Thursday 6 March 2014

Language of the Soul

"The more God is in all things, the more He is outside them. The more He is within, the more without."                                     [Meister Eckhart]

There would appear to be not only a contradiction in this statement but also a possible error. It has been said at many times, in many places, that the search for God involves a search within oneself, because God can only be known through those internal faculties of wisdom, understanding and gnosis. Those faculties are not of themselves God, but can point the way to God. How then can he be inside yet outside?

The universe that I perceive around me is a construct of my own making. That is not to say that the material universe has no relative reality, only that I cannot know that universe in its entirety or be certain that my perception of the universe tallies with that relative reality. The incoming data that I collect through my senses enter through a very limited window and are processed by my brain, a material body that is as much a part of the 'outside' as is the rest of the universe. The ultimate interpretation by my mind, quite regardless of the nature of the processing that takes place in my brain, comes from that inner sense of "I-ness" that seems to live separately from the rest of the material universe. In other words the universe is my interpretation of heavily restricted, and very limited, incoming data. It naturally leads to a very limited perception of the world around me. That which lies beyond my consciousness receives much more information than my ego-consciousness alone, but how can that ever be enough to meet the requirements for total knowing and understanding?

Now the more I increase the quantity and the quality of that incoming data by the use, for example, of ever more sophisticated equipment, the broader becomes my perspective, and the more accurate (but never perfect) becomes my perception. Yet even if the whole of the material universe were to reside inside me in the form of images, there would still be so much more to know. If I need a language with which to speak with God, the language of the soul, or imagery, is a good place to begin. But imagery extracts its source material from the outside world. Thus the more accurate the perception of that source, the less room for misconceptions in the use of the soul language and the greater my understanding, wisdom and knowing. Thus the more improved my communication with God, the better I can know the universe around me; the more accurately I perceive the universe, the more sophisticated and gnostic is my inner understanding. The greater the divine presence within, the more without.

William Law (English cleric 1686-1761) once said, 

"Though God is everywhere present, yet he is only present to me (my underlining) in the deepest and most central part of my soul. The natural senses cannot possess (understand?) God or unite thee to him."

He is not present, therefore, in my physical self, my thoughts and my emotions, that is in my ego, any more than in the rest of the physical universe. That is tantamount to saying that only that sense of "I-ness" that resides in the ground of my being wherein I meet God, has any real and true existence. 

William Law continues,

"There is a root or depth of thee from whence all these faculties come forth [which] is called the centre, the fund or bottom of the soul. This depth is the unity, the eternity - I had almost said the infinity - of thy soul." 

God is beyond any activity of my brain, which itself lies in the outer universe, and is present only in the beyond-conscious root of the most basic essence of that which is my sense of "I-ness". Only there in that uttermost root can exist that unity which is the ultimate seat of resolution of universal duality.

12 comments:

  1. Tom, I'm very much in tune with this post. God being present both within and without...this concept fits my inner picture of 'where' God may be, if location is at all relevant in this case. I've sometimes imagined that God's 'thoughts', unlike ours, become forms - as in nature, for instance - and that the colour spectrum, sound-waves, all things visible, and also invisible to our limited vision, are the language of God, the 'words' that God uses. And that it's up to us to interpret or decode that language, not only in its material aspects (science does that) but also on another, deeper level. Some will say that this other level doesn't exist and that the material level is all we have. I don't agree. I think that everything in the universe, macro and micro, inner and outer, has multiple levels of meaning.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Natalie; I wouldn't disagree with any of your comment. When seen from both the inner and outer, and the use to which the inner puts the outer, in terms of imagery, puts the universe into a totally different perspective. And as a recent commenter said here, how can you possibly leave God out?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Now this is very thought provoking. It seems that you are making progress, Tom, toward your ultimate understanding or "knowing" the presence. Your search continues to fascinate me. The idea (if I understand you correctly) that the brain cannot know that which you so earnestly want to know but only the subconscious state can "get" it . . is (to coin a phrase) mind-boggling. That may explain the testimony of people who have had near-death experiences.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Bruce; I have to say that your final sentence had not occurred to me, but it is an intriguing thought.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I agree with your conclusions here, Tom. Our usual sense of conscious identity could be described as an 'island' surrounded by a 'sea' of all the things we're not conscious of.. the unconscious. Yet the idea that as human beings we are a microcosm of the divine, suggests there's a direct link between our subjective reality and the Greater Reality. Perhaps this could be thought of as a reflective process that can, with effort on our part, bring us wisdom and eventually, gnosis.

    ReplyDelete
  6. As a gardener, I have concluded the language of the universe is Nature, of which we are part. Universe speaks through us too, even though we don't always like what it's saying.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Susan; And the often frustrating aspect of that link - and I have a 'slight' tendency towards impatience :) - is the powerful awareness that it is there but an inability to actually 'see' it and what lies beyond in the Greater Reality.

    I can imagine that to really 'see' might be too much to bear. To say that one cannot look on the face of God and survive the experience, may simply be one way of saying that the experience of the Greater Reality is too much for the limited mind (as compared with the possible universal Mind) to take on board.

    Thank you for your thoughts.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Geo; I have heard others say that they are closest to the Divine when in a garden, or when they are at one with Nature. There is that (sometimes overwhelming) feeling of Life in its many manifestations that speaks to us at a deeper level than our physical senses. As you say, we don't always like what the universe is saying. It's a bit big and powerful!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Just want to wave and say that I still read every word in every post. I just don't have the right words to respond other than say 'wow' and 'thank you', Tom.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Marja-Leena; Hi! That's fine!

    ReplyDelete
  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  12. "William Law (English cleric 1686-1761) once said,

    "'Though God is everywhere present, yet he is only present to me (my underlining) in the deepest and most central part of my soul. The natural senses cannot possess (understand?) God or unite thee to him.'

    "He is not present, therefore, in my physical self, my thoughts and my emotions, that is in my ego, any more than in the rest of the physical universe. That is tantamount to saying that only that sense of "I-ness" that resides in the ground of my being wherein I meet God, has any real and true existence."

    Tom, this is my understanding, too.

    Thank you for your comment this morning on my compare/contrast post. It made me realize that I wasn't as clear as I should have been -- that I had written, in essence, a poor parable. Your comment led me to substantially revise my post. I'm very grateful for your participation.

    The genre of parables in Isaiah's and Jesus' mouths points to, I think, the limitations we have in our efforts to know God through our ego or our five senses alone, though my reason and senses have a role in pointing me to a deeper place. I think I have found a harsh God in some of Jesus' parables precisely because parables by their nature "speak" of the difficulty of knowing God by any means other than what you describe here as "the ground of my being."

    ReplyDelete