Everything you want
must be searched for –
except the Friend.
If you don’t find Him
you’ll never be able to start to even look.
Yes, you can be sure:
You are not Him — unless
you can remove yourself
from between yourself and Him –
in which case you are Him.
~ Hakim Sanai (1044? – 1150?), from: The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry, Trans. Peter Wilson & Nasrollah Pourjavady
I became exquisitely aware of the Stillness — around, within, underneath everything. It was a Stillness so profound that all that is seemed to be originating from and contained in it. I felt it most intensely at a locus in the center of my chest, and it radiated outward, filling my entire being and moving beyond. But it also undergirded and surrounded me and everything else.
The Stillness was not a Negative or an Absence, but neither do the opposite terms seem at all apt. It simply Was (Is). It seemed the basis, the grounding, the totality of all that is. To describe it as a person is to limit and trivialise it. And to call it “it” is not at all accurate either, for what I experienced was no-thing. What I do know is that I experienced an absolute wholeness, integrity, serenity, and union with everything, a union that cannot be expressed in language.
My intuitive reaction was “This is It!”, “This is What Is!” without in any way being able or feeling it necessary to articulate conceptually what I was experiencing, what “It” was. I sensed that all that is being continually birthed from the Stillness, sustained and supported by and in the Stillness, and returned to the Stillness itself. The Stillness is fundamentally All.
What analogies can I use to help clarify this, what metaphors? It is as if the velvet darkness of the night were producing the stars, steady but ultimately transient expressions of being out of itself, the fundamental reality being the living darkness, and yet the stars being intrinsically the night also. But is the Stillness then alive? That too is an inadequate description of what I knew. I fear that metaphors fail me.
The Stillness is what is between and under and in the words we speak, the print we read, the notes of music we hear; all these are expressions of the Stillness and are nevertheless not other than the Stillness. The Stillness is what surrounds, contains, and delimits and even is the objects we see.
The Stillness precedes, contains, and follows the feelings we feel. The Stillness is that out of which our thoughts and ideas arise, and yet those thoughts and ideas are not really apart from and other than the Stillness. And much, much more.
I anticipated the experience fading rapidly. It has not. The Stillness remains much in my awareness. I sense it most of the time — a groundedness, a centredness, a peace and wholeness impossible to describe. My awareness turns to it repeatedly and frequently, and I become aware that I was never really away.
And yet I do not sense that it is I turning to the Stillness but rather that the Stillness is continually drawing my awareness. I find myself looking at life, people, things, circumstances — how shall I say? — gently, tenderly. The fragility, the poignancy of all that is touches and overwhelms me.
Aware of the Stillness, sitting in the Stillness, I am left almost breathless, stunned, yet curiously cherished, shielded beyond all danger or possibility of separation. I experience the validity of Julian’s affirmation that all is indeed well.
And yet these latter feelings seem unimportant, almost beside the point, personal well-being seeming somehow irrelevant, for as a part of the Stillness I am (we are) not other than It. I am trying to describe another dimension of experience altogether, and I fear that I am failing.
Poems sometimes speak truth the most clearly, and one of my favourites by Rumi seems appropriate here:
Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make sense.
~ From: Stillness, by Bruce K. Nagle
The love of God, unutterable and perfect,
flows into a pure soul the way that light
rushes into a transparent object.
The more love that it finds, the more it gives
itself; so that, as we grow clear and open,
the more complete the joy of heaven is.
And the more souls who resonate together,
the greater the intensity of their love,
and, mirror-like, each soul reflects the other.
~ Dante Alighieri (1265? – 1321) Trans. Stephen Mitchell,
The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry
Lost in myself I reappeared I know not where
a drop that rose from the sea and fell and dissolved again;
a shadow that stretched itself out at dawn,
when the sun reached noon I disappeared.
I have no news of my coming or passing away –
the whole thing happened quicker than a breath;
ask no questions of the moth.
In the candle flame of his face
I have forgotten all the answers.
In the way of love there must be
knowledge and ignorance
so I have become both a dullard and a sage;
one must be an eye and yet not see
so I am blind and yet I still perceive,
Dust be on my head if I can say
where I in bewilderment have wandered:
Attar watched his heart transcend both worlds
and under its shadow now is gone mad with love.
