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394-649_A.mp3
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Pitts Theology Library
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[CHOIR SINGING]
Close, present Father, we are overwhelmed by the strength and vitality of thy spirit within us,
moving at so many different levels of our being, kindling our minds in the ceaseless search for
truth and understanding, present in the glow which we feel when we remember that someone
loves us and that we love someone, the overwhelming sense of caring that distributes itself in so
many little manifestations of grace-- a kind word here, a thoughtful gesture there, sometimes, the
nodding of the head or the quickening light in the eye.
In the sense of inadequacy which we feel when there is so much that we would do and are unable
to do, so much that we would feel, but cannot quite feel, the great and over-reaching desire to be
better than we are through so many levels of our being, our Father, thy spirit moves with such
unerring strength and insight.
We would know thee better. If happily we might, we would enter into thy dreams for us and for
thy children. We would understand thy understanding that so much that confuses and bewilders
and distresses our minds and spirits would have no power over us. But our Father, we are just
men and women, weak and strong, gentle and harsh, loving and hating, sinning and being
righteous. We are just men and women, our Father, in a world of men and women.
Touch us with thy glory that the fear of ourselves will be relaxed. And even for one swirling
moment in thy presence, let us sense that we are thine and thou art ours. Does this seem too
much? Does it seem to thee to be the expression of pride and arrogance and conceit? The hunger
for thee will not be stilled, O God, O, O God, O God.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
"I have a heart that cries to God abandoned across the blind imperfect avenue of mind. I have a
heart that cries to God. I have a heart that cries to God across the quarried stones of thought, the
labored temple slowly wrought, a heart, a heart that cries to God.
I have a heart that cries to God immediately and must dispense with faltering through the world
of sense and calls across the mind to God, that calls across the worlds to God, nor stays to
elaborate the tongue of sacrament to slowly wrung. I have a heart that cries to God."
And then another poet expresses it this way. He is "on the far horizon, the infinite, tender sky,
the ripe, rich tint of the corn fields and the wild geese sailing high. And all over upland and
lowland, the charm of the golden rod-- some of us call it Autumn. And others call it God.
Like tides on a crescent sea beach when the moon is new and thin, into our hearts high yearnings
come welling and surging in, come from the mystic ocean whose rim no foot has trod. Some of
us call it Longing. And others call it God.
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A picket frozen on duty, a mother starved for her brood, Socrates drinking the hemlock, and
Jesus on the rood, and millions who, humble and nameless, the straight, hard pathway plod-some call it Consecration. And others call it God."
Pitts Theology Library
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We are continuing our quest of the inward journey. And today, we will take just a hard,
penetrating look at the man, as it was said of him, from whom God hid nothing, Meister Eckhart.
The words which have to do with the story of this man's life are not particularly relevant words
for our purposes except to say that he did live. He was born. And he died. His period is the early
part in the middle of the 14th century. He was a Dominican, a man who was regarded by some
disciplinarians in the field of metaphysics and philosophy as the father of German philosophy.
But all these things are not of particular importance for our purpose.
But here is a man who had the strange and wonderful gift of being able to wrestle with great and
imponderable aspects of existence and to reduce them, in some ways, to manageable units of
understanding. He must have been an extraordinarily scintillating and gifted personality. For
when you read his sermons and his [INAUDIBLE], it is almost impossible to understand him
with all of the background of knowledge that has been developed since his period. And yet
wherever he preached in Strasbourg or in any of the other parts of Germany, the scholars and the
theologians and all of the people who were supposed to know those persons who were prestigebearing figures in the world of religion were always crowded out by the masses of the people.
The simple, the unsophisticated, crowded everywhere just to hear him speak. And either they
were extraordinarily perceptive or he was exceptionally gifted or we are very dumb.
[LAUGHTER]
You can take your choice.
I remember hearing Rufus Jones give a two-hour lecture once to freshmen on Hegelian logic.
And every 10 or 15 minutes, the fellows were in gales of laughter. And later in the afternoon,
when I went up to the library, I saw one of the freshmen poring over the dictionary. And I said,
well, what are you doing? He said, did you hear Rufus this afternoon? I said, oh yes, I did.
