Summons to Life

THE KNOWLEDGE OF TRUE being comes to us in the place where we are working. It comes as a thief in the night, when we are least expecting it. It transforms our conception of reality. The key to this knowledge is awareness. Where we can keep our minds still, the knowledge of God can come to us. The spiritual ascent is, in essence, one of inner tranquillity in which we may become attuned to the voice of the soul within us.

The inner stillness is not to be relegated merely to periods of prayerful meditation. Indeed, meditation can easily degenerate into a technique whereby we escape the threats and demands of an ever-challenging world. The stillness that is worth having is one that is with us in the clamour of the day's work. God makes His presence real to us when the mind is aware of itself and is not merely dissipating its energy on vain thoughts and futile imaginings.

The place of suffering in our spiritual development has already been mentioned. In such a state we are fully aware of our dereliction, and our mind is resting on this painful consideration. Or the awareness of sin may become so overwhelming in the course of a religious meeting that the necessity for a complete change in outlook then becomes obvious to us. Or the mind may be lost in the inexpressible beauty of a landscape, the ineffable radiance of a great work of art, or the self-transcending devotion that occurs between two people who really care for each other. All this is meditation in everyday life. When the awareness of the mind transcends the isolation of the personal self, it establishes an intimate relationship with the other, so that it is no longer merely a subject - object communication. This communication is one in which perceiver and perceived, thinker and thought, subject and object are united into a single all-pervading reality in which duality, or separation, is lost.

As I lose my isolated self in an awareness that stretches me in commitment to the other, so I find my true self, which is in intimate communion with all other selves, and yet more truly itself than ever before. The release from the bondage of self-centred isolation is the first real experience of liberty that the person can know, a release that is not an escape from the world, bur rather a deep identification of the self of the world. Thus is proved by experience Jesus' paradoxical statement that he who would save his life shall lose it, but he who loses his life for the sake of the Christ and His gospel shall have the eternal life that comes from the true realising of identity.

This experience of the soul is also an inner confirmation that we are all members one of another. Only in isolated self-awareness does my separation from the world become overwhelming. Once I ascend from the personal self to the soul, I know that I can never be alone, because I an now one with the cosmic process and all it embraces. It is in this way that a glimpse of the larger hope of salvation is bestowed on me. This knowledge does not come by direct seeking. The more avidly one presses for personal enlightenment, the more certain is one to be disappointed, or, worse still, severely deluded by psychic impressions of dubious character. Courses aimed at self-development along an allegedly spiritual path may cultivate certain psychic faculties, and indeed enhance the person's power over others, but there is no spirituality involved in this. Anything that boosts the personality separates the individual from the greater community of mankind. Anything that leads to the unveiling of the true self, or soul, diminishes the claim of the personality and brings the person into fuller communion with the process of life.

The first manifestation of this communion is an attitude of harmlessness. Indeed, the two essential preconditions for love are awareness of the other and a reverence for his identity that will do him no hurt. The less full of our own true being we are, the more we have need of an exalted personality. This means that we grasp selfishly for those attributes we lack. The more we acquire, however, the further away we are from the centre of our being, which is the soul. Once we have the centre, we can take the periphery for granted, and flow out in the radiance of light to those around us.

"He who has the Son has life," says St.John in his first letter. We all have the Son, who is the inner Christ in potentiality, but only a few are aware of him. It is these who can be witnesses to the Light of the World within that illuminates the world without.

True illumination comes therefore by grace and not by direct effort. Yet grace will never act on an unprepared person. And that preparation is one of active work in the world so that one's very being is dedicated to one's fellow men. When the whole personality is thus consecrated to one's neighbour, God, Who is in all things, and between all things, and above all things,can make His presence known to us.Then at last we are no longer alone. The silent meaninglessness of selfish private life is extended to embrace a knowledge of purpose. Moreover we are aware of a cloud of witnesses about us, who are the fruit of mankind. The preparation thus needed for us to be tractable to the divine encounter by which we know God is a consecration of every part of ourselves to His service in the world.

