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394-095_B.mp3
Pitts Theology Library
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I'd like to begin today by reading something that summarizes and in the form of an allegory the
essence of what we've been talking about touching upon the ground of unity that sustains and
supports all external manifestations of life. Sometimes, I think it is given to the poet and to a
certain kind of literary dreamer to give expression to insights that defy the more rational analysis,
either the philosopher or the theologian. And this is written by a South African woman of
English background, and her name is Olive Schreiner. Her period is 1855 to 1921.
A man cried up to God, and God sent down an angel to help him. And the angel came back and
said to God, I cannot help that man, and God said, how is it with him? And the angel said, he
cries out continually that someone has injured him, and he would forgive him, and he cannot do
it. God said, what have you done for him?
The angel said, I've done everything. I took him by the hand, and I said, look, when other men
speak ill of that man, do you speak well of him? Secretly in ways he shall not know, serve him.
If you have anything you value, share it with him. So serving him, you'd at last come to feel
possession in him, and you will forgive him, and the man said, I'll do it.
Afterwards, as I passed by in the dark of night, I heard one crying out, I have done all. It helps
nothing. My speaking well of him helps me not at all. If I share my heart's blood with him, is the
burning within me less? I cannot forgive. I cannot forgive. Oh, God, I cannot forgive.
I said to him, look back on all your past. See from your childhood all smallness, all indirectness
that has been yours. Look well at it, and in it's light, do you not see every man your brother? He
looked, and he said, yes, you're right. I too have failed. I forgive my fellow.
Go, I am satisfied. I have forgiven, and he laid him down peacefully and folded his hands on his
breast, and I thought it was well with him. But scarcely had my wings rustled, and I turned to
come up here, when I heard one crying out on Earth again. I cannot forgive. I cannot forgive. Oh
God, God, I cannot forgive.
It is better to die than to hate. I cannot forgive. I can not do it. And I went and stood outside his
door in the dark, and I heard him cry, I have not sinned so, not so. If I've torn my fellow's flesh
ever so little, and I've kneeled down and kissed the wound with my mouth till it was healed. I
have not willed that any soul should be lost through hate of me.
If they have but fancied that I wrong them, I have lain down on the ground before them. That
they might tread on me and so seeing my humiliation forgive and not be lost to hating me. They
have not cared that my soul should be lost. They have not willed to save me. They have not tried
that I should forgive them.
I said to him, be thou content then. Do not forgive. Forget this soul and its injury. Go on your
way. In the next world, perhaps, he cried, go from me.
You understand nothing. What is the next world to me? I am lost now, today. I cannot see the
sunlight shine. The dust is in my throat. The sand is in my eyes. Go from me. You know nothing.
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Oh, once again, before I die to see that the world is beautiful. Oh, God, God, I cannot live and
not love. I cannot live and hate. Oh, God, God, God. So I left him crying, and I came back up
here.
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And God said, this man's soul must be saved, and the angel said, how? And God said, you go
down and save it, and the angel said, what more shall I do? Then, God bent down and whispered
in the angel's ear, and the angel spread out its wings and went down to earth. The angel went
down and found the man with a bitter heart and took him by the hand and led him to a certain
spot-- and now follow this. Now, the man wist not where it was the angel would take him, nor
what he would show him there.
And when they came, the angel shaded the man's eyes with his wing, and when he moved it, the
man saw somewhat on the earth before them. For God had given it to that angel to unclothe a
human soul, to take from it all those outward attributes of form and color and age and sex.
Whereby one man is known from among his fellows and is marked off from the rest, and the soul
laid bare before them, bare as a man turning his eye inwards beholds himself.
They saw its past, its childhood, the tiny life with the dew upon it. They saw its youth when the
dew with melting, and the creature raised its mouth to drink from a cup too large for it, and they
saw how the water spilt. They saw its hopes that were never realized. They saw its hours of
intellectual blindness men call sin. They saw its hours of all-radiating insight, which men call
righteousness.
They saw its hour of strength, when it leaped to its feet crying, I am omnipotent. Its hour of
weakness, when it fell to the earth and grasped dust only. They saw what it might have been but
never would be. And the man bent forward, and the angel said, what is it? And he answered, it is
I. It is myself, and he went forward as if he would have lain as heart against it, but the angel held
him back and covered his eyes.
Now, God had given power to the angel further to unclothe that soul, to take from it all those
outward attributes of time and place and circumstance. Whereby the individual life is marked off
from the life of the whole. Again, the angel uncovered the man's eyes, and he looked.
