When I had the letter asking me if I would write something on the
subject of forgiveness, I felt both relieved that someone else felt as
I did that this word just had to come to the fore and be carefully
considered, but also, I felt a very deep sense of fatigue, because I
knew instinctively that this would pose the same sort of problems
that the challenge to conscious forgetfulness that is detailed
carefully by Dr. Ghani in the Supplement of God Speaks, both
raises and promises. I use the word "promise," as Ghani gives great
impetus to the effort to access and master forgetfulness in stating
that it is absolutely necessary to add this attribute to our
capabilities to make progress on the spiritual path, and that implies
that, if we manage to do it then a major assist on that tough road
will have been accomplished.
Forgiveness for me falls instincitvely in the domain of love and
unity. It would be difficult to try to pair two more imposing keys
to God and Creation than to put these two words side by side.
After all, if infinte indivisible unity is a fundamental characerstic
of God, and if we reflect that Baba has said very clearly that love
is the high road of all roads to Realization, then it is evident that
one has mated two horses that are almost bound to win the course.
But I must not make the mistake of putting the two words side by
side without giving some reason for doing so.
While the civilized world had managed to fight two of the most
dreadful wars of all time within short years of one another in the
first half of the twentieth century, not to mention all the really
horrible massacres kindled in smaller conflagrations, one might be
tempted to write off any chance of finding anything approaching
unity within humankind,. Still the hopeless optimist is bound to
search under the frequent horrors that seem to savage the surface
of recorded history, for evidence that all this is in some manner
necessary in order that God's Whim to know His divinity
consciously might manifest. But even putting into words the
challenge, makes clear that this will not be an easy job under any
circumstances.
Perhaps one might take a beginning clue to the puzzle from the
conditions necessary just to start the process of bringing latent
consciousness into a state of manifest actuality. This is, that
consciousness is very evidently enlivened by the tension created by
opposition or contrast, whichever way one prefers to put it. This is
not a lightly suggested definition of conditionality, but one
supported by the apex of modern psychology, in addition to the
common sense observation of the average you and I's. A bit of
honest reflection shows at once the manner that darkness is
brought into a starkly creative role when it is compared to and
contrasted with light. Something springs into being that had not
been there a moment before, and this we call consciousness of the
light state.
From here, it is an easy step to observe that when consciousness
has been enlivened by contrast and opposition, then certainly, if
unity is to be reestablished as a fundamental for Reality, then
something has to fuse diversity back into oneness. And if there is
any principle available, it has to be the essence of forgetfulness,
deliberate and uncontested, combined immediately after its
accomplishment, with forgiveness. The only way these two
attributes could function honestly and sincerely would have to be
through the rediscovery of love. Otherwise, they remain frozen
into eternity in a static condition of immobility.
When the necessary work of contrast/opposition has been
accomplished and consciousness manifested, the driving energy
stored up in those events in turn has to be dissipated. That is not
easy to do, and Baba has given us some very discouraging statistics
on the number of reincarnations it takes each individual drop-soul
even to get to the first step on the return path to the Reality of
unity. But it is eventually started, and that is where deliberate
effort can be of help. Forgiveness is certainly part of the secret
process that can help immeasurably in doing the necessary.
Strange, though, that nowadays even the word forgiveness has
fallen into a sort of disrepute, as it seems to be more a
characteristic of what is called -unrealism than of reality. There is
certainly not the time nor the space for us to plumb this deep
problem of interpretation here, but I am sure that an honest baring
of the matter will eventually lead inevitably to the conclusion that
there is a profound connection with reality in the act of
forgiveness. It just happens to be the necessary precursor to
finding the beginning traces again of love, without which oneness
is left in the domain of pious theory.
Let me be very blunt, while contrast/opposition is the prerequisite
to the enlivening of consciousness, it inevitably leaves a deep
residue of the habit of opposition in our lives. And this has to be
erased before there is any possibility of finding the road back to
infinite oneness. There, Ghani's description of conscious
forgetfulness has a key role to play, but even that can only be a
non-productive and static state of even eternal waiting if it is not
succeeded in some manner by the act of deliberate wiping out of
the memory of division and opposition. This is nothing other than
forgivness.
I was astounded by the wisdom of a famous collumnist in a leading
newspaper when, in commenting on the future to be expected
from the atrocities committed in recent wars in several Slavic
countries, he gave his formula for any real progress. He said
simply, forgiveness. There is no other way, and forgiveness has no
logic of justification; It just has to be, and then life can move
along once more. it is this same forgiveness that we have to be
prepared to find and grant, to others first of all, but finally, to
ourselves, for what we have done to ourselves over so many many
lifetimes.