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A HOLY CURIOSITY: A Meditation on Albert Einstein and Nondual Religion

A HOLY CURIOSITY: A Meditation on Albert Einstein and Nondual Religion

Last updated on: March 13, 2022 at 12:48 pm by James Ford

A HOLY CURIOSITY: A Meditation on Albert Einstein and Nondual Religion 2022-03-13T12:48:27-07:00 James Ford

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A Holy Curiosity:
A Meditation on Albert Einstein and Nondual Religion

James Ishmael Ford

A Sermon delivered at
the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles

13 March 2022

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity… Never lose a holy curiosity.

Albert Einstein

In 2008, Albert Einstein’s so-called “God Letter” was put up for auction. It was a handwritten page and a half long letter. Despite his full-on embrace of his Jewishness for the whole of his life, the letter was highly critical of his birth religion, lumped together with all religions, as prescientific. He particularly expressed disdain for the common understanding of God, which he saw as simply a field of projection. Among those who bid on the manuscript was the renowned “new atheist,” Richard Dawkins. But the going price was a bit rich for the retired Oxford don. As the letter ended up selling for a bit less than three million dollars.

It was a litany of what Einstein didn’t believe regarding conventional religion, including Judaism. Put a bit more positively it’s not in fact all that different than another famous quote of his. “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.”

In the letter he rejects the word God for its freighting. But in fact, Einstein often used the word God. But for him God and Nature and Cosmos and Universe are simply synonyms. When Einstein used the word God he meant it in a sense he carried throughout his life – that there is something that unites all things, and perhaps is worthy of language of reverence. But, as far as we human beings are concerned, well, we’re on our own.

However, for Einstein, as for all of us who find ourselves living in this world, it appears there was a push-come-to-shove, where he showed how he saw things are complicated, more than a great cosmos to be revered but ultimately separate from the problems of humanity. We find this in another correspondence, this time an exchange with Robert Marcus.

Marcus was a remarkable man, an American Orthodox rabbi. When the second world war began, he immediately enlisted as a chaplain. Marcus would win six battle stars as well as a Bronze Star for personal heroism. As the war ended, he was one of the first chaplains to come to Buchenwald. There he found that while children and youth, by Nazi policy, were the first to be gassed; the inmates, against all odds, had successfully hidden 904 kids. Rabbi Marcus managed to get them to France, from where they were all sent to new homes. Among them was sixteen-year old Elie Wiesel.

In 1949, while still working in Europe, Rabbi Marcus was informed all three of his children had contracted polio, and one of them, his firstborn died. From that period of suffering piled high upon suffering, in the midst of his endless struggle to lessen the hurt of so many, he reached out to Albert Einstein.

On February 12th, Einstein replied.

“Dear Dr Marcus: A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.”

Not including the salutation, three sentences, seventy-eight words. It speaks to possibilities shared within many religions, maybe all. But, before I move into unpacking what that might mean, a bit more about its author. For some a reminder, for others a small introduction.

Albert Einstein was born one hundred and forty-three years ago, tomorrow, the 14th of March 1879, in Ulm, in what was then the kingdom of Wurttemberg, a part of the German Empire.

His family were secular Jews. Einstein was slow to learn to speak. That and his youthful rebelling against rote education has sparked numerous stories of his being slow. By twelve it became obvious the boy was in fact not ordinary. At thirteen he began the study of math, philosophy, and music. In 1900 at twenty-one he earned a teaching degree in math and physics. He had trouble finding a teaching position and ended up working at the patent office. Even then his studies continued, and Einstein won his doctorate in 1905. And he began to publish. Three years later he was appointed a lecturer at the University of Bern. The rest, as they say, is history.

His theories of special and general relativity, and the photoelectric effect, fundamentally changed how people saw the natural world. His work had near immediate practical consequences ranging from laser pointers, to the development of solar power, to stock market forecasting, to the development of paper towels. Of all things.

It is fair to say he would become one of the greatest physicists in history. Much of modern physics either confirms his theories or is engaged in disputing them. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. In 1933, escaping the Nazis, he settled in the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1940. Einstein died in Princeton, New Jersey in 1955. He was seventy-six.

He was a public intellectual. With his wild mane of white hair, his willingness to occasionally clown for the camera, he was photogenic and easily identified. His serious commitment to civil rights, especially for African Americans, his work first in defense of Democracies, and later for world peace made Einstein a celebrity scientist. He was a longtime correspondent with Mahatma Gandhi, and a committed socialist. At his death his FBI file was over 1,400 pages long. Einstein’s complicated love life added spice to his legend, including the possibility his first wife Mileva Maric was in fact a collaborator in several of his groundbreaking theories. Einstein remains an endless well of interesting tidbits.

But, for me, I’m most interested in his spirituality. He considered himself a Humanist and was associated with the First Humanist Society of New York, founded by the Unitarian minister Charles Francis Potter. As well as with the Ethical Culture movement and its congregations, where he occasionally attended services. Einstein described himself as a “deeply religious nonbeliever.” If he were alive today, perhaps he’d find resonance with the term spiritual but not religious.

