Is there a God or not?
“God” is almost a four-letter word. “God” has definitely been spoiled by zealots and by conformity to institutions. “God” has been objectified by priests to be forever apart and vilified by scientists reacting to the narrow mythic-mindedness of provincial belief. “God” has been examined by philosophers to be meaningless or meaning itself and analyzed by psychologists to be part of a humanistic psychology. Etymologically, “God” is to call, to invoke. “God” implies something fundamental, beyond while including everything, the Ground of Being, supreme Being. Altogether, I use the term “God” cautiously, consciously.
Thereby, the question is not, “Is there a God or not?” or “Do you believe in God?” Those questions can't be answered at the level they are posed. Rather, the question is, “Do we understand there is a fundamental reality? Can we feel the substantive reality and being prior to form?”
Can we see that we can't acquire or achieve fundamental happiness? Love is not an object to be gotten; it is received and invoked, which becomes giving and sharing. No thing. Vulnerably verified.
The enlightened One leads us beyond the precients of separation and therefore beyond point of view — where fundamental reality is not known or argued, but is self-evident in intuitive abiding and rest in relationship.
The pre-Socratic giant, Parmenides, simply offered the enquiry: “Being or not?” The fundamental laws of physics as well as our own most natural feelings inform us of our Ground and Substance and how we intercourse multi-dimensionally and omni-directionally with real light. Being or not?
My Beloved Adi Da demonstrates and transmits such numinous congress; the luminous Condition of all conditions is the Same as our awareness and lighted ground of radiant being and heart-rich devotion. Lighted-awareness and life-feeling are simply two evolutionary modes of appreciating the Singular Condition of Light.
Praise to the Masters who have clearly shown the transcendental heart, being and light. Indeed, we are the dance of slow, thick light and dazzling brilliance. This is self-evident if we attend to what matters. (By the Way, light matters.)
Is there Reality? Yes, even as illusions, hung upon the repetition of identity, linger. Does Being appear within the perfect Void of non-being? Paradoxically, apparently. Beyond constructs while informing each proposition, this beauteous, ineffable luminosity is reflected in every thing and thought; beyond and including the body and every somatic intimacy, beyond and including sentiments and every story, beyond and including cleverness and every logic, beyond and including noble thoughts and every insight, beyond and including sage discernment and perfect dwelling, beyond and including unitive joy and every bliss, beyond and including all.
As I learned in the Company of my Beloved Adi Da, Beauty is Reality is Truth is Love. Called God by some, divine or immortal by many, what is most real is Reality Itself. Immortal Light, Numinous Beauty, Incarnate Love, Fundamental Light. Heart awareness naturally appreciates the divine paradox of relationship and prior unity. As Adi Da explicated in The Knee of Listening:
“To be in relationship to what arises is not to find yourself identical to anything that arises. It is merely to see it prior to identification. Therefore, relationship is the nature of the Heart's awareness prior to identification.
“To be in relationship to what arises is not to differentiate yourself from what arises, or to perceive what arises as itself a differentiated field. Such differentiation also depends on identification and difference, not relationship. Therefore, non-separation is the nature of the Heart's awareness prior to differentiation.
'To be in relationship to what arises is not to move by desire for anything that arises. Such desire depends on identification and differentiation in the midst of what arises, not relationship. Therefore, love is the nature of the Heart's awareness prior to desire.
“Identification, differentiation and desire are not the action of the Heart in relationship to what arises. They are the avoidance of relationship, the turning. But the living Heart, the action that is understanding, is present in the midst of what arises as relationship, non-separation and love. And these are the natural, creative principles of conscious life. They are the principles whereby the Heart enjoys or realizes the worlds that arise.”
While the word “God” “invokes” the highest of all powers, the question of God is beyond linguistic analysis. If we strip away every provincial, developmental, and culturally constructed context (which is a project of worth), we still come to the point of the question. Is there reality? Yes. Real Is. Beautifully.
Therefore, the question most worthy of asking is not “Is there Reality?” but rather: If Beauty and Light are the Substance and Ground of every iota, why do I not feel beauteous all the time? Ah! There's the rub again.
Understand suffering. The first noble truth indeed. We must come to a penetrating self-knowledge and confession of the naked anxiety we add to this moment. Adi Da Samraj poetically casts the enquiry, “If only we understand the harm in which we act…”
I learned from Sage Adi Da that if this jewel of self-knowledge is uncovered, if we can see what disturbance we add to this moment and every relation, if our base action is clear, then reality is recovered as native joy, simply being. Like the Buddha's fingers upon the ground, the feeling of reality is the feeling of happiness itself. If we are not feeling happy, then some un-reality has us. This first noble truth is required for the quenching of thirst.
The question is not, “Is there a fundamental reality of light?” but “What do I need to understand to live most real, most in alignment to fundamental light? What do I settle for instead? What am I unconsciously doing that avoids or forestalls falling forever in love?” I learned to enquire from Adi Da, “What are you doing, what are you always doing? -- Avoiding relationship? -- Avoiding My Love? -- If you are troubled by what arises, you are not in proper relationship to it.”
