Initiation of the True Disciple
by Abhishiktananda, Swami (Henri Le Saux)Original Language French
Go, my son, in the freedom of the Spirit,
Across the infinite space of the heart:
Go to the Source, go to the Father,
Go to the Unborn, yourself unborn
To the Brahma-loka
Which you yourself have found
And from which there is no returning.
 | -- from The Further Shore, by Swami Abhishiktananda |
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Go, my son, in the freedom of the Spirit,
Across the infinite space of the heart:
I love that phrase, "the infinite space of the heart."
In deep communion we discover that the awareness seems to rest in the heart, yet the space of the heart seems to expand infinitely to encompass all that is.
Go to the Source, go to the Father
This pairing of the Source with the Father in an important one to recognize for anyone trying to understand how Hindu descriptions of divine reality can be reconciled with Christian, especially Catholic theology.
Despite his adopted Indian name, remained Swami Abhishiktananda's primary spiritual identity was as a Catholic, and in Catholicism we have the description of God as a Trinity: God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The Son is, of course, Christ, the personal expression of God. The Son is God with a human face, God in a form we can most easily relate to. Through that human expression, we have a human-divine template to emulate in our own lives. In Yoga, the Son might be understood as Ishwara, the personal god we are most drawn to.
What about the Holy Spirit? If we think of the Father-Son-Holy Spirit Trinity as representing a family, we have a father and a child... who is missing? The mother. Often the Holy Spirit is understood to represent a feminine or maternal aspect of the Divine. This is the spiritually animating presence of God within existence -- which many Hindus would immediately recognize as being similar to how the Goddess is understood in Indian metaphysics.
Which brings us to God as the Father. If the Son is the personal form of God and the Holy Spirit is the manifesting, maternal expression of God, the Father is the unmanifest, pure source of being - the Source - which is often identified as masculine in Hinduism. And this is what Abhishiktananda is exploring with this line. He is building that bridge between the two traditions by saying that God the Father is Source, the same source of being sought through the practices of Advaita Vedanta (nondualist) yoga.
Go to the Unborn, yourself unborn
We can also describe the Source as Unborn, since this aspect of the Divine is not swept up within manifestation and form. Encountering the Unborn, we recognize that some essential part of ourselves is likewise unborn, somehow blissfully untouched by the complexities of material existence.
To the Brahma-loka
A loka is a place, a realm, a space. So Abhishiktananda is saying that this is a journey to the realm of Brahma. Again he is connecting the idea of God the Father with the Source, the Unborn, and now with Brahma, who is the source of all things. But here it is not a divine person, but a place, a sense of space, the Brahma-loka... just as we have the infinite space of the heart a few lines earlier.
Which you yourself have found
And from which there is no returning.
Recommended Books: Abhishiktananda, Swami (Henri Le Saux)
