17 – Christmas Collection

Sermon #17 – Christmas Collection

Over the years I have given many Christmas sermons. Today I will reprise several memorable statements from these previous sermons, not out of laziness, but just because Christmas is a time for traditional ceremonies that get better with repetition. Also because by picking highlights out of these several sermons, I am making it clear to myself what I think is most important about Christmas.

To begin with, this being the second Sunday of Advent, I never tire of the reading the Magnificat, the text wherein the Angel Gabriel gives Mary the good news, and Mary responds:

Luke 1:46-55:

“My soul doth magnify the Lord, 

And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; 

Because he has regarded the lowliness of his handmaid; 

For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed; 

Because he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name;

And his mercy is from generation to generation on those who fear him. 

He has shown might with his arm, 

He has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.

He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and has exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has given help to Israel, his servant, mindful of his mercy 

Even as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity forever.”

The expression “my soul doth magnify the Lord” has many

interesting ramifications: a roundabout interpretation I have 

come up with begins with a specific definition of this word “soul”. 

The word “soul” is very freely bandied about; many people confuse the word, and use it to refer to various, sometimes very different, dimensions of being. I agree with the interpretation of the word “soul” I have learned from Jeanette. If I understand correctly, the soul is the container of the spirit body, rendering it not unlike Steiner’s “astral body”. Soul is not the essence, it is the container. 

As such, how does the soul magnify the Lord? Let's take the word 

“magnify” at its literal meaning, which is “to make bigger”. You 

might say make present, to appear. And thus it was that bringing into presence the soul container, Infinity takes this essence and expands it into visible proportions that can be appreciated by human intelligence.

On the subject of SIZE, I ran across this interesting diversion in the 

Secret Gospel of James concerning the soul as a magnifier:

“Therefore, you must be in want while it is possible to 

fill you, and be full while it is possible for you to be in 

want, so that you may be able to fill yourselves the           

  more. 

Hence, become full of the Spirit, but be in want of  reason,

for reason belongs to the soul; in turn, it is of the nature

  of soul."

This verse makes a clear distinction between spirit and soul. 

Furthermore, it encourages us to become ever more full of the

Spirit, meanwhile warning us against thinking because thinking is in the nature of THE CONTAINER and not of the spiritual essence. 

Also the idea of being full but still wanting more sounds a lot like the ineffable sehnsucht about which we talked extensively a few years ago.

Going on with some more Advent stuff:

From Wikipedia:

"In Anglican churches the Sunday before Advent is sometimes nicknamed Stir-up Sunday after the opening lines of the Book of Common Prayer collect for that day. In the Roman Catholic Church since 1969, and in most Anglican churches since at least 2000, the final Sunday of the liturgical year before Advent has been celebrated as the Feast of Christ the King. This feast is now also widely observed in many Protestant churches, sometimes as the Reign of Christ."

So, according to the church calendar, we should have feasted three weeks ago in preparation for the fast that began two weeks ago. Next Sunday is the fourth of the four Sundays of Advent, the period of sacrifice and preparation for the coming of the Christ. We need to impose some kind of rigorous discipline on ourselves to help us concentrate on this idea: out with the old, in with the new. For, whatever else may be said of it, it cannot be denied that Christmastide is a time of renewal, and a certain amount of garbage must be taken out before the new can take its place in our lives. 

It's just not possible to be a human being and not, (over time), fill up a hefty-sized garbage can full of leftover junk--waste matter--that was not part of the program but which got stuck to us anyway. Think about the accumulated trash that clutters your life; ask yourself if you really need any of it, or if you are just hypnotized by it dancing glitter; try to free yourself from its thrall, and come before the lord naked and open. Advent is the time of preparation, (purification, say), for the coming incarnation of spirit into the material plane; it is a time of a mental bracing of our egos against the devastating breath of God that wipes away the old and ushers in the new; the rod and staff of the Shepherd.

I confess, as much as I enjoy the healing, restorative energy of Christmas, I usually do feel pretty shattered for awhile somewhere in there. Revisiting the past and kissing it good-bye will do that to you. And making yourself receptive (in preparation) can make you exposed; your ego's guard is down, and you feel fragile, and weak, and incapable. But it is this very fragility that allows spirit to gain a foothold, inviting it to imbue the non-resisting flesh with heavenly light.

