I am the Way, the Truth and the Life
January 16th, 2008
Mysticism is the discarding of the false self — the nafs — in order to ‘meet’ God, which must be the ultimate déjà vu. I apologize for the link-dependent article, but this is the most wonderful thing: Alan Watts writes what to tell your children about God. It’s the story of how God plays hide-and-seek with Himself by pretending that there are people and animals and plants and rocks and stars. I wish someone had told *me* this when I was a little kid.
Each of us actually is God.
The Sufi poet Rumi said ‘People imagine that it is a presumptive claim, whereas it is really a presumptive claim to say “I am the slave of God”; and “I am God” is an expression of great humility. The man who says “I am the slave of God” affirms two existences, his own and God’s, but he that says “I am God” has made himself non-existent and has given himself up and says “I am God”, that is, “I am naught, He is all; there is no being but God’s.” This is the extreme of humility and self-abasement.’ That’s originally from Wikipedia, but I got it here.
Recently I learned about Huston Smith’s argument for a spiritual hierarchy of one-way mirrors. At the bottom is atheism, which sees material existence but nothing else. The next level is polytheism, which looks through the mirror to the world of the atheist but adds to it demons, sprites, angels, gods and every kind of superstition. The third level, which can also see down into the other worlds, is monotheism, where it is possible to understand God as a benevolent Creator. The top level is that of mysticism, which sees the other levels, but also experiences the transcendence of the Divine Reality. I got it here.
“Namaste,” Indians say, as they bow to the divinity within each other. Persian mystic Mansur al-Hallaj said, “I am the Truth”; Persian mystic Bayazid Bistami said, “There is no God but Me” and Jesus Christ said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” These humble mystics were explaining, in as few words as possible, that there is no separation — there logically cannot be — between God and anything else.