An article from "New Era", November 1998 ...

A SPIRITUAL MARRIAGE
by Rev Antoinette Schoenmaker

On Advent Sunday in 1997 Rev Antoinette co-celebrated the Cosmic Mass with the world renowned spiritual teacher, Swami Satyananda at his Akhara in northern India. The mass was celebrated as part of the Hindu Sita Kalyanum festival. In this article Rev Antoinette reflects on the significance on last year’s visit and the stirrings of unity that go beyond the outer forms of spirituality.

Let me begin by telling you a bit about my spiritual tradition, I said to the 3,000 strong crowd who sat cross-legged in the shade. I, too, was fortunate to have a guru, a spiritual teacher. The spirit that is in Swami Satyananda was also in my teacher. They would have felt at one. This I think was recognised by Swami Sivamurti who often invited my teacher to come to her ashram in Athens. It was she who suggested to Swami Satyananda that he and Mario should meet, that it would be excellent if Mario would come to India and celebrate the Cosmic Mass. However before that meeting could take place my spiritual teacher died. And so I am here in his place and on his behalf.

With these words I commenced perhaps the most auspicious event of my life. I co-celebrated the Cosmic Mass with the world-renowned spiritual teacher, Swami Satyananda, and in so doing experienced the largeness of God’s purposes. I received a sense of the moving forward of evolution and of our part in the divine plan of which St Paul speaks in his letter to the Ephesians, where he says God’s plan is to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on the earth.

Earlier in the year, Swami Sivamurti (originally from Melbourne and now running an ashram in Athens) invited me to be part of an annual spiritual festival at the home of her guru, Swami Satyananda, in Northern India. Swami Satyananda lives in seclusion most of the year but at the end of the year he invites devotees and fellow swamis to be with him for a short while to celebrate the spiritual work completed that year. In 1997 his festival was called Sita Kalyanum and it was centred around a Hindu feast celebrating the marriage of two Indian deities, Sita and Rama. So the them was one of love, union and appreciation of the other. Swami Sivamurti’s invitation went like this: “I feel sure this event will help to strengthen the unity between east and west and, as Maria said, it will also strengthen the fruitful connection that exists between both our traditions.”

For me personally this momentous visit was the beginning of what will be a life’s work in uniting different spiritual traditions, and also a remembering again of the ancient origins of my priesthood, the Order of Melchizedek. I felt that I had been shown the original branch of our Order, a priesthood which has been operating for thousands and thousands of years.

This was the subject I was asked to speak about to the 3000 swamis and devotees gathered on that Advent Sunday 1997 in the Akhara of Swami Satyananda. But first I wanted them to understand about Mario.

My teacher was a western spiritual teacher – which meant that he wore different clothes, used different words, and smoked cigarettes, but nevertheless the same spirit was in him as is in Swami Satyananda. My teacher was also my father. He was my spiritual father and my physical father – which at times made things very difficult for us both. Nevertheless we continued, to this day. It was his task in life to revive an ancient Order of the priesthood – an Order which is eternal. When a person enters this Order they vow to be a priest until the end of days, lifetime after lifetime serving God. This Order was first born at the time of Atlantis and it has subsequently appeared in different lands and cultures throughout history. The first appearance was in India, some 10,000 years ago and the commission was to preserve the teachings and to raise the consciousness of the people already living there. The Order has appeared in subsequent cultures and had different expressions in each incarnation but in the end there was only one essential task – the task of reconciling and reuniting that which as become separate. It is a task of union. This work of our priesthood, the Brotherhood of Melchizedek, takes place on many levels. There is the union between masculine and feminine, emotions and intellect, head and heart, love and wisdom, male and female, east and west, slave and free, poor and rich. On the inner level, whatever is divided within us must become whole. Then there is the work on the macrocosmic level also; the past must become reconciled to the present and the future. The whole universe is a series of separations and one day sun, moon, earth and stars must reunite. That is the task of my Brotherhood into which my father initiated and ordained me nine years ago. My father always maintained that a swami had the same spiritual status as a priest. When Swami Sivamurti’s mother died, my father gave her the funeral honours of a priest, because she had been a swami. Thus I learned that the task of a swami is essentially the same as the task of a priest.

