BY TORSTEN SCHWANKE
"Because you have seen me, you believe..."
(Gospel)
PROLOGUE
Jesus asked me to believe,
That he will not forget me,
He will never leave me,
But I must also do
What is in my power to do.
The Master said this
Very gently and sweetly.
He also spoke further
Gracious words,
Which I need not pass on.
The glory of the Lord
Showed me Eternal Love
And spoke to me,
I AM YOU AND YOU ARE ME!
MEDITATION ON THE WISDOM
OF HINDU THEOSOPHY
IN THE UPANISHADS
Whoever wishes to attain to the mystical vision
First practise the virtue
Of the active life.
Let him be a householder
In practical life.
If he proves himself in this,
He can later emigrate
To the blissful theory.
There are two sciences to learn,
The lower and the higher.
The lower science
Comprises the teaching of nature,
The arts and the sacred writings.
The higher science studies
The primordial mystery
Of the incomprehensible
Mystic Deity,
Womb of all beings.
Not by reading books does one know God,
Not by thinking alone.
Only he to whom God reveals himself,
Attains divine knowledge.
Words cannot say,
How beautiful the Godhead is!
The mind cannot fathom
The secrets in the Godhead.
The senses cannot comprehend
The mysterious Godhead.
Only the pure in heart
Will behold the divine beauty!
He who does not know God,
He remains a slave to sensuality.
Whoever recognises the divinity
Will be truly free.
A miracle when one proclaims the divinity,
A miracle, if one recognises the Godhead!
Without the master and teacher
The path cannot be found.
The Godhead is too deep
For the mind of man.
The path is narrow and steep,
Not many walk the path.
Many have not yet heard
Of the spirit of the Godhead,
And many who have heard,
They have not understood.
Man becomes immortal
Certainly not through money.
The wise man loves the Godhead more
Than he loves the woman he loves
And than he loves the beloved boy.
He hangs his heart
Not to possessions.
He loves poverty
And trusts in providence.
He seeks only to serve God
And to serve man.
Who in his higher self
The divine I found,
Finer than subtlety gleaming,
Deeper than feeling and will and understanding,
He looks through his higher self
To the divine I,
Who only knows how to love selflessly,
And his love is eternal.
The word that the Scripture proclaims to us,
Is called Amen.
Amen means:
God is a king of faithfulness.
He who prays Amen,
Prays Amen in the name of God,
He is heard
And full of power is his prayer.
He who knows the Amen
He shall live in the kingdom of heaven.
Verily, my son,
The Amen is God's name,
In God is Yes and Amen.
The divinity within nature,
The divinity within man
Is one Godhead.
He who recognises this divinity,
He attains union with the Godhead.
He who attains union with the Godhead,
He attains oneness with the Godhead.
Verily, he who recognises the Godhead
And unites with the Godhead,
He is deified by the Godhead
And will be a god in the Godhead.
The world soul is
The breath of the Godhead.
It is the resting point of the universe,
The centre of the universe.
It is finer than fineness,
She is eternal and immortal.
Your soul, my beloved,
Is soul of the world soul.
In your soul, beloved,
I recognise the world soul itself.
In me, Wisdom,
The core of the world was born,
Has become the world.
In me, Wisdom,
The beings have their being.
In me, Wisdom,
Beings find their goal,
Their perfection.
I, Wisdom, am divinity
And beside me is no other divinity.
In prayer I recognise God.
But the wise man rises
Still beyond God
To the over-eggified supergod
And is deified
In the supergod,
He enters into union
With the incomprehensible Godhead.
What you hear and what you speak,
What you think is smoke and mirrors,
What you see with your eyes
Is but a shadow.
The wise man turns to the invisible
And in parting from the world becomes immortal.
With words and thoughts
The divinity cannot be taught.
Divine Wisdom is different
From the knowledge possible to man.
But the wise
Are not unaware of Wisdom.
Unutterable through words,
Unrecognisable through names,
Unrecognisable through images
Is the mysterious Godhead.
What the people of this world
Call God, is not God.
The divinity is
Unthinkable by thought.
This incomprehensible divinity
Worship within,
Not that which fools call God.
He who cannot fathom the Godhead,
He knows the Godhead.
He who mystically knows the Godhead,
He knows not who she is.
She is the one unknowable by knowledge,
Divine Folly recognised by holy fools!
MEDITATION ON THE WISDOM
OF NEOPLATONISM BY PLOTIN
But now I have to say,
That the womb of all beings
Is simpler than all beings.
That which precedes the spirit,
Is therefore not spirit and spiritual world,
Is simpler than the spirit
And simpler than the spiritual world.
Not from many have many become,
But from the non-many
Has become the many.
If the original unity were
Itself a many,
It would not be the womb,
But there would be another womb.
