An especially limiting feature of the standing order of morality, by which I mean the study and the subsequent practice of the choices of right and wrong, is the effect it has on our lives. This may be assessed not so much by how we feel, as by how our presence affects other people. We may, for instance, effect an air of bonhomie sufficient to convince those who believe that they know us quite well, while in fact a cloud might separate us quite sharply from them. This is not so much the cloud of unknowing about which the medieval mystic wrote, as the far less separative cloud of common decency that may form a distinct barrier between us and them. This barrier of dubious activity and our way of evading its results serve to sully the moral order. The situation was well summarized by Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1937), a hero for the forces of common decency during the Spanish Civil War during the l930s. He wrote "Faith which does not doubt is dead faith". This is spelled out even more explicitly: "Cure yourself of the inclination to bother about how you look to other people. Be concerned only with the idea God has of you." The first quotation of Unamuno contains the vital paradox of doubt: if you are quite sure you are infallibly right, there is something radically wrong with your clear understanding of reality. Take the dogmatic medical practitioner, for example, who can only pity practitioners of alternative medicine, or the self-assured psychiatrist who is arrogantly convinced that all mental illness stems from internal sources. Such a practitioner will not so much as glance at the possibility that behavioural disorders may from time to time have a psychic background, by which I mean that there may be interference from entities, both living and discarnate, which infest and invade the minds of those suffering from intrinsic mental disorder and cause further confusion and terror.
On the more material level, we encounter the dogmatic politician whose assessment of the state of the world or of their country is amusingly, yet horrifyingly, naïve, through personal prejudice and sheer ignorance.
Ignorance is much more than merely the basis of destructive doubt, inasmuch as, more than any other emotional state, when prejudice has occluded the sight of a well-qualified, professional worker in the fields of national or international affairs, it clouds the mind. Religion and the scientific world outlook are both inimical to the sight-denying capacity of doubt. The first is essentially a scheme of reality which has been devised by the arrogant human mind determined to impress itself on its fellow human beings that they may believe what is scarcely credible to effect power over human thought, or select a sacerdotal caste or class that may be able to assert absolute power over the independent ability of humans to judge for themselves what is right and wholesome and what is wrong and ill-considered. The second worships perpetually at the altar of reason in an exclusive company: science is its god.
Of all the human institutions, the Church, using the term in its widest meaning to include all religious agencies, should be the way forward to a decent society with fairness, honesty, and purity of action, whether sexual, financial, or political, as the real test of innocent motive to a service that the whole world can see. It claims allegiance to a power that transcends human understanding and whose nature is love, wisdom, and compassion. Love is a total self-giving to the limits of wisdom, for what use is my sacrifice if it cannot be used valuably by the person to whom it is given? Compassion is an ardent feeling for the suffering of another person or persons. Love acts to its maximal degree when it is geared to its height, we know that we have crossed over from death to life, because we love our fellow-Christians. This famous passage from 1 John 3.14 gives an admirably lucid account of the new life of love seen in the person of Jesus Christ. It is also grossly inadequate in that it limits the institution of love to a special group, great no doubt, but still merely one of many individuals humbly doing their work with us, while on earth.
Judaism is a religion of wisdom, no surprise when one considers the brilliance of the Jews over many generations. Their mystical outflow is poorly generated when compared with the great religions of the East, especially Buddhism and Hinduism. Islam resembles Judaism with regard to its reverence for the Bible, and its respect for its own teaching in the Koran; and the finest Muslim teachers have emphasized the need for its teaching to be revised in the confrontation of new knowledge that reveals itself constantly in the greater world than its own limited field. Islam also has a beautiful mystic content in the form of Sufism with its emphasis on love.
All this is excellent, of course, and little can be faulted but, in fact, few of its practitioners have practised what they have preached. All believe that they are right; they are not so much ignorant as arrogant, and in that arrogance they are not really prepared to listen to anything other than their own views. The moral order teaches us that of ourselves we know very little. It is only when we relate positively and constructively with other people that we are able to move beyond our own selfishness to an understanding of reality that can embrace all people and all forms of life, and then we can begin to appreciate the brilliance of the generations that have come from Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and others: also, so that we may all grow into that fullness of being that was shown absolutely in the total Christ. I have already emphasized that the total Christ is more than a single person. His nature was shown in a single person, of that I have no doubt at all, but his basis is in all people who are prepared to go beyond themselves and give of themselves fully to all the world and to all life. In this way they grow into the fullness of life, which is the basis of all our common humanity.
