THE PRESENCE AND POWER OF ETERNITY

'For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place …'
Isaiah 57:15 (KJV).

There was once an Australian soldier and evangelist John G Ridley MC who preached a sermon titled ‘Echoes of Eternity’. Actually, he preached more-or-less that same sermon more than once, and perhaps many times. A copy of an audio file of one taped version of the sermon, preached by Ridley in his later years, can be found here. Ridley was a dynamic and powerful preacher. He painted the most wonderfully evocative word pictures ...

… Eternity … This word is a solitary word, wonderful word, just like a great mountain peak standing up and leaping above all its fellows and casting a kind of glorious shadow over the whole mountain range, an Everest of scripture, snowcapped in the purity of God. Eternity! Eternity! … Eternity. What a remarkable, uplifted, glorified word! Once uttered, because there is only one eternity, and the eternal God is in command of it. I seem to hear it coming out of the past like a distant sound of thunder, bursting with a clap in the present, and rolling on with mumblings and rumblings into the unknown future. Eternity. Eternity. How can you preach on eternity? Yet, if a preacher does not touch on eternity, he’s missing the great mountain ridge and glorious throne that God has given us in this verse, who inhabited Eternity. … [We] are travellers to eternity.

... Eternity, Eternity, I wish I could sound or shout that word to everyone in the streets of Sydney. You’ve got to meet it. Where will you spend Eternity? ...

When John Ridley preached this sermon in Sydney, New South Wales on what was perhaps the first occasion—this was way back in 1932—a man named Arthur Stace (pictured), who had been a soldier himself and who was a reformed alcoholic who had been converted to Christianity a couple of years earlier, was so moved by Ridley’s words that he went outside the church building and wrote the word ‘Eternity’ in beautiful copperplate writing with chalk on the footpath. He continued to do that on the footpaths of Sydney and even beyond Sydney and the State of New South Wales for about 35 years—some 500,000 times.

Now, Ridley and Stace had their own evangelical understanding of the word ‘eternity’. By the way, that word appears just once in the King James Version of the Bible, and it is in the verse set out above.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge lit up with the word ‘Eternity’.

What is eternity? Well, as I see it, we are in eternity now. We are immersed in eternity. We live, move and have our be-ing-ness in eternity. Eternity is not a ‘thing’ we enter into at death. No. Eternity is now. Everything is contained within eternity, that is, the eternal now. All duration – or time – is total and complete in the now. There is an eternal quality about the now. It is forever new. The present moment has its unfolding in the eternal now for it is nothing other than that which presents itself before us in and as the now, which embraces past, present and future. It is in the eternal now that we have our presence.

For me, God is the eternal now—omnipresence. There is only one eternity, one eternal now and it is both the medium in which all things have their be-ing-ness as well as Be-ing or omnipresence itself.

You may or may not share my understanding of the word eternity. That is your prerogative. The important thing is not to wait until you die in order to experience its tremendous presence and power.

ARE YOU A SHEEP OR A GOAT?

We are fast approaching Christmas but we're still in the season of Advent which ends on Christmas Eve.

The season of Advent, in the Church year, is a four-week period of spiritual preparation for the coming of Jesus. It's a time when Christians also look forward to the Second Coming of Jesus.

Now, I don’t interpret the Bible literally for the most part. For me, the events in the life of Jesus depict and represent various stages in our potential spiritual growth. Thus, doctrines such as the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Ascension and the Second Coming of Jesus have for me a deeper, more spiritual meaning and importance than a literal reading might otherwise afford. We can be resurrected at any time into newness of life, with our minds and bodies being restored in any number of ways. We can ascend to greater heights of understanding and achievement. As for the Second Coming, it can be right upon us now. It is not a matter of whether Jesus will again appear in the flesh.

In all my years of regularly attending Baptist and Anglican churches I rarely, if ever, heard a sermon on the parable of the sheep and the goats. I think the reason why preachers rarely speak on the topic of that parable is simple--its message doesn't sit at all well with the ‘believe and be saved’ evangelical interpretation of Christianity.

In the parable of the sheep and the goat, in the 25th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus talks about the Day of Judgment. Now, once again, I do not actually think there will be a literal day of judgment when some people will go to their supposed reward in heaven while others will be sent to hell for everlasting punishment. You can believe that if you wish but that is not how I see it. The Day of Judgment occurs every day, and every minute of each day, when we get the result in our lives and in our world of our thoughts, words and deeds.

According to the parable of the sheep and goats, everyone we meet, everyone we serve, is in the image of Jesus, a personification of the divine. The Anonymous Christ, as he or she is known, comes to us in so many ways, and we fail to recognize that Jesus’ incarnation continues all the time, in us and in other people. In the parable, Jesus talks about the Day of Judgment:

‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

‘Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

‘Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”

‘The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

‘Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.”

