William Keepin: The Inner Science of Divine Love
OMTimes: What are some of these inner disciplines and spiritual practices?
William Keepin: Inwardly to dwell in the heart, and outwardly to serve others—this is the bottom line. We strive to give ourselves utterly to this path of divine love. Silent meditation and contemplative prayer are essential practices for plumbing the depths of the heart, and for offering oneself without conditions to the ineffable transformation. Remembrance practices for invocation of the Divine throughout the day are crucial. Heart-centered meditation is indispensable; it is the gateway to the infinite. Other practices are also extremely valuable, such as experiential breathwork, dream work, contemplative walking, and spiritual inquiry and dialogue practices.
Outwardly, to give oneself in service to others, putting others first, and staying connected to the inner promptings of the heart, which are often given only as subtle hints or fleeting glimpses. So one must stay ever attuned for them, and watch for the overriding tendencies of the egoic mind. We delve into all these practices in our retreats and trainings.
OMTimes: What about ‘divine love’ in the non-theistic traditions, such as Buddhism, which doesn’t have a God?
William Keepin: There are important differences in the non-theistic traditions, to be sure, and one must not posit a facile equivalence with theistic traditions. Nevertheless, the similarities are deep and far-reaching, particularly on ultimate levels, pointing to a possible underlying unity that scholar Raimundo Panikkar terms ‘homeomorphic equivalence.’ For example, recent interfaith scholarship unveils remarkably close correlations between what is called ‘Dharamakaya’ in Buddhism and God in theistic religions. Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace says that the cosmogonies of Vajrayana Buddhism, Hindu Vedanta, and Neoplatonic Christianity have so much in common that they can be regarded as different interpretations of a single theory. Similarly, Islamic scholar Reza Shah-Kazemi’s recent book Common Ground Between Islam and Buddhism, highly praised in the forward by the Dalai Lama, makes a strong case that the ultimate reality affirmed in Buddhism is none other than what monotheists call the essence of God. As Thich Nhat Hanh puts it, “once the ultimate is touched, God and nirvana as concepts have been transcended.”
OMTimes: How does modern science illuminate the fundamental unity of the world religions?
William Keepin: The oneness of all existence, long proclaimed by sages from many wisdom traditions, is illuminated by new discoveries in science that reveal matter, energy, and consciousness to be an integral whole. Quantum physicist David Bohm, a close colleague of Einstein’s, proposed that “the cosmos is a single unbroken wholeness in flowing movement,” in which each part of the flow contains the entire flow. His insight is based on breakthroughs in modern physics and mathematics and is enjoying a major revival in recent years.
Science is evolving, and slowly coming to recognize that there exist invisible dimensions of reality that shape what we observe and experience, yet which are difficult to measure in a laboratory. The material dimension of existence is not the whole truth of reality—not by a longshot! For example, sometime in this century, probably in the next decade or two, I anticipate that science will finally acknowledge that human consciousness survives physical death. This discovery is rapidly approaching, as the empirical data supporting it become overwhelmingly compelling and are replicated across the globe in multiple research and clinical studies, such as the work of cardiologist Pim van Lommel. The longstanding materialistic bias endemic in scientific and clinical research, which adamantly refuses to acknowledge these remarkable data and their full implications, is steadily eroding. Recent reviews of the evidence by people like Erwin Laszlo and Chris Carter conclude that: “Our consciousness does not end with the demise of the body; it continues to exist in another dimension of the cosmos.”
In short, science will soon discover the ‘soul’ or the Atman, or something akin to this. In so doing, science will finally catch up with the basic spiritual teaching, known to mystics for millennia, that the person does not die when the body dies. This is the first spiritual teaching in Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita, for example, and so we could say that in terms of understanding human consciousness, science is currently about 2,500 years behind mysticism.
OMTimes: How is the universe structured?
