Nov/Dec 2008

The Infinite Infant

by Jon Mundy, Ph.D.

The Prologue to John

In the beginning was the Word,

 and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 

He was in the beginning with God,

all things were made through him,

and without him was not anything made that was made.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

The light shines in the darkness

 and the darkness comprehended  it not.

John 1:1-4

  The story of Jesus’ birth was originally not as important to early Christians as his teachings. Mark, (around 70 A.D.) the earliest of the gospels, contains nothing regarding Jesus’ birth but begins instead with the story of Jesus meeting John the Baptist. The story of Jesus’ birth was not recorded until well after his crucifixion, somewhere between 70 and 100 AD. As Jesus came increasingly to be revered as the Christ, it became more and more important to know about the whole of his life including, of course, his birth.

  Let’s step out of time for a moment, out of the world, out of our soap operas, and go back to a beginning which has no beginning. No book in the Bible has so breathtaking a beginning as the prologue to the Gospel of John. This is the beginning of beginnings even more than Genesis. In the Gospel of John are set the motifs of life and light, glory and truth -- themes which recur again and again through out the Bible.

     John does not begin with the account of an historical figure as do Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John's book is altogether different. It is not a historical accounting. It contains no parables. It is rather a metaphysical and mystical melody. John reaches deeper. John goes back further -- back into eternity -- into the void -- the very center of life and light itself. Focused eyes are needed to see what John saw. Attentive ears are needed to hear these words. All prejudice, all projection, all anger, all attack thoughts must be laid aside. As the angels said to the shepherds: Behold! Behold! Listen, listen carefully. Give your full attention.

  I bring you good new of Great Joy.

  In the Beginning - Before Abraham was I am.

  Each of the Gospel writers begins by tracing the appearance of Christ back to what the Ancient Greeks called the Arche, or origin. Matthew and Luke begin with the birth of the man, Jesus. John begins with creation itself. He goes back to the very first expression of Love Itself. In the Gospel of John, we find Jesus saying Before Abraham was, I am. He did not say, Before Abraham was, I was He said: Before Abraham was, I am. Before the particularized body of Jesus, Christ already was. Perfection precedes imperfections. The creator prefaces creation. God prefaces Adam. Christ always has been and will be in perfection. Christ always has been - in the present -- in the eternal now; and, He is as alive now as ever.

      The Immaculate Conception

  Only the gospel of Matthew and Luke tell of the birth of Jesus. While they give us different details, they are agreed that Jesus was conceived without a human father and was born at Bethlehem. The founders of other religious traditions including Buddha, Mahavira, Pythagoras, and Confucius were also thought to have had immaculate conceptions. The word "Immaculate" means not spotted, pure, clean, stainless, untarnished, impeccable, and innocent. It comes from the Latin in, meaning not; and macula, meaning a spot; and means spotless. Whether it is true “in fact” or not, an immaculate conception is an important idea to human consciousness. We want the beginning of things to be perfect, clean, and spotless.

      There is nothing outside of you

  To see Jesus as Christ but not to know ourselves as Christ is to disallow our identity and divinity. There is no light which shines outside our Mind. We are already part of the Mind of God and all else is illusion. The only reality is Spirit, God, Heaven, Christ, Love – are all one and the same and there is nothing else. God does not know about this illusory dream of separation precisely because it is an illusion. God knows only the truth. The truth is the only thing which is eternal. Everything that is made up will disappear. Only that created by God is eternal.

Can you find light by analyzing darkness as the psychotherapist

does or like the theologian by acknowledging darkness

in yourself and looking for a distant light to remove it

while emphasizing the distance?

A Course in Miracles

   God has created us all immaculate (W-pI.152.9:4). In the core being of who we are, we cannot but be pure, spotless -- clean. We remember that purity as we let go of the self, the mask, the play, the game, which does not become us. To purify means to let go of all the concepts; all the ideas, and projections and prejudices that fill our heads. It means falling back into the void.

 How Was The Messiah To Come?

