Archives: Third Party Stories

John Redwood Anderson (1883 – 1964) was a leading English poet and playwright. He was educated at Trinity College, University of Oxford, as well as the Brussels Conservatoire. Redwood Anderson taught in different parts of England before settling in Hull where he taught at Hymers College from 1916 to 1942. There, he was a member of the Hull Literary Club and the Hull Literary and Philosophical Society, and he served as president of the Hull Chamber Music Society.

After his retirement, Redwood Anderson moved to Wales and, in 1953, to London. During his career as a poet, Redwood Anderson wrote over 20 books. His last book of poetry, published in 1962, was While the Fates Allow. He also wrote the play “Babel” which was produced several times.

In his poem, “Hinterland”, John Redwood-Anderson attempted to convey the sense of the mystical reality of God’s unlimited love—a love realized through identity—as follows:

“There is a knowledge beyond knowledge: a knowledge that knows itself not—
not itself, nor the object known, nor its own knowing;
so, too, beyond the love of person, is a love that knows not person—
not the self loving, nor the self loved, nor the love between them:
only such knowing breaks through the soul’s last self-illusion;
only such love shall overcome the wound and the anguish of love:
knower and known made one in the blind state of knowledge;
lover and loved made one in the blind state of love.

In describing the deepest state of mystical consciousness, Redwood Anderson writes of the “shining Dark” and the “Divine Abyss”:

for this, beyond time and eternity, beyond the being of God,
was to God’s being what silence is to the word:
the Silence that was ere the Word was spoken,
the Word that gives shape to the Silence…”

Redwood Anderson explains his views on man’s position in relation to the Ultimate Reality of God—and how, in acting as though he alone matters, man denies his relationship to the whole and thus commits “sin”—as follows:

“The trouble begins when man asserts his peripheral position to be central: this is Original Sin. All asceticism is designed to break the mortal hold of the egocentric and anthropocentric obsession. One should not abandon the world, one should embrace the world; but this is safe and right only when one has abandoned oneself. It is not attachment to an object of desire, whatever that object may be, that is a barrier to the spiritual life, but attachment to oneself in that attachment… If we could remember that all our experiences are not only ours—not our exclusive private property and concern—but also and identically God’s; if we could remember that we are not only ends in ourselves, but also means to the total end: not only self-active organisms (I speak spiritually), but also organs in the Divine Organism—if we could remember this single and simple fact, we should be very near to the mystical life… We should do nothing we were ashamed of, since in our shame God is also ashamed; we should not wittingly do anything to another’s hurt, since in that hurt God is also hurt—and in the hurt thereby done to ourselves God is again hurt. We should be living then as if we lived ‘within’ and not ‘without’.”

In his article entitled “The Fourth Mysticism”, Redwood Anderson further explains:

“Could we see from all time and simultaneously all the events of the Universe—see them from inside as well as from outside—nothing could appear as irrelevant to the whole pattern: there would be no non-significant matrix, but a single all-comprehending significance, and that in turn means a single all-comprehending truth and beauty and rightness. This is the characteristic of the Divine Experience; and this can in its measure be known and shared by the soul that has abandoned its peripheral isolation… and taken up a central position.

Man must live his life as man, a finite being here on this earth, with his individual and finite values, his individual desires, his loves and his hates, his joys and his sorrows: and, at the same time, man must live that life and realise it as a function of the organic life of the Whole—an autonomous organ of the Divine Experience. This is, I believe, the whole secret of how to experience rightly—a secret nobody ever tells us.”

Quoted from John Redwood Anderson’s book, Transvaluations, and his article, “The Fourth Mysticism”, published in Faith and Freedom (1951), a Unitarian Journal at Manchester College, University of Oxford.

Photo Credit: Portrait of John Redwood Anderson from idedrich.co.uk.

Beaumont Mandus (1907 – 1988) was born in Hartlepool, an English seaport town. As a young boy, Mandus thought deeply about metaphysical concepts. Later, he discovered how to meditate, spending hours in sincere devotion. He also began performing spiritual healing and would ultimately go on to found the headquarters for The World Healing Crusade (now the World Healing Centre), in Blackpool, England in 1952.

