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“God’s Divine Nature – can you say more?”
Today, is the third installment in our series on walking with the mystics. It has been acknowledged many times by many scholars that every major religion has a mystic strand within their tradition. These mystic strands seem to have more in common with each other across the religions than they do with their own religious tradition – thus we can look at sayings of mystics within Hinduism, Judaism, earth-centered traditions, Christianity, Taoism, Islam, Buddhism, and see from them that they have known very similar experiences. The mystic experience is the direct intuition of ultimate reality, and that reality is unified – many mystics give voice to this supreme understanding.
Listen to Heraclitus in 540 BC – All things come out of the One and the One out of all things.”
The Christian mystic Master Eckhart “The more God is in all things, the more he is outside them; the more he is within, the more without.
The Buddhist Yung-chia-Ta-shih – The inner Light is beyond praise and blame; like space, it knows no boundaries, yet it is even here, within us, ever retaining its serenity and fullness… You cannot take hold of it, but equally, you cannot get rid of it.”
Lord Byron – Are not the mountains, waves and skies, a part of me and of my soul, as I of them?”
John Muir (creator of the American National Park system) When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
Black Elk – “Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all…and I saw the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson – It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.”
Hermann Hesse – In our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being”.
Gandhi – I believe in the essential unity of man, and, for that matter, all that lives. Therefore, I believe that if one man gains spiritually, the whole gains with him....”
Some scholars argue that the true unity of religion can be found in mystical experience. Some mystics claim that there is a common thread of influence in all mystic philosophies that is traceable back to a single shared source.
Mystics experience, or seek to experience union with – call it what you will – it has many names: God, Ultimate Reality, the Great Spirit, the Tao, the Ground of Being. We have already touched briefly in other sermons, the mystic aspect of Taoism and of the Native American earth-centered faith tradition. The Taoist tries to develop a receptive mode of consciousness that opens one up to “the Tao,” the great flow of fundamental forces that constitute the ultimate nature of the universe.
Native Americans view themselves as living within an animated universe and related to all other living things in the natural order. They say that Western desecration of the environment comes from our failure to grasp this that everything is interconnected. Russell Means, speaking for his people said, in a famous speech in 1980 that Mother Earth will retaliate, and as a consequence, the abusers who desecrate will die out.
The topic of mysticism is so broad, I just need to say that we are like the proverbial blind men or blind women who touch the elephant in different places and each describe something that is accurate and yet only very partially accurate. One of my personal goals in this series is to develop or renew our respect and appreciation for the power and scope and value of the religious experience that is available to us beyond the reach of words.
I mentioned in my write-up for this service that I would like to look at the mysticism of the Kabalah. The title for today is “God’s Divine Nature – Can you say More?” So today we consider the nature of God – that unity which is characteristic of the mystics, from out of that body of work. The Kabala is a large, esoteric body of Jewish mystical writings, some dating back to Moses, that speculates on the nature of divinity, creation and the soul. It is a huge subject and we can’t cover much. What we’ll do is look at a fairly well-know prayer from out of the Kabbalah on the nature of God. I’d like to read it to you – it was written in the 1200’s. But in order to get what it’s trying to give you, I’d like you to close your eyes and imagine that you are a blank slate as far as religion is concerned and you are about to be given your first installment on the nature of divinity.
Imagine that you know what you will be told is the truth, and you hope you have the capacity to understand in some of its fullness, what is being said. The prayer is trying to inform you about God. Now remember, the voice that is speaking to you is that of a Jewish mystic who is trying very carefully to put into words something specific that he knows about the nature of God. The understanding could have arrived in a momentary flash of insight – words are feeble transport for this kind of knowledge, but it is all that he (or she) has available. Be patient with the speaker. Shut your eyes:
In THE KABALA IT IS WRITTEN:
(written in the 1200’s)
Everything that God,
the source and substance of all,
creates in this world
flows naturally from the essence of God’s divine nature.
Creation is not a choice but a necessity.
It is God’s nature to unfold time and space.
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.
There is a lot here. The unfolding of time and space is, in this view, not so much the handiwork of God, but the essence of God. Now imagine yourself coming out of a lengthy period of reflection or meditation or prayer with this awareness of creation as the extension or essence of God gripping your being. Then, look around at what you might see, a tree, a friend, raindrops, traffic Imagine sounds you might hear or the scent of the air. With the guidance of this mystic’s prayer can you experience every aspect of all this as an encounter with God? The mystic says to attend to creation is to attend to God. Knowing this – then what?
Look down at your own hands – they have developed, come into being through processes way beyond your knowledge – one day they will disappear, as you will, later to take new form in time and space; creation is the infinite in the garb of the finite: it is all God. Knowing this, then what?
The mystic says attend to creation. This is God. The mystic says attend to the moment - this is your door to eternity. You are only small – your life one among many – but attend to it. The mystic says to attend to the part is to attend to the whole. It is all God. This, the prayer tells us, is how to live constructively.
