By Robert Atkinson
The quest to understand the greatest mystery of all – the nature of the Sacred – is a search for transcendent meaning that most characterizes us as the species Homo sapiens. To the indigenous peoples of the world, the land is revered, life is lived in harmony with nature, and all life is related. This holistic view of the Sacred sustains an awareness that there is no separation between one thing and another.
Our fascination with the ultimate power and greatest good that we think of as Divinity, or the Sacred, has not diminished over the millennia. Over many spiritual ages, we have come to accept that such an infinite, limitless reality can in no way be fully known. As Baha’u’llah explained: “The Divine Being” always has and will be hidden “in the impenetrable mystery of His unknowable Essence...”
There will always remain a vast unknown around us. Scientists and other thinkers alike acknowledge that our most concerted explorations inevitably lead to yet greater mysteries. Comprehending the essence of the Unknown is beyond the scope of our finite conceptions.
Yet, at the heart of the entire creation, the mystery of oneness looms. Both material and spiritual reality, as much as we can understand them, are counter-balancing parts of the same unified reality, held together by the same Creator.
If we allow ourselves an openness to this Oneness, with a heart turned toward recognizing our deeper identity as a reflection of this reality, all paths lead us closer to the ultimate mystery we seek, and into a universal experience of knowing something more than what is visible.
Religion evolves through cycles of interconnected, cumulative sacred traditions that change in structure and form while moving through history, all having their origin in the same Source. The oneness of Divinity becomes more recognizable as the process of ongoing Revelation is visualized as an unfolding, ever-growing tree with Indigenous traditions branches, Abrahamic branches, and Dharmic branches.
If we take a holistic view of the paradox of many religions and one Creator, we see the world’s religions are not separate entities, but one evolving knowledge system whose purpose is to help us decipher the mystery of Divinity.
As Abdu’l-Baha put it in the early twentieth century, “Religion is the outer expression of divine reality. Therefore, it must be living, vitalized, moving, and progressive.” And as Teilhard de Chardin said a half century later, “Evolution is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow… a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.”
Pondering the Great Mystery in which all things are tied together in a scaredness beyond comprehension, especially in this time of seemingly deeper divisions, can give us pause while helping us to re-member the wholeness of all things.
Adapted from The Story of Our Time: From Duality to Interconnectedness to Oneness.
Robert Atkinson, PhD, author, educator, and developmental psychologist, is a 2017 Nautilus Book Award winner for The Story of Our Time: From Duality to Interconnectedness to Oneness and a 2020 Nautilus Book Award winner as co-editor of Our Moment of Choice: Evolutionary Visions and Hope for the Future. His other books include Year of Living Deeply: A Memoir of 1969 (2019), Mystic Journey: Getting to the Heart of Your Soul’s Story (2012), and The Gift of Stories (1995). He is professor emeritus at the University of Southern Maine, director of StoryCommons, founder of One Planet Peace Forum, and a member of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle. www.robertatkinson.net
Landscape photograph by Robert Atkinson.
