to say all
shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well –
neither as a joke nor a commonplace, a comfort nor a privilege, a ruse nor an
experiment, but as an acceptance of the all one cannot know … what is this
other than a calm absurdity, a replete and resplendent reason?
it is easy to see existence as a jewel, naked
in the night and possibly eternal, civilization as a process of time covering
up the jewel with fabrics, analyzing the covering, the fabrics, enchanted with
the growing bulk, enamored by the changes, the colour and texture of the
fabrics replacing the colour and texture of the jewel. if art’s trick is to show the jewel using the
materials covering it, mysticism's might be to remove the materials and know the
jewel cannot be shown and that the jewel itself is this inability, the removal
a rough simulation of the jewel.
so mysticism is associated with what has been
called the negative way. and all this is
is or may be a removing and simulating and not showing.
society – which we could say is also devoted
to removing and simulating and not showing – is the positive way, for it
removes and simulates and doesn’t show what mysticism doesn’t reveal.
mysticism is perhaps the one unique element
of humanity, the core of consciousness, allowing as it does humanity to
imaginatively step outside itself – whether through nature, god, art,
technology – and doubt reality’s weighty structures and so create spaces –
however transient – of grace and, if grace is capable of entering reality’s
structures, possibility of form.
if mysticism is oriented to language in
silence, community in solitude, light in darkness, inhumanity in humanity, is
it not an experiment to find a way through or around the problems that pervade
us, seeing no evidence that social-political struggle – regardless of the
ostensible goodness to any of its claims – effects at best anything more than a
displacement of problem to problem.
everything constructive i have learned i have
learned from the mystics in their immense deconstructions, which make scholarly
deconstructions seem like décor alterations in a room in versailles and the
knowledge of the learned and experienced like dusty wall hangings. all these other paths, rife with cleverness or utility though they might sometimes be, all seem the same in their unmitigated support
for or rebellion against the given world.
but the mystic path, being not a path but a placement in a flow and flows,
provides alternatives to the given world and its endless injustices and so –
through awe, passion, doubt, plurality, play – subverts it.
one mystic says, i am the universe – what do i have to fear? another – hide your boat in the universe, then the
thief cannot steal it. the only safety of the soul is this: the i - which appears at first and for long and chaotic periods as the ultimate non-safety - is recognized as a ruse, doubles, balloons to margins slightly larger than the entire universe, bursts, and disappears in itself.
mysticism is creedless, has no tribe, no
fads, hardly a history or purpose, no hierarchies, no alliances, no wars. mysticism does not contend or claim.
it is not as if mysticism would eradicate
flesh, but that it would renew it through greedless gazing.
if mysticism can be said to be oriented to
death, is this not less because it sets too little or too much store by life
and more because, in an age which does, it sees no use for life?
there is a place for laughter in mysticism, a
place where mysticism itself disappears.
and in this disappearance mysticism may be most truly itself.
voices speak in the night of the question,
this night that, once entered, encompasses the day. what is mysticism but a clearing of debris
for entering, a clearing of noise for listening, a clearing of thought for
translating?
all these other modes of knowledge to which
humanity is addicted and for which vast resources are required are modes of
building and willing and desiring and endless separations and unions. but mysticism sidesteps, like a flower on the
edge of battlefields, a vision on the edge of screams.
to self-identify as a mystic has a certain
discrediting quality to it. to be a
truck driver or banker or scholar or cleaner or even a poet is to be a truck
driver or banker or scholar or cleaner or even a poet. but to be a mystic is not to be – and this is
what a mystic is. so we see mystics
hiding, sometimes in poetry, sometimes in thought, sometimes in children,
sometimes in shape or flowers or death or a smile.
