Though I didn’t know it until recently, the man pictured below has had a great impact on my life.
For each of us there are probably many such people. Men and women in the background of the background of our lives, quietly doing good. They support our own journeys whether or not we ever know it. Evil is a showy thing. Those who do it like to rejoice publicly in their sins and so we all know the names of tyrants. By contrast Good is humble. The names of all the soldiers who combat the darkness through their simple lives are often known only to God. Never forget that you likewise are in the background of the background of someone else’s life somewhere. Supporting them. Your little acts of good and kindness, however small, is saving lives. That’s true. Remember it.
Father Bede, aka Swami Dayananda (“Bliss of Compassion”) was one such man. For me at least, and probably for many others. Most have probably never heard of him, even though the work he did was profound. Born in England in 1906 he grew up to become a Catholic priest, a Benedictine Monk, and a Yogi, pioneering what has since become known as the “Christian Ashram Movement.” Bede saw, truthfully I think, that Christianity could never be truly catholic (catholic of course meaning, “universal”) if it had only ever been fully explored and understood through the lens of Hellenistic philosophy. Which, of course, is largely what happened. The protestations of the Eastern Orthodox aside, the great bulk of Christian theology was worked out through the intellectual framework provided by Plato and Aristotle. Ideas like “substance” and “logos” and “essence” come, really, from Greek paganism. With Christ a very strange thing occurred wherein this near-east Semitic religion of the Hebrews was sort of alchemically transmuted into something Hellenistic. This legacy from the early days of the church has never gone away, nor should it. The Western underpinnings of Christian theology as we know it are good. They’re just not all there is, nor all there needs to be.
Bliss of Compassion saw this. Bede believed very strongly in his own Catholicism, but also very strongly in the Catholicism of God. The God who had saved the world through Jesus also had his hand in some mysterious way in all the other religions of the world as well. He had to have. Thus they also must in the fullness of time be integrated into the Christian story. Just as Paradise Lost seamlessly incorporates classical paganism into the story of Adam and Eve, and just as Germanic paganism was baptized into Christmas, Bede realized that the other traditions of the world must likewise be gathered in. There was truth, and profound truth, in Shinto and Hinduism and Buddhism and so forth, and those truths must also be baptized. There is still work to do! Bede declared. Christianity is not yet finished!
So Dayananda set out on a journey to see if the story of Jesus could be understood through Vedic philosophy. If God had laid the foundation for Christ to be known through the Greek philosophers, had he also done so through the Hindu ones? Could Christ be found in the Upanishads, he asked. Jesus had declared that his yoke was easy and his burden light. Was it a coincidence that the word for “yoke” in Sanskrit, is yoga?
Our culture is one of youth. Today it is not uncommon to meet young people who unironically believe one is over the hill at twenty-five. The internet, music, movies, apps… all of this is geared towards people young enough to have no responsibilities but old enough to buy things. Once we age out of that a lot of us get the feeling that our lives are set. Over and done. But, this has never been God’s way. Abraham was seventy-five when God called him, and Bede, in 1955, at the cusp of turning fifty, at last set out for India. It was only in the second half of his life that his real work even began. In his own words, he left for the East to “find the other half of his soul.”
Why am I telling you this?
Because as it turns out Bede was a close personal friend of two men who have had a profound impact on my life. C.S. Lewis and Rupert Sheldrake. Bede was actually a student of Lewis’s at Oxford, and the two maintained constant communication through letters until Lewis’s death in ‘63. At one point Bede even gave Lewis a copy of Aelrid of Rievaulx’s “Spiritual Friendship”, a small tome Lewis would come to revere. They were one anothers’ confidant in the deep struggles of their souls. It is unlikely that Lewis’s religious writings, or Narnia, would have come out like they had if not for Bede’s influence. It is thus impossible that I should have come out like I did, if not for their friendship. Sheldrake likewise studied directly under Bede in his ashram, and it was Bede who first opened Sheldrake’s mind to the fact that Eastern and Western religion need not be opposed. Without Bede it is doubtful Sheldrake would have ever returned to his Christianity. Thus it is unlikely that his thoughts on the nature of the soul and morphic resonance, both crucial for me personally, would have ever been as well formed. I often credit Sheldrake’s work on the apparent extrasensory perception of homing pigeons as vital to my own breaking free of the shackles of scientific materialism. Perhaps I should likewise then credit Bede.
In short, though I never knew the man, nor read him until recently, if Bede had never existed neither would this blog and neither would our podcast. I am in his debt, and only just now learning it! Maybe this post may go some distance in repaying.
It is fitting though. As tuning forks set to the same note resonate with one another so too do human spirits. Whether or not I ever knew him Bede’s spirit was close to the same wavelength of my own and so it is perhaps inevitable that the music he was putting out into the cosmos would reverberate in me. As I’ve noted many times on this blog, I’m a conspiracy theorist, and so many people assume me to be in the same camp as Alex Jones. You know, angry and militaristic. “1776 will commence again!" and all that. I’m not though. That’s not me. Not to hate on Alex or anything, I love the man, his style just isn’t my style. I have always believed that inside each of us, in the heart, in the soul, is a golden light. A light more powerful than any darkness. If we cultivate it, if we become strong in love and peace and justice and mercy, then it will overwhelm all the evils of the world. I have therefore always been something of a universalist, and like Bede, could only ever see the richness of the world’s traditions as good. Just as I, even now, wear a samue-gi to pray the Jesus prayer and frequently contemplate the koans of the Blue Cliff Record, Bede read through the psalms weekly and yet also practiced the sun salutation and yoga.
Of course, such attitudes can reasonably lead to charges of syncretism. Of the desire to create a sort of oriental santeria that treats Jesus as just another teacher, or just another prophet, or just another god among a myriad of other deities that one might worship. Bede was likewise criticized However, from his Ashram of the Holy Trinity he stated, clearly, that if one is grounded enough in one’s own tradition then the traditions of others can only enhance it. Such can only ever be a door to the evangelization of the word. Christ you see was already at work in the religions of the Native Americans and the Aboriginals and the Japanese. The Great Spirit of the Lakota is Yahweh, if we have eyes to see it.
Naturally, trying to see it will not be without challenges. There will be much confusion along the way. Trying to baptize Zen or Shinto into the Christian story will be as problematic and dangerous as baptizing Odin was (who do you imagine Santa Claus is?). But, still. It must be done. With God’s help it will be done. This thing isn’t finished until Catholic means Catholic.
Swami Dayananda, if you’re up there, pray for us. Pray for me.
Omnia vincit Amor.
A generous, thoughtful and evocative telling of how wisdom and insight travels, with such nuance, from one generation and soul to another---many kindly thanks for the beauty and bounty of the compelling reflections. I was fortunate to correspond with Bede when alive and
I have all of his letters he sent to the "Canadian C.S. Lewis Journal" in my private collection.
amor vincit omnia
Ron Dart
Amen, brother.