Archives: Third Party Stories

Khwaja Shams-ud-Din Muhammad Hafez-e Shirazi, known as Hafez or Hafiz (1325/26 – 1389/90), was a Persian poet and mystic. Among Hafez’s most treasured poems are his short love songs called ghazals, which focus largely on faith and The Beloved (God).  His collected works are regarded as a pinnacle of Persian literature.  They can be found in most homes in Iran and are also enjoyed throughout the world.  Many of Hafiz’s poems are available online for free here:  Poems From the Divan of Hafiz.

While few details of Hafez’s life are known, it is said that, by listening to his father’s recitations, Hafez learned the Qur’an by heart at a young age (“Hafez” means “memorizer of the holy book”).  Hafez was a natural poet, and, in his early twenties, he gained the patronage of a succession of rulers and wealthy noblemen.  Hafez then worked as a court poet and a college professor at a religious college founded by one of his benefactors.  Hafez married and had at least one son (both his wife and son passed away during Hafez’s life).

Hafez was first and foremost a spiritual seeker and, ultimately, a Sufi master.  Early in his life, Hafez became a disciple of the master Sufi teacher Muhammad Attar.  Attar guided Hafez through a long and trying spiritual apprenticeship that lasted most of Hafez’s adult years.  At the age of 60, after forty years of discipleship, Hafez is said to have begun a forty-day-and-night vigil by sitting in a circle which he had drawn for himself.  On the 40th day, he met with Muhammad Attar and was offered a cup of wine, which was symbolic of the embodiment of perfect love, Hafez himself.  Hafez then attained cosmic consciousness (god-realization).

In the following poem, Hafez describes the process of growing to a state mystical consciousness:

“Little by little,
You will turn into stars.

Even then, my dear,
You will only be
A crawling infant,
Still skinning your knees on God.

Little by little,
You will turn into
The whole sweet, amorous Universe.
In heat
On a wild spring night.

And become so free
In a wonderful, secret
And pure Love
That flows
From a conscious,
One-pointed,
Infinite need for Light.

Even then, my dear,
The Beloved will have fulfilled
Just a fraction,
Just a fraction!
Of a promise
He wrote upon your heart.

When your soul begins
To Ever bloom and laugh
And spin in Eternal Ecstasy––

O little by little,
You will turn into God.”

In the poem below, Hafez wrote of his mystical state of perfect love and perfect knowing:

“I hear the voice
Of every creature and plant,
Every world and sun and galaxy––
Singing the Beloved’s name!”

From Daniel Ladinksy’s renderings of Hafiz, I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy.

Image Credit: Hafez from www.irania.eu.

Akka Mahadevi (1130 – 1160) was an Indian poet and Bhakti mystic, i.e., a mystic committed to the personal expression of devotion to God is in order to become at one with Him.  She was also an important 12^th century advocator of gender equality.  Akka Mahadevi achieved “Aikya” or Oneness with lord Shiva (i.e., mystical union with The Divine) at the age of 20.  “Akka”, meaning “elder Sister”, was an honorific given to her by other fellow saints who highly valued her contributions to the period’s spiritual discussions at the Anubhava Mantapa (an academy of mystics, saints and philosophers).

Akka Mahadevi’s 430 existing Vachana poems (a form of spontaneous mystical poetry), and her two short writings, Mantrogopya and the Yogangatrividhi, are considered her most notable contribution to Kannada literature (Kannanda is an official language of the Indian state of Karnatak).  Akka Mahadevi’s poems convey to people how to achieve eternal happiness.

In the following poem, Akka Mahadevi notes the difficulty and inadequacy of describing her mystical consciousness through language:

“I do not call it his sign,
I do not call it becoming one with his sign.
I do not call it union,
I do not call it harmony with union.
I do not say something has happened,
I do not say nothing has happened.
I will not name it You,
I will not name it I.
Now that the White Jasmine Lord is myself,
What use for words at all?”

In another of Akka Mahadevi’s poems, she asks what is left to do or know during the state of mystical union:

“When the body becomes Your mirror,
how can it serve?

When the mind becomes Your Mind,
what is left to remember?

Once my life is Your gesture,
how can I pray?

When all my awareness is Yours,
what can there be to know?

I became you, Lord, and forgot You.”

Quoted by Jane Hirshfield in Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women.

Painting Credit: Akka Mahadevi from www.vsne.org.

Gopi Krishna (1903 – 1984) was an Indian yogi, mystic, writer, teacher, and social reformer who was committed to the evolution of human consciousness and to the establishment and continuance of world peace.  Krishna worked in state government, and he lived as a householder, marrying and raising a family.  Early in his career, Krishna also became the leader of a social organization devoted to helping the disadvantaged in his community, particularly with respect to the well-being and rights of women.

