Man was created in this state of communion with God, and all ancient religion bears witness

"Man was created in this state of communion with God, and all ancient religion bears witness to the memory of this blissful state of consciousness. The fall of Man was a fall from this spiritual consciousness with its center in God to the plane of psychic consciousness with its center on the ego, the separated human soul bound by the laws of the physical organism. This is the state in which we find ourselves today and for many people even the memory of that higher state of consciousness has been lost. The psychic consciousness dominated by the rational mind is taken to be the norm of human life and as a consequence man finds himself dominated by the powers of the physical world, the 'elemental spirits' of St Paul, or in Indian terms the darkness or ignorance (avidya) and the illusion of maya which is the world separated from God. In India from the earliest times man has sought to be liberated from this bondage to matter (or maya) and to attain to enlightenment, the state of the Buddha, the enlightened one, and so to discover his true self, his spirit or atman, in which he knows himself as one with God, the universal spirit and source of all."

"The view of the universe on which western science has been built, that of matter as a solid substance extended in space and time, and of the human mind as a detached observer capable of examining and describing the universe and so gaining control over it, has now been demolished by science itself. The Newtonian model of a world of solid bodies moving in space and time has been replaced by the model of relativity and quantum physics, in which matter is seen as a form of energy and the universe as a field of energies, organized in space-time, so as to form a unified and interdependent whole.

This comes very close to the Buddhist view of the 'insubstantiality' ('anatman') of the universe and of the dynamic character of the elements ('dharmas') as constantly changing parts of an organized whole. But western science has been compelled to go even beyond this and to recognize that the human mind as observer is already involved in that which it observes. What we observe is not reality itself, but reality as conditioned by the human mind and senses and the various instruments which it uses to extend the senses. What we observe, as Heisenberg said, is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.[22] The old understanding of science is gradually giving way to the view that 'consciousness and physical reality (or empirical reality) should be considered as complementary aspects of reality.'[23]

Thus a revolution is quietly taking place in western science and it is slowly beginning to rediscover the ancient tradition of wisdom, according to which mind and matter are interdependent and complementary aspects of one reality. The same process can be observed in western medicine where it is gradually coming to be realized that all disease is psychosomatic and that the human body cannot be properly treated apart from the soul.

We are slowly recovering, therefore, the knowledge which was universal in the ancient world, that there is no such thing as matter apart from mind or consciousness. Consciousness is latent in every particle of matter and the mathematical order which science discovers in the universe is due to the working of this universal consciousness in it. In human nature this latent consciousness begins to come into actual consciousness, as a human consciousness develops it grows more and more conscious of the universal consciousness in which it is grounded. Thus we begin to discover the threefold nature of the Vedic universe. There is the physical aspect of matter ('prakriti'), the feminine principle, from which everything evolves, and consciousness ('purusha') the masculine principle of reason and order in the universe. These correspond to the Yin and Yang of Chinese tradition and the matter and form of Aristotle. Beyond both the Yin and the Yang, beyond both matter and form, is the supreme principle, the ground of Being, the Great Tao, from which everything comes and which pervades all things. In the Vedic tradition the two principles were conceived as heaven and earth, and the whole creation came into being through their marriage.

These two principles, which are to be found in all ancient philosophy, are no less fundamental in Christian doctrine. St Thomas Aquinas, who built up his system of philosophy on the basis of Aristotle, regarded the 'form' and 'matter' of Aristotle as the basic principles of nature. Matter according to this philosophy is pure 'potentiality,' form is the principle of actuality. Pure matter, or 'prime matter' as Aristotle calls it, does not actually exist. It is a metaphysical principle which is basic to all physical being. Matter, as we know it, is a combination of form and matter, or of act and potency. In every physical object there is a form, a structure, an organizing power or active energy, and a material principle, a passive energy, a potentiality of being which is actualized by the form.

