* This essay has been published as Issue 3 of Mountain Rain, a periodical of Awarezen. If you wish to read this issue or other issues of the periodical, please email the author for a PDF copy. While the current essay is reproduced here in full, other essays published in Mountain Rain have been truncated for this forum in view of their length.
In this essay, which in a sense follows the theme of my previous two essays on the nature of Christ and an alternative discourse on the human condition and evolutionary process in light of the cosmotheandric Christ, I would like to reflect on the nature and role of grace that Christ offers humanity and the cosmos. This is necessary and important for the simple reason that in mainline biblical discourse, grace is central and specifically understood as an initiative of divine redemption of sinful creation by means of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus the incarnate logos and Son of God. As such, in proposing an alternative discourse, it would be remiss of me not to reframe and rethink grace in light of Christ conceived in cosmotheandric terms. Hence, this essay.
At this juncture, I see grace in cosmotheandric terms by way of the familiar Protestant Calvinistic delineation of common grace (Arminians would term this prevenient grace) and redemptive grace. In mainline Christian thinking, common grace is the grace that God in his mercy bestows upon all of creation in a universal way, as a means of mitigating and checking rampant evil and indirectly pointing out to humanity the need for and way back to God. Examples of God’s common grace might be the sunshine and rainfall, trees and plants, science and technology, medicine and therapy, and the like.
Redemptive grace is quite a different matter, however. Redemptive grace is specifically the grace of God bestowed on creation and humanity by way of the incarnate logos and Son of God/Son of Man, Jesus Christ. Jesus is central and essential to the enactment of this grace for it is his life of perfect obedience culminating in his excruciating death on the cross followed by his resurrection, exaltation, and eventual return at the end of history that forms the arc of redemption for creation and humanity. Grace in this mainline biblical sense would entail the suffering and death of Jesus as vicarious atonement for the sins of humanity (and all creation) in order that the debt of humanity’s sin is paid, the penalty of humanity’s sin inflicted, the righteous wrath of God satisfied, and the justice of God effected. By Jesus bearing the burden of humanity’s sin and guilt, we can now be freed from that burden and be made new and righteous in Christ, our fellowship with God graciously restored. This entire process of divine exchange where our sins and its attendant consequences are placed upon Jesus and Jesus’ righteousness with all its attendant implications are imbued on us is thus seen as the redemptive grace of God in Christ.
With the foregoing as background, I will now delve more deeply into how we can see grace in cosmotheandric terms without adopting this belief and doctrine of substitutionary atonement, rooted as it were in a judicial cosmos governed by iron-clad laws laid down by an ontologically separate and sovereignly almighty God existing outside creation. I argue that a cosmotheandric conception of grace in Christ makes empirical, ethical, and intellectual sense in the context of our personal and collective spiritual journeys.
Common Grace
From a cosmotheandric Christ perspective, Christ is not an ontologically separate entity apart from the cosmos (however many parallel universes and dimensions there might be) but is seamlessly its primordial ground while infinitely extending beyond it. In this case, the very presence of the cosmos indicates the common grace of Christ in modulating and transmuting itself into the very “body” of the cosmos with all its elementary particles or strings, forces and fields, and the space-time continuum itself. There is nothing that is not Christ and thus nothing that is a separate entity from Christ. Such a view of Christ sees not a delimited psychosomatic person called “Christ” but an infinitely and ineffably expansive space of pristine and primordial consciousness empty of any inherent existence. In this view, Christ as primordial consciousness is naturally dynamic and creative, ceaselessly emanating as the entire gamut of phenomenal appearances both pure and impure.
Pure appearances are those appearing to an enlightened mind, perceived directly as utterly transparent and empty of inherent existence. Perception of pure appearances is completely free or pure of defiling or afflictive states of attachment, hostility, and delusion. Impure appearances are those appearing to a deluded mind that grasps after an inherent self of things and persons. Perception of impure appearances are necessarily tainted by defiling or afflictive states of attachment, hostility, and delusion. Put another way, these dynamic pure and impure appearances of our visible cosmos are none other than the modulations of primordial consciousness, also termed its effulgent displays. As these displays manifest spontaneously and without intent or contrivance, they can be called the playful sport of consciousness. In a sense, because consciousness as such is naturally blissful where bliss (infinite happiness) is its innate nature, this playful sport of primordial consciousness is also blissful to the core when known and seen as they really are.