Spiritually Albert Einstein was a species of pantheist. Where God, nature, cosmos, universe are interchangeable terms for some dynamic unity of which everything is a part. I believe, in his thorough going quest to find wisdom within his scientific quest, he was a sort of jnana yogi, seeking wisdom through the cultivation of knowledge. Not mere accumulations of facts; but opening the doors of his perception into wisdom by way of a holy curiosity.

In 1936 Einstein responded to a letter from a sixth-grade girl who asked if scientists pray, and if they did, what did they pray for? He wrote back:

“Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being.

“However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually, the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in Nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research.

“But, on the other hand, every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe — a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.”

Here we see the faith of science. It’s not long on metaphysics. It’s kind of spare, in fact. There is a bit of an air of triumphalism that isn’t entirely attractive. If, possibly justified. But the really important part is how his “faith,” if you will, is a kind of curiosity. Over and over Einstein speaks of humility and being humble. He calls to a not knowing, and with it a desire to know. So, it notices things. And that is a spirit which arises as the laws of the universe. Which, as I understand this matter, is a constant unfolding of the mysterious ways in which everything is bound up together.

It’s about how we are a whole and a part. Or, as we say in the Zen world, citing the ninth century poem, the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, “You are not it, but in truth it is you.”

Not one. Not two. The mysterious world of the nondual. Nonduality is a current within the world’s religious traditions. It’s the spiritual of the seventh principal, how we’re all bound up together. And it explains the first, that we are each of us, in our passingness, precious.

For me Einstein offers a map to a spirituality after religion. And it’s worth looking at.

Let’s listen to his letter again, slightly edited for our time and place:

“A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. The striving to free ourselves from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.”

Three sentences, seventy-eight words, in the original and in this slight paraphrase.

First, that sentence about the universe. We can call it the world. We can call it God. There’s a lovely term in Koine Greek, Pleroma. It means fullness. Pleroma is used as a theological term in Christianity to mean fullness of God. Although in the New Testament it is also used in several other ways. In Gnosticism it means fullness, as well. But adds in a sense of completeness as contrasted to any form of deficiency. It is a whole that needs no extra.

What I find useful about Pleroma is that it describes a whole that is dynamic and contains, or perhaps better, manifests within relationships. You know, just like this world we notice when we open our eyes and our hearts. Like a kiss. Like cancer. Pleroma, fullness, asserts a kind of universe that is experienced, never static, sometimes terrifying, always, always beautiful.

That universe of which we human beings are a part. But a mysterious part. Temporary, no doubt. But in that shining moment of our existence, we can also notice how everything else within the universe has collaborated in the moment to birth us, to sustain us, and in time, in another moment to take us apart. Only then in another moment to be put back together in new ways. And this is another part of the mystery of it. We are for a moment, for that moment, for this moment the center of this universe. Each of us. As we are.

Then there is what I consider the essential of all religious endeavor. “(S)triving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion.” More specifically, as a practice to not nourish this delusion of separation. Einstein doesn’t describe the actual practice other than say to “try.”

I think Einstein’s how, his way of trying, is actually captured in another handwritten note. This one sold at a different auction and won a tad more than a million and a half dollars. It goes, “A calm and humble life will bring more happiness than the pursuit of success and the constant restlessness that comes with it.”

In some ways his theological, his spiritual assertion of our radical interdependence is found as a mystical thread in many religions, all the Abrahamic faiths, in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. To name the obvious. His approach has a Taoist feel to it, or, perhaps we can see echoes of ancient Greece, the way of the Stoic or the Pyrrhonic path of radical skepticism, which some see as a Western adaptation of Buddhism.

We find ourselves called to a middle way, emphasizing calmness and humility. Humility, to be humble, to not know, to be curious. Here we can see not only the heart of the scientific endeavor, but also a straight-forward description of a spiritual path that is worth walking. Definitely worth a million and a half dollars.

It is noticing the part as a brokenness, a sense of separation from the whole. And the promise to the broken heart, is a kind of healing. He offers something modest, an attainable measure of peace of mind. He says. And I also notice how he modeled his life flowing out of this noticing, in his tireless work for justice. As the Zen missionary Shunryu Suzuki said, “you are perfect as you are. And you can use some improvement.” Einstein worked for racial justice, for economic justice, and for peace. For his entire life.

He saw the connections and felt an endless need to reach out and help.

Now, I can’t say how far Einstein was able to delve into this mysterious place of not knowing within the intimate web of relationships. I think he is a bit like Moses, he saw the promised land. But he did not go there.

Or, in this case he touched it. He saw a certain peace. I believe that.

But there is more to be uncovered. I suggest as have many others, there is a ways to go from these insights, a continuing journey into not knowing, into curiosity of heart, into witnessing the mysteries of our intimate existence. And with that, ever unfolding encounters with grace.

There is going ever more deeply into the truths that the world’s religions and their languages point to.

But which we must walk for ourselves.

However deeply he penetrated into the personal parts of the cosmos, with his holy curiosity, he showed us a way. One we can profitably take up for ourselves. And I hope we do. Each of us.

Who knows? Who knows? The fate of worlds might rest on whether we do, or not.

Amen.

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