Of course, I had much more to say than that. I went on to explain the duties of a priest and what the Cosmic Mass was, for one young Indian man had said to me: “What is this Mass thing? Is it a prayer?” Swami Satyananda had been giving our Cosmic Mass such a rap that everyone was very excited about it, but most didn’t really understand what it was. I explained that the Mass had many elements and was in fact a very highly developed way of entering into communion with the Gods. There is prayer, but there is also meditation. There is a great deal of participation on the part of the congregation. There is teaching, a spiritual idea to focus on. There is the altar, that magical threshold between worlds which is also a symbol of ourselves. And there is the ritual of the outer and inner sacrifice in which ordinary elements are changed into extraordinary powers. I explained that communion is essentially soul-food. I said that while many Indian people were physically hungry, most westerners were spiritually hungry – their bellies were full, but their souls were starving.

For many people who had experienced the Mass in the past, having the ritual explained deepened their experience through the involvement of their intellect. In the days that followed our celebration of the Cosmic Mass, many swamis said variations of the following: “I wanted to be a priest but couldn’t find any life (read: Christ) in the churches. I found spirit in the yoga movement and I see becoming a swami as my priesthood.”

Other people who were just commencing their studies in yoga said similar things. They had been looking for Christ and couldn’t find him. They were westerners who were attuned to Christ yet couldn’t find him in any of the traditional places. A number of people commented that they were now looking for a blend of the best of all the religions, for the wisdom of the east and the west, the north and the south, and yet they also wanted to know where Christ fitted in.

An Indian nun asked me about the church. Was it Catholic? Why was it a Cosmic Mass? I explained to her that Mario had been raised as a Catholic but had then graduated through many other traditions and finally commenced his own independent church where the Mass was cosmic, that is for everyone. Her eyes widened with every word I said. She said, “I too am independent. I was a Catholic nun but when I became interested in yoga and trained as a swami and commenced my own Christian ashram, they rejected me. Therefore I am not independent.”  I suggested that she commence celebrating the mass for herself. “I? Could I?”, she asked incredulously. “Why not?” I asked. “What harm can it do? In fact, it can do a great deal of good. Miracles happen when people start to say the mass.” And so within ten minutes she was armed with a liturgy and I left India knowing that one person in that vast continent was saying our Cosmic Mass. 

I met several such “independent” people. All these conversations reminded me of things that Mario had said over the years. In one of his meditations he said: “How do you see the future? How do you see the overall global, cosmic levels that are operating at present in evolution? Can you see the human being of the future, say in a hundred years time? What sort of a person will that be? How will religion fare? How will the feeling levels be opened? How will the human being be able to know and feel the heart throb of other people? In a hundred years time are we going to accept one another as we are, not as we think others ought to be? I see a greater outpouring of the spirit of God, a special unction through which the inner knowledge will be released and grace poured in. I see a different race arising. I call it God’s race for want of a better word – people with beauty in their souls. They will come from the four corners of this earth. They will not be Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or anything else but they will have the stamp of the love of God upon them, which is Christ. But the immediate future… we have to be the channels of a new outpouring, a setting aside of souls for specific tasks. What a wonder. What a responsibility. The message of spiritual freedom must be widened and given to people. There are groups in every nation ready for the message. And to do that task God has already set aside many souls. We have to do that. We are as it were the preparers. When his happens in the next few years, and further on of course, the principles of pure Christianity will reappear as in the days of old, when the mystery schools were still at work and the power was still present. A Christianity will appear again with a freedom that has nothing to do with dogma but has to do with a purity that can perceive the Christ.”

Mario also said that far from Christianity being over, it is still to be discovered! Real Christianity is still to become known and practised. What we have at present is a shadow of things to come. I suddenly understood that to be the truth. In India I experienced a glimpse of the powerful Christ spirit uniting individuals and nations regardless of cultural differences and religious traditions.

When I came home, one short verse from the Bible kept appearing in my mind: “In my Father’s house are many mansions….” (John 14:2) or, in some translations, “In my father’s house are many rooms.” The earth is the house of the Father. In it there are many rooms and in each room we do a different thing. There are many different expressions, but they are all related in the end. There is only one Father. The same power is at work within each expression… if they are pure. 

During one of his New Year Readings for The Centre, Mario described the Father’s house: “Our chapel is surrounded by a magnificent looking building. It’s an enormous building from the human point of view…. I look at our chapel, which is in this enormous building, and at the same time I am in other places in this enormous building, seeing other souls, other chapels, other places – some small, some very large.”