Without self-understanding, we do not respond freshly to experience; we live in our context, we are too much a self with a role, embedded in the past; we re-act. The transition from embeddedness in the drama of underworld reaction to free-feeling responsiveness here is the maturity of present response-ability. This is evident in self-transcendence in relationship, inherent freedom, and the reliance on the grace and simplicity of reality.
Aligning our actions to harmonia (as Orpheus taught), we come to embrace something like the eight-fold path or the life of dedicated responsibilities. This is the noble truth in deed. Living a life of bodily, emotional, mental, social, and spiritual responsibilities, we nurture a deep rest that relaxes the self and mind to a natural simplicity. The more responsible I can be, the easier it is to rest.
In His Loving Company, the fullness of trust is Given. Suddenly and inherently, the lighted ground of every thought and feeling can be sensed, self-evidently. We spontaneously commune with what is not limited directly; we intuit a foundational Presence, felt with and in the heart, then throughout the whole body. Adi Da transmits the fundamental Condition of all conditions as He Demonstrates the transcendental nature of Being. “I Am Is the Way that I Teach.” In holding our Beloved to our heart, we natively feel how we inhere in a singularity of blossoming every where, naturally maturing and uniting body, mind, self, and world in heart rest, transcendental joy, and immortal beauty.
Adi Da Samraj sings in The Enlightenment of the Whole Body, “There is only one event: Something arising. All arising is the same mysterious fascination. Only the Mystery is ever found, within and without. Therefore, all that a man or woman may confront is the process of arising, instant forever. When the valuation of one moment or condition over against another ceases by this insight, then profound sensitivity is felt relative to every instant of simple arising. And this sensitivity becomes ultimate and radical intuition of the Condition of this whole process of arising.”
I learned from Adi Da that Real Light is reflected in the here and now; beyond (while including) the here and now; what is always and already the case is always and already the case. Reality is Beauty is Being is Love is Truth. This is divinity, immortal God.
But unlimited living is sustainable only in a life conformed to harmony. Orpheus taught that as we cultivate personal harmonia, the harmonia of the kosmos is heard. Harmonia tunes the soul to unbounded feeling, thus inheriting the Primal Brightness (Phanes), inherently beyond waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and death.
The greatest aid to this art of full living is in the imprint of our sacred persons. Magnificent spiritual realizers across the globe and throughout time have given demonstration and scripture to us. But considering the provincial to global transition we are still embedded within, it is required that we appreciate many modes of greater-than-self maturation and outgrow our provincial exclusivities (even if we remain heart-moved most by “our own” cultural radiance).
Enquiry into light not only illuminates reality, but likewise what is short of reality. Therefore, the light also reflects changes, such as from religious revelation to scientific enquiry or the shift from provincial orientations to a global one. Enquiry about God, or fundamental light, begs an in-depth discussion on both religious naivete and scientific idealisms. But perhaps this enquiry is more of a question into how we have become embedded in mentality and our apparent fall from the magnificence of real living.
Via spiritual realizers we see that a new order of incarnation is possible; we see that spiritual maturity is not just a good idea. From every quarter and epoch, we should appreciate a host of hosts.
“Socrates was one of that small number of adventurers who, from time to time, have enlarged the horizon of the human spirit. They have divined in our nature unsuspected powers which only they have as yet, in their own persons, brought to fulfillment. By living the truth they discovered they gave the world the only possible assurance that it is not an illusion.” — Francis M. Cornford
Beholding the transcendental blossoming core, ground, and Incarnation, we are given heart visions. I bow down to the Beauteous Beloved of my heart, Avatara Adi Da, Who Shows Immortal Beauty most resplendently, Who Is This Beauty most magnificently.
I am rested in fundamental happiness in two ways: self-evidently and by reception. I trust my intuition and I appreciate the wisdom of all great teachers, especially my beloved Adi Da Samraj, who Transmitted to us: “Trust the actual living reality, the living God. Do it to the point that the physically based fear of death vanishes on the basis of trust alone.”
Trust in Fullness. “The physically based fear of death vanishes on the basis of trust alone.” But the final fullness of trust comes not from self-responsibility but by falling-out-of-self via the recognition of reality itself, which is beauty unfathomable — and this is most clearly shown via demonstration of a person adept in spiritual fullness. The complete fullness of trust is not achieved or created, but shown and given — and then yielded to in beatific adoration, across the wide threshold made by the Incarnations of Love.
The truth of reality is thus seen in ordinary beauty and powerfully confirmed in the extraordinary demonstration of the great avatars of humankind. It has been shown again and again what it is like to live without limit in the beauty and love-bliss of reality itself. Fullness of trust is transmitted and completed by the Holy Ones, the Siddhas and Saviors of humankind. Thus it is humorously said that the Guru is greater than God.
Every province has their spiritual geniuses who show and teach this true happiness. All transmit the happiness of real existence, and as these adepts of spirit reveal primal joy, they naturally illuminate what is less than love in those surrounding her or him. Stripping the cultural clothing from themselves (thus revealing the roles around her and him) is what these holy “avadhoots” do naturally. We respond with crucifixion, poison, derision, and self-satisfaction.
Is there Light? Uh, all there is is light. Have you heard the good news? Light equals matter (times the speed of light squared). Is there Beauty? Everywhere. Is there God, a gracious and fundamental reality? In the heart, there is no doubt.