    Infancy and early childhood is a mystical time. Jesus came to the world as a baby. A messiah was expected. Maybe the Messiah would come as a mighty warrior or a great king; maybe He would come riding on a fiery chariot out of the heavens. God's foray into history was perfect -- peaceful and correct. It is possible to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven only if one becomes as a little child. We see the Kingdom of Heaven when we have nothing to hold onto (no body -- no name -- nothing with which to identify). We know the infinite when we know innocence. When, like an infant, we just are -- when we have no judgments -- when we have no name to defend -- we can see the Kingdom.

 What is the Christ?

Christ is God's Son as He created him.

He is the Self we share, uniting us with one another and with God as well.

He is the Thought which still abides within the Mind that is His Source.

He has not left His holy home, nor lost the innocence

in which He was created.

He abides unchanged forever in the Mind of God.

A Course in Miracles

       What is being described here is you and me and us and we. It is the whole. It is also them and us, us and them. It is the beginning and the end. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega. A Holy Son of God appeared in this world, for a time, in the person of Jesus. He came to show us that perfection is possible. It is possible to remember God. To remember God is to remember infinity. It is possible to be here without separation. The fact that he did it is proof that it can be done. We who live in bodies, in space and time, on a specific planet -- we who live in history -- need stories that have beginnings and ends. Stories tell us of a process. By reading about something which happens in time, it is possible to understand things. Our minds are set to grasp sequence, but the Kingdom of Heaven is eternal and not delimitated to time.

       Time is a great illusion. In Heaven everything simply is. Though the mind processes things in a linear-fashion, sometimes it is actually possible to see beyond the limitation of this world. For this reason, we sometimes have déjà vu experiences or “think” we remember past lives. Truth is there is only now. There is no past or future (ACIM, M. 24. 1:2). The mind seeks to organize things logically, sequentially, linearly. But there are other ways of understanding. Our hearts understand in a way that our minds do not. We are not limited to time and we may gain awareness in ineffable ways through intuition, music, poetry, images, dance, touch and affection. The simplest, most profound way to know things is through a deep inner knowing -- through immediacy and intuition -- through revelation. The mind wants one thing to follow after another, so we create stories. Jesus' story as a human being begins on a certain night in Bethlehem and continues through Golgotha and the Resurrection. Christianity, as a historical event, has a beginning and will have an end. But Christ who is the Alpha and the Omega has no beginning and can have no end.

 In the Beginning was the Word

    Before the historical Jesus of Nazareth, the Greeks worshipped Christ as the Logos, the word. Logos means inward thought. It also means outward expression. John tells us that first, there was that which knew that which grasped the nature of reality and formulated it into sound.

 In the light of God the Kingdom of Heaven is a very subtle sound

 - sweet and lovely, so that if compared with terrestrial noise,

it is like a perfect stillness.

Nevertheless, in the realm of glory, it is indeed comprehensible sound

and there is a language heard by the angels.

- Christian Mystic Jacob Boehm (1575–1624, Germany)

    First, there was that which was expressed - the first idea -- the logo -- the sound -- the first utterance coming out of the void. In the beginning was the word. Before light there is sound, there is that which seeks to grasp the nature of reality itself. The Nativity Scene shows Jesus surrounded by baby animals. Many baby animals are born with their eyes closed. Before they can see they can hear and they can speak. Puppies and kittens can hear themselves and their brothers and sisters barking and meowing well before they see each other. Human babies do not at first see color nor have the ability to focus their eyes.

    The word per-son comes from the Etruscan word for through “per” and sonar meaning “sound.” The word “per-son” means “through sound.” First there is consciousness seeking to comprehend itself -- reaching out of the void. In my death experience in 1976, the way I came back to my body was by regaining control of my vocal cords and screaming - by making a statement. The first cry coming from the baby is a statement. Already the ego is formulating itself. It is yet, however, quite primitive so the child keeps falling back into the void, into infinity, into sleep and then the ego awakes again and again. When a child is born, it has no name. During the first months of life, the ego is undeveloped – the infant just is. An infant has no name, no past and therefore no guilt, no anger, no position. There is no memory and no language by which to construct a past. 

