The Mystical Journey

 

Provocative readings recently have featured a half dozen or so works that circle about “visionary recitals,” hoping for exposure to the numinous, moving like Rilke’s orbits around the ancient tower, perhaps to gain personal guidance on this journey, probing the beyond. Rilke’s imagery suggests the way:

“I live my life in growing orbits

which move out over the things of the world.

Perhaps I can never achieve the last,

but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,

and I have been circling for a thousand years,

and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm,

or a great song.”

   Translation by Robert Bly, Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, pp. 12-13. 

     [see also, Going in Circles]

     The “tower” centers a life by providing the gravity that holds against the centrifugal force. The orbits drawn by guidance are building the character needed to prevent the accumulated life experience from dissipating into nothingness. This guidance protects from being drawn into false idols of power-mad cults as well as from the seductions of narcissism. Finding and refining the “tower” directs the journey to heaven. The theme of “visionary recitals” offers such a tower. 

     A visionary recital that carries particular magnetism for me comes in Attar’s [d. 1229] Conference of the Birds. Yearning for the Divine, as Rilke tells, distinguishes this tower with its orbital power, and my connection with Attar’s masterpiece has been engaged for at least a decade or so … “if one sigh rises from the inmost soul…” 

Eleven minutes after the previous photo

     This magnetism of Attar’s work prompted an orbit into Avicenna [d. 1037] to explore source material drawn upon by Attar. The significance of this exploration receives fascinating elaboration by Henry Corbin who summarizes the importance: “With Attar’s poem, the end of the celestial ascent finally marks full mystical consciousness of encountering, attaining to, the Self to which one says ‘Thou’” (p. 169, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital). Corbin’s study led to consideration of Salaman and Absal as well as Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzan (translation and commentary by Lenn Evan Goodman). The trace soon focused on Ian Richard Netton’s Islam, Christianity and the Mystic Journey which includes particular reference to Qushayriya’s Sufi Book of Spiritual Ascent. The spin also led into Austin O’Malley’s The Poetics of Spiritual Instruction: Farid al-Din ʿAttar and Persian Sufi Didacticism.

Netton synthesizes the central theme on page one: 

“like the great Persian mystical poet, Jalal al-Din Rumi (AD 1207-73), before her, [Professor Annemarie] Schimmel expresses the essence of Sufism best in her poetry [referencing p. 42 from Nightingales Under the Snow “… I wait for the silent night/ when the archangel’s purple wing/ will cover the eyes of my heart/ and there will be nothing but You.”]. The verse captures one of the most commonplace, and yet deepest, of all sufi themes, the yearning of the terrestrial-bound soul for communion, intimacy and ultimate union (whatever that might mean!) with the Divine ‘Object’ and focus of sufi love, God Himself.”

     Manna for going along life’s way comes in the imagery of orbiting around the tower and/or of traveling with a guide (as Attar’s sojourners or Dante’s descent or so many stories tell). Corbin suggests:

The idea of the journey into the Orient—that is, of the soul’s return to its “home” under the conduct of its Guide, its celestial Self—implies an “angelic pedagogy” that makes the being of the particular soul and the notion of soul in general concurrent with an angelology. This concurrence is particularly clear in the Recital of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, in which the Avicennan angelology propounds its triple hierarchy: there are the Archangels or pure Intelligences, the Kerubim (Cherubs). There are the Angels who emanate from them and who are the moving Souls of the celestial spheres. There are the human souls, or ‘terrestrial angels,’ who move and govern earthly human bodies (p. 46) …

This recital is an initiation into the Orient: the meaning of the Orient is announced to the adept by a messenger from that Orient itself, who shows him its direction, describes the difficult stages of the journey thither, sets forth the conditions for undertaking it, and finally concludes with the invitation: “If thou wilt, follow me.” (p. 123, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital)

Sunset, August 27, 2026

Of Love, Beauty, and Sadness

      And, of Love, what can we say or know or live? Moving daily further along, does it only swirl more mysterious, inner and outer? 

Reading from Henry Corbin’s Avicenna and the Visionary Recital:

“But what the Soul tenderly desires is precisely to assimilate itself with the Intelligence by becoming like it, as the disciple makes himself like his master, or the lover like the beloved. To do this, the Soul must ‘grasp the beauty of the object that it loves; the image of that beauty increases the ardor of its love, this ardor makes the soul look upward, and thence arises a motion by which it can apply itself to the object with which it desires to assimilate itself. Thus imagination of beauty causes ardor of love, love causes desire (inquisitio), and desire causes motion.’”

