The Essential Mystics

Voices of the First World

• “The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men.” (Black Elk)

• Very similar to Christ’s greatest commandments. Unity first, betweenness second, collective betweenness third. Love thy Lord with all thy heart…and a second one is like it, love thy neighbour as thyself.

Taoism

“In moments of darkness and pain

remember all is cyclical.

Sit quietly behind your wooden door:

Spring will come again.”

— Loy Ching Yuen

Hinduism

• “The Sanskrit word [Brahman] has a dual etymology, deriving at once from br, “to breathe,” and brih, “to be great.” The chief attributes of Brahman are Sat, Chit, and Ananda, roughly translated as Being, Awareness, and Bliss. Absolute reality is conceived by the Hindu mind as being a Presence of Pure Being, Pure Conscious-ness, and Pure Bliss.“
• ‘Yoga’ means literally to unite, to yoke. It is a means of union with god.

• “Four main paths of yoga (“union with God”) were gradually developed to suit different ways of imagining, approaching, and enacting the divine:

• jnana yoga, the path to the transcendent through knowledge;
• bhakti yoga, the path of devotion, usually to a “personal” god;
• raja yoga, the path of royal (rai) reintegration through psychophysical exercises;
• and karma yoga, the path of works and action dedicated selflessly to the Supreme.”

“So through spiritual wisdom, dear one, We come to know that all of life is one.

In the beginning was only Being, One without a second.

Out of himself he brought forth the cosmos And entered into everything in it.

There is nothing that does not come from him.

Of everything he is the inmost Self.

He is the truth; he is the Self supreme.

You are that, Shvetaketu; you are that.”

(Chandogya Upanishad)

“The Spirit’s tops and Nature’s base shall draw

Near to the secret of their separate truth

And know each other as one deity.

The Spirit shall look out through Matter’s gaze

And Matter shall reveal the Spirit’s face.

Then man and superman shall be at one

And all the earth become a single life.”

— Aurobindo, from Savitri

Buddhism

“Thereby [the bodhisattva] generates the love that is firm, its high resolve unbreakable, like a diamond; the love that is pure, purified in its intrinsic nature; the love that is even, its aspirations being equal; the saint’s love that has eliminated its enemy; the bodhisattva’s love that continuously develops living beings; … the love that is enlightenment because it is unity of experience; the love that has no presumption because it has eliminated attachment and aversion; the love that is never exhausted because it acknowledges voidness and selflessness; the love that is morality because it improves immoral living beings; the love that is tolerance because it protects both self and others; the love that is effort because it takes responsibility for all living beings; … the love that is wisdom because it causes attainment at the proper time; the love that is liberative technique because it shows the way everywhere; the love that is without formality because it is pure in motivation; … the love that is without deceit because it is not artificial; the love that is happiness because it introduces living beings to the happiness of the Buddha. Such, Manjusri, is the great love of a bodhisattva.”
(Vimalakirti)

“Whoever wishes to quickly rescue himself and another should practice the supreme mystery: the exchanging of himself and the other.
…
All of those who are in a condition of unhappiness in the world are that way because of desiring their own release. All of those who are in a condition of happiness in the world are that way from seeking the release of another.
…
It follows that for the sake of tranquilizing my own sorrow, and for the tranquilizing of the other’s sorrow, I give myself to others and I accept others like myself.” (Shantideva)

• Second commandment

“The fair tree of thought that knows no duality,

Spreads through the triple world.

It bears the flower and fruit of Compassion, And its name is service of others.

The fair tree of the Void abounds with flowers,

Acts of compassion of many kinds,

And fruit for others appearing spontaneously,

For this joy has no actual thought of another….

He who clings to the Void

And neglects Compassion,

Does not reach the highest stage.

But he who practices only Compassion

Does not gain release from toils of existence.

He, however, who is strong in practice of both,

Remains neither in Samsara nor in Nirvana.” (Saraha)

• Upanishadic at the end there. Isha upanishad. Transcendence vs immanence, action vs knowledge.
• Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will not

“Make a thousand of an inch distinction,

Heaven and earth swing apart.”

— Seng Ts’an

“…only when you have rid yourself of the whole gamut of dualistic concepts of the “ignorant” and “Enlightened” category, will you at last earn the title of Transcendental Buddha….

There exists just the One Mind. Truly there are no multiplicity of forms, no Celestial Brilliance, and no Glorious Victory.…

Every grain of matter, every appearance is one with Eternal and Immutable Reality! Wherever your foot may fall, you are still within the Sanctuary for Enlightenment, though it is nothing perceptible. I assure you that one who comprehends the truth of “nothing to be attained” is already seated in the sanctuary where he will gain his Enlightenment.” (Huang Po)

Judaism

“Whither shall I go from thy spirit?

Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:

If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

If I take the wings of the morning,

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;

Even there shall thy hand lead me,

And thy right hand shall hold me.

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me;

Even the night shall be light about me.”

Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee;

But the night shineth as the day:

The darkness and the light are both alike to thee …”

(Psalm 139:7-12)

• Unity among duality.

“I loved her above health and beauty, and chose to have her instead of light, for the light that cometh from her never goes out…”

(Wisdom 10)

“For wisdom is more moving than any motion; she passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness.

For she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty: …

For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness.

And being but one, she can do all things: and remaining in herself, she maketh all things new: and in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God, and prophets….

I loved her, I desired to make her my spouse, and I was a lover of her beauty.”

(Wisdom 20something)

• Wisdom as the immanent divine, the motherly, material, universe.

“…

Creation is the extension of God.

Creation is God encountered in time and space.

Creation is the infinite in the garb of the finite.

To attend to creation is to attend to God.

To attend to the moment is to attend to eternity.

To attend to the part is to attend to the whole.

To attend to Reality is to live constructively.”

(Pirke Avot 6:2)

“There is one who ascends with all these songs in unison—the song of the soul, the song of the nation, the song of humanity, the song of the cosmos-resounding together, blending in harmony, circulating the sap of life, the sound of holy joy.” (Abraham Isaac Cook)

Ancient Greece

“It is an everlasting loveliness which neither comes nor goes, which neither flowers nor fades, for such beauty is the same on every hand, the same then as now, here as there, this way as that way, the same to every worshiper as it is to every other.

Nor will his vision of the beautiful take the form of a face, or of hands, or of anything that is of the flesh. It will be neither words, nor knowledge, nor a something that exists in something else, such as a living creature, or the earth, or the heavens, or anything that is-but subsisting of itself and by itself in an eternal oneness, while every lovely thing partakes of it in such sort that, however much the parts may wax and wane, it will be neither more nor less, but still the same inviolable whole.”

(Plato, Symposium)

“…And in the center he put the soul, which he diffused throughout the body, making it also to be the exterior environment of it, and he made the universe a circle moving in a circle, one and solitary, yet by reason of its excellence able to converse with itself, and needing no other friendship or acquaintance. Having these purposes in view he created the world a blessed god.”

(Plato, Timaeus)

“It would be unsound to condemn this universe as less than beautiful, or as less than the noblest universe possible on the corporeal level. A majestic organism complete within itself, the minutest part related to the whole, a marvelous artistry shown not only in the stateliest parts but in those of such littleness you would not have thought Providence would bother about them … the exquisite design of fruits and leaves, the abundance and the delicacy and diversity of flowers….

The Divine Intellect, then, in Its unperturbed serenity has brought the universe into being by communicating from Its own store to matter; and this emanation of the Divine Intellect is Reason [or Logos]. This Logos within a seed contains all the parts and qualities concentrated in identity; there is no distinction, no internal hindering; then there comes a pushing into bulk, part rises in distinction from part, and at once the members of the organism stand in each other’s way and begin to wear each other down. Yet while each utters its own voice, all is brought into an ordered system by the ruling Reason.”

(Plotinus, Enneads)

“Do not suppose that a man becomes good by despising the world and all the beauties that are in it.… When we love a person, we love all that belongs to him; we extend to the children the affection we feel for the parent. Now every Soul is a daughter of the Godhead. How can this world be separated from the spiritual world? Those who despise what is so nearly akin to the spiritual world prove that they know nothing of the spiritual world, except in name.

Let it [any individual soul] make itself worthy to contemplate the Great Soul by ridding itself, through quiet recollection, of deceit and of all that bewitches vulgar souls. For it let all be quiet; let all its environment be at peace. Let the earth be quiet and the sea and air, and the heaven itself waiting. Let it observe how the Soul flows in from all sides into the resting world, pours itself into it, penetrates it and illumines it. Even as the bright beams of the sun enlighten a dark cloud and give it a golden border, so the Soul when it enters into the body of the heaven gives it life and timeless beauty and awakens it from sleep. So the world, grounded in a timeless movement by the Soul which suffuses it with intelligence, becomes a living and blessed being.

The Soul gives itself to every point in this vast body, and vouchsafes its being to every part, great and small, though these parts are divided in space and manner of disposition, and though some are opposed to each other, others dependent on each other. But the Soul is not divided, nor does it split up in order to give life to each individual. All things live by the Soul in its entirety; it is all present everywhere. The heaven, vast and various as it is, is one by the power of the Soul, and by it is this universe of ours Divine. The sun too is Divine, and so are the stars; and we ourselves, if we are worth anything, are so on account of the Soul.” (Plotinus, Enneads)

“We may know we have had the vision when the Soul has suddenly taken light. This light is from the Supreme and is the Supreme; we may believe in the Presence when He comes bringing light: the light is the proof of the advent. Thus, the Soul unlit remains without that vision; lit, it possesses what it sought. And this is the true end set before the Soul, to take that light, to see the Supreme by the Supreme and not be the light of any other principle—to see the Supreme which is also the means to the vision; for that which illumines the Soul is that which it is to see, just as it is by the sun’s own light that we see the sun.

