Eyre Lines

This morning I listened again to the curate reading from John (3:16) “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”.

I’m in the process, among other things, of catching up with Richard Beck’s outstanding “Experimental Theology” blog, which I discovered about three months ago. I’ve made it from the beginning up to mid 2011 so far, and one of the recurring themes is Universalism. Prof. Beck is an Universalist. He makes a very good case for Universalism, as you can see if you follow that link (and others with that tag – there are quite a few of them!). As a psychologist, he has also written about death anxiety being at the root of a great deal of Christian theology.

In conscience, I’m not really best targeted by the passage from John, as I have no fear of death at all. I have a very healthy fear of many of the means of getting from here to there, mind you! The reason lies partly in the content and nature of my original peak spiritual experience (which I’ll call the “zap”), but also in the thought that my consciousness goes offline every night (well, nearly every night now I’ve got reduced insomnia) and until I wake up, I could well die and never know about it. My late Uncle John passed away like that many years ago; fell asleep reading his morning newspaper and just never woke up. I’ve always thought that you couldn’t design a better way of leaving life, whether or not there is something beyond that.

There were, however, a few aspects of the zap which are pertinent. One was the dissolving of the boundary between “self” and “other”, a complete oneness with everything, animate and inanimate, near and far, human and divine. The sufi Baba Kuhi of Shiraz wrote about this kind of experience, saying “In the market, in the cloister, only God I saw; in the valley and on the mountain, only God I saw”. Meister Eckhart said “Thou shalt know him without image, without semblance and without means. – ‘But for me to know God thus, with nothing between, I must be all but he, he all but me’. – I say, God must be very I, I very God, so consummately one that this he and this I are one is, in this isness working one work eternally…” All things were God, in which I “lived and breathed and had my being” as someone else said, well before Teilhard de Chardin suggested the “Milieu Divin” ground of all being concept.

That boundary has never really returned in fullness (it was previously absolute); one effect of this was to become significantly empathic (the pre-zap Chris was NOT noted for empathy) which is a somewhat mixed blessing – yes, I can be far more responsive to the needs of others, but also I tend to soak up emotions from others and become too affected by them (which means that in order to function at all, I often have to wall off my emotions, which has a distinct downside). Another, though, is to see the Chris inhabiting this particular structure of bone and flesh as nothing like the whole extent of that-which-is-Chris; if this bit dies, the whole of that-which-is-Chris doesn’t (though I grant the continuity of consciousness is likely to be somewhat lacking!).

It is, incidentally, very difficult to have this kind of consciousness and not “love your neighbour as yourself”, or regard your neighbour as Jesus, aka God in disguise as is set out in Matthew 25:31-45 ending “Truly I say to you, as you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me”. For they ARE you. And, indeed, they are more than you.

I may go away (indeed, I expect to) but God endures, and therefore I endure. Another aspect of the zap is the strong desire to conform myself to God, to become a part of God which is more in tune with the rest, less of a discordant note. I see echoes of that in the concept of the Church as the body of Christ, in which I occasionally say that I am the ingrowing toenail. I have aspirations to be less irritating than that! My best template for that is Jesus, who I inescapably regard as having had this consciousness (only more so, probably more so than anyone else who has lived); I seek to cultivate Christ-in-me, and as I do so that-which-is-Chris will diminish. I doubt the process will be anything like complete during my life!

An important aspect of the zap was the feeling that, if I could just let myself go a little more, the ecstasy of union with God could be complete – but that my “self” would in the process be extinguished; there would be nothing but God. The image of a moth in a candle flame came to me, but as an image of intense joy. The first time, that scared me, and as a result I pulled back, but I have pulled back less on subsequent occasions and think that I may soon be able to let go completely, if another zap of that intensity is granted me (I practice the presence of God as best I can, but it seems to me that the more intense zaps are given, not worked for). Baba Kuhi ends by saying “But when I looked with God’s eyes – only God I saw. I passed away into nothingness, I vanished, and lo, I was the All-living – only God I saw”. Eckhart writes “But he manifests as different and the soul is destined to know things as they are and conceive things as they are when, seized thereof, she plunges into the bottomless well of the divine nature and becomes so one with God that she herself would say that she is God” but also, speaking of the soul, “Wherefore God has left her one little point from which to get back to herself and find herself as creature. For it is of the very essence of the soul that she is powerless to plumb the depths of her creator”. Perhaps he is right, and the process will always stop just short of complete extinguishment of the self. But perhaps not, and that is an ecstatic end.

On one occasion several years ago, I was in serious fear of death, as someone far more physically powerful than me was pounding me. Yes, it hurt – but thinking I might die, a strange peace came over me as I looked forward to the ecstatic reunion with God which death would provide. Maybe that might reduce my fear of physical pain? Probably not, as generally I’m not expecting to die from it. As it happened, the disconnect of me smiling seraphically while this guy hit me was sufficient to make him stop and ask why I was doing it – I said “it’s only pain” and he walked away, confused.

I expect, therefore, that at my death, that which is other-than-God will be destroyed, that which is God will remain, cannot but remain. The Theologia Germanica says “Nothing burns in Hell save self-will, therefore it has been said ‘put off thy self-will and there will be no Hell’ “. I intend that there should be as little that is not God as possible at that time, but expect that the remainder will burn, be burned away, indeed. This is very akin to Dr. Beck’s concept of Hell as a purification prior to universal salvation.

So, am I an Universalist? I’m attracted by Dr. Beck’s thinking, and certainly I expect everyone regardless of their beliefs and actions to arrive at the same point. However, I am not so confident that all will survive the refiner’s fire of Hell (be it ever so brief). I have met people in whom any spark of the divine seems exceptionally weak; I can envisage that rather than submit to the fire of cleansing, a few may be able to elect to resist, and that they may remain in that condition forever, or even that in a very few, the spark of the divine may have been extinguished completely during their lifetime, and there remains nothing but self. Some of those I have met, for instance, have been sociopaths. I am not particularly optimistic for them.

And so I think I have to accept the Arminian view of salvation, which acknowledges God’s wish that we all be saved and our freedom to choose, but effectively denies that in this salvation God is omnipotent.

There is one final aspect of the zap which has a bearing, and that is that it appears to give a glimpse into eternity. That eternity is not, as most seem to think, a very VERY unimaginably long time, it is atemporal. The zap is a “timeless moment”, in which all that is and has been is as one (possibly all that will be as well, although I cannot confirm). As such, all that you have been and done and are during your life is present, and this can be an extremely painful situation, alleviated only by the knowledge of God’s love and acceptance (of the essence of you, not of your actions). Perhaps it is possible not to repent in a powerful zap, I don’t know; I certainly couldn’t have withstood it’s force.

In this atemporality, my life just represents a set of boundaries; once I did not exist, as I had not been born, in the future I will not exist (in one sense, at least) as I will be dead. All that is between those remains, atemporal, eternal. In this, there can be no annihilation, no unmaking of what has been. I have to an extent had one foot in this atemporality much of the last 45 years, as my cultivation of conscious contact with God, the practising of the Presence of God, has developed. Beside that, temporal limits appear irrelevant.

Timor mortis non conturbat me.