Love Irradiates The Universe

Tony: The passions of my early life — I suppose that’s what were — led me in the past to read an enormous amount of books. But gradually over the years certain things have happened to me that I have drawn a tremendous amount of information from. For instance I had an incredible experience during which I felt as if I had gone back to the beginning of things.

Tony read all these books – but books didn’t hold the answers he was looking for.

I had been wondering about difficulties in my life. I could see that they were causal. They had arisen from relationships with, for instance, my mother. But those events in themselves had been caused by things previous to them. So I was asking myself what was behind those events. During the experience in question I felt I was at the very beginning of the universe. I knew and experienced that beginning of things as a huge awareness. There was no separation in it at all. I had the impression that prior to it a whole universe had existed that had gradually sunk back, melted, or synthesised into this single great ocean of substance and consciousness. Although to be more precise I guess I should describe it as a whole condensed universe that was also consciousness existed beyond time and space (remember that the discovery of the Big Bang led the researchers to realise that at the moment if that massive creative act, time and space were created).

So from a huge universe in which had existed all manner of life forms, what I met had gradually synthesised into an immense and unimaginable single awareness. I felt that this was what our present science has seen as existing prior to the Big Bang. But the description is mine not that of science. It must be remembered that present scientific theory sees that the condition prior to the Big Bang was beyond time and space.

This view of a consciousness, which is a type of being existing prior to the emergence of the universe is not of course a new thing. Hindu philosophy talks of the universe as expanding and contracting over immense periods of time. It also states that fundamental to all existence is a form of consciousness. They describe this expansion and contraction as the breathing in and out of Brahm. But I felt that what our own science has not stated, or perhaps has not yet found, is the awareness or consciousness underlying everything.

I saw, I experienced, I felt with great emotion, that this consciousness was alone. In human terms that is the only way I can describe it. It was one immense consciousness without division, without separation anywhere in it. Nothing could exist outside of it. Even if it imagined something other than itself, that would still be an undivided part of itself. But because of what I am calling aloneness, the being, the consciousness wanted to create otherness. It wanted other beings to share its existence, its wonder.

So the only thing it could do to enable the existence of others was to die, to destroy itself. Therefore, as far as I can put this into words, with the enormous skill, with great art, with science, with an ability to plan and foresee the results beyond what we can understand, it set about its own death. It did this with enormous love. And that death and that love is what our present culture calls the Big Bang.

My experience was that the Big Bang was an act of enormously creative self giving. It did this so others might exist. It was the only way in which the possibility of other beings having an existence outside of itself could come about. It was almost like seeding itself.

Love Irradiates The Universe

What I saw was that the Big Bang utterly shattered the existence of what had been before. That ocean of energy and consciousness destroyed itself so beings such as ourselves might exist. And then, as it died, at the very last moments of its death, it shot out something to penetrate all that was coming into being. It radiated love. It gave us love as its parting gift so that if any beings got lost, if they were troubled or overcome in their experience of growth, they could reach out for that love and be helped. They could touch the love, the heart and soul of which was self giving.

The death of that being also meant that every particle of the universe and what has arisen out of its death is the very substance of that great creative being and its act of self giving. There is nothing in the universe that is not the body, the broken and fragmented body, of that being. Every tiny fragment of our earth, of our bodies, of our universe, the food we eat, is the essence of that being. Every tiny speck of the universe is a seed that has the potential of that being within it. There is nothing that is not that being and a seed of that being. The potential to know that is within each of us. It is within each of us to be that wonder. We can grow and realise we are the children of that.

That is what I see as the beginning of things, the origin of our universe and ourselves. But I was also shown that our corner, our small part of the universe, has certain qualities that maybe other parts do not. One of them, especially in regard to ourselves, is the shortness of life. We are tiny, short lived, biological creatures that have emerged out of the amazing processes of this world in its interplay with the cosmos. We can see ourselves in one sense as little bags of shit. We can be thought of as little digestive reproducing bags. But because of that potential in us, there has always been a possibility of more in human life. As this species we have managed to emerge beyond the other living forms of this earth. We have developed complex language and enormous curiosity and creativity. But the shortness of our life is a big factor in our experience of ourselves. I was shown that this shortness of life is really important for us. This because an essential part of the mystery of the universe is death. Therefore death is an enormous key to understanding the universe and life. Understanding death means that we become capable of letting go of ourselves, of delivering ourselves, of being able to give ourselves away to the mystery underlying our existence. The importance of this is because, if what has been said above is correct, then death is at the very centre of the mystery of life. It is at the foundation of our physical being. It is behind the urge that leads parents to a sort of death in giving themselves to the new being that emerges, to parents giving of themselves to their offspring. The sun gives of itself as it is dying. Through its dying life can exist on earth. This is part and parcel of the processes out of which our universe has emerged.

Love Irradiates The Universe

What I saw was that the Big Bang utterly shattered the existence of what had been before. That ocean of energy and consciousness destroyed itself so beings such as ourselves might exist. And then, as it died, at the very last moments of its death, it shot out something to penetrate all that was coming into being. It radiated love. It gave us love as its parting gift so that if any beings got lost, if they were troubled or overcome in their experience of growth, they could reach out for that love and be helped. They could touch the love, the heart and soul of which was self giving.

