|
|
A Sermon by
Donel McClellan
A Sermon by
Donel McClellan Hot Topics for the Summer: Cosmic Consciousness During our July vacation, Marilyn and I spent two delightful days in New York
City seeing the sights. On a beautifully sunny warm morning we took a cab uptown
to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As we approached the wide steps leading up to
the entrance, I looked up and something caught my eye. It was a plastic shopping
bag caught by the wind. It danced seventy feet above my head as though it were
suspended by invisible strings. I watched, transfixed, for half a minute as it
moved this way and that riding on the thermals and breezes sweeping up from the
hot Manhattan street. As I turned away and started up the stairs, the woman
walking next to me said, "Did you see American Beauty?"
Together, we had watched life imitating art. I had seen American Beauty, and those of you who saw the movie
remember why the floating sack was of such aesthetic interest. In the film,
which is a critique of life lived without creativity or passion, the young
teenage neighbor Ricky Fitts observes everything through the lens of his video
camera. He is obsessed with the visual beauty of the world seen through the
camera’s lens. The most haunting of his short videos is a lyrical portrait of
a dancing plastic grocery bag in the breeze. That moment in the film presents
the world in its fragile and mysterious beauty. To me, the image is a symbol of
the transcendent realm of beauty which underlies the world as we see it. In the metaphor of the movie, Ricky sees things nobody else sees and knows
things nobody else knows. As a character, he is foreboding, strange,
mysteriously threatening. And yet, his sense of the terrible beauty of living—the
real theme of the film—makes his role similar to that of the biblical prophet
or the poetic voice of the psalmist. These voices always call us to celebrate
the intricate beauty in which our daily lives are held. This summer, I have been playing with the theme of seeing what lies beneath
the world of casual perception. To really see something takes a great deal of
work. To see good art requires some effort and even a little struggle on the
part of the perceiver. Great art draws us into a conversation with the painting
or sculpture. It invites our focused attention and open mind. Sister Wendy on
PBS is a delightful guide into the art of seeing. She wonders with us about the
world which the artist sees and presents to us in a painting. Most often, that
world is subtly different than the world we normally inhabit. Seeing, paying attention, moves far beyond art. It is necessary in the social
world of politics as well. A few weeks ago I read an article, in the New Yorker,
which took the reader on a search for the real Al Gore. It was an interesting
review of Mr. Gore’s love of learning and his tendency to take every
discussion to the next highest level. Unwilling to simply address the effects of
pollution in a particular city, Gore wants to move to the interplay between
environmental concerns and industrial productivity. Then he jumps up a level to
the historical and economic themes involved. Given enough time Mr. Gore will
move to an almost cosmic perspective. His difficulty is that many people have trouble following him. He often comes
across as rather distant and impersonal, more involved with ideas than people.
In many ways, George W. Bush is the exact opposite, comfortable in interaction
with people, and less inclined to jump up into the realm of theory and history.
The author of the article commented that Al Gore was all transcendence and no
immanence. George W. Bush, he suggested was all immanence and no transcendence. This is not intended to be a political commentary, certainly not a criticism
of either the Governor or the Vice President. Rather, it is an example of the
dilemma which faces all of us. How do we inhabit the familiar world of our
everyday lives without losing a sense of the vast majesty and mystery of the
world beyond our immediate grasp? How do we understand powerful poetry which proclaims: 1 How do we even know that there is some reality beyond what we perceive from
day to day? One way is through experiences such as seeing dancing grocery sacks as icons
of a disorderly beauty which disturbs and fascinates us. Another way is to read
the writings of those who have explored the worlds beyond ordinary imagination.