‘They also will answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?”

‘He will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

‘Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.’

Notice how the separation of sheep and goats is not on the basis of what people believe or don’t believe. No, the separation takes place on the basis of what people do or don’t do with their lives. The sheep are the ones who feed the hungry, give a drink to the thirsty, invite in the stranger, clothe those in need of clothes, look after the sick, and visit those in prison. The goats are the ones who do none of those things.

The message of this parable seems lost on conservative Christians. They are so damn good at judging others on the basis of what they believe or don’t believe yet they fail to realize that the Bible says they will be judged on how well they have looked after their fellow humans---as respects the provision of such things as food, water and clothes, and attending to the needs of the homeless, the sick, and those in prison.

Many Buddhists I know, even many atheists and other secularists, live lives that are so much more nobly and deeply and closely molded after that of Jesus than those fundamentalist and evangelical Christians. I repeat, many people, who would not identify as Christians, are real followers of the way of Jesus. There is a hymn written by Marguerite Pollard which contains this verse:

And there are some who love him well,
yet know not it is he they love;
he tends the holy fire within
and draws them to the heights above.

Of course, many, if not most, of the people who Jesus declares to be ‘sheep’—true followers of the way of Jesus—would not want to be called Christians. They have given up on Christianity. Well, they have given up on Churchianity. I don’t blame them. Far too many of the Christian churches have so grossly distorted the teachings of Jesus, and far too many so-called Christians are so damn unappealing, that the ‘sheep’ want nothing to do with Jesus. That is sad, because Jesus was a revolutionary.

The separation of sheep and goats takes no account of race, religion or ethnicity. It takes no account of what people believe or don’t believe. The separation is solely on the basis of what people do and don’t do with their lives. Deeds, not creeds.

Advent is all about the coming of the kingdom. Jesus envisioned a beloved community of all humanity living in peace with one another. The good news of the Gospel is that you don’t have to be a card-carrying Christian to seek, work for and hasten the coming of that kingdom.

Have a wonderful Christmas, all of you.

Image opposite. Detail of a stained glass window depicting the parable of the sheep and the goats. Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Gunthorpe, Norfolk, United Kingdom.

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DESIRE NOTHING: THE ZEN OF SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS

So, you want to be happy, really happy? Then, here's what you need to do. Desire nothing. Desire to possess nothing. Desire to be nothing. Desire to know nothing.

Conventional Christians, especially those of an evangelical bent (how I love that word ‘bent,’ so apt in the case of those just mentioned), are very wary of Christian mysticism. Someone once said, 'Mysticism: it begins in "mist", centres in "I", and ends in schism.' Funny, but not really true. Real mysticism helps to eliminate that 'I' or self. I’m not at all wary of mysticism, because I draw from a considerable number of diverse spiritual traditions and I'm more interested in what the various world religions have in common than what divides them as well as people.

Now, the great theme throughout the ages is unity … oneness. This is so beautifully expressed in the Shema Yisrael (‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One’ [Dt 6:4]), but the theme of unity and oneness can be found in all the world’s religions and systems of spirituality. Here’s another major theme, and important spiritual principle … the need to weed-out the personal self.

All the world’s religions stress the importance of purification. (Of course, some take this too far!) We need to progressively weaken and weed-out all of the structures of the personal self in order to open oneself to an experience of one’s True Self. This involves the complete subjugation of our lower nature by the higher. I love what William Temple had to say about the matter of selfishness. He said, ‘For the trouble is that we are self-centred, and no effort of the self can remove the self from the centre of its own endeavour.’ We need to be made free from all forms and notions of self-identification, self-absorption, self-obsession and self-centredness, but how is that accomplished. The ‘problem’ identified by Archbishop Temple is very real indeed.

Saint John of the Cross [pictured above and below] was a major figure of the Counter-Reformation. He was a Carmelite friar and priest … and one of the all-time great Christian mystics. He is also remembered as having been one of the greatest poets in the Spanish language, his poems being full of rich imagery and symbolism. There was a Zen-like quality to much of his spiritual writing. Take this gem, for example:

In order to arrive at pleasure in everything
Desire to have pleasure in nothing.
In order to arrive at possessing everything,
Desire to possess nothing.
In order to arrive at being everything
Desire to be nothing.
In order to arrive at knowing everything,
Desire to know nothing.
In order to arrive at that wherein thou hast no pleasure,
Thou must go by a way wherein thou hast no pleasure.
In order to arrive at that which thou knowest not
Thou must go by a way thou knowest not.
In order to arrive at that which thou possest not,
Thou must go by a way that thou possesst not.
In order to arrive at that which thou art not,
Thou must go through that which thou art not.
When thy mind dwells upon anything,
Thou art ceasing to cast thyself upon the All.
For in order to pass from the all to the All,
Thou hast to deny thyself wholly in all.
And when thou comest to possess it wholly,
Thou must possess it without desiring anything.
For, if thou wilt have anything in having all,
Thou hast not thy treasure purely in God.