That doesn’t mean the sort of passionate love that people often talk about as being in love; it doesn’t mean making love which is actually having sexual intercoutse, it is something much more profound, a love that offers us freedom to create, to destroy, to hope and despair, to experience life to the full – backed up with the law of cause and effect. People often say why doesn’t God step in when tragedies occur to save people? Such question come from people who have no awareness of eternal life – a span in which people can make mistakes and learn from them. Also to be a ‘God’ who told or ‘saved’ people when they got hurt or when others think they should would make us all robots doing ‘God’s Will’.

The love offered is one that needs to be asked for and to be opened too. Love at first casts out all the huge mistakes we made, and that needs courage and perseverance in order to bear the cross that we created ourselves.

The death of that being also meant that every particle of the universe and what has arisen out of its death is the very substance of that great creative being and its act of self giving. There is nothing in the universe that is not the body, the broken and fragmented body, of that being. Every tiny fragment of our earth, of our bodies, of our universe, is the essence of that being. Every tiny speck of the universe is a seed that has the potential of that being within it. There is nothing that is not that being and a seed of that being. The potential to know that is within each of us. It is within each of us to be that wonder. We can grow and realise we are the children of that.

Almost like saying, “What can I leave with you to help you?”

Our name in the West for that Comforter that was left is Christ. I don’t know if there was a historical Jesus Christ, because humans tend to project outwardly what they sense inwardly. It is innate in us to give an outer form to, or to see as something outside of ourselves, what we sense within ourselves of any wonder. So I can see the possibility that humans gave an outer form to what we call Christ. Just as we have given an outer form to what we call the devil.

It is difficult for us to claim as a part of ourselves something of such wonder. So we tend to put it outside of us so that it is not too near. Then it doesn’t make us feel small and baby like in our own growth. We often cannot bear to see what we call the Christ as our own personal potential that we are constantly crucifying, denying, and washing our hands of. Nevertheless, we have that embodied in one of our world religions.

Chris: Just one of our world religions?

Tony: Well it is there in the others, but often not as clearly stated. For instance the Indians call it Krishna. And Christianity itself cannot be thought of as a stand-alone religion. It emerged out of what had existed before it. The area of the world in which it arose was a crossroads between East and West, and Christianity in many ways appears to be a synthesis of what existed before it.

Christ is not the only historical figure with these associations. Krishna and Shiva in the Indian culture, Mohammed in Islamic culture, and Quetzalcoatl/ Kukulkán/ Gukumatz in the South American culture have the same sort of power. Some aspects of the Buddha are approached for redemption and there are many saviour heroes from other cultures such as Anansi in Africa, Cúchulainn in Eire, Osiris in Egypt and Hercules in Greece. Apollonius of Tyana is also recorded as living a sacred life. But Christianity is simply a new expression of an ancient theme.

Mithra was born in a cave, and on the 25th December. He was born of a Virgin. He travelled far and wide as a teacher and illuminator of men. His great festivals were the winter solstice and the Spring equinox (Christmas and Easter). He had twelve companions or disciples (the twelve months). He was buried in a tomb, from which however he rose again; and his resurrection was celebrated yearly with great rejoicings. He was called Savior and Mediator, and sometimes figured as a Lamb; and sacramental feasts in remembrance of him were held by his followers. Mithra’s appearance is dated 1400 BC.

Osiris was born on the 361st day of the year, say the 27th December. He too, like Mithra and Dionysus, was a great traveller. As King of Egypt he taught men civil arts, and “tamed them by music and gentleness, not by force of arms”; he was the discoverer of corn and wine. But he was betrayed by Typhon, the power of darkness, and slain and dismembered. “This happened,”says Plutarch, “on the 17th of the month Athyr, when the sun enters into the Scorpion” (the sign of the Zodiac which indicates the oncoming of Winter). His body was placed in a box, but afterwards, on the 19th, came again to life, and, as in the cults of Mithra, Dionysus, Adonis and others, so in the cult of Osiris, an image placed in a coffin was brought out before the worshippers and saluted with glad cries of “Osiris is risen.” “His sufferings, his death and his resurrection were enacted year by year in a great mystery-play at Abydos.” Quoted from Pagan and Christain Creeds by Edward Carpenter

“Such a myth, however, consists of symbols that have not been invented consciously. They have happened. It was not the man Jesus who created the myth of the god-man. It existed for many centuries before his birth. He himself was seized by this symbolic idea, which, as St. Mark tells us, lifted him out of the narrow life of the Nazarene carpenter.” Quoted from Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung

I know I hung on the wind-swept tree Nine nights through, Pierced by a spear, dedicated to Odin, I myself to myself.

There is, above all, the self-sacrifice of the hero-saviour: as Toynbee puts it in A Study of History,  ‘A very god who dies for different worlds under diverse names-for a Minoan World as Zagreus, for a Sumeric World as Tammuz, for a Hittite World as Attis, for a Scandinavian World as Balder, for a Syriac World as Adonis (“Our Lord”), for an Egyptian World as Osiris, for a Shi’i World as Husayn, for a Christian World as Christ.’