Be that as it may, even if the dynamic displays of consciousness are naturally free of inherent existence, as is consciousness itself, the very unconstrained dynamism and activity of consciousness renders it liable to non-seeing (avidya) and later mis-seeing (moha) in a cloud of bewilderment and illusion (maya). Consciousness-in-itself and its generally misapprehended dynamic display should not be thought of as having a specific identifiable beginning in linear time. Rather primordial consciousness (or Christ) and its creative manifestations have never ceased in their processual becoming from moment to moment, untouched and unconstrained by time, space, or person. In other words, there is no absolute beginning to the cosmos at large, even if each universe might have a relative beginning and relative endpoint within the cosmos of incalculable parallel universes. But even so, when viewed from a meta-temporal perspective, each universe dissolves only to re-emerge for another cycle of its existence in a pulsating system of expansion and contraction. Seen this way, we can posit a timelessly pulsating macrocosm of myriad parallel universes.
On an apparently smaller scale of our individual psyche and its ground of consciousness that witnesses the mind and its activity, we have a microcosm of pulsating “inner” universes of thoughts, images, verbalizations, feelings, perceptions, sensations, intentions, and impulses. From moment to moment or over a longer duration of time, our inner universe which is a veritable constellation of content of experience can emerge out of, abide within, and dissolve into the space of the mind that at its deepest dimension is none other than pure consciousness. Retracing the totality of each of our inner universes right back to its presumed “beginning” will not yield any viable result. For there is simply no absolute beginning to be found. And just as the outer universes of the macrocosm have no absolute starting point, the same is true for the inner universes of the microcosm. To put it bluntly with a somewhat tongue-in-cheek, we can say that having come from nowhere, we abide nowhere, and are going nowhere. Nowhere is simultaneously now here. There is thus only an stream of infinite moments of undefinable “now here”.
A perfect symmetry between the macrocosm and microcosm can be easily discerned. Unreflectively, we might presume that the macrocosm exists “objectively” outside our individual minds or spaces of experience, and that each of our individual microcosms exists as a separate space of experience objectively demarcated another inner space. But upon further reflection and more importantly steady introspection, can we discern how our presumption is flawed? We cannot conclude that there is indeed an external objective space and content of the macrocosm apart from our direct immediate experience of that space and content. All we can say without overreach is that there may be among us a consensual inter-subjective agreement on what is presumably “objectively” experienced. But we cannot jump to the conclusion that just because we have consensual agreement that there is in fact an indubitable objective macrocosm “out there.” All we can experience and say of the cosmos is simply the bare fact of experiencing certain common elements of experience that we inter-subjectively agree on. That is all. Positing anything else beyond that is an overreach. Furthermore, in looking at the microcosm of our individual experience, we see with steady and clear awareness that apart from a fluid process of cognition, emotion, volition, perception, and sensation, nothing can be said to exist as a self of person or a self of phenomena that can be located within that incessant process. The content of this experiential process varies from individual to individual, but insofar as the space of experience goes, there is clearly no discernible difference in identity or characteristics. Each space of experience is like another: formless, shapeless, colorless, empty, luminous, open, transparent, and boundaryless.
To use an analogy, the space of experience of each individual in a community of individuals is like the space of each room in a multi-room house. The only thing that seemingly separates the space of each room from another room is partitioning wall. Seemingly separates because the actual nature of space in each room is exactly the same. Thus it is not a case of two different spaces but a single space seemingly differentiated by the wall. Tear down the walls and the open undifferentiated nature of the space of the house reveals itself. In the same way, the content of each individual’s experience is seemingly localized to that individual in question. And this observed “fact” of individualized separate existence and experience feels seemingly real and unchangeable. But upon closer inspection and inquiry, it becomes clear that the only thing separating one’s content of experience from another’s is the deeply ingrained identification of self with one’s content of experience. This identification is a process of self-grasping of the “am-ness” of the experiencing person and of the “is-ness” of each experienced content. The sheer shining “am-ness” and “is-ness” of experience are not the problem, but the instinctive unconscious grasping at the selfhood of “am-ness” and “is-ness” is. This self-grasping is the delusion of reification (moha) that follows on the heels of not-seeing or unawareness (avidya). Unaware of the deep nature of primordial consciousness itself and unaware of the nature of the stream of experience, we fall into the trap of delusion and thus suffering.