It is difficult to grasp this principle of potentiality precisely because it has no actuality and is not intelligible in itself; for form is the principle of intelligibility as well as of actuality. It can only be grasped in relation to the form which actualizes it. It can be compared to a womb, a darkness, a capacity of being, to which form brings life and light and actuality. It is the chaos, the 'tohu' and 'bohu' of the book of Genesis. It is the source of flux, of change, of that indeterminacy which science discovers even in the atom. This is what in Hindu tradition is called 'maya', which Sankara described as 'neither being nor not-being.'[24] It is the irrational element in existence, the meaningless, the absurd. Yet this principle is not evil in itself. In itself it is a pure potency, a pure capacity of being, and as such has a kind of purity, an innocence, a simplicity which exists at the heart of creation.

This principle is, of course, not merely a physical but also a psychological principle, since the physical and psychological are but two aspects of one reality. It is the ground of the unconscious in man. Beyond all levels of human consciousness, mental and imaginative and emotional and physical, there is a ground of unconsciousness, a primeval source, a womb of darkness, from which all life and consciousness springs. It is the world into which we enter in deep sleep, what in Hindu doctrine is called sushupti, the state of being beyond the waking and the dreaming state. It is the source of irrationality, of those violent contradictions in human nature, of the insanity which plagues us. And yet it is not insane or irrational in itself; it is only in association with sanity and reason that it develops these characteristics. In itself, as has been said, it has a certain purity and innocence. It is pure receptivity, which is the feminine aspect of the human soul. The masculine aspect is active and communicative, the feminine aspect is passive and receptive. The feminine has its roots in the unconscious, the darkness of the womb, and is the source of instability and change like the waxing and waning of the moon; the masculine is the source of stability and order and has its source in the light of the sun. Yet both are necessary for existence - without the feminine principle the infinite variety of nature would not exist; the white light of the sun would never be broken up into the multiple colours of the rainbow.

Moreover, these two principles have their source in the Supreme Spirit itself. The one who is beyond all change and multiplicity manifests itself in these two principles eternally. Purusha is the active principle in the Godhead manifesting itself as light and life and intelligence; Prakriti is the feminine principle, which in the Godhead is the Sakti, the divine power or energy. In the Christian tradition there has been very little recognition of this feminine aspect of God. Yet God is both Father and Mother, and in Oriental tradition this has always been recognized.

It is a fact, however, that in the Bible the name for the spirit ('ruah') is feminine and in the later Syriac tradition, which preserved the same name, the Holy Spirit was spoken of as Mother. There is also in the Old Testament the tradition of a feminine Wisdom (Hebrew hochmah, Greek 'Sophia', Latin 'Sapientia') which reveals a feminine aspect in God. It may be possible therefore to see in the Holy Spirit the feminine aspect of God in the Trinity. The source of the Trinity is both Father and Mother, the Son or Word is the active principle of intelligibility, the source of order in the Universe; the Holy Spirit is the feminine principle of receptivity, an infinite capacity for love, which receives perpetually the outflowing of Love through the Son and returns it to its source in the Father...

[Bruno Barnhart]: Bede briefly develops the Vedic myths of the sun, of light and darkness, and then returns to his overall theme.[25]]

[Bede Griffiths]: ...Everything has at once a physical and a psychological, including a social, meaning and behind all the symbols is the one supreme Reality which is manifesting itself at every level of existence.

It is this vision of the universe which we need to recover. The western mind has split the world into two halves, conscious and unconscious, mind and matter, soul and body, and western philosophy swings between the two extremes of materialism and idealism. This is due to a disease of the mind, a schizophrenia, which has developed in western man since the Renaissance, when the unitive vision of the Middle Ages was lost. This medieval vision is in other respects no longer adequate, and western man has to recover his equilibrium by rediscovering the vision of the ancient world, the perennial philosophy, which is fully developed in the Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism, but is implicit in all ancient religion. In this vision of the world the three principles of matter, mind and spirit are seen to interpenetrate one another. It is a disease of the merely rational mind that causes us to see them as separate from one another, to imagine a world extended outside us in space and time, and the mind as something separate from the external world. In reality the world we see is a world which has been penetrated by our consciousness; it is the world as mirrored in the human mind. But beyond both mind and matter there is a still further principle of Spirit which interpenetrates both mind and matter, and is the source of both energy and consciousness.