We are chosen through grace, but the preparations we make to receive the gifts of grace are good works, which operate on us from the inside out. As the Grace of God approaches, in the raiments of Christmas, we know it will be ours, but we also know that the more worthy we make ourselves, the greater will be the gift--we take what we can get, and we get what we can take. We look forward to the coming of the Christ with longing and anticipation, but also fear and trembling because we think that we may not have done enough to deserve this great coming. Undoubtedly we haven't. 

Moving on to some remarks concerning the actual Christmas ritual:

The following is from Rudolf Steiner's Signs and Symbols of the Christmas Festival, I, The Birth of the Light, Berlin, December 19, 1904. It highlights (haha) the significance of light and sun, and points to the resonance of destiny that accompanies the symbols of the season:

"Christianity stands as the external mystical fact for the birth of the light. Christ brought to the earth what had existed from the beginning, although it was hidden from mankind throughout the ages we have been speaking of. Now, however, a new climax was reached. Even as the light is born anew at the winter solstice, so . . . the Savior of Mankind, the Christ, was born. He is the new Sun Hero who was not only initiated in the depths of the Mystery temples, but who also appeared before all the world so that it could be said, “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). When it was recognized that the Divine could descend into a personality, the festival celebrating the birth of the Sun Hero, the Christ, came to replace the festival celebrating the birth of the light."

To recapitulate: the myths surrounding all the ancient Sun-Gods, may only be thought of wishful thinking, an image seem through a glass darkly, compared to the blinding light of Jesus' glorious incarnation on Earth. These myths attest to the POSSIBILITY of a Messiah, the HOPE for a Messiah, but their impact pales next to the ACTUAL COMING of the Messiah.

From the web article Legacy of the Gods we read:

"In Steiner's Tenth Lecture on the Gospel of St. Luke, he reflects that just as a plant cannot unfold its blossom immediately after the seed has been sown, so has humankind had to progress from stage to stage until the right knowledge could be brought to maturity at the right time.

To Steiner, the Christ energy is the catalyst that germinates the seed that great Spirit Beings implanted within their human offspring. There were, of course, the physical seeds of male and female, which intermingled to produce the whole human being. But there was also something in each human that did not arise from the blending of the two physical seeds. There was, so to speak, a "virgin birth," a something ineffable, Steiner says, which somehow flowed into the process of germination from quite a different source: "

Now we revisit Rudolf Steiner's insight into the The True Second Coming - by Robert S. Mason

"Another tremendous revelation from Steiner's spiritual science concerns the true nature of the Second Coming of Christ. Steiner was adamant that the physical incarnation of Christ can happen once and only once.

"Just as a pair of scales can have only one balancing-point, so in Earth evolution the event of Golgatha can take place only once".

The amazing fact is that the Second Coming is happening now, but that most of mankind is unaware of it. Actually, the term "second coming" is not in the New Testament; the Greek word is parousia, meaning roughly "active presence". It was this "presence" that Saul/Paul experienced on the road to Damascus; Paul being mankind's "premature birth" of the coming new experience of Christ.

Parousia was translated into Latin as adventus, which means arrival, thus helping to give rise to the expectation of a physical arrival of Christ. The original Greek term seems in consonance with Steiner's explanation. In fact, it is the driving force behind the "apocalyptic" convulsions and struggles of our time.

For, as the picture given in the Apocalypse of John, the bottomless pit is opened, Michael casts the dragon and his hosts onto the earth, the vials of wrath are poured out, and Babylon is overthrown -- all in preparation for Christ's triumph that brings the New Heaven and New Earth. Most of us are unaware of this present Second Coming because it is not happening in the visible, material world, but in the "ethereal" region of the earth. "Ethereal" means the system of "formative forces", bordering on the physical, that raise inert matter to the realm of the living. . . 

[ . . . the Second Coming shall be a tremendous event, not limited to a particular location:

(Matt. 24:27)

"For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so also shall the coming of the Son of man be."

The ethereal is super-physical, not bound by the laws of material space; Christ's appearance in the ethereal earth is everywhere-at-once. And since the ethereal is super-physical, some degree of super-physical vision, or "clairvoyance", is needed to see into it."

Notice that Steiner places great emphasis on developing clairvoyance, not as some rarely discovered miracle, but as the stock-in-trade for the devotee on the spiritual path. He encourages us to develop "super-physical vision"--it's just one more way of paying attention.

