The Seer

Today I woke up with only one aim –
to walk my way to myself.
There were sun and the grass and flowers;
There were river and bridge and animals;
There were also wind and clouds and rain.
There were me and you and others on the way.
Other things and beings, visible and invisible.

Today, while I was walking that way, something happened.
And I see that, while I was walking my way to myself—
it turned into a Way to the Self.

I don’t know if it is a rare mystery,
or ancient alchemy,
or something inevitable and ordinary,
but I stand here still,
going further without making moves,
thankful and peaceful –
needing no more words.

~ From: On the WAY, by Eloratea

How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One who is manifest by everything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One who is made manifest in everything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One who is manifest to everything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He was the One who was Manifest before there was anything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is more manifest than anything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One with whom there is nothing else?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One who is nearer to you than anything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when if it had not been for Him, there would not have been anything?

A marvel!
See how existence becomes manifest in non-existence!
How the in-time holds firm alongside Him whose attribute is eternal!

~ Ibn Ata’ Illah (1250 – 1309), From: Ibn ‘Ata’ Illah: The Book of Wisdom / Kwaja Abdullah Ansari: Intimate Conversations. Trans. Victor Danner & Wheeler Thackston

The Poetry

Eternal youth is a natural phenomenon,
It is each person’s destiny — as a mature, realized individual;
It ensues spontaneously, as an authentic experience,
An energy without support, bound by nothing.

Physically, youth depends oh the number of our years,
On the body’s progress towards maturity.
There are no contradictions. People consider themselves
As old as their physical age, according to their life expectancy.

Whereas psychologically it is a-different matter,
Youth is directly connected with Life’s constant newness;
Life itself demands that we encounter it,
The same way She is, as absolute newness in each movement.

Without this eternal, ever-renewing youth,
We will not understand the newness of the Universal movement.
We need to have a fresh, lucid and clear mind,
Completely detached from time, from the wandering memory.

Such a state is attained naturally,
When we understand the “ego” and its powerless nature,
Unable to embrace and really comprehend
The innocence of the naked moment.

The moment makes us young, if we encounter it constantly,
Without the old “self” — based on old residues;
Youth is unrelated to time, years do not define it,
In eternal youth, everyone and everything becomes integrated.

The Prose

Eternal youth is a natural phenomenon; it is the destiny of every human being who has reached a stage of spiritual maturity. This spiritual attainment appears spontaneously — as a true experience — when man discovers the Reality of his being, as immortal Divinity. In this fortunate circumstance, he has a Pure Energy and Consciousness without dimensions or cause.

On a physical plane, youth is determined by the age of our body, by its progress towards maturity. From this point of view, there are no contradictions. People consider themselves as old as their years, according to the climate or the geographical location they live in.

On a psychological level, it is a different matter. In this circumstance, youth is closely connected to the way we integrate and welcome Life’s eternal freshness. >•

Practically, Life itself requests us to encounter it in the same way She is — as absolute newness, with each movement. Without this Eternal Youth, we will never be able to encounter or understand the newness of the Universal movement. Only by being detached from time and space — from the wandering memory — we are able to understand that which is new and real, brought “here and now” by the constant mobility of Life.

How can we reach this eternal Youth within us? Only in one manner, that is: when we understand the “ego” and its powerless nature, unable to embrace and comprehend the purity of the present moment. When understanding occurs — as a direct experience — this fiction becomes silent, in humbleness, because it has understood its fundamental incapacity. In the psychological void thus created, we expand to Infinity and we acquire a new mind, perfectly functional and without limits.

Encountering the moment correctly leads us to a state of eternal Youth — without the senility based on mental accumulations. Youth is not a prisoner of time and it is not influenced by how many years old our physical body is.

In a state of complete inner freedom, on the threshold of the incoming moment – we remain untouched and just as free after the moment has passed, without recording any memory residues. We die psychologically to what has been and, simultaneously, we are reborn just as alive, fresh and always young in each second of Life in Its perpetual movement.

~ From: The Silence of the Mind, by Ilie Cioara pp 59.

Within Wisdom is a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, active, incisive, unsullied, lucid, invulnerable, benevolent, sharp, irresistible, beneficent, loving to man, steadfast, dependable, unperturbed, almighty, all-surveying, penetrating all intelligent, pure, and subtle spirits; for Wisdom is more mobile than any motion; she is so pure, she pervades and permeates all things.

She is a breath of the power of God, pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; hence nothing impure can find a way into her.

She is a reflection of the eternal light, untarnished mirror of God’s active power, image of his goodness.

Although alone, she can do all; herself unchanging, she makes all things new.

In each generation she passes into holy souls, she makes them friends of God and prophets; for God loves the man who lives with Wisdom.

