The One Is Indivisible
The Truth Is The Whole
Devin Nunes, podcast of historic interview, 20 December 2019, including Lee Smith and Ray Appleton, discussing Smith’s The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History.
Creatures — all of them — are by nature religious. They want their duty functionality here and now. They are right to want that because they were thrown into existence for precisely that reason, to have precisely that operational ability, and that is their destiny.
The practice of religion (re + ligare) reconnects ligatures which have separated, thus allowing the pieces of a creature they are meant to hold together to go loose and floppy. That describes paralysis. Religion is an active restoration project. It’s sources and methods restore a creature’s functionality by repairing their parts’ connectors, and thus re-binding together as a whole — healing — their being. Religion restores a creature’s duty functionality. That is religion’s sole use and purpose. When restored, when fit for duty, a creature has no more need of religion. Religion is like a hospital: when one is healthy, one does not need it.
The end of religion is a creature’s duty functionality in the world, not religious practice per se. Religion restores duty functionality here and now. Religion does not aspire to some goal or aspiration or some home elsewhere, such as heaven, peace on earth, economic equality, social justice, political stability, a new age, liberal hegemony, national security, a greater good, a liberal democratic order, a rules-based international order, conservative principles, etc. Those are cloud castles devoid of truth.
If the churches are not brimming with members, works of art, quiet acts of supererogation, and sublime mirth, if the churches are not the very center of a town or city, that is because they are inimical to religion, they obstruct spiritual exercise. If the churches are brimming with performers, legal arguments, moral scrupulosity and/or its opposite, moral equivocation, loud, garish, self-congratulatory, and publicity-oriented, that is because they are devoid of religious practice and therefore are not churches. The continuous and quiet prayers of the faithful make a church. Nothing else can do that. The churches have a monastic base or they have none and they are not.
Creatures — all of them — desire to be one, knit up to completion, consummatus, whole, perfected, in the harmony of resignation with other creatures and with life’s dynamics generally. The crucial ligature, the principal binding or connector restored by religion is the loyalty of consciousness to the truth. I am an ant. I am an elephant. I am a fish. I am a bird. I am a human. I am an angel. I am a tree. I am a flower. I am a lion. I am a cripple whom God has touched. The Glory of The Lord is revealed in a creature’s loyalty to the truth during duty station operations.
The Gita does not encourage inertia, indifference or slothfulness. It recommends Karma as a divine communion (Yoga), as an activity in tune with the Divine Will, and directed to the promotion of one’s spiritual consummation. Karma must be an act of fulfilment, of adoration and of one’s duty to oneself and others. The Gita marks out the steps and the path towards the realisation of this goal. It accepts all attitudes as valuable and sublimates each one into a spiritual effort (sadhana). No one can do better than their best. The body is gifted with all its inherent excellences and defects so that every moment of life can be used for purposes that can sanctify time through service, sacrifice and love. Mundane action (Karma) then becomes Karma-yoga, karma yoked with unselfish ideals.
Sathya Sai Baba – Divine Discourse, September 10, 1984
Βασιλεία του Θεού