And you know you’re saved only if somebody else isn’t; if somebody else is damned. It’s very difficult to believe or even to imagine a state of affairs where everyone and everything is saved. You have to be a mystic even to think about that. Because it requires having a state of consciousness which transcends oppositions.
We have, of course, a ceramic model of the universe, because it’s said in the book of Genesis that God made Adam out of the dust of the ground. In other words, he made a clay figurine and then blew the breath of life into the nostrils of the figurine so that it came to life. Now, the Hindus don’t have that model of the universe to cope with. Because they don’t look at the universe as God’s creation (in the sense of being an artifact), they look at it as God’s drama. Because they see the world as acted, not created: God is that which is pretending to be all this. And everybody is really God, is a mask of God, who is playing that he’s you. But he’s doing it so well that he’s taken himself in, because he’s the audience as well as the actor. It’s a really successful play. Because the good actor—although you know a play is just a play—a good actor is going to try and make you think it isn’t. He wants to get you crying, he wants to get you sitting on the edge of your seat in anticipation. And God, as the best actor, has convinced himself completely that the act is real. The Chinese, again, have a different model. Their model of the universe is an organic one: it is a great organism. It is alive. It grows. It is an intelligent order.
How, for example, can you be a citizen of the United States, having taken an oath that a republican form of government is the best form of government, and believe that the universe is a monarchy?
The most dangerous graven images are not those which are made of wood and stone, they are those which are made of ideas. And it is well known to the great mystical tradition of the world—all over the world—that the, sort of, supreme vision can only come when you have got rid of every idea of God whatsoever.
Certainly, God doesn’t take himself seriously. If he did, I shudder to think what would happen.