 Gnosis of the Creed –by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Chapter Three—In one God, the Father almighty
 Who Is God?
It is really rather ridiculous to think that the human intellect, which is finite, could comprehend the infinite God. We are certainly able to know a little about God with our human minds, but to know God is possible only through direct experience by the spirit, far beyond the body, mind, intellect, and ego.
But the Fathers have told us that God cannot be known. Am I contradicting them? No. The Fathers meant that our mind-intellect-ego complex which we so idolatrize cannot know God–rather it will be consumed in the fire of His vision. But our true self, our divine spirit, can certainly know God–not by sight or thought, but by union with Him. (This is why in King James Biblical parlance sexual union is called “knowing.”)
We talk about seeing God, but that is a metaphor for being God (more accurately: god). What the Fathers have actually said is that human beings cannot see or know God, but if we rise above the human condition and its limitations, we will see and know–not with the eyes or the intellect, but with our very being, which is consciousness.
A Further Insight
We must consider a further, quite subtle point. There is a stage in mystical evolution where the spirit is enabled to rise and glimpse the Light Ocean of God’s Being. When this occurs, one of the most vivid realizations the individual spirit gains is the understanding that its own finitude cannot possibly see or know God in the sense of taking in the fulness of the measureless, divine Life–though to do so is our eventual goal.
When we stand by the physical ocean, we see only a small part of it. Therefore, if we would be precise in our language, we would say: “I have not seen the ocean,” since that small portion cannot be considered the ocean in a strict sense. (At all times we must remember that no expressions, explanations, or similes regarding mystical experience are one hundred percent accurate.)
God bestows the realization that He cannot be truly seen or known to the purified mind and intellect of the budding mystic in order to stimulate him to thirst ever more for deeper spiritual experience and eventually shed the mind and intellect (“deny himself” and “lose his life”) and plunge unreservedly into the ocean of God, no longer trying to see or know in the external sense, but entering into That and–in a qualified sense–becoming It.
What Is The Meaning Of “God”?
But what is the word translated “God”? The Creed was formulated in Greek, and the Greek word used is theos, the root word from which we get such terms as: theology, theosophy, and theurgy. Literally, it means: “the absolutely Other.” That is, God is Something absolutely other than ourselves, than the world, than anything we know. God is the Absolute Alien! That term was not adopted from reasoning but from experience.
This truth was understood and expressed long before the advent of the Christian Faith by the philosophies of Egypt and Greece, which had their roots in the philosophical system of India, which tells us: If you want to discover God, you follow the path of negation, saying: neti, neti, “not this; not that.” Bring to mind anything that you can perceive or conceive, and say: “No, that is not Him.” Say this to anything that can arise in your intellect: “No, not that; not this. God is not this world which I see. God is not this intelligence which I experience. God is not this emotion which I feel. God is nothing I can conceive of.” And when there is nothing else left to say “not this” about–THAT is God. Sensuum defectui, says Saint Thomas Aquinas, “the senses fail.” The ancient Upanishads speak of God as “That from Which the mind and the senses turn back.”
Both the ancient philosophers and the Church Fathers gave us this principle that God is absolutely “other” than anything we can conceive. The bearded old man on a throne in the sky is a blasphemy, not just an absurdity. A “God” Who can be either peeved or pleased is ridiculous, for that also is a conception. Any formulation by which our minds can seemingly comprehend That will also be a delusion. For He is absolutely Other, at the very end of “not this, not that.”
The Practical Meaning
In practical application, this means that to reach God we will have to become alien as well, transmuting ourselves into something absolutely Other. This is why Saint Peter exhorts us: “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims.” Moreover, in that great exposition which we considered in our analysis of “believe,” those of exemplary faith are all said to have “confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” The theology which holds that man is an integral part of this world and is destined to live forever in a human body, however “glorified” it is supposed to become, is an aberration. Man has no permanent business here. Students enter school so they may eventually leave it–having learned the requisite lessons and “passed.” So it is with us.
We are aliens, pilgrims intended only to pass through and go beyond the world. Supremely absurd, then, is the eschatology which says that God’s plan is to permatize us here forever in an eternally existing, physical earth. It is also in contradiction to the Holy Scriptures which say: “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.…all these things shall be dissolved.” Where, then, can the glorified heaven and earth be for us to live in which such erroneous theology proclaims? The idea is false and contrary to the express words of Jesus: “I go to prepare a place for you” that is attained when we realize our otherness, which is the truth of our essential nature, and live accordingly.
