Transcendence

In the middle of the night I drift back to the simplicity of my childhood faith.  The Saxon church where we sang the Psalms of David, the kind old schoolmaster who listened to our readings of those wonderful old books of the new and old testaments.

I seek the divine and it finds me in the dark hours before dawn. In peace and darkness, when no bird sings and no human yet sullies the new day.

Are these moments when I find myself on the road to Damascus, or have I never left it.

Our world seems increasingly without a soul and as traditional faith falls off into the abyss, it is hard to find anything to replace it.

Many won’t see the necessity, most will be blinded by the glitz of social media, the bragging hype of the AI barons, the never ending push for more of the material in a world which seems to encompass only the physical.

But equally I suspect most, even if only at some deep subliminal level, will feel a chill emptiness and long for more. Purpose, meaning, a worthwhile goal. Happiness, goodness, joy.

Transcendence is to be found, it is not a mirage. Peace is to be uncovered here on earth, not just in a possibly mythical afterlife.

God is to be encountered, anywhere and everywhere. If you look hard enough and broadly. If you realise that god is not to be contained, defined. Not to be found in a book or a building. Not even in a piece of ethereal music.

The Buddhist in his Himalayan cave, the Dervish in his ecstatic dance. The monk in his Zen garden, the Sikh, the Zoroastrian, the simple gardener, the ploughman – each and everyone can see through the mist which separates us from meaning and happiness. The dark and often seemingly impenetrable curtain which hides from us a greater and better reality beyond.

For some, the divine is not supernatural, not an entity or person separate from what is to be seen all around us. For some god is moksha or nirvana – a state of mind, a way of being.

A mysticism, certainly  but one which is obtainable in the here and now, and for every one of us.

The doors of perception are not hard to find, if you keep looking. If you practice hard enough. If you drop pretension and vanity and see yourself and the world for what it is rather than what we have always assumed it to be.

The good books of religion are pointers, a valuable starting place. We would be a poorer species without them. Most describe the first supreme necessity to climb out of the pit of darkness: decency and right thinking. Right behaviour. Right actions. Such simple stuff and yet so hard to achieve, it seems. And yet how can we hope to find peace in ourselves, transcendence from the terrors and miseries which have always seemed germain to earthly existence, unless we first embrace peace towards others.

Nothing supernatural there. Nothing our pure materialist could quarrel with.

And then right livelihood. We don’t all have to be priests. There is goodness and decency in baking, in driving taxis or delivery vans. Even bankers and lawyers are under no obligation to be evil.

The problem of course is the love of money. Or more accurately the worship of the material over what could loosely be described as the spiritual. A word I have never been comfortable with, but which seems to get me where I need to go.

Cooperation and decency – replace competition with sharing and helping and caring. What a ghastly word, caring. And yet once again, it gets me where I want to go.

If we put away tooth and claw and build a society where no-one is in fear of homelessness and hunger and poverty, we would all be on the path to transcendence.

Perhaps it will happen, perhaps it won’t, but I am in no doubt it is the right path.

And so a better society, a kinder one has to be the first step. And it will not be handed down to us on tablets of stone.

If he did rise on the third day, he never came back to finish the job. And so that is something we must do for ourselves.

I have never sought god in a conventional setting. I have never sought a conventional god. If it is there, it is within us, all of us. If it is there, it is. If it is there everyone and everything make up it’s parts from electromagnetism to the very particles we are made of.

For me, god is a state of mind. A determination to do better, to be better. To leave behind a way of life found unsatisfactory and to move to one based on a better premise.

State of mind, a very serious proposition. Not something to be taken lightly, dismissed.

Endless thought and still, quiet meditation change the mind. Change the state of mind. From a state of ignorance greater wisdom can emerge. And change your life.

Perhaps that is why the Buddha’s were said to come back, to teach, to show the way. From the mere beast to a form of consciousness better able to rise over what can come to seem a base mundanity. Or indeed what is a base mundanity – endless violence, endless self interest.

Through silent contemplation another reality seems to emerge and a peace begins to settle. Away from the ten thousand things, a transcendence beckons, a better way to be.  To glimpse it reveals another dimension. One of mind. Not a separate reality but a way to see this reality in all its glory and to be happy with it.

Perhaps some day everyone will see it. Perhaps some day, in some sense, the promise of so many religions will come to be.  In the meantime, an inner peace can be found. Perhaps it can spread.