A Sermon Delivered by Rev. Marlin Lavanhar, Senior Minister
At All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, OK
on December 9, 2007
One of my teachers, Jack Kornfield, who is a
Buddhist, tells of a time, some years ago, when he and his wife were traveling
in India. They were on a mountaintop studying with a great
yogi and meditation master, when his wife had a series of visions and dreams
that came to her about death. The most
vivid was about the death of her brother.
Jack kept trying to reassure her that at times, in meditation, we face
death and images of death come naturally – for us to learn about our own life. But unfortunately he was wrong. Ten days later a telegram arrived saying that
her brother Paul had died – he had committed suicide. It was a great tragedy. And then when they looked at the telegram
through their tears, they noticed that the day of his death was the day she had
seen his death. And the way that he had
died was the way that she had seen it.
We've all heard these kinds of stories. We’ve probably heard stories of identical
twins being able to feel and know things about each other across hundreds of
miles with no formal communication. We
hear of mothers sensing something happening with their children even when they
are far out of sight. And we hear of
countless coincidences that make us wonder if we are connected on a level so
subtle that the only way we can explain it is to say we are connected in
spirit.
Kornfield says, “The reason we hear these kinds of stories
is because they're true.” He goes on to
say, “We are fundamentally connected in spirit and consciousness. And yes, we may live in the optical illusion of separateness, as Einstein said, but the
reality is that we are connected. And if
it can happen from here in the US
all the way to a mountaintop in India,
and in so many other times that you've heard about, then this is a phenomenon
worth paying some attention to.”
Eastern religions, like Buddhism and Hinduism teach
that there is an underlying unity of all creation. In these traditions there is a sense that you
and I might think we are separate beings, but in reality we are all one with
each other and with everything around us.
Like Einstein, they tell us our sense of separateness is just an illusion. The classic metaphor used in the East to
describe this unity is that we are all like raindrops that are finding our way
back to the great ocean from whence we’ve come. The ocean represents both our true source and
our destiny. The raindrops are our
imagined state of consciousness, because in fact, we are told, we’ve never
really left the ocean – it’s all an illusion.
In other words, during this life, in which we have consciousness,
we are led to think we’re independent, individual and unique, but in reality we
are all made of (and part of) the same substance. That means whatever I do to hurt you, or to
hurt the earth, really affects me too.
The spiritual path in the Eastern traditions is presented
as a journey to discover our unity and interconnectedness with all that exists. You may know the old joke: what did the Buddhist
monk say to the hotdog vendor in New York
City? “Please make
me one with everything.” Mystics from the
east and west all speak of an underlying unity of existence. A mystical experience is typically described
as a timeless experience of feeling connected with everything and everyone. You may have had such an experience at some
point in your life.
It’s been interesting over the last few decades, as
scientists have begun to create theories that seem to be pointing in the same general
direction as the mystics and theologians.
In subatomic physics we hear of experiments in which a particle is separated
and placed on different sides of the country and when a change occurs in one particle,
at the very same instant, the other particle is observed making the same
change, 3000 miles away. Such
experiments speak to a degree of connectedness on a subatomic level that is
still hard to imagine, and it has challenged much of what scientists thought they
knew about matter and energy. It’s as if
there is some form of immediate communication that can occur between the halves
of the particle, no matter how far apart they might be. Although scientists do not describe it as
communication, they speak of symmetrical and asymmetrical internal relations
and other layers of connectedness.
The point is, science has been discovering subtle
layers of connectedness that certainly make room for the possibility that some
of the phenomena described by mystics and theologians may someday have a
scientific explanation. But whether it
ever becomes explainable or not, the theories being uncovered by quantum
mechanics certainly offer us a reason for humility about what we think we know and
don’t know. They also prompt us to keep
an open mind when it comes to certain phenomena that have historically been
described as spiritual or even paranormal.
In Hindu mythology, we are told that the
heavens of the god Indra contain a
net of pearls.
