The Sacred Universe

In addition to an awareness of the expansiveness of the globe and of the influence of the past that has emerged into consciousness, there is an increased awareness of the vastness of the future opening up before us. New possibilities for future phases of human transformation result from this understanding we have of ourselves and the universe in which we live. Compared to our knowledge of the past, our knowledge of the future is limited. But although we see only a little, we do perceive that the dimensions of the future must in some manner fulfill the expectations of both past and present. The rate of historical and cultural change has accelerated. Aspirations for the future pass beyond the dimensions of the past. Changes undreamed of before are now taking place in a brief span of decades—even within the limited range of future time available to our vision through conscious planning in the scientific and technological order.

Contemporary spiritual writers are generally preoccupied with one or another of these dimensions of human development. Some concern themselves with a defense and exposition of past traditions. Some are attracted to the spiritual developments that result from the convergence of traditions. Some are preoccupied with creating a spirituality suited to a united planet. Little has been done to bring these three concerns together. Yet none of these can be adequately dealt with in isolation from the others.

Before entering into a more detailed discussion of this issue, we might note the shock that passed over Western cultures in the decades following World War II. At the very moment when such expansive horizons of past, present, and future were opening up before us, we were cast into an inner anxiety and foreboding about ourselves and the meaning of it all. Writers such as Albert Camus (1913-1960), Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980), and Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) told us of the absurdity of all existence. The theater of the absurd developed in Eugene Ionesco (1909-1994) and Jean Genet (1910-1986).

Through the works of these writers, the sense of alienation once again found expression. Unable to bear the awesome meaning of life, we began to reject ourselves and the world around us. While indigenous peoples of the forests and deserts still have a sense of the magnitude of human existence and of our human capacity for living within divine and cosmic dimensions, contemporary Westerners are beset by a sense of confusion and alienation. Emotionally we show ourselves in the face of mystery less mature than indigenous peoples in the border deserts, island nations, and diminishing wildernesses of the world. The retrenchment of Western spiritual traditions and the consequent desolation we experience have been described with precision and fullness, for example in Beckett’s Endgame.

Contemporary humans have no spiritual vision adequate for these new magnitudes of existence. In the very effort at discovery we abandon inner meaning. So far we have not been able to fill these magnitudes with a human presence such that we can really be comfortable with the world we live in. This art of comprehensive communion is a spiritual skill. To develop such a skill, to teach such a discipline, are the primary tasks of contemporary spirituality. We have lost the universe even as we walked on the moon. Recovering the universe requires an ability beyond that of maneuvering rocket engines or of engineering faster computers.

Stated briefly, we have lost the interpretative patterns of our existence, patterns generally designated as “myths.” Myths are narratives that indicate the meaning of the human mode of being as well as the meaning of the universe itself. Our critical faculties, committed to the analytical processes of the rational mind, have destroyed the naiveté of ancient beliefs in favor of critical reflection and pragmatic realism. As the excitement of the new realism has diminished, we find ourselves encompassed by a world without meaning. There are only facts. The human itself is only another fact, qualitatively no different from any other fact of the world around us. The world of the sacred presented so forcefully in ancient myth and symbol no longer provides the atmosphere in which we can breathe humanly. Thus the suffocation of contemporary humans in consumerism and the excitement over the instant communication of the trivial.

Recovery of meaning involves a recovery of the sacred. That is the basic value that must first be identified and appreciated. This sense of the sacred requires recovery of ourselves, a return to the depths of our own being. We must in some manner manage the whole of existence in terms of the authenticity of our own deeper self. To accomplish this, we have to turn to three sources: our own past traditions, the spiritual insight of other traditions, and our present experience of the deeper realms of our own being.

When these sources are investigated, certain general orientations toward the world of meaning emerge. These are presented in the traditional myths and beliefs of the Western world, in the myths of the larger complex of world traditions, and in the symbols, stories, and dreams that emerge from the depths of primordial, intuitive modes of human consciousness. In these stories and symbols, similar things are expressed over such a wide geographic and historical area that a common human heritage begins to manifest itself. Many basic patterns and symbols of our spiritual development are similar across a vast diversity of traditions. Intercommunion of peoples in any significant degree must take place in and through these common symbols. Without these common symbols, very little can be achieved.