When we feel that we know everything according to some written text, we invariably twist our own understanding and our relationships with other people, and become more and more offensive and ignorant. This is the tragedy of the moral order when it is seen solely on a dogmatic level. The moral order is good when it can be changed. In other words, there is no definite or infinite moral order. When I start to tell you what is good and what is bad, and what you should do and what you should not do, I immediately fill you with my own prejudices.
What is the right way to live? Jesus said "You shall love your neighbour as yourself". Indeed, this comes from the Bible even before Jesus (Leviticus 19.18). The actual moral order is very simple; it is contained in the Ten Commandments, in the Sermon on the Mount and the rather similar teachings in the other great religious traditions also. But if I were to set out to tell you what to do, and gave you a written script, I would immediately cramp your style, and in the end you would cease to be a full, real human being.
What is the right way to live your life? Is chastity better than promiscuity, for instance? On one level the answer must be "Yes". Nearly everybody would agree that a chaste lifestyle is to be preferred to one of sexual promiscuity. Yet if you look at the great figures of the Bible and the Koran and other sacred texts, you will find that this is not always the case. Something often seems to be missing from strict morality, and that is love. If I can give my love to you, even in terms of bodily action, I may be closer to God than if I restrict myself from you and will not give fully of myself to you and what you need.
Is it better to steal or to remain absolutely perfect in one's honesty? Again, it depends on the situation. If one is stealing in order to give food to a starving child, it can be justified. On the other hand, if one steals merely out of greed, the action is indubitably wrong. In other words, the moral order cannot simply be defined unilaterally and categorically without reference to its final point of application. If we were living in a perfect world, those who lived perfectly on a moral level would be the ones to follow, but in the world we live in, with so many distortions of morality, even produced by people who seem on the surface to be the very paragons of the right way of living, they should have doubts about their own actions.
What about those who are involved in shady dealings on the Stock Exchange, and are dishonest in their material lives as well? And yet they may at times be much closer to the naked truth about themselves than many others who are able to make a good impression on other people. I am not suggesting here that it is a good thing to be immoral or in any way dishonest in one's dealings: that could not surely be right, but there are times when giving oneself in one's emptiness to other people may be much nearer the heart of true charity than merely keeping it for oneself in a hard-hearted, cruel sort of way.
Doubt is at the very heart of the moral order. Decisions may be very easy for those who know what is right and what is wrong, for they are satisfied both with themselves and what they have. They have no needs any more, whether it is in the field of personal relationships or in relation to money or other possessions that they might want. But there are others who need things that they may not have: beauty, joy, acceptance; they too need to have something the world cannot give them, and until they have it, they will never know what it is to be fulfilled individuals.
Thus, while it is right that Unamuno should say that "Faith which does not doubt is dead faith", dead faith is so bound to assurance that it does not need to move on at all; it knows that it is right and can just go to sleep. That is the nature of so much religion: I have fulfilled my duties for today, therefore I have nothing further to do. Only when my faith is alive, only then is my doubt truly alive, can I start having a living faith, and that faith may enliven my doubt and then I might start to live consciously.
This is something we need to consider again towards the end of this book, when we come to our good fellow traveller, Job, who was such a fine, righteous man until tragedy smote him and he had to begin to live and see life as it really was and could no longer rest behind prosperity of one kind or another.
To my mind there is no question but that the tragedies of one kind or another which smash us and make us fit for nothing are a way of growth towards not only our knowledge of God, but our love of our fellow creatures also. When all goes well for us, we become increasingly smug and sure of ourselves, and also rather superstitious inasmuch as, should we do anything wrong, something unpleasant may befall us, and so we lose that lust for life which is the basis of all creative human existence.
It is a strange paradox that when we do something well, we may be nearer the dark side of reality than when we have moved beyond the bright side and are now in the darkness itself; through the darkness a greater light may shine, but when we are asleep we are incapable of seeing anything at all. This is why a great deal of what might be called conventional or orthodox religion is so dead. It is not because its teaching is dead, but because its practitioners are dead. They are so sure of themselves, so closed to anyone else that they do not know what they are doing or what they are seeing. Fortunately, there may be a later opening to the Divine Presence, and through this to the world around them. If we are in a state of prosperity, we often do not know this rejoicing, but instead we quarrel with one another. If we are in a beautiful garden we are often blind to the beauty, and see only the dirt on the grass, if anything at all. Only when an illness comes to us may we understand what health is about, and then at last we begin to work towards bodily soundness. Fortunately for us there is never an end to the munificence of God, even when we have wasted and spoiled the gifts which he has given us.
