The Politics of Being Here Now

He became a wanderer once again -- a vagabond -- a man without a home either in this realm or the next. He wandered through many incarnations determined to understand why humanity could not realize its true nature. He became mentally ill and spent time in state hospitals. He became retarded and spent time in institutions for people who could not tie their shoes. He became a criminal and spent time in prisons. He became a bag lady and an illegal alien and a beggar. He spent several incarnations living the lives of different sex perverts, and he enjoyed their pleasure and suffered their condemnation. And he said to himself, "what shall I do for this humanity that cannot seem to understand that they share a single wound?" And that was when he made his vow.

Outside the circle of acceptable humanity the Bodhisattva lived with the riffraff, the outcasts, the slime-balls, the ignorant, the deformed, and the demented, and he vowed that he would never step back into the circle of acceptable humanity again until every last broken and despicable specimen was welcomed back with him. This was a vow he was happy with. "For the whole problem is that we draw a circle that can leave somebody out," he said. "That's the First Noble Truth." He dictated this to the scribes, and again they couldn't hear.

A Possible Map of the Here and the Now

It has been suggested by more than one sage that in some way that is difficult to understand we are co-extensive with God. Fair enough. But we must be careful how we understand this. If to be God rather than our finite self in an imperfect reality is the goal, how is this essentially different than waiting for the rapture? It leads to the same disparagement of creation, to the same a-political manner of being in the world, and to the same projection of the self into some never quite achieved future state of bliss or Samadi -- which is the ultimate postponement of gratification.

Perhaps it would be informative to view all this within the Christological struggles of the early church. The Orthodox position was that Christ was both fully human and fully God. Logically, of course, this is a difficult position to defend. Theologising tended to fall either to the side of seeing him as a good man and great prophet, or as a God walking on the earth. One or the other. But it was the paradox of His being both that Orthodoxy was trying to capture. (Set aside for now the very unfortunate practice of attempting to defend a perceived truth but declaring alternate views as "heresy" and outlawing them. There is something to be learned from this orthodoxy.) If the theologizing about the nature of Jesus is understood to be a way of thinking about human nature -- about the nature of all people -- there was truth in the orthodox position. We are both/and. Realizing our oneness, which is often called "God," does not deny either our finitude, nor the need to take the events of this world seriously.

A professed (and perhaps even felt) love for an impoverished and enslaved humanity, that does not engage in political action to change the conditions that give rise to poverty and imprisonment, is idle sentimentality.

Where then shall we be God?

I am suggesting that it is not at the Still Point rather than in Time.

Nor is it in the Totality rather than in the Ego.

It is rather, in the Now sandwiched between a real past and a possible future, as informed by the still point beyond all time; and it is in the Ego as grounded in, and some way co-extensive with, the Totality of What Is. It is Here and Now, in this finite ego/self and in this painfully disjointed time, that we Be God. There is nothing to be overcome, but only a Now to be lived.

Conclusion

The two poetic expressions that helped me bring into language some of my experiences as an adolescent were the drop of water losing itself in the ocean, and the "spirit " that rolls through all things."

It was in a book called "The Thirteen Principle Upanishads" that I first encountered the metaphor of the drop of water and the Ocean as a means of describing the relationship between the individual person (Atman) and the unified whole and creative ground of creation (Brahman.) My understanding of reality at that point was pantheistic. I saw the mystical oneness between Brahman and Atman to be essentially the same as that between Christ and God the Father. And I believed that Christ was a metaphor for the inner reality of every person.

I am now aware of another distinction that was perhaps not clear on until later -- and that is the distinction between God as imminent and God as transcendent. Is that a valid distinction? Is there a difference between the unity of all time/space moments and that which transcends time/space altogether? Surely at this point we are getting into the realm Wittgenstein had in mind when he wrote, "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Actually it was probably several miles back that we came to that point. But perhaps Wittgenstein was to pessimistic. Perhaps something can be said in a poem. Still, I'll just stick with the pantheistic part, and leave the transcendent part for another day. Here is Wordsworth's description of how one senses God imminent in creation.

He senses it as...

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