A CRUCIFIXION ON A WORLDWIDE SCALE

by Gerald E. Hoke

Back in 1992, while an Australian film crew was making a documentary of his life at Shantivanam in South India, Fr. Bede Griffiths made some unusual observations:

“ The whole human race has now come to the moment when everything is at stake, when a vast shift of consciousness will have to take place on a massive scale in all societies and religions for the world to survive.”

When asked if he believed that the human race could survive, Fr. Bede responded:

“ Yes, but it will cost everything. Just as Jesus had to go through death into the new world of the Resurrection, so millions of us will have to go through a death to the past and to all old ways of being and doing if we are going to be brought by the grace of God into the truth of a real new age. The next twenty years will unfold a series of terrible disasters, wars and ordeals of every kind that will reveal if the human race is ready to die into new life or not...Either total destruction or total transformation is possible and depends on us, on what we choose and how we act.” ¹

Standing at the cusp of the new millennium, Fr. Bede Griffiths remains a major beacon on the path to understanding what it is that unites us all in the true cosmic experience, the core of all major world religions. Over and over again he affirms that “The universe can be seen as coming into being as an overflow of the energy, which is love.” ²

Initially Fr. Bede’s vision of the crises we are currently experiencing may seem dissonant with his strong affirmation of the universe “coming into being as an overflow of love.” But, Fr. Bede is never credulous; he is consonant with the great mystics of the Church who put their faith, not in humanity, but in the power of God working through humanity. Although his faith guides him in the awareness of the peace that is the promise of the Resurrection, he is perfectly conscious of the negative forces we must contend with. “In the Christian understanding there are contrary forces both in the cosmos and in the human psyche which cause disorder in nature and disease in man.” ³; This brings to mind Teresa of Avila’s injunction to her sisters: “Let everyone understand that the real love of God does not exist in tear shedding nor in that sweetness and tenderness for which we usually yearn just because they console us but in serving God in justice, fortitude of soul, and humility.”

In that discussion, Fr. Bede pulls no punches. As a true servant of God he speaks with fortitude of soul as he expresses his vision.

Very few people are prepared to look without illusion at our time and see it for what it is—a crucifixion on a worldwide scale of everything humanity has expected or trusted or believed in every level and in every arena. To look like this requires a kind of final faith and courage, which few have as yet.⁴

It is significant that he chooses to refer to this time as a “crucifixion.” With true contemplative sensibility, he suggests the painful moment is a preparation for a “resurrection.” He is suggesting here that there is something more to this space-time encounter with evil that will be played out on the cosmic plane. The union with the “Father” seems implicit.

As this problem, or question, of “evil” appears to be such a salient predisposition in the global attitudes surfacing today, it might be useful to take a cursory look at this problem from the Christian point of view. “Sin” is generally considered as an attribute of the human condition. In order to survive in the world, it may be necessary to take actions that might be considered to be self-centered, unjust and even destructive. In so doing, we separate ourselves from the divine creative force of the universe; we set our will over and against the will of God. It is a turning away. In the case of sin, when awareness of the destructive nature of our act reaches the level of normal consciousness, we experience remorse and the desire to return to our grounding and connectedness in the Ultimate Truth. “Evil”, on the other hand, while it is a similar turning away from the Divine Center, presupposes a refusal to acknowledge the need for “return” and operates with the supreme arrogance of Cain’s sardonic response, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” This is the categorical disavowal of reconciliation; it is the abnegation of responsibility.

What we have here are two diametrically opposed extremes in spirituality. The concept of “God” envisions an ultimate spiritual power in the universe and our natural existential thrust is to achieve union with or some sort of belonging to that power through self-surrender; it is a turning of the spirit toward the “other”, toward that which is beyond “self”— “we lose our sense of separation and division and discover our integral oneness in the One Reality.” ⁵ “Evil” conceives of numerous final spiritual powers, ends in themselves, and, rather than submitting the ego to them, seeks to master them or manipulate them to do one’s bidding through pure self-will. It is a presumption completely immured in an autocentric universe. This “self-centered” or “autocentric” exclusiveness becomes a turning toward “evil” in so far as it a turning away from the agape and unity that is the “I AM” in a sense.