The understanding of man as body, soul and spirit is found in St Paul[26] and in the early fathers of the church, though later it was unfortunately displaced by the body-soul conception of Aristotle. But in India this threefold character has always been accepted. Man has a body, a physical organism, a structure of energies, forming part of the physical universe. He has a psychological organism, consisting of appetites, senses, feelings, imagination, reason, and will, which forms his personality and is integrated with the physical organism. But beyond both body and soul, yet integrated with them, is the spirit, the pneuma of St Paul, the atman of Hindu thought. This spirit in man is the point of his communion with the universal spirit which rules and penetrates the whole universe. This is the point of human self-transcendence, the point at which the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal, the many and the One, meet and touch. It is to this point of the spirit that we are led by meditation, when going beyond both physical and psychological consciousness we experience the depths of our own inner being and discover our affinity with the spirit of God. 'The spirit of God,' as St Paul says, 'bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.'[27]

Man was created in this state of communion with God, and all ancient religion bears witness to the memory of this blissful state of consciousness. The fall of Man was a fall from this spiritual consciousness with its center in God to the plane of psychic consciousness with its center on the ego, the separated human soul bound by the laws of the physical organism. This is the state in which we find ourselves today and for many people even the memory of that higher state of consciousness has been lost. The psychic consciousness dominated by the rational mind is taken to be the norm of human life and as a consequence man finds himself dominated by the powers of the physical world, the 'elemental spirits' of St Paul, or in Indian terms the darkness or ignorance (avidya) and the illusion of maya which is the world separated from God. In India from the earliest times man has sought to be liberated from this bondage to matter (or maya) and to attain to enlightenment, the state of the Buddha, the enlightened one, and so to discover his true self, his spirit or atman, in which he knows himself as one with God, the universal spirit and source of all."

The One Light - Bede Griffiths' Principal Writings
Chapter I, Mind, World and Spirit, p. 56-61
Edited and with Commentary by Bruno Barnhart
Templegate Publishers, Springfield, Illinois
ISBN 0-87243-254-8

Notes:
[22] Quoted in Fritjof Capra, 'The Tao of Physics', 144.
[23] Bernard D'Espagnat in 'Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Mechanics'.
[24] "An appearance of being, without origin, inexpressible in terms of being or of not-being.": Sankara's commentary on the Brahma Sutras.
[25] 'The Marriage of East and West', 57-59.
[26] See 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and the contrast between the 'anthropos psychikos', the 'psychic man', and the 'antropos pneumatikos', the 'spiritual man', in I Corinthians 2:14.
[27] Romans 8:16.

NOTE: If this page was accessed during a web search you may wish to browse the sites listed below where this topic or related issues are discussed in detail to promote global peace, religious harmony, and spiritual development of humanity:

www.adishakti.org/
www.al-qiyamah.org/
www.adi-shakti.org/  — Divine Feminine (Hinduism)
www.holyspirit-shekinah.org/  — Divine Feminine (Christianity)
www.ruach-elohim.org/  — Divine Feminine (Judaism)
www.ruh-allah.org/  — Divine Feminine (Islam)
www.tao-mother.org/  — Divine Feminine (Taoism)
www.prajnaaparamita.org/  — Divine Feminine (Buddhism)
www.aykaa-mayee.org/  — Divine Feminine (Sikhism)
www.great-spirit-mother.org/  — Divine Feminine (Native Traditions)

"Now, the principle of Mother is in every, every scripture - has to be there." Shri Mataji, Radio Interview 1983 Oct 01, Santa Cruz, USA