Moreover, contrary to some of the comments I have quoted above, Steiner is telling us that Christmas is not about the FIRST coming of the Christ, it is about the eternally unfolding SECOND coming of the Christ. Now, as we have admitted above, there must be moments of heightened intensity in the rhythm of life, but it must also be admitted that the theme song of Christmas has always been, "Live in the spirit of Christmas all the year long." Perhaps the realization, waiting for us at Christmastime, is that, with each passing year, our own personal capacity for love and virtuous acts is expanding like the eternally unfolding SECOND coming of the Christ. 

The following are two short but meaningful quotes, and a longer piece from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. From his God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas:

“God can make a new beginning with people whenever God pleases, but not people with God. Therefore, people cannot make a new beginning at all; they can only pray for one. Where people are on their own and live by their own devices, there is only the old, the past.” 

“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes - and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent”
 

The Coming of Jesus into Our Midst

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Revelation 3:20:

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. 

When early Christianity spoke of the return of the Lord Jesus, they thought of a great day of judgment. Even though this thought may appear to us to be so unlike Christmas, it is original Christianity and to be taken extremely seriously. When we hear Jesus knocking, our conscience first of all pricks us: Are we rightly prepared? Is our heart capable of becoming God's dwelling place? Thus Advent becomes a time of self-examination. "Put the desires of your heart in order, O human beings!" (Valentin Thilo), as the old song sings.

"Our whole life is an Advent, a time of waiting for the ultimate, for the time when there will be a new

heaven and a new earth, when all people will be brothers and sisters."

It is very remarkable that we face the thought that God is coming so calmly, whereas previously peoples trembled at the day of God, whereas the world fell into trembling when Jesus Christ walked over the earth. That is why we find it so strange when we see the marks of God in the world so often together with the marks of human suffering, with the marks of the cross on Golgotha.

We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God's coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God's coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience."

[Sidebar: There is an interesting ramification of the idea of FEARING Christmas; it is that Christmas, like all second comings, comes like a thief in the night, and inevitably catches us unawares, and unprepared. Christmas is a reminder to remind ourselves that human life is a serious business that requires serious people to PAY ATTENTION. KEEP YOUR LAMPS LIT.

Back to Bonhoeffer:]

"Only when we have felt the terror of the matter, can we recognize the incomparable kindness. God comes into the very midst of evil and of death, and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, God cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with grace and love. God makes us happy as only children can be happy.

God wants to always be with us, wherever we may be - in our sin, in our suffering and death. We are no longer alone; God is with us. We are no longer homeless; a bit of the eternal home itself has moved unto us. Therefore we adults can rejoice deeply within our hearts under the Christmas tree, perhaps much more than the children are able. We know that God's goodness will once again draw near. We think of all of God's goodness that came our way last year and sense something of this marvelous home. Jesus comes in judgment and grace: "Behold I stand at the door!  Open wide the gates!" (Ps. 24:7)

One day, at the last judgment, he will separate the sheep and the goats and will say to those on his right: "Come, you blessed. I was hungry and you fed me." (Matt. 25:34). To the astonished question of when and where, he answered: "What you did to the least of these, you have done to me?" (Matt. 25:40).

With that we are faced with the shocking reality: Jesus stands at the door and knocks, in complete reality. He asks you for help in the form of a beggar, in the form of a ruined human being in torn clothing. He confronts you in every person that you meet. Christ walks on the earth as your neighbor as long as there are people. He walks on the earth as the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you and makes his demands. That is the greatest seriousness and the greatest blessedness of the Advent message. Christ stands at the door. He lives in the form of the person in our midst. Will you keep the door locked or open it to him?

Christ is still knocking. It is not yet Christmas. But it is also not the great final Advent, the final coming of Christ. Through all the Advents of our life that we celebrate goes the longing for the final Advent, where it says: "Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. 21:5).

Advent is a time of waiting. Our whole life, however, is Advent - that is, a time of waiting for the ultimate, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, when all people are brothers and sisters and one rejoices in the words of the angels: "On earth peace to those on whom God's favor rests." Learn to wait, because he has promised to come. "I stand at the door?" We however call to him: "Yes, come soon, Lord Jesus!" Amen."

