This
Page 14
Somehow Christendom turned Jesus into an idol to be possessed by the ego as a key for the ego’s eternal enduring, rather than the living invitation to fully experience the eternal THIS. Christian empires turned the idea of incarnation (God made flesh) into a dead and sterile dogma of exclusivity rather than a lived reality of love. The ruling entities and those leading the developments of Christianity and the Church made Jesus’s words more about what will happen in some imagined future after death rather than the eternal life that he pointed to here and now. Growing up, Jesus was presented to me like some sort of superhero who had gone away but would someday come back and make everything better. Jesus was to be found not in the present grittiness of life, like he said he would be,36 but instead in the traditions of old men and dusty books. We looked for him in the past and the future, when all along he had pointed us to the infinite and eternal present of birds and flowers and neighbors. We keep going back to the places where we thought he was in our belief systems, traditions, and stories of some imagined future, but unless our thoughts, words, and practices ground us in THIS very moment, our religion is nothing but an empty tomb, and “he is not here.”
As Jesus demonstrated, a life that is fully present to THIS, without attachment, is a life fully lived. To love your enemies while recognizing that there are no enemies, to swim in the ocean as the Ocean—this is the mystery, wonder, and beauty of word made flesh. THIS is God.
When God is seen as THIS, the arguments between theism, atheism, nontheism, polytheism, or any other term with that root word get a little silly. Does God exist? Of course not, any God worth his salt could not possibly be confined to a human idea like “existence”! But neither could one accurately say that God doesn’t exist because “nonexistence” is also a concept of its own, far too limited to apply to an infinite and ineffable THIS. 37
When I speak of God, I’m not speaking of being or nonbeing or both or neither. Borrowing the apophatic (or negative) language style of the Eastern Orthodox, who recognize that anything spoken of God is inherently incorrect, I might say something like, “God is All.” God is not All. God is not not All. Hindus and Vedantists say neti, neti (not this, not that). Taoism states that the Tao that can be told is not the eternal, true Tao. Judaism understands that God’s name, YHWH, is ineffable and therefore is not spoken. The mystics from every major tradition know of this unspeakable, unquantifiable, unabstractable nature of truth in their marrow.
THIS is God. Allah. Elohim. Huwa. Ishwar. Bhagavan. Brahman. Ram. Shangdi. Cheon-ju. Deus. Dios. Bahá. Abba. I Am. Call him what you want. Different names are used in different ways with different people. Just look at me! My audience calls me Gungor. My dad calls me Gil. My mom calls me Mick. My childhood friends call me Mike. Their parents call me Mikey. Most of my friends from my twenties call me Michael. Ram Dass called me Vishnu Dass (more about that in the next chapter). Most of my friends in Los Angeles call me Vish. My wife calls me Monk. Amelie calls me Dad. Lucie calls me Dadda. I should be so lucky to have so many names. Each represents stories, memories, and love formed of different shapes and stripes. Why should God have fewer names than I do?
Of course, many of us are not okay with that level of cosmopolitan universalism. When my daughter Amelie was five, I told her some of these other names for God that other people use. She wasn’t thrilled about that. When I asked her why, she responded, “How would you like it if I called you ‘Hideous’?” I had a good laugh at that, but the truth is that many of us hear the language and metaphors of other cultures and feel the same way as my kindergartner did. To many Christians, the multiarmed, colorful, or animalistic gods of Hinduism look scary and demonic. To many Buddhists, the eating of the body of Christ and drinking of his blood in Christianity seems barbaric. To many Protestants, Catholics are guilty of blasphemous idolatry by praying to Mary. I think much of this aversion to the religious expressions of others occurs for the same reason that a lot of Mexican people tend to like their food served a bit spicier than your average British person might—we tend to like what we are used to.