When we consider the broader aspects of “evil” in the political and social purview, we recognize that sociocentric perception is really a shared and expanded form of autocentric perception and runs the same risks. The accepted concept of “reality” in this case is centered not on the attempt to discover reality, but on the reassuring sharing of points of view, acceptance, and predetermined meanings for terms, all things that protect the individual from the existential struggle with the “unknown” in the environment. “It reassures either because so many people share it, or—if it represents the viewpoint of a relatively small group—because of the zealousness with which it is adhered to.” ⁶

The failure to see the “self” as an open and on-going process in relation to the universe gives rise to the fear of losing one’s “identity.” Here we have what is, perhaps, the real root of evil on individual and societal levels alike. Fear, envy, hate— all arise from the dread of losing one’s security and stability experienced within the cocoon of the protective self-image, a sort of encased autocentricity in the individual. This becomes sociocentric when employed to protect the individual members of the group— be it as members of family, faith, community, nation, or whatever— from anything that might threaten the group identity. Both modes of perception tend to block consciousness from experiencing that total oneness that is Reality.

Identity implies the process of abstracting, a requisite process for human consciousness in order to “make sense” of and materially survive in the multilayered stimuli with which it is bombarded every second of every day. In order for consciousness to grasp reality, to keep from being overwhelmed by this saturation of energy that is our physical, psychological and spiritual environment, normal consciousness needs to discern some sort of order.

Abstraction is the tool of discursive consciousness which allows us to order our awareness of the universe in a way that enables us to function in the world and survive. Korzybski points out that “In a world of only absolute differences, without similarities, recognition, and therefore, ‘intelligence’, would be impossible.”⁷ The process of abstraction is accomplished by focusing on similarities and ignoring unique differences. As Prof. Michael von Brück put it, “… if we look into identity we cannot avoid facing reality as a pluriform and pluralistic field of references. Identity constitutes ‘I’ and ‘we’ in facing and interpreting something or somebody as ‘other’.” ⁸ Wheeler reminded us almost a century ago that, “Since no two events are identical, every atom, molecule, organism, personality, and society is an emergent and, at least to some extent, a novelty.” Everything is becoming in divine creation. Korzybski, the founder of General Semantics, insisted that the “is” of “identification” needed to be eliminated for the welfare and sanity of humanity.⁹ The sane individual is always conscious of the fact that nothing “is”; all is “becoming.”

The question inevitably arises, “if everything flows from the love of God and is organized by the wisdom of God,” ¹⁰how can this manifest “evil” exist in the world today? Fr. Bede asserts that “[t]he Christian view is that God creates a world of free beings, because freedom is the greatest blessing one can have.” He goes on to say that freedom is a condition of love and that “the world was created by love and for love.” There is no freedom without love.¹¹

The ultimate goal of humanity is a communion of persons in love. This is what is revealed in St. John’s Gospel, when Jesus prayed for his disciples “that they may be one, as you, Father, are, in me and I in you, that they may be one in us.” This is the meaning of Christian doctrine of the Trinity; that the ultimate Reality, the Godhead, or whatever name we give to the ultimate Truth, is a communion of love. ¹²

This being the case, how can we fathom the chaos and conflict that confronts us in the world today? We find this turning away from unity and agape ultimately not only in the attempts of governments to ignore the will of the governed and in the tendency of societies to attempt to impose their will on other, less materially fortified, societies. Fundamentalism is on the rise everywhere; terrorism spreads like a virulent virus; the international situation has reached a level of global instability previously unimaginable and a new and little understood imperialism seems to be on the march. Institutions supposedly dedicated to international peace and welfare are either incapable or unwilling to deal effectively with the critical state the world finds itself in. T. S. Eliot once said, “Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.” With his customary elegance, Eliot may have provided us with the perfect definition of political evil with that phrase, “harm does not interest them.”