[Sidebar: Even if a person makes it the disciplined purpose of his life, to remain fluid and open to the subtle influences spirit has upon our mundane existence, there will still naturally be moments of greater intensity, like a planet orbiting closer to the sun may feel the greater heat. Christmas is the season of lights because the seasonal darkness, by contrast, brings out the light of spirit more brilliantly.

We close this sermon by quoting, from the Infancy Gospel of 

James the complete account of the Joseph’s trip to Bethlehem 

and the surreal episode of the shepherds, wherein time stood still. The shepherd’s scene is very much like a song, and captures a  mythical quality of the event that is not always so vividly conveyed in the Synoptic Gospels:

“CHAPTER 17

1. (1) Then, there was an order from the Emperor Augustus 

to register how many people were in Bethlehem of 

Judea. 

1. (2) And Joseph said, "I will register my sons. But this 

child? What will I do about him? How will I register

him? 

1. (3) And my wife? Oh, I am ashamed. Should I register 

her as my daughter? The children of Israel know 

that she is not my daughter.”

I love how Joseph argues with himself while he is trying to figure out what to do with Mary. First he thinks maybe he can pass her off as his daughter, and then he says, “No, the Jews already know she's not my daughter, that she's my wife.”

A difficult decision is made here:

“(4) This day, I will do as the Lord wants."

[Sidebar: “This day, I will do as the Lord wants." And from here on it is smooth sailing:]

(5)And he saddled his donkey and sat her on it and 

his son led and Samuel followed. 

(6)And they arrived at the third mile and Joseph 

turned and saw that she was sad. 

(7) And he said to himself, "Perhaps the child within 

her is troubling her." 

(8) And again Joseph turned around and saw her 

laughing and said to her, "Mary, what is with you? 

First your face appears happy and then sad?"

(9) And she said, "Joseph, it is because I see two 

people with my eyes, one crying and being afflicted, 

one rejoicing and being extremely happy."

(10) When they came to the middle of the journey, 

Mary said to him, "Joseph, take me off the donkey, 

the child is pushing from within me to let him come 

out."

(11) So he took her off the donkey and said to her, 

"Where will I take you and shelter you in your awkwardness? This area is a desert."

CHAPTER 18

1. (1) And he found a cave and led her there and 

stationed his sons to watch her, 

1. (2) while he went to a find a Hebrew midwife in the 

land of Bethlehem.

(3) Then, Joseph wandered, but he did not wander. 

(4) And I looked up to the peak of the sky and saw 

it standing still and I looked up into the air. With utter astonishment I saw it, even the birds of the 

sky were not moving. 

(5)And I looked at the ground and saw a bowl lying 

there and workers reclining. And their hands 

were in the bowl.”

[Sidebar: Here it gets really interesting: we are expecting to see a choir of angels singing “Hosannah in the Highest”, but instead, time stands still—the whole plain is motionless. 

The high level of dramatic artistry in this section should not go unnoticed. The images are presented in tableaux, like stop-action photography: they are eating then they freeze and they are not eating, they were picking it up and then not picking it up, etc. It’s very Twilight Zone, but still very electric and hypnotizing not to mention spiritual:]

“(6) And chewing, they were not chewing. And 

picking food up, they were not picking it up. 

And putting food in their mouths, they were not putting it in their mouths. 

(7) Rather, all their faces were looking up.

(8) And I saw sheep being driven, but the sheep 

were standing still. 

(9) And the shepherd lifted up his hand to strike 

them, but his hand remained above them. 

(10) And I saw the rushing current of the river and 

I saw goats and their mouths resting in the 

water, but they were not drinking. 

(11) And suddenly everything was replaced by 

the ordinary course of events.”

I love the image of time standing still, with everybody frozen 

in a Twilight Zone screen shot. Actually, how VULGAR it is to 

paint a sky filled with tinsel angels when it was probably 

more like it is described here—an inner vision—time standing still totally works for me. 

However, it wouldn’t be Christmas if we didn’t end our 

Advent review with the traditional picture of angels as 

described in Luke, so let us view this scene, in the terms 

suggested by James, as an archetypal symbol of the inner 

experience of angels:

Luke 2:8-14:

“8. And there were in the same country shepherds 

abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by 

night. 

9. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, 

and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: 

and they were sore afraid. 

10. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, 

behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which 

shall be to all people. 

11. For unto you is born this day in the city of David 

a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. 

12. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the 

babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. 

13. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude 

of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, 

14. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, 

good will toward men.”