There therefore in no case
The first can be a multiplicity,
For then, before the multiplicity
Another first is as unity.
Why do I not call the first thing spirit?
Because in the spirit there are two things,
The thing that thinks and the thing that is thought.
If the spirit is twofoldness,
Then it is necessary to grasp the unity
That precedes the twofoldness.
United with the spirit
Is the thought object.
Now if no conceived object
Be united with unity,
The unity cannot be spirit.
When the original unity
Leaves behind the twofoldness of the spirit
And precedes it and underlies it,
Then unity is to be sought beyond the spirit.
The highest goodness
Is beyond being and thinking.
Thinking about goodness
Is different from goodness itself.
Goodness precedes thinking,
Goodness is simply good
And does not think about itself.
That mysterious unity
Is not a certain something,
But is before all that exists.
The essence of the One
Is the creator of all existence.
It is not a certain something.
What is it like?
How big, how small is it?
It is not touched by such questions.
It is not the spirit,
It is not the soul.
It is neither movement nor rest,
It does not exist in space and time.
It is formless entity
And is before all form.
But the forms in motion
Adhere to the existing.
The divinity that creates all beauty,
Must not itself be one of these beauties,
Otherwise it would be a certain something
And would only be a part of the whole.
Thus the divinity is also
Of no particular form,
Nor is it a special power
Nor the sum of all powers,
But beyond power and forces,
Before all form is the Godhead,
The primordial divinity is formless
And yet generates all spiritual forms.
Since the Godhead created everything that exists,
It must be very great,
Yes, its greatness must be infinite,
But infinite greatness says,
The Godhead is of no size.
The Godhead extends
Over everlasting eternity
And so its duration is measureless.
How does one become aware of unity?
Not through scientific thought,
But by its presence alone,
Which is of a higher nature
Than the mind can comprehend.
The Godhead is inexpressible,
For what can be named with words
Is always a certain something.
Therefore call the Godhead
Her, who are beyond all existence
And beyond all spirit.
For that is her name, which says,
That she has no name.
We cannot speak of her,
Not in human words
Nor with angelic words,
But, my beloved, what we can do,
Is to point each other to the Godhead.
Do not narrow the divinity
To a point,
But show its fullness!
That is, to know the power,
If you know that the Godhead
Carries within it
A fullness of divine qualities,
All gathered in her,
All being in her.
Imagine, my beloved, a spring,
That brings forth many streams,
But never exhausts itself.
In this divine entity
Is being, life and thought.
It is the Eternal Being,
She is the Eternal Life,
She is the Eternal Wisdom.
The psyché depends on the spirit,
The mind depends on goodness,
Goodness depends on the primordial divinity.
Thus the one is close to the Godhead,
The other is far from the Godhead,
But the most distant is sensuality.
But when Psyché turns
To the spirit,
Then she is delivered from the body of death
And ascends to the heavens.
Psyché swings herself up
To something higher, always higher,
She still rises above the spirit
And ascends to heavenly goodness
And rests in divine goodness.
So consider the psyché
And the divinity in the psyché,
For thus thou knowest the spirit.
So strip off the body
And strip off the passions
And all the foolish antics of desire
And see Psyché naked
And recognise in the mere psyché
The image of the divine spirit.
The stages of ascent
Of the redeemed Psyché
Are the stages of purification,
Of virtue
And of walking in the spiritual realm.
Psyché keeps herself free
From the whirlwind of feelings
And let even earthly lust
Only pass lightly by,
In freedom shet rises
Above pain and sorrow
And free herself
From the desire for lower things.
If Psyché desires the lust of love,
At most, that which is morally permissible.
So let Psyché strive
To be free and pure
And unsullied
Of disordered passions.
How can you see beauty?
I advise you: Go within yourself,
And if what you see within
Is not yet all beauty,
Be like an artist,
Who moulds a bust,
And chisel all away,
That disfigures the sacred beauty,
Smooth and polish the marble,
Until the bust is perfect.
Do not desist, my love,
To work on your image
Till you shine with the radiance
Of perfect goodness.
Only when you yourself, my love,
Have become beautiful within,
Only then will you be able
To behold the divine beauty.
But I believe that my spirit
Has seen the divinity
In the ray of light,
That was She herself!
Rise above all creatures!
Here the spirit finds
The inner rest.
Now the spirit
No longer holds thinking in such high esteem,
Because the Godhead does not think.
Psyché sees the divinity,
As her thinking mind
Becomes confused and disappears
And nothing remains but the folly of love!
Of the beauty of the Godhead
Cannot be spoken or written of.
The path can be shown,
That leads to the blissful vision of the Godhead.
Only the proclamation and the teaching
Show you the way, beloved,
To the blissful vision within the psyché,
It is the pure gift of the Godhead.