As regards our own society, the stage of demythologizing and deconstructing myth and symbol, which developed in the twentieth century, is over. Various disciplines offer new insight into the function of myth and symbol. Those who have penetrated deepest into the human psyche, whether in psychological analysis, in philosophical or religious studies, in the various spiritualities, or even in the understanding that science has of itself, now recognize the powerful and even determining role in human affairs played by ways of knowing beyond rational analysis. In this context, we can deal with the great paradoxes of reality and once again set up those needed spiritual disciplines upon which the human future depends.

Among these symbols, one that is most effective in understanding and responding to our present human needs is “the journey.” This symbol offers a basis for unifying the past with the present, for bringing about a fruitful convergence of traditions, and for enabling the present generation to achieve a beneficial transition into the future. The idea of a journey is found in most societies that speak of their cultural patterns as a pathway to an authentic human mode of being. So we speak of the “way of life” as both the cultural and the spiritual form of a people.

This “way” encompasses the worldview of a society. It provides the interpretation of the universe, the experience of the human condition and the way of release from the human condition, the basic structure of values in the civilization, the legal and institutional structure, and the manner of human association by norms of kinship and community status. This way is depicted in the arts, it is the substance of the literature, and it forms the basis of education. Instruction in the higher mysteries of the way is incorporated into the initiation ceremonies whereby youths enter into mature participation in the life of the society. Those societies that developed a greater philosophical and theological awareness have established the way as an ontological absolute in terms of the Tao or the Logos. The spiritualities of the various societies were established according to this concept of a way as an interior journey to the real, a journey to the divine presence within.

The difficulty has been that so far in human history such a “way” has been ritualized in fixed and unchanging cosmic patterns. These seem not to allow for the type of historical change presently taking place. Yet these symbols will, if sufficiently examined, reveal themselves to be more adequate to the occasion than has generally been thought. These earlier symbols were never so totally fixed as would seem at first sight. They have been undergoing transformation within themselves from the time of their beginning. This is true within Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and the other traditions that have given shape and meaning to the human venture. All the traditions have been radically altered by cultural convergence in the past. None is a “pure” product of its own isolated society. Hinduism was modified by Buddhism. Confucianism was modified by Buddhism. Islam in India was modified by Hinduism. Radical confrontation with the changes brought about by the new secular, scientific, and technological order is, indeed, a shattering experience for all traditional ways of life.

Even so, the ancient symbol of the journey is precisely the means needed to interpret our confusions and our confrontation with the devastating forces of the period. In reality, there is no devastation possible that is not confronted in principle by these narratives, in which we were brought up against the most awesome forces of destruction that the human imagination could conceive. The monsters of myth, such as Medusa, were not nursery tales for innocent children. They were confrontations with wild destructive forces of preternatural might.

Our modern journey into the future, along with the attendant agonies to be endured and perils to be undergone, is not the negation but the very substance of the ancient story. Earlier humans did not underestimate the problems that we must face in our individual or collective journeys through time. This can be seen in the journey of Gilgamesh, in the Homeric epics, and in the Exodus legend of the Hebrew peoples. It is found in the wanderings of the Buddha and in the travels of Confucius in China. It is expressed in the journey to India of the Chinese Buddhist monk Hsuan Tsang (c. 602-664), as narrated in the Chinese novel Hsi Yu Chi or Journey to the West. It is found in Augustine’s story of the rise, progress through history, and termination of The City of God and in the journey of Dante in the Commedia. In all of these, external pilgrimage is the symbol of the journey of the individual soul, the particular society, and the human order itself into those interior depths wherein the sacred presence shines forth, all peril is surmounted, and final security is attained.

Without the symbol of the journey, it would be difficult to find meaning in our present venture through time, nor can we find the support we need for sustaining the sorrows and anxieties of life. So necessary is this narrative of the spiritual journey that only by establishing a new narrative can we engage these ancient tales of the meaning of life. The success of Marx for a century and a half was due to the journey symbolism outlined in the Manifesto. There all the ancient elements were brought together in a new presentation, one lacking the spiritual dimension of the earlier versions. Marx presents only the journey of matter through time and the inner dynamics of its evolution. There is no sense of the sacred, yet there is acceptance of the primary elements of the journey: the awakening to a strange and unsatisfactory setting of human existence, the need to seek a new form of life, the battles to overcome the destructive forces at work, and the final achievement of liberation, attaining the true self and the sacred paradise. All this is accomplished by human effort in alliance with transpersonal powers.

