A year before meeting Srila Prabhupad, this is how I expressed my religious convictions in a letter to my parents. It was November 1965, the war in Vietnam was raging, and I was applying to my draft board for Conscientious Objector status. I post this not to confirm any part of it, but just to show you where I was coming from.
God is Supreme Being itself – Supreme Identity – Final Identity – my identity and yours, joined in oneness. Other words might be Eternity, Energy, Beauty, Love. God is the eternal energy of unity, of beauty, of love. God is one aspect of all humans, of all existants, equal to all.
The force of God’s unity strives to create beauty, to love, but is thwarted, finds itself in the universe with ugliness, hate, separation. The interplay of the two is the universe. Good cannot exist without evil.
Each of us must choose: beauty or ugliness, love or hate, creation or destruction, peace or war. The choice must be made – now! I believe the way of humanity must be the way of love – that must be my way. I am committed to total peace. Heaven itself commands me – in these matters I hear no other voice.
“Heaven is high, the earth is low; thus the Creative and the Receptive are determined. In correspondence with this difference between low and high, inferior and superior places are established.” – The Book of Changes
For peace to exist an immediate decision must be made at this very moment. No practical round of reforms or revolutions is going to move us any closer.
At the same time in admitting the necessity of evil, the whole demand for peace is put in its place. But there can be no doubt that evil, although in some instances may appear attractive, is ugly. And as an artist I am committed to beauty. That’s where I find myself in the world. That is the way I see my most fundamental reason for existing.
It’s more Buddhist than Christian, perhaps (but maybe that’s splitting hairs), and that’s why Michele and I got married in a Buddhist church – it seemed the closest thing available. Though of course I’m not a practicing Buddhist.
