Discovering the Real Person
Tom Lawson

The Bible, and other spiritual literature, is full of tantalizing clues to personal discovery and personal change. Since ancient times philosophers and religious seekers have sought insight into the nature of a truer, deeper personhood and the means by which it may be achieved. This search even includes the secrets by which death may be survived. Even in our materialistic, technological age most of us are curious as to what lies beneath and beyond. In our time together I would like to look through three windows to discover what possibilities are contained. I call them "the original person," "the connected person," and "the transformed person."

The music you heard for the prelude is by Van Morrison and was chosen not only for its Irish background, since Diane is performing music from that tradition, but also for its lyrical content. I will read you a part of the lyrics:

Your original face? What is that? Here is an exercise. Think back. Way back. What are your earliest memories? Can you recall? In a book of family photos there is one of me taken outside in a stroller. I am looking up at the camera and my appearance seems to be filled with potentiality, open to the world, relaxed, not burdened with negative impressions nor filled with prejudice, at the point of origin-in other words, original. Erich Neumann, in his essay "Mystical Man", says:

Did you hear that? The young child lives in the mythical world, and it is the primary one, full of wonder and light. Wouldn't we all like to be there again, living at the point of our origin, with each moment like a glorious sunrise, full of potential? Is that what Jesus was talking about when he said we must be like little children and be born again? I think so. It makes us want to live like that original person that was once at home and conversant with God, living at the source of it all, at the stream where there is living water, which we perceive as the eternal flow of consciousness.

So if we are here but we once were there, the central mystery of existence is why we were ever separate from God in the first place. We cannot know the mind of God or the motives of the Creator, but to me the most satisfying is this: "I was One; I wanted to be many." If we turn to the ancient Sanskrit we are given a vocabulary which aids us in our understanding. Swami Pradhupada, who spent a lifetime studying Vedic literature and his later years teaching westerners, said:

First there is Brahman, the source of all there is, God, formless and unfathomable. The mystery of God is deep. In fact, Brahman is most frequently described in Sanskrit by what is not, neti, neti, not this, not that. But here we are, created and we do have attributes. The incarnated person is atman, in which is contained one's own inner reality. The gulf between atman and Brahman is huge indeed and few can cross it on their own. This is why Hinduism recognizes a third entity, the Paramatman, the Highest Person, the Mighty Lord. Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity all recognize the importance of spiritual transmission by means of the divine master. This is how the gap is bridged. This is how we learn. Jesus, the embodiment of divine personhood, meets us in our personhood. The New Testament calls him the great high priest, and this is his function: to bring us back to the divine. This is essential if we would achieve the original personhood of which we once were a part. If we were in an Orthodox church we might see painted on the ceiling the Pantocrator, the image of Christ surrounded by a halo with his radiance extending, gathering all creation into himself, a constant reminder to the worshiper. In Buddhist tradition there is the Boddhisattva-an enlightened being who does not seek nirvana until all beings have been saved. This describes Jesus exactly, one who is not satisfied until he leads us all back to original personhood, of which he is the Paramatman, the Original Person of all original persons. For this manifestation and for the fact that it is similarly observed and celebrated by other faiths, we can only stand in awe and exclaim Amen.

This brings us to the connected person. There is a particular quality of those who, as the Buddhists say, have entered the stream, and that may be described as the quality of connectedness. We no longer live for ourselves but for the greater humanity. It is exemplified in the lives of Jesus, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Albert Schweitzer, and many whose names are not known by us, none of whom were truly at home unless they were living for andwith others, fighting with every ounce of their strength to infuse compassion, divine justice, and an ethical content into the world order.

The current national turmoil is the result of many factors, but it is possible to detect a common denominator responsible for much of it. The increasing separation between the wealthy and the poor, the shocking mortgage foreclosure rate, exploitation of immigrant labor, poverty and lack of opportunity which breeds the violent gang subculture of urban ghettos, credit card interest rates which can only be described as usury which drive already struggling families into bankruptcy-all of these are the direct result of predatory interests which enrich themselves at the expense of the common good, aided and abetted by government institutions which turn a blind eye to the destruction of what most of us claim as American values. If you read Leon Panetta's editorial last Sunday you may agree that the time has come for the people to do what our elected leaders have failed to do for us-to act for the common good.

Only the person who is connected to all living beings may be considered to be a true person at all. It all goes wrong with the idea that we are somehow separate- more educated, more cultured, more religious, more deserving-whatever lies we tell ourselves-than those other ones. Here is another exercise for you. Walk through a large group of people, say, at the mall or in a large public gathering, maybe even here. See them-truly see them-with equanimity-with no thought to their being somehow different from you. It is a humble, energizing, and transforming experience. It is what the white soldier discovered while receiving a blood transfusion from the black soldier on the battlefield in Vietnam. It is a means of perception which can truly change us and our world. One of my favorite quotations is from a book by the monk Thomas Merton on the sayings of the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century:

This echoes the words of Saint Paul, "There is no distinction between Jew and Greek, the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches upon all who call upon him."⁵ This is an essential shift in one's sense of self-identity, and the identity of others.

I can't escape commenting upon the current fixation of many denominations in the church on gender and sex issues-endlessly debating the "role" of women, gay and trans-gender individuals as if these characteristics were the true delineation of their being. These controversies are impeding, not aiding, the church's progress. As spiritual persons we are called to rise above categorizations of sex and gender, for while they are a part of our temporal nature they do not define or limit our spiritual capabilities. A renewed identity with our common bond to all created beings (and not only humans), and with the Source of our life the Creator can overcome this, but as in all things worthwhile, it requires effort.

And finally, the transformed person. Being put here, how then do we find our way back to God? And why should this occur in the first place, why must we undergo the labor and stress of working our way through this chaotic mess? It all has to do with paradox: there is so much which we can only understand by knowing its opposite, like yin and yang. The egoless existence of early childhood can be understood only by experiencing the ego. We cannot simply do away with it, deny it, or wish it didn't exist. Neither can we refuse to live in the world. Erich Neumann writes:

The ego, then, must be sacrificed to yield the realization of the egoless, the union with the Divine that we seek. This way, and Neumann continues, "which is the substance of all transformation mysticism, experiences both inner and outer worlds as shells. When these shells become transparent, the multiplicity of the numinous gives way to an experience of unity, in which the self is made manifest as the creative center out of which both man and the world are generated." ⁷ I love the part about transparent shells. This passage resonates with me, for I have found several on the beach washed by the sands of time, until you can hold them to the light and see through them in their beautiful luminous transparency. Let's resolve to be washed by life until we become like those shells.

What, then, is that other world like and what is our part in it? The best description I have ever read comes from Father Bede Griffiths, who spent a lifetime considering these things, much of it in India. He speaks of the Logos, the Word of God, in this way:

Note here the reciprocal nature of the person of God knowing man as man knows God.

And closing with a strikingly similar passage from the Svetasvatara Upanishad:

End notes