I love this image. We are all connected through the Father’s house – particularly when we worship or are engaged in a spiritual activity. In such an atmosphere we are raised beyond our differences. I felt this very much during the ten day festival in India.

Someone asked me what was the highlight of the trip. For me it was the first time we walked in the spiritual gathering of the Akhara of Swami Satyananda.

The morning after our arrival, we were driven to the Akhara (where all the spiritual festivities were held), met at the gate and ushered through approximately 500 people who had gathered there for the English “satsang” (questions and answers). We expected to sit down the back and use the next two days to quietly get our bearings and prepare for the Mass. Not to be! We were ushered straight through the front, introduced to Swami Satyananda and his successor Swami Niranjananda and given seats by their side. These were to be our places for the remainder of the festival.

For days prior to our arrival Satyananda had spoken about our Cosmic Mass and the significance of it being celebrated at this festival and how much he valued what was about to occur. He insisted that every person attend the Mass. Even their duties (their karma yoga) would be suspended for the time. It was a very important event.

Satyananda did not know me or anything about our Centre or our Mass. But his trust in us was complete. He honoured us in every way – speaking with us often, explaining things, shaking our hands, sitting us next to him – when other devotees might never even have had the chance to look into his eyes. It was an intensely moving experience for me, and as I walked through the crowds on that first morning I felt tears of joy welling up within me.

When he asked me to address the people, the only thing I could think of was not spoken words, but a song. I sang, “O love that knoweth of no fear, O love that sheds a joyous tear, O love that makes me whole and free, Such love shall keep and hallow me.” Only this song could describe how I felt. This obviously touched many people present and forged a link between us immediately. Satyananda later said to me, “Tears come when the soul cannot contain itself.” And this felt totally true.

Satyananda is an exceptional man. At 75 he is very energetic and beautiful. Wise. Cutting, Compassionate. Truthful. A mystic. Being him was exactly like being with Mario. Many times I felt tears of recognition rising within me as he would say something that Maria had said or would have said. It showed me that Christ is at work all over the world, that our Brotherhood is at work all over the world – using different languages and different words, but the same spirit.

We have always been taught at The Centre that Christ is a spirit, a power, a presence, not a set of rules or an organisation, that not everyone who names Christ is Christed and who know nothing about the Bible may well be expressing the Christ spirit with purity and power.

I am grateful for my spiritual education; knowing about spiritual evolution and about our Order’s history helped me appreciate exactly what I was experiencing. I knew that at one point in our history it was needful for people to be in tribes, through religions, and that was the Era of Jehovah. At present we live in the Era of the Son when each one must discover the spirit within, the I AM. Then we will be ready for the Era of the Father – when we will discover that we are all sons of the same Father – and then true unity will be possible. I felt I had a glimpse of that unity during this trip. There were representatives of approximately 25 different nations present. I felt that the whole world had come to Deoghar.

We went to celebrate a marriage and I believe a marriage did occur. I understood anew the blessing that marriage can be: that it is respect for the other person which raises up both parties. This respect was shared between myself and Swami Satyananda. As a result we were both enriched; both blessed.

The work that is being done by Swami Satyananda and now his successor Swami Niranjananda is a continuation of the first era of this current Post-Atlantean epoch, an era which is destined to be repeated in renewed form. Through them the Vedic tradition and its very precise spiritual knowledge has been preserved, kept alive and is now being given to the world again. This is knowledge which must now become amalgamated with the Christian tradition. This is the marriage which must now be consummated.

Imagine: real spiritual knowledge that has precision and credibility and that is expressed with the spirit and life and individuality which is Christ. Imagine: rituals that are powerful but that also speak to our intelligence and heart. The blending of our traditions is the challenge set before me and the possibility of such a union was shown me in that small village in northern India.

“May we, O God of our hearts, be able to open our eyes and see beyond the horizon of our material existence and grasp to a small degree the working of your spirit in the history of this world, 

in the lives of people round about us, in our own lives and in the function we have to fulfil. 

Make us content with the function you have given us, no matter how small or how large it is. 

May we continue to walk the path you have set before us. 

May we do it with care, with love, embracing each and every one we meet along our path. 

This we pray in the name of Christ. 

So shall it be.”