William Keepin: Everything is connected to everything else, and love is the force that holds it all together. Nothing exists in objective isolation from the rest of the universe. This interconnectivity is not just a metaphor; it is confirmed by quantum physics, which reveals the universe as exhibiting vast networks of ‘nonlocal’ interconnections that transcend spatial separation. Even a tiny electron has an awareness of the rest of the universe and behaves in response to the larger environment. Indeed, systems of coupled electrons or photons exhibit “quantum entanglement”, in that our measurement of the state of one immediately determines the state of the other, even if they are on opposite sides of the universe. Such discoveries point toward fundamental interconnections, between matter and consciousness, that transcends time and space.
These interconnections relate to another key feature of the universe: self-similarity across vastly different scales. For example, neural networks in the brain exhibit a similar structure to galaxies in outer space. A recent study on “network cosmology” showed virtually identical patterns of growth in complex networks, ranging from the intergalactic scale in solutions to Einstein’s general relativity equations, right down to the ‘local’ scale in the growth of the internet and social and biological networks. Fractal patterns in mathematics and in nature are a modern re-discovery of ancient mystical wisdom.
OMTimes: What is a “fractal” and how do fractal geometry and holography relate to ancient wisdom, alchemy, and spirituality?
William Keepin: A fractal is a mathematical geometric structure that contains mirror images or replicas of itself on smaller scales. It’s a bit like a set of Russian dolls, except that the smaller dolls inside just keep going forever. Fractals are not a human invention, they are a logical necessity of numbers which existed long before the Earth and humanity came into being. The remarkably intricate fractal patterns on a computer screen are not generated by the computer, but inherent in numbers themselves. Only discovered in the past 30+ years, fractals are applied widely today to model natural systems. Fractal patterns are found throughout nature; simple examples include the structure of tree branches, lightning, coastlines, galaxies, ferns, and Romanesco broccoli, to name just a few. Fractal structures appear throughout the human body as well, including the respiratory system, circulatory system, and nervous system—all of which exhibit branches that divide and subdivide again and again.
Fractal geometry and holography are modern scientific rediscoveries of a more profound ancient alchemical principle called “the Correspondence Principle.” Articulated in The Corpus Hermeticum, this principle of “as above, so below” affirms that the microcosm replicates the macrocosm, and is a fundamental key to spiritual wisdom across the traditions. For example, it appears in the well-known saying, attributed to Hermes (Trismegistus), that “God is an infinite circle whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere.” Another vivid example is the concept of Indra’s Net, found in Buddhist and Hindu mysticism, which portrays reality as a vast array of exquisite shining jewels, and in each facet of each jewel, all the other jewels are reflected. So each jewel contains, in a sense, the entire universe of jewels.
I propose that consciousness itself has a fractal structure – that the human heart and mind are a microcosm of a much larger cosmic intelligence which can be regarded as the consciousness of ‘God’. Mystics across the religions report profound experiences of realizing the full infinity of God within the heart. The fractal structure of consciousness shows how such experiences are possible, for just as the mathematical infinite can be contained within the finite fractal geometric form, so too the infinite consciousness of God can be contained within the seemingly finite heart of the human being.
OMTimes: You speak of an emerging revolution in religion that parallels recent scientific revolutions. How might this happen?
William Keepin: Let’s take the example of Einstein’s relativity theory, which revolutionized classical scientific understanding that had stood for centuries. Einstein showed that space and time are not absolutes, as we had earlier believed them to be. Einstein derived his special theory of relativity from just two postulates: 1) The laws of physics must be the same in all reference frames, and 2) The speed of light is a universal constant across all reference frames. If we apply these same postulates metaphysically to spirituality, we have: 1) The “laws of spirituality” must be the same in all religions, and 2) The divine light is universal across all religions. These postulates prompt a parallel spiritual revolution in religion: there is one ultimate spiritual Reality, which is infused with a universal divine light. This observation reveals the world religions to be mutually complementary, rather than contradictory. Different religions constitute distinct rays of this universal light, refracted through the ‘prism’ of divinity, and each religion constitutes a valid pathway to realizing God, or ultimate truth, or supreme reality.
Continue to Page 3 of the Interview with William Keepin, Ph.D.