And now, as we reach the end of this series, I’d like to share with you one more prayer from the tradition of the mystics. The Jewish sage I just quoted spoke to us from across the centuries in a surprisingly modern and accessible way. His advice, to see God all around us, to know that everything is the substance of God, has been said by many ways by many mystics throughout recorded history.
This next prayer could have been written as a follow-up. If you, as a student had said to the kabbalist, “Tell me more about how to understand the world as God. You say to pay attention, and that I will see the infinite in the garb of the finite. What does that look like?
This next prayer answers your question. But the speaker is not the kabbalist. He is Mahmud Shabestari, a mystic who lived in Iran in 1311. Shabestari, is a Sufi mystic. Sufis are the mystic strand within Islam.
Again, I ask you to close your eyes and listen – go with his teaching. Shabestari’s insight is astonishing. He sounds like he must be familiar with modern day scientific instruments. But his knowledge came, not from scientific instruments, but from the inner chamber of the heart as he paid deep attention to the world around him. (Shut your eyes – and listen)
The Mirror of This World
Every particle of the world is a mirror.
In each atom lies the blazing light of a thousand suns.
Cleave the heart of a raindrop,
a hundred pure oceans will flow forth.
Look closely at a grain of sand,
The seed of a thousand beings can be seen.
The foot of an ant is larger than an elephant
in essence, a drop of water is no different than the Nile.
In the heart of a barley-corn
lies the fruit of a hundred harvests;
within the pulp of a millet seed
an entire universe can be found.
In the wing of a fly, an ocean of wonder;
In the pupil of an eye, an endless heaven.
Though the inner chamber of the heart is small,
the Creator of both worlds gladly dwells there.
--- Mahmud Shabestari
Isn’t it as though the writer of the kabbalah prayer and Shabestari are in conversation across time? The kabbaalist says attend to creation – it is God. And it is as though a student has asked, but how will I know? What is it like to see God and creation as one? Shabestari’s answer – look closely - so closely the foot of an ant becomes larger than an elephant.
Let’s try to become a student of these mystics in our imaginations right now. In your mind’s eye, imagine seeing the wing of a fly from a distance, and then move in closer and closer to it until you have to switch to a microscopic point of view, and still, move in deeper and deeper into the pulsing, living wing – inside there is a dance of intelligent movement, such complexity – a whole world. Somehow, the kabbalist knows about this world and he asks - is there not an ocean of wonder here? And as for us today, in 2004, – does not our wonder increase? This wing is so far beyond our mere modern machines – it reproduces itself.
To attend to creation is to attend to God, reminds the kabbalist. Now we are instructed by Shabestari to take something as seemingly ordinary as a single barley corn – to consider the power and wonder. This tiny package is equipped to generate a hundred harvests yet to come? It is God’s nature to unfold in time and space. And as you hold it in your hand there dawns awareness of another miracle in the form of your hand. How many babies had to be born in order to bring you, and the workings of your hand, into the world?
We noted earlier that every major religion has its mystic strand and that some scholars say these mystics have more in common with each other than they do with their own religious tradition. The mystics see each of us – all things, as a seed of God, part and parcel of Ultimate reality, the Ground of Being – the infinite in the garb of the finite.
The great mystics seem to be entered into the same conversation across the ages. So the Greek philosopher Heraclitus explains, “All things come out of the One and the One out of all things.” He, and the Kabbalist and the Sufi Shabestari would agree with Emerson when he adds that “it is one light which beams out a thousand stars, and it is one soul which animates all men.” The mystics all instruct that we who seek greater knowledge of God or ultimate reality must pay closer attention to the world around us. If we do, then we will know, along with the Buddhist Yung-chia Ta-shish, that “the inner light and life knows no boundaries, it is even here within us, ever retaining its serenity and fullness.”
Ever retaining its serenity and fullness… Mystic awareness is said to bring forth the serenity and fullness, of which Ta-shish speaks, filling the mystic powerfully, if for only a moment. In that moment, in that experience of fullness and oneness, the mystic might exclaim, along with Lord Byron, “Are not the mountains, waves and skies, a part of me and my soul, as I of them?”
One of the most defining characteristics of the mystic is their well-developed interior life. But that is not commandment to withdraw from the world. To see God, the Ultimate reality, the Ground of Being, the mystic says again and again that we must look to the world! Part of applying mysticism to your everyday life is in recognizing God in the things and people around us. The mystics have much to teach us. We can learn by reading the mystics, by trying to become more receptive, to take in the world around us, and by taking the time to pay attention.
As I close this, the third and final service dedicated to the mystics, I’d like to mention that my interest in doing these sermons has grown out of time I have spent with these prayers in meditation and out of a deeper level of reading that occurred during my sabbatical. I mention this now in gratitude for the gift you have given me, and which has blessed me immeasurably. Thank you.