In these brief words of Jesus, goes the whole spiritual philosophy of Christianity.
Western humanity has been trying to understand Christ and his Gospel for more than two thousand years, but this attempt is without hope of a positive result until man has radically changed his level of consciousness and perspective. And this change does not refer to such or what peripheral aspects but requires a new central attitude in the face of the metaphysical, eternal, absolute reality. There is no point in mending traditional theology's “old clothes”, sewing some “new patch”. It is indispensable that the man disposes of these “old clothes” for an entirely new garment that does not need patches. Not to store the “new wine” of the Christian spirit in the “old wineskins” of traditional Christianity and to have the audacity to produce new and clean containers for the generous and strong wine of the Gospel.
Until humanity passes from the obsolete, hypocritical, selfish, fragmented and multi-century ideology of the physical-mental horizontality to the new spiritual verticality, it will not comprehend Christ and his Gospel.
According to traditional Western empirical philosophy, the only solid and real concept is this material world that the senses perceive and whose laws the mind conceives and calculates. If, in addition, some other, non-material reality is admitted, that other reality is only a distant, vague, fragmented, precarious thing, something that is believed in moments of goodwill and spiritual emotion, but of which nothing is known by immediate experience. Man believes in the spiritual world, more by convention than conviction; he believes because he heard or read about this invisible world; believe, almost out of weakness or to do God a favour. From the realities of the material world and its laws, man has a direct and concrete notion every day, whereas in the spiritual world, only distant echoes, indirect and uncertain reflexes, which are not in a position to have a decisive impact on human life, or even surpassing the intensity of its physical-mental experiences.
Human faith does not represent 1% of the total force of its “perceiving”, and for this reason, it is inevitable that the pendulum of the balance of terrestrial life will invariably move to the side of the senses and the intellect, and not to the side of the spirit or of the reason. The spiritual world of faith is, for man, a kind of a beautiful theory which he respects, but not a tangible reality that he can practice and love. It is a “painted fire”, but not a real flame; a fire painted by an artist on a canvas that does not set fire to anything, while with the smallest of real flames, huge fires can be set.
Now, how can the spiritual world, which is the soul of the Gospel, be made as real and efficient as the material world? To have a decisive impact on human life? To reach the point of making smooth and light what is now bitter and heavy? If man could materialize such an adventure, there is no doubt that human life would be completely transformed; man would live today and now the kingdom of happiness amid his “valley of tears”; he could even exclaim like Paul of Tarsus who went through this glorious experience: “I am greatly encouraged; in all our troubles, my joy knows no bounds.”
How could man achieve this maximum goal in his life?
Ceasing to be “Martha” and becoming “Mary”; ceasing to be solicitous and disturbed by the “many things” of the horizontal level and to sit calmly at the feet of the Master amazed at the deep verticality of the “only necessary thing”, intensely real, which does not belong to time and space, illusory and transitory, but eternal, and that, for this very reason “will not be taken away”.
Crossing that invisible boundary, crossing that immense chasm, going through this redemptive crisis, knowing from personal and intimate experience what this part of Mary's choice is that is infinitely more real and grandiose than all of Martha's many things – this is Christian redemption, it is spiritual initiation, it is rebirth by the spirit, it is seeking the kingdom of God and his justice, that is, it is eternal life!
Not having time or interest in this one necessary thing, wasting all the time and interest in the many unnecessary things - this is supreme incipience; it is blindness and spiritual obtuseness.
Everything that a man has or thinks he has will be taken from him someday - only what he is, is what he will be forever.
Everything that man calls his own is only around, outside of him, alien to his true being; none of this he is. Only his deep and divine Self is really his.
Martha's quantities are fictitious, temporary - the quality that Mary is is real, eternal.
Martha has many things - which is why she is restless and disturbed.
Mary is someone - and for that reason, she falls at the Master's feet, calm, serene, happy.
When man ceases to have many things and becomes someone, then great peace comes over him, which the world cannot give or take away.
There is no use having - it is necessary to be.
Being includes having - but having does not include being.
Being is quality, it is the cause, it is verticality, it is the source - having is only quantity, effect, horizontality, channel.
Anyone who is really someone because of his experience with God can lose everything he has, for he knows he doesn't lose anything; he discovered the divine mathematics that the plus, which is being, includes the minus, which is having; and, as he has the plus, God, he need not worry about quantities. He can spontaneously give up everything he has, become destitute of all the horizontal quantities around him because he knows he is a millionaire for what he is, for the sublime and deep verticality of quality within him. This man discovered the kingdom of God within himself, and he needs not frantically search for the illusory kingdoms of the world outside him, because he knows that these kingdoms are all rooted in God and that if he wanted to possess them, he would have them all in great abundance. This man learned the supreme wisdom of having all the effects in the cause, and stopped wanting to have the effects without the cause.
From the fortress of his cosmic vision, this man calmly embraces all the peripheries of the worlds gravitating around him. For, possessing the “only necessary thing”, he possesses all other things, without concern or disturbance, but with the dynamic serenity and the creative peace with which the spiritual man penetrates all materialities.
What avails a man to have something, even if it is the whole world if he is not someone if he suffers damage in what he is, his soul? Can having something redeem being someone? Can the minus create the plus? Can the many quantities produce the only quality?
When a man begins to comprehend the supreme wisdom that things in the material world are not primarily real but only relatively real, and that only the spiritual world is real in itself - then he goes through the process of conversion to overcome the limits of the mind that keeps him bound to the shackles of the past, performing in himself the mysterious spiritual alchemy. He ceases to be Martha and becomes Mary so that later he can be Mary-Martha, a human being with the ability to deal with the many things of the material world without concern or disturbance and without abandoning his place at the feet of the Master.
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