At this point of my life, I enjoy a wide variety of words, names, and metaphors for the Divine, like I enjoy a good fusion cuisine. As such, my use of the word God no longer comes with a bunch of necessary mythic attachments—it does not necessarily exclude or include an omnipotent, supernatural being, but I would assume that any being that exists would still exist within the ultimate and infinite context that is THIS. My view does not presume “we” are “real” or “simulated” or whether there is an infinite multiverse or a single, finite universe, but it does assume that there is no fundamental divide between the creator and the work of the creator. It does not exclude or include any view of an afterlife, but it does not place the imaginary construct of a human “I” on the great white throne of Heaven, so any sort of afterlife would still be seen as a temporary story and a condition and continuation of illusion, within the fundamentally storyless and seamless All.
God, for me, is a name for the nonduality that is beyond such categories as existence or nonexistence, matter or nothingness, real or imagined. God is All in All, beginning and end as they are now. Ey38 is immanence and transcendence; form and void. She is nothingness and everythingness. He is movement and stillness; eternal present. The here and now. Ne39 is Alpha and Omega. Like I’ve said, all language fails miserably when you start trying to talk about this infinite [ ] because the words themselves are coming out of It and will always fall short of encompassing even a fraction of hir,40 because there can be no meaningful fraction of infinity—a word that is itself a tiny sizzle of sound, a moment of vapor.
Still, I love speaking of my Self.
Why use so many pronouns? If I’m not limiting God to a cartoonish being in the sky, why bother with religious language at all? Because, remember, calling the great Blank Space or Void, which is beyond thought or understanding, an “it” or “the universe” is every bit as mythic as calling “him” “Zeus.” I enjoy using a broad tapestry of pronouns and metaphors in order for the language to remain fluid and unstuck in any sort of dead or boundary-creating fundamentalism. Even if these words do come with the risk of minimizing ultimate reality into something that can be thought of and spoken, this broad tapestry of myth and metaphor can be a wonderful canvas to paint on, a fantastic backyard within which to play hide and seek.
The nonduality at the heart of the metaphors of many of the great Eastern traditions (especially Hinduism) have given me a taste for the [ ]-personifying myths again. To me, the union that they offer between the ideas of me and the idea of the ultimate or divine not only eliminates the inherent egocentrism, along with all of the shame, fear, and suffering that it engenders, but they can turn THIS into thou or I or we or whatever happens to make all of this feel more alive, more personal, more beautiful.
To experience the sun as a “her” on my skin can feel richer and more intimate than considering the sunlight a lifeless “it.” To experience the Ground of Being as a living and present thou rather than a mere that can help one feel the music of the All in what seems to be a truer way. Any noun or pronoun we try to assign to ultimate reality will be too small, so why not use language that sparks the heart and imagination and that is as personal as our experience of ultimate reality feels?
It seems to me that by holding our sacred language more loosely, we have more space within which to play. If we could, for instance, find a healthy balance between the ego worshipping so common in the Christendom of the West and the potential ego negation of the more destructive social structures like India’s caste system or China’s human rights–violating aspects of communism in the East, I think there could be some beautiful music to be made. In the tension between these ancient stories, I think there are some inspiring harmonies to be discovered. Here, at these intersections, we can tell stories that include the small sense of “I” with all of its memories, stories, and personality, and in telling these stories well, we can provide a more just and equitable reality for t
he infinite differences within nonduality in which to dance together.
But we don’t have to cling to or become attached to these stories to the degree where we become trapped inside them—where the boundaries of our skin are felt to be the true end of any “I am-ness.” To experience THIS as God is to experience the bliss of loving and serving God without the fear and suffering of feeling separate from God. To think of God as THIS allows us to transcend and include the sacred cows of theists, atheists, and nontheists alike, giving us common ground upon which to converse. To see that THIS is God is to realize that we are home. We don’t have to go anywhere or do anything to be in the heart of God. You’re already here. You’re already it.
THIS Is Awareness
Maui (2017)
I am loving awareness.
I am loving awareness.
I am loving awareness.
