Punctum Saliens

Continuing from my last post, I have not totally thought through the “why” of the ultimate observer doing no action but, taking that as an assumption to be “proven” later, I think there are two answers to “Who, then, created?”

First, as some spiritual traditions suggest (and I can’t, at the moment, recall which one(s)) it was a demiurge who did the creating. The Old Testament God, Jehovah, was not the ultimate observer but a “lesser” god, more akin to a child with his fits of rage, anger, jealousy, &c., and it was this god who created. It reminds me of that Star Trek episode (the “real” Star Trek with Captain James T. Kirk) where the Enterprise crew is trapped on this planet by a “god” which turns out to be a child playing. The child’s parents come in at the end and save everyone from annihilation and apology for their child’s behavior.

Second, there is no creation — it’s all a dream, maya, an illusion. This fits in with Eastern tradition, especially Vedanta and Hinduism.

Vedanta has an aphorism which states: “I do nothing at all.” Our true “I,” our true Self, is the ultimate observer and does not act. If our true Self were, itself, observed, then it would be the object to another’s subject. That other subject would then be the ultimate observer (unless, of course, it was observed by yet another subject). To break the infinite chain, there must be an ultimate observer which is not observed by any other subject. This ultimate observer is “God” and our true “Self.” This is the “I” in the above aphorism. However, if “I” do nothing, i.e. “God” does nothing, then who/what created the world that we see, feel, hear, taste, and smell?

A follow-up to my Knowing God post. In that post, I wrote:

God is in us, God is that part of us that is unchanging, God is our “I,” our knower, our true self. And the way to know God is to look within. To look for what in us does not change; what in us says “I.”

I was a little unsure about that conclusion; I was unable to justify it. However, now I think I can.

When you know or perceive something you are the subject and the thing is the object. The subject knows the object. The object cannot know the subject. Now, God is — by definition, I dare say — the ultimate subject since nothing can know God as object as that would require something to be unknowable to God. So, how can we know God? The only way possible is if we are God.

Does that make sense?

In thinking about my recent post on ritual, it occurred to me that my problem with ritual is that I’m intellectualizing it too much. I am trying to force onto the ritual a meaning which, when absent, leaves me empty. Instead, perhaps, I should be just experiencing the ritual experience — as I said in my post: Just for the hell of it.

Intellectual knowledge and experiential knowledge are two very different beasts. Carl Jung, when talking about using amplification in dream analysis (the process of pulling in collective symbols — mythology, religious, &c.) says that it cannot be done by head-knowledge but only by someone with long experience.

When I was a child, I had all the head knowledge about Christianity. I was the best at Bible drills, could memorize scripture, had all the right answers. But, I had no experience — my personal Christian life was in shambles. My intellectual knowledge allowed me to fool everyone but there was nothing really there.

In The Eight Upanishads it says:

Of these, the lower [knowledge] comprises the Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, Atharva Veda, the science of pronunciation, &c., the code of rituals, grammar, etymology, metre, and astrology. Then there is the higher [knowledge] by which is realized the Immutable.

(What a great word to describe God: The Immutable.)

With the Bible as with the Upanishads, the real, higher meaning is not learnt from reading, studying the texts, memorizing, &c. The real meaning is learnt by practice, by experiencing God and not by reading about God. The intellectual part is all too simple and all too public and allows us to deceive others all too easily.

God made sense turn outward, man therefore looks outward, not into himself. Now and again a daring soul, desiring immortality, has looked back and found himself.

– The Ten Principal Upanishads, p. 33

According to Vedanta, self knowledge comes not from looking at external things nor even from delving into our minds. Self knowledge comes from finding that which is aware of the mind; becoming aware of the knower.

A very recent post on You Are Dreaming talks about this very thing — finding the “I” that is your true self, the “I” that

remains unchanged throughout the day. What remains unchanged as the thoughts and feelings come and go like the clouds? What remains unchanged as the body moves around, typing, clicking the mouse, shifting in the chair? What is the factor or principle that is steady and unshaken as the appearances of hands and thoughts wiggle around?

