Open Letter to Mrs. Keenum

 

As our parting was a bit rushed, I thought I might expand upon my thoughts concerning the "recurring theme or pattern" -- the "common thread" so to speak -- that I see as a key to understanding not only the poetry I passed on to you, but the "poetry" that life itself presents to those whose eyes (or I) are open wide enough to see it in such a light.  As I remember, I said that the "key" to seeing life as it truly is, is to see it from the perspective of the "whole" rather than the "part"; from the top down, rather then the bottom up.  That is to say, from the attitude or point of view of the "higher" rather than "lower"; the "absolute", rather than the "relative" -- keeping in mind the analogy of the "mountain top" as the "whole truth" where as the different "attitudes" or "viewpoints" adopted towards it by those of us still in the foot hills surrounding it are only "relatively" true, true only from the particular angle and distance that are present position in relationship to it presents. 

 

More specifically, I recollect saying that the "key to understanding" was based on adopting an attitude which assumed the "fundamental unity of all being as the fundamental assumption of ones existence and being; as the highest truth, so to speak -- the basic truth of ones being and so the "ground" to which one should always cling, irregardless of any and all appearance to the contrary.  Put less personally and more abstractly, the "key word" is "Oneness". That is, the fundamental relationship that each and all have with that which lies beyond sense and sight; the fundamental relationship between man and God, being a state or condition of essential Unity, an indivisible relation of Oneness.  Perhaps one of the best quotes I've ever read in this regard says it better: "The highest law is oneness with God.!"  This is not to say that I, as any one specific individual, an God; rather that I live through God and that God lives through me, that the life that flows through me is not my own but God's.  He lives through us and we live through Him -- "the One in the Many; the Many in the One."

 

Put in New Testament terms, both Jesus and Paul said pretty much the same thing.  Jesus, when he said "That the all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us..." (John 17:21) and Paul, when he said, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. (Ga. 2:20) and "Christ in you, the hope and glory (Col. 1:27).  All are but different ways of relating the Truth of Oneness, of seeing and saying the One Truth.  Alternately, each is the Truth seen and said from a different perspective, attitude or viewpoint.  With all this in mind, I offer the following, a short expansion on what I said on the 9th.  It's something that came to me today after I had finished running, and which I wrote down in a log I have recently started to keep.  

 

"Our God Is One"

 

The absolute attitude or viewpoint is that of Oneness or Unity; where as, the relative (human?) attitude, viewpoint or "way of looking at things" is that of duality or disunity (twoness).  The first, based on its higher, or perhaps more correctly, its total perspective sees All as One and One as All; while the second point of view, being partial, incomplete and so imperfect (less than whole or total) sees All as only the sum total of so many parts.  At the level of the Absolute all is truly One, both in fact and in sense -- not only is One, but is seen and so known to be one, both in head and heart. This most fundamental of all truths (the only true or absolute truth) -- the "Truth of Oneness" -- the fundamental unity of all things and so all being -- is equally true at all levels, including the level of relativity.  It is just not seen and so sensed to be so.

 

Never the less, this most essential of all "facts" remains constant, even though conscious "recognition" of the truth may not.  So it is that I, or any one for that matter, can and never could attain oneness in fact, as that is what we were, are now and always will be; always will be in truth (from an absolute perspective, or, pardon the expression, from a "God's I (eye?) view.  For in truth, we have and never could lose our "original oneness", just our "original consciousness" of our true relationship to God (and so life and being); just our original consciousness of the Oneness underlying all life or the One Life underlying all.

 

In truth, life and being can in no way be limited or bound.  It can only seem or appear so based on the specific limits that a particular attitude or view point towards it implicitly begets (i.e. "the wider you open your eyes, the broader your perspective and the more you will see to be true based on a wider or broader point of view, etc.).  For in truth, the way you look holds the key to what you can and will see -- the "narrow-mindedness" will beget a narrow world; where as, open-mindedness will beget a world-view of limitless proportions".  "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is just another way of saying the same thing.  You can look to the ground and be bound, or look to the sky and fly -- its all in where you direct or focus your attention, all in where you choose to look.

 

Keeping this in mind, the answer to our present predicament as human beings does not lie in greater and greater degrees of mental comprehension (although that will necessarily follow as a fruit), but rather in opening our eyes further and further; in "thinking and speaking" less and less, and "looking and listening" more and more.  For the truth is there for all to see -- always was and always will be.  All we have to do is turn our eyes away from the "partialized" manner in which we habitually see things, and look with eyes unconditioned by thought and unclouded by words.  Though not all "think" equally well, all have an equal potential when it comes to looking and seeing or listening and hearing.  It just takes a little practice to drop the specific way we have been taught to look, and just look; to remember how to do that which would happen quite naturally if our "mental faculties" would release, if only for a moment, the mortal lock they now hold on we who would otherwise be masters, but as yet are slaves.