But through unstained awareness of awareness that is recognizing one’s true nature as primordial consciousness pervading the space of all reality, there is nondual insight into the unity of macrocosm and microcosm — the apparent separation between macrocosm and microcosm is a delusion born of erroneous cognition and perception. There is only an infinite expanse of sheer empty consciousness within which is a pulsating constellation of experiential content or phenomenal appearances that transcend notions of “I” and “you” and “us” and “them.” Inherently separative and differentiated individualism ceases to operate. There can be nominal differentiation of myriad streams of personal content but none of them is grasped as inherently real or isolated one from another. In this cosmic panorama of nondual experience, there is only freedom and bliss of the superlative kind. Consciousness is endlessly responsive to its own effulgent playful sport (manifesting as the cosmic theatre of inanimate things and living beings with their myriad and respective spheres of experience) in a non-divisive egoless flow of love and compassion.
One might ask: what has all this got to do with grace? Everything. For what I have just described is the living reality of the cosmotheandric Christ as the infinite expanse of primordial consciousness emanating ceaselessly as the unity of macrocosm-microcosm. While its natural dynamism lends itself to non-seeing and mis-seeing leading to deluded self-making and suffering, there is at the same time an indestructible and ongoing opportunity to awaken from this delusion and hallucination to enter into the reality of Christ consciousness. Also, the natural effulgent display of consciousness itself is a movement of undeserved, unmerited, unearned grace of consciousness that expresses itself in the wondrous diversity of forms, shapes, colours, sounds, smells, tastes, sensations, feelings, images, and energies, much of which nourishes and sustains life and even flourishing. The invitation and opportunity to awaken to consciousness is extended to each nominal person in every moment as the very space of experience within which all experience occurs. It is also extended to us as the very witnessing and knowing of the content of experience in each moment, for it is awareness or consciousness by which all experience is known or experienced. On top of this, this awareness or consciousness is the very fabric out of which all experience is made. In every moment of experience, whether it be of a form, sound, smell, taste, touch, thought, image, feeling, sensation, or perception, there is nothing apart from that object experienced than the mere experiencing itself. Put another way, there is nothing apart from seeing a form other than the naked experiencing of it. Just as there is nothing other than hearing a sound other than the naked experiencing of it. What is this naked experiencing other then that very awareness or consciousness? Therefore, this wondrous opportunity of each naked now to revert from our adventure of experience to the very origin of experience, the alpha source of all thinking and feeling and the entire bundle of experiencing, is none other than the unspeakably magnetizing grace of the cosmotheandric Christ. The attraction of Christ consciousness that pulls us towards itself is none other than the persistent longing we feel in our hearts to seek lasting and infinite happiness, We are wired for bliss, so to speak. And this is grace.
Redemptive Grace
Shifting gears into redemptive grace, let us examine how a cosmotheandric view of Christ allows for the initiative and activity of grace. In mainline evangelical thinking, redemption is generally seen as an act of salvific grace that can only be performed by Jesus Christ, the incarnate and crucified saviour. Redemption of sinful humanity is thus the release of our indebtedness to God through the payment of that debt by Jesus, who suffered and died in our place. As such, redemption in the biblical sense is couched within a judicial moralistic view of the cosmos presided over by God the cosmic judge and jury. This view of redemption also traditionally entails a personalistic view of the triune God as Father, Son, and Spirit in somewhat anthropomorphic separation, with Father sending the Son to be the sacrificial payment for sin, the Son obeying and carrying out Father’s command, and the Spirit resurrecting Jesus on the third day after his death on the cross.