Each pearl is reflected in its neighbor so that the whole universe
is mirrored in each pearl. This ancient
mythology is likened by some to the nature of a hologram. Holograms, as I’m sure you know, are 3-dimensional
pictorial images; you probably have one on your credit card. But did you know that if you take a
holographic photographic plate and crack it, cut it or divide into tiny little
pieces, in each piece you will still be able view the entire picture of the
hologram? The totality of the image can
be found in each piece. Just like in the
ancient story of Indra’s net of pearls, where the image of the entire universe
can be found in each pearl, some scientists have theorized that the universe
may be constructed like a hologram. Each
little piece of existence may contain within it the whole of existence.
We see this in DNA when it comes to biological
cloning. In cloning we’re told that a
single cell of a living being can be implanted into a female egg and then the
egg can be replaced in the womb, and it has the potential to reproduce a
biological copy of the original donor. The
nature of DNA may give us a clue as to how the universe is constructed.
Scientists may someday complete their
long journey into the discovery of things and when they eventually climb over
that final peak and peer over the top of the last mountain which presents the
face of all reality, they might just find the mystics and the theologians have
been sitting there, all along, waiting for them. If we imagine, with the scientists, that the
world was created in a big bang, then all of the makings of all that exists has
been around from that very first moment. And it has simply been forming and reforming,
shaping and reshaping itself ever since.
As my colleague Forrest
Church likes to say, “The
world was pregnant with you and me from the moment this all began.”
Science tells us that some of the cells
in our bodies are the very same cells that were once in dinosaurs. And we know that the hydrogen which make up
much of our bodies were once in stars. The
big bang theory seems to fit well with the metaphor of the ocean. Apparently we all originate from one unified
source, and, at least on that level, we are all connected in substance. When Jesus said, “I and the father are one” (John
10:30) might he have been speaking like a mystic? Might he have been explaining that all of us
are one in substance with each other and with the Divine – rather than trying
to say that he was himself unique?
A more important question for me is: what
kind of ethic derives from these
understandings of the nature of our existence? As I mentioned earlier, my subject today was
chosen for me by the winner of our auction here at the church Mona Pittenger. I was asked to prepare a message on the
growing understanding of human consciousness.
So I read books by philosopher Ken Wilbur. I studied the works of Hindu Vedanta and
holographic science. I read Paul Davies
and the writings of the mystics of many religions. As I tried to imagine how I could ever
synthesize the various philosophies, and their many nuances, I realized that I
would never be able to do it satisfactorily in 20 minutes. But when I considered what was most
important, I realized that what matters most is how these ideas lead one to
act. In fact, what we do with what we
believe is the true test of our beliefs and religion anyway.
Here in this church we have people with
many different beliefs about the nature of God and existence. We have some who don’t find the idea of God
useful at all. But in the end, what
really matters is this: How does a person treat him or her self? How does a person treat others? How does a person treat the earth we live on? As far as I can tell, the ethic that emerges out
of the concept of an underlying unity of all creation is born of the idea that whatever
we do to others we also do to ourselves.
And whatever we do to ourselves, we ultimately do to the world.
Gandhi said, “I believe in the unity of all that
lives and therefore I believe that if one person gains the whole world gains; if
one person fails the whole world fails to that extent” We are fundamentally connected and that gives
us good reason to forgive. It gives us a
great reason to love our neighbors, to help strangers, to cloth the naked, feed
the hungry and free the captives.
Of
course, we live in a selfish era in so many ways. And the idea of interconnectedness encourages
us not only to help others, and to care for the planet, but it also encourages
us to take good care of ourselves. Because
when we thrive, the whole world benefits.
And when we, or anyone among us fails, we all fail to that extent.
The people who really get this concept live
generously and courageously. But it
takes a fine balance. Author John
Tarrant explains this better than anyone I know. He says we need to balance our spirit and our
soul if we are to live well. For him, spirit includes the kinds of things I’ve
been discussing. Our understanding of
God and consciousness and unity – these are spiritual concepts in the way John
Tarrant explains it. These are ways of
understanding ultimate reality and our eternal nature. Our spirit
is that part of us that never dies. It
goes on living eternally.