All this is reminiscent of a number of recorded sayings of Jesus, such as these:

‘For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.’ (Mk 8:35)

‘But many who are first will be last, and the last first.’ (Mk 10:31)

‘Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.’ (Lk 6:21)

The mystic of whatever persuasion constantly seeks out those areas of their life which are governed by the little, selfish ‘I’, and place them under the control of the selfless ‘I’, or, if you like, the Self (Christ, God, or whatever). This is something which each of us must do for ourselves. Others can but point the way, so to speak, but we must walk the path. No other person can do that for us. Giving up, letting go, surrender---they all mean pretty much the same thing---these things are damn hard. It is like death, which each of us must face and experience personally. If we would travel far we must travel light, and in order to gain something greater, we must give up many things that hold us back. 

All this we know, but, oh, how difficult this is! The ‘old me’ must die daily … indeed, every moment of each day. We must truly want that ‘treasure’ of which Saint John of the Cross writes … and we must be willing to go to any length to get it. The recovering alcoholic and addict knows this so very well. You must too.

There is an old Christian hymn written by Helen H Lemmel that contains these beautiful lines:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.

Now, Christian or not, there is a ‘wonderful face’ to which we must all turn and face. For some it is the face of Jesus, for others it is the face of Buddha or some other holy person. For many who call themselves ‘spiritual but not religious,’ and others who don’t even feel comfortable with the word ‘spiritual’ (and that’s OK, too), it is the face of their own higher or best self. Whatever be that ‘face’ for you, turn your eyes upon it, never lose sight of it, look full into that wonderful face, hold that image firmly in your mind throughout the day and all the days to come … and the things of earth will grow strangely dim. They will, indeed.

Love and blessings to you all.

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EXALT, MAGNIFY AND GLORIFY A MORE PERFECT YOU!

Is there a problem in your life at present---perhaps an illness, a disability, a lack, or a limitation of some kind? Well, although there will always be a number of things that need to be done in order to be free of the problem, here is one very important thing that you need to do---see yourself as you would like to be.

In traditional evangelical Christianity it is said that Jesus Christ, by his death and resurrection, conquered sin and bought for us a ‘robe of righteousness,’ such that, although we are all said to be dead in sins, if we repent and accept Jesus as savior and lord, God then sees us clothed in a robe of righteousness. We wear this robe, and God sees us so robed. Another interpretation of the foregoing is that when God looks at the person (you or me), God sees only Christ (God’s Son) in all his perfection, Christ himself being the robe of God’s own righteousness.

Well, all that is quite difficult to understand, and I am of the view that the interpretations set out above have carnalized and literalized in the one person of Jesus what is otherwise a most important spiritual or metaphysical truth of general, indeed universal, application. First and foremost, the Bible is a psychological and metaphysical document, despite what others have made of it. It’s all about how you can have an abundant life right here-and-now as opposed to your safely securing the eternal destiny of your not-so-immortal soul. It’s all about how you can discover, in this life, the wonderful ‘kingdom’ that can only be found within you. In the Hebrew Bible, this kingdom is called ‘Israel,’ as well as the ‘secret place of the most High’ (Ps 91:1), and in the New Testament of the Bible the kingdom is described as the ‘pearl of great price’ (Mt 13:46) as well as ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory’ (Col 1:27). This kingdom is a state of consciousness, filled with all those things we ordinarily associate with the idea of ‘God’---things such as power, vitality, wholeness, love, joy, hope, and peace. One more thing---this kingdom in you is ‘greater than that which is in the world’ (cf 1 Jn 4:4).

The truth is, there are always two ‘images’ of ourselves. One image is of us as we presently are, in all our imperfection, and the other image is of us as we could be, or as we would like to be. Now, if we want to change for the better, we need to envision ourselves as we would like to be. If, for example, we are sick in some way, or in bondage to some condition or state of consciousness, we should see ourselves as healthy or as free, as the case may be. There is an old Oriental maxim, ‘What you think upon grows.’ Of course, we may have to do a number of other things as well if we are to have any chance of achieving our goal or objective.

The ‘robe of righteousness’ is a bit like Plato’s theory of forms (or ideas). It is the ideal or the perfect---the spiritual as opposed to the material. We could not appreciate beautiful things unless there were a form called ‘beauty,’ and we could not appreciate goodness unless there were also a form called ‘the good’ or ‘goodness.’ Also, we could not talk about the sky being blue unless there were such a thing called ‘blueness.’ These ideals or forms are eternal (that is, unchanging), timeless, and paradigmatic, and, as I see it, the forms are expressed or instantiated in actual things and persons. Indeed, these ideals or forms are, in a very real sense, the efficient ‘cause’ of all the changing phenomena we see in the visible world.