But the seer
Beholds the beauty of the Godhead
Not as an object in the outer world,
But in his own subject
He beholds the divine beauty.
He himself is in possession of beauty,
Though he often does not know it.
What the seer sees beautiful on the outside,
He transplants it into himself
And sees it within
As his own soul.
The seer beholds the deity
In an image of beauty.
He unites himself with the deity,
He becomes one with the Godhead.
The beauty seen
Transcends the intellect.
But he who beholds this supra-reasonable beauty
Of the Godhead in himself,
Will be sublime
And humbly simple at the same time.
The seer who beholds the beauty
And unites himself with the divinity,
He is no longer himself,
He is drawn into the higher life
And property of the Godhead.
He is the beloved of the Godhead!
He may enter
The inner bridal chamber
Of naked divinity!
He who is thus graced
Lives not like a religious man
In moral virtue
As a pious citizen, no,
He lives and works like a god,
A god by the grace of God.
And are you thus united
And become one with the Godhead
And become a blessed god in the loving Godhead,
Then come from the inner bridal chamber
Of naked divinity
And go to the good people,
To lead them the way,
To bear witness to them of love!
MEDITATION ON THE WISDOM
OF THE ISLAMIC MYSTICISM
OF THE POET-MYSTIC ATTAR
Seven rooms you must pass through
Until you reach God's room.
The first room is the room of search.
A hundred difficulties await you here,
A hundred trials you must endure.
Many years you will be here
And have great hardships.
You must give up everything here,
All your possessions for nothing.
When you no longer possess anything,
You must still detach yourself from the creatures.
Then you will behold the sweet light
Of divine majesty,
And your desires
Aspire to the infinite.
Such longing will fill you,
That thou wilt give thyself up to the search of God.
You will drink a sip of wine
And do nothing more
But seek God.
When the gate opens,
You will have true faith.
The second room is the room of love.
You must be a flaming fire,
You must be all flame.
Your face must shine and glow,
Your soul must be impetuous
Like consuming fire.
In this room consumes
The fire of love
The smoke of reason.
Reason cannot live together
With the folly of love!
The third room is the space of wisdom.
Knowledge is endless,
The space is great, the way is long.
Book knowledge is transient,
Divine knowledge abides.
As you overcome your sins,
Wisdom is revealed to you,
Wisdom is revealed to each
According to his measure.
The aspirant will recognise
The core in the shell.
He will not occupy himself with himself,
But looks up to Eternal Love.
In every atom he recognises
The inner divine love.
The fourth room is the space of freedom.
You do not want to possess anything
And no longer discover anything worldly.
A storm goes through your soul.
The ocean is a drop in the bucket to you,
The Milky Way is like a spark to you,
Heaven like a corpse
And hell like an icicle.
When heaven and earth pass away,
It's like a blossom falling from a tree.
If no man and no angel existed any more,
Would you still ponder
About the one semen drop,
From which the universe was made.
The fifth room is the space of unity.
Everything breaks and is put together again.
You see all beings united in God.
God appears in everything.
Eternity before time and eternity after time
Are one eternity.
You cannot speak of it.
When everything passes away and comes to nothing,
What will you speak of then?
The sixth room is the space of madness.
Here you will fall prey to grief,
You will be despondent.
Every breath is a sigh.
The day is night, the night is day.
The living flame blazes,
But you are unhappy.
On whose heart is written
The mystical union with God,
He forgets himself.
If someone asks him, Are you alive or dead?
He does not know the answer.
He will say, I do not know who I am,
I only know that I am in love,
But with whom?
My heart is loveless and full of love!
The seventh room is the room of death.
A thousand shadows disappear
In a single ray of sunlight.
The sea of eternity surges
And the rippled waves
Of the present world and the world to come
Sink into the sea of eternity.
The drop rests in the sea.
You will be humbled,
You will perish.
But then from the sea of death emerges
The New Creation.
You will cease to exist,
But your beauty remains.
You are no more,
But only now you will be real.
Now the wise man looks
In the innermost bridal chamber
The fivefold veiled divinity.
The divinity drops the first veil -
The sage is drunk with Eternal Love!
The Godhead lets fall the second veil -
All delusion is gone from the wise man!
The Godhead drops the third veil -
The wise man's ego has died!
The sage's ego has died!
The Deity drops the fourth veil -
The wise man surrenders to the will of God!
The Deity drops the fifth veil
And reveals itself as naked divinity -
The sage is deified
And has become a god within the Godhead!
MEDITATION ON THE WISDOM
OF THE JEWISH NEOPLATONISM
OF PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA
The search for divinity,
The best being in the world,
The incomparable,
The originator of all that exists,
This search seizes the soul
And does not remain without success,
Since the Godhead itself
According to the grace of its divine nature
Comes to meet the seeker
And reveals itself to that man,
Who desires to behold it,
In the bright cloud
As far as is at all possible,
That man in his knowledge
Approaches the divine beauty.