Life is the most marvellous gift in the world to us because it is vibrant with activity. We do not have to imagine anything at all, we just have to be still and listen intently. The more we try and harmonize with it, the more we put it from us. Just as the more I try to prove I agree with you, the more obvious it becomes that I am not really sympathetic to you at all, but am trying to make the most favourable impression on you. One simply should be quiet, still, and listen, and in that state joy comes to one, and one begins to know that God is there, and one begins to know who God is as well: not a person, nor a being, nor a state of awareness; in fact, the only way that I could define God is purely negatively, as the great mystics have always told us. "Not this, not that" is how the Hindu puts it. "The cloud of unknowing" is another way of putting it. God is always known by the negativity of his presence. And yet in that negativity we are closer to his being than we would be if he poured out a shower of wonderful events which blinded us by their dazzling quality.
"Neither this, neither that", the Buddhists say of God, in whom they do not believe in at all as a personal entity, but as emptiness or the great void. How hard it is for a Westerner to see ultimate reality in those terms! But then, it is perfectly true; it is much more real than visualizing God as a person who shows favouritism towards a group of people whom he likes especially, and is very angry with others whom he intends to punish if they do not do exactly what he wants of them.
What about the punishing nature of God, then? Does God punish? Is there any moral order at all? We believe there is a moral order, because without it human beings could not live as moral beings, and they would destroy each other. But it is not God that does the destroying; God is quiet, and when we are in the stillness too, we begin to see what we ought to be doing, and then we know God as the supreme providence which guides everything by his very presence. He does not need to shout, command, or produce effects of one type or another in order to make us sit up and be aware. He simply tells us to be quiet, be still, and know that he is God (Psalm 46.10). In that stillness we know of the presence of God, the God who destroyed the enemies of the Jews in this famous psalm; it was not God that was destroying them, it was they who were destroying themselves because they did not practise stillness, and therefore fell foul of their adversaries and precipitated their own destruction. When we begin to know stillness, we can begin to know the power of God in the form of eternal silence, a silence that is more eloquent than speaking for millions of years.
How strange it is that the nature of reality is known in its negative form, the way of negativity, the cloud of unknowing! When we know this, we know something about reality, and then we can begin to see what God is telling us about the nature of reality as well. That is the way that we can be aware of God if we are sensitive. We cannot know him directly. If we did know God, he might burn us up! This is one way of seeing him. More likely, we would be swallowed up into a void of sheer non-being. Neither of these views is very frightening from my point of view, but they are unsatisfactory because they are negative. But when we know the nature of God, we are still, quiet, and begin to listen. God does not need my stillness, but other people do. It is only when I can be quiet and listen that I can hear what other people are saying, and therefore can be of some help to them according to their need.
Most people are of no help to others at all, because they are not really listening. They want to help; it is not that they are not concerned, but their real concern is for themselves and what other people are thinking about them. Only when they have moved beyond self-concern and all its egoism can they know the other person, and be of help as they ought to be. That is the way in which we know God. When we are quiet, a presence of stillness comes to us and at last we know the true God who brings us close to the love of our fellow creatures, not only human beings, but everything that lives. All are part of the essential beauty of the world. Nothing is hidden from us. But unfortunately, we are usually so full of ourselves and our own concerns that the beauty of the world and its glory are largely hidden from us, and we are not able to see anything at all of it.
That is what the moral order is basically about. It is not being very good or doing the right thing, or following a code of laws like the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, or any other great teaching, excellent as all these are. But they are all essentially of human origin in the end. I would say that even about the Sermon on the Mount or the Ten Commandments; they are wonderful prescriptions of the positive way of life, but they do not get you very far until you are still, and can begin to assimilate and practise them.
The greatest of all these prescriptions is surely the Sermon on the Mount, but how can you follow it? I asked this question in one of the earlier chapters of this book. If you are slapped on the right cheek, turn the left cheek to be slapped as well. If a person takes money from you, let them have more of it. How can you do this? It is really idealistic, but nobody could quarrel with its beauty. The answer is, do not become attached to material things at all; while you are attached to material things, there must be problems in your life; material things are illusions. Here I am today, a man growing in age, rather crippled as I have said before, in due course I may or may not get better or worse; but one thing is certain, I am going to die, as everyone else does. Everything that we have here is an illusion. The Hindus speak about maya - illusion. While we are attached to anything in this life, it goes from us through the process of time, the attenuating process of time by which we all live.
Without death nothing would live at all, because there would be such an overcrowding in the world that nobody would be able to move. That is why death is possibly God's greatest gift to all of us. But it should be a death after a constructive life when we have seen and enjoyed the wonders around us; and have been able to give of our particular genius to other people. Then when the time comes for us to pass on, we will not only have seen and understood what we have been given, but will be able to give to other people as well, and joy will come to all of us through that meeting. This is the spiritual way of life and the moral order.