Let us pray: Jesus take our prayers as a sign of love and faith. 

Life is so hard sometimes, we surrender our hopes to frenzied despair—then the old tales draw us back, ground us in the soil 

of our long and deep history, and we are comforted. 

Thanks again for that. Amen.

16 Heaven on Earth

16 Heaven on Earth

Today’s sermon was inspired by my efforts to reconcile a troublesome paradox in my life: I have preached Heaven on Earth from this pulpit many times, and I have tasted firsthand the fruits of heaven and breathed the rarefied air of eternity—and yet there are times when the weights of life bear down on me, and make me forget that nothing in this world is as important as it seems; indeed these pressures make me forget that nothing in this world is as real as it seems. I needed a reminder that all my worries and frettings are miniscule lumps in in the grand fabric of existence--that I need to rise above my mundane troubles and stay focused on the higher reality that my faith points to, but my sin occasionally obscures from spiritual sight.

So, I did a search on the internet for “Heaven on Earth” and came up with a pile of quotations which pertain to the subject. I have attempted to take this material and synthesize it into a coherent presentation, with some point to it, but the main point is in the title and can’t be improved that much—Heaven is here on Earth. Nevertheless I found some deep aphorisms that bear repeating in or out of context.

To begin:

The following words are attributed to a variety of people including Mark Twain, Satchel Paige, and William Purkey:

Sing like no one is listening.
Love like you’ve never been hurt.
Dance like nobody’s watching,
and live like it’s heaven on earth.

That’s the trick isn’t it? To live LIKE—as if-- it’s heaven on earth; as if earth is NOT heaven, but it is LIKE or similar to heaven. As we have noticed many times, spiritual experiences, spiritual perspectives, are mind states achieved by CHOICE. The implication of “Live like it’s heaven on earth” is that we can CHOOSE to live AS IF we are in heaven; and if we CHOOSE to so live, we create the Heaven on Earth out of our own subjective reality. Thus, though earth is NOT heaven, it is LIKE heaven because we choose to project our intuitive image of heaven onto the physically REAL THINGS of earth, thereby bestowing on those THINGS heavenly attributes. The question is whether such attributions are REAL, or imaginary—moreover, the question is whether imaginary entities are REAL. 

Jules Renard says it like this:

“On earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it.”

From the article Where Is Heaven on Earth?, by Jonathan Parnell, we read:

“Until God’s new creation overwhelms this old one, the way that heaven touches this world is through his people. 

We are “ambassadors for Christ” — his new-creation representatives in this old-creation world.”

2 Corinthians 5:20 

“Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, 

God making his appeal through us. 

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” 

“And when we pray the way he taught us, that God’s kingdom come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we know that it must first happen in our own lives — and then through our own lives.” 

Thus, in the spirit of the Catholic allegiance to the “Salvation through Good Works” doctrine, we create heaven on earth through virtuous acts on the mundane level. By assuming the Christ Identity we become an ACTIVE Christ. So, as “ambassadors for Christ”, we touch the world with heavenly energy, by example-- by performing acts characteristic of heavenly activity, imbued with heavenly love and tolerance. By performing Christlike acts, we assume the Christlike consciousness.

We read an expression on the same theme in On Earth as It Is in Heaven: The Tasks of the College of Teachers in Light of the Founding Impulse of Waldorf Education by Roberto Trostli:

“What is most important is that earthly matters be informed from the point of view of the spirit and that spiritual matters be informed by down-to-earth practicality.”

In Fourteen Questions About Heaven Peter Kreeft states: 

“The link connecting the Church Militant with the Church Triumphant, the link connecting Heaven and earth, is the incarnate Christ. We participate in what Christ does, and Christ links Heaven and earth. He is still on earth as well as in Heaven (1) by His Spirit and (2) in His Mystical Body, the Church, His people. Christianity does not worship an absent Christ. And just as He can be on earth even when He has gone to Heaven, so can we in Him. The cells in the one Body are all living cells, but only a very few of them are living on earth.” 

As you can well imagine, Joseph Campbell has much to say on the subject:

“The experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. Heaven is not the place to have the experience; here is the place to have the experience. 

Our world as the center of the universe, the world divided from the heavens, the world bound by horizons in which God’s love is reserved for members of the in group: That is the world that is passing away. 

Apocalypse is not about a fiery Armageddon and salvation of a chosen few, but about the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end.”