He said, I went to the library. I took the two volumes of Hegelian logic out. And I was sure I was
going to have a very exciting and wonderfully relaxing time. And now I'm at the dictionary
looking up the word "T-H-E" because I know that the way Hegel uses it, it must be different
from the way I understand it.
So I was telling Dr. Jones about this. And I said, how does it happen that you have this
extraordinary gift? And he told me an interesting story. And it's very important here, even though
I'm taking precious time from Eckhart to tell you.
He said when he was graduated from Haverford College, he was a young radical. As a matter of
fact, his class was the most radical class that had been graduated from Haverford up to that time,
so radical that it was they who brought Matthew Arnold to America to lecture for the first time.
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Pitts Theology Library
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He was invited to give-- he, Rufus, was invited to give a sermon at the Friends Meeting in
Cleveland. And he prepared a very elaborate sermon. And he delivered it at the right moment in
the quiet. And when he unfinished, there were three comments made. One was made by a man
who sat near him. And he said, thee did very well, even though what thee had to say came from
underneath a mustache because Quakers were not supposed to have any new-fangled notions,
like mustaches.
The second said, thee did very well. But thee did not have very much unction because when thee
arose, thy coat was caught in thy belt. And when thee sat down, thy coat was still caught in thy
belt.
And then the third, the third was a lady. And she said, we enjoyed thee friend, Rufus-- that is,
some of us. But there is one thing that thee has forgotten. Our blessed master said, feed my
sheep, not my giraffes.
[LAUGHTER]
This is the idea. So Eckhart must have remembered this. His great and central insight has to do
with one of the most persistent questions of the mind. How can you get behind the creation of the
world? How can you get behind God?
If God is the revelation, then there must be that which is behind God that is inarticulate, that is
unformed, that is a pulse beats of being. And here I use the word "being," which is a form of
"this-ing" and "that-ing," a form of differentiation.
Eckhart was trying to get behind all of the manifestations of life. And he comes upon what is the
heart of his theological interpretation that there is a Godhead, which is the very ground of all
existence. It is undifferentiated. It is inarticulate. It is what he calls the "unnatured nature." It is
unknowable. He even refers to the Godhead as the great nameless nothing, trying to put into
words what cannot be put into words.
And he says, out, out of the Godhead, God moves. God is the self-consciousness of the Godhead,
moving always towards the manifestation of all of creation that there is no evolution, no gradual
development of things, except as a delusion, for all existence is mirrored in God, not as
something that is in process, but as pure thought, pure idea. Existence is. And all of the external
world is but an expression of the mind of God, the total existences, but an expression of the mind
of God.
Therefore, wherever you touch anything that is created, wherever you have any primary
experience with any sense data, wherever knowledge, which is a form of differentiation, a form
of expression, a form of thisness and thatness, a form of distinction between that which is known
and the knower-- wherever you come into any touch with any aspect of your whole sense
experience, it is as if you are a vast cathedral. And remove your shoes because it's holy.
Now, if this is true, says Eckhart, then man must partake of this. And then here his thought
moves in two, apparently, opposite directions. You see, he's trying to account for man and for the
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one who thought the things that he thought. And he says that there is-- on the one hand, there is
something in man that is a part of the unnatured nature, a part of the Godhead, the part of that
which is beyond all values, all good and evil, right, wrong-- that is, that which is beyond all
forms of judgment and all dimensions of conception, that which is deeper than thought, deeper
than feeling, that which is inarticulate.
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This is at the very center of man. This is man's-- this is the core of man's soul. And it is not an
aspect of the Godhead. It is not a manifestation of the Godhead. It is not an emanation. But it is
the Godhead itself in man and the process by which man becomes conscious and by which he
begins to develop in terms of the creative, the process by which man can hold in his mind
thoughts and ideas and watch as a dreamer in his sleep watches the dawning of day, watch ideas
take flesh and become expression of that which, at one time, was mirrored in the mind.
And we've all seen it happen, haven't we, an idea that you have? And you brood over it. You turn
it over and this way and that way. And finally, you are able to reduce the idea to a form that will
give it manifestation. And then, once the idea is, for instance, in time and space, the idea begins
to take on a character and a life and a history and a development of its own. But it is but an
expression of something that was in you that was not developed, but something that existed
whole, total, complete.
Now, how practical is this? What does this mean? The closest that I can come to an expression of
it is that when you love somebody, you see that person whole. This is why it is so difficult to find
a way to recognize the faults in someone you love.