But how is this to be accomplished?

Cut away everything.”

(Plotinus, Enneads)

Islam

“He who knows himself knows his Lord.”

“I cannot fit into my heavens or into my earth but I fit into the heart of my believing servant.”

“He who knows himself knows his Lord.”

“My slave does not cease to draw near to me with devotion of her own free will until I love her. And when I love her, I am the hearing with which she hears, the sight with which she sees,… the foot she walks on.”

“The heart of the believer is the place of the revelation of God.

The heart of the believer is the throne of God. The heart of the believer is the mirror of God.”

(Hadiths)

“You thought yourself a part, small;

Whereas in you there is a universe, the greatest.”

(Hazreti ‘Ali)

“You say you see my mouth, ears, eyes, nose—they are not mine.

I am the life of life.

I am that cat, this stone, no one.

I have thrown duality away like an old dishrag, I see and know all times and worlds,

As one, one, always one.

So what do I have to do to get you to admit who is speaking?

Admit it and change everything!

This is your own voice echoing off the walls of God.” (Rumi)

“The intellect says “Do not go forward, annihilation contains only thorns.”

Love laughs back: “The thorns are in you.”

Enough words! Silence!

Pull the thorn of existence out of the heart! Fast!

For when you do you will see thousands of rose gardens in yourself.”

(Rumi)

“That moment you are drunk on yourself,

You are withered, withered like autumn leaves.

That moment you leap free of yourself,

Winter to you appears in the dazzling robes of spring.

All disquiet springs from the search for quiet.

Look for disquiet and you will come suddenly on a field of quiet.

All illnesses spring from the scavenging for delicacies.

Renounce delicacies and poison itself will seem delicious to you.

All disappointments spring from your hunting for satisfactions.

If only you could stop, all imaginable joys Would be rolled like pearls to your feet.”

(Rumi)

“…The image in the mirror seems different

But sublime days arrive when you know

Viewer, image, and mirror are one: the same

Silent calm eternal shimmering

One Moon blossoming in a thousand bowls

One Water laughing in a thousand thousand fields

One Sun with a million electric shadows

One Silence with these love-cries for children

…

The law of Wonder rules my life at last

I burn each second of my life to love

Each second of my life burns out in love

In each leaping second love lives afresh”

(Rumi, from the Rubaiyat)

“O Lord, is the beloved within the lover?

And the lover in the beloved?

I find not the question why and wherefore.

Am I one within the many?

No, I am the one with the many in me.

I am the owner and the owned,

And the doer and the done.” (Kaygusuz Abdul)

Christianity

“…

“But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

“That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

“For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye?””

(Matthew 5:~40)

“And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

“And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

“Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

“Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?”

(Matthew 6:~24)

• The church clothes itself in extravagance. Why don itself in raiments? Help me find the humble church who lays up its treasures in heaven rather than earth.

“… Rather, the [Father’s] imperial rule is inside you and outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty.”

(Logion 3, Gospel of Thomas)

“Jesus said to them, “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, … then you will enter [the Father’s domain].”

(Logion 22, Gospel of Thomas)

• Unity.

“For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,

Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”

(Romans, 8)

• The whole creation groaneth!

“But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world, to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world, to confound the things which are mighty;

…

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.” And again, “The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.””

(I Corinthians 1: ~25:29; 3:18-20)

“Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

(Philippians, 3:~10)

• To apprehend as I am apprehended, to hold as I am held, to know as I am known.
• Cloud of unknowing and forgetting at the end there.

“[Charity] beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Charity never faileth…

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.”

(1 Corinthians, 13)

“Leave the senses and the workings of the intellect, and all that the sense and the intellect can perceive, and all that is not and that is; and through unknowing reach out, so far as this is possible, toward oneness with him who is beyond all being and knowledge. In this way, through an uncompromising, absolute and pure detachment from yourself and from all things, transcending all things and released from all, you will be led upwards toward that radiance of the divine darkness which is beyond all being.

Entering the darkness that surpasses understanding, we shall find ourselves brought, not just to brevity of speech, but to perfect silence and unknowing.

Emptied of all knowledge, man is joined in the highest part of himself, not with any created thing, nor with himself, nor with another, but with the One who is altogether unknowable; and in knowing nothing, he knows in a manner that surpasses understanding.”