 

    Corbin continues into the next page commenting on Suhrawardi’s The Familiar of the Mystical Lovers with a discussion of “three beings who proceed from the threefold self-intellection of the Intelligence [who] bear three names that, despite appearances, are less abstractions than typifications, since they have correspondences in three names from Biblico-Koranic hagiography (Joseph, Zulaykha, Jacob). The three figures that proceed from the meditation of the First Archangel reflecting upon his being are named Beauty, Love, Sadness. Of these three dramatis personae, Sadness corresponds to the heaven whose subtle matter ‘materializes’ the thought of a nonbeing; it measures the zone of shadow, the distance that always intrudes between Love and the Beauty to which it aspires—that is, between the celestial Angel and the Angel-Cherub. But at the same time this heaven, this Sadness, is the instrument that allows the Soul, by the roundabout way of a long pilgrimage, to approach that Beauty, to attain the goal of its desire, just as, by moving its heaven, the Soul tends toward the Angel from which it emanates. Thus the same nostalgia that is close to the secret of the mystic’s heart is likewise the secret of celestial physics.” pp. 74-75

 

    So good to have guidance on the way that gives place and relationship among Sadness, Beauty, and Love; and all this encouragement for finding oneself on the pilgrimage of life with such fine companions.

Infinite Mystery

Several threads seem weaving into some indefinable mesh that yet might collectively be contemplated within the theme of “infinite mystery.” Almost any deep reflection in the overlapping worlds of social history, personal experience, religion/theology/spirituality, and contemporary political activity butts into the inescapable quagmire of theodicy: How can suffering fit in a design made by an all-powerful and all-loving God?  Perhaps, among other possibilities, this problematic condition paradoxically pushes a kind of vitality, a relentless impulse toward further development, toward trying to know more even when admitting the hard awareness that the ultimate foundation must be the Unknowable. Just perhaps it’s this complex that generates the energy needed for living in perplexity which includes an essential grace of protection, a slight safety from presumption, a safety that draws from continuous confession of surrender and into forgiveness. 

     This perspective on the mesh, possibly on a tapestry not primarily made by human hands, seems more viewable in the field of emptiness (discussed in the preceding post).  Reading on from Waddell’s Zen Words, (quoted in that post), let's consider D.T. Suzuki’s Manual of Zen Buddhism as it further elaborates on One Mind:

“It has been in existence since the beginningless past; it knows neither birth nor death; it is neither blue nor yellow; it has neither shape nor form; it is beyond the category of being and non-being; it is not to be measured by age, old or new; it is neither long nor short; it is neither large nor small’ for it transcends all limits, words, traces, and opposites. It must be taken just as it is in itself; when an attempt is made on our part to grasp it in our thoughts, it eludes. It is like space whose boundaries are altogether beyond measurement no concepts are applicable here.” (p. 112)

     Additional threads coming in today include items shared by Jim Palmer’s Center for Non‑Religious Spirituality and from Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation.  From the Center for Non‑Religious Spirituality:

"The great spiritual discovery is not merely that you are loved. It is that love is more original than the self you spend so much energy defending. It precedes your achievements, your failures, your beliefs, and your fears. The journey is not toward earning love, finding love, or securing love. It is toward recognizing what has been true from the beginning.

The journey is not toward earning love, finding love, or securing love. It is toward recognizing what has been true from the beginning: that you have always existed within it. The ground you have been searching for is the ground on which you already stand. And at your deepest level, beneath every identity, every wound, every role, and every belief, love is not only what holds you. It is what you are." [citing Jim Palmer, Notes from (Over) the Edge]

     Also in today’s meditation from Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation: 

“a radically different understanding of spirituality. The central question is no longer whether we can convince God to love us. It becomes whether we can awaken to the love that is already present before belief, before doctrine, before identity, before any attempt to prove our worthiness. Love is not something added to existence. We emerge from it, live within it, and participate in it whether we recognize it or not."

     These meditations reinforce a convergence that continues to build in my post-midnight wonderments that strangely reassuringly probe and assert that the bounds and textures of Love permeate with the Infinite Mystery. Surely, the final answer (as one is allowed to approach it) is Love; of course, the “love that surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:19). And, again, while the overthrowing of the rational mind feels disconcerting, some comfort also comes from the resonance of having survived this apparent calamity before. For example, in the puzzling combo of know/not-know. 

So the big realities recur in such a unity: God, Self, Mind… The midnight whisper says “Walk on. Go slowly…or not…" 

For as The Center for Action and Contemplation notes:

"I’m not in control or in charge of this Holy Mystery. I don’t presume to understand it; all I know is that I’m forever being drawn through everything. Each manifestation or epiphany of God calls for surrender, communion, and intimacy.”

Tuning In

May 3, moon at morning

When awake mid-night 

As in any time attuned 

Look not for clock-time 

The Lord of both worlds 

Calls always “Now!”