Krishna’s spiritual experiences began early in life.  When he was eight, he was spontaneously overtaken with the question, “What am I?”.  He then fainted and fell to the ground.  Days later, Krishna had an extraordinarily vivid dream in which he was surrounded by ethereal beings and found himself transformed in an atmosphere of luminous serenity.  He concluded that this image was the answer to his question.  At 34 years of age, Krishna experienced a sudden and forceful Kundalini awakening (an awakening of spiritual energy, emanating from the base of the spine).  In his autobiography, Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man (now available under the title Living with Kundalini), Krishna described this experience, which occurred during a morning meditation:

“Suddenly, with a roar like that of a waterfall, I felt a stream of liquid light entering my brain through the spinal cord.

Entirely unprepared for such a development, I was completely taken by surprise; but regaining my self-control, keeping my mind on the point of concentration.  The illumination grew brighter and brighter, the roaring louder, I experienced a rocking sensation and then felt myself slipping out of my body, entirely enveloped in a halo of light.  It is impossible to describe the experience accurately.  I felt the point of consciousness that was myself growing wider surrounded by waves of light.  It grew wider and wider, spreading outward while the body, normally the immediate object of its perception, appeared to have receded into the distance until I became entirely unconscious of it.  I was now all consciousness without any outline, without any idea of corporeal appendage, without any feeling or sensation coming from the senses, immersed in a sea of light simultaneously conscious and aware at every point, spread out, as it were, in all directions without any barrier or material obstruction.  I was no longer myself, or to be more accurate, no longer as I knew myself to be, a small point of awareness confined to a body, but instead was a vast circle of consciousness in which the body was but a point, bathed in light and in a state of exultation and happiness impossible to describe.”

Twelve years after his first experience – and after years of working to achieve spiritual strength – Gopi Krishna had another mystical experience.  This experience, which is recounted below, began as he was walking home a friend and colleague, hoping to rid himself “of a slight depression” that he felt at the time.

“We walked leisurely, discussing our work, when suddenly while crossing the Tawi bridge I felt a mood of deep absorption settling upon me until I almost lost touch with my surroundings.  I no longer heard the voice of my companion; she seemed to have receded into the distance, though walking by my side.  Near me, in a blaze of brilliant light, I suddenly felt what seemed to be a mighty conscious presence, sprung from nowhere, encompassing me and overshadowing all the objects around, from which two lines of a beautiful verse in Kashmiri poured out to float before my vision, like luminous writing in the air, disappearing as suddenly as they had come.

When I came to myself, I found the girl looking at me in blank amazement, bewildered by my abrupt silence and the expression of utter detachment on my face.  Without revealing to hear all that had happened, I repeated the verse, saying that it had all of a sudden taken form in my mind in spite of myself, and that it accounted for the break in our conversation.

She listened in surprise, struck by the beauty of the rhyme, weighing every word, and then said that it was indeed nothing short of miraculous for one who had never been favored by the muse before to compose so exquisite a verse on the very first attempt with such lightening rapidity.  I heard her in silence, carried away by the profundity of the experience I had just gone through.  Until that hour, all I had experienced of the superconscious was purely subjective, neither demonstrable to nor verifiable by others.  But now, for the first time I had before me a tangible proof of the change that had occurred in me, unintelligible to and independently of my surface consciousness.

After escorting my companion to her destination I returned to my residence in time for dinner…

In the middle of the meal, while still in [a] condition of entrancement, I stopped abruptly, contemplating with awe and amazement, which made the hair on my skin stand on end, a marvelous phenomenon in progress in the depths of my being.  Without any effort on my part, and while seated comfortably on a chair, I had gradually passed off, without becoming aware of it, into a condition of exaltation and self-expansion similar to that which I had experienced on the very first occasion, in December 1937, with the modification that in place of the roaring noise in my ears there was now a cadence like the humming of a swarm of bees, enchanting and melodious, and the encircling glow was replaced by a penetrating silvery radiance, already a feature of my being within and without.

The marvelous aspect of the condition lay in the sudden realization that, although linked to the body and surroundings, I had expanded in an indescribable manner into a titanic personality, conscious from within of an immediate and direct contact with an intensely conscious universe, a wonderful inexpressible immanence all around me.  My body, the chair I was sitting on, the table in front of me, the room enclosed by walls, the lawn outside and the space beyond, including earth and sky, appeared to be most amazingly mere phantoms in this real, interpenetrating, and all-pervasive ocean of existence which, to explain the most incredible part of it as best I can, seemed to be simultaneously unbounded, stretching out immeasurably in all directions, and yet no bigger than an infinitely small point.