I let the mantra wash over me as I walk down the country road near Ram Dass’s house in Maui. I’m on a private retreat with him and am playing with the mantra that he has given to me. The cool January tropical air is enlivening after so much sitting in silence. I walk the lane as mindfully as I can, repeating the mantra with every breath.
I am loving awareness.
I am loving awareness.
I think of how lucky I am to be on a retreat at Ram Dass’s house. It would be hard to overstate how important his life and work has been to me. After the shit show that had played out in 2013–14, I had become a bit numb to the world emotionally. Even though I was much more grounded internally than I had ever been before the spa, everything in my life had been falling apart, and I felt that I had wasted so much of my life and energy on a foolish and useless belief system. When I came across the teachings of Ram Dass, they were like water for my parched soul.
Ram Dass, formerly known as Richard Alpert, had been a professor at Harvard in the ’60s. He and Timothy Leary became famous for getting fired for their controversial experimentation with LSD. After his ousting from academia, Richard went on a spiritual quest to India, met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba (known also as Maharaj-ji), and his life changed. He ended up becoming a prominent spiritual sage and teacher in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. Then in 1997, he experienced a nearly fatal stroke that changed his life yet again. Today, Ram Dass is in his eighties. He needs constant care for his health, and he can’t speak nearly as quickly or clearly as he used to be able to, but you should see his eyes. There’s so much love in those eyes.
I am loving awareness.
I am loving awareness.
I continue to walk, slowly and mindfully down the rural lane near his house that leads down to the ocean. It is quiet but for the occasional birdsong or chirping insect. I slow the mantra down even more, so that the “I am” stands on its own before the “loving awareness” completes the phrase. I am not used to mantra meditation. I’ve always been more of a sit down and focus on your breath kind of meditator, but Ram Dass recommended it, so I’m giving it a go. And enjoying it so far.
In my first meeting with Ram Dass after arriving in Maui, he told me about how hard it was for his ego after his stroke, particularly when he was on stage. He used to be able to use his verbal acuity to take a room wherever he wanted to go. I’ve heard a good amount of those old recordings, so I knew how masterfully he could own a room with his wit and charm. He told me that he lost all of that with the stroke. He told me that now the best he can do if they wheel him out onto a stage is just love everyone. That’s all he’s got left. And he’s so grateful for that. He thinks of the stroke as a great grace given to him by Maharaj-ji, who Ram Dass sees as his doorway to God, manifesting as everything and everyone.
Ram Dass entered my life at the perfect time. I had been meditating a lot more, and his teachings gave me language to things that I had experienced that I had never heard articulated so beautifully and heartfully. At the time, some of it was pretty out there and woo-woo for me, but I enjoyed how it stretched me. My reductionistic lens of viewing the world had become smaller than my experience of the world, and I was tired of reducing reality to the provable, testable, or perceivable. The more I listened to Ram Dass, the more I felt my heart opening up to the mystery within it all.
I am loving awareness.
I am loving awareness.
The country lane bends and a beautiful farmhouse appears. There are sprawling fields of long green and yellow grasses, the wind gently granting them movement. I feel the words coming straight from my heart to my lips.
I am loving awareness.
I am loving awareness.
I experience each step, each breath as a manifestation of love. I recall the new name that Ram Dass had just given me while we sat together in his study. He had been telling me how different his life was today than when he was called Richard Alpert. He said that name almost felt like a different incarnation to him at this point. I had told him some of my story already and I agreed that I too felt like an entirely different person than I used to. The name Michael Gungor sometimes felt like some other person. It was a brand, a Google search query that yielded bizarre and inaccurate results of my life. He asked me what kind of name I would like to have. I laughed and said I didn’t know.
He had leaned back and closed his eyes.
I waited with bated breath. Was this really happening? I saw that I had constricted a bit and let it go, finding my breath. Becoming more present in my body.
Vishnu. He said in a whisper. He opened his eyes. They were beaming with joy.
Vishnu Dass.
Whoa. What would my Christian music fans on Facebook think of that one?