The blessed race of men,
Who interpret the Godhead,
Are the prophetically inspired,
Possessed by the divinity,
Enjoying the divine drunkenness.
To behold the divine beauty
Only the spirit of man is worthy.
Blown in from above,
The spirit heeds not the body
With its appetite,
Nor heed the bodily soul
With its desires,
Consuming passions
And burning lusts.
Let no creature hold you back,
But rise above every creature.
Spirit, be royal
And learn to rule
And let no creature rule you.
Know thyself!
Leave the earthly world,
Escape your stained body
And tear yourself away with all your might
From the desires of the body
And all bodily lasciviousness!
Ecstasy, firstly, all madness
That makes you an idiot,
Ecstasy is, secondly, a shock
At the abrupt onset of fate,
Ecstasy is, thirdly, the rest
Of the spirit in the arm of eternity,
Ecstasy is, fourthly, exaltation,
When the Godhead itself touches you
And you speak and act prophetically.
As long as the human spirit
With all its knowledge
Shines in you on all sides
Like noonday sun in the soul,
We are not yet possessed
By the good demon of wisdom.
But when your mind
Sinks with all knowledge, then rises
The divine wisdom herself
With her loving word.
This is how it is with prophetically enthusiastic people.
The spirit of man falls silent
Before the word of divine wisdom.
How can a mortal
Dwell together
With immortality?
Therefore lead your mind
Into the night of thought
And prepare thyself for it,
That in ecstasy
The divinity itself ravishes thee!
O soul, when thou feelest the desire,
To inherit eternity
And to enjoy the Godhead,
Leave not only the body
With its animal urges,
Leave also the soul
With its desire, its lust,
Its passion and its pleasure,
And leave your mind
And all your human knowledge
And become possessed
By the good demon of divine wisdom,
And let the divinity itself
Inspire and enrapture you.
Do not rule yourself
With your reason,
Your logical thinking,
Your human knowledge,
The fragments of your knowledge,
But consecrate your human wisdom
To the divine wisdom
And let this mistress rule you!
If thou hast thus gone out of thyself,
You will not only be a seer,
But enjoy the Eternal Divinity!
MEDITATION ON THE WISDOM
OF THE CATHOLIC NEOPLATONISM
OF SAINT DIONYSIUS AREOPAGITA
Do not desist, my beloved,
To practise mystical vision!
Renounce the art of understanding,
Put away sensuality
And strip off prudence,
Be naked of all that exists
And naked of empty nothingness
And then rise
To holy indifference -
Fly beyond the cosmos
To the threshold of fusion
With the divinity of love,
Who is beautiful above all knowledge!
Only when you are rid of yourself
And naked without all perishable clothing,
Will you in drunken ecstasy
Rise to the black splendour
That envelops the primordial deity
In eternity before all creation,
There thou wilt be naked of all
That makes you exist,
And you will enter into the Godhead.
Who wants to look into the womb of all being,
Leave behind the divorce
Of sacred and wicked -
Leave behind the valley of the urge
And the mountain of purification
And the heights of holiness
And soar above all creation
And fly above all light
And go beyond the clarity
And pass through the grounds of Paradise
And behind the begetting Logos,
Beyond all bounds,
Behold the womb of the Godhead!
Think of a sculptor
Who with hammer and chisel
From the block of marble
The indwelling image makes free
The divine ideal of beauty
With strength and art.
All you have to do
Is to remove the obstacles.
Take away everything that is not divine!
Then the veiled beauty
Will reveal itself more and more
And at last you will behold the ideal
Of the beauty of naked divinity!
MEDITATION ON THE WISDOM
OF THE CARMELITE BRIDAL MYSTICISM
OF SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS
In the dark night
Blazed the living flame of love,
Unspeakable the bliss,
Then I went away
And left my house in sleep.
Stealthily I went,
Disguised, down the stairs,
Hiding in the darkness,
O love's delight,
And left my house asleep.
No one saw me
In that blessed night,
Nor would I see any man,
Nothing led me
But this ardour of the heart,
It guided me
Better than the light of day.
Eternal charity makes itself right for me,
She whom I love,
And no creature has disturbed us.
O silent night, which is more blessed
Than the dawn,
In your black silk dress
Lie the beloved united,
With the power of love
Sink the beloved into divinity.
I lay at her breasts
And enjoyed the peace of mind.
She fed and refreshed me
And refreshed me with her breath,
When the morning breezes
Played with her long black hair,
I felt her caress me
On my right arm.
It was incomparably tender
And I lost my senses.
I drank the potion of oblivion
And stayed nestled against my beloved
And let my ego sink
And was cradled by the beloved
And all my sorrow
Disappeared
In her rose garden paradise.