    There are no words for the infant.  There are no words for the infinite.  We give a name to the infant. As the infant grows and an association is made between the name and the body, the ego begins to form. Slowly, slowly, the infant leaves the infinite and comes into the finite, into time and the world of form -- the physical. You may know the story of the family who had a new baby and the little girl in the family asked if she could be left alone with the baby for a while, apart from her family. The parents, concerned that the little girl might be jealous and hurtful of the baby placed a monitor in the room and told the little girl she could go in and be alone with the baby but they decided to listen in on the monitor. Once in the room, the little girl approached her new baby brother and said: "Tell me about God baby, I'm beginning to forget."

         The Infant - The Infinite and the Ineffable.

     And The Word Was With God - And the Word Was God

     John's Gospel says God is no different than the Word. He Himself is Is-ness. When Moses asked God who he should tell the people had sent him, he was told, Tell them I Am that I Am. St. Augustine, after questioning who God is hears a voice say to him, simply, I am that I am. Infants are blessed because they come from the infinite. The word in-fant and in-finite share the same root. The “in” of both words means not. In-finite means not finite or not limited -- the void -- allness. One synonym for void is innocent. The “in” of In-fant also means not. fant comes from fari which means talk. An in-fant is one who cannot talk, who has no words.  

            There is a Chinese saying that man is born infinite but dies finite. If we die in infinity we melt back into the void. Man is born infinite but most people die finite. Most people die delimited by the world. Most people die with their boots on, that is, they die with a "personality" which can be hurt by words. They can still be insulted. A mystic cannot be insulted. An infant cannot be insulted. The word insult comes from the Latin insultare, meaning "to jump on." When we feel we are attacked verbally or physically, we feel jumped on. The infant comes from the infinite. The infinite has no past, the infant has no words, the infant has no name. Slowly, slowly, a past is created and an ego comes into form. Now, if the name is insulted, the child will be hurt, become angry and upset. Before the ego there was no separation. There was no one to get angry. Being itself just is. God just is. Christ just is. You just are. Christ always has been purely in infinity and innocence. When we die, we are somebody, a teacher, a salesman, a doctor, an engineer, or a professor. When we were born, many alternatives were available, infinite possibilities were open -- all doors were open. By and by, we adopt an identity which can be insulted.

Every child is a mystic. Every child is born mystical;

then we drag him toward the school and education.

The serpent is the civilization, the culture, the conditioning.

Osho

      Infancy and Innocence

      There are moments that we can remember, if we choose, when we were innocent. The further we go into eternity, the less there is of this world, the more innocence. The Course speaks of innocence 146 times. It’s trying to help us get back to our own innocence, to the memory of who we are in truth. Eternity itself is purely innocent. Can you remember time in the cradle? Not with clarity of course but just a soft and gentle laying down of the head, on clean flannel blankets with a satin strip sewn along the edge. Mother and Daddy and other adults are talking in the background, their words are of no particular importance -- just a strong, gentle reminder of a caring presence.

      We love Christmas particularly when we can share it with children because of their immediacy, their "proximity" to the moment; their ability to "fall" into things, to give themselves over so completely, so immediately to the experience. Young children are as happy to play with wrapping paper as they are with expensive toys. Innocence is true perception and innocence is our natural state. Christmas is time to return to innocence. Things of this world are limited. We are delimited by the confines of our bodies and by space and time but the infinite has no delimitation. The infinite is so vast it is ineffable. Words cannot describe it.

      Do you remember it? It's so far past and so ineffable that it is difficult to give expression to it but, there was a place and time when everything was perfect, a time of innocence, a time when everything was taken care of -- a time of trusting -- a time in the cradle -- a time of infancy. For most of us our earliest memories are not really memories, they are images, feelings and impressions, colors, lights, and sounds -- simplicity, purity, wholeness. Christmas is a time to remember the peace of infancy, the sense of being okay, and burden free. Infancy is a holy time when everything is okay. Babies laugh and giggle and play because they have no reason not to. Life simply is and in that simplicity is its beauty.

