Three Brief Essays on Abhishiktananda

Notes on a Christian Vedanta

I The Ass and the Heart are One

I want to think about something Abhishiktananda said in Ascent to the Depths of the Heart. He said that Christianity could not possibly sugar out only “concern for one’s brothers” because that failed to fully compass “the experience that Jesus had of the Father” which Abhi considered “an explosion of the Spirit” (342).

For Abhi, to think of Jesus merely in terms of a social or political program was an error. Prior to that – upstream of that – was Jesus’s knowledge of God, his relationship with God, his oneness with God. How did that happen?

Abhi was fascinated that the Christian tradition includes no real reference to how Jesus became Christ. There were no steps to follow. In the Hindu tradition so dear to him, there were actions one could take – sit this way, chant that way, breathe this way et cetera. But Jesus is silent about “methods.” The early followers who resurrected him weren’t focused on technique either. It’s a different kind of path.

Abhi wondered if this relative silence reflected Jesus’s understanding that any encounter between oneself and God is ultimately impossible because “both oneself and God cause all Dualism (dvandvas) to disappear” (342). To know God was to know the self, and vice-versa, and to know either was to undo the separation that produces otherness in the first place.

I do wonder. Jesus taught his followers to be itinerant and nonviolent because those human actions perfectly mirror God’s love, justice and mercy. In my experience, even trying to live that way requires a radical shift in one’s understanding of reality that – surprise surprise – requires undoing the illusion of separation. It’s not mind or body; it’s both. The ass and the heart are one.

It takes a long time to write the preceding paragraphs – an hour or so, Colin Vallon’s Sisyphe on repeat, may I never forget to be grateful. Night fell as I wrote, or finished falling. Christmas tree lights reflected faintly in the tea. The tea is cold, but I am happy, content, at odds with noone. All the ways that things can go wrong – and all the ways they did – and still. Look at me writing; look at the writing looking back.

II Into An Experience of Darkness

Near the end, Abhishiktananda said that what distinguished Jesus was the way he claimed his “freedom as a human being.” Most of us cannot bear this freedom – nor the responsibility it entails – so we project it onto God. But Jesus didn’t project it. He accepted it as God’s gift, as God’s will.

I want to understand this better. Abhi is saying, Jesus knew who he was. He accepted with total grace and humility his humanness. He set himself above nobody. The depth of his acceptance – especially in its unconditional nature – brought him to God. There was nothing left to project, nor another on whom to project it. In that state, death on a cross is no harder to accept than a cup of tea from a friend. What else could freedom possibly be?

But Abhi is not cherishing crucifixion; he is not making light of suffering. He is pointing a way beyond all of that, knowing full well that when Jesus attained moksha, his practice – the yoga he left his followers – was a pure form of service that was only possible in the transformative light of divine love.

In those days, Abhi was also reflecting on the way consciousness of one’s sins deepens awakening by plunging us into an experience of darkness “in the midst of which the Light springs up” (372). I want to understand this better. What is awakening that it should include an awareness of sin? And, in what way does this awareness plunge us into an experience of darkness?

A Course in Miracles suggests that what we call “sin” is better thought of as an “error” (e.g., T-19.II.1:1-3). Whatever you think of that translation, Jesus invited us to actually reflect on our failures to love others – to be kind, gentle, forgiving, merciful, generous, humble and welcoming. But not in order to harm ourselves through judgment or punishment. Nobody does this perfectly! Rather, to see the failure to love so clearly that it undoes itself on the spot, making perfectly clear what we are in truth.

I have sinned. I’m not afraid to say that anymore, and I’m perfectly happy with its Old Testament connotations. When I looked at my sins I hated myself and wanted to die. I believed I deserved to die. But something else happened. I was forgiven; I was taken back into the fold; my inheritance was remembered and restored. A light did spring up – first faintly, but with ever more brightness, until I forgot that all of this had once been a cause for grief and a site of pain.

When you no longer bear the judgment, and no longer fantasize punishment-as-virtue, then you are free. You are free to remember who you are, and to share what you learn with your brothers and sisters. Sharing is awakening, and awakening is shared.

III To Redeem is to Make Free

Near the end, around the time he was musing about Jesus and freedom, almost as an afterthought, Abhi wrote these words: “Redeeming the present. Free it from past and future, embrace its perfect fullness” (372).

That’s it. That’s the journal entry. And on the one hand, it’s kind of meh. But on the other, it points perfectly at what I’m trying to understand. In the present, what A Course in Miracles calls the “holy instant,” the separation naturally dissolves and our sins are forgiven. There is a peace and happiness in that space that cannot be forgotten. Even when we slip from it, it calls to us.

The suggestion Abhi makes is not religious. In many ways, the integration of Advaita with Christianity perfected itself in him (hence his applicability to serious ACIM students). The work he suggests is, stop focusing on past and future and instead embrace the reality that is present here and now. Nothing to understand or explain, defend or support, endorse, create or approve. Just the present, presently noticed. Find it, lean into it.

It’s interesting he calls this “redeeming” the present, isn’t it? One of the older, almost archaic now, meanings of “redeemed” is to save somebody from sin or error or from captivity. To redeem is to make free. I wonder if he was subtly pointing at our spiritual dependence on the present – as a concept, yes, but also an accomplishment or attainment, both of which merely reinforce ego and separation. I wonder if he was gesturing at an even more radical letting-go – that of the self altogether, as if past and future and the present are illusions.

Something settles, grows still.

Lately I’ve been practicing not being here. Phone off, nobody in the house. Mostly I sit quietly, but sometimes I sweep the stairs or straighten a painting. I don’t have to think about anything in particular. I don’t have to come up with something to say about it later. I’m not here! Do you know what I’m talking about? How clear and beautiful the world becomes when nothing and nobody is in it?