From this marvelous point, the entire existence, of which my body and its surroundings were but a part, poured out like radiation, as if a reflection as vast as my conception of the cosmos were thrown out upon infinity by a projector no bigger than a pinpoint, the entire intensely active and gigantic world picture dependent on the beams issuing from it.  The shoreless ocean of consciousness which I was now immersed appeared infinitely large and infinitely small at the same time – large when considered in relation to the world picture floating in it and small when considered in itself, measureless, without form or size – nothing and yet everything.

It was an amazing and staggering experience for which I can cite no parallel and no simile, an experience beyond all and everything belonging to this world conceivable by the mind or perceptible to the senses.  I was intensely aware internally of a marvelous being so concentratedly and massively conscious as to outluster and outstature infinitely the cosmic image present before me, not only in point of extent and brightness, but in point of reality and substance as well. The phenomenal world, ceaselessly in motion, characterized by creation, incessant change, and dissolution, receded into the background and assumed the appearance of an extremely thin, rapidly melting layer of foam upon a substantial rolling ocean of life, a veil of exceedingly fine vapor before an infinitely large conscious sun, constituting a complete reversal of the relationship between the world and the limited human consciousness.  It showed the previous all-dominating cosmos reduced to a state of transitory appearance, and the formerly care-ridden point of awareness, circumscribed by the body, grown to the spacious dimensions of a mighty universe and the exalted stature of a majestic immanence before which the material cosmos shrank to the subordinate position of an evanescent and illusive appendage.”

Quoted from Gopi Krishna’s Living with Kundalini in Moments of Enlightenment: Stories from Ancient And Modern Masters by Robert Ullman & Judyth Reichenberg-Ullman.

Irina Starr (1911 – 2002) was an American mystic, spiritual writer, and teacher who lived in the Los Angeles, CA area.  She described her profound and lengthy mystical experience in her book The Sound of Light.  Starr also wrote a number of other spiritual works, including With all thy heart: The sacred summoning; From these waters: The continuing renewal; and The Pilgrim’s Path series.

In one of her passages in The Sound of Light, Irina Starr described the beginning of one of her mystical experiences, which lasted for four days:

“The radiance which permeated my eyelids and suffused the entire room caught me unawares.  Everything around me had come to life in some wondrous way and was lit from within with a moving, living, radiance.  It was somewhat as it must be with one blinded, whose vision is first restored.

I was obviously seeing with vision other than the purely physical, but what I saw did not conflict with what my ordinary vision registered any more than the central vision conflicts with the peripheral; or close, medium, and far ranges of vision conflict with one another.  I saw objects in the ordinary way as well as with some extraordinary extension of the visual faculty; I saw into them with an inner vision and it was this inner sight which revealed the commonplace objects around me to be of the most breath-taking beauty. …

The one thing which was, above all, significant was that everything was literally alive; the light [that permeated all] was living, pulsating, and in some way I could not qiote grasp, intelligent.  The true substance of all I could see was this living light, beautiful beyond words.  This awareness of beauty so intense as to be nearly unbearable was not to leave me for four days in which I beheld the world with extended sight.

As I gazed about the room on that first morning, one of the things which particularly fascinated me was that there was no essential difference between that which was inanimate – only in form and function, not in basic substance, for there was only one Substance, that living, knowing, Light which breathed out from everything.  I was aware of the outward difference of each object which drew my attention, but that superficial difference in no way concealed or conflicted with the one substance or living light which composed each alike.  Ever since I could remember, I had accepted the fact of the one-ness of all life and manifestation, but it was purely theoretical, an intellectually accepted condition.  But here I was literally beholding the fact itself so very far beyond any concept I had ever held.

There was such beauty in all that met my eyes that I could have remained for hours gazing at any one thing and the feelings of joy and wonder were so strong they seemed to generate a peculiar pain.  I recall that I was near-bursting with a tremendous, non-conceptual, understanding of life – like a balloon which expanded to its utmost capacity – so that my mind was strained with this great, formless ‘knowing’ and I actually prayed, Enough!…

I knew that I could never explain or transmit verbally the essence of what was transpiring in my consciousness, I could only be the truth, the living expression of inner revelation, and as such it would be transmitted in its own way, beyond my knowing or intent…It is a wondrous and mysterious sort of divine chemical process which takes place in the human and his orbit as truth moves from concept into living experience.  We are holy factories in more ways than one.”

