Friday night is date night, which for my wife and me usually means Netflix and microwave popcorn. This weekend, the Force got us to watch two seemingly incompatible documentaries, one on a group of young Catholics who made the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, and the other on the life of Baba Ram Das after his near-life ending stroke. They seem incompatible, as one is a bunch of guys saying the rosary and wearing crosses, and the other, an old man contemplating the Hindu monkey god in his Hawaiian garden. But within minutes after watching the former and starting the latter, it became startling clear that both the Catholics and Ram Das (aka Richard Alpert) not only sought the same things from life, but were promised them through their own religions.
The ends were the same: a merger or front-row seat with the Supreme Deity or Life Force to gain peace and eternal love. The verbal myths varied, but the means, too, were often nearly the same: both carried beads to count prayers, both looked to deny the ego to open up to God, and both sought to find love within and spread it without through good deeds and charity. Even the background of many of them were similar: Ram Das began his road to God when he got involved with Tim Leary at Harvard in the 1960’s with the LSD experiments, and many of the youth on the walk had flirted with drugs, alcohol and sex before realizing a need for something greater.
Or as Ram Das put it, something more permanent. Said he (my paraphrase), “Drugs… got me into the womb of God – into Christ or Buddha consciousness – but only for a few seconds. I needed more.” In this, he understood that both Christ and Buddha were one in the same: human versions of God meant to bridge the gap for us, to give us an eternity “in the womb” rather than a few seconds. Both the Catholics and Ram Das knew that the primary reason for life, and the only way to secure happiness, was in finding God and/or in having him (it, OM) at the center of one’s life.
Certainly, the two documentaries, each without coordination with the other, struck the same primary themes, showing that the proven religions strive for essentially the same things through related means, although with different texts.
But there are important differences, even beyond texts, which are of style, or like different flavors in the same basic ice cream recipe. The Christian emphasis is on human relationships, even intensely so. Relationship is the essential ingredient of the concept of the trident God: the relationship of God the Father with God the Son as expressed through the Holy Spirit. Sins are those that hurt this relationship, which are felt as wounds, just as people who are hurt have emotional wounds. “We and God” is a macrocosm of “We and Other People;” we must feel sorrow for hurting God as we feel sorrow for hurting our wife or our children or are parents. And if and when we get to heaven, we will meet the other souls there, to share paradise in perfect harmony – that is, in a perfect relationship of love.
Because of this, Christian sin is racked with a personal sense of guilt. But the Christian way to God is also known to us through worldly relationships, making God and Heaven very accessible. We understand relationships. It is through their perfection that we meet God.
Ram Das’s Maharaji/Hindu approach to Heaven is, at least to me, far more remote and mystical, even cold. There is sin (karma), and sins against man, but the emphasis is on sin as attachment. While avoiding karmic sin leads to the same thing as avoiding relational sin– one does not cheat another if he has no desire for worldly goods – the emphasis is on a type of consciousness rather than on relationships. I’ll go back to the LSD experiments as a point. LSD takes one on a cosmic tour of the universe, opening one up to the shocking revelation that we are much, much more than little people dressed in little suits making a living. On a trip, one finds that we are cosmic voyageurs who happen to have stumbled temporarily onto this little backwater of reality. Once past this shock, if the trip is a good one (and probably one of your first – they lead one astray after a while, becoming means to their own ends), one falls into the lap of God, or eternal love.
The LSD trip is much more like the Hindu way than the Christian way. The Christian way does not take one on cosmic trips – these are rarely if ever mentioned. It is only known that God is all wise and can do anything, so that anything is possible, but its followers are seldom told to take off their basic reality suits and grow wings to fly about the cosmos. In this, I personally prefer the Hindu way. However, also like LSD, the Hindu mystical cosmic flights often become scary, even terrifying. One often does not feel accompanied by a loving companion on these flights, but more like Major Tom as he hurtles out of control into a cold cosmos. By contrast, in Christianity, belief means relationship with God and/or Mary and/or the angels. One is never alone, but always in the lap of love.
For me, the two documentaries were reflections of the two holy paths I have walked in life (let’s forget about the many unholy paths for now). I felt the old longing for the Hindu/mystical, even as I understood the benefits of the intense and comforting relationships in Christianity. In the end, Christianity is now my road because it was present at the formation of my cultural character, and so is not only the easiest, but easily the more authentic path for me. But Ram Das made me recall that we live in an immense cosmos of many realities and possibilities, even apart from death – and even apart from heaven and hell after death. Such knowledge may frighten, but it does add to the adventure. And, regardless, it is a truth, as are the Christian relationships, of this existence whether we want them to be or not.
In the end, though, it is still about heaven, which is the eternal presence of God in our lives. Whether we fly there on a magic carpet, or in the arms of Jesus, the goal has always been the same. It is as real and as present here and now as it has ever been anywhere, forever.
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