There is no need to stress the similarities with the Egyptian experience, with the Hebrew journey to the Promised Land, or with Buddha’s experience of the destructive forces of age, illness, and death and deliverance. So too, the similarity to Dante’s awakening in the Dark Wood and his journey through Hell and purgatory to a paradisal vision. In such Asian practices as Yogic and Buddhist meditation, the journey becomes almost totally interiorized. With Marx, the journey is almost totally exteriorized in terms of social tensions and their ultimate resolution in a peaceful world community. In both, however, the journey context is identifiable.

Of special significance is the cause or origin of the journey—the discovery that we exist in an unacceptable situation. The human must experience a transformation. This unacceptable situation involves not primarily the external surroundings in which we find ourselves but the unacceptable structure of our own being. This is what is involved in Dante’s experience of the Dark Wood; in India’s experience of Duhkha, of sorrow; and Gilgamesh’s experience of mortality. While these experiences of the human condition are structured differently in the various traditions, certain essential characteristics are found in each. These are the unacceptable states in which humans discover themselves and need to transform. This spiritually transformed state of being is achieved not simply through personal effort but with the aid of more than human powers. We must enter into combat with demonic forces; we must endure affliction and even death prior to attaining an acceptable human situation. This situation is described in terms of paradise, of interior communion with the divine, of attaining sacred status, of immortality or emergence out of the merely temporal into the world of the eternal, of the final establishment of justice and peace within an integral human community, of the coming of the divine kingdom.

The journey is a common symbol found in various societies, and it is associated with another symbol also widespread, that of the Cosmic Person. The Cosmic Person is seen in the Mahapurusha of the Indian world, the Cosmic Buddha of the Lotus Sutra, the Sage in his identity with the entire order of things in the Chinese world, and the Cosmic Christ of Christianity. Awareness that humankind has a real, fundamental unity and that each of us in our full dimensions shares in this unity forms an effective basis for uniting peoples with one another and for relating the human world to the universe itself. This higher human personality appears in literature as “the hero of a thousand faces,” in the words of Joseph Campbell (1904-1987). This higher personality is the Everyman of the medieval period, the Dante of the Commedia, and the Man-writ-large of Shakespeare (1564-1616).

So far, however, the symbol of Cosmic Person has been applied to the relation of humans to the universe and to human development through different periods rather than to the encompassing of the various cultural traditions within the metaphor of a single human. This latter has never been worked out satisfactorily, although it has found generalized expression in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s (1881- 1955) description of the rise of the noosphere and the convergence of peoples on a universal scale. In this manner, an all-inclusive higher personality is formed in preparation for a final unification at point Omega. While this symbol of the Cosmic Person has been a significant force in our past conceptions of ourselves, it may also provide a basis for understanding the various traditions as they now converge toward one another. This convergence of traditions, which seems destined to be an intensive experience in the future, needs spiritual interpretation of a high order. Because individuals will be unable to exist in isolation from social controls or social influence, the totality must be spiritualized within a meaningful way of life.

This comprehensive spirituality, which has reasserted the mythic as the means of communicating with the world of the sacred, finds itself in accord not only with the past course of human history and with the various cultures of the world but also with basic aspects of contemporary developments in the social order and with contemporary psychological understanding of the deeper self of the human community. This word “comprehensive,” used in describing the spirituality needed by our contemporary world, also indicates one of the most significant themes of this discussion: the theme of totality. A spirituality suited to contemporary humans must rest on the drive we feel for a total experience of the universe. This is what propels us into the primordial past as into the distant future, into the outer dimensions of the universe as well as into the fantastic worlds hidden in the smallest particles of matter. We must walk on the moon both as a physical experience and as a mystical symbol of our inner journey. This drive toward fulfillment includes the quest to understand the deepest realms of the unconscious self as they are indicated by symbols revealed in dreams. This search into the deepest origins of psychic experience reveals that as humans we are centered in our place within the whole of things; the individual person seeks the reality of the whole and the whole of reality. This is the importance of the mandala symbol. Each of us must experience ourselves as both center and circumference. When we reach the integrative phase of our own personal experience, we also experience the integrative moment of the universe itself and of that supreme mystery in which the universe and the self exist. This is the achievement of the sacred wherein all oppositions are reconciled.