Knowing your true self, your unchanging “I”, the knower is not becoming aware of an object because there would always be another knower of that object which would have to be perceived. So, if the knower is not an object, then what is it? What is aware of your mind, never changes, and is not an object that can be perceived? Sounds a little bit like God, to me!

Furthermore, to know the knower is to realize that you are the knower. Jesus says as much in John 10:30 –“I and the Father are one.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

But wait … if the knower is God and you are the knower, then, are you God? Well, Jesus says so in John 17

… that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us … And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them; that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and didst love them, even as Thou didst love Me.

There certainly are a lot of parallels between Jesus and “them.” They are in God and Jesus, they are one just as God and Jesus are one, Jesus is in them and God is in Jesus, God loves them just as God loves Jesus.

God is not something “out there,” totally separate from us. If he were, he would be an object that we can perceive and know and, therefore, not God. God is in us, God is that part of us that is unchanging, God is our “I,” our knower, our true self. And the way to know God is to look within. To look for what in us does not change; what in us says “I.”

I’ve been reading about Vedanta lately and thinking about it in terms of the Christian doctrine of total depravity and the (what I would call extreme) position of “no morality apart from God.”

According to my Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, the word for “sin” in the N.T. is derived from the word hamartano, which means “to miss the mark (and so not share in the prize).” The Greek-English Lexicon by Liddell and Scott also cites the following phrases as meanings for hamartano: “to miss the road”; “to miss one’s point”; “failed in hitting upon the thought”; “to be deprived of, lose.”

According to Vedanta, my individual self is none other than Brahman, the universal self. My “sin” is that I don’t realize this. I’ve missed the mark and so do not share in the prize of peace and tranquility during my life. I’ve missed the point. I’ve failed to hit upon this thought and understand it fully. In other words, I’ve sinned. I was born in this sinful state because from birth, I’ve not realized what I really am. In a way, according to Vedanta, I am totally depraved (at least as far as the doctrine relates to being born a sinner) but my punishment is merely the hell of eternal rebirth into a suffering life rather than the Hell of eternal teeth gnashing in the Lake of Fire.

But then there’s the “no morality apart from God” crowd. (And by “God” they, of course, mean “their God”.) “Look at the Nazis!” they say while shutting their eyes to Gandhi, Siddhartha, &c. Anyway, I see a grave danger in the combination of these two ideas. If I am a) born a total sinner and b) have no moral compass apart from God then the only conclusion is that there is absolutely nothing preventing me from committing every heinous, despicable, detestable act imaginable. Can you see how this attitude colors — or perhaps more precisely, discolors — one’s view of the world? No longer do you see people; you see potential murderers and rapists.

I have personally felt the effect of this attitude. Someone very close to me accused me of doing something that someone else did. I shall not go into details but let’s just say that it was more along the lines of emotionally damaging than physically. There was no reason to believe that it was I who did this act. I had never done anything even remotely like it; never hinted that I would do such a thing. It was totally out of character for me. Again, not wanting to go into details, there were several other circumstances and pieces of evidence that would have pointed away from me as the perpetrator. But this person was absolutely convinced that it was I. They went to their pastor for guidance on what to do about it. They even threatened me with legal action if I did it again. In their mind, I was a sinner without God and so there was nothing I would not do. I had no moral compass and so it was perfectly reasonable to conclude that I did it. Needless to say, that accusation caused more than a little tension in the relationship.

I am no expert in Vedanta, but I don’t see the same reaction from “believers” toward “sinners” as with some Christians. Reading people like Alan Watts who seem to agree with the Vedanta viewpoint, there seems to be more tolerance of those who don’t understand the way things really are. These poor souls are not evil, merely deluded. And it is realized that forcing reality down their throats will not make them see it any more quickly. Which reminds me of a quote from Carl Jung (of course, I cannot find it at the moment) which says that people with faith should be more understanding of people without faith for having faith is easier. (I’ll add an update to this post when I find the exact quote).