Theologically and metaphysically, the three persons of the Godhead are conceived as three persons or hypostases of one substance or essence. There are three centres of consciousness and will but sharing in a single essence or substance, thus one God in three persons. To me, this is logically untenable. By subscribing to and appropriating Greek substantialist metaphysics to formulate the trinitarian doctrine, Christian theologians end up with a conundrum on their hands. In fact, I see this metaphysical trinitarianism as having opened Pandora’s cargo that is far bigger than a box. Without going into detailed critique here, suffice to say that a substantialist metaphysic makes for three separate Gods, not one God in three persons. To claim one God in three persons is like having your cake and eating it too. The arithmetic and logic of the case simply do not work out.
Thankfully, none of these framings including trinitarian substantialism makes sense in the cosmotheandric perspective of Christ. In the cosmotheandric view of grace, Christ as the primordial ground of all that exists is timelessly and dynamically effusing into myriad forms and appearances of cosmic reality. In terms of redemptive grace, there is provision for this primordial ground of Christ to spontaneously manifest out of responsive compassion and egoless love a supreme emanation body (nirmanakaya) of flesh and blood made up of the five elemental factors (solid, liquid, luminous, aerial, and ethereal factors or traditionally earth, water, fire, air, and space) with unsurpassed liberative capacity to act as a divine bridge (taraka brahma) for all sentient beings including humanity to cross from the sea of suffering over to the further shore of lasting freedom. Jesus the Nazarene is just such a supreme emanation body of unparalleled liberative capacity. In my estimation, Gotama Buddha, Adiyogi Shiva, and Bhagavan Krishna are all equally supreme emanation bodies of primordial consciousness of identical stature. They are all Christ, so to speak.
In the case of Jesus the Nazarene who is a supreme emanation body of the cosmotheandric Christ (primordial consciousness), there is a manifest mission and work that he has consciously adopted to perform, This unique work is firstly the prophetic and apocalyptic teaching of a new mode of being that Jesus called the kingdom of heaven, which can be foretasted on earth by all and fully realized in the timeless now for those who embark upon the way of life and practice that Jesus lives, breathes, teaches, and models. Some yogic teachers such as Paramahamsa Yogananda would call this teaching of Jesus the “original gospel” which is none other than the “original yoga” for union with God. Another aspect of Jesus’ work is the altruistic and compassionate bearing of cosmic suffering (dukkha) and its causes in contaminated actions (karma) and mental defilements (klesha) in his own being. This is essentially a profound meditative act of absorbing within himself all of the cosmos’ dukkha, karma, and klesha while at the same time radiating out to the cosmos all of his self-evolved supreme happiness (paramasukha), virtuous merit (puñña), and mental purity (parisuddhi). Biblical tradition would call this a “divine exchange,” or in Tibetan Buddhist terminology it can be called a process of cosmic tonglen (giving and taking).
This is what the primordial consciousness of Christ does anyway from moment to moment for sentient beings who are none other than spontaneous modulations of consciousness in essence. However, having the supreme emanation body of Jesus standing as a personified focal point serves as a relationally accessible mode of benefitting deluded sentient beings entrapped in suffering. From a cosmotheandric perspective, this liberative activity of Jesus the cosmotheandric Christ personified can be seen as an act of utmost and egoless non-controlling love of God, his “amipotence.” Sentient beings who due to their distinctive profile of predispositions, traits, and karmic patterns have an affinity for Jesus Christ could enter into a relational process of devotional faith and surrender with him. Jesus then becomes “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” for these beings in their return and reversion back to their primordial ground of being in total liberation, in and through the divine bridge (taraka brahma) personified as Jesus, their Adiguru (original teacher).
Seen in this cosmotheandric light, the sufferings of Jesus in his life and ministry of relentless persecution culminating in his excruciating pain and death on the cross is a dramatic and potent reminder of Jesus’ unparalleled and superpowerful practice of cosmic tonglen. God the Father whom Jesus addresses as his “Abba” in endearing and intimate terms is his experience of primordial consciousness as his very source and being. That devastating experience crystallized in Jesus’ outburst “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” may point to the temporary covering of all sense of consciousness’ brightness and bliss in his total identification with cosmic sentient suffering and its roots. There is no actual alienation of the person of Father from the person of Jesus but an epistemological separation expressed emotionally as a sense of forsakenness.
