7. Bennett on the Cosmic Changes

In the second of this series (Easter Saturday), I set out a quote from volume 4 of The Dramatic Universe:

The (Christ) Event was beyond understanding, chiefly because it belongs to the Realm of Impossibility that lies outside Existence itself. To unmake what had been made and to redeem mankind, an act of Will was needed that would not destroy Existence or even the smallest part of it. … a new power was to work and this was to be the Unitive Energy or the Power of Love concentrated within a living man. The Unitive Energy … did not enter the human soul-stuff together with creativity. … Love entered the soul-stuff of humanity with the Incarnation (of Christ). … It is not to say that there was no love before the time of Christ: the Incarnation being hyparchic, its effect would be felt in all history. Nevertheless, it is very noticeable that the significance of love did not penetrate into the human mind-stuff until the time of Christ. This can be noticed in non-Christian traditions such as Buddhism. All Buddhist texts earlier than the first century A.D. emphasise the ideas of causality and liberation, but not of compassion and redemption. The same is true of the Hebrew Scriptures which, with one notable exception, never ascribe love to God, but do require it of man. Nevertheless, the (Hebrew) prophecies foresee the coming Redemption and in this they differ from their Buddhist and Hindu contemporaries. (345)

In the footnotes, Bennett provides examples of Buddhist texts to illustrate that love and compassion feature in them during the Christian age; and that when Mahayana texts begin to do so, this is not imitation of Christian ideas but, he implies, the influence of Christ’s releasing Divine Love into humanity.

The second footnote on this page refers to the prophet Hosea, where 14:4 has God stating: “I will love them freely for mine.” The ESV translation, generally the most literal, reads: “I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them.” There has to be a “Redemptive Sacrifice” (346) Bennett says, and hence in Hosea 14, God’s love is given to Israel only after Israel has repented and been humbled. Much of what Bennett writes in this part of The Dramatic Universe would be worth exploring, but I do not have time now, except for this one remarkable statement:

(there was) an Act of Will whereby the Cosmic Individuality in a unique manner entered Existence in time and place. (Bennett’s bold type, 346)

8. Drawing the Threads Together

There are, therefore, reasons to see in the Passion, death, and Resurrection, of Christ, a cosmic event which fundamentally altered the nature of Man. From the time of the Incarnation, the divine impulse Love was available to us – but it is, of course, for us to claim it, to live up to the gift of Christ. Needless to say, this opens an entirely new perspective upon the Four Ideals Exercise.

I may be entirely wrong, but it seems to me that, if Pogson and Bennett are correct in some of their assertions, then perhaps Christ chose to die a violent death for two reasons: first, because a Being of His level can die only by His own choice; and second, by dying a violent death, he added His Love to the substances which would be released upon His death. That is, when one dies, some energy is released. the additional force of His own Will and the other impulses present in Him at the time of His Passion and death – notably, His Love. Gurdjieff told Ouspensky:

The process of the growth and the warming of the moon is connected with life and death on the earth. Everything living sets free at its death a certain amount of the energy that has ‘animated’ it; this energy, or the ‘souls’ of everything living — plants, animals, people — is attracted to the moon as though by a huge electromagnet, and brings to it the warmth and the life upon which its growth depends, that is, the growth of the ray of creation. In the economy of the universe nothing is lost, and a certain energy having finished its work on one plane goes to another. (In Search of the Miraculous, 85 )

It is one thing to die, but another matter entirely to consciously choose death, and especially so horrid a death as that which He chose. Bennett adds the fate of the Apostles: he may well be quite correct about this, because the Church’s tradition about martyrdom and what it calls “baptism by blood” is so extensively witnessed. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” This may true also because of a higher force (higher hydrogens) released when the blood is voluntarily shed.

This would dovetail with Bennett’s thesis: that at the death of Christ, a new force entered the world, and specifically, a new impulse of Love and Compassion began to permeate the world. It did, or so it would seem, and it was released from within Christ by His Will to accept death (and the same goes for the Apostles). It is almost stupendous – this would at least be consistent with the suffering Christ endured in the Garden of Gethsemane. Had there not been a tremendous struggle to die in love, then that form of death may have lost its eternal value. It also goes some way to explaining why Gurdjieff insisted that we cannot “really … sense various possible genuine terrors, in particular the terror of one’s own death …” (1223) Christ, however, could. This is a sobering thought. It is one way of seeing how small I am, how weak, and becoming aware that I have perhaps been oblivious to the true dimensions of His sacrifice.

One cannot be dogmatic on any of this. We are small and these mysteries are endless. But it does for me bring questions: how do I contemplate my own life and accomplishments?  What will be released at my death? Will I, when I die, be able to bequeath to any of those who survive me (and perhaps even to those who have predeceased me) a force, an impulse? And what will be its nature? Will be a stink? This provides a very different perspective on the aim of dying an honourable death.