Truth Like a Blazing Fire

Truth like a Blazing Fire...an eternal flame.

Or like quenching water...a flowing stream.

Or like a sacred mountain top...the center of the universe.

Or like a womb...and a tomb.

Or like a journey...or is it a destination?

Or like a carnal desire...quenched by hieros gamos.

Or like a treasure? Or a friend?

Or what?

This discovery of a “divine” essence or substance, dwelling, as Ruysbroeck says, at the apex of man’s soul is that fundamental experience—found in some form or degree in all genuine mystical religion—which provides the basis of the New Testament doctrine of the indwelling spirit. It is, variously interpreted, the “spark of the soul” of Eckhart, the “ground” of Tauler, the Inward Light of the Quakers, the “Divine Principle” of some modern transcendentalists; the fount and source of all true life.

At this point logical exposition fails mystic and theologian alike. A tangle of metaphors takes its place. We are face to face with the “wonder of wonders”—that most real, yet most mysterious, of all the experiences of religion, the union of human and divine, in a nameless something which is “great enough to be God, small enough to be me.” In the struggle to describe this experience, the “spark of the soul,” the point of juncture, is at one moment presented to us as the divine to which the self attains: at another, as that transcendental aspect of the self which is in contact with God.

On either hypothesis, it is here that the mystic encounters Absolute Being. Here is his guarantee of God’s immediate presence in the human heart; and, if in the human heart, then in that universe of which man’s soul resumes in miniature the essential characteristics.

-Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism

reply to post by BlueMule


Truth is presence. This moment with nothing added, pure without the mind telling it what it should be. Aware presence. It is the stopping of concepts and seeing and hearing what is real.
The human finds this almost impossible because it thinks, it imagines and believes.
The truth is not mind made. Mind is known by the aware presence.

The gift is the present.

This is actually the best description of spiritual confusion that I have yet seen, as regards Homo Sapiens and the journey we've made toward our respective destinies. Star and flag.

reply to post by AfterInfinity


Thanks. You would probably enjoy reading her book very much.

reply to post by BlueMule


I like this (from the link you provided)

Attempts, however, to limit mystical truth—the direct apprehension of the Divine Substance—by the formula of any one religion, are as futile as the attempt to identify a precious metal with the die which converts it into current coin. The dies which the mystics have used are many. Their peculiarities and excrescences are always interesting and sometimes highly significant. Some give a far sharper, more coherent, impression than others. But the gold from which this diverse coinage is struck is always the same precious metal: always the same Beatific Vision of a Goodness, Truth, and Beauty which is one. Hence its substance must always be distinguished from the accidents under which we perceive it: for this substance has an absolute, and not a denominational, importance.

How very, very true.

Originally posted by Itisnowagain
reply to post by BlueMule

 

Truth is presence. This moment with nothing added, pure without the mind telling it what it should be. Aware presence. It is the stopping of concepts and seeing and hearing what is real.
The human finds this almost impossible because it thinks, it imagines and believes.
The truth is not mind made. Mind is known by the aware presence.

The gift is the present.

edit on 5-8-2012 by Itisnowagain because: (no reason given)

And what of the 'thief in the night' motif...making off with your gift under his arm?

reply to post by Biliverdin


I like it too. It really speaks against the fundamentalist who thinks his coinage is the the only one worth anything. I don't like fundamentalists much. Fundamentalism and mysticism don't mix.