Our soul, on
the other hand, is that part of us that does die. The soulful part of our life is the part that
is not eternal, but that lives in time. It
includes the daily joys and indignities of life. The soul is the poetic part of our life. The smells and tastes, the stress, the pain
and the ecstasy – these parts of life are real too.
Tarrant explains that both spirit and soul are
important, but he says that some people live too much in the spirit. These are people who tend to emphasize life’s
unity and perfection and they tend to be addicted to feelings of spiritual
transcendence. These are people who,
when someone is in pain, they can seem aloof and uncaring. They may say, “It all happens for a reason,” a
belief that, even if it is true in an ultimate sense, gives little comfort in
the here and now to someone in grief. They
might say things like, “Have faith, there’s a bigger plan that you just don’t
understand right now.” And they say
these things without acknowledging the depth of suffering the person they are
talking to is feeling in that moment in their soul. That is because for people who live too much
in the spirit, the pains of this world are seen as temporary and illusionary. Therefore, these people can often seem not that
compassionate or loving or realistic about the very real, daily level of our
existence.
On the other side, people who are out of balance with
too much soul, and not enough spirit, are the ones who don’t have a spiritual
perspective to help broaden the context of this life and its suffering. These are people who are facing the highs and
lows and tragedies of life without having a worldview other than a completely
materialistic perspective. Tarrant makes
the case that we each need to have a balance of soul and spirit.
How does this figure into what I’ve been speaking of
today? Because we can have a strong
belief in the underlying unity and connectedness of all existence. We can believe that our individual natures
are just an illusion. But we cannot live
each moment of our lives looking at the world from that perspective. Even the mystics speak of having an
experience of oneness from which they came to understand reality, and how it
shaped their way of being in the world. Yet
they did not, nor could they, live their lives each moment with that level of
intensity. Neither can you and I.
We need to balance a perspective of ultimate reality
with a perspective of daily reality.
Because we are going to pass by homeless people on the streets whom we
cannot help. We are going to hear of
hunger around the country and around the world.
We are going to know, or even experience, domestic abuse and violence. The wars and torture, addiction and murder
and genocide will continue to ravage our brothers and sisters. If we’re paying attention at all we will
constantly see how deep the fangs of injustice go into the real flesh of real
people on this earth everyday. We will
see how the earth is being harmed and abused at an alarming rate. If all we could feel is how each of these
acts is a kind of rape of our own sacred heart, we’d probably go insane and be
of no use to anyone.
And yet, if we allow ourselves to get too far removed
from this reality, we risk perpetuating it and losing our humanity altogether. So we need to find a balance that allows us
to touch life’s supreme joy and still make a positive difference. The best road I know is to have a personal spiritual
practice and a community of faith and action like All Souls. I realize that we usually think of mystics as
people who live in monasteries, or as people who devote their entire lives to religion. Yet today everyone can follow a mystical spiritual
path.
Caroline Myss says we can all be mystics without monasteries. And she says the world needs people who have
a mystical worldview who will also be deeply engaged in the politics and
problems of this world. There are too
many people who get addicted to spiritual transcendence and they use it like a
drug to escape reality. And there are
too many others who live as activists, who have no spiritual practice and these
people often become angry and burnt out because they don’t have ways and
worldviews that rejuvenate them.
So I’ll end with six simple steps for developing a
mystical spiritual practice. I learned these
from Andrew Harvey:
First, realize the great longing you have in you for love and
for union with the divine.
Second, make a list of everything you are grateful for, and
come to know them as
blessings.
Third, read the great mystics like Rumi and Hafiz, Kabir,
Saint Teresa of Avila,
Meister
Eckhart and even the contemporary ones like Mary
Oliver.
Fourth, pray and meditate at least 20 minutes in the
morning and at night.
Fifth, pay attention to your dreams.
Sixth, do service. Serving
others helps to wear down your ego and shows you the divinity
in others.
The love and power of the saints and mystics can be
cultivated in us too. When we begin to
cultivate it, we begin to act out of a sense of divine love for all. May you become a mystic without a monastery. May science and religion continue to inform
and understand one another.
And
may all the people of this world someday come to know and to cherish that we
are one!
Amen.