Today, the World Healing Centre describes itself as “a non-denominational Spiritual Sanctuary and Holistic Healing Centre” that believes in “the freewill choice of self-expression.” The centre further states that it embraces “the individuality of all beings and understand[s] that self-empowerment is the key to a peaceful and fulfilled life.” The organization’s work is “inspired by the many great teachers of our past and present…”

Brother Mandus described his most profound mystical experience as follows:

“I remember now (and I am always recalling it) the greatest experience of my life, that vital moment when I was baptised by the Holy Spirit within. For one perfect second, unexpected, unheralded, and while I was doing a trivial task, my personal mind and body were fused in Light: a breathless unbearable Light-Perfection, as intense as the explosion of a flash of lightning within me… In this timeless second I knew a Love, Knowledge and Ecstasy transcending anything I could understand or describe. I was lifted into the midst of God, in whom all people, all worlds, and every created life or thing moved and had their being. Perfection! Had I been suffering from the worst mental or physical disease known to man, in that Light I should instantly have been made Whole.

In that moment I knew my Lord dwells within my own being, and within everyone else. In that one moment I knew the truth of His eternal reality, and that He is All, and that my Father and I are One, that all people and the Father are One, and that we are all One with each other in spirit.”

Quoted from This Wondrous Way of Life by Brother Mandus.

Photo Credit: Brother Mandus from https://brothermandus.wwwhubs.com.

William Olaf Stapledon (1886 – 1950) was an influential British philosopher and author. He earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in Modern History at Balliol College, University of Oxford, and a Ph.D. degree in philosophy at the University of Liverpool. Stapledon wrote nearly two dozen fiction and non-fiction works, including Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord; Star Maker; Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future; and Darkness and the Light.

During World War I, Stapledon served as a conscientious objector. He also worked at the front for three and a half years as an ambulance driver with the Friends’ Ambulance Unit in France and Belgium, earning the French War Cross for bravery. His experience during the war shaped his pacifist beliefs. Stapledon spoke at the World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace in Wrocław, Poland in 1948; he attended the Conference for World Peace in New York City in 1949; and, in 1950 (shortly before his death), he became involved with the anti-apartheid movement.

Stapledon described his mystical experiences in his non-fiction book, Saints and Revolutionaries, as follows:

“Sometimes, when I am more than usually awake, I do have a deeply moving experience. There is nothing mysterious, or in any way magical about it. It is just ordinary experience of the world and oneself, only much more lucid and comprehensive. I cannot but regard it as the rightful compass-needle of my whole life. It may happen unexpectedly in response to some particular and even insignificant event, which now suddenly opens up vistas of significance; or it may come when I try persistently to ‘get the feel of’ being a self in relation to other selves and the rest of the universe. In either case it brings an unusually precise and poignant awareness both of my present surroundings and of things remote in space and in time. It seems to be simply a very comprehensive act of attention, an attending to everything at once, or to the wholeness of everything at once. And in response to all that act of attention reveals I feel a very special emotion which I can describe only as a tension of fervour and peace. The experience is one which, if I were less sceptical, I might easy regard as some sort of contact with ‘God’. But being sceptical I refrain from this interpretation. There may be a sense in which the old religious language is true, but in our day it is far less true than misleading…

But what about this ‘something discovered in the depths of one’s own being’? This I interpret as a metaphorical way of saying that in persistent contemplation of myself I discover, beneath all the personal desires which make up the everyday ‘I’, another desire or will, so alien from the everyday ‘I’ as to seem indeed another being. It is a detached will for the good, not for my good nor even for mankind’s good, but for the good of the universe, whatever that may turn out to involve. I recognise that this will ought to be the supreme determinant of my conduct, and in a feeble sort of way I strive to submit my normal self to it. I recognise also that in some sense this will is a potentiality of all minds. Inevitably the awakening of a mind must lead it to this desire, this will. Evidently, then, this will is a very important factor in the universe. But what its metaphysical status is, I do not pretend to know.

To say all this is to suggest merely my own reaction to an experience which I cannot at all clearly grasp, let alone describe. All I can say of it is that it gives meaning to life, that it is the supreme consolation, the supreme inspiration, and yet also, strangely, a most urgent spur to action.”

Quoted from Saints and Revolutionaries by Olaf Stapledon.

