The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he carried me out by his Spirit and put me down in a plain full of bones. He made me go to and fro across them until I had been round them all; they covered the plain, countless numbers of them, and they were very dry. He said to me, "Man, can these bones live again?" I answered, "Only thou knowest that, Lord God" He said, "Prophesy over these bones and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. This is the word of the Lord God to these bones: I will put breath into you, and you shall live." .. . I began to prophesy as he had bidden me, and as I prophesied there was a rustling sound and the bones fitted themselves together. (Ezekiel 37:1-7)
THIS MARVELLOUS ACCOUNT of the resurrection of the body of the people of Israel, crushed under Babylonian captivity, is also the way of spiritual rebirth for the individual. The paradox of birth is that it always succeeds death. To put this even more starkly, one has to die before one can know God. The Spirit descends only on him who has either given of himself to the highest that he knows, or on him who is so crushed by calamity that he has of necessity been shriven of everything by which he had previously identified himself. Even the birth of a baby is the moment of its separation from the warmth and security of the mother's womb. To live is a dangerous experience, because it is always hazardous to move into the unknown future. But he who takes the plunge soon discovers that he is not alone. The Spirit of the God without knocks at the inner door of the soul and is accepted in trust and thanksgiving.
I knew a man whose life was selfish and hedonistic. For one thing he had far too much money when he was young. He not only spent it improvidently but he valued everything, even friendship, by the price of the object or person. Relationships were, for him, a means of self-gratification, and yet he had considerable charm and a deceptive inner warmth which attracted many people. His marriage soon foundered on the rocks of infidelity, and he came to realise in middle life that, despite his affluence and his physical attractiveness, he was desperately lonely. To escape from an encounter with himself, he would seek every possible and available activity. Some of his exploits were mean and sordid. And yet, strangely, he did have an inner warmth which made the more perceptive observer hope that eventually he would come to himself and start to do the work for which he was called. The crisis came when he was in his late forties, for then severe mental disease struck him. His family history was bad, since a number of relatives had also suffered from mental illness; indeed his early, feckless behaviour was probably a presage of the later breakdown that was to scar him so severely.
As he languished, so his life collapsed about him. His wealth was dissipated while his family melted away, and his associates - none was worthy to be called a friend - moved elsewhere. The only people who cared about him were the medical and nursing attendants, and these were so severely overburdened with other duties that they could not give him as much attention as they would have liked. He had no religious faith, and little awareness of his own identity apart from the outer appurtenances of money, sex and frivolity that had previously sustained him.
In his anguish, he had an experience of being separated from his body and seeing his life pattern from a great distance. Indeed, he was given a panoramic view of his past life. He saw how a pall of selfish hedonism had thwarted any good that he might have done, and how few traces of noble actions punctuated the sequence of his existence on earth. A voice then asked him when he was going to start the work he had come in to do. He had never been in the least interested in religion, but at last, bereft of all conceit and in fact experiencing a heightening of consciousness that spoke of the proximity of physical death, he knew intuitively who was addressing him. The voice was at once inside him and part of the universal world. It was the voice of God's Word, the Christ, which could at last make itself heard as conscience when the clamour of personal assertiveness had been stilled by illness and annulled by impotence.
The medical attendants ascribed this psychic phenomenon to the disease itself, but the man knew better. As one gropes for truth in a dark fog of despair, so one becomes emancipated from conventional theories expounded by professional authorities. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Corinthians 3:17) - we shall come to this theme on more than one occasion later on. This man knew that the focus of truth deeply set in the universal consciousness of life pulsating within him was the light that alone would heal his broken mind and set in action his growth into a real person. To the amazement of all concerned, he steadily improved, was able, in due course, to relinquish the drugs prescribed for his condition, and started to do the work for which he was called. This was to care for others and be a support for the needy. He came progressively to a mature religious faith, and the latter part of his life was singularly blessed with good works.
