Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
Ethiopia as very important to the mix of matters under discussion, yes, very strongly. Ethiopian Royal House calls itself Lion of Judah. Direct trace to David and Solomon and before. Ethiopia is a center of Coptic Christianity, traditionally, which is rather more important than Latin Church of all flavors gives it credit for being.
Israelis regard themselves as having ancient fraternal ties with Ethiopia and I am in complete agreement on that. I am lacking in details, however.
Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia? Something, yes. The Ark of the Covenant, doubtful. I will not say no. I will say I doubt it. Switzerland is my favorite guess, but that is still a guess. Possibly under Notre Dame de Chartres. However, something is in Ethiopia, something important and something physical. I do not know what.
On spiritual and physical, this gets to be a muddle. When Baba hands a mother a blanket for her child is this an act in the physical realm? Only? Obviously, it i s physical and spiritual. And the realms are inseparable. People like the tinsel and trash Baba materializes for them. It this junk physical? Only? Obviously, it is physical and spiritual.
Food, He says, is the best service. Food? That is as physical as one can get. Feed the body. This is not spiritual? If it were not, He would not say it is the best service.
You see the point: the separation of physical and spiritual is absurd. First, it cannot be done. And second, it is foolish to try. And by implication, third, it is foolish-er by the yards to pretend that we can say what is physical and what spiritual.
Can you tell me what is spiritual and what is physical? Can you say this is one and this the other? Try it. If you succeed, let me know. The spiritual is known only under the aspect of the physical. The physical is known only under the aspect of the spiritual. Language which separates the two or implies a relevant distinction between them is ignorant and therefore ludicrous. Truth has no second. It is known under the physical aspect and under the spiritual and under the mental. It is mediated. Cognitively, Truth cannot be separated from the media under the aspects of which we receive and revel in It. This is the phenomenon which makes Namasmarana possible at all.
We call the name of God. That sound is physical. Is it not spiritual for that reason? The blanket Baba gave to the mother for the child is a blanket, fully spiritual and fully physical. This is the extremely important point the Church has always wanted to make through the cumbersome but significant language of Christ as “fully God and fully man.” The point is that each is only knowable under aspect of the other. Rabbi Heschel had a poignant way of making this point, with this language: God is in search of man. He titled a book thus, in fact. He meant in part that God is always looking to be manly, i.e., humanly. Abraham (Heschel’s first name) was intuiting that God arrives on deck as an Avathar, or less plenarily as a Christ.
We must not use language which implies a distinction between the physical and the spiritual. The language of attachment and detachment re physicality is appropriate and necessary. But language which implies a distinction between these mutually interpenetrating and supporting aspects of the One should not be used. It is misleading at least and can be willfully ignorant.
We should not, for example, call some person spiritual and another not or not so much so. First, what do we know? Exactly nothing. But more importantly, how would we know the difference? We have no way to. As I say, if you can tell me what is spiritual and what is physical, give it a try, although I am sure your native intelligence has already affirmed that it is not possible to tell because the things are integral, un-differentiate-able.
Is Swami’s body unspiritual? He eats. He urinates. He defecates. He chews pan. Is that unspiritual? Is that bodily? I eat, I urinate, defecate, I sleep to rest the body, I yawn, I think, I get angry, I get sad, I get happy. Is that unspiritual? How would one know? What is the standard?
Story time tomorrow. I need sleep. Or rather, my body does. Is that unspiritual? As the Church has always maintained through a rather cumbersome thing called the Doctrine of Christology, Truth and World rely on one another both for their actuality and for their presentment as themselves to themselves in and as what we call “awareness” or “knowing” or “cognition.”
Truth only goes under the aspect of the World, and the World only goes under the aspect of Truth. Our language should try to indicate this integral non-duality or at least minimize a collateral non-appearance of it.
War is spiritual activity. Spiritual activity is war. That is a bald way to state the matter, and deliberately so, to give it high relief, and should not be taken as a legalism. The point is that we cannot say where spirituality leaves off and physicality begins or vice versa. If we think we can say where, then we are just like those famous “Christians” — and Jews, and Hindus, etc. — who screw around all week and then dress up to look prim and pretty for Sunday.
The danger to sadhana and spiritual progress if this integration of spiritual and physical is not appreciated is not trivial. It is serious. A story of Janaka and Gargi points to an aspect of how serious it is. The terrific conflict in Church history between representatives of relatively orthodox Christology and representatives Marcionism and Docetism — which, incidentally, are still the most common misunderstanding among our citizens, because they are the most forgiving of hypocrisy — is a running commentary on how serious it is. Drawing a contrast and separation between spirituality and physicality is avidyamaya. It is an hypocrisy that produces a myriad moral debilitations.
As I say, if you can tell what is spiritual and what is physical, I am agog to know.
Enlightenment and Liberation are illusions useful for confusing the addled.
It is a constant source of high amusement to me that people who go ballistic over language such as original sin, salvation, the church, and John Calvin think they have something different — and both new and better !!! — with language such as maya, moksha, ashram and Shankaracharya. There is no accounting for ignorance. :-)
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