A younger contemporary of the great Sufi theologian, Ibn ‘Arabi, the celebrated Sufi poet, Fakhruddin Iraqi (1213 – 1289), was born in the village of Kamajan, in Persia (present day Iran). According to legend, he was famous in his region for his religious devotion by the time he was eight years old; and, by the age of seventeen, he was giving lectures on the scriptures to his schoolmates. As the story goes, he was drawn to the Sufi path when a group of wandering dervishes passed through the town, and he happened to hear their plaintive songs of divine love. Iraqi immediately left his studies behind, and went off with the Sufi band, wandering throughout Persia and into India.

Later in his life, Iraqi set out for Mecca, and from there to Damascus, and onward north to Anatolia, to the city of Konya, where Sadruddin Qunawi, chief disciple of Ibn Arabi, now lived. Qunawi’s lectures on Ibn Arabi’s Bezels Of Wisdom and Meccan Revelations were attended by Iraqi, who became thoroughly fascinated and inspired by the study of these works. Each day, after the lectures of Qunawi, Iraqi would, in a state of inspired joy, set down a few verses of his own, illustrating Ibn Arabi’s teachings, and at last collected them in a book, which he called Lama’at, which may be translated as “Flashes,” or “Glimpses” of insight.

Here are a few selected verses and passages from his celebrated Lama’at, which describe his mystical consciousness:

“Beloved, I sought You here and there, asked for news of You from all I met. Then I saw You through myself,
And found we were identical.
Now I blush to think I ever searched for signs of You.
By day I praised You, but never knew it;
By night I slept with You without realizing it,
Fancying myself to be myself;
But no, I was You and never knew it.
“O You, who are so unbearably beautiful,
Whose beloved are You?” I asked.
“My own,” He replied;
“For I am one and one alone—
Love, lover, beloved, mirror, beauty, eye!”
He speaks; He listens.
“You” and “I” are but a pretense.
When shall You and I divorce ourselves
So that “You” and “I” are gone,
And only God remains?
If You are everything,
Then, who are all these people?
And if I am nothing,
What’s all this noise about?

You are the Totality;
Everything is You. Agreed!
Then, all that is “other-than-You”—
What is it?
Oh, indeed I know, nothing exists but You! But tell me, whence all this confusion?
He Himself speaks of Truth;
He Himself listens.
He Himself shows Himself; He Himself sees.
The world but seems to be,
Yet it is only a blending of light and shade.
Discern the meaning of this dream;
Discriminate between time and Eternity.

All is nothing, nothing. All is He. All is He.
Listen, riffraff: Do you want to be ALL? Then go, go and become nothing.
You are nothing when you wed the One;
But, when you truly become nothing,
You are everything.

Regard yourself as a cloud drifting before your Sun;
Detach yourself from the senses,
And behold your intimacy with the Sun.
If you lose yourself on this path, Then, you will know for sure: He is you, and you are He.”

Quoted from History of Mysticism by Swami Abhayananda.

Image Credit: Fakhruddin Iraqi from https://sufinama.org.

Muhammed Ali Muhammed Ibn al ‘Arabi al-Ta’i al-Hatimi, better known simply as Ibn Arabi (1165 – 1240), was born into a Muslim family in Murcia, Spain, on August 7, 1165. After his education in Seville, Ibn Arabi became married and obtained a position as secretary to the governor of Seville. He was twenty years of age when he was initiated into the Sufi path. It is not known when he became illumined by God’s grace and realized the Unity of which he was later to write; but we know that between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty, he traveled several times to Tunis in North Africa, where he visited a number of Sufi Shaikhs, and spent much of his time in studying and writing.

He wrote his magnum opus, Bezels Of Wisdom, around 1230; he is said to have once remarked that he had written over two hundred and fifty books during his lifetime. It is because he represents an early attempt within the Islamic tradition to convey a rational formulation of the vision of Unity that he must be deemed one of the most influential thinkers of Sufism. In his writings, Ibn Arabi strove above all to explain the identity of God and the Self for the benefit of all who sought to comprehend the Truth.

Here are a few of his most penetrating statements about his mystical consciousness:

When the mystery of the oneness of the soul and the Divine is revealed to you, you will understand that you are no other than God. Then you will see all your actions to be His actions and all your attributes to be His attributes and your essence to be His essence….

Thus, instead of [your own] essence, there is the essence of God and in place of [your own] attributes, there are the attributes of God. He who knows himself sees his whole existence to be the Divine existence but does not experience that any change has taken place in his own nature or qualities. For when you know yourself, your sense of a limited identity vanishes, and you know that you and God are one and the same….