Listen for in tone ing 

Home making

Of that harmony 

Eternal recurrence 

Of the Order 

Not for food-sleep-pleasure 

Nor for calendar bank account 

But to home in 

Always returning

“Original Countenance”

And Remember we are 

   there 

Sooner 

   moving more slowly 

Mindfully 

For fewer dragons 

   Disturbed 

 

May 3, 5:59A

 

Being in time. I’m wondering about the baseline … perhaps it’s a sense of center. The “original countenance.” Nishitani says “The dropping off of body-and-mind is self-presentation of the original countenance.” 

“…all things coming forward to practice and confirm the self is no different from defining the dropping off of body-and-mind as being the practice of Zen. The dropping off of body-and-mind is self-presentation of the original countenance. The original countenance is present at the point that the world worlds, where ‘one’s treasure-house opens of itself and one can use it at will.’ It is the place of self-joyous samadhi. . . On the whole, this is the meaning of ‘observance.’

… in the Existenz of the dropped off of body-and-mind (that is, of true emptiness)… a standpoint of absolute freedom. By means of its own dharma, this Existenz maintains dharani over all phenomena in the dharma-like nature, or suchness, within this world of transitoriness and uses them for its own enjoyment. Hence, when the self as body-and-mind is born, it is a birth that is a unbirth; and when it passes away, it is a passing away that is a non-passing away. (pp. 199-200)

May 3, 5:56A

 

Returning Home

The moon remains 

Now full…clouded…unseen… 

Still-less. 

Return home empty-handed. 

Still-full. 

“Empty-handed” comes from continued reading in Nishitani:

“In short, Existenz as a ‘coming home with empty hands’ and a birth-sive-unbirth is Existenz on the field of śūnyatā as samsara-sive-nirvana, the field of the birthplace that is self-identical with the unbirthplace. This field embraces all things on their home-ground, where they become manifest as they are in themselves. If the term ‘embrace’ be thought to incline too much toward a spatial sense of unity, we may paraphrase it: that all things are severally what they are in themselves directly implies that they are all collected together. Such is the field of emptiness.” ((Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, p. 192)

     The coming-home-empty reminds me of the homecoming reception of the “prodigal son” (Luke 15), especially by the elder brother. Taken in the way a dream can be seen in which all participants are characters within the dreamer’s psyche, both brothers (as well as the father) may represent dimensions of the self (as well as other relationships). The quotation from Rumi cited last time (“God has stationed two headmen, heedlessness and heedfulness, so that both worlds will flourish”) containing both the “heedless” as well as the “heedful,” might apply to the two brothers. Might the hostility of the elder who can be seen as suppressed/repressed anger due to being too contained by the external directives (like the root-bound tree too confined in limited space), “safe” from the wilderness where discernment of authentic voice suffers the edge where the true hones against the wasteland, sharpening a sensitivity more than can be developed in the homeland. 

Home Ground

 

     The recent full moon allows a glimpse of a special world, especially around three AM, offering a space-time which blends nicely with continued reading in Nishitani’s Religion and Nothingness. Nishitani probes the possibilities of oneself, particularly if explored in relationship to the field of śūnyatā where one engages the void, the emptiness where our contemporary culture often brings the risk of a severe loss of meaningfulness. But this space or place also, perhaps, gives us a best chance of leaning into the other world. “Being” here/there may also be “identified with ‘true reality,’” (p. 294) and thus offers companionship to endure/engage the stress of existentialism.

“‘Not being self in being self,’ on the other hand, means that on the field of śūnyatā the selfness of the self has its being in the home-ground of all other things. On the field of śūnyatā, the center is everywhere. Each and every thing in its nonobjective and ‘middle’ selfness is an absolute center. To that extent, it is impossible for the self on field of śūnyatā to be self-centered like the ‘self’ seen as ego or subject…

As a being in unison with emptiness, then, the self is one absolute center, and, to that extent, all things are in the home-ground of the self. And so far as our self is at the home-ground of all things, that is, on the field of śūnyatā, all things are also at the home-ground of the self. Such a circuminsessional interpenetration, as we  said before, can only come about when all things, including ourselves, are in a nonobjective, ‘middle’ mode of being. As we also noted there, through this circuminsessional interpenetration, all things are gathered together, and as such render possible an order of being, a ‘world,’ and consequently enable the existence of things as well. . .

… This assembly is the force that makes the thing in question be, the force of the thing’s own ability to be. In that sense, we also said that when a thing is, the world worlds …  (Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, pp. 158-9)

     Reading Nishitani, for me at least, is challenging; and this post dares not presume much more than to invite a person to read his work for oneself. Nishitani makes clear the necessity for the individual to enter alone: “Just as no one else can see for us or hear for us, so too none of our actions can be performed by proxy. All actions imply, as it were, an absolute immediacy” (p. 166). 

