 158. Stigmata (All Faiths) |
Of course all the physical structures and functions in the human brain (and in the human body-mind as a whole) are directly associated with the experiences human beings have! Those physical structures and functions are the gross designs that lie at the base (or lower order) of the total human design, which total design extends from that gross base into higher and higher orders of subtlety. But human beings are not separate in any absolute sense. Human beings arise in a grand unity and Oneness, and either they fully participate (and transcend themselves) in that unity and its Source-Condition or they participate only nominally (or in an otherwise limited, and, generally, only gross, manner). If an individual (or even an entire society) becomes philosophically bound up with egoity (and, therefore, with the notions of separateness and mere grossness, or materiality), the notion, the understanding, and the experience of the grand unity and its Ultimate Source-Oneness are lost. And, in that case, all human cogitations are reduced to the fastening of attention on the separateness and grossness of the body-mind. Not only does that affect philosophy—it affects the entire process of living. The body-mind can fasten on itself, and be utterly controlled by its own mechanical and material limitations—or it can feel beyond itself, and participate in the grand psychophysical unity and the Ultimate Source-Oneness. Those are the two most fundamental human options.
Of course the brain conditions individual experience, and even all the structures of the bodymind condition individual experience! But the limitation proposed or represented by the bodymind mechanism can be transcended by intensifying and magnifying ego-transcending participation in the grand unity of conditionally manifested (or cosmic) existence, and by surrender of ego (or separateness) in the One Source-Condition. Therefore, rather than wallowing (self-contracted and ego-possessed) in the separateness and separativeness of egoity and its psycho-physical mechanics, human beings must be given over, by means of self-surrender, self-forgetting, self-transcendence, and the (more and more) participatory disposition. The brain itself must be made to feel beyond the skull. The nervous system must be made to feel beyond the flesh. The entire body-mind must be made to participate more and more in the Great Unity, the Great Force, the Great Consciousness, the Great (and Self- Evidently Divine) Self-Condition and Source-Condition and Event in which the human being is (with all, and in All) appearing. This is the fundamental matter for human "consideration". By means of its own submission, the mind must participate in the cosmic unity and the One Reality. And, that being done, of course changes occur in the mind, changes occur in the brain, and changes occur in the entire body—in accordance with the concepts, the images, the metaphors, and the imperatives associated with an individual's social, cultural, and religious (and otherwise sacred or philosophical) tradition (and his or her other familiarities). That is how religion and Spirituality work—not by maintaining one's separateness and the notion of "God" as separate, but by one's awakening and responding to the "secret" (or esoteric) Truth that conditionally manifested existence is a psycho-physical unity, and that the Divine (or the Ultimate Reality) is the One and Only Source-Condition of all and All (the Ground, the Essence, and the Very Self of all and All). When you rejoice in that, when you enter into true devotional exercise on that basis, then the body-mind participates. Therefore, and only by that participation, the mind is changed, the brain is changed, the body is changed. That is why people sometimes dance and sing and weep in ecstasy. Or they become silent and still. Or they hear and see profound things beyond. And their doings change, and even their appearance changes. And some may become stigmatics, and others may walk on fire, and yet others may do miracles of "mind over matter", and so on—each according to the concepts, the images, the metaphors, and the imperatives of his or her tradition, the effectiveness of his or her own self-surrender, and the degree to which he or she actually enters into the Profundity of the cosmic unity and the One Reality. In the face of such ecstasy, "modern" Western commentators typically argue that the phenomena of ecstasy are merely and only created by the brain (and its own, or material, mental activities), and that (therefore) such phenomena have nothing to do with Real God, or Truth, or Ultimate Reality. But such arguments only reveal the poverty of philosophy, the absence of the knowledge that conditionally manifested existence is a universally participatory psycho-physical unity, and the absence of the Realization (or even the intelligent presumption) that the Divine (or the One and Ultimate Reality) is the Ground, the Essence, and the Very Self of all and All.
The genuine (or religiously important) manifestation of the stigmata is certainly (and necessarily) the result of participation (mystically, psychologically, mentally, emotionally, physically, and altogether) in the concepts, images, metaphors, imperatives, and other influences of a particular (in this case, Christian) tradition. But that does not make the stigmata un-Divine. Genuine stigmata are, like all other genuine religious phenomena, a sign of psycho-physical participation, via tradition, in the cosmic unity and the Ultimate Source- Condition.