There is no existence but His existence. This means that the existence of the beggar is His existence, and the existence of the sick is His existence. Now, when this is admitted, it is acknowledged that all existence is His existence; and that the existence of all created things, both accidents and substances, is His existence; and when the secret of one particle of the atoms is clear, the secret of all created things, both outward and inward, is clear; and you do not see in this world or the next, anything except God.

Nothing but the Reality is. There is no separate being, no arriving and no being far away. This is seen in true vision; when I experienced it, I saw nothing but Him.

When my Beloved appears, with what eye do I see Him? With His eye, not with mine; for no one sees Him except Himself.

It is none other than He who progresses or journeys as you. There is nothing to be known but He; and since He is Being itself, He is therefore also the journeyer. There is no knower but He; so, who are you? Know your true Reality. He is the essential Self of all. But He conceals it by [the appearance of] otherness, which is “you.”

Quoted from History of Mysticism by Swami Abhayananda.

Swami Rama Tirtha (1873 – 1906) was born Tirath Ram in a village called Murariwala in the Gujranwala district of West Punjab, now in Pakistan. By all accounts, Tirath Ram was a bright and loveable child with an extraordinary love of learning. From an early age, he devoured the literature of his own and other cultures. As he grew, his interests expanded to include philosophy, psychology, poetry, physics and mathematics. He had a particular talent for discursive reasoning and excelled in math.

In 1888, despite his father’s insistence that he go to work to support the family, he enrolled, at the age of 15, in the Forman Christian College at Lahore, specializing in Mathematics, and in 1893, he received his bachelor’s degree. In April of 1895, he earned his M.A. degree in mathematics with high marks, and soon secured a teaching position at a Mission College in the town of Sialkot.

In early 1899, Tirath Ram quit his post at the College and set out into a life of freedom and inner communion. Taking with him his wife and two sons (one of which died young), along with his fledgling disciple, Narayan Das, he boarded a train for Hardwar, and from there he slipped away from the others and made a solitary pilgrimage to Gangotri, the source of the Ganges River which lay hidden in the icy crags of the Himalayas. Thereafter, Tirath Ram found the freedom to roam in the Himalayan heights, becoming a mountain ascetic, climbing in the snows, bathing in the mountain streams, taking shelter in the forests, and sleeping in the caves. And it was during this time that he was drawn through love to ascend to a vision of God.

He was all Stillness, pure Awareness, eternally single and awake; while from Him all exuded and evolved and dematerialized once more. It was not a new Self he had become, but it was rather a revelation of the Self he had always been behind the illusion of a separate, independent self. In this new awareness, he saw the entire creation in Himself, and yet, in that Self, He was above all that is manifest, ever unaltered, ever one and complete. Rama had become enlightened and could never again identify with that earlier notion of who he was.

In his notebook, Rama wrote the following about his mystical consciousness:

“How wonderful! I have now discovered and realized that I am Brahman myself. I am myself the Turiya (the absolute Consciousness). The One whom we addressed as the third person is Himself the first person. The ‘third person’ is now no more. It is all One. There is neither me nor He.

Everything is lost in One. Om! Om! Om!!
Tears are rolling down, as if it is the rain of ecstasy of union.
O head! You are very fortunate today. O eyes! You are blessed. O ears! Your efforts have after all been crowned with success. This union is blessed. This unity is divine. This realization is sacrosanct. Oh! The word “blessed” itself is blessed today.

The dolls of ego and intellect have both been burnt down today. O you eyes! Your tears deserve all praise. Your God- intoxication has been glorified. O my most loving Beloved! Run, if you can. Run away. But, where to? If you hide in the sky, I am already present there. If you go to mount Everest, You will find Me there. If you dive deep into the sea, I have already reached that depth. If you enter fire, it is my own mouth. I am present in all the names, forms and the bodies. Who is to talk and who is to reply? Oh, the all-embracing condition of supreme joy at this stage; it is indescribable.

Ha, ha, ha, ha. How beautiful am I!! No eyes, except those of My own, can appreciate My beauty. Who has power to perceive my beauty, My elegance, My brilliancy, My splendor and My magnificence?

I am all absorbed in My own sublimity. But the pity is that there is no one to appreciate My loveliness, because I am One without-a-second. There is no one to care for My beauteous exquisiteness. Who can pay to possess this priceless Jewel? I am Myself the Lover and also the Beloved. Lover or Beloved? Neither. I am Love personified.

