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#2272
- Monday, September 26, 2005 - Editor: Jerry Katz
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http://www.swans.com/library/art11/mgc166.html
Bede
Griffiths 1906-1993
Making Statements Through Action
by Milo Clark
(Swans - September 26, 2005) In the Bhgavad Gita, Krishna
tells Arjuna, plagued with doubt in the center of a great
battlefield, that he cannot not fight. He cannot avoid actions
for which he is uniquely prepared, uniquely sited to act. He
cannot escape his karma.
A pursuit common to mysticisms is the union of opposites;
realization of nonduality. In Vajrayana Buddhism, they speak of
the union of perfected opposites as shown in the Yab-Yum statues
dear to prurient non-Buddhists. Those who follow the Vedas see a
similar state in Advaita Vedanta (non-duality at the end of the
Vedas), sometimes summarized as Sat Chit Ananda. As Christianity
is very hard on its mystics, faith in Godhead is mumbled as
approaching nonduality somewhat, but who needs such things.
The excitements of Yab-Yum potentialities meet the very rational
strictures of Advaita Vedanta and fall to sheer boredom around
Godhead, unless, of course, Godhead is your path. In any case, as
Buddhists generally agree, such matters lie within absolute
truth, unknown and unknowable to us mired in actualities.
As an English Benedictine monk living in India after 1955, Bede
Griffiths, prepared and sited, could not and would not avoid
actions. He struggles mightily to find words and ways beyond
relative truth while nibbling at the fringes of absolute truth.
He sought to stand firmly on a mystic's path with arms
outstretched to all who would join him. As one may imagine, he
was not overly popular with those convinced that their way is the
only way.
Recently, the newage communities have been much excited by a
movie, What the Bleep Do We Know (Captured Light Industries). The
Institute of Noetic Sciences and Captured Light Industries
prepared an eighty-page "Study Guide and Manual for
Navigating Rabbit Holes." (See Alice in Wonderland for a
primer on rabbit holes.) Is it ironic that a movie with rabbit
holes exploring intuitive actualities requires or inspires an
eighty-page study guide?
"What the Bleep" looks at untidy matters such as
paradigm shift, quantum reality, creating our days and healing
the past. Untidy is both a characteristic and recommendation of
such matters. Untidy is good.
If you are comfortable with David Bohm, Fritjof Capra, Ken
Wilber, eschew the Perennial Philosophy and are not put off by
Dao, Shunyata, Al Haqq or Godhead, "What the Bleep" is
possibly old hat for you.
In context, however, Bede Griffiths may be able to save a lot of
time while cutting quickly to the quick on most of this business.
In his 1989 collection, A New Vision of Western Science, Eastern
Mysticism and Christian Faith, Bede Griffiths covers the
essentials (and then some) of "What the Bleep" in his
first two concise chapters. He then charges onward storming the
rabbit holes to end up (chapter 13) at the New Age.
"It is very significant that the physics and other branches
of the new science are helping us to get a renewed vision of
reality which takes us back to aspects of the ancient wisdom, and
in the process assists the development of our new vision in ever
more profound and far reaching directions." p. 11
Dump Aristotle, can Descartes and break free! Put mind back with
body and power up soul!
Those familiar with Karl Gustav Jung know that he experimented
extensively with both Eastern and Western alchemy. His efforts to
relink psyche and soul, animus and anima found profound
inspiration therein. (See his Mysterium Coniunctionis, ISBN
0-06910-1816-2, and The Secret of the Golden Flower, ISBN
1-56799-80-4.)
Few known that Isaac Newton very secretly pursued alchemical
studies. He lived in terror that The Church would discover this
work. We get stuck with him, therefore, as scientific anchor for
a materialistic and mechanical science governing a largely
dominant mechanical and materialist worldview. If it can't be
measured, quantified, it isn't real, doesn't exit. It is
subjective in an objective actuality. Bad!
"In Newton's case the irony was that philosophically he
himself was not a mechanist at all; he believed the universe to
be a body, an organism, rather than a machine." p. 15
After Newton and Descartes, ". . . life itself came to be
explained exclusively in terms of mechanism." p. 16
"Jung discovered in the unconscious not only repressed
emotions and desires but also creative principles which he called
archetypes. . . formative principles . . . which opened the human
mind to other levels of reality. From this Jung was led to
conceive the collective unconscious as the repository of the
inherited experience of humanity, manifesting itself particularly
in dreams and in the myths of ancient man." p. 17
Modern physics now sees that ". . .the material universe is
essentially a field of energies in which the parts can only be
understood in relation to the whole. . . . The whole . . . is
present in every part and . . . every part is interconnected with
every other part." p. 17
David Bohm, a devotee of Krishnamurti, gives us implicate order
(the compact unfolded state, one may say, before Big Bang) gone
explicate, that is, unfolding ever since. Who needs specific
dates within irrelevant time? Now covers all.
"But behind the explicate order, the implicate is always
present, so in that sense, the whole universe is implicated
beyond every explicate form." p. 18
Bring in the Heart Sutra's "Gate, gate, paragate,
parasamgate, bodhi, svaha," add a dose of ontogeny
recapitulating philogeny and we bump into Rupert Sheldrake's
formative causation and morphogenic fields mixed with a healthy
sprinkle of Gaia to inspire Ramtha's broad smiles in "What
the Bleep." These sets of ideas tell us a lot about how
everything organizes itself, that a cat will be a cat wherever a
cat is a cat. Without, of course, being the last word on
anything. pps 19-20.
Shall we go on through Prigogine and Teilard or settle for
"What the Bleep"?
And be happy!
Beyond the Darkness, A Biography of Bede Griffiths, Shirley du
Boulay, Doubleday NY, 1998, ISBN 0-385-48946-3.
Return to the Center, Bede Griffiths, Templegate, Springfield IL,
U. S. Edition 1977, ISBN 87243-064-2.
The Marriage of East and West, Bede Griffiths, Templegate,
Springfield IL, 1982, ISBN 0-87243-105-3.
A New Vision of Reality, Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and
Christian Faith, Bede Griffiths (ed. By Felicity Edwards),
Templegate, Springfield IL, 1989, ISBN 0- 87243-180-0.