The Gospel of Relativity

Dear Reader,

In this day and age I am sure that many people will be asking, "Just where is God when his help is needed?", in the midst of all the many challenges that surround us. But, of course, the solution does not reside "out there"; the solution is in our own hands, and in this way:

We will find peace and harmony when, despite all appearances, treaties, and boundaries, the Spirit of Love permeates our hearts and until how we relate to each other becomes more important than the results of individual gain. - Walter Starcke

This quotation stems from the pen of a man steeped in spiritual reflection and work in the Unitarian church [an essentially Christian church that rejects the idea of the Holy Trinity and original sin. Its teachings are a legacy from the time of original - pre-Roman - Christianity. Their spiritual philosophy is in accord with many other spiritual paths and wisdom teachings.]

Surely these words from Walter Starcke rather sum up the approach that is needed in this age, an age of considerable agitation and worry about climate change and ecological considerations, as well as disease. 

However, Walter Starcke's life (1921-2011) was anything but that of a spiritual recluse - he was a Broadway theatrical producer! Starcke’s friends in his theatre days ranged from such literary giants as Noel Coward, Cole Porter, and his own peer group of friends – Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, Marlon Brando, and Paul Newman, who Starcke discovered and introduced to Paul’s first agent. Starcke was centrally involved in the original stage productions of shows like The King and I and the forerunner of Cabaret.

He was a big figure, therefore, in the New York theatre world, yet it was one of Starcke's books on spirituality - The Gospel of Relativity - that rather lept off the shelves of a Birmingham bookstore in 1975 and helped me to determine or, rather, confirm my own unitarian spiritual philosophy. However, at that time I was not going to accept the authority of this one book and I went through many twists and turns over the next 25 years - and plenty of unexpected meetings and experiences - before matters seemed to begin to properly gel. A rounded sense of understanding about the unity of existence began to emerge.

In 1998. I was on a visit to Malaysia and found myself sitting at a tea-hut in the middle of the night with the stars twinkling brightly above us. I was sitting with 3 Malaysians, two of them being Hindu and the other Christian, and we were talking about religion when I was asked what I thought was the correct religion. I did not believe that formal religion was a proper way, and my answer emerged as: "The way of Jesus". I hardly believed I had said that as for years I had been concentrating on other spiritual traditions, but out it came. On reflection, I think that was the true start of my re-examination of the teachings of Jesus and my return from what had been partly an ego trip into the study of other teachings.

That occasion followed on from a 1997 chartered tour of north Italy, when, near Assissi, I had the profound and unexpected experience of entering a huge basilica that surrounded the ancient and humble chapel of St. Francis of Assissi. It was a macrocosm/microcosm awareness moment and one never to be forgotten.

Around the year 1999 or 2000 I suddenly became profoundly aware of the teachings of Sri Sathya Sai Baba of India, who emphasises that all religions are, essentially, the same and that there is unity in diversity. To paraphrase his viewpoint, no-one - no matter what religion they follow - is exempt from the potential of salvation and entry into God's arms. 

So much for one religion being 'better' than another. But whichever way one chooses, it is not easy, as demonstrated so fully in Jesus's life, though Sai Baba has indicated that the level of commitment shown by Jesus is one that very, very few can follow.

In time I came to learn that Jesus, if he were to speak to us now, might begin by uttering the following words:

I am your friend and your brother. I am not a god and am as much the son of God as you are, as all are. There is a supreme force and we are all sons of it. We really are brothers and sisters and this force never judged you. The given Prize is life itself, and this is the sacred experience, the central story of the sacred message. We have all the same father, mother, supernatural awareness, a non-namable, indescribable generating source.

It is very important to know that the light of God is not within me only, but there is a divine light within every man, woman and child [My note: see Corinthians 3:16-17]. It is within all conscious, sentient and living being, plants, crystals, animals of all kinds and celestial bodies. That light is what they call the individual soul and everyone must learn to recognise that light in others and oneself. Learn to be and love yourself, and to love others. Glow, while connected to the brightest light of all.

