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The Revealed texts of Scripture, Nature or
Experience have more than a hidden meaning. The Text itself
stores and emits a transmission. This inner dimension of a
text actually communicates what it signifies, as in a
sacrament. So, God humbles himself to come to us in the Word
of Scripture, or the Beauty, Truth, and Goodness or in the
heart of a personal experience.
Some Scriptures boldly speak about this intimate relationship
as in the Gospel of John, the Song of Songs or Letters of St.
John. Some lines, parables, events, sayings or narratives of
Scripture only are intelligible if one reads the text “as if”
it was a mystical communication. “The Word was made flesh” or
“This is my body give for you.” There are the other three
dimensions stored in the text 1) literal historical narrative,
2) symbolic meaning and 3) dynamically moral. However, more
than the other three dimensions there is an explosion of
“voice” integrating the previous dimensions when we access the
mystical voice. The text takes on a whole category of the
“new” not just a new category added upon the former ways of
knowing.
The mystical voice is not limited by definitions, as in
exegesis, but can be understood at a level deeper than insight
and intuition. Let me list at least ten (and there are more)
descriptions that point to the mystical voice:
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1. |
Anagogical - we are lifted up and our
soul’s assent is natural and with easy flight. We go
from light to light. In the light we see the light. Like
a trellis we grow along the supporting wall with
gentleness and gradual sure footedness. The content
itself sheds grace upon grace. |
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2. |
Eschatological - The already of the
reign of God is in our midst. There is no “more” to hope
for. Our faith is actual because God is here, now and
for all eternity. The “not yet” dynamic is also at-work
in the text. This voice sustains us so that we move and
have our being. |
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3. |
Teleological - The end is perfect in
Christ Jesus. Our High Priest has bridged the gap. We
are acquitted of wrongdoing and Christ Jesus has taken
upon himself our sins. Mercy prevails. This voice
welcomes death, as dying has been passed over and only
life is now and in the next and the next realm. With the
exodus event completed there is an eternal new “now”. |
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4. |
Cosmic - we go above but dwell within
the whole of it. This voice is speaking from planet
Earth and all the billion spheres of matter, light,
energy and motion spinning in our field of expansion and
contraction. This cosmic voice awakens our cosmic
consciousness that celebrates our unique place in the
universe as distinctively human among the organic and
living manifestations of life birthing and dying into
ever-new life forms. |
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5. |
Unitive - We experience the single
point, that irreducible oneness that has no other that
is mysteriously spoken of as Trinity, since through
Christ and in the Holy Spirit we, without losing our
personal identity are taken into this vast shore of one
grain of sand. This theosis or divinization separates us
only to binds us back to God as we originally were in
the beginning. Annihilation is prevented as distinction
in the Trinity provides a God and right relationship of
ourselves in God. Impenetrable as in mystery stillness
chants and is heard, co-mingling here! This Christ
Consciousness is manifested so pervasively we pass
through the low door of humility and take off hats of
speculation and bow in realization. |
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6. |
Contemplative - both in the dazzling
darkness of the apophatic voice and the intimate
personal conversation of the Holy One we hear the voice
of the inner guide. Sometimes it is the wind, the fire,
the storm, and the flood and other times the whisper.
The contemplative voice vibrates at a different
frequency than ordinary sound, sight and feel. This
voice speaks with authority heart to heart. This voice
comes through icons, chant, incense, and Eucharistic
bread and wine. |
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7. |
Esoteric - There is something secret
about this voice. Heard by those who already “know”
(Gnostic) stored in this text is a hidden power to
transform any and all that consent and take it to heart.
The harvest is ripe but the laborers are few. The
vibrations of calligraphy or illumination mediate deep
upon deep beyond decoration or enhancement. Emptiness
differs from void. Fountainhead springs up and begets
the begotten. |
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8. |
Transcendent - we take off our sandals
because of dead skin before this “other” and adoration
happens to us. We bow, prostrate, linger in awe melting
our fear into love. Silence. Ineffable, yet known and we
know that we know and are known. Fear of the Lord morphs
into loving revelations. The text converges from the
outside and inside, inscape and landscape enveloping the
reader into context. |
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9. |
Ecclesial - not alone our body, mind and
soul lays low in prostrations. We come together even
when only one is in the presence. This dialogue becomes
communion. We, in Eucharist wash feet as we feel the
text at-work in us. |
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10. |
Universal - the mystery of the whole
cannot be fathomed like a lake with no bottom known as
instruments are too week to measure vastness and depth.
