Tosia H Zraikat

Where is God?

The great Christian mystic and teacher Meister Eckhart wrote, 

“God is beyond all understanding. A master says: ‘If I had a God that I could understand, I would not regard him as God.’ If you understand anything about him, then he is not in it, and by understanding something of him, you fall into ignorance." ¹

I doubt that Eckhart's words are an injunction to worship and experience God without trying to understand what it is we worship or experience, for it is our nature to want to understand our world, to find meaning in our experiences, especially those of the numinous. I don't just want to think about God. I want to understand the nature of the Divine, and why I am continually drawn to contemplate the Ultimate mystery, like waves drawn endlessly back to the sea.

The paths of devotion and good deeds offer their own rewards and can be fulfilling for those who follow, and both are often strenuously advocated for women. Yet we are body, mind and soul; surely each participates in our spiritual being, and brings different qualities to our spiritual experiences. We are designed to know the Divine through all parts of our being.

Sages and mystics have always taught that we cannot know God through mind alone for Truth greatly exceeds the capacity of the human intellect, no matter how impressive it may be. It is in the opening up of mind, the melting of its borders that opens the Gates of Perception so wide that spirit can be heard and understood by the heart, soul's home within us.

Of course, it has taken me almost a lifetime to know and really understand this, a great deal of struggle and much despair for from childhood, I was convinced that all knowledge could be gained by those who developed a well-trained, disciplined mind and dedicated to study. To hinder the intellect was, to me, unconscionable, but I learned rather early that outside of my small family, the female intellect was often not only hindered but shunned. 

In my early or pre-teens, I began reading the Bible, and in my eagerness to understand some of what I read, I sought out a priest of our little Orthodox church, a man much admired for his humility and sweet nature, and asked if he could explain some thing for me. To my astonishment, he snapped at me irritably, scowling that I must not read the Bible, especially being a girl, that my duty was to listen to the readings in service and pay respect to the holy book with a worshipful kiss. He would not say more, but angrily waved me away. I was shocked and hurt, for he clearly interpreted my earnestness as disrespect for holy tradition.  

I cannot be sure that this priest's reaction arose from beliefs about the female intellect as well as about women's correct place. Maybe it didn't. Nevertheless, it affected me deeply. I never talked about my spiritual seeking with anyone thereafter until well into my fifties, keeping my searches, reflections and questions to myself.

This attitude about woman's place in religion is still, I must admit, a point of discord in my relationship with the institution of religion, which can and does wander from its revelatory origins, often with devastating results. 

What triggered these memories and reflections a few days ago was reading about the female Hindu philosopher, Gargi, and the great Hindu Sage, Yajnavalkya. Gargi asked many questions, each urging the Sage to tell more about the nature of the Divine and Its relationship to the world.

"Yajnavalkya became very angry and said: "O Gargi, do not ask too much and if you ask more, your head will fall off."²

This reminded me also of Peter's hostile reaction to Mary Magdalene's questions to Jesus in the Gospel of Mary and the Pistis Sophia, and the story of Mary of Bethany, whom I imagine soaking in tbe deeper teachings that Jesus gave to his intimates when they were together, the true mysteries of the Divine. 

Except for martyrs and certain acetics or nuns, women are not taken seriously by and large in Christianity, even though Jesus, by all accounts, welcomed them. As in Judiac law, women are often treated as part-persons, corruptible and corrupting and unworthy to speak or read sacred teachings. The depths to which this spiritual mysogeny can fall are clearly illustrated in the horrific murder of the Hellenic mathematician-philosopher, Hypatia, by Cyril's Christian followers (without his approval, I hope) and the centuries-long persecution of women as witches.

These thoughts triggered the  following poem, but it's not about that. I just wanted to share what I was thinking about before and after I wrote it.

 

 

Divinity

 

Ancient Gargi sits

tugging persistent 

at threads of knowledge

reluctantly disclosed,

urging forth one by one

from the Sage's mouth

question by question

revelations

unraveling the precious tapestry

of Everything.

 

Mary sits listening

at the Master's feet

drinking thirstily of the waters

flowing from his mouth

all else forgetting

in this awakening

to the true nature

of Everything.

 

Rise up O soul

from fruitless longing

and know your Source ...

Creator of all that can be named

Father-Mother, Goodness

Ultimate Radiance

wrapped in dark cloud

Naught but Itself

containing Everything.

 

Simplicity

mysterium tremendum

caught by those who fish

in deep parables and riddles

Too fragile to be spoken

Too strong to be broken

into easier parts

Light as the space between flickering atoms

Ponderous beyond all bearing

Needing nothing

Giving Everything.

 

Divinity

Infinite potential

Fundament of the world

and all possible worlds

manifest and unmanifest

Unborn, Imperishable, Undivided

male and female, light and darkness

action-passivity

Transcendent - within Everything.

 

Maker of the Law of 

Perpetual Unfolding

of the law-breakers 

and their redeemers

Permitter of ego's devilish desire

Source of hope insistent

of fortitude

Love, the Law fulfilled.

 

O refuge, O comfort, strength

that lifts me through lifetimes

out of fear, doubt, ignorance.

Without It, separate, 

I would not be

 

Nor all the universes.