This is the second great commandment, namely that we must love our neighbour as ourself. But there can be no conception of the real meaning of love until we can understand the first great commandment,that we must love God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength. Only when we know of this love that God has bestowed on us, can we start to love those around us. Yet paradoxically, it is in conscious relationships with others that we usually become aware of God. No wonder the second commandment is an essential extension of the first.

The awareness of God is not completion of the spiritual path. It is merely an important milestone along it. We progress in life by faith that the better will prevail against the worse and that life will triumph over death. Often our faith is sorely taxed, but we persist, driven as much by the body's desire to survive as by the soul's hidden will to meaning. At last, often when we are strained to the limits of our endurance, or sometimes when we are in great peace, He comes to us, and the way to meaning is revealed.

Whatever is said about God is wrong, for He transcends all categories so that even a compendium of every virtue would belittle Him. Though the Godhead is beyond human imagining, yet He comes to us as a person among persons, until He has lifted us out of our own enclosed personality so that we may begin to have a mature intimation of His full nature. God is known to us in the experience of our own souls. Without that experience, He is merely an intellectual hypothesis or a theological construction. It is His manifestation to us that brings us closer to Him, and the validity of that experience is judged by the degree of proximity that flows between Him and us.

The first intimation of divine reality is the experience of an opening-up of the enclosed personality. This can never be done by a mere act of will. It comes suddenly from the outside and impinges on our awareness, which is transformed. It is as if another modality of consciousness takes control of our senses. This awareness is formless and ineffable. It is not a mere psychic interference in which forms of communication from another source come to us. The awareness of God is an awareness of warmth that permeates the very depth of our being. It speaks to us of a power beyond thought that cares for us as we are, that loves us for what we are. It is not that we feel greater love for others so much as that we are the receivers of ineffable love.

This warmth opens the "eye" of the soul to the potentialities within the person. Faith, once hidden and obscure, is now illuminated by hope that springs from this gift of love. I am loved for what I am, and my sins are forgiven me. This does not mean that the past and all its consequences cease to exist, but rather that they are no longer facts of imprisonment and condemnation. Instead, they are experiences that can lead to the fullness of life by the lessons they teach and the compassion they engender toward others. It therefore follows that in our apprehension of the divine, the aspect of personality is important. This justifies the use of the personal pronoun to describe God - though it is more questionable whether the masculine qualities rather than the feminine should be exalted in the pronoun commonly used.

This type of experience is not only a glimpse of the love of the personal God - God showing Himself to us in terms of personality, of which love is the supreme quality. It is also a view of our soul and its interconnection with the soul of humanity and of all creation. What is now important is the proper evaluation of this manifestation of divine grace, so that it may lead us into ever-widening truth; otherwise we may, through restricted reasoning, limit the experience and derive a constricting dogma from it.

When the experience of God's love comes to someone at the emotional peak of a revivalistic meeting in which sin is loudly denounced and lamented, the release from the spiritual bondage of his special sin may easily lead the person to believe that this forgiveness is dependent on a rigid theological position that must be dogmatically upheld at all costs. Thus God's grace is conditional on our acceptance of Him in terms of a particular religious insight or tradition. The result of this is that the vision of God may easily be transformed into an imprisoning proposition that cuts one off from the body of mankind, and separates one into a small class of the elect, or the "saved". This is where an understanding of the love of God and His providence in the world is so important. God's revelation of Himself to us is progressive. Indeed, in Christian terms it is the Holy Spirit that is to lead us into all truth.

This progressive revelation by the Holy Spirit, Who is deep within us in the spirit of the soul, leads us into an ever - deepening awareness of the divinity that lies at the heart of all creation and was supremely revealed in the juxtaposition of God and man in the incarnational event. But if we are ever unwise enough to believe that we have the whole answer to God's being, we at once shut Him out of our lives, replacing Him with an idol, which may be theological, ritual, or intellectual, and which ultimately degenerates into a superstition.