He saw before him that which in its tiny drop reflects the whole universe. He saw that which
mocks within itself the step of the furthest star and tells how the crystal grows underground
where no eye has seen it. That which is where the germ in the egg stirs which moves the
outstretched fingers of the little newborn babe and keeps the leaves of the trees pointing upward.
Which moves where the jellyfish sail alone on the sunny seas and is where the lichens form on
the mountain drop. And the man looked, and the angel touched him, but the man bowed his head
and shuddered.
He whispered, it is God, and the angel re-covered the man's eyes. And when he uncovered them,
there was someone walking from them a little way off, for the angel had re-clothed the soul in its
outward form and vesture. And the man knew who it was, and the angel said, do you know him?
And the man said, oh yes, I know him, and he looked after the figure.
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And the angel said, have you forgiven him? But the man said, how beautiful my brother is, and
the angel looked into the man's eyes, and he shaded is own face with his wing from the light. He
laughed softly and went up to God. But the men were together on the earth.
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Now, before we start our discussion, the point at which we stopped yesterday, Do you have any
questions to raise about the creative encounter? Have you found it, or is it still lost in the
bookstore? All right. There's a saying that comes from some part of the Old Testament,
allegedly, but it is this. That if Israel is not saved, Jacob will not lose his reward. So there it is.
Now, I'd like to begin by giving you one reference, a book which, if you are interested in
pursuing our search, which obviously can hardly be done in three weeks. There is a book written
by a Catholic priest which represents, from my point of view, the best composite of the generic
interpretation of mysticism with authentic source quotations. It is called Varieties of Mystic
Religion by Father Elmer O'Brien, Varieties of Mystic Religion by Father Elmer O'Brien. It's a
Holt Rinehart publication published in 1964, and it sells for $7.50.
Now, at the close of our discussion, we were dealing with the fact that it is the mystic's insight
that what he experiences which gives to him a sense of encounter with that which is ultimate.
And if he be a certain kind of religious man, he will label that ultimate by calling it God. And I
was suggesting to you that this element of which is the mystic speaks is regarded by him and by
many other people who think deeply on the subject as that which is essentially the givenness of
God.
It is-- to use a figure-- it is an increment which is basic structural to his very life, his very
essence. It isn't something that he achieves initially, but it is something that is given. It is a
manifest of the creator in the creature. And all that he, the mystic, feels under necessity to do is
to establish primary contact with this given increment which is inherent in him.
In one sense then, he shares this as a part of creation. It is the signature of the creator that is
inherent in his conscious. He may realize it by becoming aware of it, or its awareness may be
forced upon him in some sudden moment of illumination. Or a man may live his entire life
without becoming other than vaguely aware of the fact that there are moments when he seems to
be so much more than what he is at any given time, the various names by which this is given.
Sometimes, there are those who feel that a man becomes aware of this at a moment of
inspiration, for instance which gives to whatever the problem of his mind may be an
illumination.
What the orthodox-- what originally the Quakers referred to following the leadership or the
guidance of George Fox. The inner light, the inner light which lighteth every man that cometh
into the world, picking up a phrase or an intimation from the fourth gospel, the Gospel of John.
That this light, this inner light, is a part of the givenness of God. And that it is not only present in
human life, but it is a part of the totality of the experience of all living things. And indeed, there
are some people who say, who not only include among living things things that have specific
consciousness, like cats, dog, snakes, mice, flies, but that every living thing, trees, flowers.
You may have read a year or two ago it was rather popularized in many magazines about the
man in New York whose name I don't remember, but he's the man who developed the polygraph
machine. And in his experiments, he discovered that if he attached the wires of the polygraph
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machine to the plants in his office, that the machine would register emotions in the plant that
were identical or their reaction to emotions that were in the man himself. And he received a great
deal of publicity about it, and an enterprising newspaper reporter came to check it out. So he
gave him a dry run.
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He said, my associate in the office can't stand these plants. Every time I go away for any length
of time, he refuses to water them. He forgets to water them, and there's a wall of hostility that is
generated in this office between him and the plants. He said, now, I'll test it out for you. So he
attached the wires to the plants, and then he buzzed and his associate came in the office. And as
soon as he appeared in the door, the indicator, ffft, went up like that.