     While this journey into self has an inevitable aloneness, support does come from guides, from long ago and today. Rumi, in particular, resonates with the theme. For example, from his Discourses:

“At this time the world subsists through heedlessness. If there were no heedlessness, this world would cease to be. Desire for God, memory of the other world, ‘inebriation,’ and ecstasy are the architects of the other world. 

If everyone were attuned to that world, we would all abandon this world and go there. God, however, wants us to be here so that there may be two worlds. 

To that end He has stationed two headmen, heedlessness and heedfulness, so that both worlds will flourish.” (Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin, trans. W.M. Thackston, Jr., 1994, p. 114.)

An earlier translation of this passage by A.J. Arberry offers additional entry into the mystical edge:

“Now this world goes on by reason of heedlessness; if it were not for heedlessness, this world world not remain in being. Yearning for God, recollection of the world to come, intoxication, ecstasy—these are the architects of the other world. If all these should supervene, we would to a man depart to the other world and would not remain here. God most High desires that we should be here, so that there may be two worlds. So he has appointed two sheriffs, one heedlessness and the other heedfulness, that both houses may remain inhabited.” (Discourses of Rumi, 1961, p. 120)

     We are also fortunate to have contemporary companions on the way. David Whyte offers “Sweet Darkness” including an opportunity to listen to his marvelous voice as he presents the poem and adds his rich commentary. 

     The work of Jim Palmer also stands out in relation to this theme. For example, he elaborates the “language of existential health.”

Existential health is the set of capacities that allow a person to engage the conditions of existence directly, without distortion, avoidance, or dependency on external authority. It describes the difference between having beliefs, identities, and frameworks, and actually being able to live in a grounded and coherent way. It is often misunderstood as a philosophy or worldview. It is not what you think about life. It is how able you are to meet it. Where existential health is underdeveloped, people rely on external structures to stabilize what they cannot hold internally. Where it is developed, a person can remain oriented even in the absence of clear answers, fixed meaning, or guaranteed outcomes.

Living with Unknowing

     Last night’s dream must’ve figured from recent readings (especially Religion and Nothingness by Keiji Nishitani, translated by Jan Van Bragt) and doings (particularly planting maple trees whose roots were wound far too tightly inside far too small containers, much too restrictive for the continuous development essential for ascension). The dream featured folks playing a sort of game where individuals attempted to articulate words that yearned toward but not quite able to reach into sufficient meaningfulness. Perhaps the divine purpose within the activity meant to enjoy the spirit of the attempt without getting trapped by the demands of clarity and rational thought. Nishitani seems to lean into such notions, including the attempt to “prehend,” the attempt to grasp or lay hold of:

“But when the concept of substance, which was supposed to express the selfness of things, and the concept of subject which was supposed to express the selfness of the self, strike against nihility at their very ground and are there negated, they make a leap forward onto a field where the things and the self they were out to prehend manifest their selfness. This means that, on the field of nihility, neither things nor the self are objects of cognition and, hence, can no longer be prehended or expressed conceptually (as logos). They are no longer determined either as substance or as subject. We seem no longer to be able to say ‘what’ they are. . .   With that, the existence of things and of the self are both transformed into something utterly incomprehensible, of which we can no longer say ‘what’ it is.” (Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, p. 136)

     Looking out into the tree (whose colors transition between matter and air, my reflections wander into the poem that’s held a favorite position for over a decade. Antonio Machado in “Llamo a mi corazon” penetrates into the garden with the “viento” which I consider as holy spirit that wafts along dreams and visions, that whispers its blessings and demands upon the responsive heart and soul. 

     The full poem with Robert Bly’s translation has been treated in previous posts including Distilling Distraction: Contain the Longing (Oct 4, 2014); Mining the Resonant Field with Mantras & Story Moments (Nov 4 2016, including a link to a video in which I recite the poem and give brief commentary); and Winter Containment (Feb 3, 2022).

     My experience today with Machado’s marvelous poem owes much to the remarkable writings of Mark C. Taylor (see previous blogs, most recently Planting a Tree Oneself ), Nishitani (just cited above), and works noted in other recent blogs. Especially, I have gratitude for a responsive shift to the closing of this poem. Usually the emptying of the garden feels almost heart-breakingly poignant (“Mi corazón sangraba”) as the wind takes away the waters of the fountain, the yellowed leaves, and the withered petals: 

          Me llevaré los llantos de las fuentes,

          las hojas amarillas y los mustios pétalos.

          Y el viento huyó... Mi corazón sangraba…

          Alma, ¿qué has hecho de tu pobre huerto?

Now I’m thankful that a somewhat lighter possibility flits through. Perhaps as Nishitani indicates, the field of emptiness promises a marvelous transformation beyond the too-tightly contained self. The emptied garden makes a space brimming with the hope of movement into “the field of ecstatic transcendence…” (p. 151).