You see them totally. You see them complete. And in your spirit, you deal with them totally. But
as you begin to express this in terms of your own pattern of details, what you express is always
so much less than what you see and sense. What you are trying to realize in a pattern of behavior
is but a broken manifestation of the thing which you see and sense and regard as whole.
Now, the baring of all of this on our journey is not far to seek-- that if it is true that there is in
every man that which is God, then growing in life means finding ways by which all the things in
your life that keep you from realizing in your own mind and spirit this which is inherent and
indigenous to you must be done away with so that we find in Eckhart a great deal of emphasis
upon getting rid of creatureliness. He says one-- in one place that, if I am able to empty myself of
creatureliness, if I am able to empty myself of the things that create conflict in me, if I'm able to
purify my life by putting out of it those things that block my visions, then automatically, he says,
the God in me gets on the move. And when it begins to move, it fills all the spaces that had been
occupied by my wedding to things, occupied by my anxieties, occupied by my acquisitiveness,
occupied by all of the things that keep me from being, in the language of the master, true to my
truest self.
And the same thing applies as he moves out into the world. He says, always, behind whatever
manifestation of the external world that I encounter, I must see that the Godhead, and let us not
be upset by his language-- the Godhead is trying to break through to the Godhead that is in me.
When, then, I, through quiet, through discipline and his great word through contemplation-when I am able, through focusing my life, to create in the upper regions of my being a vacuum
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that pulls the Godhead up through me so that it begins to manifest itself in all aspects of my life,
he summarizes by saying, what I sense in contemplation, I must express in love.
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Always, then, he comes back to the same simple, but profound insight. Every man, be he rich or
poor, be he sane or insane, be he sick or well, be he wise or stupid, every man has the same
essential increment in him. And when I deal with a man, I am really dealing with this spark-- this
think line, as he calls it. And I am never, then, at liberty to deal with him on the basis of any
particular manifestation of his life.
But always, I must recognize that even in his goodness and in his badness and the things about
him that I despise or the things that I admire, always, that which is pushing from deep within
him, trying to move out so as to join with all of the other expressions of this in all creation, this is
the thing that I must honor in him and in me. And I must not sit in judgment then upon any
particular expression of my life and say, this is I. But always, I must do a double take behind all
of the expressions.
There is something that is trying to be born in me. And all of life, perhaps, is summarized in
trying to find ways by which this can be born in me, can break through, to use the contemporary
term-- break through and become radiant in all of the expressions of my life. And to deny this is
to deny all meaning not merely in me, but in those above me, and not merely in those above me,
but in the great world outside.
Speak to Him, thou, for he heareth. And spirit with spirit may meet. Closer is He than breathing,
nearer than hands and feet. It is a wonderful thing to me to know that God is not at the mercy of
the institution, not at the mercy of the book, not at the mercy of the sacrament. But He is as close
as is the breath I take.
What a boon this must have meant to those people back in the 14th century, dying like flies from
the Black Death, the church in a great battle, having no time from its struggle to administer to the
private, personal desperations of the little man. What a boon it must have been to them to feel
that the hunger in their heart could be answered in their heart, for the hunger for God perhaps can
never be separated from God, for it may be that God is the hunger. God is the hunger.
Leave us not either to the thoughts that we think or the things that we feel. But teach us how we
may trust thy spirit within us, O thou who lighteth every man that cometh into the world, our
Father.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[CHOIR SINGING]
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Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts
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1960s
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394-649_A
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Thurman, Howard
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Meister Eckhart (3); The Inner Light (4), 1961 Oct 15, 22
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<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
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audio
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<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
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1961-10-15
Description
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This sermon is the third of nine in a series of sermons given in Marsh Chapel that are titled "The Inward Journey." In this sermon, Thurman reflects upon Meister Eckhart's description of the Godhead. In his dissection of Eckhart's Godhead, Thurman wrestles with the tension between the external Godhead that exists in the world, and the internal Godhead that wrestles within the self, noting "The Godhead is trying to break through to the Godhead that is within me." Considering this sermon series' emphasis on mysticism and discovering the spirituality that is innate within human existence, Thurman uses the Godhead concept as a means to describe the indescribable nature of God, and God's relationship to the human experience.
