Theos-Talk Archives (March 1995 Message tl00088)

In message <v01510100ab8372ab61fd@[198.163.154.57]>
theos-l@vnet.net writes:

> As I was waiting of my wife Bev to come out from here work place
> I read an article by Sri Ashish and was awakened by the sentence.
>
> It was in non-inclusive language so excuse this, "Man is at one
> with the universe; and that is the same as saying that man is at
> one with God.Man is God, or God is Man; it makes little
> difference which way one looks at it.  Nor is it a blank
> impersonal power, for what is blank and impersonal could not give
> birth to the full personality of man.  But to say that divine
> power encompasses personality does not mean that there is a
> personal God, for hte univerally diffused awareness does not
> discriminate between the bliss of one individual or the suffering
> of another.

To Art:

Reading the above (which is more or less how I see it) inspired
me to look out one or two quotes (again, there is a shortage of
inclusive language, alas):

"There is no Religion higher than truth."  (TS)

"The spirit of truth ...  will guide you into all truth." John
16:13

"I will not engage on wordy disputes, such as can only unsettle
the minds of those who are listening.  The Law is intended for
edification, and it is an excellent thing, where it is applied
legitimately, because its end is charity, based on purity of
heart, on a good conscience and a sincere faith.  Christ our
master well knows which are the two commandments on which, he
said, all the Law and the Prophets depend.

"O my God, light of my eyes in darkness, since I believe in these
commandments and confess them to be true with all my heart, how
can it harm me that it should be possible to interpret these
words [of scripture] in several ways, all of which may yet be
true? How can it harm me if I understand the writer's meaning in
a different sense from that which another understands it? All of
us who read his words do our best to discover and understand what
he had in mind.

"Provided, therefore, that each one of us tries as best he can to
understand in the holy scriptures what the writer meant ...  what
harm is there if a reader believes what you, the light of all
truthful minds, show him to be the true meaning? It may not even
be the meaning which the writer had in mind, and yet he too saw
..  a true meaning, different though it may have been from this."

St.  Augustine, _Confessions_ xii, 18.

It seems to me that the spirit of Augustine's view, if not the
letter, is the best way to approach our studies, including the
MLs.  Ultimately, as Liesel has [I think] suggested, it is the
experiential part that matters.

Alan