If our religion is based on salvation, our chief emotions will be fear and trembling. If our religion is based on wonder, our chief emotion will be gratitude.”

My new hero, G.K. Chesterton says it like this:

“The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. 

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”

Indeed, wonder and gratitude have become leading concepts in my current musings on spiritual doctrines. I have found that feelings of gratitude put me closer in touch with heaven than any other feeling I can willfully manufacture in my mundane mind. Furthermore, feelings of gratitude lead, as night the day, to acts –EXPRESSIONS-- of praise. Thus, through acts of praise, acts of creativity, I create the heaven on earth I prefer, and see the side of the face of God I wish to see.

Notice, in that last paragraph I have mentioned “the side of the face of God I wish to see”, implying that there is more than one Face of God, and I have a choice as which one I choose to worship. To a doctrine in which there is only ONE God, this might reek of blasphemy, unless we remember, with Dante--as he approached the face of God, the immutable, eternal, changeless face of God—that the face changed with every change in Dante himself. Can we humans ever hope to become the One True God, or must we be satisfied with the little corner of God that we can apprehend with earthly intelligence? As we have heard C.S. Lewis say many times, the more we become like God, the more we become our true selves. Carl Jung says something similar below: 

“The whole point of Jesus's life was not that we should become exactly like him, but that we should become ourselves in the same way he became himself. Jesus was not the great exception but the great example.” 

Jung also gives us a hint as to the LOCATION of Heaven on Earth:

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

Heaven is INSIDE us—the outer is a dream, the inner is the reality. Jung goes on to comment on the experience, I have had many times, of hearing an inner voice that tells me things that often contradict the apparent messages of my physical senses: 

“In each of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves. When, therefore, we find ourselves in a difficult situation to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude - the very attitude that led us into the difficult situation.”

Thus we realize that the INNER Heaven is inhabited by an INNER SELF—a self who views reality from a wider-angle perspective than our physical eyes can apprehend. He goes on to suggest that this inner self may lead us to enlightened experience by shining the inner light on the outer world, and, thus, illuminating it with heaven heavenly rays. 

“Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the Shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. Enlightenment doesn’t occur from sitting around visualizing images of light, but from integrating the darker aspects of the Self into the conscious personality. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”

The use, above, of the expressions “conscious” or “conscious personality”, is tricky because they can refer, in a general way, to several different states of mind. In this context, the word “conscious” must mean “literally conscious”, or “mundane consciousness”—a perspective visible to the literal mind, merely. So, “by making the darkness conscious” and “integrating the darker aspects of the Self into the conscious personality”, he means: by using the light of heaven to reveal the poverty of the darkness of the mundane state of mind; the shadows of our worldly understanding are dispelled by the light of Heaven drawn down into the physical by an act of will—an act of will enabled by this HIGHER SELF who speaks to us in dreams, and, coincidentally, in art.

As an artist I am compelled to insert this summary of the artist’s role in the cosmic design, especially because, as Jung points out, the conflict between the light and dark of higher and lower reality is expressed in the micro-cosmic arena of art:

“Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument...

The artist's life cannot be otherwise than full of conflicts, for two forces are at war within him-on the one hand, the common human longing for happiness, satisfaction and security in life, and on the other a ruthless passion for creation which may go so far as to override every personal desire ... There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of creative fire.”

As we know Jung is concerned with the collective unconscious, and archetypal forms—patterns which conform to a heavenly template, but which integrate the human into their radiant being. Here, Jung points out that the “pattern of God” exists in every man, and this pattern, when manifested outwardly, reveals the heavenly component of even the most earthbound entities:

“I cannot define for you what God is. I can only say that my work has proved empirically that the pattern of God exists in every man and that this pattern has at its disposal the greatest of all his energies for transformation and transfiguration of his natural being. Not only the meaning of his life, but his renewal and his institutions, depend on his conscious relationship with this pattern of his collective unconscious.”

It is a most provocative thought that all our human institutions depend, for their mundane structure, on the CONSCIOUS (that is to say literal) relationship between this inborn God-pattern and the collective unconscious. In a further broad definition of the meaning of life, Jung asserts:

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

The sad truth is that man's real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites - day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail against the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life is a battleground. It always has been and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end.

We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos- the right moment- for a 'metamorphosis of the gods', of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing.

We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.”