Such unique plausibility is the voice of the all no
contradictions, debate or faith claims can master. The
whole is greater than the sum of parts in exponential
magnitude. The wonderful works of God indeed exceed
imagination and awaken an “isnness” that satisfies a
deep laughter. |
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The voice of the text quickens the reader. The
text is inspired by the Holy Spirit and is from God. We can
trust that even if we do not get the message that it is there
for us and for our salvation, generation upon generation,
everywhere and at all times. Even if never read by a mortal,
God is.
Example: In 1968 Thomas Merton visited the Gal Vihara, a
Buddhist shrine in central Sri Lanka in the ancient city of
Polonnaruwa. It was the capital of Singhalese kings from the
eleventh to the twelfth century and was a huge monastic
complex.
Merton writes in his journal “the silence of the extraordinary
faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with
every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything,
rejecting nothing.” He was speaking of this shrine. Carved
into a massive outcropping of granite that sharply rises out
of the otherwise gently rolling terrain, there are three
exterior renditions of the Buddha and a smaller, seated Buddha
within a cave. On the far left, Buddha sits in the classic
lotus position, one hand upon the other in his lap. Next,
following the cave opening, there is a huge standing Buddha,
twenty-three-feet tall. To its right is a reclining Buddha,
stretching forty-five feet. This is what he saw. Note the text
of the art is an actual transmission.
Let me go on showing how Merton’s spiritual senses opened
before this revelatory text: (I’m paraphrasing from Paul
Wilkes “Merton’s Enlightenment at the foot of the Buddha”
written in Commonweal June 2, 2006 p.12).
As Merton’s eyes passed over the statues, he was first struck
with the face of the standing figure. Initially he described
its “smile, the sad smile,” but went on to say that
notwithstanding its simplicity and straightforwardness, it was
even more “imperative” than the Mona Lisa. Indeed, there is
something quixotic in the expression, dramatically accented by
the lines of black segment ingrained in the rock that streak
across the nose and cheeks, almost like lines etched in the
skin, expressing emotion wrought, perhaps, form either a
moments recognition, or alternately, from years of experience.
“Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly,
jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things,
and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the
rocks themselves, became evident and obvious,” Merton goes on,
the words almost palpably picking up pace.
It is apparent that it was not Merton’s keen intellect that
had finally decoded this higher power. Rather, his heart and
soul were so completely subsumed on that day at Gal Vihara
that there was no longer any need to do anything. He could
simply rest in the simplicity of it all. Everything and
nothing were but different words for the same reality.
He goes on to say, “I approached closer to the huge reclining
Buddha. Its head lies gently on an outstretched hand, which in
turn rests on a pillow. Though made of stone, the pillow looks
soft and comfortable, as if beckoning to the pilgrim to find
rest.
We read on with Paul Wilkes description: For some reason, I
found my eyes drawn to two small details that I had certainly
not noticed on my first visit. The Buddha’s left leg is ever
so slightly bent, the knee giving a gentle, almost
imperceptible rise to the sculpted stone robe that covers the
figure from neck to ankle. Because of this, the massive toes
on the left foot are similarly askew, just inches (on the
scale of the statue, just a hair’s breadth) behind the right.
As Buddhists know, that position represents the pregnant
moment just before the Buddha received enlightenment.”
Merton wrote in his journal that day: “an inner clearness,
clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves became
evident and obvious…I don’t know when in my life I have ever
had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running
together in one aesthetic illumination. I know and have seen
what I was obscurely looking for.” Merton had burst through
traditional boundaries of belief. The God he sought in the
cloister, in prayer, in ascetic practices, the God he tried
somehow to address, describe and quantify in his writing, was
a God of a subtle, knowing smile, a God everywhere, in
everything.
We know that Merton died only days after this epiphany when he
touched that fan in his room in Bangkok. Merton’s own words of
premonition: “I don’t know what else remains,” he wrote, “but
I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have
got beyond the shadow and the disguise.”
We, like Merton, do have the capacity to “read” the text. We
have spiritual senses that grasp the sound of this mystical
voice. Let’s continue with the #10 Teaching on the Spiritual
senses of the reader. |
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