In further support of this, we have a saying of our Lord not recorded in Christian books, but inscribed by the Emperor Ashoka on a pillar in India: “Jesus, the Son of Mary, said: The world is a bridge. Pass over it; do not build a house on it.”
One
Let us now look at the adjective “one” attributed to God in the Creed.
God is not a relatively existing object, so to say that God is “one” in the sense that the house we live in is one house or our right foot is one foot, is an error. The term “one” when applied to God expresses the idea of singularity, of uniqueness, and of aloneness.
Let us look again at the Upanishads which Jesus quotes from in the Gospels, drawing on His years spent in India. One of the Upanishadic definitions of God is: Ekam, evam, advityam Brahman: “God is one, only, without a second.” In the Bible we read: “I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me.” In other words, when we say God is one, we do not mean it in the sense of one among many, but rather that He is the only one; absolutely, there is no other.
God, being both one and infinite, there can be no entity whatsoever, either greater or less, in existence besides Him. If there is even one grain of sand outside the being of God, then God is not infinite, because there is something He is not and there is a place where He is not. To be infinite, God must be absolutely all, and this is the true meaning of the expression: “one God.”
God is everything that exists, for there is only One Whose very nature is existence itself, and that is God. All of the saints have seen this to be so and have borne witness to it. As mentioned before, Saint Bernard saw that the entire creation is a single ray of light, and that Light is God. Before Saint Bernard, David wrote: “In thy light shall we see light.” We are told that He is “dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto,” yet we are also told that He came to call us back to that light. This is beautifully expressed in the ancient Mass for Christmas, which says: “By the mystery of the Word made flesh the light of Thy glory hath shone anew upon the eyes of our mind: that while we acknowledge Him to be God seen by men, we may be drawn by Him to the love of things unseen.”
God Alone Is Real
Christian non-dualism (not to be confused with monism) posits that for anything to be real it must be both ever-existent and ever-unchanging. That which does not exist forever and does not exist unchangingly is not real in the absolute sense. It is on this basis that the Fathers state that God alone is real and this world is unreal.
This world is not real, for it is constantly changing in one way or another. As Saint Paul says: “The fashion [form] of this world passeth away.” This is because God is like the screen on which a motion picture is projected. The screen is there, invisible behind the picture, unmoving, unchanging, though we see the figures moving across the screen, speaking, singing, laughing, crying, even dying. And seeing them, we also laugh, cry, feel indignation, fear, suspense, inspiration, triumph–and all the time it is nothing but the movement of light, the single beam emanating from the projection room. When we face toward the screen, away from the light source, we see a multiplicity of forms and movements. But if we turn and look back, we see only the one shaft of pure light coming from the unseen source.
The Human Experience
We human beings look at our surroundings and instead of seeing God, Who alone is substantially present, we see only the superimposed images and lose ourselves in the experiencing of them. We miss the Real through our involvement with the unreal, an involvement we call “having a grip on reality.” How ironic! And we say such mad things as: “seeing is believing,” “I can only accept what I am able to perceive with my senses,” “If I can’t touch it, then I don’t believe in it,” etc. We mock the mystic for getting involved in the “unreal” and “unsure” realms of the Invisible. But we are missing the fact that the worlds of the mystic are invisible only to us–not to him.
As Sir James Jeans, the great physicist, has said, he who truly investigates scientifically will come to realize that the universe is a great thought in the mind of God. Every atom moves because it is held in the consciousness of God. And the moment He “thinks” differently, it will be altered. The moment He ceases to “think” of it, it will cease to “exist”–which in essence it never really did.
We are not saying that this world does not have a momentary, dreamlike existence. It does. Or rather the form of this world momentarily exists. But ultimately it does not. We might put it this way: the world at this moment exists, but it is not real. This is indicated in the Holy Scriptures. “For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” “For who knoweth what is good for man in this life, all the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow?” “Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth away.” “As for man, his days are as grass…the wind passeth over it, and it is gone.” “My days are like a shadow that declineth.” “He remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away.”
These verses seem pessimistic only if we hold the delusion that we are human beings and that human life is the real life. The intent of these verses (which are only a few of such to be found in the Bible) is to shock us out of that delusion, to goad us to rebel against the hopeless finitude of earthly life. But let us not forget that wind, grass, and shadows do have a brief “reality,” which we are not denying. And this is the truth not only about our little lives, but about the entire cosmos.
The False View
Those whose minds are wedded to materiality protest against these ideas. “No, no, no!” they insist, “the world is real, the world is true!” And they build their religion on it, saying that eventually God will give the world back to them after resurrecting their flesh and making it immortal so they can live on this (improved, of course) earth forever. And this, in defiance of Christ’s definition, they call eternal life: to live forever in a permanent body on a permanent earth. Such a view is not Christian, as the foregoing scriptures show.