After her life-transforming experiences, Irina Starr stated that, “I was not the same person I had been one short week before.  Nor could I ever experience my world again but in a new and revelatory manner; I had emerged into a dawn-fresh and excitingly life-filled dimension.”

Photo Credit:  Irina Starr from The Supreme Awakening by Craig Pearson, Ph.D.

Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886) was a prolific and private American poet.  In her youth, Dickinson studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years and then spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family’s home in Amherst, MA.  Dickinson lived largely a reclusive life, writing nearly 1,800 poems, fewer than a dozen of which were published during her lifetime.

Dickinson’s poems are unique for the period in which she lived:  they contain short lines, they generally lack titles, and they frequently use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.  Many of Dickinson’s poems deal with themes of death and immortality, which were two recurring topics in her letters to friends.

In one of her poems, Dickinson wrote of the limitlessness of the “brain”, which today most would call the mind (as distinct from the physical organ that is the brain):

“The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—

The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As Sponges—Buckets—do—

The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—”

Dickinson described the mystical moments of her soul in the following poem:

“The Soul’s Superior instants
Occur to Her—alone—
When friend—and Earth’s occasion
Have infinite withdrawn—

Or She—Herself—ascended
To too remote a Height
For lower Recognition
Than Her Omnipotent—

This Mortal Abolition
Is seldom—but as fair
As Apparition—subject
To Autocratic Air—

Eternity’s disclosure
To favorites—a few—
Of the Colossal substance
Of Immortality”

Quoted by Stephen Mitchell in The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry.

Wumen Huikai, also known as Wu-men (1183–1260), was a Song period Chan master (Chan is a school of Mahayana Buddhism developed in China starting in the 6th century).  He was the head monk of Longxiang monastery.

Zen master Yuelin Shiguan (1143–1217) gave Wu-men the koan “Zhaozhou’s dog”, with which Wu-men struggled for six years before he finally attained realization/mystical consciousness.  Wu-men is most well-known for being the compiler of, and commentator on, “The Gateless Gate”, a collection of 48 koans (paradoxical anecdotes or riddles used to provoke enlightenment).

After his enlightenment experience, Wu-men wrote the following poem (as quoted by Robert Aitken in The Gateless Barrier: The Wu-Men Kuna):

“A thunderclap under the clear blue sky
All beings on earth open their eyes;
Everything under heaven bows together;
Mount Sumeru leaps up and dances.”

Wu-men further described his nondual, mystical consciousness as follows (as quoted by Stephen Mitchell in The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry):

“One instant is eternity;
eternity is the now.
When you see through this one instant,
you see through the one who sees.”

Jianzhi Sengcan (? – 606), also known is Seng-ts’an, was an influential Chan master (Chan is a school of Mahayana Buddhism developed in China starting in the 6th century).  Shortly after his death, Sengcan was given the honorary title Jianzhi (“Mirrorlike Wisdom”) by the Emperor of the time, Xuan Zong.

Sengcan is generally regarded as the author of the famous Chan poem, “Inscription on Faith in Mind” (also translated as “The Mind of Absolute Trust”), which deals with the principles of non-duality and the notion of emptiness.  This poem also reveals Taoism’s influence on Chan.

In his poem, “The Mind of Absolute Trust”, Jianzhi Sengcan described mystical consciousness (an account that presumably fits his experience) as follows:

“For the mind in harmony with the Tao,
all selfishness disappears.
With not even a trace of self-doubt,
you can trust the universe completely.
All at once you are free,
with nothing left to hold on to.
All is empty, brilliant,
perfect in its own being.
In the world of things as they are,
there is no self, no non-self.
If you want to describe its essence,
the best you can say is ‘Not-two.’
In this ‘Not-two’ nothing is separate,
and nothing in the world is excluded.
The enlightened of all times and places
have entered into this truth.
In it there is no gain or loss;
one instant is ten thousand years.
There is no here, no there;
infinity is right before your eyes.
The tiny is as large as the vast
when objective boundaries have vanished;
the vast is as small as the tiny
when you don’t have external limits.
Being is an aspect of non-being;
non-being is no different from being.
Until you understand this truth,
you won’t see anything clearly.
One is all; all
are one. When you realize this,
what reason for holiness or wisdom?
The mind of absolute trust
is beyond all thought, all striving,
is perfectly at peace, for in it
there is no yesterday, no today, no tomorrow.”

Quoted by Stephen Mitchell in The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry.

