29 - On the Champs - Elysees

Sitting on the Champs-Elysees doubtlessly has its very special Parisian charm. People do this for various reasons, if nothing else, to get out of the confining offices of shops or factories. More ponderous minds find this a perfect opportunity to watch the moving scene of life. For me, here is a prompt to reflect upon what is going on in the souls and hearts and minds of so many different types of people, what relevance to spirituality here? Musing on my rather more metaphysical grasp of what spirituality really means in my high tech, modern aluminum cave in the Pyrenees helps me x-ray - what strikes the eye, as the ceaseless crowds criss-cross right in front of me - a living film on the moving scene of life

Remember, I say to myself, the real cave is not carved in the stone, but an attunement (that paradoxical psychological chemistry of the objectivity of detachment with the subjectivity of involvement). How can I understand these beings if I do not recognize their idiosyncrasies in me? Of what value are my subjective impressions of them unless I were to involve myself with them, at least talk to them? "La ufe est un noeucl de relations. Life is a network of relationships", said St. Exupery. Life is interaction; we are intermeshed with each other. If we think of "that person" as "other" in what Martin Buber called the "I-it relationship", we become judgmental. We are lacking in love. So this is where spirituality comes in.

But now comes the test. That man with sunken cheeks right in front of me has so obviously been beaten by life, so disappointed, so forlorn, so bereft of hope. How can all my preaching about glorification have even the slightest meaning for him? When fate has proven to be so unfair, how can one enjoin upon its victim to believe in God?

In my seminars and retreats, I show how, by transcending the personal vantage point, one realizes that there is splendor behind "all this", but how can one not be locked into the personal perspective when fighting a losing battle for survival? What would be the use of presenting him this sublime teaching? Even if I had the opportunity of talking to him, it would fall upon his psyche like water on a duck's back. It took a leap into the sublime to overcome the floundering of my soul as I gaped upon the abyss in his soul. I smiled upon him. He couldn't believe anybody could smile upon him He did not have the strength to smile back. But after a double-take, I could see that something stirred in the unsounded depths of his being. Here it was easy to love; facing suffering, it is easy to love. This was his only cure, love, not glorification. The emotion of the heart rather than the emotion of the soul. But I could only have found that love by getting in touch with the emotion of my soul.

But what about that thug (please excuse the obviously judgmental term) slouching down the Champs Elysees, yelling swear words, molesting the girls, throwing his beer can on the pavement and snatching the purse of a fashionable old lady right in front of my eyes in broad daylight, at the dismay of sheer incredulity of the passers by, then taking flight? Love comes less easily here; in fact, is it at all realistic?

It would be a platitude to say that it is just because he has so alienated himself from the sacredness of the very act of life that this could ever occur. This is where only our sense of paradox, as Pir-o-Murshid mentions, helps us face this aberration. "All faces are My Face", says God, according to the Qur'an. Could the Face of God have become spoliated? Fruit putrefies; the seed remains unscathed. Yes, all is God, providing we grasp that behind the immanent God, who, according to Meister Eckhart. "becomes and unbecomes", we grasp the transcendent dimension of God in His/Her perfection. Perfection, all inclusive, must include freedom, with the consequence that things can get out of hand.

Do we recognize ourselves in that thug? The propensities are inherent. Do we not nurture resentment? This is what has brought him to this point. He may well have been humiliated and abused as a child and disenchanted by the hypocrisy of the very people who profess spirituality. In this case, a smile would not help. What help does spirituality have to offer here? One would have to start from scratch; it would involve a whole educative process. It means overcoming heavily set in sardonic disenchantment, indelible resentment and bitter irony. The people in Plato's cave with their backs to the light could not understand what people meant when they said the grass was green and the sky blue, nor do fish know the sea they are floating in. Some might ascribe the condition to a lack of spirituality from the start. I would say, perhaps the lacuna is in the way spirituality is ordinarily meted out to the young, totally out of phase with the thinking of our time.

The young are living in a tougher world than ever before, suspended upon an atmosphere of hopelessness which all the permissiveness in the world cannot allay. Youths need to have something to look forward to: out-run their father's records, unmask their blunders, free-wheel creatively, build a brave new world. Take this away and young persons become disgruntled, apathetic, sardonic, sometimes violent or degenerate. Spirituality. that totally incommensurate dimension that crowns our human values and spins one's mind and emotions beyond their middle range, has inspired civilizations to produce great cultures. It still remains the live force spurring us to outreach ourselves, but spirituality needs to be updated. Space age spirituality, further dimensions of reality, that is the pointer.

This realization came across overwhelmingly when a nun was passing by. Here at least, I had expected that spiritual dimension missing in the thug (in my estimation). But I missed the joy, the radiance, the sparkle of St. Theresa of Lisieux or the compassion of Mother Theresa of Calcutta. I sensed humility misconstrued into self-denigration, reinforced by a guilt complex. I sensed a cult of suffering bordering upon masochism. I do not wish to generalize but Christ could not have wished for this. I see him earnest because conscious of the suffering of the world but full of joy. "Be ye of good cheer", he says to the forlorn poor in spirit.

Updated spirituality, is that to be found in the new age flower people? Here was a typical hippie conforming to non-conformism. shipwrecked in the unleashed ocean of his psyche and taking it to be spirituality is it spirituality to so damage the delicately programmed brain we are invested with?

There was the colorful ramble of the good, steady mainstream loners. And now, standing out in the crowd, a one with sunlight in the eyes, nobility in the gait, strength blended with gentleness in the demeanor, restraint and wisdom in the voice. Our glances crossed, just as my glance did when I passed that Rishi at an earlier Kumbh Mela or communed with that dervish at Shams Tabriz's tomb. But here, no robes, no role playing, no pretense at spirituality. Just a mutual attunement, unspoken mutual realization, and mutual recognition. Such is spirituality in real life.