And finally the kicker:

“The unconscious psyche believes in life after death.”

Why, I wonder, does the unconscious believe in life after death? It must be because the unconscious was never born of this world to begin with, so it simply exists as life before, during, and after carnal life. As Jung says:

“The unconscious has no time. There is no trouble about time in the unconscious. Part of our psyche is not in time and not in space. They are only an illusion, time and space, and so in a certain part of our psyche time does not exist at all.”

Another deep thinker of the 20^th century is Aldous Huxley. The following quotes are taken from his magnum opus, The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell. One of Huxley’s basic premises is succinctly expressed below. His message is very much the same as Jung’s, but Huxley makes an effort to bring medical science and linguistic science into the mix:

“To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he or she has been born -- the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it be-devils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.” 

Notice that this opening sentence: 

“Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system” 

This concept hints at why most of us are denied access to the Higher Mind as a normal condition of earthly existence. The idea is that SURVIVAL on Earth is way too complicated for us to be able to freely shift between dimensional modalities—if we did, we might end up driving off a cliff and find ourselves in Heaven ahead of the schedule dictated by our predestined cosmic timetable. The grand design has ordained that most of us need to focus on Earth on Earth, and save Heaven on Earth for later. I remember, a long time ago, awaking from a nap and finding myself floating on the ceiling. I was excited by the possibilities of astral projection that I had read much about, but just as I was about to take off exploring, I heard a voice say, as clear as a bell, “Get back in there.” I dropped back into my body with a thump and was never permitted that type of astral recreation again.

Edgar Cayce says: 

“The reason we don't remember our former lives is because our vast soul memories are not transferred to our baby brains at birth. All we know in this life is what we have learned, most of which is a partial memory of things we learned in past lifetimes. At the beginning of each lifetime, we are cleared of all past prejudices, learning blocks and wrong teachings, and are ready for a fresh start - just like a new term in school - and, like school, when we have learned enough of life's lessons, we graduate and don't have to come back to this Earth anymore, except as volunteers to teach stragglers."

At another point Cayce likens life on Earth to a deep-sea diver plumbing the depths of the ocean, insulated by one of those space-suit-like affairs with the large round metal helmets, with only a small tube connecting him with the surface. The storms and dangers of undersea life are enough for him to worry about without being concerned with the other world of the surface. Therefore, remembering a bunch of stuff that is not directly related to survival in this hostile environment would be a distraction from the main purpose of this undersea exploration (whatever it is).

Thus, as Huxley elegantly puts it:

“The self is coming from a state of pure awareness from the state of being. All the rest comes about in an outward manifestation of the physical world, including fluctuations which end up as thoughts and actions.” 

Going on with the idea we have professed many times, Huxley associates the limitations of earthly consciousness with the limitations of LANGUAGE, especially in terms of its eliminative function rather than its additive function:

“We can never dispense with language and the other symbol systems; for it is by means of them, and only by their means, that we have raised ourselves above the brutes, to the level of human beings. But we can easily become the victims as well as the beneficiaries of these systems. We must learn how to handle words effectively; but at the same time we must preserve and, if necessary, intensify our ability to look at the world directly and not through that half opaque medium of concepts, which distorts every given fact into the all too familiar likeness of some generic label or explanatory abstraction.

Cambridge philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad, has suggested “that we should do well to consider much more seriously than we have hitherto been inclined to do the type of theory which Bergson put forward in connection with memory and sense perception. The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.” 

It does not hurt to reprise the statement we read earlier—this is to reinforce the idea that the brain is a funnel whose function is to REDUCE consciousness not enhance it; it is also to reinforce the idea that language is the sculptor of our reality, and it is language that we will chiefly give up upon entering the Cloud of Unknowing.

“According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages.”

On the subject of REDUCING awareness William James suggests:

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”

This must be true because the literal mind is always cluttering up the issue with non-essentials—non-essentials which appeal to the literal mind but which the heart integrates into a synergetic whole, in which details are absorbed into a blurry gestalt.

William James has other things to say in support of the idea that Heaven on Earth is a byproduct of an enlightened attitude: 

“Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.”

In these last three quotes, James draws a connection between heavenly (INNER) reality and faith:

“Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

Belief creates the actual fact.”