The True View
Authentic (Gnostic) Christianity holds out a more wonderful hope to those who live in the spirit. We sit through so many “features,” so many lives, in the motion picture theater of this universe. We laugh, we cry, we suffer anxiety about what is going to happen next in the “plot” of our lives. Finally, though, the “show” ends and we see the screen of divine consciousness upon which all this was enacted. And then we go home–home to the Theos, to the Absolutely Other, to our Father.
We are the sons of God who have come forth from Him and foolishly wasted our lives in a foreign land like the Prodigal Son. When at last we realize that our life has been but “a dream within a dream,” we wake to immortality, to What and Who we are.
What We Must Do
If we truly believe that there is only the One, we will then cling to that One, live for that One, only wishing to reach and be established in that One.
We need not doubt our ability to attain this exalted goal, for our Lord Jesus Himself prayed to the Father: “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us…that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me.”
He did not pray that we simply be like God or in harmony with Him, but One with Him; one in the same way that Jesus is one with Him. One to the degree that we, too, can say with Jesus: “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Otherwise we are mocking God–and ourselves–when we say the words: “I believe in one God.”
All Words Are Relative And Imperfect
Throughout our consideration of the Creed, it is good to remember that the experiences and insights gained in the higher realms of existence simply cannot be spoken of accurately here on earth. Now, if the things of higher, relative existence are unutterable, what then must be the case of the nature of God? Yet, religion is the revelation, the revealing, of God. In trying to bring down the principles of the reality of existence from the supreme heights, something naturally has to be “lost in translation.”
A Perfect Example
There is an amusing example of this in the mundane world. When Coca-Cola was introduced into Japan, the slogan that was being used everywhere in the world was: “Coke adds life.” It was decided to translate it into Japanese. But something went wrong in the translating, and all the billboards said: “Coke brings your ancestors back from the dead”! This also happens when we try to translate into human terms that which is divine.
At one point in his writings Saint Paul says that he is going to have to speak foolishly, since he is attempting to express the inexpressible. We can say that anyone who has tried to speak of the mysteries of God has had to speak “as a fool,” for how can the incomprehensible God be comprehended? It is important for us to realize this.
What Must Be Believed So Far
As far as the Apostolic Tradition goes, the only thing a person really needs to believe–that is, experience–is that he is himself an immortal entity that came forth from the sole immortal entity, God. One need only believe that there is an individual finite spirit and there is an all-encompassing infinite God–though in a mysterious way they are both one. All theological concepts are speculations until through mystical ascension the individual comes to know this for himself.
It is not the limited knowledge of the mind we must seek, but the unfoldment of the powers of the spirit, in order to perceive the absolute realities of ourself and God. One of the fundamental ways of Gnostic Christianity, which has the mind of Christ, is to say with Him: “Come and see.” We ask no one to believe blindly, but rather to enter and receive the Light of Christ. Then they, too, can say: “Whereas I was blind, now I see.”
“For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light.” If we come to understand the part, we can ascend to understand the Whole. “For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.…For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
Freedom From Dogmatism
The Christian experience is a mystical experience, beyond neat definitions and pre-packaged theologies. One of the prime bases of Gnostic Christianity is the refusal to attempt to define Divine Mystery. We must then be very careful not to fall into intellectual dogmatism, but hasten toward the day when by direct spiritual experience we will know the truth that we now hold only intellectually.
When we embark on a journey we provisionally accept that the place of our destination truly exists, that the vehicle can indeed carry us there, and that those who are guiding it know how to get there. So also we need a provisionally accepted framework of religious and philosophical concepts within which to work as we pursue our inner evolution–a sort of psychic environment in which to grow and function. It is only practical. And that is one of the functions of this book–to furnish you with a provisional map that you will eventually transcend through your own attainment of the Gnosis of Christ.
The Father Almighty
The next words in the Creed are: Pater Pantocrator, “the Father Almighty.”
What can the word Pater, “Father,” mean? God is not a human being or a parent in the usual sense, but by using this symbolic term we convey the fact that God is a person, which is extremely important in the Gnostic Christian understanding of the nature of God. We do not say that God has a limited, definable personality as we do. No. God is a Person, though not a personality.
