Religion and peace by Anna Bornstein

”Human beings participate in their inner reality ...your experiential world has developed in the interplay between the power of your soul and the God energy... You can’t in a normal way experience the huge energy field and consciousness that is the invisible depth of the world and its indispensable prerequisite, even if you are at all times in touch with it within. You can only approach it by creating an image of it. This doesn’t mean that the material world is an illusion or an arbitrary creation of the imagination. It is not a mere projection of our desires. Its foundation, that which makes it real, is the God consciousness”, Jesuit priest Erwin Bischofberger explains.-

”If you analyze an object you’ll discover that it consists of some material and that this material is made up of particles. The particles are, according to physicists, mental constructs dependent on consciousness. That is why we say that the object does not exist outside of consciousness...Also the perception of time and space can be derived from and resolved in consciousness.”

Swami Dayananda Saraswati, teaches Vedanta in Soylersburg, Pennsylvania.

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”For the Buddha it was ethics and not biology that was the vital force behind all development. Buddhism ...was aware of the connection between the observer and the physical world long before quantum mechanics paid attention to this issue.”

Robert Thurman, Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University and translator of Buddhist literature.

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 PHYSICISTS HAVE FOUND THE HOLY SPIRIT
Interview with Erwin Bischofberger. From Svenska Dagbladet, January 8, 1989.

That Eastern religions in part are compatible with the new physics has been shown by many people. But never before has anyone compared the world of quantum physics with the Christian creation myth. But that is exactly what the Catholic Jesuit priest Erwin Bischofberger does.

When physicists like David Bohm speak about the order inherent in matter - Erwin Bischofberger says: the Word of God

When they say that all of creation, man and nature, both literally and figuratively, is "trapped light" - he says: trapped in God.

And when the physicists claim that we can’t see nature as it is - the priest says that we can’t perceive reality, the divine, until we have discarded our preconceptions.

- Such a sacred mission as this one is not to be undertaken in a rush; Erwin Bischofberger immediately says when we meet in Saint Eugenia’s Catholic Church at Kungsträdgården in Stockholm.

My big and important questions about the world and man have to wait while the learned Jesuit priest, who is Professor Emeritus of Medical Ethics at Karolinska Institutet and the author of the book “Guds födelse i människan”, leads me up to a terrace to admire the view over Strömmen. Not until the silence, the winter wind and the wide sky have had their say it feels appropriate to use human words again.

Is there a connection between the Spirit and the material world?

- The background of the reality that seems so firm under our feet is a will, an energy of divine origin. We are all creatures of light, not only metaphorically but also literally. Each one of us forms a pencil of rays. The entire creation is, as one of our contemporary physicists puts it, "trapped light" or to strain it, "trapped in God", Father Prof. Bischofberger explains.

- There is a close correspondence between the view of reality that is emerging in natural science and the Christian creation faith. Physicist David Bohm says that matter manifests through the interplay of different vibration patterns that he calls the order inherent in the universe. This inherent order, that exists in and is the basis of all the phenomena in the world, is what in Christianity is called Logos or the Word of God.

POWER AND WILL

Do you mean that the energy that quantum physics has found to be the “other side” of the smallest material particles in reality is the power or will of God?

- Well, Bohm, too, calls the energy of the inherent order "consciousness". It is this divine foundation for creation that is referred to in the Prologue to the Gospel according to John, where it says that

“In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”

- An outflow of this Word of God is active in the creation as its inherent development principle. Traditionally this energy is called the Holy Spirit. It is the inner “pressure” in creation that makes it strive toward higher and higher complexity and deeper meaningfulness. Even the smallest elements of matter are expressions of law-abiding order; every atom and every molecule is built up and moves within certain laws. That which is higher than the highest, viz. God, is contained in the smallest.

But space and time, where do they enter the picture?

- The outer world, everything that we can experience in time and space, is like a ripple on the ocean of the divine energy within, the all-encompassing, “timeless” consciousness. Space and time are, as the philosopher Kant said, preconditions for human knowledge and inherent in human thinking. That is why you can say that space and time exist as a possibility in the God energy.

The soul can only approach the created objects by receiving their image. Through the image the soul meets the created world. The image is something that the soul creates by its own power.

Master Eckhart (1260-1327), German theologian, philosopher and mystic, known for his sermons and religious works.

CONSCIOUSNESS

If reality is consciousness, wouldn’t it be appropriate to look for it inside of oneself, and not as scientists do, in some matter on the outside?

- Well, human beings participate in their inner reality. The great Christian philosopher and mystic, Master Eckhart describes the inner reality of man as a workshop of divine creativeness, where the divine is constantly born. The Word of God has been part and parcel of the material world that man has created. It has been immersed in the world, in the world of life.

Do animals and inorganic objects have God energy, too?

- Yes, God energy is the foundation of all things created, even of seemingly “dead” objects like minerals. But when we try to define it we must use images and words from our world that belong to the “outer” order which is a simpler dimension. Our terminologies are not suitable for the energy of God consciousness, which is infinitely larger, wider, and deeper than the world we perceive through our senses.

And where does this God energy come from?

- God is much more than creative energy. Eckhart goes beyond all confessional concepts of God when he tries to describe the ultimate foundation of existence. He speaks about it as a “nothing”, as an “existence without state” - “a non-consciousness”. This God foundation differs greatly from God as the Creator.