These are the spiritual seers, the prophets, poets and artists of every age who
devote their disciplined lives to probing the veins of mystery just below the
surface of existence. They are the ones who keep our lives from becoming too
daily. All of my life, I have had an infatuation with these seekers: musicians,
artists, mystics, writers, story tellers, and ordinary people who remember
extraordinary experiences. One of the sources of my awakening was Richard Maurice Bucke, who was
studying medicine in London in 1872when he had an unexpected, powerful mystical
experience. It changed the direction of his life. Bucke spent the next years
pouring through literature to study other people who had recorded such mystical
experiences. Finding patterns in his research, Bucke published a book in 1902
entitled Cosmic Consciousness. It is from Bucke’s book that I take the
title of today’s sermon. The book, which is clearly outdated today, follows the premise that during
the course of human evolutionary development there emerged three forms of
consciousness. The first Bucke called Simple Consciousness. This is the awareness possessed
by all animals. Simple consciousness is an awareness of the things we see,
without an awareness of the self as the seer. Bucke’s second level is Self Consciousness, that self-awareness that allows
humans to understand themselves as distinct entities with the ability to perceive
not only others, but the self as well. To Bucke, immersed in the emerging evolutionary theory of his time, it seemed
logical that Simple consciousness emerged first in the evolutionary process,
followed much later by Self Consciousness. At the pinnacle of evolution is Bucke’s
third level which he called Cosmic Consciousness. This is an awareness of the
complexity and interconnectedness of all creation. Often attained by a mystical
experience. Cosmic Consciousness, Bucke suggested, is the quality of great spiritual and
creative leaders. His list, sadly limited to males, includes Jesus, Buddha,
Dante, Francis Bacon and Walt Whitman. In spite of the naive compilation of rather different experiences into one
evolutionary category, the book Cosmic Consciousness served to give a
secular context for the discussion of theological realities. A the time in which
he Bucke lived, the church was hardly open to considering Jesus and Buddha as
similarly endowed with a common consciousness. Bucke describes it this way: Please forgive the exclusive language of 1902. "Like a flash there is presented to [a person’s] consciousness a
clear conception (a vision) in outline of the meaning and drift of the
universe . . . He sees and knows that the cosmos . . . is in fact . . . in
very truth a living presence. He sees that instead of men being, as it were,
patches of life scattered through an infinite sea of non-living substance,
they are in reality specks of relative death in an infinite ocean of life.
He sees that the life which is in man is as immortal as God is; that the
universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things
work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of
the world is what we call love, and that the happiness of every individual
is in the long run absolutely certain." I believe that Cosmic Consciousness was one of the books which paved
the way for the Western world to consider spirituality as a category apart from
the dogma of the Christian Church. To some degree, Bucke was a founder of what
we often call New Age Spirituality. I want to affirm Bucke’s insight
that all religious traditions are avenues to a deeper level of perception. And I
would suggest that the major purpose of all religion is to awaken individuals to
the lively reality of the world which lies beneath and beyond all we experience.
Cosmic Consciousness does not answer our questions about the world. It sharpens
and enlarges them. It allows us to imagine a sparrow finding shelter in the
altar of God, to honor the house of God as the doorway to perceive the blazing
magnificence of creation. In The Christian Century a couple of months ago, there is an excerpt from a
recent book written by Howard Mumma, a retired Methodist minister, who describes
a series of conversations he had with the very famous and distinguished French
existentialist author, Albert Camus. Mumma served the American church in Paris
in the 1950’s and he recalls noticing a man in a dark suit surrounded by
admirers. It was Camus, a hero to the French after the war, an existentialist
who with Jean Paul Sartre, observed the plain but harsh truth that human beings
are alone in the universe. They believed that the immediate moment, the
immediate experience, is all there is and all any of us may ever hope for. Camus
had come to hear Marcel Dupré play the organ, but then he began to stay, to
listen, and eventually struck up a friendship with Mumma that resulted in
conversations about faith and religion. There were always rumors that Camus was actually a sympathizer, if not a
Christian believer. Mumma recalls him saying during a conversation one evening: "The reason I have been coming to church is because I am seeking. I’m
almost on a pilgrimage—seeking something to fill the void I am experiencing .
. . I am searching for something the world is not giving me." He went on,
according to Mumma, "I have been thinking a great deal about the
transcendent, something that is other than this world." Camus knew the Bible; knew that major Biblical characters, Jonah, Moses,
Isaiah, were not confident, self-assured believers, but unsure, questioning,
seekers. Jonah and Moses did not seem to want to believe. Both resisted
responding to God’s call. Isaiah was virtually paralyzed by his experience of
God. Camus asked the classic old question, "What does it mean to be born
again, to be saved?" Mumma’s answer was a good one, "To me to be born again
is to enter anew or afresh into the process of spiritual growth. It is to
receive forgiveness. It is to wipe the slate clean. You are ready to move ahead,
to commit yourself to a new life, a new spiritual pilgrimage." Camus, Mumma reports, looked at him with tears in his eyes and said, ‘‘Howard,
I am ready. I want this. This is what I want to commit my life to!" Camus died in an automobile accident soon after this conversation. Perhaps,
however, it was enough to acknowledge that he was on a quest, and that he sought
that which lies beyond the present moment. Cosmic Consciousness is not so much a goal as a direction, not so much an
accomplishment as style of living. It is a reminder that we, all of us, are
deceived by what we assume is real, and important, and holy. All we need do is wipe the slate clean and commit ourselves to a new
pilgrimage. Amen. 1. The Christian Century, "Conversations with Camus," June 7-14,
2000. This illustration is from John Buchanan’s sermon, The Search for the
Sacred, preached on June 18, 2000, at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of
Chicago.
|