Erick Rittenberry publishes most days at his Poetic Outlaws Substack Newsletter, which I recommended many times. He posted this today, Sunday.
Aldous Huxley: On Truth and the Nature of Spiritual Reality
By: Aldous Huxley
POETIC OUTLAWS
SEP 15, 2024
Why dost thou prate of God?
Whatever thou sayest of Him is untrue.
—Meister Eckhart
The further one travels, the less one knows.
—Lao Tzu
In religious literature the word ‘truth’ is used indiscriminately in at least three distinct and very different senses. Thus, it is sometimes treated as a synonym for “fact,” as when it is affirmed that God is Truth meaning that He is the primordial Reality. But this is clearly not the meaning of the word in such a phrase as “worshipping God in spirit and in truth.”
Here, it is obvious, ‘truth’ signifies direct apprehension of spiritual Fact, as opposed to second-hand knowledge about Reality, formulated in sentences and accepted on authority or because an argument from previously granted postulates was logically convincing.
And finally there is the more ordinary meaning of the word, as in such a sentence as, “This statement is the truth” where we mean to assert that the verbal symbols of which the statement is composed correspond to the facts to which it refers. When Eckhart writes that ‘whatever thou sayest of God is untrue,’ he is not affirming that all theological statements are false.
In so far as there can be any correspondence between human symbols and divine Fact, some theological statements are as true as it is possible for us to make them.
Himself a theologian, Eckhart would certainly have admitted this. But besides being a theologian, Eckhart was a mystic. And being a mystic, he understood very vividly what the modern semanticist is so busily (and, also, so unsuccessfully) trying to drum into contemporary minds namely, that words are not the same as things and that a knowledge of words about facts is in no sense equivalent to a direct and immediate apprehension of the facts themselves.
What Eckhart actually asserts is this: whatever one may say about God can never in any circumstances be the ‘truth’ in the first two meanings of that much abused and ambiguous word.
By implication St. Thomas Aquinas was saying exactly the same thing when, after his experience of infused contemplation, he refused to go on with his theological work, declaring that everything he had written up to that time was as mere straw compared with the immediate knowledge, which had been vouchsafed to him.
Two hundred years earlier, in Bagdad, the great Mohammedan theologian, Al-Ghazzali, had similarly turned from the consideration of truths about God to the contemplation and direct apprehension of Truth-the-Fact, from the purely intellectual discipline of the philosophers to the moral and spiritual discipline of the Sufis.
The moral of all this is obvious. Whenever we hear or read about ‘truth,’ we should always pause long enough to ask ourselves in which of the three senses listed above the word is, at the moment, being used.
By taking this simple precaution (and to take it is a genuinely virtuous act of intellectual honesty) we shall save ourselves a great deal of disturbing and quite unnecessary mental confusion.
The subject matter of the Perennial Philosophy is the nature of eternal, spiritual Reality; but the language in which it must be formulated was developed for the purpose of dealing with phenomena in time. That is why, in all these formulations, we find an element of paradox.
The nature of Truth-the-Fact cannot be described by means of verbal symbols that do not adequately correspond to it. At best it can be hinted at in terms of non sequiturs and contradictions.
The history of all the religions is similar in one important respect; some of their adherents are enlightened and delivered, because they have chosen to react appropriately to the words which the founders have let fall; others achieve a partial salvation by reacting with partial appropriateness; yet others harm themselves and their fellows by reacting with a total inappropriateness either ignoring the words altogether or, more often, taking them too seriously and treating them as though they were identical with the Fact to which they refer.
Sloan Bashinsky
Thank you for publishing this, Erik.
The mainstream elements of the three Abraham religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, recognize only dead and buried mystics. I lost count of the times Christians told me that God stopped speaking to people after the Bible was written. A clever way of creating a monopoly on God.
My understanding is Eckhart Tolle was really struggling and in a deep despair he surrendered to it and suddenly he felt a total inner peace and calm which continued more or less, He wrote several books that became international best sellers, yet did anyone who bought and read his books, or travel to visit and talk with him, have a similar experience?
Did anyone who visited and talked with Buddha then experience what Buddha had experienced?
Did anyone who visited and talked with Laozi (Lao Tzu) experience what he had experienced?
Did anyone who read Acts of the Apostles experience what Peter and Paul experienced, as reported in Acts.
Did anyone who read U.G. Krishnamurti’s books (U.G. knew and did not think so well of Jiddu Krishnamurti), or come to visit and talk with U.G., experience what U.G. had spontaneously experienced, which changed him completely?
