Punctum Saliens

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.”