A paper presented at the first Yoko Civilisation International conference at Suza in 1986 by Father Morlion (consultant to Pope Paul

the sixth).

THE CALLING OF MAHIKARI FOR THE COMING SPIRITUAL CIVILISATION Andrew F. Morlion
In this paper I will discuss what the contribution of Mahikari to the new civilisation we are building can be. It is already great and can be even greater. Mahikari can become the common denominator of unity concerning the essential, infinite answers given by God in the nature of religion as a free decision to become selfless, totally given to love. Mahikari must remain a small group of very fervent religious people who approach all people everywhere without asking them to depend on a new hierarchically structured organisation. The booklets Mahikari has published in America and Europe often repeat that Mahikari is not a creed. Better than others, the members of Mahikari can show that it does not proselytise for any religious affiliation and thus obtain active cooperation from people who refuse to be members of a church, but who in practice love and help all fellow men without discrimination. This is an authentic act of religion obeying God's commandment to love. The proof of the love of God is the union with infinite love which embraces all creatures. Better than religious promoters, Mahikari can bring many to understand authentic self-giving love into the family, the work community, and the socio-political arena. It is liberty, equality, justice, and brotherhood that make men God's children. In this paper I will try to express and intensify Mahikari's calling using age-old Western ways of expression, which are conceptual and not intuitive as are those of the cultures of the East. The great medieval mystic, Thomas a Kempis said, "Do not consider who speaks but what is said." In the spirit of these wonderful works, I will try to be extremely severe in checking every sentence, so as to be sure that I express the real nature and calling of Mahikari and not my opinion on what Mahikari should be and do. Imbued as I am with the four-thousand old Judeo-Christian tradition, I was tempted to list Mahikari among the many new cults my colleagues and I have studied for several decades. However, I have faithfully followed the wise advice of Saint Paul of Tharsus. "Examine everything carefully and conserve as a treasure what is good." For millennia, the deathly man-made abyss between the East and the West has created a guilty ignorance in the West of the spiritual value of the religions of the East. Before summarising what I now consider to be the providential calling of Mahikari, I will first present the three realistic criteria of credibility that I applied in the strictest manner possible to Kotama Okada. These three criteria are humility, balance, and wisdom. They overcome mistrust through trust. After patient research, they allowed me to conclude with certainty that the profound, central message of Mahikari is important. This central message must be distinguished from the incidental use of certain intuitions expressed with Eastern imagery not easily understood by Westerners. The great gift of the East is the "warm light of the heart." It is very different from what Western culture essentially is - the "clear but cold light of the mind." Regarding the first criterion of humility, Saint Theresa of Avila wrote with strictness, "Humility is the only virtue you do not have when you think or say you have it." Okada is very different from many spiritual writers who unceasingly repeat that they are the greatest of sinners on earth. He does not hypocritically ask for praise. This powerful organiser of immense industry admits he was totally absorbed by his material success. He does not call this sin but simply recognises his faults and failures. He also admits that he suffered before receiving God's calling to help all human beings with a more fervent approach to humbly open their hearts and minds to the true divine light which is not their human light. The closer one comes to God the more one sees one is not good enough for God. The more we become godlike, the more we feel our human insufficiency and imperfection. We even discover sins of selfishness in which we thought we had never indulged. Humility is a sign that God is giving his divine light. The members of Mahikari certainly agree with another of the most daring declarations of St. Theresa, "Humility is truth on the march." The humility that I have observed not only in Okada, but also in his disciples is an authentic humility that conquers. I think it is reasonable to believe their call to their fellow human beings to share with them the divine light. The second criterion is balance. The writings of Okada show that their divine inspiration is surely authentic for they are in

