Spiritual Topography and Abba Consciousness

As we have a physical topography to travel on the earth; there is also a spiritual topography for our inner journey. These spiritual topographies are created by varied people in the spiritual history; and they all had at some point of their life felt being an ‘orphan’.

Moses was thrown into the water; he was the great law-giver to Israel. The parallel in India almost at the same time is Bhagavadgeeta, the great philosophical work. Krishna never had his parents, they were in jail. He was born in jail. Buddha was a motherless child; she gave birth and vanished from the palace, and her sister took care of him. Jesus was in the most difficult situation of being an orphan. He had no one to show as his father. His foster father doubted. He was often called ‘son of Mary’, it wasn’t an honour given to Mary, rather it in English translates to a bad expression. Muhammad Nabi’s father died at his birth, and his mother died when he was four or five.

They all sought their father in the universe. Most of them had a sense of the cosmic father. Jesus found his father in the universe. Jesus declared God as his father/abba. Now that was insanity, he was supposed to be taken forcefully by his brothers. His insanity has become our enlightenment.

Ramana Maharshi, Francis Assisi of our time, left home in search of his father, who actually died when he was in his 10th standard.

St Francis of Assisi’s father was a man of vanity. He was a fancy cloth merchant. Even the name, Francisco, given to him was because of his fancy for France and Paris, the fancy, fashionable city. From the negative experiences that Francis had of his father, he comes out with the most sweet realisation of the ‘Father’. At some point in his life, he gave back all that belonged to his earthly father, even the clothes that he was wearing, and stood naked on the street, looking heavenward at his Father. Thomas of Celano adds, that no one, not even young women and children looked away in shame; Mario completes the picture by saying, that there had never been any midwife, who looked down in shame at the birth of a child. It was a rebirth of Francis into Abba consciousness. From then on he began calling everyone and everything as brothers and sisters. It was as radical as calling, brother thief, brother wolf, sister prostitute, etc.

It was Christianity that offered the word ‘brother’ to the secular world in the first century, but later we lost it in clericalisation, patriarchy, and hierarchy. There is a mystical body where all members of it are connected. When Saul was struck down from the horse, he was told you are persecuting me, but Saul had never done anything to Jesus; later he recognised that when he persecuted anybody anywhere he was persecuting His mystical body. Nietzsche was affected by a horse being beaten, he ran and stood in between; he was arrested and sent to an asylum; watch the film, The Horse of Turin. When you beat a horse I get pain is a spiritual position. We are the trumpet blowers of brotherhood.

Notes taken during my annual retreat, preached by Bobby Jose Kattikad, Capuchin.

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