Being is Whole

“For the benefit of young students we have established the Temenos Academy Young Scholars scheme, a special free membership of the Academy for young people. Applicants are asked to submit a paper that emulates the first five of the ‘Ten Basic Principles that inspire the work of Temenos’, which are:

Acknowledgement of Divinity
Love of Wisdom, as the essential basis of civilization
Spiritual vision as the life-breath of civilization
Maintenance of the revered traditions of mankind
Understanding of tradition as continual renewal
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The Vision of Unity And its Retrieval
By Dylan Esler
(Dylan was a young person when this was written. He is now a scholar and translator of Tibetan Buddhist texts.)

It has become commonly accepted as fact that science and religion are divided by what seems to be an unbridgeable gulf, the one dealing with matter and the other with the invisible world
of the spirit.

However, this assumption rests on a conception which is a fundamentally distorted view of reality. For reality is not to be split into distinct entities, which can be neatly separated from
each other, as the Cartesian worldview would have us believe. What we call ‘matter’ and ‘spirit’ are by no means discreet entities, but different facets of one whole, or, in other words,
different levels of vibrations in the endless energetic fluctuations of Being.

‘Being’ is a whole. Any attempt to divide this whole is a more or less conscious violation of truth (truth as the correct, namely holistic, perception of reality), which stems from the
inability to accept reality as it is. From this results existential insecurity, which manifests in frantic attempts to construct conceptual models. Through these we try to capture glimpses of an essentially dynamic process into rigid positions that we can analyse according to our prejudices.

It is not, however, that these models are necessarily wrong. The problem lies in mistaking these models for truth itself, when in reality they only provide us with a particular glimpse of truth. Thus we become enslaved by what should be but useful tools. As the Buddhist parable goes, after crossing the river we carry the raft which took us to the other shore on our shoulders. We end up being burdened by what might have originally been a useful asset! In this way we begin to worship the models which we created to understand reality, thereby becoming idolaters, instead of using them as windows open onto reality…

In this state of affairs, it may be asked, where does religion stand? Does it still have any relevance in the modern world? …

Religion, in its essence, is that aspect of human endeavour that seeks to relate man back to his sacred origin. And what is this sacred origin? It is essentially a unity, what we have hinted to
above by speaking of ‘Being’, which is the ground and source for all more limited expressions of being. In other words, any being exists solely by virtue of Being, which at once embraces all while transcending the finiteness of particular beings. And every being takes part in and expresses on the individual plane the unlimited and transcendent qualities of Being, or Being-as-such…

What has here been termed Being, or Being-as-such, has received, as the history of religion tells us, numerous names. It has been termed the Godhead, God, Allah, Yahweh, the
Brahman, the Atman, the non-Atman, the Dao, the Buddha-nature, and there are many, many more such names. The reason the term Being has here been chosen, is that it is neutral as regards religious doctrine and does not oblige us to incorporate into our discussion exotic terms or religiously loaded concepts. Moreover, the word Being itself expresses a very fundamental truth, namely that the world’s and man’s nature is to be before it is to have and to do…

Now, it may be objected, especially by those who are familiar with the Study of Religions, that the equation of the above terms, taken from very different religious contexts, with what I here have named Being, is questionable and indeed presumptuous. Who am I to say that what the Christians mean by God, the Hindus by Brahman, the Buddhists by the Tathagatagarbha and the Daoists by the Dao, is one and the same Reality? How can this be upheld when we know from history how many of these various groups slaughtered each other brutally, or at least debated violently, each with the hope of establishing its God or Absolute as the only and supreme?..

Each mystical path, at the same time, seeks to provide a means whereby Ultimate Reality can be approached, experienced and embodied by the practitioner, and allows for differing levels
of participation in that Reality, depending on the temperament and commitment of the individual. In providing such a means of approach, which includes linguistic descriptions of the path itself as well as (to some extent) of Ultimate Reality, no one tradition can provide a full account for the simple reason that what it seeks to describe is truly ineffable. Each religious tradition has a particular genius for approaching Reality from a particular angle, for opening a particular perspective onto Truth, while developing, on the human plane, particular traits of saintliness.

All religious traditions are bridges from the human to the transcendent. As such they incorporate features of human limitations together with aspects of transcendent infinity.
It is quite illogical to expect anything else. To expect them to each provide the same approach to Ultimate Reality would be to want a relative phenomenon to take on an absolute character. If there were only one MAN, there would be but a single PATH. But as things are, humanity is diverse, and corresponding to these different temperaments are various religious traditions; within these, corresponding to various aptitudes and levels of commitment are differing paths,
ranging from the exoteric to the esoteric modes of approach; and these again open up to ever deeper and subtler dimensions of Reality.

