Bede Griffiths and the Shape of Wholeness

by Bruno Barnhart, OSB Cam

Bede Griffiths reacted strongly against the modern western dualism of mind and body, and even more strongly against the crude scientism which had reduced all reality to material bodies and forces. He revived a threefold view of reality as at once matter, consciousness and spirit, and a tripartite view of the human person as a unity of body, mind/psyche and spirit. This is the 'vertical axis' of his vision.

The Vedic seers had reached an understanding of the threefold nature of the world, at once physical, psychological and spiritual. These three worlds were seen to be interdependent, every physical reality having a psychological aspect, and both aspects, physical and psychological, being integrated in a spiritual vision. The cows and horses of the Vedas were not merely physical cows and horses, they were also the cows and horses of the mind, that is psychological forces, and beyond that they were symbols of the cosmic powers, manifestations of the Supreme Spirit.

This understanding of the threefold nature of the world underlies not only the Vedas but all ancient thought. In the primitive mind (which is also the natural mind) there is no such thing as a merely physical object. Every material thing has a psychological aspect, a relation to human consciousness, and this in turn is related to the supreme spirit which pervades both the physical world and human consciousness. (The Marriage of East and West, p. 51)

Sometimes, however, Bede’s critique of modern western culture would take a different course. He saw it as gravely out of balance, dominated by a ‘masculine’ rational consciousness. He insisted on the necessity of balancing this ‘left brain’ perspective with a ‘feminine’ consciousness which he identified with intuition, imagination and myth. The intuitive mind has a participative understanding of the whole of a reality, rather than an ‘objective’ and analytical knowledge of interacting parts. This polarity of masculine and feminine, reason and intuition, constitutes the horizontal dimension of his view of the human psyche. Bede wrote, recalling his conviction before going to India,

I remember writing to a friend at the time: “I want to discover the other half of my soul.” I had began to find that there was something lacking not only in the Western world but in the Western Church. We were living from one half of our soul, from the conscious, rational level and we needed to discover the other half, the unconscious, intuitive dimension. I wanted to experience in my life the marriage of these two dimensions of human existence, the rational and intuitive, the conscious and unconscious, the masculine and feminine. I wanted to find the way to the marriage of East and West. (The Marriage of East and West, pp. 7-8)

Joining these two images produces a kind of ‘cross of reality’ (the phrase is from Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy), which may be taken to represent either the human being or the world within which the individual exists, stretching the person toward fullness between spirit and matter or contemplation and action along one axis, and between truth and love or identity and relationship or even past and future along the other. From this vision it is not far to the image of the mystery of Christ which we find in Colossians and Ephesians: Jesus stretched upon the cross joining ‘heaven and earth,’ Jews and Gentiles.

He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Col 1:15-20)