I've experimented a little with this myself. When I lived in San Francisco before, I had about 20
roses in our backyard, and they were having a hard time to live. Because in the area of San
Francisco, where our home was located, there were only about two hours of sunshine on a day of
sunshine. And night did not ever quite come off, because the lights of the city, the fog would
reflect the lights. And we would stand in the backyard just as if it were a brightly-lighted,
moonlit evening.
So I developed the habit of going out before I retired in the evening. If I did not come in until
1:00 o'clock, 2:00 o'clock, whatever time it was before I went to bed, I went out to have a little
conversation with my roses. And I would say to them, now, I understand what a hard time you're
having, because you don't get enough sunlight. It's never dark, and living things must have
darkness as contrasted with light so that certain things that can happen to them. And growth can
only happen in the darkness and you don't that.
And there are rumors going around in the garden about your cousins in Portland, where the roses
are as large as saucers, and I don't want you to get an inferiority complex about this. So please
know that I believe in you, and I know you're doing the best you can. Just squeeze as much
energy out of the available sources as possible and do the best you can. And whenever I had a
blossom, I would very carefully give to them a little paean of praise for the fact that they'd finally
made it. It didn't look like much, but it represented the best that they could do.
And I know that of all the yards in our general neighborhood, I had the kind of rose blooming in
our garden that were not to be found in the rest of the neighborhood. Now, this may be, you see,
just a fiction in my mind. I don't know. I don't know where the reality is, but I do know that
before I started doing this, they were very-- I was full of compassion for them. But after I started
doing this, they stood on their own feet, and a rose is a rose, and it helped.
In other words, what I'm saying is that there are some who go even beyond the notion that this
givenness is a part of the basic residue, the ground, in all living things. Whether or not this is
true-- no, that's wrong. Whether or not it is a fact, it can be challenged, but perhaps the truth of it
remains untouched. Because the mystic affirms this sort of experience, that the ultimate is within
reach of every living thing. It is not merely in the reach of every living thing, but it is inherent in
every living thing.
This has exposed the mystic who affirms this to the accusation, or the judgment, that can best be
expressed by a term with which you're familiar named the Pantheism. Which seems to suggest as
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an inference from this that everything is God, and God is everything. This is the rather severe
judgment that is cast upon this point of view.
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Now, I do not think, in technical terms, that the accusation is valid, because it is the attitude, this
attitude towards all living thing, that suggests that everything that is living is in some very real
sense sacramental. That the presence of the givenness of the creator in his creation makes of the
object of creation the a sacrament. A sacrament, because it carries within itself the signature of
the ultimate, the signature of the creator, but the mystic doesn't stop there.
There's a second thing that follows, and that is that there is always the assumption, and more than
the assumption, they insistence, that it is possible to cultivate this givenness. That it can be the
sphere of its influence in the common life can be enlarged, that it can grow, not in quality but in
the area that it covers in the life. Back of this second assumption is the whole exercise that is
characteristic of the mystic endeavor that we call spiritual exercise, and what is the aim of the
spiritual exercise?
As you see, if we have time before we're through, the aim of the spiritual exercise is to widen the
sphere of influence-- how to say this-- to widen the area of awareness in the individual of this
presence. That even though it is a part of the givenness, the influence of it, the spread of it-- if I
may use that term-- the spread of it is related to the way in which the individual puts himself at
the disposal of it. That there is a way by which this consciousness can grow and become more
and more central and [INAUDIBLE] in the life of the individual.
The result of this feeling, notion, idea, experience is that almost always the mystic has for
himself a pattern of behavior that is constantly being refined, tested. The fulfillment of which, or
the exercise of which, gives to him a sense that this presence-- this mark, this sign, this
imprimatur, whatever word you want to use-- this givenness of the creator is in him. So that
when he begins to work at it, each man discovers what for him are the most effective disciplines.
And they call them, in the Roman Catholic tradition, for instance, they're called spiritual
exercises.
But a curious thing to bear in mind is that with the possible exception-- that the possible
exception of Meister Eckhart about whom we will spend our last times together-- no mystic
insists that there is a necessitous relationship between the spiritual exercise and the result. Now,
this is very important. This is crucial.
Let me say it again. That given the function of the significance of the exercises, the means by
which the individual seeks to widen, to enlarge, his awareness of the presence of God in him, the
exercises are very important, very critical, very crucial, and I think necessitous. But there is no
guarantee, inherent or implicit, in the exercises themselves which says that if I do this and this
and this, God will come or my awareness of God will increase.