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harmony with common sense. The Mahikari teachings are modem in every detail and at the same time an age-old synthesis of the imperatives of conscience and of the call to virtue which does not change with time and space. Okada's writings exhibit a constant, dynamic, harmonious balance between idealism and realism. There is no naive optimism but also no cynical pessimism. There is no contemplation without pragmatic action. There is no enlightenment that does not become operational. The third and most important criterion by which we can recognise a person as a sage and saint is wisdom. Okada ceaselessly repeats that God's wisdom is not human wisdom, but that, on the contrary, human wisdom, when seen in the light of God, is sometimes, in some ways, foolish and even scandalous. The wisdom of Okada's writings is the wisdom of God's light. It is the wisdom of the heart which can never by grasped by the mind. God's wisdom infinitely transcends all human wisdom. No holy scripture is a literal transcription of God's message, as if God used human writers as some kind of antediluvian tape recorder. We Christians see it as a loving mystery of Providence that the Holy Bible (even the gospel) in which God reveals his nature and his plans for man's destiny is transmitted in a primitive language which has no words for the abstract universal concepts we Westerners need to conquer human wisdom. The Hebrew alphabet originally did not even have vowels so that we often have to guess what the real pronunciation and consequently the real meaning of the written word is. The books considered by Jews and Christians to be God's revelation to man use physical imagery in an attempt to express spiritual realities. In order to be able to assimilate God's answer to man, God bestowed us with the extraordinary gift of intelligence- the capacity to read inside reality. Therefore, Catholic and Jewish authorities do not ask people to believe that God took some dust from the earth and created man, and that he then took a rib from the first man to create the first woman. All modem believers rejoice in the gift of intelligence that gives us the scientific evidence that God created in an evolutionary way. The writings of Okada, like those of the Jewish and Christian authors, express divine wisdom more with images than with dear abstract concepts. As in the Bible we are challenged in the Mahikari writings to read through the images to avoid literal interpretation. We must assimilate the essential message God transmits to all. in reading Okada we thus wisely follow the advice of Saint Augustine: in essentials we all come to an agreement in non-essentials we may disagree, but in everything we receive and give the unity of God's love. The great pioneer of critical realism, Thomas Aquinas, Doctor communis, official theologian of the Catholic Church, remarked in his Summa Theologica with a rare sense of humour. "If we all agree on all contingent things, i.e., things not necessary for life, then we are as stupid as oxen, or as terrorised as rabbits." It is with this criterion of wisdom that we objectively conclude that Okada is one of the great sages sent by God to bring the people of this century back to the essence of faith, the only real source of hope. No Pope receives any visitor without first culling ample information. Thus Pope Paul the sixth had Okada's faith and love in mind when he shook hands with him and said, "That you and I should shake hands fas of great significance. I shall always cherish this moment." It is evident that the wisdom of Okada is the wisdom of the divine love he received from God with special intensity. It is thus in the critical spirit of humility, balance, and God-given wisdom that I present the five central values which I think Mahikari is called to give, as a new source of vigour, to all religions and also to those who have more doubts than certainties. The most profound and most characteristic feature of the Mahikari movement is its persistent challenge to "tune in with God." We cannot approach God with concepts because each concept is a limitation. This is why the Catholic church promotes the theology of negation. We are nearer the truth when we say that God is not our father because when we use the word "father" we reduce God's infinite reality to the idealised but limited ideas and images we have formed about our earthly, human father. We cannot truly approach God through images, because any image is by nature limited by time and space, and God is above all of this. Okada introduces a wonderfully effective way to come nearer to God, challenging all to "tune in with him". Music is more divine than any language or picture. It makes us enter into an all absorbing rhythm which shatters all the man-made barriers of concepts, images, and feelings. The call of Okada to tune in with God is a call to give our whole selves and not just the assent of the mind. All religions and also, especially, those people who think they are not religious, need to enter the rhythm of love which brings us closer to God than words do, and even closer than the "dark night of the senses and the mind," "the dark cloud of unknowing," which is the highest phase of mystical union, In most traditional mass Page 2 of 4

religions the faithful do not give their whole selves. They repeat their assent to some statements about God at a prayer meeting. They do this more often as idle lip-service than as an act of total love. Mahikari is a challenge to all of us every day to abandon our human limitations and to share the living rhythm of God, which is love. The second specific characteristic of Mahikari is its unshakeable faith that God is one, as the universe is one, as the earth is one, and as man is one. This stress on the unique "oneness* of God in himself and in all is desperately needed by many religious people who have divided the believers in God into different and sometimes antagonistic churches. It is the calling of Mahikari, as it is of us all, to unite all peoples in one religion. As there is only one God there can be only one religion. It is, however, true that God uses different cultures, histories, writing systems, languages, and images to make man one with him. Thus Mahikari is not a new religion; it is the constant appeal to all to unite in one religion. Okada concentrates on the essentials which give new vigour to the abstract idea that God is omnipresent. God is not simply a being who is present in the abstract; he is the cosmic energy in all creation. This expression will be accepted by the non-believer as well as the believer. Even the most tepid believer and the most critical agnostic cannot resist Okada's most moving and musical expression of the religious spirit. Everything in heaven and earth is the voice of God. It overflows with the divine truth. It is the rhythmic movement of the arrangement for all creatures emitted from God's great love (which is the true cross of great mercy and great strictness). God acts dynamically in history not only through holy Scriptures, which are words, but through his participation in all human events. The third feature which characterises Mahikari is its refusal to separate the body and the soul from the divine unity. What Okada, in his Eastern language, calls "the physical world" and then, as superior reality, the "astral world* would have no being, no existence, if it were separated from what he calls the "divine world". Out of nothing comes nothing. Out of the absolute void can come no spirit and no body. Like other sages Okada repeats that man can wrongly oppose God with his body and soul. But that does not mean that God separates himself from all that is. We come existentially from God and are in God. We cannot separate what God had united: himself as Creator with his creatures. However, with our free will, we can sinfully try to live without God or against God. This helps us understand why the Mahikari movement approaches all our human brothers and sisters to help them obtain total purification from God. All Mahikari members say that they ask for the divine light all together in order to obtain spiritual purification, and that this is in no sense faith-healing, although spiritual purification necessarily includes other types of purification. This fact is important because, as happens in many religious groups, some disciples fail to assimilate the global teaching of their master and exaggeratedly stress the physical effects of purification which they lightly call "miracles". All should regularly reread at least one of the simple but powerful exhortations of Okada: In order to attain "the God-given intuition" thou should keep thy mind pure and righteous. Thou should be good, not in the sense of the goodness and evilness of the human understanding, but in the sense of God's goodness. The fourth characteristic of Okada's followers is expressed in its American magazine as a "world organisation for the true light civilisation." A Mahikari member is always active for others. He does not limit himself to developing his own individual spirituality. God did, in fact, reveal that after the loss of the harmony of paradise, there would come "a new earth and a new heaven. No more than any other religious writer, Okada does not try to explain what this new civilisation on earth will be like. He proclaims his firm faith that materialistic civilisation is doomed, and that we are nearing the new era ordained by God. He does not, as many sect leaders do, try to find the answer to the question of when this world will end, using sophisticated arithmetic calculations based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. He strengthens the more than human hope that we may count on God to bring about this spiritual civilisation for his children. Mahikari members have no ambition to become the only power that changes society. The Mahikari movement is not a hierarchical organisation dependent on structures made by man. Mahikari is thus not just one new group competing with others, it is a thoroughgoing universal religious challenge to obey the will of God. Page 3 of 4