 

¹ Meister Eckhart, Sermon 12

²http://somaditya-banerjee.blogspot.com.au/2010/04/st¹ ory-of-yajnavalkya-and-gargi.html

The Goddess and Mother Nature

The Ephesian Diana whose many breasts nourish the earth and all living things. 

She is the  Nature Goddess aspect of the ancient Greek virgin goddess, Diana (Artmenis). The cows in her head dress relate her to a much earlier Nature Goddess, the cow-eared Egyptian Hathor, sometimes in cow form, who was later relegated to a minor status as Isis assumed much of her Nature Goddess role.

Before this there was the Egyptian goddess, Hathor, who before Isis, was the most popular of the goddesses worshiped in many temples across Egypt, and in many forms.

 

As Hesat, “the creator of all nourishment”, as a pure white cow whose udders flow with milk, and who bears food on her head. She is also closely associate with an earlier cow deity, the divine Mehet-Weret.

When St Paul was busy with the establishment of a formal Christian church, he hardly refers to the teachings of Jesus whose life and teachings had illustrated a philosophy of tolerance, acceptance, love of nature and ... a deep appreciation of the feminine. Jesus often spoke in parables about growing things, grape vines, trees, lilies of the field, fish and so forth, Paul wrote and taught rules and admonitions for Christians and their newly forming churches, excluding women from the developing church hierarchy except in subservient roles, for both women and nature were to serve rather than be partners with men.

I don't blame only Paul for our modern sense of being separate from Nature. It was already implicit in the Jewish religion that he had formerly served so well. Although Jesus often drew the symbolism of his parables from nature, and seemed to have spent most of his short life out in the fields, the hills and the sea, the supremacy of God-the-Father had already eroded the ancient veneration of the feminine as both part of that male God and as living, sentient Nature in the form of nature goddesses. Paul and those after him gave, one could say, the final blows to goddess worship and to understanding of nature as conscious and sacred. In much later times, the so-called age of reason, which emphasised the value of reason, of intellect over intuition, emotion, even experience, finished the job. The disastrous effects of this can be clearly seen in the world today.

Nature is the emanating principle, that through which God expresses Itself in the world, and humankind's awareness of that, or even muffled sense of it is everpresent. Veneration of Nature, therefore, cannot be completely suppressed, for She remains, however we might think of it, the great Mother from whom all life emanates, and new myths of Mother Nature arise to replace those that fade, or old ones, like the archetype of Gaia revived by the environmental movement, are given new life.

Whether it is expressed in goddess form or in our intense love for and devotion to Nature, or in the recognition of God as the manifest  in Nature, reverence for Nature is fundamental to a truly spiritual comprehension of self and the world and to any meaningful concept of Oneness of the Divine, or the fundamental Unity of Being .

 

Gaia, ancient Earth Goddess surrounded by symbols of fertility.

The church and scientists who have taught - and do to this day - that mankind is master of the Earth have simply got it very wrong.

Nature is not only the Great Mother through which all of the world is born and by which it is nurtured and sustained; she is our most perfect, complete expression of the manifested life force, God or Spirit in matter. As an icon of Nature and her power to create and destroy, the Great Goddess, the Mother Goddess, is the other half, the complement, consort, beloved and soulmate of the masculine Logos or Father God.

 

This divine principle is reflected in the life of Jesus who was baptised in a river and infused there with the Divine Spirit. It is in the life and teachings of the Buddha, who was enlightened beneath a Bodhi tree and called on the Goddess of the Earth to witness his awakening. The Chinese sage, Lao Tzu, father of Taoism, described Nature as the great teacher from which we could learn how to live in harmony with the Tao.

The Essenes, who included Jesus' mother Mary and her family, taught that as human beings in our quest to return to God, we must go through Nature and honour her as our true Mother and our supreme teacher.

From the Essene Book of Peace -

"And Jesus answered: 'Seek not the law in your scriptures, for the law is life, whereas the scripture is dead. I tell you truly, Moses received not his laws from God in writing, but through the living word. The law is living word of living God to living prophets for living men. In everything that is life is the law written. You find it in the grass, in the tree, in the river, in the mountain, in the birds of heaven, in the fishes of the sea; but seek it chiefly in yourselves.

...."I tell you truly, that the scripture is the work of man, but life and all its hosts are the work of our God."

For St.Francis of Assisi, a monk committed to the doctrine of a Father God, nature is at least our relative, our brother and sister, of equal value to human beings.  In his Hymn of the Creatures, he sings:

"....Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for air and cloud, calms and all weather, by which Thou upholdest in life all creatures. / Praised be my lord for our sister water, who is very serviceable unto us, and humble and precious and clear. Praised be my Lord for our brother fire ...."

We are not completely lost, though. Nature is once more being seen as a living being to be venerated, honoured, not only by those who love her but even in more enlightened nations, in law: 

The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity. This Word manifests itself in every creature
Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/726103

"A growing number of lawsuits and other projects are seeking to have non-human primates and other animals declared legal persons, while in New Zealand a river has been recognized as a person." (Nature as a legal person. https://journals.openedition.org/vertigo/16188?lang=en) 

So will the Goddess of the World breathe again, come alive to us, inseparable from our concepts of Self, Being and God.