ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पूर्णमुदच्यते ।
पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥
"Om Purnam-Adah Purnam-Idam
Purnaat-Purnam-Udacyate
Purnasya Purnam-Aadaaya
Purnam-Eva-Avashisyate."
~Upanishads
"That outer world is Purna, full with the Divine; This inner world is also Purna, full with the Divine. From Fullness only Fullness comes. Taking Fullness from Fullness, Fullness indeed remains."
“Purnam" in the Upanishads, "Pleroma" in the Greek of the Christian Gnostics, this is the divine fullness of Brahman, the totality of the Godhead with all the divine attributes. The Pleroma overflows into itself, and this self-relationship is consciousness, I and Thou aware of each other in one Self. The very space of relationship of self-awareness is the seed and pattern that generates the hologram of every subject-object relationship in the cosmos. The entire universe appears as the space between God and God's awareness of God in God's spaceless heart.
When with the fullness of wonder I behold a blossoming rose in my own backyard, it is the Lord beholding Christ in the Godhead. It is Shiva dancing with Shakti in the fullness of Brahman. Godhead overflows into God, into galaxies of DNA, into every dust mote photon quark of light and yes Pleroma wholly present in each breath I breathe.
Now you ask, “Can this all-pervading fullness of Godhead be ‘a’ God in particular, a personal Beloved?” It would seem surely not. It would seem this must be the cruelty of the One, the limitation of Unity. For if you would know Godhead in fullness, Godhead could not be a "He" or "She," a Christ or Krishna, a Mary or Kwan Yin. In the fullness of the One, Godhead must be an "It." For any personification of the Unity must reduce absolute unbounded fullness to a particle of form, a limited Other. You would have to abandon your adoration of your personal Lord if you would attain Unity. And this would be the price of Oneness, the poverty of the Godhead!
But this dilemma rests on a fallacy, that the One is impersonal. We assume that fullness evaporates personhood, as a whole subsumes its parts, and particles dissolve in a solution. But the Pleroma is not made of parts that are erased upon merging with Brahman. Take out a part, and the Pleroma is no less whole, nor is the part less than the Pleroma. The part is full of the whole, the realized soul is full of the Godhead, and each particle is never less than a holographic microcosm of the All.
As a diamond has many facets, so the Godhead has countless faces, myriad divine attributes. The mystery of adoration is this: gaze into any one facet of the Godhead, and that face becomes a portal to the transcendental value of the entire jewel.
A drop falls into the ocean, and the drop becomes the ocean. Yet the ocean becomes the drop. Just so, your Ishta Devata, the beloved face of the Divine that you choose to worship in the all-consuming fiery mirror of your heart, intimately expresses all of Brahman, the overflowing Pleroma.
To know and adore Christ is to know and adore the fullness of the Godhead. To know and adore Krishna is to know and adore the fullness of the Godhead. To know and adore Kwan Yin, Lakshmi, Mary the Mother of God, Mary the Magdalene, beloved companion of Jesus, is to know and adore the fullness of the Godhead. To know and adore your own Self as you truly Are, friend, is to know and adore the fullness of the Godhead.
Photo by Kristy Thompson
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