I understand Aldous Huxley became a mystic by using LSD.
The problem with using LSD or psychedelic plants is, there are lots of different kinds of beings “out there”, some are benevolent, some are not. Some are malicious. Like any virus, they are more than happy to latch onto a person on a psychedelic trip and remain with that person for the rest of his/her life, and the person does not know it happened. Only an adept shaman, an experienced exorcist priest allegiant to God and not his church, or an angel of the Lord can remove such a virus.
I am a mystic, made so by angels known in the Bible. I do not attend church or say I am a Christian. Mystics see and experience life very differently from everyone else. They know God by any named called, exists. They know God is unfathomable and cannot be confined by any definition. They know the walk with God on this world, as Jesus in the Gospels said, is difficult, and the gate is narrow, and few enter, and that is only the beginning. For they also know Jesus spoke true in the Gospels, when he said, many are called but few are chosen, and the work is great and the laborers are few.
I often suggest to people on a spiritual path that they read the Sufi Poet Rumi’s poem, Chickpea To Cook, and they read about Rumi’s irascible spiritual teacher Shams, who was much deeper into God than was Rumi.
Here are two variations of the Chickpea , Coleman Barks is an American:
by Coleman Barks
A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot where it’s being boiled.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’
The cook knocks him down with the ladle.
‘Don’t you try to jump out. You think I’m torturing you. I’m giving you flavor, so you can mix with spices and rice and be the lovely vitality of a human being. Remember when you drank rain in the garden. That was for this.’
Grace first. Sexual pleasure, then a boiling new life begins, and the Friend has something good to eat.
Eventually the chickpea will say to the cook,
‘Boil me some more. Hit me with the skimming spoon. I can’t do this by myself. I’m like an elephant that dreams of gardens back in Hindustan and doesn’t pay attention to his driver. You’re my cook, my driver, my way into existence. I love your cooking.’
The cook says, ‘I was once like you, fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time, and
My animal soul grew powerful. I controlled it with practices, and boiled some more, and boiled once beyond that, and became your teacher.
by Chittick:
Look at the chickpeas in the pot, how they keep on jumping up, driven by the fire.
At every instant the chickpeas boil up to the top and let out a hundred cries: “Why are you tormenting us with fire? Since you showed your appreciation for us by buying us,
The housewife keeps stirring with the ladle:
“Now, now! Boil sweetly and do not jump back from the one that made the fire.
I do not cook you because I dislike you: I want to gain taste and savor.
You will become food and then mix with the spirit. You do not suffer tribulation because you are despicable.
Fresh and succulent, you used to drink water in the garden; your water-drinking was for the sake of this fire,”
His Mercy is prior to His Wrath, so that Mercy could acquire a stock-in-trade: existence. For without pleasure, flesh and skin do not grow.
If they do not grow, what can love for the Friend waste away? Gentleness will come again, asking forgiveness:
“Now you have purified yourself and jumped across the stream to safety.”
She says, “Oh chickpeas! You fed in the spring pasture, and now suffering has come as your guest.
Receive it well. So that the guest may return in gratitude and tell of your generosity before the King.
Then in place of benefits, the Benefactor will come; all benefits will envy you.
I am Abraham, you are my son. Place your head before the knife: I saw in a dream that I must sacrifice you.
This example of Sufi humor below very well could be about Shams.
Once upon a time word arrived through the countryside grapevine that a Dervish was headed toward a small village. The village's people were thrilled, because it was a great honor to be visited by a Dervish. They spruced up their village and cooked a great meal and put on the best of their simple clothing, and they walked to the edge of their village to await the Dervish. They saw someone walking on the dirt road leading to the village, and as the person neared, they saw he was an old man, his hair and beard were unkempt, he was dressed poorly, he looked dirty. He walked past them to the well in the center of the village where a donkey was tethered to a post. The old man leaned down and talked for a while into the donkey's left ear, and then the old man straightened himself up and walked out the other side of the village.
A couple of days ago, a friend, who is a mystic and very good at tech stuff, and I did a podcast about the spiritual path that bypasses organized religion and psychedelics, and yesterday I published a post at my blog on same topic, "ABCs of a spiritual path that bypasses organized religion and psychedelics".
Here’s the blog link:
Here’s the podcast link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuxLKqWs_lw
We do this for free. We do not solicit.
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