This sequence is reminiscent of the most famous parable of Jesus:
"There was once a man who had two sons; and the younger said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the property.' So he divided the estate between them. A few days later the younger son turned the whole of his share into cash and left home for a distant country, where he squandered it in reckless living. He had spent it all, when a severe famine fell upon that country, and he began to feel the pinch. So he went and attached himself to one of the local landowners, who sent him on the farm to mind the pigs. He would have been glad to fill his belly with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything. Then he came to his senses." (Luke 15:11-17)
We know the Parable of the Prodigal Son well enough, but the important facet that concerns us here is the moment light descended into the derelict heart of the foolish young man. The Spirit of truth which leads all creatures into truth is available to the humiliated and broken man, and at last he begins to see the light. This light shows itself to him as hope, one of the greatest gifts of the Spirit. Meaning is suddenly revealed in a singularly aimless, selfish life, and the broken, yet now wise man can return to the source of his being in faith, albeit a faith heavily overlaid with feelings of guilt and unworthiness. But the most revealing part of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and also of the life history of the man I have described, is the wilful movement of the hero from the security of conventional propriety and religion. It is this wilful movement that marks the authentic birth of the individual, even if his path starts on a downward slope of sensuality and folly. It would seem almost as if the Spirit within the person impels him to relinquish comfort and conformity and proceed on an ill-starred adventure to attain integrity of the personality. When one compares the Prodigal Son with his brother who stayed at home, or the mentally broken man with his more successful peers, one cannot but exalt the first over the second. Although these latter may appear to be much more successful and desirable in the world's eyes, they lack that understanding and compassion which come only from a deep identification of the personal self with that of the other individual in his greatest travail.
The moment a person comes to himself, facing the reality of his own responsibility, is the moment of birth of the Spirit within him, or rather, the Spirit of God has entered his personality and is attending the birth into consciousness of the Inner Christ, that Word of God deeply implanted in the soul as a vibrant seed. It follows therefore that the Spirit acts primarily to renew, resurrect and sanctify the consciousness of the person. Only when that Spirit has become a conscious reality in the life of the person does he have a real conception of his own identity. When one knows what one is doing and is aware of what one is attempting in the wider context of life, one is at last imbued with a conviction of inner authenticity, that what one is and does is of real importance, not only to oneself but in the broader concern of the world. Conversely, the person uninformed by the Spirit is rootless and his life lacks ultimate meaning. This does not mean that a Spirit-filled life is one that necessarily proceeds along well-defined tracks and ends in material success and prosperity. The Spirit may lead the aspirant into a maze of unexplored passages, each of which has something to tell him. But the main feature of a directed life is that even when one appears to be completely lost, one is still impelled by a sense of purpose within that shows itself outwardly as hope and expectation.
The action of the Holy Spirit in informing and renewing consciousness, like all actions of the Spirit, cannot be induced by the will. Techniques, by their selfish attitude, serve only to occlude the Spirit, Who comes to the hungry as pure grace. "Thus speaks the high and exalted one, whose name is holy, who lives forever: I dwell in a high and holy place with him who is broken and humble of spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, to revive the courage of the broken." (Isaiah 57:15)
The Holy Spirit is sometimes described as the feminine principle of the Trinity. This is, of course, a symbolical description, for the Persons of the Trinity all combine the male and female principles of a new creation. In Jesus Christ Himself, though masculine in outer form, there is the coinherence of man and woman that is the true mark of a celibate, the one who can love al1 humanity in complete identification with the lowliest as well as the most exalted. Nevertheless, the fertilising power of the Spirit, His attendance on the birth of Christ within the soul of man, and the nurture that He gives to all creatures so that they may attain nothing less than the stature of spiritual reality (which is eternal life), is of the nature of female generosity and providence rather than male assertiveness and leadership. The Spirit, in other words, by His courtesy, infuses us and renews the powers inherent in us. He does not take us over and direct our lives for us. Any power that over-rules the human will and forces itself on the person cannot be divine. Free choice is the divine gift to man. As he grows into maturity, so the way of the Spirit opens itself to him, and in the end it shows itself as the only way to authentic living, but at no time is man forced to accept the Spirit. He can remain in his present situation indefinitely, until he realises that he is, literally, in hell. At that point he will accept the Spirit gladly. But when the Spirit is accepted, responsibilities are thrust on the person, and life begins in earnest. Gone is the ease of careless living; the birth into the Spirit is the beginning of the encounter with the Living God, Who demands nothing less than perfection from His creatures. And this perfection is to realise in living form, the divine image in which man was created.