Use everything that you have been given properly and advantageously. Thank God for it all, and give it to other people; do not cling on to anything. The tendency to hang on to things is one of our greatest human foibles. Remember Mary of Magdala and the other woman, and the risen Christ: they clasped his feet, and he told them to take word to his brothers, to go ahead and leave and see him in Galilee (Matthew 28.6-10). "Do not cling to me", said Jesus, "for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them that I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (John 20.17).
The full meaning of this is somewhat obscure, but one thing is certain, we dare not cling to any being while that being is still with us. That being has to move on. Had the women really stayed with Jesus and not left him, they would not have moved on themselves, and would have been attached to an entity or an appearance that would not let them go. When we have to face the fact of death, do not let us be too lugubrious about it. Let us see that it is our way forward to a new existence. This applies to all people. It is we who make death a tragedy, by clinging on to earthly life desperately, and not seeing what God is telling us about reality. The moral order is here to tell us that nothing in this world belongs to us. It is here for our experimentation and our experience, and after this we are fitted to go on to other things, notably to quit our present home and to be with other entities. The real life that is the life here is the life of the spirit, in which we may know God, as the silent being in whom all things exist. That is how all mystics understand God. He is silence, absolute silence, but in that silence there is a greater presence of being than in all the noise that human beings can create.
Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46.10). This is the God who sustains us by his loving presence. He does not interfere in our lives. He is there to support us by his concern and loving care. He does not do anything deleteriously to any other creature because all creatures are under his protective wing. The very statement: Be still and know that I am God, is actually something of a mistranslation. A more acceptable version is "Let be then; learn that I am God" (46.10).
The Psalms often stress the close link between God's chosen people Israel, but in many of the finest of them the Lord of Hosts has a universal character. Of course, God loves everything that he has made and there is nothing outside the moral order, because through that order we come to be responsible human beings, whatever we may call ourselves in terms of nation, race, religion, colour, or creed. Unfortunately we all tend to identify ourselves according to these criteria, and the results can be destructive, as we all know only too well.
God has no favourites. We learn that from the conversion of Cornelius to Christianity by Peter (Acts 10.34-35). God loves everything that he has made, and there are no degrees of love. You either love or else you do not love, but you cannot love some people more than others. This is one of the things that we humans do not understand properly. If I say that I love you, I love you with all my heart, and soul, and mind and strength: not only with a little piece of myself. Unfortunately again, most of us do not see this clearly, we have a sort of Laodicean (lukewarm) view of relationships, and are prepared to give what we want to give but no more. In the end, we have to learn that all that is created is created through the love of God whom nobody has ever seen visually. But in that love all are brought into his presence.
As a created being I am of very little worth. What am I but a mass of flesh and bones here today, gone tomorrow! But in my mind, in my mental and spiritual capacity, I am of incalculable value. Furthermore I am now small compared with what I shall be eventually; again not on a material level but on a spiritual level. Consider the really great creators of humanity, the musicians, artists, and writers and all the others of that type who have inspired humanity to a new understanding of what it should mean to be a human: no longer fighting against each other, or acquiring wealth, or becoming richer or more powerful, but simply giving to others the products of the inspiration with which they have been endowed.
If you are an inspirational person, as I am myself, you do not need to grasp for inspiration; it comes to you quite spontaneously. When you are quiet and still, the idea comes to you and the form comes with it as well. I am sure that this applies with far greater intent to the really great musicians, writers, and artists of the world; they are open, the idea comes to them, and it develops into a marvellous creation, which they in turn can bequeath to the rest of humanity.
There is no greater gift than that of creativity. It cannot be bargained for, nor can you work towards it. For as soon as you do this, the ego intrudes and whatever is formed is spoiled. If there is one thing that prevents creativity, it is egoism. Even now, if I were to speak to you from an egotistical standpoint, I would get in the way, the creative process would be abolished, and anything regarding the Holy Spirit would be totally obliterated. You would simply hear my opinions, with which you may or may not agree, but in the end you would become disgruntled and bored. I of myself have nothing to offer at all. I know that perfectly well. This is certainly not false modesty, I can assure you; it is simply common sense and a realistic attitude to life.