By “person” and “personal” we mean that God is a Being that has an intimate conscious relation to His creation, just as the ideal father has an intimate relation to his family. We are applying human attributes to God in a symbolic manner. At the time of the Creed’s adoption, the father was the sole guide and support of the family. So by the term “father” we understand that God is the sole support, the sole Ground and Mover of the universe, that all creatures are absolutely dependent upon Him.
In the same way, the divine Father, as the sole Power behind all phenomena, is giving us life and is therefore the sole Actor, as well.
As the father impregnates the wife and she bears children, so the Father implants the individual spirits into the womb of this world where they are embodied and begin their upward growth unto the manifestation of His image. He is the origin, the source of all things, all existence having Him as its basis. This is why we call Him “Father.”
God: The Sole And Absolute Ruler
He rules absolutely, and therefore He is Pantocrator, “the Ruler of All,” both His power and His dominion being infinite. Moreover, “all-ruler” implies that He is doing everything, for in actuality every power that exists is God’s power alone. All exists by His willing it to be. We speak of “law” in the universe, but we err. It is Will–the conscious, immediate Will of God. There is nothing mechanical or automatic about the universe. Every atom turns because God is consciously aware of it and wills it to turn. In the universe there is one power, the Pantocrator: God. For if God is infinite, who else could there be?
We, Too…
Although in the absolute sense God is doing everything, He has given us the will and the power to do things on our own. But as that power is a borrowed power, all actions are ultimately God’s actions. Yet we dare not hide behind the oft-heard excuse: “If God did not want us to do it, we would not be able to do it,” for in bestowing free will upon us, He also bestowed responsibility.
A Vital Point
Now we come to a very important theological point. Since there is no reality to even a momentary existence or will separate from God, there can never be an eternal, everlasting separation from God or an eternal, everlasting rebellion against God resulting in everlasting “damnation.” But when all things are healed, “that God may be all in all,” ALL will be restored to the primal perfection. This is the teaching of the Church Fathers, especially of “the Father of the Fathers,” Saint Gregory of Nyssa, and his sister Macrina, the great philosopher-saint. This view alone is Christian doctrine. Everlasting damnation and banishment from the face of God was a concept of the pagan Greco-Roman religion which was absorbed into Christianity after Constantine and was forcibly made into an “orthodoxy” by the Byzantine Emperor, Justinian.
Why God Does…
We love to say: “Why does God allow…?” and at the same time insist that we have free will. We inconsistently want free will but not the consequences of our exercise of that free will. Therefore God has done this: He has made us little gods in our sphere, letting us act and will and move and change things in the world around us. He has said in effect: “You shall receive whatever you wish; you shall reap what you sow.”
All the horror we see in the world results from our own actions. It is reaping what has been sown–not reward and punishment. God is revealing our own evil to us in this way. It is His way of showing us the truth of things: negative acts produce negative results and positive acts produce positive results. When we commit an evil or good act it is a statement of will, and God has us then reap accordingly.
How We See Is What We See
We should further realize that if there were not a purpose, God would not have permitted the rebellion of Lucifer or the betrayal of His trust by Adam and Eve. In all things there are the seeds of perfection, and this is vital to the understanding of the term Pantocrator. For He is indeed controlling, directing, and doing everything, and everything therefore must ultimately result in perfection.
A little boy who saw his dirty face in a mirror called out: “Mamma, our mirror is no good. It’s dirty.” Later, after his face had been washed, he looked in the mirror again, and with great surprise said: “Oh! we must have a new mirror!” Just so it is with us. The imperfection, the evil, the ignorance is in us. As a result we see mostly (if not exclusively) imperfection, evil, and ignorance. But if we abandon our delusive egotism, turn from our selfish involvements, and look to God alone, we will then see only perfection.
This is something that somehow must be gotten across to us. Things are not as they seem in the world around us, and we are not as we seem, either. This is why Saint Paul said: “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” Now we see the darkness of the world because we are asleep and dreaming. But we can wake up, and after we wake we must rise. Then we will move out of darkness into the light of Christ. In anticipation, even now we can say: “As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.”
Many people like to think that one day Jesus will drop from the sky and they will pop up from the grave like toast and be carried away to heaven. God has a much greater destiny for us than anything as cheap and simplistic as that: it is the passage into the light of Christ, not to merely be with Christ, but to be Christ.
See The Unseen
God is hidden to our earthbound eyes and minds. There is an inner side to existence, and that is what Christ came to reveal, saying: “There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.” It is, then, both our privilege and our duty to look into the inner side of these things.