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (September, 30 1207 – December, 17 1273), known more popularly in the English-speaking world simply as Rumi, was a Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic.  Rumi’s influence transcends national borders and ethnic groups:  Iranians, Turks, Cappadocian Greeks, Afghans, Tajiks, other Central Asian Muslims, the Muslims of South Asia, and many other groups have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries.  Rumi’s poems have been widely translated into many of the world’s languages.  In recent years, Western interest in, and appreciation for, Rumi’s writings has grown enormously – so much so, that Rumi has been described as the “most popular poet in America.” Many of Rumi’s poems are available online for free here:  Wisdom of the East:  The Persian Mystics—Jalalud-Din Rumi.

In his poetry, Rumi described his search for God and where he discovered The Beloved (as translated by Coleman Barks):

“I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross and therein I found Him not.
I went into the ancient temples of idolatry; no trace of Him was there.
I entered the mountain cave of Hira and then went as far as Qandhar but God I found not.
With set purpose I fared to the summit of Mount Caucasus and found there only ‘anqa’s habitation.
Then I directed my search to the Kaaba, the resort of old and young; God was not there even.
Turning to philosophy I inquired about him from ibn Sina but found Him not within his range.
I fared then to the scene of the Prophet’s experience of a great divine manifestation only a ‘two bow-lengths’ distance from him’ but God was not there even in that exalted court.
Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.”

Through his poem, “Unity of Spirit”, Rumi described how in mystical union all becomes One (as translated by R.A. Nicholson):

“When the rose is dead and the garden ravaged, where shall we find the perfume of the rose?  In rose-water.
Inasmuch as God comes not into sight, the prophets are His vicars [i.e., representatives].
Do not mistake me!  ’Tis wrong to think that the vicar and He Whom the vicar represents are two.
To the form-worshipper they are two; when you have escaped from consciousness of form, they are One.
Whilst you regard the form, you are seeing double:  look, not at the eyes, but at the light which flows from them.
You cannot distinguish the lights of ten lamps burning together, so long as your face is set towards this light alone.
In things spiritual there is no partition, no number, no individuals.
How sweet is the oneness of the Friend [i.e., God] with His friends [i.e, creation]!
Catch the spirit and clasp it to your bosom.
Mortify rebellious form till it wastes away:  unearth the treasure of Unity!”

Claire Myers Owens (1896 – 1983) was a novelist, lecturer, and author of non-fiction works about self-realization and Zen Buddhism. In 1949, Owens experienced a spiritual awakening that changed the course of her life. In an effort to make sense of her experience, Owens studied psychology, particularly the work of Carl Jung. Owens described her spiritual awakening in her second published book, Awakening to the Good. Her work was praised by prominent psychologists and philosophers who were pioneers in the human potential movement, such as Abraham Maslow, Carl Jung, and Aldous Huxley. Owens said of herself that she was “the happiest person she ever met.”

Claire Myers Owens wrote the following of the mystical union that she experienced while she was working at her writing desk on a quiet morning:

“Suddenly the entire room was filled with a great golden light, the whole world was filled with nothing but light. There was nothing anywhere except this effulgent light and my own small kernel of the self. The ordinary ‘I’ ceased to exist. Nothing of me remained but a mere nugget of consciousness. It felt as if some vast transcendent force was invading me without my volition, as if all the immanent good lying latent within me began to pour forth in a stream, to form a moving circle with the universal principle. My self began to dissolve into the light that was like a great golden all-pervasive fog. It was a mystical moment of union with the mysterious infinite, with all things, all people.”

Quoted by Louann Stahl in A Most Surprising Song: Exploring The Mystical Experience.

Photo Credit:  Claire Myers Owens from thebooktree.com.

Zhou Xuanjing (12^th century) was a Chinese Taoist whose curiosity about the Way [i.e., The Absolute or The Divine] was initially awakened when she dreamt that she was immersed in a scarlet mist (considered an auspicious sign) just before the birth of her son, Wang Chuyi, who would ultimately become a Taoist teacher of the highest rank.  Zhou Xuanjing became a disciple of the same teacher who would guide Wang Chuyi, and the teacher eventually gave Zhou Xuanjing the tile “Free Human of Mystic Peace.”

Zhou Xuanjing wrote of her mystical consciousness in the following poem:

“Meditating at midnight,
Meditating at noon,
A mind like autumn
Comes to the Way’s [i.e., The Absolute’s] deep heart.
Under motionless waves,
Fish and dragons freely leap.
In the sky without limits,
Only the moonlight stays.”

Quoted by Jane Hirshfield in Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women.

Image Credit: Painting of a Chinese woman from the Yuan Dynasty from http://arts.cultural-china.com.