Embracing the Millions

The Question of Universal Brotherhood: An essay for
“Embracing the Millions: A Community Arts Project”

by Thomas Kight

The Question of Universal Brotherhood - Download PDF Version

As I am fond of questions as catalysts for contemplation, let me begin with one: Are you sitting down? Good, because I have been posed an interesting question to reflect and write upon, and I intend to provoke you either to riot or contemplation in answering it. This is not because I have any particular wish to be provocative, but only because shining the light on the Truth underlying the question that has been posed will tend to do that on its own.

The question I have been asked to take up as part of the “Embracing the Millions” Community Arts Project is simply this (though there is little that is simple about it): Is it possible to have Universal Brotherhood while we hold different conceptions of God?

Beethoven in his 9th Symphony asks the question of whether Universal Brotherhood is possible and answers with a resounding “Ja!” He goes on further to ask where and when such brotherhood may be realized, and quite enthusiastically asserts that it is here and now. Of course, we may chalk this up to old age or artistic sentimentality. I mean, you know those musicians. Another option would be to simply ride along the surface of this profound work, spewing its platitudes without ever penetrating its profundity.

It would certainly be easier to answer the question of the practical possibility of Universal Brotherhood with Splenda-filled, “I’m OK, You’re OK” , “Can’t we all just get along” platitudes, but the truth is that our varied conceptions of God have rarely led to the embracing of the millions. More frequently, those differences in conceptions have led to everything from ostracizing the millions, insulating the millions, converting the millions, all the way to slaughtering the millions in the name of embracing one concept of God while rejecting another. That most horrific outcome of differing conceptions of God has continued in both subtle and grossly obvious ways since Man first began to organize his understanding of spirituality under graspable conceptions of God. Well known among these worst outcomes are the Crusades, the Holocaust, wars of all kinds, and the constant slaughter of innocents today by people so deluded by their conceptions to be able to pretend that harming others is a spiritual act in the service of God and that paradise awaits them as a result.

観念
So, “Can there be a universal brotherhood without a common conception of God?” In a word, no.
As long as there are conceptions (plural), there is no One. But what if a common conception replaced the myriad? Then there’s hope, and the answer shifts to “Yes and No”. But it most certainly is still “No” until the common conception of God is no conception at all, but rather direct apprehension. The direct apprehension of God, unmediated by conceptions, makes universal brotherhood self-evident. We don’t even need to ask if it is possible; we simply know it is.

The problem is that conceptions, if allowed, can kill the truth and people as well, but only until the conception is itself killed. Then the Truth may live again, for while we may hide, obscure or even lose it for a time, the Truth was not born and so cannot die. Universal Brotherhood is not something to be hoped for; it is something that already IS. Perhaps we have lost sight of it, but it is quite simply the nature of things – the Truth before it has been touched by our concepts of it.

There is a Spiritual Principle at work in the Universe. It exists without our having to create it. The conceptions that we throw on top of it may help us understand it better, but they are not the thing itself.
And because these conceptions vary in shape and form across time and cultures, our minds tend to see differences where none truly exist.

This would not be so much of a problem if we could simply recognize that that is the case, and utilize our religious concepts to effectively approximate an understanding of the Principle without having to supplant one with the other, that is, without holding that our view has a corner on the truth that admits no other company. This is where problems start and the Body of Man is hacked into separate limbs each claiming to be the One – unable to recognize the ridiculousness of its own assertions. For the hacked-off arm to lie on the ground and claim to be a man is silliness that would be evident to the dullest of our kind, yet we fall into all manner of immorality, corruption, and violence to claim, defend, and force upon others the opinion that our conception of God, or no God, is the same as God .

Emerson rightly suggested that we should “resist all attempts to palm other rules and measures on the spirit than its own.” Or, I might add, if we do, to simply realize that we have done so, so that we might draw whatever understanding we may from the rules we are most familiar with without ever mistaking our understanding for the realized Truth.
天人

We must not mistake our myriad conceptions of God for God. We must not mistake the many for the One. See conception for conception. Make use of it to support an understanding of what Universal Brotherhood is, and that it is, but do not hold the truth hostage by holding only to your opinions of it. Do that and the truth of Universal Brotherhood becomes obscured by apparent but illusory separateness. The Body of Man is hacked into constituent limbs, at war with itself, not realizing its own unity. It is no more absurd than our right hand attacking our left hand, but “small mind” makes us loathe to see it.

