St Mary's

I don’t know if any of you had the good fortune to watch some or all of  “The Wonders of the Universe”, a television series produced by the BBC and hosted by Professor Brian Cox.

The series comprised of four episodes each of which focused on an aspect of the universe, from the nature of time, and the elements of which all living things are made, to the central place of gravity and light.

He begins by stating that we are part of the universe, its story is our story. Unlike the story many of us were brought up with, where we were made as a separate entity to the rest of creation and placed within creation to rule over it. But that’s another story for another time.

This new but ancient story starts with the beginning of the universe, it began 13.7 billion years ago. Today it is filled with over a hundred billion galaxies each containing hundreds of billions of stars. Wow, how do we get our heads around this for we know that

in our galaxy, the Milky Way, light traveling at 300,000 kilometres a second takes 100,000 light years to cross and there are billions of these galaxies.

Life as we know it, maybe that is when the first animals appear on the earth some 590 million years ago . Life as we know it, Professor Cox explained at one point, is only possible for one thousandth of a billion, billion billionth, billion, billion, billionth, billion, billion, billionth of a percent of the lifespan of the universe (life has simply come and gone). And of that barely conceivable fraction, a human life occupies only a very tiny space. You wonder whether it’s really worth getting up in the morning!

It can send you into a severe case of “What’s it all mean? What’s it all about?”

(It reminds me of the Galaxy Song from Monty Pythons Meaning of Life)

“Whenever life gets you down Mrs. Brown,

And things seem hard or tough,

And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,

And you feel that you’ve had quite enough,

Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving

And revolving at 900 miles an hour.”

They go into singing about all the things I have just spoken about concerning  the universe and they finish with,

“So remember, if you’re feeling very small and insecure,

How amazingly unlikely is your birth

And pray that there’s intelligent life

Somewhere out in space

Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth”

Monty Python

The way we are treating our planet would not indicate much intelligent life here on earth.

Embracing this new understanding of the universe certainly puts into perspective many of the things we worry and concern ourselves with.

Many of us here are here today because we believe that there is something more, something beyond the form, the material world in which we find ourselves. We have called that ‘something beyond’ many names, God, Spirit, Presence, Consciousness, All that is, the Ground of our Being. But not everyone has this sense, this belief. And for many of us, who have grown up with this belief, we could not imagine life without it. The understandings of what and who this presence is has probably changed and evolved. The moment of actually believing in such a presence is maybe not a memory many of us have, there may have being moments of doubt, or even years of doubt and a re-emergence of belief.

Spiritual teacher, Adyashanti speaks of this moment of seeing, of belief, as a Virgin Birth. In many of the stories of the great spiritual teachers, Avatars, there is often a virgin birth. Why is this so? Could it be, he suggests, and moving beyond a literal understanding to a metaphorical understanding, could it be a moving beyond the coming together of opposites such as a male and female to form life. That in a virgin birth there is no need for the coming together of opposites, there is a recognition of something beyond the world of form?

The virgin birth is the moment of TIME, the first spark where there is this first recognition of the TIMELESS, formless one life which precedes the coming together of opposites.

It is interesting in the programme “Wonders of the Universe”, Brian Cox discusses the elements of which all life are made. He explains how these elements are related to the life cycles of the stars. That in the entire universe there are only 92 elements, all of which are present here on earth, and many go to making up a human life. What is fascinating and why I am relating this, is that all matter, all elements are comprised of the coming together of two, and something like Carbon which is the basic building block for all life was forged in the death of a Supernova, a stellar explosion of a huge star which dies over a period of a few weeks and months and during this time can radiate as much energy as the sun is expected to emit over its entire life span. At the core of the explosion at 50 billion degrees Celsius, the Carbon atom can be formed. The whole death-new life motif is present in this wonderful galactic event, and to think we are the product of the death of a supernova, some time in the distant past. It makes looking into the skies at night a wonderful intimate moment. Just to imagine our being birthed in the heavens, in the galactic realms of outer space.  But to take this wonder to all that surrounds us on this marvelous planet, particularly on a day like today when everything appears brighter after the clearing cleaning qualities of recent rains, and to wonder at how we are all the products of the one beginning.

The Gospel for today speaks of the death rebirth motif. “Jesus began to show the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him saying “God forbid it! This must never happen to you.” But Jesus turned and said to Peter “Get behind me Satan! You are a stumbling block to me: for you are setting your mind not on DIVINE things but on human things.”

The journey to making sense of this amazing expanding universe, and the meaning of life, is a journey of death, death to the ego, the small self, the mind made self, the mind caught in the words of Jesus to Peter, stuck on human things, the world of form, the exterior material world. To get this we are invited by Jesus over and over in the Gospels to go beyond this world of form – to meta noia.(metta meaning to transcend; noia, translated mind, but in particular the small mind) often translated to repent but in a better translation  Jesus is inviting us to the larger mind, the mind which embraces the oneness of life, beyond a separate identity.

To do this takes a death and at times great suffering because of the great attachment we have to our separate identities and to the world of form.

But with this death can come a rebirth, a virgin birth, a tiny spark of realization, of something beyond form, beyond the coming together of opposites, an embracing of this mysterious unseen presence.

And as Jesus, who is birthed by the virgin, becomes the light of the world, so too this realization within us that my true essence is beyond form, that I am one with the great I am. That I too, in my egoless essence, Am, the light of the world.

I would like to finish with the Buddhist practice of ringing the bell three times.

The sound of the bell representing the form which comes into existence but fades and dies out of existence. Like the universe we have just described. We enjoy the form in an unattached way while it last, represented in  the sound of the bell, but we also enjoy the silence from which it emerges. The silence where the great I AM resides and where we are one with this I AM.

Let us enjoy the bell.

Let us enjoy the silence.