In fact I have got a great deal to offer, my whole life is there before you if you want it, but if you were to pump it out of me, or I were to give it to you spontaneously, it would soon become embarrassing and boring. The real life is the life that you can see in me, and you can find in me as you hear me speak; then you can begin to know something about me, my attitude to life, and more important than that, what life has done to me and what life does to a human being generally; then you are beginning to learn something that could be of value to you. I, as it were, am a mere catalyst then. I do not change, but I am part of the spiritual process that brings life into full being for you. But as soon as I get in the way, I become a god in my own right and the results are not attractive, to put it mildly.
The moral order is one in which we are close to God in doing the work that he wants us to do. It is not being moral in terms of doing the right thing as opposed to the wrong and the moral order thing. So often in the history of the world the right thing has been tyrannical, while the wrong thing has been the basis of a new creativity. Many of the greatest artists have been regarded as immoral and disgusting, yet they have been the founders of a new understanding of relationships. William Blake in the eighteenth century and our own contemporary artist Francis Bacon are classical examples of people who have, in one way or another, been regarded as unpleasant if not disgusting and repulsive, and yet they have given us a closer view of reality than merely that of the staid, complacent writers and artists of the past. Which writers of the past would you be particularly interested in? Surely those like Dickens and Thackeray and others who have given us a frank description of life as it was lived in the last century. The Dickensian view of life was not particularly pleasant, because life in mid-nineteenth-century England was not pleasant for the broad masses. But people who have written in accordance with their smug view or understanding have irritated us, and not in any way lifted the net higher over the human situation.
The moral order, in other words, is an indication of the human situation as it is now. It may not be particularly pleasant, but it gives one a fairly accurate indication of how we live and what our attitudes to life are. It is far better to have an honest assessment of the moral order, which may not be particularly attractive, than to say and do the right things and to know the right people, while we ourselves are dishonest in our dealings with other people on a deeper level. And this dishonesty may not be direct fraudulence; it may be simply adopting ignorant attitudes which are foreign to us. Jesus said things that must have horrified many people in his time, and yet today he is an exemplar of a morality which can never wane.
Look how he described the religious authorities of his time in Matthew 23.
Jesus then addressed the people and his disciples in these words: "The doctors of the law and the Pharisees sit in the chair of Moses, therefore do what they tell you, pay attention to their words, but do not follow their practice, for they say one thing and do another. They make up heavy loads and pile them on the shoulders of others but will not themselves lift a finger to ease the burden. Whatever they do is done for show. They go about wearing broad phylacteries and with large tassels on their robes; they love to have the places of honour at feasts and the chief seats in synagogues, to be greeted respectfully in the streets and to be addressed as "rabbi".
"But you must not be called "rabbi", for you have one Rabbi and you are all brothers. Do not call anyone on earth "father", for you have one Father and he is in heaven. Nor must you be called "teacher"; you have one Teacher, the Messiah. The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people's faces, you do not enter yourselves, and when others try to enter, you stop them. Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You travel over sea and land to win one convert; and when you have succeeded you make him twice as fit for hell as you are yourselves.
"Alas for you, blind guides! You say, "If someone swears by the sanctuary, that is nothing, but if he swears by the gold in the sanctuary he is bound by his oath." Blind fools! Which is the more important, the gold or the sanctuary that sanctifies the gold? Or you say, "If someone swears by the altar, that is nothing; but if he swears by the offering that lies on the altar, he is bound by his oath." What blindness! Which is the more important, the offering, or the altar which sanctifies it? To swear by the altar, then, is to swear both by the altar and by whatever lies on it; to swear by the sanctuary is to swear both by the sanctuary and by him who dwells there; and to swear by Heaven is to swear both by the throne of God and by Him who sits upon it.
"Alas for you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, but you have overlooked the weightier demands of the law - justice, mercy, and good faith. It is these you should have practised without neglecting the others. Blind guides! You strain off a midge, yet gulp down a camel! Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You clean the outside of a cup or a dish, and leave the inside full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! Clean the inside of the cup first; then the outside will be clean also. (Matthew 23.1-26)
These are stern words; they are based on religious hypocrisy on a large scale. The terrible thing about it all is that the people whom Jesus condemned so vehemently were completely ignorant of their hypocrisy; they believed that if they performed certain ritual actions all would be well. They did not see that if their inner attitude was wrong, their outer action would be fruitless. So much religion of the past has been based on this inner hypocrisy, which is really an indication of ignorance and superstition.
Only if one has done the right thing first, as Jesus says, can subsidiary things be right. Therefore, before you eat say your prayers and your grace devoutly, then you can eat well and what you eat will be blessed. Saying grace is a way of thanking God before you have food to eat at all. It is a wonderful custom, but it must be said with intent, then the moral order is inside you; where you eat is blessed with the moral order also.