I have the privilege a couple of times a week to be on an early-morning bus to work from my home in central Victoria to Melbourne, starting the journey in inky darkness and moving through the grand spectacle of dawn and sunrise along the way.
As light appears on the horizon it is a faint orange, a first smudge that gradually changes to pink, sometimes with delicate red and purple hues above. In the east, where the main show happens, clouds take on pinkyness, break up and swirl in a sea of blue. Pinks change to fiery reds then yellow as the sky comes ablaze.
By the time dawn is in full array the bus passes the Macedon Range on our left, a dark hulking facade that blots out the action. We climb into the Great Divide, with its refined air and subtle colour; shreds of mist fly past, a flock of ibis in v-formation flaps overhead. Then, down into the plain again, the sun finally rises, breaking open the horizon with a flood of light.
The grace, the intensity, is deeply moving. The book I had taken to read lies idly on my lap.
To an open and receptive sensibility, the process of world-waking is a miracle, a revelation. Thinking of the great historical revelations of humanity – that of Moses, Zoroaster, the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed – none of them compares with this ordinary, everyday event. Or rather, for all of them it was the ground, the Mother, the vehicle that brought their Word to birth.
I would define revelation as “coming into being”. That is, a spiritual manifestation of some kind experienced at a point in its process that engenders inner transformation. The revelation appears autonomous, a discreet event, if we speak of a particular sunrise or of a particular mystical vision that occurs to an individual, but in reality the person is catching a moment in an unfolding process and experiencing it as a soulful awakening.
The sunrise is part of the turning, changing life of the Earth as a mystical vision is an emanation of Spirit to a developing individual in a certain time and culture. It’s important to be aware of this dynamic nature because of the human tendency of attachment to revelation which at times has caught them as if in a static bind. Powerful religions with global reach have been formed around them when their inner nature, their core, defies any hard concretisation. Jesus’ revelation was of the nature of Love, Zoroaster’s the relationship of Light and Dark, Buddha’s the Path beyond suffering. When a “holy book” is created around a particular revelation, the danger arises that it becomes lifeless over time and open to the uses and abuses of power. Treated as poetry, as story, as a gateway to the mystery of being, a revelation lives; as theology or doctrine it dies.
At the same time, it is inevitable and, indeed, desirable that a revelation effect change in the world and its redemptive goodness and transformative power be shared with others. “Proclaim!” is the first, urgent word spoken to Mohammed in his rapture at the Cave of Hira. Yet there is no guide of certainty as to what is to be proclaimed, what is to be done – only that action is consistent with the nature of the revelation.
It is also inevitable that people respond differently in the presence of Spirit according to their personality and inner development. The same numinous moment, the same sunrise may yield a variety of results. In that sense, a revelation is like a comet – some will apprehend only parts of its long tail while others are able to approach somewhere near the head. The tail represents the revelation taken at its most concrete and literal, while the further one moves towards the head the more metaphoric and refined it becomes. It is the one spiritual manifestation for everyone who partakes in it, but translated differently by each person. The task, then, is for those nearer the crown of the comet to lead a movement of the rest towards the apex of refinement.
Just as the sunrise is available to everyone, so revelation in general is the common endowment of all who are receptive to it, and any claim of ownership by a religion or institution is absurd. In creating sacred rites and rituals around a revelation the challenge for a community is to remain open to the changing call of Spirit over time and avoid idolatry of its own symbols. The task of a priest is not to be “a keeper” of the sacred but a guide towards the transformative power liberated by the revelation.
In our contemporary globalised world there is a process of convergence of cultures and a tendency of democratisation that undermines established hierarchies. What was previously buried or undervalued begins to have its day in the sun; women start to be properly recognised, non-human nature is seen for its own intrinsic worth. Through this prism, revelation too is made “democratic”. No longer is it reserved for men or a priestly class or spiritual elite, but belongs to all who can experience it and who are able to turn it creatively for the benefit of the world.
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