 

R.F.Hay, (C) 1984 

 

"Oneness"

 

p.s.  As a further expansion on some of the thoughts I've offered above, I've taken the liberty of passing on some of my earlier theological writings.  Their indictment is no personal in nature, but rather of the "human condition" in general.  One might also imagine them as something Christ might have said to the Pharisees in response to their accusation that "...thou, being a man, makest thyself God" (John 10:33).  They understood perfectly what Jesus was saying when he said, "I and my Father are one."  They knew that he was saying that he was equivalent or equal to God.  What they didn't understand is that he was saying directly what the Old Testament scriptures necessarily implies.  He tried to make this point when he responded, "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are Gods"(John 10:34).  He just as easily could have referenced Gen. 5:1 and said, "In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him...".  For implicit in such a proclamation is that man was like unto God (an absolute creator), having the same fundamental qualities of being; the most fundamental of these being the innate limitlessness of his nature (and potential to be), both in time and space -- his absolute and perfect freedom to be and do any and all things.

 

What they didn't see, what they couldn't see with eyes blinded by "self-thought: and "self-interest", was that Jesus was saying applied not only to him, but to them, and to all other men as "Children of God" (once they attained a consciousness of the Christ living in, as, of and through the vehicle of their being; and as such had attained what is often called "Christ Consciousness").  But, as is usually the case, "ego-centric" thought and sense -- a "self-referencing" point of view or attitude towards life and being -- blinded them to the "Ultimate Truth" of what he was saying by imputing "exclusivity" to all his statements (by taking them personally, instead of impersonally) regarding the Truth.  Statements to the effect "... that the Father is in me, and I in him (John 10:38) were misinterpreted by those whose "self-conscious" view of life is congenitally blind to the implicit "Truth of Oneness" and the "Fundamental Unity" of all being as the ground upon which all stand.  This is not to say that the truths that Jesus spoke applied to man as he, both then and now, "thinks and so conceives himself to be", but to man as God did, does and always will conceive man to be, as man is, "...in  Spirit and in Truth", as man is in fact (even though he may not presently be conscious of same).

 

Needless to say, it doesn't apply to the "self-image" that I as a "self-conscious" being now hold regarding myself (which in truth is just a "thought of myself", an partial "image or idea" of myself that I presently entertain in mind, and so consciousness, and thereby sustain and maintain as a "pseudo" or false sense of self and so being).  This is where the Pharisees went wrong in interpreting Jesus' words. They assumed he was speaking fro the perspective of that "self-same" false sense or image; they assumed that that is where he was "coming from" and rightly challenged such a beings "making himself God". Their mistake was in imputing their own "self-limited" perspective or point of view -- attitude towards life and being -- that they were, and he clearly wasn't.  He was speaking form God's point of view, from His absolute, all-encompassing perspective.  And who He was speaking of was "God's only begotten Son"; the "Son of God" lying at the root and the heart not only of his being, not only at the heart of Jesus' being, but at the root and heart of All Being, and so at the very heart of God -- His perfect idea of Himself made manifest in the world of the flesh -- "...the Son in whom he was (and still is) well pleased".  A proclamation that was equally true of the Pharisees, as it was to him, the only difference between him and them being his recognition and so "realization" in the world of flesh of man's fundamental relation of oneness with his Absolute (and so Absolutely Indivisible) Creator, and their "relative unconsciousness" of that "self-same" fact.

 

But what Jesus was saying was only true of himself as the "Christ", as the true "Son of God", as " God's Man" and not "man's man"; and not himself as "Jesus the man", not of himself as a 'limited, finite, circumscribed conception or idea of man and so mankind as a relative state, form or condition of being".  For the latter must die as a precondition to the birth of the former, even as the seed must die to itself as a seed if its full potential to be a tree is to be "realized" and so make manifest in the flesh (or the world of relative consciousness and being).  The same could be said of the caterpillar which must "seemingly" die in order to be reborn to the "higher freedom" that the butterflies wings imply and will necessarily beget. But does that which was the seed or caterpillar -- the entity or life underlying the being of either or both -- truly die, except to its previously "self-limiting" flesh or form (relative state or condition of being); except to that which, though once necessary to its evolution and self-fulfillment, had become a barrier to self-development and growth? Or can it be better said that the life or being underlying both or either is really just transformed and so transfigured into a "higher form or state" of itself; a condition of being which more closely or more fully approximates or reflects its innate potential to be; just one more momentary stop on an everlasting journey of an individual "life form" becoming evermore conscious and aware of the "Ultimate Truth of Being" -- the ultimate potential to be lying dormant within its very own heart and soul.

 

R.F.Hay, (C) 1984

 

God Bless, Speed and Keep -- As I know He Has, Is and Always Will! 

 

Atch I Cor 13:1, An Interpretation

Atch 2 Seed Thoughts 

Atch 3 In Spirit and In Truth

Atch 4 Sin of Relativity

Atch 5 False Gods

Atch 6 "I" Cross 

 

Note:  The copyright notices are included so that I might pass on the writings to others, or include them as part of a book, should I eventually decide to publish.  Other than that they are yours to do with as you wish.  As they were written to and for you, and only by me, they are more yours than mine.