Still, something about the name resonated in my body. Vishnu Dass. He told me it meant servant of God.
God. I just couldn’t get away from that word could I? Growing up, God was everything. In 2012, I had let God go. But apparently, He/She/It/They/I stayed around anyway.
Ram Dass smiled with the joy of a little boy. I couldn’t help but smile back. We just sat there together for a while. I got lost in those wildly loving eyes of his that were somehow also mine, and we just shared each other’s presence. Eventually, he began to talk about the moment. He slowly called out various happenings in our environment. The breeze coming in the window. The warmth of the sun. The airplane overhead. The flowers. The ocean. His slow pace brought a peace and depth to that moment that is hard to describe. Then he looked at me and said, “When you burrow deep enough into a moment, that’s Vishnu.”
Ah. I loved that.
He went on to tell me that he saw in me a man who had spent a lot of time living in my mind, but that he also saw me making an effort to live more in my heart. He told me about how when I can live in both, that’s the essence of Vishnu—the creative dreamer of the world.
As I continue to get closer to the farmhouse, I wonder what I will do with that name. No way in hell my mom would call me that. But something about it feels so right. It feels like a new start. Vishnu Dass doesn’t bring up any of the theological or identity baggage that my Christian name, Michael Gungor, does in my mind. But I also would never want to make Vishnu Dass its own ego game by thinking that it’s important or necessary. Nor would I want to hurt my family or be guilty of some sort of cultural appropriation with a name like that. I don’t know, I’ll figure it out later.
I am loving awareness.
I am loving awareness.
Suddenly, a pit bull dashes towards me from the farmhouse, barking, mad and sounding thirsty for blood. Adrenaline shoots through my body as my heart begins to race. There’s a fence between us, but it’s not tall. This beast looks like it could easily jump over that thing and tear my throat out. It runs along the fence, snarling and barking. Frightened, I look around for a defensive weapon of some kind. I find a large rock. I look at the bloodthirsty, snarling dog with the rock tightly in my hand.
Don’t you dare, or I will crush your skull, you fucking dog.
I take a breath.
“I am loving awareness,” I whisper again. And then I la
ugh, the stone dropping back to the pavement.
• • • • •
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?”
(PSALM 8:3–4)
I always have liked that passage in the Psalms. Ever since I was a kid, I always loved looking into the sky and feeling tiny. But one thing I failed to notice for a long time was the whole “fingers” thing. Throughout the Bible, people talk about the face, hands, and feet of God. God sits on a throne (with his butt?). He dances (with his legs?). He wears a robe and has hair like “wool.” I suppose it’s not that surprising that the human ego would imagine the infinite creative energy of the entire universe as a big human in the sky, fingers and all; still, it’s pretty funny when you think about it. It’s only slightly less on the nose than if a guy named Brian with red, curly hair who always wore Led Zeppelin T-shirts started a religion with a deity named Brian who happens to have red, curly hair and always wears Led Zeppelin T-shirts. (I wonder if there are any alien civilizations out there who have sacred texts about how the whole world is held in God’s Zorgoplasm. Or how his giant, third antenna undulates on its hyperpod like the great Flergies of the Mt. Binglehorn. The Word of our Lord. Thanks be to God! )
Why is it that we so quickly personify and anthropomorphize God? I think it might have something to do with the reason that my dog, Willa B. Huckleberry Jones Gungor, launches into a frenzy of tail-wagging euphoria every time I greet her enthusiastically, regardless of whether I’ve been gone for ten minutes or a month—these mammal brains of ours were made to need each other. Experiments have shown that we literally depend on physical touch to survive. The need for attention and affection is wired deep into our brains because our survival and reproductive success is largely dependent on a good enough place in our social group. With that in mind, it makes sense why so many people would find comfort in the idea of a humanish ruler of the universe, the King of Kings, who not only is aware of me but who loves me. The leader of the pack is on my team. That’s a powerful idea for us evolved, social apes.