The Gifts from the East
"Bede Griffiths' fourth step towards a recovery of wisdom is his recognition of the divine dimension of the feminine. Repeatedly he identifies the Holy Spirit with the 'feminine side' of God. This is a very important point. This 'feminine' Spirit is the divine energy which is The Mother of creation, which brings forth all life, which moves the process of evolution. It also is"that divine life latent in the universe from the beginning, latent in nature, and becoming conscious in us....The Spirit is this energy of love in us, the power of the divine. It is the Source of our real being, by which we become conscious of the divine life in us and know ourselves as sons [and daughters] of God...”[27]"
THE GIFTS FROM THE EAST
"Let us single out some of Bede Griffiths' main contributions to the
rebirth of a Christian wisdom in our time. First of all is wisdom itself: his
quest of the 'golden string.' It is his conviction - and his ability to
communicate that conviction - that there is another way of knowing, which is
deeper than the ordinary way that we think in the contemporary West. There is a
fuller spectrum of consciousness and you recognize its music in his voice as he
speaks or writes. It is this fullness of voice which is to be recovered in
Christianity.
Bede's second contribution, intrinsic to his conception of wisdom, is the
principle of nonduality, or 'dvaita', and of a unitive absolute, the One. When
Bede immerses himself in the world of the Indian scriptures - particularly in
the 'Upanishads' - he discovers a perspective in which everything is one rather
than multiple, in which all things are embraced within a single, ultimate
reality. When Bede speaks of the 'perennial philosophy' or the
'primordial wisdom' or the 'universal wisdom', he can include within each of
these expressions several levels of meaning - or several concentric spheres of
meaning. The core meaning, however, is that unitive reality, or unitive
absolute. Generally, when Bede speaks of the perennial wisdom in his later
years, he means the principle of 'dvaita', or a single nondual reality,
'brahman-atman'. That absolute Reality, or unitive principle - which lies at the
core not only of Hinduism but of Buddhism and Taoism - becomes the heart of
Bede's vision. Identified with 'God' or 'Father,' the first divine Person, it
becomes a key to a new Christian vision. There remains the further work of
re-interpreting the mystery of Christ from this perspective of nonduality.
His third contribution is the unitive self, or atman. As soon as Bede has
written about the nondual Absolute, he usually moves to the atman, because it is
through the Self that the unitive ground of all reality is experienced. The
search for the Self, Bede writes repeatedly, is the heart of the Vedantan way.
In this focus upon the Self, Bede joins Thomas Merton and Abhishiktananda. The
critical further step that is needed here from the Christian theological
perspective is the correlation of this nondual self with baptismal initiation.
Bede Griffiths' fourth step towards a recovery of wisdom is his recognition of
the divine dimension of the feminine. Repeatedly he identifies the Holy Spirit
with the 'feminine side' of God. This is a very important point. This 'feminine'
Spirit is the divine energy which is The Mother of creation, which brings forth
all life, which moves the process of evolution. It also is"that divine life
latent in the universe from the beginning, latent in nature, and becoming
conscious in us....The Spirit is this energy of love in us, the power of the
divine. It is the Source of our real being, by which we become conscious of the
divine life in us and know ourselves as sons [and daughters] of God...”[27] This
concept of a unitive 'divine feminine,' however, requires further
differentiation from the archetype of The Mother.
Bede's fifth gift is something we observed early in our study: the vision of
total integration which Bede conceives in terms of the three levels of being:
spirit, soul (or mind) and matter (or body) - or, roughly speaking, God,
humanity and the universe. Here too we can look toward a further
differentiation: a differentiation of the 'masculine' and 'feminine' poles of
this intermediate human level of mind-soul. The tripartite vision of cosmos and
human person may thus open laterally into a further fullness which corresponds
to the cruciform mystery of Christ as it is found in the New Testament.[28]
Corresponding to what we have called Bede Griffiths' basic myth, we can see his
contribution towards a new wisdom in terms of the realization of a 'Christian
advaita'. Bede brings together Hinduism and Christianity within the vital energy
field of his own spirit. within this creative matrix there gradually occurs a
quasi-fusion of unitive Absolute and Christ-event, giving birth to a vision of a
Christian nonduality in two stages. Firstly, Bede tells us that participation in
God, the nondual Absolute, is realized in the 'communion of love' which is
Christian life and relationship. Secondly, the One is known in the great event
of incarnation which is the 'Cosmic Person', gradually emerging as the center of
Bede's synthesis.
With Abhishiktananda, we may imagine a further - or rather prior - moment of
Christian advaita which is rooted in 'baptismal initiation' as the moment of
identity, a pure unitive participation in the One, as if before differentiation
into Word and Spirit, knowledge and love. This simple and primordial unitive
participation, the moment of identity, may be understood in Jesus'
self-identification in John's gospel," I AM.”In his last years, Abhishiktananda
came to see the baptism of Jesus as the realization of the divine"I AM"In the
human person at the very outset of the gospel. From this point, 'Christian
wisdom' may be regenerated today.
Abhishiktananda apparently lost himself into this moment of identity, this pure
'East' of the beginning. Bede, on the other hand,[29] followed the way of
relationship and synthesis rather than that of primal identity, and returned
westward to integrate that which he had earlier left behind - and indeed the
whole of reality - into an expansive cosmic vision. The eastern keys which Bede
and Abhishiktananda have put in our hands have now to be brought to bear upon
the New Testament and upon the experience and thought of the Christian
tradition.”
The One Light - Bede Griffiths' Principal Writings
Introduction, p. 21-23
Edited and with Commentary by Bruno Barnhart
Templegate Publishers, Springfield, Illinois
ISBN 0-87243-254-8
Notes:
[27] Bede Griffiths, 'Return to the Center', 129-130.
[28] See Bruno Barnhart, 'Second Simplicity', New York, Paulist, 1999, 4,
229-232.
[29] See Judson B. Trapnell," Two Models of Christian Dialogue with Hinduism:
Bede Griffiths and Abhishiktananda," 'Vidyajyoti', 60 (1996), (I) 101-110, (II)
183-191, (III) 243-254.
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