There is nothing particularly new about the kinds of human conflict we are experiencing; this sort of thing has been with us throughout history. Nonetheless, since the burgeoning of the democratic vision in the 19th century with its promise of unity and universal respect, if not compassion, we appear to be experiencing a rapid intensification in a regression to less spiritually receptive attitudes. Fr. Bede, with his panoramic historical vision, sees this as an historical rhythm. St. Paul saw the turmoil of the first century also as “the present evil age.”

We are separated from God by sin, by egoism, by self-assertion. Jesus surrenders that ego, that self, totally and thereby enables humanity to return, to free itself from its egocentricity, to be centered in God. “He gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age.[Gal. 1:4]” ¹³

The world is created with free beings, “both angelic and human,” but Fr. Bede reminds us that “freedom means capacity also to fail, to fall away from love, to center on the self and to cause disintegration.”¹⁴ He asserts that there are “negative, hostile cosmic powers which work against the order of the universe.”

As a result of these cosmic and psychological forces human beings fall away from the life of the Spirit and center on themselves, forming cells of disintegration like a cancer in the body, in this body of mankind. It must never be forgotten that mankind is one. ¹⁵

It is within this fabric of experience that the critical decisions must be made; the “yeah” or “nay” at this point is the essential act of will of the individual or the society by which the consequences will be determined. Faced with the brilliant and complex mystery of creation, do we elect to humbly recognize our unique existence and embrace the unity of which we are an integral part and sing with Aquinas “Adoro te, devote, latens Deitas,/ quae sub his figuris vere latitas” (I devoutly adore Thee, hidden Deity,/ Truly hidden under these present forms), or do we center our vision on that smaller individual self, whether that self be encased in person, culture or state, imagining it to be the central force of our existence and thereby judge and sentence all that is not in accord with our predetermined and limited vision?

Fr. Bede deals extensively with the evolution of human consciousness in the early chapters of A New Vision of Reality pointing out that this developmental process inevitably involves the separation of “self” from “other” in order to bring the other into discursive consciousness where it can be dealt with objectively; but if the destructive potential is to be avoided, the process must not stop there; it must continue to fulfillment by giving the self over to the other in the perfecting of the emanating trans-personal consciousness.

We become more ourselves as we enter more deeply into relationship with the others. In ordinary consciousness we are all separated in time and space, but as we go beyond the limitations of time and space we experience our oneness with others. We do not lose ourselves, but we lose our sense of separation and division and discover our integral oneness in the One Reality.¹⁶

It is interesting to see that Einstein, working as he did in the area of mathematics—the languages par excellence of discursive consciousness—presents us with a very similar picture:

A human being is part of the whole, called by us “universe,” limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons close to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from our prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all humanity and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Fr. Bede certainly was not without faith in the long range development of the human spirit. One who knew him well while he was here, gives us an insightful glimpse into the faith of Fr. Bede.

For him…the spiritual powers begin to develop and transcend the capacities of mind and body. These are not left behind but are integrated into what opens us to the Eternal, the discovery of the Absolute, the Transcendent, the deep Source of all Reality. This is the breakthrough to the mystical and this, Fr. Bede believed, is the great hope for everyone. . . . This man, monk, and mystic, left us a message not only in his words but most of all by his very life! ¹⁷

That “breakthrough to the mystical”, “the great hope for everyone” implies not only the “dark night” through which each individual soul must pass on the pilgrimage to the light, but, also, the broader evolutionary crises that humanity as a whole must face at each expanding phase of the development of “cosmic consciousness.” Growth and rebirth, although exhilarating, even joyous, may also entail a certain “terror and anxiety” as we move out into the embrace of the new creation in Christ and leave behind the protective constructs that provide such comfort and consolation while keeping us from experiencing the fullness of the Reality of which we are a part.