We come to know these forms through the process of instantiation or exemplification in particular things. Perhaps it is more correct to say that particular things are known only through the forms that are instantiated in them. All creative and constructive ideas, visions, and possibilities point to the reality of these forms or ideals which exist, not on some supposed higher order or level of reality or plane of existence, but rather in and as things themselves---including you and me---in varying and ever-changing degrees of manifestation and expression. So, if sickness be your problem, the robe of righteousness for you is perfect health and wellness, and if bondage to alcohol or some other drug be your problem, the robe of righteousness is sobriety or clean time. Get the idea?

This robe of righteousness is said in the Bible to be a ‘garment of salvation.’ There’s another grossly misunderstood word---salvation. Now, the word salvation comes from the same Latin root as the word salve and refers to a healthy kind of wholeness. Salvation is not primarily connected with sin, which is simply a symptom of an underlying morbid condition. Sin means ‘missing the mark’ (as in archery), that is, not being all that we could be, and what, in truth, we really are. When a person is ‘truly saved,’ that negative condition is offset. In short, salvation is all about health and wholeness and not just holiness. Actually, the word health means wholeness or holiness. Yes, the words health, holy, hale, heal, as well as whole, all come from the same Anglo-Saxon root.

Each one of us ‘falls short’ (says Plato, as well as the Bible) of the ideal---that is, the perfect, unflawed, unchanging form. We may fall short in terms of our physical or psychological health, or we may fall short in terms of our conduct or behavior. However, whatever be your problem, first envision, and then continue to hold fast in your mind, the vision of yourself as whole, perfect, and free. You may presently be experiencing illness in your body or mind but know this---there is a part of you that can never be ill. What is that part? Well, it is the life itself in you and as you. Your body or your mind may grow old, but life itself can never grow old for it is birthless and deathless. I love these lines from Sir Edwin Arnold’s beautiful ‘translation’---or rather poetic version---of the Bhagavad-Gita (dubbed ‘The Song Celestial’):

Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never;

Never was time it was not; End and Beginning are dreams!

Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit forever.

Can you envisage, that is, envision or imagine, a perfect man or woman? Can you feel ‘at-one’ with your ideal or desire? It’s hard to do in the abstract, but not so hard to do when you narrow it down to some particular sought-after quality, which is what I suggest you do. Never forget that the power to change your life is within you---within every one of us. If, for example, you are sick, envision yourself as well, for what you seek is available at least in potentiality if not actuality. Now, there is a Bible verse that wonderfully encapsulates the essence and modus operandi of this metaphysical approach to healing and wholeness, and it is this: 'He calleth those things which be not as though they were' (Rom 4:17). Got that? You affirm that which is not, that is, that which you wish to see actualized, as if it were true already---for in truth it is already ... at least in the realm of pure ideas and forms.

Of course, you have to be sensible about this, but in the realm of ideas and forms there is no sickness, lack, or limitation of any kind, and we can learn to use our mind to help create desired experience through desire, vision, and intention. In my work as a wellness instructor and practitioner I often use this form of healing which is sometimes referred to as ‘spiritual mind treatment.’ You do not deal with the ‘material’ person (what is now) but rather the ‘spiritual’ person (the sought-after ideal, what could be). Even if healing in the physical sense does not occur, or does not fully occur, I find that there is invariably a change in consciousness for the better, and that is a healing in its own way. As the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche pointed out, ‘Even a thought, even a possibility, can shatter us and transform us.’

So, see yourself not as imperfect and sick but in perfect good health, and hold fast to that vision irrespective of circumstances or appearances to the contrary, the aim being to induce a state of consciousness in which you become more fully aware of that which already is a reality, at least in the spiritual realm (that is, the realm of ideas). That, as I see it, is the true, inner meaning of the Bible verses that urge us to ‘glorify God in [our] bodies’ (1 Cor 6:20) and to ‘exalt the Lord our God’ (Ps 99:9). Then there’s the Bible phrase that says ‘magnify the Lord’ (cf Lk 1:46). I could go on.

In short, exalt, magnify, and glorify your sought-after objective, and affirm with feeling and conviction that which you know to be true about the ‘ideal’ (spiritual) you---for example, that you are strong, healthy, vibrant, energetic, and alive---and be prepared to do what is otherwise necessary to achieve your goal, ideal or vision. ‘In the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs,’ wrote the New Thought writer James Allen.

‘Where there is no vision, the people perish’ (Prov 29:18).