When I see outside, every leaf or flower welcomes Me as My own Self. Within Me, the clouds of ecstasy are thundering to drown every other thing. Gradually the limbs are becoming as though paralyzed. Time and space have disappeared. There is no distance, inner or outer. It is all One. It is all One.”

Quoted from History of Mysticism by Swami Abhayananda.

Thomas á Kempis (1380 – 1471) entered a Christian spiritual community called the Brothers of The Common Life at the age of sixteen, was educated in that community, and, at the age of twenty-two, became a monk of the Augustinian Canons at the monastery of Mount Saint Agnes in Zwolle, near Utrecht. There he lived, totally obscured to the world, for seventy years, until his death. His daily work for many years was the artful copying of manuscripts, and his daily intent was the continual awareness of God’s presence. In the days he worked, and in the nights, he prayed and wrote. He was eventually made Director of novitiates, and in this capacity guided the novices to spiritual life through the snares and pitfalls along the path to blessedness and joy in God.

 In his solitary nights, Thomas wrote down his interior meditations, prayers, and counsels, and these pure outflowings of God’s activity in him were eventually collected in the form of a small book for the spiritual benefit of those novices in his charge. As the earliest Latin manuscripts of this book were untitled, for purposes of identification it was circulated under the title, Musica Ecclesiastica, or Music of The Church. But later copiers, forming a title for it from the first few words of the opening chapter, called it, De Imitatio Christi, or Of The Imitation Of Christ.  

It is by that title that his book is known to us today, and this little book of Thomas’ has been the special solace of renunciants and scholars, popes and laity, statesmen and kings, for over five centuries. To countless devout souls, this journal of a soul to the vision of God has proven itself to be an inestimable treasure, a marvelous and magical source of inspiration and joy. Here, from The Imitation Of Christ, is one of Thomas’ most exuberant and inspiring paeans in praise of God and of the divine Love which draws the soul to Him in mystical experience:

“O my Lord God, most faithful lover, when Thou comest into my heart, all that is within me doth joy! Thou art my glory and the joy of my heart, my hope and my whole refuge in all my troubles…. Love is a great and goodly thing, and alone makes heavy burdens light, and bears in the same balance things pleasing and displeasing. It bears a heavy burden and feels it not and makes bitter things to be savory and sweet. The noble love of God perfectly printed in man’s soul makes a man to do great things and stirs him always to desire perfection and to grow more and more in grace and goodness.

Love will always have his mind upward to God and will not be occupied with things of the world. Love will also be free from all worldly affections, that the inward sight of the soul may not be darkened or lost, and that his affection to heavenly things may not be diminished by an inordinate winning or losing of worldly things. Nothing, therefore, is sweeter than love, nothing higher, nothing stronger, nothing larger, nothing more joyful, nothing fuller, and nothing better in heaven nor in earth; for love descends from God and may not rest finally in anything lower than God. Such a lover flies high, he runs swiftly, he is merry in God, he is free in soul, he gives all for All and has All in all; for he rests in one high Goodness above all things, of whom all goodness flows and proceeds. He beholds not only the gift, but the Giver, above all gifts.”

Quoted from Thomas á Kempis: On The Love of God, edited by Swami Abhayananda.

Juan de Yepes y Alvarez was born on June 24, 1542, at Fontiveros, a small village about twenty-four miles northwest of Avila in the district of Old Castille, Spain. At the age of twenty-one, Juan begged admittance to the Carmelite Order of Santa Ana, and was accepted as a monk in that contemplative Order. A year later, he made his profession, taking the name of Fray Juan de San Matias. But, since he required yet more education to be ordained as a priest, he was sent to the university of Salamanca for a year, where he studied scholastic philosophy and theology; and finally, in 1567, at the age of twenty-five, he was ordained. It was just at this time that Juan met the nun, Mother Teresa de Jesus, who was then a woman past fifty years of age, and who was later to be recognized as a saint and known to the world as Teresa of Avila.

At Avila, some years before this meeting, Mother Teresa had founded the reformed Order of Carmelite nuns, called the Discalced (barefoot) Carmelites, which was more strictly ascetic and more given to a life of contemplation than the parent Order. She had been searching for a few monks to serve as confessors and guides to her nuns in a second convent to be established at Medina; and, learning of Fray Juan through another priest, Antonio de Heredia, she met with him, and convinced him to join the new, more primitive, Order. This Juan did gladly, for he had been dissatisfied with the laxity of his own Rule and was eagerly searching for a means to enter into a life more given to solitude and the way of prayer. There, he took a new name: Juan de la Cruz, “John of the Cross.”