A Deeper Insight
There is even more. The good father has a loving and caring relationship with all his family. So calling God “Father” affirms the personal, loving bond and interaction between God and His “children” of the universe. This almighty God is a God Who loves all that He has made; He hates and rejects none of it. This is why in the beginning of Genesis it more than once says about this creation: “And God saw that it was good.” Moreover, there is a hidden meaning in those words, for what does the Lord Jesus say? “There is none good but one, that is, God.” The inner meaning of the Genesis statements is that God sees His creation as His own perfect Being.
His Life Is Ours
In the East at the time this expression was placed in the Creed, it was commonly said: “The father is born in his son.” By using the symbolic word, “Father,” it is implied that we, as His “sons” are all extensions of the Father Almighty, His images, as the Bible states. We are part of His infinite life. Although we draw the substance of our bodies in the womb from our mothers, that which forms our blood comes exclusively from our fathers–and “the blood is the life.” In the same way, our life is the extension of God’s life. We and the Father are one. Christ came to reveal that–not to claim a unique status for Himself, but to make us joint heirs of the Kingdom with Him.
We And The Father Are One
If Christ is one with the Father and is the Son of God, then how could we be called sons of God if we are not also one with the Father? The life in us, the spirit in us, is the Father’s own life, the Father’s own spirit. Therefore, no matter how far we may dream we go astray, we are never really separated from God, but are always a part of His life, and nothing can remain forever alienated from that perfection.
By saying “Father Almighty,” we are affirming our own divine status, the truth about our own real being. This is the profound message of those two simple words. More chapters of the Gnosis of the Creed:
• Chapter One—The Nicene Creed
• Chapter Two—I believe
• Chapter Three—In one God, the Father almighty
• Chapter Four—Maker of heaven and earth, And of all things visible and invisible
• Chapter Five—And in one Lord
• Chapter Six—Jesus Christ
• Chapter Seven—The Only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of the Father before all ages. Light from Light, True God from true God. Begotten not made, Being of one substance with the Father; By Whom all things were made.
• Chapter Eight—Who for us men, and for our salvation
• Chapter Nine—Came down from heaven
• Chapter Ten—And was incarnate by the Holy Spirit
• Chapter Eleven—Of the Virgin Mary. And was made Man.
• Chapter Twelve—He was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. Suffered and was buried.
• Chapter Thirteen—And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures. And ascended into heaven. He sitteth at the right hand of the Father.
• Chapter Fourteen—And He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead.
• Chapter Fifteen—Of Whose kingdom there shall be no end.
• Chapter Sixteen—And in the Holy Spirit, the Lady and Giver of life: Who proceedeth from the Father. Who together with the Father and the Son Is worshipped and glorified. Who spoke by the prophets.
• Chapter Seventeen—And in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
• Chapter Eighteen—I confess one baptism for the remission of sins.
• Chapter Nineteen—And I look for the resurrection of the dead. And the life of the age to come. Amen.
1) “Deep calleth unto deep.” (Psalm 42:7) [Go back]
2) Matthew 16:24, 25; Mark 8:34, 35; Luke 9:23, 24 [Go back]
3) I Peter 2:11 [Go back]
4) Hebrews 11:13 [Go back]
5) II Peter 3:10,11 [Go back]
6) John 14:2 [Go back]
7) Isaiah 45:5 [Go back]
8) Psalm 36:9 [Go back]
9) I Timothy 6:16 [Go back]
10) I Corinthians 7:31 [Go back]
11) James 4:14 [Go back]
12) Ecclesiastes 6:12 [Go back]
13) Psalm 144:4 [Go back]
14) Psalm 103:15,16 [Go back]
15) Psalm 102:11 [Go back]
16) Psalm 78:39 [Go back]
17) “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God.” (John 17:3) [Go back]
18) Luke 15:11-32 [Go back]
19) John 17:21-23 [Go back]
20) John 14:9 [Go back]
21) Another, equally hilarious, blooper was committed by President Kennedy in his famous “Berliner” speech which is touted as a landmark of his career. The truth is that between his New England accent and his ignorance of German, although he intended to say (in German) “I am a Berliner,” he actually said, according to the local dialect, “I am a jelly doughnut.” [Go back]
22) John 1:39 [Go back]
23) John 9:25 [Go back]
24) Psalm 36:9 [Go back]
25) I Corinthians 13:9,10,12 [Go back]
26) I Corinthians 15:28 [Go back]
27) Ephesians 5:14 [Go back]
28) Psalm 17:15 [Go back]
29) Matthew 10:26 [Go back]
30) Matthew 19:17 [Go back]
31) Deuteronomy 12:23 [Go back]
32) “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ….” (Romans 8:16,17) [Go back]
|
