دار بيبليون
God reveals himself in the way he was worshipped
Lecture by Lwiis Saliba on Zoom Wednesday 29/12/2021
God reveals himself in the way he has been worshipped
There remains a central question which, at first sight, seems to be a point of contention between the yoga of piety (Bhakti Yoga) and the teaching of St Teresa of Avila. The former asserts that God reveals Himself to His lovers and worshippers in the way they loved and worshipped Him. He who worships Him in the image of Krishna appears to Him in that image, and so does Jesus… and all other manifestations of the Absolute. Bhakti Yoga teaches: “God appears to his devotees, whatever their paths, religions and traditions. He takes the same form that the believer has already chosen or is used to, even though God transcends forms, religions and traditions.
This is what Yoga calls Îshtâ Devatâ: the beloved divine form chosen for worship and love.
And in the Shiva Samhita (Sutra 6/70): “What the mind desires is what it gets. The yogi, through uninterrupted practice, sees the worshipped Lord, the Most High.
Teresa of Avila confirms what Ptanjali said
What attracts our attention here is that, while we expect Teresa to contradict this view of yoga to say that God appears only in the form of his own divinity (God incarnate in Jesus), we find this view, and contrary to our expectations, she confirms it. She tells her daughters the nuns, advising, warning and guiding them (in her book on the way to perfection): “As soon as you accept the Lord, you will have the same person before you, for even if he came in disguise, this would not prevent him from revealing himself in various ways, according to our desire to see him.
“And you can desire him with such a strong desire, that he will be revealed to you completely”
The meditation teacher here seems to be repeating the same statements of the yogic sages on the question of seeing the Lord and in what form this occurs.
The most remarkable feature of bhakti yoga as a spiritual path is that it is, in the words of Swami Vivekananda: “the simplest and most natural way to reach the divine goal we seek”.
The Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu holy book, mentions three types of yoga: “the yoga of action for those who work in society, the yoga of knowledge for the ascetics, and the yoga of piety, Bhakti yoga, which it considers the highest, for everyone.
Intolerance is the main danger of Bhakti
But there is an important caveat to Bhakti Yoga that we must present and discuss. On this Swami Vivekananda says: “The great disadvantage of Bhakti is that in its less developed forms it degenerates into hideous fanaticism”.
The sage Ramakrishna compares Bhakti to a tiger. Just as the tiger devours animals, piety (bhakti) devours vices, such as anger and lust.
The great calamity remains that this ferocious tiger, at the lowest level of bhakti, would go after the other vices, instead of devouring those of the soul.
Vivekananda explains the terrible danger of bhakti by saying, “The fanatical gangs of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity have always and exclusively been recruited from the believers still at the lower levels of bhakti. This exclusive attachment (Nishta) to a single beloved object, without which no true love can develop, often leads to the condemnation of everything that is not that object.
Vivekananda explains how intolerance emerges and develops into a dangerous, even destructive, social plague. Its basis is the limited nature of bhakti piety, and he continues: “All those whose minds are weak and limited, in all religions and in all countries, have only one way of loving their ideal, and that is to hate the ideals of all others. This explains how a pious man, who is attached to his own ideal of God and devoted to it, turns into a fervent fanatic as soon as he sees or hears something related to another ideal.
This sage gives a simple and expressive example of what he is saying. It is the dog that guards the house. He adds, “These characteristics of love are somewhat similar to the instinct of a dog to protect its master’s property from intruders and thieves.”
The calamity, says Vivekananda, is that the primary instinct of the dog is better than the reason of the man. The former is able to recognise his master, no matter how much he changes his appearance or clothes. As for man, he is unable to recognise his Lord if he changes his appearance. He then considers Him as another Lord and another deity and ends up fighting Him. The Indian sage says: “The instinct of the dog is better than the reason of the man, because the dog does not make a mistake in distinguishing his master, even if the latter is hidden. As for the fanatic, he loses the ability to judge and distinguish. The problem with him is not what was said, and whether it was right or wrong. The only thing he wants to know is who said it?
Here Vivekananda echoes a saying attributed to Imam Ali: “The truth is not known from men, but from what those men have said”.
The Indian sage continues: “The same man who is gentle, good honest to those who share his opinion, does not hesitate to commit the vilest mischief against people outside the religious group to which he belongs”.
This is a grave and terrible danger, and all of us in this Orient of religions are prey to it today. However, at the end of his analysis, Vivekananda limits the dangers of piety: “This danger exists only in the preparatory stage of piety. When Bhakti has matured, when it has passed to that degree which is called supreme (para) there is no longer any need to fear any of those hideous manifestations of fanaticism. The soul that is pervaded by this higher form of Bhakti is too close to the God of Love to contribute to the spreading of hatred.
But the problem, or rather the major dilemma, is that most people remain in the preparatory stage of this piety, and few go beyond it. The latter turns into hell.
Sediment of intolerance in T A
Coming back to our Saint and Doctor of the Church, we do not doubt for a moment that she has gone beyond the “early levels of bhakti and its preparatory stage”. This, in the words of Swami Vivekananda, but she still has some residue of that stage. She was cruel to her body and sometimes intolerant of it. And we have mentioned in the chapter on her biography how she used to whip it. Her nuns still maintain this fanaticism to this day.
The Carmelite reformer does not hide a clear fanaticism against the Protestants (Lutherans), and she sometimes describes them in the most horrible terms. They are, according to her, the traitors and the new ‘crucifiers’ of Christ: “The intention of these traitors [the Protestants of France] is to crucify Christ again and not to leave him a place to rest his head.
Can there be any harsher accusation than that?
They have been condemned by her to eternal fire in hell, for all who leave the Church are condemned to perish.
She has already seen them in Hell. In the vision of Hell that she recounts in her biography, she says: “My heart broke at this vision of pity for the many souls who have perished, especially the souls of the Lutherans, because they were baptized members of the Church.
Here, Teresa of Avila’s vision seems to be an extension of the anti-Protestant sentiments of fanaticism. She is enthusiastic about confronting these dissenters and exposing their delusion. She says in a report written in the monastery of St. Joseph/Avila 1563: “I think I myself am capable of facing all Luther’s followers and showing them their error. I am very sorry for the loss of these many souls’.
And her regret here does not diminish her fanaticism and violence: it is the residue of the lowest levels of piety still at work in Therese’s consciousness and thought.
Spiritual marriage is the culmination of love
In sum, divine love or bhakti is an essential path in Teresa’s spirituality and experience. It culminated in what she called spiritual marriage, and she set this out in Report 35 (Avila mid-November, 1572), where she recounted: ‘The Lord presented himself to me in a fantastic dream and gave me his right hand, saying: ‘Look at this nail. This is a sign that you will be my bride from today’. Then he added: “You have not yet earned it, but from now on you will honour me not only as Creator and King, but as your God. On the other hand, as my true bride, my honour is your honour, and your honour is mine.
Here, Therese/Spouse of Christ, recalls Radha/Shepherdess, the bride of Krishna.
But Teresa’s yoga and spirituality are not limited to divine love alone, for she is the reformer of Carmel and the founder of monasteries, she travelled all over Spain to found the monasteries of the Discalced Carmelites, which by the time of her death in 1582 had grown to 16 monasteries for nuns and 14 monasteries for monks. She is not only a nun of divine love, Bhakti Yoga, but also a nun of action and reform, of continuous missionary activity, thus of Karma Yoga, the yoga of service and action. This is what we shall show in the next chapter.
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