In some sense, the spirituality we need already exists and is being communicated to us by the larger human tradition. Indeed, the human tradition in all its multiform expression is the primary bearer and teacher of the spirituality we seek. This spirituality cannot be created anew. Human history cannot be set aside. The ancient symbols cannot be ignored. We must simply become conscious of the deeper and more universal forces at work in our own development. Spirituality is not something an individual or school of thought thinks up under some inner pressure to detach from the vulgar ways of humans so as to live in an esoteric realm of interiority. It is, rather, a profound expression of the mystery of participation in a total way of life, formerly of single cultures but now of the human community. The discovery of ourselves must include discovery of that spirituality which has supported and directed the human venture. This spirituality imposes itself just as inner creative powers impose a poetic vision that cannot be refused by the poet or the artist. This spirituality is not a future possibility but a present reality widely experienced but little understood.

This multiform spirituality can be observed at work within each society in the contemporary world. In and through its symbols, Western influences take root in Asia and Asian influences are apparent in the West; indigenous influences are strong among the more scientific-technological societies, and influences from these more commercial societies are found among indigenous peoples everywhere. Already we see that these traditions do not destroy one another or take away the distinctive characteristics that identify each one. Each keeps its original substance while bringing a new vitality to the larger context. Each lends support to the others in facing the historical crisis of scientism and secularism. Together the various traditions constitute a functioning public spirituality of the global village.

This is what is needed: a differentiated public spirituality for the human community. This spirituality in its historical depth and cultural diversity reaches its full expression when it enters into intimate communion with the vital forces of contemporary science and technology. The major proponents of these areas also now realize that their work acquires its meaning and value as well as discipline and limitation from the symbolic narrative within which it lives. The driving force for science and technology is also found in the symbol of the journey. When the scientists write the story of their discoveries of the universe, they have no way of describing it except in terms of the journey of matter through the various phases of transformation and the simultaneous journey of the human mind, wherein this journey of matter becomes conscious of itself and begins, in a new way, to guide itself into the future. This journey of matter and of mind is a single journey that can only be described as having two aspects, one expressed in physical terms, the other in terms of consciousness.

There is still another aspect of the journey symbol that should be mentioned, namely the death-rebirth symbol experienced in the form of periodic upheavals and transformations. Prior to the historical sequence of human development, the formation of the galaxies and the sequence of eruptions on the Earth often came in the form of vast upheavals and catastrophic movements, which shaped the continents and delimited the seas, raised the mountains and formed the valleys of the Earth. With its human expression, however, after the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic period, the movements of Earth were fundamentally fixed; within this determined sequence of cosmic rhythms we established the rhythms of our own activities, accentuated by ritual celebration of the principal moments of cyclical and seasonal change, to bring the inner spiritual world into accord with the outer cosmic world. Only with the biblical experience could the death-rebirth cycle be seen more in radical historical transformation than in the seasonal sequence.

Death-rebirth has a special place in the liturgy of the Easter Vigil. Although this liturgy originally derived from the cosmic renewal rites that predate the Passover celebration, it has been adapted to the theme of historical renewal as this takes place through periodic transformations in the social-historical order. These are recalled in the Easter ritual in terms of the destruction of the world and its renewal at the time of Noah, the desolation of Egypt and the transition of the Hebrew peoples to the Promised Land, the Babylonian captivity and the restoration afterward. But more than the symbol of periodic historical renewal, there is the symbol instituted by the prophets of a total earthly renewal in the Day of the Lord, a symbol later developed into the period of the Reign of the Saints and the Descent of the Heavenly Jerusalem. These millennial symbols of the transformation and final healing of the human condition have given to Western societies our exceptional historical drive. This has been particularly true during periods of human suffering on an extreme scale. The vision of this Heavenly Jerusalem descending upon the Earth in total peace and abundance has given the human community a type of historical expectation such as we never had before.

This expectation has vastly increased the sensitivity we experience to our human condition and has made us more than ever desirous for total transformation both of ourselves and our environment. Evolutionary processes, which are often slow and laborious, have become intolerable. There must be immediate paradise. Thus there is the need not only to endure periodic historical convulsions but to bring these on by positive measures, much as the American Indians inflicted pain on themselves during their vision quests in the hope of bringing about the healing power of the Great Spirit through the intensity of their giving of themselves. In more recent centuries, this compulsive need for a shattering of social forms to introduce a reign of justice has expressed itself in the Western world on numerous occasions.

