The counterculture of the late 1960’s into the 1970’s produced a particular interest in something called “ultimate reality”.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t take too many intact brain cells to understand precisely what that counterculture was searching for.

“Ultimate reality” is exactly what it claims to be: the perfect connection between man’s consciousness and Truth, with the capital “T” intended.

Ultimate Truth deserves to be capitalized.

What we must be careful not to capitalize is the “m” and “c” in “man’s consciousness”.

The hope of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s was that through various forms of meditation and/or drugs and/or shaman-guided experiences, (mostly the drugs), there could be such a sharpening of the awareness that the divide between the temporal and divine would be removed.

The ordinary consciousness of the ordinary man would become “Man’s Consciousness”...

Ultimate Consciousness.

Ultimate Reality, Man.

Musical acts like The Beatles, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and Jefferson Airplane championed the cause.

The Beatles would sing:

Sounds of laughter,

shades of life are ringing through my open ears,

inciting and inviting me,

limitless undying love,

which shines around me like a million suns.

It calls me on and on… across the universe

‘Jai guru deva’, om

Nothing's gonna change my world

Authors like Aldous Huxley (from the ‘40s), Ram Das, and Hermann Hesse all echoed the same themes as Alan Watts, who wrote:

"The ultimate reality is not something that can be grasped and held on to, but it is always and ever-present within each moment, no matter how mundane or profound. Ultimate reality is simply being fully present without clinging or resisting."

Which, believe me, means a whole lot less than it looks like it should mean.

Ultimate Reality was the phrase commonly used by that counterculture to refer to the difference between being deceived by life and being enlightened by god.

I intentionally left the lower-case ‘g’ in “god”, because outside of Christianity the god which is doing the enlightening will not be God.

Left to creaturely devices, “god” will always and necessarily be defined by the limitations of the creatures who are doing the devising.

Which is ultimately real for everyone until the actual, One True God reveals Himself.

…then we have ultimate reality on our hands…

The new life described by the holy scriptures is the only kind of life depicted to be in full alignment with reality.

The gift of saving faith introduces its human subject to an entirely alternative, revelatory, and accurate view of everything.

The contrast is so huge, that to live without it is the equivalent of walking around in darkness.

The recipient of God’s grace is no longer out-of-touch, she is in fellowship with God.

And now I capitalize the ‘G’ in God, because God is by definition deserving of a capital letter.

Take a look at the Jeremiah prophecy at the top of this blog post. Never mind first half for a minute, look at the “two evils”.

The complaint that Yahweh Himself is decrying is a two-fold problem:

1. His people have forsaken Him
2. His people have acted in their own interest

It’s not about the actual physical act of digging cisterns, that’s just the poetic and prophetic stand-in for what the prophet is actually talking about, living life.

“Hewing cisterns for themselves” is the opposite of “Ultimate Reality”.

It’s a life that is completely out-of-touch with the Way, The Truth, and, well, The Life.

Yahweh is lamenting the fact that His people have doubly surrendered their birthright as born-anew creatures.

Not only have they rejected the gift by hewing cisterns for themselves instead of living with whatever God has given them, they’ve also rejected the God that has done the giving to begin with.

They have forsaken the Giver. And they have forsaken the gift. Two evils.

Let’s explore this a little bit more.

Psalm 127:1 declares, “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”

Why are they said to labor in vain?

Because whatever it is they are building isn’t really a “house” when compared with the house that Yahweh builds for them.

Psalm 127:1 also says, “Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.”

Why are they said to stay awake in vain?

Because whatever that watchman thinks he sees will in no way be an accurate interpretation of what is actually coming, which would never sneak past the perfectly watchful eye of the LORD.

Get it?

The preacher in Ecclesiastes says, “I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.”

And Jesus says, “everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.”

Oh, the fool is “doing”.

It’s just that whatever he’s “doing”, it's like building on sand compared to what he could be “doing” if he were “doing what Jesus says”.

Vanity.

You get it.

There’s doing, and then there’s Ultimate Doing.

And like Proverbs 28 says, “Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.”

It’s not just the doing, it’s also the trusting that leads to the doing.

It’s the forsaking as well as the hewing. Two problems.

Two evils.

What the beatniks and hippies were after isn’t any different than what everyone else is after, they just went looking for it in psychedelics and groovy art.

Those were their cisterns.

You are likely hewing different cisterns than Jim Morrison was hewing before he died of overdose.

Your cisterns are just as easily easily defined. They are whatever it is that you are hewing for yourself, absent the will of God.

They are easy to define, but often difficult to see, because like I said it’s a little like walking around in darkness.

How about some examples.

Someone is gifted at making money. Not everyone is, but our guy is.

Making money is important for everyone, but when God gifts someone with a particular capacity to do it well, it’s a sure thing that God has big plans for the money that person is going to make.

The LORD builds the house, after all.

It’s very difficult for the person with the money-making gift to avoid, at some point, plying his God-given gift for man-derived purposes.

And just like that, there’s a forsaking of God and a cistern being hewn for self.

Another person is gifted in music-making.

God does love music…

And you’ll rarely meet a musician who isn’t tempted, sooner or later, by the praise of his audience.

Unless the LORD builds the house…

There’s the Parent who loses sight of the primary spiritual reason for parenthood.

There’s the Athlete who loses sight of the primary spiritual benefit of sport.

There’s the Politician who forgets that the purpose of government is to uphold justice.

You see how quickly and easily God is forsaken, and the cistern being hewn is all about me, me, and me.

Of course that cistern is “broken and can’t hold water”, to quote Jeremiah.

If Yahweh’s people would stop forsaking Him they’d realize, in the first place, that He is Living Water!

My goodness, I don’t even need the cistern!

Now we’re ready to look at the first half of that Jeremiah quote.

We quickly realize who Yahweh (“the LORD”) is speaking to - who He is calling as witness.

He asks the very heavens to witness the sad state of affairs of His people.

What he asks the heavens to observe is appalling, shocking, devastating.

Imagine what it must take to shock the glorious heavens.

Think about the angels. Think about Jesus, the eternal Second Person of the Trinity looking on.

Yes, think about Jesus looking on.

I imagine Jeremiah’s prophecy like this: God the Father is giving His Son Jesus a good, long, look at the very people in need of a Messiah.

“His people”.

The ones Jesus comes to save.

And when Jesus sees what His Father is asking Him to observe, He knows exactly what kind of cistern He’s about to get Himself into.

We’ve hewn hell for Jesus to pay.

When Jesus first comes into our lives, He finds us living in illusion, pretense, false perception, darkness, facade… hell.

He rescues us from that.

It’s enlightenment. It’s fellowship and communion with God and it puts us into proper alignment with the entire world around us.

Remember, Jesus is dealing with two evils, not just one.

God’s grace 1. “un-forsakes” us with respect to Him while 2. reconnecting us with ourselves and with the rest of the reality He has created.

We could call it “Ultimate Reality”.

John refers to it beautifully in his first epistle. He writes, “the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”

In summary, a life without the proper relationship to Jesus Christ as Savior is a life of illusion.

It may often look no different than any other life from the outside, but then again our perceptions are only as good as the one doing the perceiving.

And whoever trusts in their own mind is a fool…

It’s best to assume that Proverb applies personally to everyone.

To put it differently, it’s best for everyone to assume that Proverb applies to themselves.

And since Jesus has already opened the relationship with you through the Gift of His Life, invoke His Name.

It’s the first step towards Ultimate Reality for anyone and everyone who has been saved by Grace.

Jesus responded to Jeremiah’s prophecy from chapter 2. He saved you.

Now call on His Name.

Pray, praise, and give thanks.

Amen.