Jesus crucified from a cosmotheandric perspective offers another possible route for the healing and redemption of human individual and collective psyche. This is the route of mimetic scapegoating and psychodynamic healing of a psyche fractured by internalized sin, shame, and guilt. I have explored this angle of mimetic and psychotherapeutic “redemption” in another essay Religious Construction of Sin and Guilt. Here I briefly sketch my reflections on how Jesus crucified serves as a potent meme and therapeutic narrative for the transformative healing of deep psychic wounds suffered as a result of assimilation of social norms, values, and expectations in cultures where normative pressures to conform are high, if not tremendous. Such high social pressures can trigger uncritical and expedient internalization of norms and standards of behaviour pegged at a level unrealistically high and unreachable by many. Such a scenario is coupled with a reward and punishment system whether structural (external accolades and awards versus loss of opportunities) or covert (unwritten expectations and unspoken demands of elders, peers, and authority figures). As such, a deeply ingrained sense of moral and social failure can result from self-perceived shortfalls in meeting those normative expectations and demands. This gives rise to a mixture of felt shame and guilt driven by perceived “falling short” of the “glory” of some cherished truth or principle or deity, be it Confucian ethics or God. The internal pressure of this sense of sin, shame, and guilt can literally fracture the psyche into the self that is flawed and broken versus the self that wants to excel and shine. Such a psyche whether individual or collective needs an outlet or resolution mechanism in order for it to survive, let alone thrive in any meaningful way.
It is precisely this conflicted psychosocial scenario that is ripe for the infusion of “grace” and “mercy” — the free unmerited gift from the highest truth or God, unearned and undeserved, that wipes away all punishment for shortfalls and confers absolution and release for any residual sense of shame and guilt. In addition, the bestowal from on high a new identity of flawless righteousness and sanctity upon the absolved individual or group can create a sense of hope and optimism for the future. It is important to realize that none of these psychotherapeutic effects needs to derive from objective truths or divine entities standing outside the person or group as ontologically real. All that is needed is the belief that the narrative and mythopoetic figures are objectively real. The pedagogical efficacy of these mythopoetic narratives lies in their appearing as real, objective, true, and efficacious to the subjective mind that holds them. Scientific research on the placebo effect has demonstrated in some studies that a perceived fake cure (placebo) for a disease condition can be up to 90% as efficacious as the real medical cure.
In other words, it is the subject’s perception of and belief in the placebo treatment that account for most of its therapeutic effect. For me, this fact is telling and highly persuasive in shaping the way I think of and account for the subjectively “redemptive” effect of a “faith-encounter” with the crucified Jesus that effectively removes all sense of sin, shame, and guilt in one’s fractured psyche. This can occur even if this psychic fracture may not be self-evident to the person, especially if more surface expressions of this fracture have already been worked through by other therapeutic or spiritual processes. In this case, the subtlest imprints of such fracture are what require the mimetic scapegoating and psychodynamic healing effects of the crucified Jesus Christ narrative. When this mythopoetic narrative meets the fractured psyche in a contemplative state of receptivity and sensitivity, an implosion of “redemptive healing” of that fracture might occur. The end result is erasure of internalized sin, shame, and guilt possibly evoking a new unfamiliar sense of gratitude and devotion (assuming that one is not previously a believer in God) to the figure of Jesus Christ. Regardless of its objective reality (notions of “objectivity” and “subjectivity” necessitate deeper inquiry but this is not the time or place for it), the mythopoetic narrative of the crucified Christ can be viewed as a pedagogical means of “divine therapy” that emerges out of the infinitely creative ground of primordial consciousness that is Christ. The cosmotheandric Christ is ceaselessly responsive to the suffering of sentient beings and manifests in the shape, form, tone, energy, and storyline of the crucified Saviour and Lord in Jesus Christ as a skillful means of liberating us from psychic fracture and affliction.