Returning to the Kingdom of God requires innocence. There is no room for arrogance or ego. Thus, Jesus in the gospels says: Bring the little children to me and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. The young child cannot remember any past. The past is yet to be created. In this world, at this time, there cannot yet be any personal guilt. The ego however, is developing. Defenses soon appear in more definite forms than crying -- soon there will be lying.

      Who is Jesus?

      Are we talking about a historical figure that walked around on this planet for 33 years, 2000 years ago? The answer is yes, but we are also talking about something much more than that. To talk about Jesus is to talk about that which is timeless, beyond the world of birth and death. To speak of Jesus is to speak of the Christ, the Son of God, and the Self that God created. To speak of the Self is also to speak of one's own Self, which always has been and will be a part of God. The Course says Jesus was: a man (who) saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and sisters and remembered God. (ACIM, C-5:2:1) What a remarkable thing! What would it be like to look upon all our brothers and sisters and see the face of Christ shining back towards us. The Course continues: So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God.  (C-5.2:2). There is a cause and effect relationship here. By seeing the face of Christ in all his brothers and sisters, Jesus was identified with the Christ and became as a result one with God. Can you imagine what it would be like to see only the face of Christ, as Mother Theresa said: In all of its distressing disguises shining back at you in the face of your brothers and sisters? What we look for we will find.

      Who is Jesus? is he (Jesus) God's only Helper? No, indeed. For Christ takes many forms with different names until their oneness can be recognized. (C-6:1-4). The Course does not ask us to nail Jesus on a cross, nor are we to build an altar to him. The altar is in the center where the heart is. See what Jesus saw -- do what he did. . . .  be a disciple, someone who can learn something from the master.

      Jesus saw the false without accepting it as true. This is very important.  The ego mind sees the false and then says that it is true. Let's say that you are insulted in some way. The insult is not true. Yet, you respond to it and act as though it is true. Do you not want to be at Peace? If we want to be at peace, we must give up all attack thoughts. We must also give up the idea that we are victims of the world in any way at all.

At Christmas, we celebrate the birth of a man who taught only love; who came into this world to bring only kindness; who taught the power of forgiveness. At Christmas, we are asked to come before God's altar -- to come before the manger of the baby Jesus and there lay down our hurts and pains, our little loves in order that we might become aware of our true greatness. Only then can we hear the angels sing.  

     A Closing Story

     The highlight of the Christmas play was to show the radiance of Jesus. An electrical light bulb was hidden in the manger. All the stage lights were to be turned off so that only the brightness shining forth from the manger could be seen. At the appropriate time all lights went out! Silence was broken when one of the young shepherds said in a loud stage whisper. "Hey, You turned off Jesus!" Don't turn off Jesus! Jesus is love. Christ is love. You are love. Love is Christmas.

     Christmas is the viewing of Christ not as a baby lying in a manager, but as a neonatal thought shining in the Heaven within your Mind. Christmas means Christ time. Let the light of Christ shine forth from the mind. Christmas is the time when we remember who we are as God's children. Jesus is the symbol within the dream reminding us of the truth of our reality. If we worship a baby in a manger or a man hanging from a cross, then we are looking at Christ outside ourselves; but, Christ does not live outside of us. He is us at our best. To know Christ is to know the Christ that lives within our own minds and hearts. Then he is not just a historical figure, or a hallowed image on a Sunday school wall. He is alive inside of you. To understand that He is the only life is to be enlightened.

          God is the only being -- the only life.

      the only movement -- the only energy

      the only dance there is.

      In ocean wave and snowflake fall,

      in the dreamer and the dream,

      the only energy there is.

   The Gift of Presence

      If you want to give a gift this Christmas, give the gift of Presence. In whatever you do, whoever you are with, give the gift of being perfectly “present,” with no worries, no regrets, no agenda, no cares -- just be with whomever you are with, in the fullness of the present moment in Omnipresence.

     Peace,