The success and expansion of the Reformed Order was not, however, without its troubles. The spreading fame of the ascetic Order called forth much resentment and opposition from the conservative elements of the Church. Especially fierce was the opposition of the Friars of the Calced, or unreformed, Carmelite Order, who felt that they were being devalued, or even replaced, by the new Order. In retaliation. Fray Juan and some of his brother monks were kidnapped by the Calced Brothers and were imprisoned in a Calced priory. There, Juan was flogged mercilessly, and then taken blindfolded to the city of Toledo―that infamous bastion of the Inquisition. There, a trial was held, presided over by Tostado, in which Juan was found guilty of rebellion and contumacy and condemned to an unspecified term of imprisonment. He was thrown into a closet, six feet by ten feet, which had served as a privy to an adjoining guest-chamber. This was in December of 1557. His home for the next nine months was this small stone privy-closet, lit only by a small hole at the top.

He was given a board covered by a rug to lie on and was fed on scraps of dry bread and an occasional sardine. He was given no bath or change of clothes during this entire time, so he became covered by lice and sores. During the winter months, he endured freezing cold, and in the summer months the stifling heat. On Fridays, which were Feast days, he was taken to the refectory where the friars sat at their table and made to kneel in the center of the room, taking a bit of dry bread and water like a dog. At this time, the Prior would admonish and taunt Juan with reproaches, after which all the monks would in turn strike him vigorously across his bared shoulders with a cane. Juan bore all this without a word.

It was during this nine-month period in his tiny cell that Juan wrote down, on scraps of paper given to him by a sympathetic jailer, the verses which were to comprise his most famous and exquisite poetry on the “dark night” of the soul, and its union with its Lord. It was there, in this most wretched physical state, that his mind, freed from all but God, his only solace, experienced that illumination which he calls the “divine marriage” of the soul and God. Much later, when he was asked by a nun if any consolations had been given him during his imprisonment, he replied, “My daughter, one single grace of those that God gave me there could not be paid for by many years of prison.”

The desire for God, says Juan, “is the preparation for union with Him…. If a person is seeking God, his Beloved is seeking him much more. And if a soul directs to God its loving desires, God sends forth His fragrance by which He draws it and makes it run after Him.

What God communicates to the soul in this intimate union is totally beyond words. One can say nothing about it just as one can say nothing about God Himself that resembles Him. For in the transformation of the soul in God, it is God who communicates Himself with admirable glory. In this transformation, the two become one, as we would say of the window united with the ray of sunlight, or of the coal with the fire, or of the starlight with the light of the Sun….

The soul thereby becomes divine, becomes God, through participation, insofar as is possible in this life The union wrought between the two natures, and the communication of the divine to the human in this state is such that even though neither changes their being, both appear to be God.

Having been made one with God, the soul is somehow God through participation. Although it is not God as perfectly as it will be in the next life, it is like the shadow of God. Being the shadow of God through this substantial transformation, it performs in this measure in God and through God what He, through Himself, does in it. For the will of the two is one will, and thus God’s operation and the soul’s is one.

In the inner wine cellar
I drank of my Beloved; and, when I went abroad Through all this valley,
I no longer knew anything,
And lost the herd which I was following.

There He gave me His breast.
There He taught me a sweet and living knowledge; And I gave myself to Him,
Keeping nothing back.
There I promised to be His bride.

Now I occupy my soul
And all my energy in His service; I no longer tend the herd,
Nor have I any other work
Now that my every act is love.

…What more do you want, O soul! And what else do you search for outside, when within yourself you possess your riches, delights, satisfactions, fullness, and kingdom ―your Beloved whom you desire and seek? Be joyful and gladdened in your interior recollection with Him, for you have Him so close to you.  Desire Him there, adore Him there.  Do not go in pursuit of Him outside yourself. You will only become distracted and wearied thereby, and you shall not find Him, nor enjoy Him more securely, nor sooner, nor more intimately than by seeking Him within you.”

Quoted from The History of Mysticism by Swami Abhayananda.