This is a point we continually come back to: our inner reality creates an outer reality; furthermore, our contemplation of this self-created reality is what we call BELIEF. James says, “Belief creates the actual fact,” but, as faith is the EVIDENCE of things unseen, it is just as true to say that the actual fact creates the BELIEF. Heaven manifests on Earth in so many innumerable tangible ways, such that it takes a blind man not to see it, and an incredibly bull-headed man not to believe. The ego is tough, and makes, sometimes, superhuman demands on the will and the intellect, but just let one crack in that armor of self-centeredness let a tiny shaft of the light of truth leak in, and Belief flowers like a torrent released from its terrestrial dam.

C. S. Lewis always brings a voice of clarity to the argument:

“Well, I would say that the most deeply compelled action is also the freest action. By that I mean, no part of you is outside the action. It is a paradox. I expressed it in Surprised by Joy by saying that I chose, yet it really did not seem possible to do the opposite.”

On the radio, I just heard Nadia Bolz-Weber, the founder of the House for All Sinners and Saints Church in Denver, say something similar: when asked what she did to get closer to God she indicated that she got closer to God, kicking and screaming, but that she had no choice—God called her and she must answer—in short, God got closer to her. In thinking about this we must not forget the concept of inertia—once you start along the path with God, it is pretty difficult to break loose or backtrack. Thus Heaven on Earth tends to become more and more Heavenly, and this without any particular act of will, but merely a willingness to go along with the flow. Indeed, the most titanic act of will is the act of saying NO to God, rather than pronouncing a humbly submissive YES. Resisting God is really much more difficult than submitting to God—Satan is incredibly strong—it takes enormous will-power to be miserable. Thus, when C.S. Lewis states, “the most deeply compelled action is also the freest action” he means that the force of God’s compulsion toward Himself is the action we take freely as we tend toward our true selves, and our purest pleasure. His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

Specifically on the subject of Heaven on Earth C.S. Lewis says:

“Aim at heaven, and you will get earth thrown in; aim at earth, and you will get neither.” 

Don’t forget that as Alaskans living out in the bush, we have a MUCH easier time living in Heaven on Earth than most city folk, because we live in the center of a magnificent ejaculation of divine forms, trembling like volcanoes within the natural forms that surround us, and call to us. On this subject Rabindranath Tagore says:

“Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.”

Finding Heaven in the forest is one of the more effortless of all human excavations.

On the subject of being IN the world but not OF the world, Deepak Chopra says:

“The world sometimes feels like an insane asylum. You can decide whether you want to be an inmate or pick up your visitor's badge. You can be in the world but not engage in the melodrama of it; you can become a spiritual being having a human experience thoroughly and fully.”

Chopra encourages us to find heavenly bliss within ourselves. He speaks of this bliss as if it never wasn’t--as if it has been there all the time waiting for us to reconnect with it:

“Nothing is more important than reconnecting with your bliss. Nothing is as rich. Nothing is more real.”

Indeed, affirming the REALITY of Heaven on Earth is the key. Remember that there are two contradictory theories of human evolution; the theory of entropy states that the universe is declining into entropy, a “lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder.” However, many spiritual philosophers, including Deepak Chopra say something like this:

“The universe is constantly moving in the direction of higher evolutionary impulses, creativity, abstraction, and meaning.”

Perhaps the first major proponent of this philosophy was Teilhard de Chardin. We find, in his book The Phenomenon of Man:

“The unfolding of the material cosmos, is described from primordial particles to the development of life, human beings and the noosphere (the sphere of human thought), and finally to his vision of the Omega Point in the future, which is "pulling" all creation towards it. He was a leading proponent of orthogenesis, the idea that evolution occurs in a directional, goal-driven way, argued in terms that today go under the banner of convergent evolution.”

I hope this review of commentaries on the subject of Heaven on Earth has been of some comfort. I myself need constant reminding that that trials of Earthly life are just that—tests of our power to stay focused on God, and nothing more. I need daily reminding that Heaven is all around us and in us, and all we have to do to see it is to SEE IT. Thus, with Boethius I say:

“So combat vice, dedicate yourself to a virtuous life oriented by hope, which draws the heart upward until it reaches Heaven with prayers nourished by humility. Should you refuse to lie, the imposition you have suffered can change into the enormous advantage of always having before your eyes the supreme Judge, who sees and knows how things really are.”

Let us pray: Jesus, we know that You never left Heaven in all your Earthly travels. Help us stay the course that leads to You and the Divine Mansions waiting for us. Amen.