The present hue and cry raised by umbrageous religious sensibilities on a global scale is another reflection of this acute grasping for “identity” and is doubtless a generalized reaction to the current state of political and social ferment and fragmentation. Religion has become a cause celebre as it is the one arena in which the individual citizen can still experience the confluence of social unity and personal identification that in the 19th Century accompanied nationalistic identification. Sincere devotion to the deep spiritual center of the religious group is not a necessary concomitant for identification with the group; the most superficial identifications are sufficient to justify the reactionary posture.

Fr. Bede said, “I know for certain only two things about the time we are about to enter. The first is that it will be on every level a ruthless battle between those forces that want to keep humanity enslaved to the past— and those include religious fundamentalism, nationalism, materialism, and corporate greed— and those forces that will awaken in response to a hunger for a new way of living and of doing everything. The second thing I know— and I know this from my own inmost experience— is that God will shower help, grace and protection on all those who sincerely want to change and are brave enough to risk the great adventure of transformation.”¹⁸ The “time we are about to enter”— for us, today, that “time” is now.

Recently the Aga Khan observed, "We are often told these days that tension and violence in much of the world grows out of some fundamental clash of civilizations — especially a clash between the Islamic world and the West. I disagree with this assessment. In my view it's a clash of ignorance which is to blame."¹⁹ It is unlikely that the Aga Khan was referring to awareness on the “discursive” level when he spoke of “ignorance.” Certainly his vision was turned to deeper spiritual insights that have been dulled so extensively in the public arena by the march toward absolute “objectivism” that marks Western cultural development since the 15th Century Renaissance.

Fr. Bede sees the present state of spiritual dissolution manifest in the social and political tension and violence in so much of the world as having its origins in the Renaissance of 15th century. Most of our studies of culture in the West ignore an earlier “renaissance”, that of the spiritual and cultural flowering in the 13th century.

My mind was moving now towards the thirteenth century as the supreme period of European art and philosophy, and already I began to see the Renaissance as the initial stage in that decline of culture and spread of "civilization" of which we are witnessing the last stages at the present day. . . .. ²⁰

That pinnacle of eight centuries of unprecedented cultural evolvement has generally been ignored in our history texts. The general idea transmitted in our schools is that from the fall of the Roman Empire until the blossoming of the neo-classical rationalism in the 15th century, Western culture was essentially comatose. That, of course, was not the way it was. While the Northern regions of Europe were still in a semi-barbaric state, the Southern regions hosted 800 years of a flourishing culture that was marked by an harmonic co-existence of North African Muslims, Jews, and Christians that has never been replicated in Western history. Science, art, philosophy and agriculture were inter-related in one vision at all levels of medieval society. This cultural unity was particularly marked in the South-west where agriculture, mining, trade, and industries (textiles, pottery, and leather working) were fostered and brought tremendous prosperity; the Andalusian cities of Córdoba, Seville, and Granada, embellished by the greatest Moorish monuments in Spain, were celebrated as centers of culture, science, and the arts. The University of Salamanca, founded in 1218 by Alfonso IX of León and reorganized in 1254 by Alfonso X of Castile and León, was a center of multi-cultural scholarship. The Cantigas of Alfonso X, his hymns in praise of the Blessed Virgin, are one of the most beautiful musical compositions that reflect this unity of cultures. At the same time the University of Paris, where Sr. Thomas Aquinas taught theology, was flourishing in France. Dante Alighieri produced his Divine Comedy and the great musical forms of the Mozarabic chant(the Mozarabic rite was documented by St. Isidore of Seville in the 7th century) and Ambrosian Chant (already established in Milan in the 4th Century) were highly developed while the “Gregorian Chant” played a major role in the development of the Western Christian liturgy. During this period the art of stained glass was developed and the great Gothic cathedrals rose up to proclaim the glory of God. Science, theology and religion were integral. This was, indeed the “Age of Faith.” When Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Kings, drove the Muslims and Jews from the region, this high culture began its decline with only fragments remaining in literary and some musical genres and textiles, pottery, and leather working preserved in Spain.

