Integral Religion

by Dr. Marc Gafni | (part 4)

It is precisely this fellowship of prayer and prophecy, which we might refer to as the second face of God. In this pointing out instruction, God in the first person would be the face of god you feel flowing through you in meditation. God in the third person would be the face of God reflected in your radical amazement at the wonder and infinite intelligence displayed in every nook and cranny of existence. God in the second person is in the mystery of the encounter between God and Man. A relationship of intimacy is revealed between the finite and the infinite.  All of the infinite power, glory, and intelligence of the first person and third person of the divine were felt and revealed as relationship in the second encounter between the prophet and God. The precise flip side of prophecy is prayer. In their essence, they are the same. Both are expressions of the fellowship between man and God. The difference is simply this. In prophecy, God initiates and God invokes. In prayer, man initiates and man invokes.

What is key to grasp here is that the second person of God is not a primitive metaphor for the simple people who cannot quite grasp the depth of god as principle or Tao or spirit or the evolutionary impulse. God in the second person is not, as so many American spiritual teachers have suggested, a left over touching trinket of the old religion. Not in the slightest. The full integral realization of enlightenment feels in the core of it’s being all three faces of God. Central is the face of God the lover and beloved. This is God for whom we yearn. This is God of whom we know that wherever we fall, we fall into God’s hands. This is not a product of projection, childish fantasy, or immature imagination.

This is a knowing of the presence, which emerges directly from enlightened realization.

The personal, caring, compassionate embrace of the divine is a profound realization of the eye of spirit.  If a teacher has not realized the personal embrace of God as part of their realization, they would do well to bow their head in humility and yearning instead of dismissing that of with which they have no direct contact or realization.

None of this means that God is your grandfather in the heaven  waiting to give you candy. Your realization of God in the second person has little to do with a cosmic vending machine dressed as your favorite uncle.  Rather, God is the transpersonal nature of all that is.

The transpersonal is not pre-personal. God is more than personal, not less than personal.

God is Personal-Plus not Personal-Minus. It is somewhat like saying God is not physical. That does not mean that God is less real or less concrete than the physical. It means that the flatland of the merely physical cannot even begin to express the absolute sensual pulsating realness that manifests in the direct first-person experience of the divine.

God is not merely impersonal.  When you say impersonal, we think of a person with whom we cannot make contact. Impersonal means without the possibility of love and intimacy. In both the experience of  God in your first person as cosmic consciousness or your experience of God in the second person Encounter, you will realize that radical love, intimacy, and contact is the very quality of the experience.

For more of this essay, see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, or Part 5.

You can also join Dr. Marc Gafni’s contacts on LinkedIn.

by Dr. Marc Gafni | (part 3)

The sense of peril resulting from direct contact with the divine ground has nothing to do with any ideas that the people are sinful or the god wrathful. It is more like the famous question of the Bhagavad Gita: “Suppose a thousand suns should rise together in the sky,” what would happen to our reality? How can the individual hope to survive contact with Source? Source incarnates all the energy and power in the Cosmos and infinitely beyond.

Presence by its very nature overwhelms all individual existence.

This strange and awesome paradox is resolved not by theory, but in the very experience of the encounter itself. The living presence of the divine “which is the suchness and substance of all that is” not only IS but is also FOR man. The person experiences an overpowering concern, in which they are held, cared for, recognized, and loved–within the very encounter itself. So the paradox of the encounter is that it is, on one hand, overwhelming and at the same time radically affirming. The individual is rendered powerless, almost lifeless before the divine, even as the individual is enlivened and empowered.

The core of the encounter is three fold. The revelation of love and concern for man, the calling of man to responsibility and action, and a radical affirmation of the dignity and meaning of personhood and individuality.

To sense this more deeply, hear directly the description of the encounter by of one of the great master prophets Ezekiel, “I fell on my face, then the spirit entered me and set me on my feet and spoke with me.” Ezekiel is overpowered and yet retains his personal identity. In all of the reports of the encounter, the same paradoxical quality is apparent. The divine reveals itself as all consuming energy, and at the same moment, hides the full intensity of infinity, holding the prophet in the protective embrace of divine love. Overwhelmed by the presence in the encounter, man finds himself affirmed. There can be no encounter with nothing. If human individuality is overwhelmed into nothingness, there can be no encounter. God invests with man the evolutionary impulse to stand up again and unfold his individuality. Even as he experiences his nothingness, he is affirmed as dignified, adequate, responsible, and beloved. Man is granted a measure of independence. He is free to be himself because God cares for and affirms him. God hides in his revelation in order to preserve the personality of man. The Wholly other reveals itself as friend, sustainer, preserver. This is what the prophets used to call the Humility of God.

So we see that the divine self-revelation in the encounter is dual. Radical presence, which is overwhelming, coupled with radical love, which is affirming of human dignity and preserving of human individuality.

The encounter invites man into fellowship with God. Communion and even Union are the divine invitation. But for the prophet and the Western spirituality that he birthed, there can be no identity between man and God, for in identity man is absorbed and the fellowship is lost.

For more of this essay, see Part 1, Part 2, or Part 4.

You can also join Dr. Marc Gafni’s contacts on LinkedIn.

by Dr. Marc Gafni | (part 2)

The most powerful expression of this realization is in the prophetic encounter with the divine mystery. This encounter runs like a thread from Abraham and Sarah to Moses, Miriam, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the larger legions of prophecy. As America’s second president John Adams has already noted, the best of everything Western man knows about freedom, love, ethics, and responsibility emerges from the great encounter between the finite and the infinite.

The Encounter with other marks the emergence of the pre-personal slumber. The baby encounters other even as the emergent human being who experiences his separate self turns to other. The  encounter–relationship–is born as the central dynamic of human existence.

In the encounter between separate selves, love is born.

In the encounter, the infinite creative intelligence, which is the underlying ground of the kosmos, reveals itself to you with compassionate face. Full of care, challenge, and concern.

The encounter is an actual experience, which engages all the sense of man. At the same time, it is well beyond any limited material apparition of deity.

The knowledge of the presence is conveyed with irresistible force even as the presence remains invisible to the naked eye. The encounter is not philosophical abstraction or metaphysical speculation. The knowing is not derivative.  It is immediate. The presence is directly felt and recognized. The nature of the experience is induced as an absolute certainty. Not certainty of dogma, not certainty that it is true, that you are true. You are fully affirmed in the encounter.

The experience combines two very different qualities. Radical love and radical danger. The presence by the very fact of its overwhelming power seems to threaten the very life of the person to whom it is addressed. Moses hears the voice and hides his face. Face means his singular individuality, which feels threatened by the encounter itself. We have scripture on this. “Did ever people hear the voice, speaking from the midst of the fire and live?”

For more of this essay, see Part 1 or Part 3.

You can also join Dr. Marc Gafni’s contacts on LinkedIn.