The fifth characteristic of Mahikari is that it is teamwork. Most religions rely mainly on solitary prayer, meditation, and contemplation to unite their members more intensely with God. Mahikari obtains the commitment from all its members to approach God, possibly each day and together with another brother or sister. Mahikari action is teamwork, continuing one of the sagest and oldest traditions of the world the Japanese belief that God works through teams. A Mahikari member approaches another person, who may be a believer or non-believer, with the aim of opening two hearts together to receive God's divine light .life, and love. After a short invocation asking for God's light in the ancient pre-Japanese language, the Mahikari member revives the oldest and most significant religious gesture: the laying on of hands. He knows that God is actively present not only in his mind but also in his hands. Then in silence he uses his hands to become a channel for the radiation of divine light. He also uses his hands to touch the vital centres of the human body. This new method of "giving light is essentially a spiritual communication in which God thinks, feels, loves, and acts first, and the human being follows. There have been physical purifications in every religion and in every century. These have often been "corporal healing through the laying on of hands in which the hands are used as a pure channel of God's grace. For some time now there have been Christians who have been tempted to think that after the time of Moses, David, and Christ, prophecy and miracles ended. There is no evidence for this in any religious writing and no dogma that compels us to believe this. We do not have to believe that the Mahikari method of action, the laying on of hands, is infallible. In Christ's time also many forewarnings were imperfectly expressed and wrongly interpreted, such as the belief that Christ would come back to earth before his youngest disciple John had died. There were thousands in Israel and millions elsewhere who were not cured by Christ, nor by his chosen apostles. Mahikari does not claim that "the giving of light necessarily produces new health and harmony. But no Christian need think the contrary, because God has infinite ways of helping man which cannot be foreseen by man. Any person, religious or not, can have the experience of really "tuning in with God with a Mahikari member, in an exceptionally intense, powerful silent and loving way. This repeats, and in a certain sense strengthens, spiritual encounters with members of different religions who together encounter God. Two examples are sufficient. The "Campus Crusade Movement for Christ" founded by a successful American businessman, Bill Bright, has in a few years revived religion for three million citizens on all continents. They are constantly told to become better members of their own church, and not to try to become a member of a new church. U Thant, the late Secretary General of the United Nations, was a devout Buddhist who passed an hour of meditation with his personally loved God every day before he went to his office. At a "Pro Deo" agape, a friendly dinner of five hundred very eminent personalities of all religions in New York, he concluded his fervent call thus: "that the Catholics become better Catholics, the Protestants better Protestants, the Jews better Jews, the Moslems better Moslem, and the Buddhists better Buddhists." Mahikari is called to add even more vigour to this universal calling. It has half a million active members in seventy countries, amongst whom are many thousands of Catholics. Some of these Catholics say that, through Mahikari they finally reread the Bible and daily approach one of their fellow men to be together with God and in God. Like other churches the Catholic Church welcomes these five essential contributions for the strengthening of religion. It accepts the five great inspirations I have summarised as a common faith. It is open to cooperation with Mahikari. It follows the strict answer given by Christ to some of his disciples who wanted to call the fire of God on those who did not act in the name of Christ. Christ said, "He who is not against me is for me." The answer is definitive and should be an important step towards the coming union of all believers.

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