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Description by Dustin Mailman
Autumn
Black Death
conflict
contemplation
creatureliness
Dominican
ecology
existentialism
geese
Germany
Godhead
grace
Haveford College
heart
Hegel
holiness
in-breaking
Incarnation
language
longing
love
manifestations of life
Matthew Arnold
Meister Eckhart
mysticism
panentheism
patterns
prayer
purification
Quakers
Rufus Jones
self-consciousness
Socrates
unknowingness
wholeness
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394-095_A.mp3
[LAUGHTER]
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Dr. Thurman?
Oh, yes.
[INAUDIBLE]
People who talk to animals. You remember the book Papa Hemingway? Maybe some of you
read it. It's Hemingway's friend or biographer wrote it. And he has a marvelous discussion in one
of the places about Hemingway, who had a gold pass given him by one of the Ringling Brothers
so that he could always go below in Madison Square Garden when the circus was in New York
to talk or to do anything he wanted to do with the animals.
And there's a description of how he went down, and that was a particularly obnoxious gorilla
who had a rather unhappy spirit. And when Hemingway said, well, it's been a long time since
I've talked gorilla talk, but I'd like to go. And the keeper thought that he was out of his mind.
And he went over and began doing something, making these guttural sounds-- I imagine they
were guttural sounds.
After a few minutes, the gorilla stopped whatever he was doing and stood on his haunches and
took his bowl of bananas and put over his head to express extreme ecstasy. And I won't say what
the keeper of the gorilla said when he saw it.
Then he passed by the polar bear cage, and he said, well, I-- this is a brand new experience, but I
think I can do it. And he had conversation with the polar bear. And the polar bear was so excited
that he got up and walked over to the wall and began rubbing his back against it, which is
another way of getting an expression of the kind of bliss that he experienced from hearing
Hemingway do this.
There are various accounts of this sort that sound perhaps specious to us. But there is a rather
detailed account of an Italian doctor who spent a great deal of time going through the various
parts of West Africa, where he was serving the Italian government as a physician. He'd heard that
there was a Catholic priest who operated at orphanages who, by reputation, once a year had a
meeting with the warthogs.
And he didn't believe this, but he arrived at the proper time, and the Catholic priest took him out
into the woods on a moonlit night. And there was a clearing, and the priest sat there in prayer.
And the warthogs began to come out of the shadows, and they gathered in this opening.
And the priest continued praying, and then when he had finished, he addressed them. And he
said, you know that the children in the orphanage are dependent upon the crop. There is no other
food, and if you eat the crop they will starve to death. And I'm sure you do not want to do that.
And there were some more words-- I've forgotten what they were now. And then he had another
prayer, and the warthogs disappeared. And the crop was saved.
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Now all of this sounds very ridiculous perhaps. But the point that I'm making is that all
manifestations of life are rooted in a common ground-- this is the point-- and that all forms of life
are manifestations of this. And to be repetitive, the marked difference between the manifestations
is the form of the manifestation, is the context, not the ground.
Pitts Theology Library
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And self-consciousness, inherent in its very nature, is paradoxical, because in self-consciousness,
I see myself as standing over against the ground of my being. I see myself as being a separate
entity-- separately contained, independent. And much of the journey, the pilgrimage of selfconsciousness in human beings is to try to find their way back to the ground, to re-relate
themselves to the ground out of which they come.
Now, interestingly enough, very often people who are less sophisticated, who are simple, seem to
be closer to the awareness of this ground than others. And an illustration of this just from my
own childhood that I've written somewhere, but I went across the meadow to visit with my
buddy. I was about nine, 10-- somewhere in that awkward period. And when I came into the
yard, his father rapped on the windowpane, telling me to come around and come through the
front door.
And when I came into the room where he was, he pointed into the backyard, and there, Pierce-that was my buddy's name-- his little sister, about four months old, was sitting in the sand-- this
was in Florida-- playing with his rattlesnake. And she pulled him by the tail as he would try to
crawl away. She'd turn him over on his back, and she would giggle. And they were having a very
interesting, intimate experience of fellowship and community.
Pierce was stationed on one side of the house-- of the-- yes, of the house, and I was stationed on
the other side. But why? so that no one would come around and introduce a divisive principle in
the harmony. But as soon as that happened, there would be violence. There would be death.