It is only through love and healing old religious wounds that humanity can be saved from their own self-destruction. The religions of the world, and I mean all of them without exception, have kidnapped God, trying to pretend special properties as if they had a single right. They have tried to hijack the unspeakable, the eternal. They are blind to their own stupidity.

Starck's Unitarian Church would surely be happy with that statement. The official creation of the Holy Bible and Roman Catholicism as late as the 4th century has a lot to answer for; both creations contain the seeds of error. But once any spiritual teaching lurches into formal religion it loses its validity, except that it can act as a basis towards finding enlightenment if one is prepared to let go.

In the space of those two years, just as I was entering all kinds of worldly difficulties, my spiritual search seemed to stop dead. That journey had reached a certain point of fulfillment from where all spiritual truth became understandable in my mind. A sense of unity had been reached, though the influx of new knowledge did not end there.

Strangely enough, in some respects, I had gone full circle from what Walter Starcke had written in his Gospel of Relativity book and which I had read 25 years before. In subsequent years, what was "The Way of Jesus" (as I had so inexplicably and boldly enunciated in Malaysia in 1998) gradually became more clear.

The physical resurrection of Jesus, though hugely significant, is not as important as his message. What is more important is the message of the resurrection of the Divine within man, resulting in a deeper understanding of reality and a greater love for God and his ‘neighbour’ – his fellow man. Such re-birth lifts human life to an awareness of its own Divine content and purpose. When the veil between the eternal and the temporal is lifted, a man walks with God (in surrender) and as He directs. So when Jesus declared “I am the Way”, there was a special meaning in his statement. 

Also bearing very much in mind the opening quotation of this post, may I leave you with this extract from The Gospel of Relativity:

When Jesus tried to tell the password he said, "There is only one way you can enter the kingdom." He said, "I AM the way," but mankind didn’t hear. They thought he was saying that Jesus, the man, was the way, but he was saying the password, "I." That’s it. That’s all. Just "I." So simple, but so very, very complicated. For "I" cannot be spoken; it can be felt and experienced, but not thought. Any thought about "I" carries with it the seeds of ego, separation and defeat. “I” is the most sacred of all words because it can be comprehended only in silence, in an inner silence.

We have missed the secret of life because we have spoken it. In fact, we have spoken it more than any other word, and every time we have said "I" in a finite way we have desecrated the word. Whenever we have said, "I feel depressed" or "I feel sick," "I need this" or "I need that," we have closed the door on ourselves. We have misused the password.

Whenever we have called any man on Earth our father, any guru, any mate, any effect, we have shut the door on "I." Those who know I AM will never have to look to man whose breath is in his nostrils for anything. They can travel anywhere in the world without money or protection. Everything will be provided from the "I" within.

But we must not speak "I." We must hear it. "I" must enter the heart, it must be in the soul, it must be felt rather than reasoned or thought; only then do we dwell in the secret place of the most high. And it says to us, "Know ye not that I am God? ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ I in the midst of you is mighty, and I will never leave you, nor forsake you.” ...

I is the invisible presence within you. I is the invisible presence that goes before you to make the way clear, is always with you as your protection if you call upon it and hear its voice. "Listen to ME, I, look unto ME, the I of your own being. Don’t look to effects.

Your body is only the temple of ‘I’; I made it in my image and likeness, of my substance. I knew you before you were conceived in the womb. I formed your body. "I am the way, live by Me. Do not live by the way of the world, do not live by form. I am your high tower. Put up your sword; don’t live by the physical or the mental. Live by the recognition of I always with and as you. I in the midst of you is ordained. …"

I, LOVE, and YOU are all the same word. Your capacity to love is your capacity to experience the I of another. Supreme love is when you see another as your own I, when you see yourself in another because you have gone beyond form and know I. When you love another and see your I as his I, you have become total: all is one.

Thank you for reading this.