On the other hand, the early revelations of God's love are as valid as the later ones. Nothing that is given at any time, that is truly of God, can be anything other than perfect. It is our own growth into greater awareness that enables God to come closer to us and show Himself ever more clearly to us. The spiritual path becomes clear and defined when the personal God reveals Himself to us. This is our initiation into the life of the spirit.

It is now that the test of our integrity commences,and wisdom is granted in every action of life. As we move beyond the limitations of our own personality to the vast reaches of the soul that underlie it, so the being of God ceases to be merely personal, but expands to embrace the whole universe, and transcend it at the same time. And the potential hope of partaking of the divine nature, that lies within all men, becomes ever closer to realisation.

To the more simple aspirant, salvation is a state of purification which occurs suddenly and is complete once it is accepted and the theological implications are fully acknowledged. Such a salvation puts the recipient into the category of the saved-the sheep-who are rigidly separated from those who are not saved-the goats. Such a view of salvation is uncharitable at its very least, and obviously very inadequate if the fruits of this "salvation" are studied in everyday life. The "saved" are above all else priggish, superior in attitude, and condescending in approach to their unsaved fellows. They have a definite code of rules regarding belief and behaviour, which, if followed, they are sure will lead them straight to God Himself. They are not aloof from their unfortunate brethren, however, for they are usually imbued with intense missionary zeal. Yet you sometimes feel that the desire to win converts is as much to assuage unconscious doubts about the reality of the scheme of salvation of that body as to help others to a fuller, more abundant life. The limitation of this view of salvation is not in the reality of the initial experience of God's grace, but in the finality of the vision of God that the aspirant deduces from that experience.

True salvation is to be seen as the healing of the whole person. This means an integration of the personality so that the body, reasoning mind, and emotional nature are working under the conscious direction of the soul, which is itself illuminated by the Spirit, Who is God immanent. This salvation is a slow but progressive process. It is punctuated by many episodes of failure and apparent regression, which in turn are the portals of entry for God's mysterious grace which reveals new aspects of the divine love to us. Thus the first experience of God's personal presence is followed by a penetration of the darkness that is both of the world and in our own unconscious minds.

It is no surprise that Christ spent time in the wilderness after His baptism and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Him. It is in the redemption of the most sordid aspects of creation that we can see the scale of salvation, which can only be complete for the person when it embraces all people. The path of salvation is one of a rugged journey across the valley of desolation, up the hills of vision, and eventually to the mountain of transfiguration. The hallmark of the right path is the progressive loss of self-concern - indeed of the awareness of separate self-that becomes ever more obvious to others as one proceeds onwards. This is a far cry from the arrogant self-assurance of the instantly saved who is so superior in his own eyes to the remainder of humanity that he resembles the Pharisee who thanked God that he was not as other men were, particularly the publican. And yet it was the self-reproachful publican who left God justified, for the Pharisee had hardly yet begun to know the God whom he thanked with such self-satisfaction.

The beginning of this process of healing is facing oneself in candid awareness, not flinching from the dark and formidable elements of the unconscious. This means in effect an active participation in the round of common life. Our true nature with its many imperfections impinges upon us in our attitudes to other people and the events of the world around us. The abundant life depends first on a progressive recognition of the material in the unconscious and then its active integration in the conscious life of the person. The pain experienced in this journey of self-discovery is often very great, but when it is almost too great to bear, the love of God breaks into our consciousness, showing us more of the divine reality. It is in this way that the personality is resurrected.

This self-discovery comes to us in the life of the world around us. It needs no special efforts to encompass it, nor need we go to far-away places to find it. Indeed, it requires far greater spiritual dedication to reach the centre of being in a large, noisy modern city than in some place of refuge in the mountains. The value of such places of refuge is that one can gain equilibrium in a quiet atmosphere, but in due course one has to return to the greater world once more. There are some inevitable circumstances of life that impinge on us so intimately that we cannot fail to react to them and thereby see more clearly into ourselves. These are firstly relationships with other people, secondly the course of our chosen work, and lastly the fact of suffering which is a part of our limitation in a time-space universe.

To these we must now turn.