is in God. God – or Brahman or Tao or whatever name we give to the absolute reality – exists in himself, and the universe and humanity exist only in relation to the one Reality.’ (p.29)
Father Bede finally develops his core message of a God both transcendent and immanent and spiritual progress growing from entering fully into that paradox, in his outline of the gospel of John:
‘It is of particular importance that in the fourth gospel the Logos, the Word, is said to have “become flesh”. There is always the danger that Reality should be reduced to an abstraction. It can become a universal idea, which, however profound it may be, does not touch the “flesh”, the concrete reality of the human person. This is the particular revelation of the fourth gospel, that the Reality, the Truth, the Word, is revealed in the flesh and blood of a human being, who sheds his blood on the cross and rises to eternal life in the flesh. This does away forever with the view that this world of flesh and blood, of suffering and death, is unreal in the light of the perennial philosophy. The world of science is an unreal world: it is a world of sense phenomena and mental abstractions. But in the real world, while the realty of sense experience and knowledge is not lost, it is taken up into the world of personal being, of the whole, from which sense and reason derive their reality. This is the world of the fourth gospel, as of all the forms of ancient wisdom. It is the world which we know, when we cease to be dominated by the rational mind and allow the light of the eternal truth to shine in the heart. Jesus in the fourth gospel is always open to this divine light: “You shall see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (p.38)
After outlining Jesus’ relationship to the Father, Bede goes on:
‘Jesus is not Son in an exclusive sense. Every human being is created in the “image and likeness” of God. Every human being is a capacity for God. Jesus comes to reveal the destiny of all humanity. Jesus speaks of himself in terms of utmost intimacy with the Father. “I am in the Father and the Father in me”, “He who sees me, sees the Father”, “I and the Father are one.” Here we have expressed in the clearest terms the “non-duality” of Jesus and God. He is one with the Father and yet he is not the Father. This is neither monism, a simple identity, nor dualism, a real separation. It is “ non-dualism”, the mystery revealed in the Hindu and Buddhist and Taoist scriptures and discovered in Judaism and Islam. Here we are at the heart of the cosmic revelation. Jesus makes this clear when he prays for his disciples “that they may be one, as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be in us. This is the destiny of all humanity, to realise its essential unity in the Godhead, by whatever name it is known, to be one with the absolute Reality, the absolute Truth, the infinite, the eternal Life and Light.’ (p.39)
Finally, Bede returns to the theme of divine, non-dual fullness, as expounded in the Letter to the Ephesians:
‘The letter to the Ephesians takes up from the Letter to the Colossians, which stems from the same milieu, the concept of the pleroma, the “fullness”, corresponding with the Sanskrit purnam. This signifies the absolute fullness of reality, but it is now said this fullness dwells in Christ – “in him dwells the fullness of God bodily”. This is a remarkable text revealing a conception of the “Godhead” as in Meister Eckhart, beyond the personal God, and this fullness is said to dwell “bodily” in Christ, that is, the divine fullness or ultimate reality is present in its fullness in a human being.’ (p.42)
Father Bede concludes by setting out his vision for the Church, “which is his Body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all” as an organic universal community, an integrated whole capable of embodying the Universal Wisdom, ‘in which the “fullness”, the whole, of the Godhead dwells.’
May we all continue to dream Father Bede’ dreams and find dreams that well from the common underground river to nourish and sustain us.