~ Farid ud-Din Attar (1120?-1220?), The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry Trans. Wilson & Pourjavady
Light, endless Light! Darkness has room no more.
Life’s ignorant gulfs give up their secrecy:
The huge inconscient depths unplumbed before
Lie glimmering in vast expectancy
Light, timeless Light immutable and apart!
The holy sealed mysterious doors unclose.
Light, burning Light from the Infinite’s diamond heart
Quivers in my heart where blooms the deathless rose.
Light in its rapture leaping through the nerves!
Light, brooding Light! Each smitten passionate cell
In a mute blaze of ecstasy preserves
A living sense of the Imperishable.
I move in an ocean of stupendous Light
Joining my depths to His eternal height.
~ Sri Aurobindo. Oct. 1939. Last Poems – 32.
The world is being run on time, by time, for time, and at no time are we free
Just to sit and enjoy even the outward forms of the Beloved’s beauty.
Each drop-bubble [soul] in time is a sphere bounded [mind], but infinite;
So fragile, yet the whole of creation is in it.
It is a mirror, never reflecting truth, but the drop-soul’s desires
No matter how deep one dives in the truth-quest or how high one aspires.
Good man, bad man — economy-tailored or king-sized –
Each gazes in his bubble-mirror self-hypnotized.
Since the blows of my will are too feeble to break my looking-glass,
At least, Beloved, let it reflect only your beloved face.
Then, though still in time, I will no longer be a fool
Under time’s tyranny, but under your benign rule.
The amazing universe and this beautiful earth will vanish, leaving not a trace behind,
When your glance shatters this so-unbreakable mirror of my mind.”
~ Francis Brabazon (1907-1984)
Sometimes spiritual seekers seem like alcoholics,
And gurus like bartenders,
And sanghas like nightclubs,
And “God”… the Ultimate Hottie.
Alas… when satsang ends,
And the “high” wears off after a few days,
And She stops returning your calls,
The Ultimate Hottie seems the Ultimate Tease.
Beside yourself with Grief and Longing,
You drink your way into oblivion,
And awaken, dawn after dawn,
In the arms of Maya.
Until one morning, turning to gaze,
Once more at the face of despair,
You find, instead, your long lost Beloved,
Your Heart’s Desire.
It was Her all along,
Wearing Maya’s makeup.
You were simply too drunk,
On the bartender’s “words”.
~ Chuck Surface
I have thrown from me the whirling dance of mind
And stand now in the spirit’s silence free,
Timeless and deathless beyond creature-kind,
The centre of my own eternity.
I have escaped and the small self is dead;
I am immortal, alone, ineffable;
I have gone out from the universe I made,
And have grown nameless and immeasurable.
My mind is hushed in a wide and endless light,
My heart a solitude of delight and peace,
My sense unsnared by touch and sound and sight,
My body a point in white infinities.
I am the one Being’s sole immobile Bliss:
No one I am, I who am all that is.
~ Sri Aurobindo, 1938
I regard not the outside and the words,
I regard the inside and the state of the heart.
I look at the heart if it be humble,
Though the words may be the reverse of humble.
Because the heart is substance, and words accidents,
Accidents are only a means, substance is the final cause.
How long will thou dwell on words and superficialities?
A burning heart is what I want; consort with burning!
Kindle in the heart the flame of love,
And burn up utterly thoughts and fine expressions.
~ Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi (1207 – 1273), From: The Mathnawi: Rumi, Trans. E H Whinfield.
I have discovered my deep deathless being:
Masked by my front of mind, immense, serene
It meets the world with an Immortal’s seeing,
A god-spectator of the human scene.
No pain and sorrow of the heart and flesh
Can tread that pure and voiceless sanctuary.
Danger and fear, Fate’s hounds, slipping their leash
Rend body and nerve, — the timeless Spirit is free.
Awake, God’s ray and witness in my breast,
In the undying substance of my soul
Flamelike, inscrutable the almighty Guest.
Death nearer comes and Destiny takes her toll;
He hears the blows that shatter Nature’s house:
Calm sits He, formidable, luminous.”
~ Sri Aurobindo (1872 – 1950)