A Trinitarian Excursion
Let us now move on to a closer inspection of the trinitarian formulation of God, with particular attention on the ontology of the Christian trinity that is Father-Son-Spirit. From a cosmotheandric perspective, Father is not inherently existent as a substantial person apart from the Son and the Spirit, both of which are grasped as inherently existent and substantial persons. Rather, all three persons of the Godhead are nominal designations upon respective valid constellations of qualities and functions of primordial consciousness. Each person of the trinity is relative to the other two, relationally imputed and functionally distinguishable. The singular Godhead itself is nominally imputed and thus empty of inherent existence just like the three nominal persons that it emerges and functions as. This discourse of the triune God makes sense and is casually efficacious in the linguistic, conceptual, and cultural matrix within which it operates, subject to the system of measurement (that is, epistemology and mode of perception) that is consensually employed. Hence, through pragmatic deployment of this contextual nominalism, we can have a logically tenable and practically workable paradigm of the triune God and thus a viable “trinitarian faith.”
In the context of this viable paradigm of the trinity, we once again see the expression of redemptive grace in the coordinated and concatenated liberating and enlightening activity of primordial consciousness on behalf of all suffering beings in the cosmos. Father sends, Son reveals, and Spirit enacts. Son suffers, Father loves, and Spirit embraces. Spirit enlightens, Father draws, and Son emanates. All three concatenated in action yet singular in compassionate and loving response — to magnetize all varied expressions and creations back to their original home, to dwell as their original face before they were born, and to ensconce in their original heart of consciousness beyond words and ideas. In the event of the supreme emanation of Christ into creation — an event termed the incarnation — there is a super-upsurge of energy and consciousness that causes massive and intense waves of cosmic reverberations throughout the entirety of space-time. This was the case for Jesus of Nazareth. As was the case for Gotama Buddha about 500 years before Jesus. As was the case for Krishna several thousand years before that. As it was again the case for Shiva about 7,000 to 15,000 years from this day back. The evolutionary coalescence of fundamental elements of matter (earth, water, fire, air, space) and the emergence of mind that matures to its pinnacled state is a long process in chronological time.
For bodymind systems such as Jesus, the Buddha, Krishna, and Shiva, the evolutionary process did not happen overnight but took a long duration of time. When each supreme emanation body of Christ appeared, the super-upsurge of energy and consciousness not only vibrated the whole macrocosm and every microcosm, but it also energizes the seed of enlightenment in each microcosm that could potentially grow and fruition into the full tree of enlightenment. This seed of enlightenment lies hidden within every living being as the potential for full and irreversible enlightenment. Enlightenment is also lasting liberation from the ocean of suffering and perfection of all good qualities, where the bliss of highest happiness and peace becomes permanently realized. This seed is called buddhatva (buddha-nature) in Buddhist discourse and imago dei (divine image) in Christian discourse. Every time Christ incarnates as a supreme emanation body, we experience this enlightening upsurge that has repercussions for the wider social world as well. History can shift its trajectory and new innovations in thought and life practice can emerge downstream. This “inner” enlightening and “outer” revolutionary upsurge of consciousness-energy qua incarnation of Christ is yet another key manifestation of redemptive grace in the cosmotheandric sense. However, in this perspective, there is no predetermined endpoint or teleology for the cosmos, which is without beginning and without end, but cyclically pulsating in eternal time. One cannot say that all sentient beings will ultimately be liberated and enlightened. But we can say that every sentient being who freely chooses to embark upon this journey of spiritual evolution by following a credible non-erroneous path of spiritual practice with contemplation and meditation at its core will indeed realize this evolutionary endpoint for oneself.
Grace in Place of Grace
The cosmotheandric grace of Christ as primordial consciousness is displayed in common grace that universally blesses and benefits all sentient beings in the cosmos. Each time the supreme emanation body of Christ manifests as a superlative instance of redemptive grace, there is a fresh infusion of grace that does not displace but trans-place the common grace prior to itself. This means that redemptive grace does not replace or displace common grace but that it enriches and supplements common grace at a meta-level, transcending the universal outflow of grace in a more direct and personal, powerful and relational way. Both common grace and redemptive grace work together in concert for the liberation and enlightenment of all sentient beings, even though there is no predestined outcome of enlightenment for all sentient beings as a matter of teleology. Be that as it may, each individual microcosm has the potential and ability to choose spiritual evolution as a trajectory though in reality the limited being is never real and primordial being all there is. Hence, enlightenment is not so much “attained” by the ego as it is unveiled by the utter and permanent cessation all that the ego is not.
