Universal Christ: Does Christ Only Belong To Christians?
Finding Our True North-Our Way Home
I was first introduced to the term Universal Christ when I chanced upon a little booklet of the same name in the stall of a Christian bookshop many years ago.
It contained a small collection of readings by Bede Griffiths (1906 -1993).
Allan Griffiths became a Benedictine monk (adopted the name Bede) who set up an ashram in India. He interpreted Christianity using the myths and symbols of Hinduism.
Contemplative stillness in meditation or prayer was what he believed was the way to unify all in understanding a ‘cosmic Christ’ or universal Christ presence that filled all things.
People of all different faiths and beliefs flocked to his ashram to experience the unity in worship.
He understood that there was essentially fundamental differences between Christianity and Hinduism. He did not attempt to create a ‘super’ religion enmeshing elements of both. He was rather trying to create a space where all could come together to worship.
He was apparently not brought up in a religious household. He had a religious experience when he was at college in England where suddenly the birdsong, the sun, the light in the sky and colors all appeared in a magnified way to him.
He felt flooded with the understanding that through nature he had experienced God.
He went on to study the classics and literature and was attracted to the writings of Wordsworth, Shelley, Blake, and Keats.
C. S. Lewis was one of his tutors. Lewis at that stage in his life had moved away from atheism and believed in a universal spirit but would not call it God.
This understanding of a universal spirit became a central theme of Bede Griffiths teachings later on in India when he set up an ashram for people to share worship together.
My Journey
Suffice to say having only recently left the fundamentalist religion of my childhood these were completely new concepts to me.
I had been finding that in my search for a place to worship, I had become disappointed as all of the organized religious places of worship I had attended, all seemed to eventually come down to the separation that they believed that they had the truth and unless you accepted the truth as they taught, then you were not to be saved and were not accepted by God.
This felt fundamentally wrong to me.
Intuitively wrong.
I was starting to understand that the way I had been taught to view the world; as everything is black or white, approved or disapproved by God, and people as being either ‘sheep’ or ‘goats’ in character, was no longer the way I felt the actual real world was.
- I saw people as being multiple shades of grey, in reasons and motivations both conscious and unconscious for their outward behavior, as well as how their internal private world functioned.
- I saw how culture and geography shaped what religious beliefs people usually adopted as well as in other areas of their life.
- I was fascinated with how history shaped the world, individual people and whole cultures.
- I loved learning about how science and the arts lead to increased understanding of how things worked and functioned in the natural world.
- When I went to university I studied different theories of psychological development and started to see how people’s families of origin and early childhood experiences could impact their conscious and unconscious ways of behaving, and choices they made. Including their choices in relationship to religion as they became adults.
A New Way to Find True North
The little booklet of DAILY READINGS with BEDE GRIFFITHS opened up my mind and heart to a different way of understanding spirituality and the world.
It was all about unity.
Unifying people. And especially,
the unity of the opened heart.
He believed that division and diversity would always exist in religion due to different cultural backgrounds:
“but that experientially, in the knowledge of the heart, we find a profound sharing in the mystery of godliness”
He believed that the supernatural Christ as manifested physically in Jesus was the same Christ experienced right throughout history not just to the Christians.
- The food (manna) that miraculously appeared for the Israelites in the wilderness ‘was Christ’ (I Corinthians 11).
- The fruits of the spirit were seen as the visible authentic sign of Christ’s presence in someone’s heart, regardless of their religious belief/or not, and regardless of what time in history they lived.
Christ was seen as “embracing all time and space, and giving meaning and purpose to all creation”. A Christ who “fills all things”.
His understanding validated and attracted many people who felt they had experienced God outside of the bounds of the traditional Christian church.
He could see that the Apostle Paul spoke about an “indwelling Christ”.
This indwelling of Christ he related to the Hindu understanding of God found in the heart of humans. Not an externalized God as traditionally taught in Christianity.
He saw God consciousness existing in all creation, not just humans.
- All of creation animate and inanimate made up the whole. God was in all, through all, and is all. Transcending both time and space.
As new discoveries in quantum physics emerge in many ways science is revealing more and more how the universe is one giant ‘whole’ and each thing impacts the other, in ways we only are just starting to understand.
The observer impacts the observed and how the observed behaves. We can’t understand the one without understanding the influence of the other.
The mystical way of looking at the world, as God in man, and man in God no longer seems so mysterious.
Unity and Separateness — A Daily Reading by Bede Griffiths
“The human person is a center of consciousness which is capable of infinite extension. As it grows it becomes more and more integrated with the whole complex of persons who make up humanity.
We become more ourselves as we enter more deeply into relationship with others. We do not lose ourselves but we lose our sense of separation and division.
This is essentially a mystery of love. When two people love one another they do not lose their distinction of person, they become more fully personal.
The whole process of evolution, as Teilhard de Chardin saw it, is a process of personalization. The ultimate goal of humanity is a communion of persons in love.
This is what was revealed in St. John’s Gospel when Jesus prayed for his disciples ‘that they may be one as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they may be one in us’ (John 17:21)”.
Bede Griffiths
So, if “The ultimate goal of humanity is a communion of persons in love” and:
True North is the internal compass that guides you successfully through life. It represents who you are as a human being at your deepest level. It is your orienting point — your fixed point in a spinning world — that helps you stay on track as a leader.
If our True North, at our deepest level, is LOVE, in communion with others, then we can’t go too wrong can we now?