(Dionysius the Aeropagite)

“I, a frail, small mortal in the world,

Behold the Creator of the world, all of him, within myself;

And I know I shall not die, for I am within Life,

I have the whole of Life springing up as a fountain within me.

He is in my heart, he is in heaven:

Both there and here he shows himself to me with equal glory.”

(Symeon, the New Theologian)

“[The spirit] presses on

deeper and deeper into the vortex

further and further into the whirlpool,

the primary source

in which the spirit has its origin.

This spirit seeks to be

broken through by God.

God leads this spirit

into a desert

into the wilderness and solitude of the divinity where God is pure unity

and where God gushes up within himself.”

(Meister Eckhart)

• The vortex as origin… also, the callback to Exodus, the water gushing forth from the rock in the wilderness.

“”Paul rose from the ground and with open eyes saw nothing.”

I think this text has a fourfold sense. One is that when he rose up from the ground with open eyes he saw Nothing, and the Nothing was God; for when he saw God he calls that Nothing. The second: when he got up he saw nothing but God. The third: in all things he saw nothing but God. The fourth: when he saw God, he saw all things as nothing. …

A master says whoever speaks of God in any likeness, speaks impurely of Him. But to speak of God with nothing is to speak of Him correctly. … God was born in the Nothing….”

(Meister Eckhart)

“He who would know thee, God, must measure thee without measure.” (St. Bernard)

“For I am love,

Which the vast expanses of evil

Can never still.” (Hildegard of Bingen)

“He has created each person’s soul as a living mirror, on which he has impressed the image of his nature. In this way he lives imaged forth in us and we in him, for our created life is one, without intermediary, with this image and life which we have eternally in God. That life which we have in God is one in God, without intermediary, for it lives in the Father with the unbegotten Son and is begotten with the Son from the Father, flowing forth from them both with the Holy Spirit. We thus live eternally in God and he in us, for our created being lives in our eternal image, which we have in the Son of God.

For this reason the eternal birth is always being renewed, and the flowing forth of the Holy Spirit into the emptiness of our soul is always occurring without interruption, for God has known, loved, called, and chosen us from all eternity. If we resolve to know, love, and choose him in return, then we are holy, blessed, and chosen from all eternity. Our heavenly Father will then reveal his divine resplendence in the topmost part of our soul, for we are his kingdom, in which he lives and reigns.

…

Here our reason and every activity characterized by the making of distinctions must give way, for our powers now become simply one in love, grow silent, and incline toward the Father’s face, since this revelation of the Father raises the soul above reason to a state of imageless bareness. There the soul is simple, spotless, and pure, empty of everything. In this pure emptiness the Father reveals his divine resplendence, which neither reason nor the senses, neither rational observation nor distinctions can attain. Rather, all these things must remain below, for this infinite resplendence so blinds the eyes of reason that they have to give way before this incomprehensible light. However, that simple eye which dwells above reason in the ground of our understanding is always open, contemplating with unhindered vision and gazing at the light with the light itself—eye to eye, mirror to mirror, image to image.

With these three—eye, mirror, and image—we are like God and united with him, for this vision in our simple eye is a living mirror which God created to his image and on which he impressed his image. … But this resplendence is not an intermediary between God and ourselves, for it is both the very thing which we see and also the light with which we see, though it is distinct from our eye which does the seeing. Even though God’s image is in the mirror of our soul and is united with it without intermediary, still the image is not the mirror, for God does not become a creature. The union of the image in the mirror is, however, so great and so noble that the soul is called the image of God.”

(John Ruusbroec, 14th century Flemish mystic)

“The Divine Persons who form one sole God, are in the fecundity of their nature ever active: and in the simplicity of their esence they form the Godhead and eternal blessedness. Thus God according to the Persons is Eternal Work: but according to the esence and Its perpetual stillness, He is Eternal Rest. Now love and fruition live between this activity and this rest….

Our activity consists in loving God and our fruition in enduring God and being penetrated by His love. There is a distinction between love and fruition, as there is between God and His Grace. When we unite ourselves to God by love, then we are spirit: but when we are caught up and transformed by His Spirit, then we are led into fruition. And the spirit of God Himself breathes us out from Himself that we may love, and may do good works; and again He draws us into Himself, that we may rest in fruition. And this is Eternal Life; even as our mortal life subsists in the indrawing and outgoing of our breath…”

(John Ruusbroec, 14th century Flemish mystic)

• Eternal Life lives between Eternal Work and Eternal Rest. Eternal work revolving in the Persons, rest in their One essence (the axis around which they rotate?). The intersection of the immanent and the transcendent. Work in the immanent, rest in the transcendent, live in between.

“If I’m no longer seen

following sheep about the hills,

say that I am lost, that

wandering in love I let

myself be lost and then was won.”

(John of the Cross)