Dear Catherine,
Well, I’m back from the video tour
and properly rested. I read your e-mail
and I am quite familiar with the concepts.
The idea that salvation comes from Grace is obvious to me. In my case it happened in the Post Office at
”Since I am not an accomplished writer and cannot describe my feelings
of self-loathing well, you will have to take it on faith that I finally hit
bottom, my consciousness peppered with thoughts of suicide. Then, on a lovely tropical morning, after a
drunken and debauched night with a woman whose husband was out of town, I was
sluggishly lumbering through the International Market Place on my way to the
Post Office, the pavement glistening from a light morning shower, the sun
playing hide and seek with big billowy clouds, plumerias
spraying their erotic fragrance as gentle trade winds rattled the palm fronds,
when I noticed a jaunty old man, a vacationer or pensioner come to idly pass
the sunset years, appropriately attired in Bermuda shorts, aloha shirt, tennies, and a straw hat, perusing his mail as he ambled my
way. As he got closer I realized we were
on a collision course and sent a message to my feet to move left, but nothing
happened! Panic stricken, I tried to
move out of the way a second time but the body would not respond!
I had completely lost control.
A couple of seconds before impact the bodies stopped face to face and I
heard a sweet voice, which was not my own, speaking through me.
"Excuse me, sir, may I ask you a
question?" it said.
Someone else had taken over!
Since I had no idea what the voice was about to say, I tried to
apologize but the words would not come. I was not connected at the mouth
either! The old man looked up, unaware
of my distress, a kind smile on his wrinkled face.
"Yeah, sure, sonny, shoot."
Then the voice, flowing like nectar from a deep place within, resumed,
"Out of curiosity, sir, how old do you think I am?"
Since I already knew the answer and had not the slightest interest in
the opinion of the doddering old codger, I was completely flabbergasted.
Certain I was going mad, I ran frantically around inside my mind looking for
the control panel but reality, a mind of its own, was completely uninterested.
The old man stepped back, pulled on his pipe, gave me the once-over, and
judiciously replied, "Well, sonny, I'd say you're forty-three."
A long history of untruth meant I could spot a lie a mile away; he was
deliberately underestimating his age to spare my feelings.
"Well,
yes, thank you very much," the voice said sweetly.
"Don't mention it, sonny," he said, proceeding on his way.
I seriously considered the possibility I was losing my mind, but the
experience was permeated with such a sense of clarity, I did not indulge my
fear. And then I regained control and
proceed toward my mailbox, the mind settling on the concerns of the day. But as
I entered the foyer I lost it again!
Instead of proceeding into the Post Office proper as programmed, the
body confidently turned left, entered the men's room, and parked itself in
front of a big mirror over the wash basins, the eyes glued straight ahead, feet
welded to the floor.
"Damn, not again! Am I
flipping out?" I thought anxiously.
But I was not going mad. I was
having a good look, courtesy of God, at what I had become. I do not know how long I stood there, unable
to move a muscle - perhaps a full five minutes - aware but unaware of the
stares of the men coming and going, the flushing toilets, the irritating
flicker of the neon over the mirror. But
it did not matter because a brand new world had miraculously opened up, a inner
world illumined by a powerful Light in whose presence I saw it all... every
last bit of the sin and corruption that I was.
The moment of truth in the Post Office lifted a monstrous weight, Saul
on the road to
And for the first time in my twenty-six years I realized there was a
compassionate God.”
My ‘salvation,’ however was not the end
of my suffering, although it was the beginning of the end. I think when the Lord blesses someone with an
experience it is up to the person to make the changes that the experience
implies. I was completely inspired by
this experience and eagerly set out to live a righteous life. And I discovered that the ‘works’ I did
acted as an invocation, that is, God responded to my efforts by showering me
with many more ‘salvations,’ direct experiences of Him, at least as powerful
and sometimes more powerful than the one I described. These experiences lasted for about three
years. During that and subsequent
epiphanies I saw God clearly, as clearly as I see the computer screen on which
these words are appearing. What I saw
coincides with what scripture describes as the nature of God. Whether the subsequent epiphanies were caused
by my invocations or not is hard to determine.
But why should God not respond to sincere attempts to communicate and
understand in an obvious way…by generating experiences that reveal His
nature?
One thing I have realized during my
long and intense communication with God, which is as intimate and strong as it
was the day we (me and God) met, makes me question the following statement,
“that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope
of eternal life” is that saint and sinner are already ‘heirs to eternal
life.’ We just do not know it. God’s nature is eternal and so is ours…’man
is cast in the image of God.’ So, the
whole point is for us, motivated by ‘faith,’ is to remove our ignorance of the
nature of God and therefore remove our self ignorance. When we discover that we are whole and
complete, lacking in nothing (because God has made us that way) the propensity
to ‘sin’ dries up, sin being just the God (and self) insulting actions we do
out of the light of God. Some may find
this view a bit heretical because they have been so conditioned to believe in
their innate (original) sinfulness. In
my experience there is ‘original’ sin, in the sense of a deep and apparently beginningless ignorance of God, but when knowledge of God
becomes firm it erases the sense of limitation and separation that causes us to
pursue our own selfish ends at the expense of God’s will and the world
around…which is also God. And it allows
us to ‘merge’ into God, in the sense of understanding our identity in love with
Him. The world is God because scripture
tells us that God is omnipresent. The
creation is non-separate from God because it comes directly from Him like the
web of a spider is made of the spider’s body and shaped by the spider’s
intelligence. God did not requisition
souls from an evil parallel universe and plunk them down in his lovely creation
just to save them…what perversity that would be!...because there is simply
nothing anywhere that is not God, or if you prefer…of God. One can account for the belief in the reality
of Lucifer by ignorance of God. When you
haven’t been ‘saved’ you experience fear and selfishness. And because these are uncomfortable emotions
they are repressed and then personified…to get the ‘sinner’ off the hook; he or
she can blame the ‘Devil’ for his or her suffering.
As far as the idea that salvation
implies that one ‘do good works’ I agree completely. But it is not easy. The tendencies that one develops before one
realizes that there is a loving God and that he or she is part and parcel of God, are often very deep.
So usually ‘salvation’ sets up a struggle within the person between the
noble God fearing part and the selfish part… which make take many years to
resolve.
I’m sure that we are going to have
an interesting conversation about the Lord.
So you get a better idea what my idea of God is, I’m enclosing a
discussion about God I had with a fellow I met on the internet. Mind you, my interest in sharing with you is
in no way motivated by an attempt to alter your faith. On the contrary I would hope that a
discussion with someone outside your tradition would help to clarify and
strengthen your faith. My view is that
whatever a person’s beliefs, they have come by them honestly and need to be
respected and that God has this whole creation under control and does not
require us to proselytize. Because in
the long run what really matters is love, not what one
thinks. When I was more intemperate in
the old days I occasionally crossed swords with people whose views were
different from mine, but time has had a mellowing effect and I’m in the autumn
of my life and much inclined to peace.
So I’m saying what I’m saying simply out of love for you…nothing else.
Ram