Venkataraman Ayyar, later to be known as Ramana Maharshi, was born on December 29, 1879, in the Tamil region of southern India and enjoyed his childhood in a typical middle-class Brahmin family.  He was not particularly scholarly, but he was athletic, with an interest in football, wrestling, and swimming.

As a teenager, he was not specifically drawn to religious literature, but became inexplicably intrigued when, at around the age of sixteen, he heard the name of a holy place called Arunachala in a town called Tiruvannamalai and felt a strong attraction to it. As it turned out, he would spend the rest of his life in that legendary place. Arunachala was the name of a large hill, the focal point of Tiruvannamalai, and a place of pilgrimage for many holy men and devotees.

Around this same time, Venkataraman read a book which contained the stories of the lives of sixty-three Tamil saints, and he was thrilled to learn of the possibility of a life devoted to the pursuit of God. The burning love, faith and renunciation attributed to these storied saints filled him with admiration and inspiration. Thereafter, he began making regular visits to the Meenakshi Temple at Madura, and he began to experience a deep introspective meditation on the meaning of his own existence.

At the age of seventeen, he had a pivotal experience, which much later he described in this way:

“It was about six weeks before I left Madura for good that the great change in my life took place. It was quite sudden. I was sitting alone in a room on the first floor of my uncle’s house. I seldom had any sickness, and on that day, there was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden violent fear of death overtook me. There was nothing in my state of health to account for it, and I did not try to account for it or to find out whether there was any reason for the fear. I just felt “I am going to die” and began thinking what to do about it.  It did not occur to me to consult a doctor, or my elders or friends; I felt that I had to solve the problem myself, there and then.

The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: “Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? The body dies.” And I at once dramatized the occurrence of death. I lay with my limbs stretched out stiff as though rigor mortis had set in and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the enquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, so that neither the word “I” nor any other word could be uttered. “Well then,” I said to myself, “this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body am I dead? Is the body I? It is silent and inert, but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of the ‘I’ within me, apart from it. So, I am Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. That means I am the deathless Spirit.” All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly, almost without thought process. “I” was something very real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with my body was centered on that “I”. From that moment onwards the “I” or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death had vanished once and for all. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time on.”

Venkataraman then resolved to leave home and take refuge in Tiruvannamalai. And so, at the age of seventeen, he left behind his family and the life he had known up to that time for a destination of which he had only heard, so strong was his conviction, faith, and inner need to devote his life to the pursuit of Self-knowledge! After three days, during which he missed a train connection, and walked many miles, he came at last, on the first of September, to the gates of the great temple at Arunachala. There he sat before the image in the shrine, and dedicated his life anew to the renunciant’s life, the life in quest of God.

After some time, Venkataraman became known to the other monks at Arunachala as Ramana Swami, which would later become “Ramana Maharshi (great rishi, or seer)”.  Often, he was addressed simply as “Bhagavan (Lord)”.  Bhagavan remained in that ashram at Arunachala, giving darshan and answering questions, till the end of his life—which came in 1950.

Quoted from The History of Mysticism by Swami Abhayananda.

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907 – 1973) was a British-American poet, playwright, critic, and librettist, considered to be one of the greatest writers of the 20^th century. Auden’s poetry covered a range of subjects, including love, political and social themes, cultural and psychological themes, and religious themes.  Auden won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for The Age of Anxiety, a long poem about humankind’s quest to find meaning and identity in a changing, industrialized world.

Auden had a number of spiritual experiences during the 1930s and 1940s, highlighting a particularly formative mystical experience that occurred when he was 26 years of age:

“One fine summer night in June 1933 I was sitting on a lawn after dinner with three colleagues, two women and one man.  We liked each other well enough but we were certainly not intimate friends, nor had any one of us a sexual interest in another.  Incidentally, we had not drunk any alcohol.  We were talking casually about everyday matters when, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, something happened. I felt myself invaded by a power which, though I consented to it, was irresistible and certainly not mine. For the first time in my life I knew exactly—because, thanks to the power, I was doing it—what it means to love one’s neighbor as oneself…. My personal feelings towards them were unchanged—they were still colleagues, not intimate friends—but I felt their existence as themselves to be of infinite value and rejoiced in it.”

Although Auden provided the above-referenced account of his mystical experience, he believed such experiences to be ineffable, writing that, “I don’t think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.”

Quoted from Forewords and Afterwards by W.H. Auden.

Photo Credit:  Portrait of W.H. Auden from the Van Vechten Collection at the U.S. Library of Congress.