The dissolution and fragmentation of the majesty of the Middle Ages reverted to a period of foment and overshadowing that was to produce another era of rapacious imperialism and material acquisition which devolved into what our texts refer to as the “Renaissance,” the force of which only now is beginning to come to an end.

Fr. Bede saw our present socio-political situation as not unlike the 5th Century when the entire structure of the Roman Empire began to disintegrate. Over and over again, he reminds us that the key to understanding our reality is the grasp of the concept of “process.” Existence is not static; it is dynamic, ever changing in relation to itself. Being is not a state; it is a process. In A New Vision of Reality, Fr. Bede delineates the progress of the “old” scientific attitude that developed from the Renaissance producing the “objectivism” that separated religion from science and resulted in “the gradual development of a materialist philosophy and a mechanistic model of the universe.” This could not but affect our whole society. “The present industrial system and modern technology are the direct result of this mechanistic concept of the universe. The whole social, political and economic system of the West is governed by it, and even art, morality and religion are affected by it.” ²¹

Fr. Bede’s vision of the future may seem dark, but his view is not pessimistic. What he sees ahead are the necessary steps in the process of humanity’s development toward, what Teilhard de Chardin termed, the Omega point.²² As this “present world order breaks down and a new world order emerges from the ashes of the old,” we will “need to rediscover the perennial philosophy, the traditional wisdom, which is found in all ancient religions and especially in the great religions of the world.” ²³ And it is not as though we need to start from square one; great strides have already been made in this direction. What Fr. Bede sees is the need for a “return to the Center.”

While at present “[t]he material resources of the universe are being grossly exploited in order to create more material prosperity for relatively few human beings,” our future development depends upon our return to an understanding that we are an integral part of this natural world which extends far beyond this small planet and must return to a sacramental respect of it. Our vision must expand to subsume and include “the sense of communion with an encompassing reality [that] will replace the attempt to dominate the world.” This should give rise to a new type of human community: “This would be a decentralized society drawing people from large cities to smaller towns and villages where a much more total and integrated human life would be possible.” There must be a rethinking and revision of our material and spiritual existence if mankind is to continue on the path to Christ consciousness which is our heritage from the Incarnation.²⁴

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¹Andrew Harvey, A Walk with Four Spiritual Guides (Woodstock, Skylight Paths,2003) ix

²Bede Griffiths, A New Vision of Reality (London, HarperCollins, 1989) 270

³Griffiths, New Vision 271

⁴Harvey, ix

⁵Griffiths, New Vision 271

⁶Ernest G. Schachtel, Metamorphosis: On the Development of Affect, Perception, Attention, and Memory (New York, Basic Books, 1959) 191

⁷Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity, (Lakeville, The International Non-Aristotelian Library, 1958) 165

⁸Michael von Brück, From an unpublished article prepared for the B.G. Conference at Big Sur in July 2006

⁹Korzybski, 93

¹⁰Griffiths, New Vision 271

¹¹ Griffiths, New Vision 271

¹²Griffiths, New Vision 94

¹³from an unpublished homily given by Fr. Bede at Shantivanam in 1988

¹⁴Griffiths, New Vision. 271

¹⁵Griffiths, New Vision. 271

¹⁶Griffiths, New Vision 94

¹⁷Pascaline Coff, OSB, “MAN, MONK, MYSTIC”. The Bede Griffiths Trust November 12, 2006 <http://www.bedegriffiths.com/>

¹⁸Harvey x-xi

¹⁹Reported in the International Herald Tribune September 22, 2006

²⁰Bede Griffiths, The Golden String (Springfield, Templegate, 1980) 63

²¹Griffiths, New Vision 276

²²Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York, Harper & Row, 1965)

²³Griffiths, New Vision 296

²⁴Griffiths, New Vision 282 - 289

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Gerald Hoke is an educator, artist, poet and journalist who has spent the greater part of his professional life in Spain. Jerry is a Benedictine Oblate of Osage+Monastery and is now working with the Bede Griffiths Center for Contemplative Prayer in Orlando, Florida.