At the same time, the transcendent dimension on which each mystical tradition opens is also present at the outset and becomes manifest in the mystical vision of Ultimate Reality at the path’s culmination, as well as in the ever unfolding embodiment of holiness in the practitioner’s life. Here, we arrive at our second objection, namely that the view that each
religious tradition produces its own fantasy, apart from being illogical, also contradicts evidence. That evidence is none other than sacred art and holiness. None who has spent but a few moments of contemplation in any of the great religions’ sanctuaries, or who has heard inspired sacred music or stood before visionary art, can fail to notice that here something of the transcendent is transpiring in the world of matter.

And, for those who are privileged to so witness, there is no more moving embodiment of transcendence than in the saint, the human being whom spiritual practice has made holy, and whose very flesh has become translucent...

Now, such things are not wonders, nor are they coincidences, nor accidents. For such inspired art to be created, or for such saints to be alive in both past and present, there must be a cause, and that cause is none other than the recognition of Ultimate Reality; sacred art and holiness could not exist if they did not stem from Truth. If the various religious traditions were but the fantastic edifices of idle dreamers, they would never in a thousand years have been able to inspire transcendent art or saintliness. Such beauty cannot stem from a lie. And it is irrelevant to object that religious traditions have also produced and still continue to instigate much hatred and violence. “The corruption of the best is the worst.” This corruption, moreover, is accidental, not essential, that is, it stems from the limitedness of man.

This dimension of a religion is of course an important one, and in all traditional societies across the world it was incumbent on religion to regulate social interaction between human beings and to ensure that the greatest possible number of people could participate, at least passively and indirectly, in the particular religion’s hue of grace…

Every mystic is to some extent conditioned by his or her upbringing, religion, and even mystical path. In particular, although various mystics experience the same Ultimate Reality,
they speak of it according to the terms in which they have been taught to think of it. For instance, some will talk of the unification of Atman with Brahman, others of the extinguishing of the lover in the Beloved, others of the shining forth of the Buddha-nature. There will obviously be differences in their way of understanding this experience. But, it should be remembered, the mystical experience is so overwhelming that it is truly impossible to describe it fully in any terms. That experience is totally unconditioned by and beyond the limits of language.

Nonetheless, the mystic is also a human being, and it is through understanding that he reflects on the mystical experience and through language that he seeks to express it to others.
However much the mystical experience is beyond conditioning, the mystic as a person is not: his understanding of the experience in its aftermath, and the language he uses to point it out to others are conditioned, even if the mystic be unaware of it.

Therefore, the mystic’s very vocation is one that embodies paradox, because he seeks to fathom the unfathomable and express the inexpressible; and yet he knows, beyond the least trace of doubt, that what he has experienced is infinitely more real and valuable than what is known to the common man. So, in his very person the mystic unifies the conditioned with the unconditioned, the limitedness of being human with the infinity of his realization. Especially if he is an accomplished mystic, he is not content with a one-off experience which has no relation whatsoever with his ordinary life. The difference between the ordinary and the accomplished mystic is that for the latter his experience is totally integrated to his life, and his every breath is imbued with its power. He becomes an instrument leading others to the same accomplishment, or at least to benefit from the grace which naturally surrounds anyone in constant attunement to Ultimate Reality.

Having said this much about religion and mysticism, if we turn to science, we will come to realize that while for long it rejected the entire religious worldview, it is now coming to appreciate that any understanding of the world which is true must take account of the whole of reality and be holistic. Thus, surprisingly to some, many of the foremost scientists are
coming to very similar conclusions about reality that the world’s great mystics reached centuries before. It is an irony that, as pointed out by Nasr,

[The] scientistic philosophers are much more dogmatic than many scientists in denying any metaphysical significance to the discoveries of science. But the physicists themselves, or at least many of the outstanding figures among them, have often been the first to deny scientism and even the so-called scientific method.

For centuries man has endeavoured to free himself from the gravity of matter, transcending his given condition through elevation of the spirit. In relatively recent times (that is, since the Copernican revolution), we have sought to transcend that gravity not through elevating ourselves above matter, but by penetrating it to ever greater depths through understanding and
mastery of its laws. But by penetrating the atom scientists have come to realize that every atom contains the information-structures of galaxies, so that the smallest microcosm reflects
the macrocosm as a whole. The universe reflects itself endlessly like a gallery of mirrors, and we, as observers, are also mirrors interdependently linked to all other mirrors, whether animate or inanimate. And what all this reflects is Reality, in its unfathomable mystery and endlessly enchanting beauty.”