Some years ago we visited an ancient house on the banks of the Wye in Hereford. Some of its walls had been the bulwark of the 12th century castle. The owner told us that he had had terrible trouble with damp. Successive generations had made many attempts to keep it out, to no avail. Experts in caring for ancient buildings told him that trying to keep the damp out was the problem. In buildings like his the solution was to allow the moisture to go through the building, partly by evaporation. Attempts to keep it out only sealed it in resulting in mould and fungi.
How like us human beings, I thought. We spend so much of our lives trying to keep out the living waters of the spirit, which does all kinds of damage. We can even do this by pursuing our religion. In doing so we may be protecting ourselves against anything that is in danger of contradicting our beliefs or threatening our egos. Fortunately, religion has a leaky roof. Somehow the pure waters of the spirit get in even when most people are trying to avoid getting wet. (Might so many appeals for funds to repair the church roof be symbolic of this, one wonders.)
Transpersonal psychologist, Ken Wilbur, observes that we all start out elitist but we all end up egalitarian. I’m not sure that’s true of everyone, but it certainly is true of those who make progress in their spiritual experience, whatever religion they are committed to. Our religious rituals, liturgies and scriptures should lead us into an inner experience of ‘God’ that transforms us from those who are trying to keep the waters of the spirit out to those who are allowing the waters to flow through us to the benefit of others. If that doesn’t happen, and sadly, for many it happens seldom if at all, then we remain elitist, closed off from the living spirit and shut in to ourselves.
The Mundaka Upanishad of Hindu scripture speak of higher knowledge and lower knowledge. Lower knowledge, it says, includes, “ . . . theology, linguistics, etymology, phonetics and grammar, poetic structure and the institutions and practices of religion.” It goes on to say, “But it is by the higher knowledge that we experience Self-realisation.” (The Self, always with a capital S, refers to that of God within us.) Lower knowledge, which is only ‘knowing about’, is important nonetheless, in that its intention is to lead us into an experience of transformation. The 15th century Indian mystic, revered by both Muslims and Hindus, put it like this:
O servant, where dost thou seek Me?
Lo! I am beside thee.
I am neither in temple nor in mosque:
I am neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash:
Neither am I in rites and ceremonies,
nor in Yoga and renunciation.
If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see Me:
thou shalt meet Me in a moment of time.
Kabîr says, “O Sadhu! God is the breath of all breath.”
Kabir; Kabir. Songs of Kabir (p. 19).
It’s not that we should leave our religions and beliefs behind, but that we should reach that place in the experience of them where we are no longer using them to screen out the living water which threatens the ego, but surrender to its cleansing and life-giving presence in our lives. Moral behaviour no longer becomes a duty or a challenge. It becomes a spontaneous aspect of our lives. As Jesus put it, “My yoke is easy, my burden is light.” This is the spiritual freedom to which we are called.
Brian C. Holley
Author of ‘From the Secret Cave’, ‘The God I Left Behind’ and ‘Spirit of the Upanishads’.