She is indeed more splendid than the sun, she outshines all the constellations; compared with light, she takes first place, for light must yield to night, but over Wisdom, darkness can never triumph.

She deploys her strength from one end of the earth to the other, ordering all things for good.

Her I loved and sought after from my youth; I sought to take her for my bride and was enamoured of her beauty.

She glorifies her noble birth by living with God; and the Lord of all loves her.

For she is instructress in the understanding of God; and an associate in his works.

And if riches be a desirable possession in life, what is more rich than Wisdom, who produces all things?

Therefore I determined to take her to live with me.

~ From: The Book of Wisdom (7:22 – 8:5). Thought to be written in the 1st or 2nd cent. BCE, by an author unknown.

I saw myself as a rock-pool on the edge of a vast ocean.
Late in the afternoon, as the sun sank toward the far horizon,
I became aware of a shining path, stretching o’er the distant waters,
Beckoning, it seemed, to something more than sea-weed, sand and anemones.
I suddenly longed to follow that Luminous Way but did not know how
Nor even if it were possible … for one set in earthbound-rock, as I was.

Then, as the tide rose, a few small wavelets washed o’er my rocky rim and into me.
I welcomed these infusions from the great immensity beyond and longed for more.
The tide rose higher and soon I was overflowing with its cool, translucent freshness.
How blessed, I thought, was I to receive of the ocean’s bounty.
But still, relentless in its high purpose, the tide came on, and on.
Till I was quite overwhelmed and submerged beneath the all-filling, all-embracing sea.

The deepening waters above and around became evermore still and silent.
Even the once-welcomed waves were now strangers to this tranquil realm.
And then the gnosis gleamed … and shone … more radiantly than any sun,
Revealing … that in truth, I was not in this luminous ocean, nor it in me,
But something far more wondrous — much more than I’d ever imagined,
Verily, there was only the omnipresent ocean — always … nothing else!

It was the realm of Beingness, a formless Self long forgotten by a form.
Nothing had been lost … except someone’s idea of being just a rock-pool.

~ Peter Stafford Sumner

Silence is round me, wideness ineffable;
White birds on the ocean diving and wandering;
A soundless sea on a voiceless heaven,
Azure on azure, is mutely gazing.

Identified with silence and boundlessness
My spirit widens clasping the universe
Till all that seemed becomes the Real,
One in a mighty and single vastness.

Someone broods there nameless and bodiless,
Conscious and lonely, deathless and infinite,
And, sole in a still eternal rapture,
Gathers all things to his heart for ever.

~ Sri Aurobindo

It was a quiet way –
He asked if I was his –
I made no answer of the Tongue
But answer of the Eyes –
And then He bore me on
Before this mortal noise
With swiftness, as of Chariots
And distance, as of Wheels.
This World did drop away
As Acres from the feet
Of one that leaneth from Balloon
Upon an Ether street.
The Gulf behind was not,
The Continents were new –
Eternity it was before
Eternity was due.
No Seasons were to us –
It was not Night nor Morn –
But Sunrise stopped upon the place
And fastened it in Dawn.”

~ Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886), From: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Ed. Thomas Johnson.

Lying in bed,
Luxuriating in a few minutes between waking and arising,
I listen to the sound of my breathing…
Where will I be when the bellows are silent?
What will I be?
After years of searching within, I discovered the answer –
I recognized what I am
that subtends the waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep states,
that remains unchanging with the passing of nights and days,
of seasons, of years, of life.
Life and death I now see in perspective …
And see that they don’t affect me.

~ by Art Ticknor

Who walks on water
is no better than a straw.
Who flies in the air
is no better than a fly.
Be without equal:
become nothing
Find the real self
where no self exists.
The heart resigns
and the eye sees
nothing but God.

~ From: Stepping Into Brilliant Air, by Colin Oliver, (who had a profound and lasting experience of awakening through the teaching of Douglas Harding)

I came across this poem from a 19th century English poet, William Dunkerley (1852 – 1941), writing under the pseudonym, John Oxenham. Eloquently written, the poem’s message transcends the ages. It seems to be part of the play of Consciousness to give ‘us’ choices thoughout our life-experience. We can make choices that enable ‘us’ to fulfill the deepest capacities of ‘our’ real selves … or not. If ‘we’ don’t choose the High Way, it will make in the end no difference what was chosen instead.

To everyone there openeth
A Way, and Ways, and a Way,
And the High Soul climbs the High Way,
And the Low Soul gropes the Low,
And in between, on the misty flats,
To rest drift to and fro.
But to everyone there openeth
A High Way, and a Low.
And everyone decideth
The way their soul shall go.

~ John Oxenham — The Way (1916)