For there is assumed that the movement of the creator, the movement of God in his creation, has
an element in it that is arbitrary and this bristles with difficulties. If I can follow the prescription
that has been tested by those who have gone this way, who've make this journey, than I ought to
therefore be able to receive what they receive. But if, by any activity on my part, I can bend the
will of the creator, then it puts the creator at the disposal not only of my needs but of my whims.
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And there's something very heady about that, if I know that I can follow a certain path, following
of which will guarantee that at a point along the way that which I seek will be available to me.
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There is no guarantee. This is important emphasis. But if I don't do it, then I may miss it. So the
problem always is am I following the right path, and by right, in this sense, am I following the
path that will lead me to the goal? Or is it possible for me to find out from within myself, from
the limited awareness that I have, can find out from that experience what I need to do in order to
enlarge the area of the sphere of his influence on my life?
Now, such questions as these are never quite resolved. One of the great formal steps along the
path is a word that you will encounter in your reading, if you do any, and that word is
detachment, detachment. And this is the point at which the whole concept of detachment
becomes relevant to the mystic's quest. For as paradoxical a contradictory as it sounds, as it
seems, if we start out saying, you see, that the whole world is resonant with God, with the
creator, then this includes all of my sense data, all of the reflective processes the mind. That I
may knock at any door of my senses and find, when the door opens, that I have this blessing, this
enlarged awareness, of the creator that's in me.
So the great systems have grown up around this. For instance, one of the great words in a man
like Eckhart is detachment, and he is a radical in this regard. He's he says that if I am able ever to
rid myself of creatureliness, then automatically, God fills me up. So that'd be his insistence is
that all the time I must disengage myself from all of the delusions of my senses. I must not
become so engrossed in the sense data which is mine that I lose the scent of the eternal.
This is inherent, for instance, in all of the notions which have to do with aestheticism, with the
laceration of the body, with the effort to rid one's self of stain of any sort. In Christianity, the
man perhaps who's had the greatest influence in this insistence is Saint Augustine. You may
recognize this at once. For coming as he did out of another system of thought, having the
experience that that's a thing that had tormented him all of his days, that had been responsible for
so much of his private and personal agony, was the battle which he had with his own body. That
the flesh, all of that sense experience, which for him not only a sense experiences but a sensual
experiences, that these were things which stood between him and actualizing the presence that
was in him.
And he felt that in so doing he was following the experience of Saint Paul, who in the seventh
chapter or Romans talks about the flesh and how wretched he was. And how the dichotomy
between the flesh and the spirit was so great that the flesh represented that which, in essence,
was a betrayal of the spirit. So this dualism, this conflict, turns up in particularly in Christianity
in the most extraordinary way.
But back of it, and the thing that I am insisting upon at this preliminary stage, is that detachment
becomes an important vehicle for ridding one's self of the things that divide, that separate, that
keep the individual from being constantly and fundamentally aware of the presence of God, or if
you want to say ground, in himself. And to betray that means that one turns his back on that
which is in him, the presence of the creator.
Now, how sound this is, is another question. I don't know what your reaction would be with it.
That the sense data, that the body, blocks the free-flowing.
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University of Redlands, Redlands, California
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1970s
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394-095_B
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Thurman, Howard
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On Mysticism, Part 4 (University of Redlands Course), 1973
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<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
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<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
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1973-02
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This recording is the fourth lecture in our collection of ten that Howard Thurman gave at the University of Redlands in 1973 on the topic of mysticism. Thurman indicates that this lecture functions as a means to point the listener towards practical approaches to mysticism through lenses of psychology, philosophy, and religious experience. Drawing from Olive Schreiner, Elmer O'Brian, and his own encounters, Thurman reflects upon God's (or The Ultimate's) sovereign providence. Thurman communicates this idea via the designation of "God's giveness." He notes that it is in personal "spiritual exercises" that one has the potential to be opened to this innate nature of God.
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Description by Dustin Mailman
aestheticism
angel
creative encounter
ecology
Elmer O'Brian
failure
George Fox
giveness
Gospel of John
Holt Rinehart
inner light
interelatedness
Israel
Jacob
life
manifestations of life
Meister Eckhart
natural religion
Old Testament
Olive Schreiner
panentheism
pantheism
potential
presence
reading
roses
sacrament
Saint Paul
spiritual exercise
totality of experience
ultimate
unity
Varieties of Mystic Religion