Redemptive grace enables and empowers the praxis of devotional nonduality wherein the heart of each person is moved into adoration and surrender not as an inherently separate entity apart from our primordial ground of Christ but as a blissful effulgent wave of emptiness enchanted in a dance of loving intimacy and oneness with God as our beloved. Redemptive grace also activates our buddha-nature to seek the primordial source of our being and energizes deep enquiry into self and beyond as we answer the call of consciousness to return from the “adventure of experience” back to the timeless expanse that is our true and original home. As nondual teacher Rupert Spira so eloquently puts it:
Our longing for God is God’s love for us. It is the gravitational pull of our being inviting us to return from the adventure of experience to the sanctuary of the heart, to return home. Our longing never finds what it is looking for; it comes to rest in it.[i]
Or in simpler, more direct terms put across by eminent sage Ramana Maharshi:
How to see God? To see Him is to be consumed by Him.[ii]
For me, I have personally experienced common and redemptive grace in the form of the myriad blessings and synchronicities of my life. In particular, I have tasted the sweet bliss of devotional nonduality with respect to my three Adigurus of Yeshua, Buddha, and Shiva. To a lesser extent, I have the same taste of liberating devotion with respect to Krishna. What has made these supreme emanation bodies come to life for me is my direct and immediate experience with all my teachers of this lifetime — my heart guru Acariya Godwin Samararatne (Pali Buddhism, shamatha and vipassana) and my root gurus Gyurme Khensur Geshe Tashi Tsering (Sutra, Tantra, and Mahamudra); Lama Alan Wallace (Dzogchen); Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Zen); Shengyen Shifu (Chinese Chan); Shrii Shrii Anandamurti (North Indian Tantra); Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev (South Indian Tantra); and all my lineage and secondary gurus that I will not mention here.
Suffice to say that through them all, I have come to see and taste and know that the cosmotheandric Christ — none other than Adi-Buddha. Paramashiva, and the Great Dao — is not a figment of my imagination but a reality of consciousness that is open to direct immediate realization in each and every moment. The immaculate and amazing, good qualities of my teachers demonstrate to me that real lasting transformation of the afflicted mind is possible and irrevocable liberation is not a pipe-dream. Through sustained deep and mindful practice of the Dharma I have imbibed from them, I have come to realize for myself much of what has been described and promised in the personal transmissions and textual teachings of the Dharma. Gurus are none other than micro-emanation bodies of Christ for the sake of liberating sentient beings from cyclical repetitive suffering and its roots (samsara). They are like magnifying glasses (made of light) that focalize the manifold rays of the sun (enlightening activity of Christ) into an intense beam that sparks a flame of awakening in us, eventually blazing into the white fire of enlightenment.
There is nothing I want to be, know, and do more in the remaining time of this life than to permanently abide as primordial consciousness both in its essential empty cessation — unborn, unoriginated, unconditioned, unconstructed, unfabricated, undying, unstained — and its effulgent creative dance of bliss suffused with loving compassion. Outwardly, a life of simplicity and joyous celebration, loving and serving all. Inwardly, a wordless silence of immense wisdom energy and awareness incomparably free, unsurpassably blissful, and beyond the reach of space and time. To live like that would be the fulfilment of all that is worth cherishing in this life for this wandering contemplative of no-rank 無位禪散修.
Soli deo gloria. Sarva mangalam. 阿弥陀佛.
[i] Rupert Spira (2023). The Heart of Prayer. Oxford: Sahaja Publications, p. 14.
[ii] Ramana Maharshi (undated). See Facebook page of Ramana Maharshi available from: https://www.facebook.com/RamanaMaharshi/photos/a.10151536385544631/10152210858359631/?type=3