So how do we get out of this delusion? How do we free the Truth of the Spirit from the prison that only we can create? It is the purpose of Art to do just that. Art is the provocateur of awakening.

We tend to see only the ordinary in the ordinary until we are provoked into awakening to the sacred there as well. Awakened, we no longer see a cup as a cup, and the water in it as something from the faucet only;
we see each cup as it is –
a holy grail
filled with blood
and oceans
and salvation.
In each man,
we see God.

In the moment that the divine rushes in the door opened by Art, we learn what years of study and mouthed prayers never revealed, which is as Emerson said, “… that God is; that he is in me, and that all things are shadows of him.” “I am God in nature,” he says, by which he means we are too. But he also adds, “I am a weed by the wall.” What does this say of weeds? Or cups? Or the water in them? Or us?
Some questions I am here to answer, but these I leave to you.

本来の面目

But in the face of such pervasive delusion nearly impervious to either reason or hope, what can music possibly have to say that would have any meaning or value? In a world like ours, what could music or any art possibly have to say that is of any consequence?
Quite simply, the truth … the truth of who we are and of human experience. And what is that truth? What is the truth that all of these apparently different conceptions of God all point to? That we are all one. That interconnectedness, interdependence, and interrelationship is part of our nature, in fact, the very center of it.
Embracing the millions is simply what we would do spontaneously if we were ever to recognize the truth of who we are. But would there not also be both consequences and risks? Oh yes, of the most delicious kinds. As Thomas Merton once wrote, “If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way, there would be no reason for war, for hatred, for cruelty … I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.”

And music is a way of doing that that transcends the need for language. “When I hear music,” Thoreau says, “I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.” Music is a language, but one closer to the heart of truth because it is further from the mind of conceptions that uses words to represent the truth but then sometimes substitutes its own conceptions for the Truth. Religious thought that separates the One, and consequently us, has no relationship either to the Truth or spirituality. Music and art practice can take us directly to the Truth without having first to get the mind’s approval or acquiescence. The result is the realization that Martin Luther King captured this way: “All life is interrelated,” he said. “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Embracing the millions is simply what we would do if we understood the truth. “Embracing the millions” sounds as if it would be difficult if not impossible. But in truth, there is no effort involved. Music and Art can reveal the truth to you and make what is impossible to the mind possible to the heart. But having seen and heard the truth, what will you do?
This question I leave to you.

八紘一宇

Author’s Note: For your further contemplation, I have attached two poems below which touch upon the very themes we have been exploring here.
I sincerely hope that you may enjoy them.
Thomas Kight
January 2008

The Question of Universal Brotherhood - Download PDF Version

when has music ever lied

The strings of the cello
can only speak the truth
of the one who is playing them.

They cannot pretend
to be played in any other way
than the way they are.

Unrelenting honesty is their curse
in the presence of which
we might be blessed
to discover
that we exist
to make clear
the music of heaven
which is the Truth
for when has music ever lied?

©September 2006 Thomas Kight

Improvisation on Immortality

The present is infinite,
the future finite.

The Soul true to itself
has no need to wander.
Its immortality is now,
not then.

Immortality is in constant being
not pork belly futures.
It is in the present flow of Truth and Love
that immortality may be found,
not in the expectation of it.
Expecting it destroys it
by turning what is into what will be,
creating gaps where none in Truth exist.

If what is is only what will be
then what is is what is not –
the void into which
the attributes of Soul
have not yet arrived.

But the thing is,
if they have not yet arrived,
they never will,
because you have locked the door
with your “understanding”.

You miss immortality and your role in it
when it is right in front of your face,
and are left to wonder
when you die,
“What happened?”

Silly fool.
You killed yourself.
© December 2007 by Thomas Kight