OBJECTS

What has God got to do with the objects that I perceive through my senses, the roof tops and the dome of St Jacobs Church, outlined against the sky, the paved terrace that we’re standing on?

- Your experiential world has developed in the interplay inside you, between the power of your soul and the God energy.

- According to Eckhart, that which you experience as your world, is an image that your soul with its own power has created of reality. You can’t in a normal way experience the huge energy field and consciousness that is the invisible depth of the world and its indispensable prerequisite, even if you are at all times in touch with it within. You can only approach it by creating an image of it.

This doesn’t mean that the material world is an illusion or an arbitrary creation of the imagination. It is not a mere projection of our desires. Its foundation, that which makes it real, is God consciousness.

And I thought that Christianity regarded the world and the body as sinful!

- The fact that we have deserted and forgotten our divine origin constitutes the sin. We live in self-inflicted exile. The feeling of being a separate, individual I, our fixation with the I-feeling, this ego, with all that it implies of fear, covetousness, need of power etc. has been passed down from generation to generation. This is what is called original sin.


CO-CREATOR

But if man is co-creator of the world, he is much more responsible for it than what is generally thought?

- We are all part of the drama of creation. But we are actors who hide our true identity behind the mask of the superficial consciousness and the outer personality. Oftentimes we are so captured by the unfolding of the drama that we totally identify with our role. We think that the mask is us! We forget who God is and who we are.

- The core of man’s essence is divine. We have God within. We are in the true sense of the word God’s children. Each human holds within him or herself the key to all knowledge and all love.

But why do you then so often hear priests preach about the smallness and insignificance of man?

- They are urging man to become humble. The interpretation has often been that man ought to belittle himself, downsize himself, and grovel before the Lord. But the Latin word for meekness is “humilitas” - “earthlikeness”. We must be “soft” as a newly ploughed field, prepared to receive the sowing. We must empty ourselves of our conceptions and expectations to be able to receive reality. We have to get rid of all programming, all the thousands and thousands of suggestions and imaginations that make up our conception of the world and characterize our patterns of actions and our attitudes to the world around us.

- The heart of Christianity is the covenant between God and man: Man came into being through the creation process but God created him to be able to be born in him. He can bungle or fail his mission but the foundation of his soul is still divine. By letting the divine break through in his consciousness, or as we put it, “letting Christ be born in him”, he becomes fully a human being.

- The closer man comes to God, and the better he can carry out his divine mission, the more he can mobilize his human capacity, too. The closer he comes to God, the more human he becomes and not the opposite, as many believe.

GOD’S IMAGE

Is this what is meant by that man is created in the image of God?

- When the eternal presence of God breaks through in the human consciousness, bound by space, time and form, man becomes a part of the creative power and wisdom of God. The birth of Christ is the fundamental model for this development. When man’s consciousness deepens and widens it becomes a truer image of the divine.

- Thomas of Aquinas expressed a central Christian doctrine when he said: “Man, in a way everything.” Man is a microcosm of the macrocosm, the intersection between the creator and the created, between bondage by biological law and striving for infinity, between limitation and the limitless.

- In man all strands of reality meet. When God is born in man, he is born in the center of reality, the intersection of the whole world.

The eyes of my soul were opened and I experienced the fullness of God in which I could embrace the whole world, on this side of all things created as well as beyond them. In all this I saw nothing but the divine Power in an unspeakable way, so that in overflowing wonder my soul cried out and said: ’The whole world is full of God!’ And I understood what a small thing this whole universe is, both on this side of all things created and beyond them. And that the power of God fills everything and goes beyond everything.

ANGELA OF FOLIGNO (1248-1309)

Do you think it is possible to affect the world by deepening your consciousness?

- Yes, according to Eckhart, God is inside man not only as an eternal being but as a constant dynamic process. When God breaks through, a comprehensive view of creation is born in man’s consciousness. His world changes, is sanctified.

CHANGING THE WORLD

Only recently psychology has discovered that the world can change when we work with our inner development. But you mean that it’s an old truth?

- I think that the longing of our time for inner development is a tendency away from the historical course towards a more timeless perspective of existence. Our sense of reality is like a spinning treadmill. We have cut the moorings to our very being, the eternal reality that is always there. We have to be tied up again to the inner holding grounds of the soul so that our outer reality gains meaning and depth.

MY TREADMILL

When they read this, many people will think: “That sounds good, but what has it got to do with me? My everyday life, my treadmill, seems so, so far away from the reality you are describing. How will I ever break the vicious circle that I have ended up in?”

- Christianity has a rich tradition of meditation and prayer methods that are designed to help us reconnect to the deeper reality of existence and teach us to rest in it. The goal is to be conscious at each moment, even when we are active on the outside, of God’s presence, both “inside” and “outside”, in the innermost corner of the heart. The being will heal the doing.

And me, who thought that the findings of science would undermine the conception of Christian faith! The way you are presenting it, it seems to confirm it, instead.

- More recent research opens fascinating perspectives for us, but the scientists are the first ones to point out that their models of explanation can never describe reality as it is. However reliably formulated such a model may be, however evident the parallels to the mystics’ God experiences may be, it’s always a question of symbols, metaphors.

- No human model of explanation could ever totally reflect reality such as it is. It always reflects only our conception of it, our interpretation. It’s in this insight of the limitations of our knowledge that spiritual masters and truth-seeking scientists resemble each other.