When I was waffling a few blogs ago of each of us having our very own question I said that I had never actually found what mine was (Maybe it had just been lost amid a sea of questions!)
 |
| Which one is mine? |
But my memory was jogged by one question - perhaps more a query - that often occupied my mind a few years ago, and one I raised then on a few Forums. I always labelled my query "The Contact of Two Liberties".
I think I need to set the scene so that others who may have stumbled upon this blog can at least have some chance of capturing exactly what I am on about.
My question/query was occasioned by an exchange between Thomas Merton and Aldous Huxley, a correspondence found in "The Hidden Ground of Love", Merton's letters on religious experience and social concerns. Merton was seeking dialogue with Huxley on the use of drugs to induce mystical states, a use that Huxley was advocating and Merton had doubts about.
First up, Merton admitted that he was unable to be clear himself as far as the distinction between natural and supernatural, of exactly what the dividing line between the two might be. Nevertheless, he saw a true mystical experience as necessarily being a contact of two liberties, and therefore not procurable by drugs. Obviously, for Merton, one of those two liberties would be God - God not as "object" or as "Him up there", but as "I Am" or simply "Am" (Merton's words) He then goes on to speak more of such "liberty" i.e. liberty as "a free gift", "a free act of love".
 |
| Free? Still there can be arguments! |
At the time I was myself moving away from "Him up there" and towards the idea of the Divine as the Ground of Being, the "hidden ground of love". But I was still disturbed by certain assertions found in the sermons of Meister Eckhart, where Eckhart claimed that if we "empty ourselves" then God must enter in. So, no choice, all determined purely by the way things are. To my mind, as it was then, something, somewhere, seemed to be in danger of being lost.
 |
| The Hidden Ground of Love |
Obviously a lot of this revolves around the free will versus determinism debate, an ongoing conundrum still unresolved - and I would say, unresolvable. But for me, then, and now, such debate holds no interest. Freedom is experienced and, subjectively, we live by choice. Appeals to determinism - especially as "justification" - are for me a cop out.
 |
| No end to the arguments |
Well, for better or worse, I have since moved onwards, from the Ground of Being to non-theism, then to non-duality! I have found that nothing has been lost, just clarity gained - irrespective of how unclear my ramblings are to others!
Why speak only of two liberties? There are infinite liberties. Why speak only of "contact"? Why not speak of inter-being?
Each moment is a gift within such inter-being, each moment potentially a moment of love, a love that has no why.
For me the distinction between natural and supernatural just does not exist. To insist upon such a division only creates problems. "Am" has been from the very beginning and has no need to "enter" when we "empty ourselves". And I would say that the words of Lama Govinda, that the only extension to the present is intensity, points towards better distinctions.
Then again, is "intensity" the correct word?
 |
| Intensity? Too much "calculation"? |
No comments:
Post a Comment