This problem of the gradual and the immediate, the evolutionary and the revolutionary, is the abiding tension in history. It is the cruel ambiguity in the prophetic enunciation of the Day of the Lord. The increasing acceleration of history has led to a growing sensitivity to the span of time to be endured before the day of bliss arrives; this in turn has led to the repeated triumphs of revolutionary movements over those more evolutionary methods, as can be seen in the triumph of the Bolshevik interpretation of Marx over the Menshevik interpretation. If total change is desired, all minor improvements are inadequate. There is no time to lose. Centuries of slow improvement will never lead to the alleviation sought and will not fulfill the biblical forecast of the healing of sorrow or the reign of the saints or the descent of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Nor does it seem that such an evolutionary process fulfills the requirements of the hero myth, which involves the engagement of demonic forces in a decisive combat that leads to the supreme treasure, the beautiful maiden, the authentic self, the divine presence.

As the future course of Marxism after 1903 was determined principally by the Bolsheviks, so the course of the human community seems to be determined by the more intense technological forces within the community. The causes of this go back to the millennial expectations of Western society that have been communicated to the human community on a wide scale. Movements such as the T’aiping Rebellion, the Cargo cults of New Guinea, the Ghost Dance religion of the American Indian, the black power movements in American political life: all these are rooted in the prophetic announcement that justice will one day be achieved, that the human condition will be radically altered by a complete renewal of the established order of things in favor of a new Earth and a new heaven.

Since this new Earth has not come down to us from heaven, then we must bring this new age into being by violent efforts directed toward seizing control of the deepest genetic as well as the most powerful physical forces within the phenomenal world. Here, then, is the dominant source of Western aggressiveness that is manifested against the past, against all present establishments, against other peoples, and against the natural world itself in a technological conquest that will enable us to exploit the inner constitution of things in a tyrannical manner.

To cure this situation might be an impossible task were it not that the various spiritual traditions are highly resilient and enduring. Although neglected and abused in a thousand ways, they remain unalterably alive. Now these traditions suggest anew their remedy for the situation. As we seek to escape from the wasteland about us, we witness these ancient springs once again flowing with cool water capable of sustaining us on the next phase of our journey. Contemplative traditions are renewed, prayer is again a source of wisdom, and the healing power of silence is rediscovered. As the need for a more mystical relationship with the Earth becomes more widespread, education could become an initiation into a wisdom tradition rather than simply an acquisition of factual data. A comprehensive program of spiritual reconciliation begins to emerge, for now it is clear that to save ourselves we must save the totality of the human community as well as the totality of the Earth upon which we live. Above all, we begin to understand the deeper dimensions of the present historical crisis.

A more creative phase of the journey to our authentic self is resumed. Personalities of comprehensive vision and all-embracing human sensitivities emerge: those who assume the human heritage as their own heritage, who are capable both of intensive engagement in human affairs and of detachment proper to an authentic personality, who combine an understanding of the ages with profound insight, interest, and sympathy for the work of scientists and technologists. Within this context, the individual person engaging in his or her own interior journey feels the support and guidance handed down from the past in the multiple traditions of humankind. All this belongs to each person, for now indeed the spiritual heritage of humankind is the spiritual heritage of all. In a reciprocal manner, the individual can feel that in and through self-integration a healing comes to all. Thus the great journey is forwarded to the fullness of the real, and the interior self and the human community are brought into the divine presence.

In this manner, a person is in communion with humans everywhere. We no longer divide humans into “we” and “they”; we no longer think of an effective spirituality for one segment of the community. However sublime such a spirituality, it would not emerge from the integral human tradition or the integral divine revelation; it would be lacking in its proper center, its proper focus, and could doubtfully sustain itself in any ultimate sense. A broader communion is needed. The journey of the individual and the particular group can no longer be separated from the journey of the human community. Indeed, the individual is instructed and sustained by this universal pilgrim community, and the individual brings to this community the special presence, abilities, and insights that he or she is able to give. The more intimate and the more universal our communion, the more sublime the presence of the human, the cosmic, and the divine realms are to one another. In this manner we attain our authentic existence; an integral form of contemporary spirituality is established.