ordinary sinners. His power was felt not in punishment but in the reintegration of the sinner both to himself and to society. He called them to repentance and a new life: ‘go and do not sin again’ as he told the woman he saved from being stoned to death.17 He convinced people that they were forgiven and he empowered them to take advantage of the invitation to live more fully that is intrinsic to that discovery. Jesus’ compassionate response to sin emphasises both the person’s will to transcend the habit of sin and the action necessary to fulfil that intention. People did not leave his presence fixated on their sinfulness. They left in liberty to live differently. The energy of this newfound freedom is related to the joy felt in his presence. He was one in whose presence, as a contemporary theologian wrote, it was impossible to feel sad.
Ramana Maharshi’s question ‘Who am I?’ leads beyond all the false identities that constitute the ego. It leads to a tranquillity of mind which evokes the ‘stillness’ of Psalm 46 which Ramana liked to quote: ‘be still and know that I am God’. For those who listen to it, the self-inquiring question of Jesus, ‘Who do you say I am?’, discloses just this power of inner stillness. ‘The false perception of the world and of our self,’ Sri Ramana taught, ‘will disappear when the mind becomes still.’
Seeing Jesus as a guru who teaches by means of question and presence, rather than as a moralist and rule-giver, may be a challenge for many Western Christians. Yet full Christian faith recognises Jesus as the incarnate manifestation of the essential quest and question of the human journey to God: the incarnational form of the ‘Who am I?’ which makes us human. Jesus, as the Word of God, like a mantra, draws our attention from its scattered state of egotism, unifies it and awakens us to the truth he identified with life itself. ‘I have come,’ he said, ‘so that you may have life, and may have it in all its fullness.’18
Jesus does not have this effect by magic or through psychic powers. According to the gospel we come to know and understand Jesus by ‘faith’. Listening to his question is the beginning of an unmapped expedition of faith. As we tread the narrow path of his question we discover how much more than belief faith means. The intellectual mind (manas in Indian philosophy) believes; but faith is our capacity for insight (buddhi, or spiritual intelligence). Faith is the ‘vision of things unseen’.19
In a “Peanuts” cartoon Lucy once told Charlie Brown that she had a new philosophy: ‘All will be well.’ ‘That’s nice’, he replied. ‘Only thing . . .’ she added. ‘What’s that’, he asked? ‘I don’t know what it means.’
Faith is not the dream but the felt conviction that things will eventually work out for the best. Without denying the reality of evil or innocent suffering faith knows that the broken can be repaired, the meaningless can be understood, the wounded can be healed, and even that what is dead in us can be raised to new life. Faith knows that despite all signs to the contrary, and there are many, life has constructive meaning and beneficial purpose. The mystery of life is that even its tragedies and setbacks, its disappointments and failures can serve to awaken and deepen faith.
Why should we trouble ourselves to listen to the question Jesus raises concerning himself and how we see him? Because faith is born in the listening. By discovering what we are listening to we find meaning, authentic consolation, joy and fulfilment, in ways which no answers can bestow. How does this transforming, healing and revelatory energy of faith arise through the stilling of the mind? How does the Self shine forth?
It happens through every action of life performed faithfully as a disciple. This means when they are not done selfishly or even for my own spiritual benefit. These practices are not necessarily overtly religious. They cover everything in a normal human life: the love of family, friends and enemies; the finding of our duty and the doing of our work; psychological integration and the development of our personal talents; care for the body and harmony with the material world; mental truthfulness and the study of sacred teaching. Upholding all these activities and converting them into spiritual practices is the work of meditation. Faith leads to discipleship and then, whatever our lifestyle, leads into the contemplative life.
The question of Jesus is significant because it touches the heart and wholeness of human experience, all our aspirations and deepest concerns. Listening to it can make us fully human. It simplifies us without the loss of human dignity.
His question rises out of silence, the still consciousness of his prayer. It stills the mind and awakens the human capacity for faith which is the door to knowledge of the Self. Stillness is not rigidity as when we become fixated on ourselves. Stillness is the condition of unselfcentered attention. It is inherently compassionate and agile. Whatever is still is also silent, therefore, because it communicates directly and not through the medium of any language. We make a serious mistake by thinking that this state does no good for others. Sri Ramana indeed said that silence is the most potent form of work.
However vast and emphatic the scriptures may be, they fail in their effect. The Guru is quiet and grace prevails in all. This silence is more vast and more emphatic than all the scriptures put together.
Today we listen to the question of Jesus in a culture that can make little sense and gives even less time for silence. Technological society is infatuated with the audio-visual and the tangible. It confuses the transfer of information with true communication. It tries to reduce consciousness to mechanics, prayer to positive thinking. It no longer allows the human mind and heart to be expanded by faith that sees what is ordinarily (to sense or thought alone) unseeable. Only faith understands the productivity of silence and the efficiency of stillness. To listen, to be silent, to have faith does not come cheap as the call of Jesus makes crystal clear. Modern spiritual practitioners or disciples may seem to conform to the values of their society but, as we will see in Chapter Eight, they will have to embrace the detachment of an outsider. Discipleship, too, does not come cheap. And if you think the first step is not easy, the demand does not let up.
Jesus’ question and its orientation to silence put us into touch with ancient wisdom. The great spiritual cultures of the world, which materialistic technology so easily discounts, treasured the knowledge that silence is a truly great and beneficial human work.
I will teach thee the truth of pure work, and this truth will make you free.
And know also of a work that is silence: mysterious is the path of work.
The person who in his work finds silence, and who sees that silence is work sees the Light and in all his works finds peace.20
The question of Jesus is all-important for contemporary culture precisely because it recalls us to silence. He does not shout this at us. His silence says it:
Indeed it is better to keep quiet and be than to make fluent professions and not be. No doubt it is a fine thing to instruct others, but only if the speaker practices what he preaches. One such teacher there is: ‘he who spoke the word and it was done’; and what he achieved even by his silences was well worthy of the Father. A person who has truly mastered the utterances of Jesus will also be able to apprehend his silence and thus reach full spiritual maturity, so that his own words have the force of actions and his silences the significance of speech.21
Jesus speaks by silence throughout the gospel: the preverbal silence of the newborn child; the look he passed into peoples’ souls to set them free from fear or ignorance; the stillness when Pilate was questioning him and he declined to be enticed into the word games that might have saved his life; the post-verbal silence of the crucifixion. So too in any life today that is guided by the gospel we meet his silence in thought, word, deed and prayer in the Spirit of