Now, this quality of man, the time binder, is one of the most important aspects of personality for
the claims and the insights of religion. For it indicates that man has-- to use a good term from the
social psychology, at any rate-- man is born with an ancient memory of a time when there was
harmony among all living things. I'm taking much time to lay the foundation for this because it
will help us in our understanding of what the claim is that the mystic makes. This is why I'm
doing it-- so you'll see the relevance of it.
There seems to be an ancient memory of the race that goes back to forms that I expressed in
myths, for instance, like the creation myths. Some years ago, I had occasion to study creation
myths at great depths. And one of the things that I discovered-- that it didn't matter what part of
the world you examined the myth. The essential elements are always there, whether you begin
with the creation account in our book as found in Genesis, or you wander all over the story of
man on the planet.
Wherever he raises the question, where did we come from? How did the world get going? The
fundamental insight in the answer is always the same. And what is that? That when forms of life
were created, it didn't matter how varied the forms or the manifestations were. When forms of
life were created, they had one thing in common-- they felt that they were all a part of each other.
So the animals and men talk with each other.
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And then the harmony was broken. Now this is the story. Now, the curious and interesting thing,
to me, is that when man began to dream about life at its best, that we call utopias, and you can
pick any one of a hundred, 150 different utopias-- Plato's Republic, More's Utopia. You can run
the gamut. The thing that all of them have in common is that within the context of the Utopian
city, there is this harmony, this community.
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Now, when we read it then, among the poets-- and I wanted to take two or three excerpts here-and we are tempted to say that this is just poetry, with a little [INAUDIBLE] to the excerpt. I'm
reminding you that what they're saying is a poetic way of expressing this basic proposition on
which we have been working these two days.
Now, a few lines from Alexander Pope, for instance-- "All are but parts of one stupendous
whole, whose body nature is and God the soul, that changed through all and yet in all the same,
great in the Earth, as in the ethereal frame, warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, glows in the
stars and blossoms in the trees, lives through all life, extends through all extent, spreads
undivided, operates unspent," and so forth.
Another-- you're familiar with this. "And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of
elevated thoughts-- a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused whose dwelling is
the light of setting suns, and the round ocean, and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind
of man."
And then you recognize this from Shelley-- "He is made one with nature. There is heard his
voice in all her music, from the moan of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird. He is a
presence to be felt and known in darkness and in light, from herb and stone, spreading itself
where'er that power may move which has withdrawn his being to its own, which wields the
world with never-wearied love, sustains it from beneath the ground, and kindles it above. He is a
portion of the loveliness which once he made more lovely," and So forth.
And then this from Tennyson-- "Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies,
hold you here, root and all, in my hands. Little flower, but if I could understand what you are,
root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is."
And then from Paracelsus-- "Truth is within ourselves." this is another way of saying this. "It
takes no rise from outward things, whatever you may believe. There is an inmost center in us all,
where truth abides in fullness, and around, wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, this perfect
clear perception which is truth A baffling and perverting carnal mesh binds it and makes all
error, and to know rather consists in opening out a way whence the imprisoned splendor may
escape, than in affecting entry for a light supposed to be without," and so forth and so on it goes.
Now, this is the summary, that there is, inherent in the notion that this is a living universe, that
life is alive, and that every manifestation of life is grounded in the aliveness of life. And
therefore, no manifestation of life, at last, as an independent separate existence from the ground
of life.
And because life is alive, therefore life cannot die. And perhaps life cannot die because life feeds
on itself. Maybe that's why it can't die. And then, the metaphysical, the theological doctrine that
takes the form of the notion of life eternal I think it's rooted grossly-- in the sense of unrefined,
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rather than a sense of vulgar-- it is rooted grossly in the fact that life lives on itself, that life
consumes life. And it's an endless cycle. Men die, you die, I die, men die.
But life keeps coming on. And the thing that has harassed and bedeviled the mind of men as far
as any memory goes is how may I consciously and deliberately participate in this ground?
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How can I experience at all the levels of my being this timeless ground in which my life is
rooted? If I can do that, then there opens up to my mind the secret of life.
Now, the mystic makes no-- I'll say this. The mystic makes no outlandish claim. The only thing
that he insists upon is that he experiences this awareness. And in this sense, there is a mystic
element in all religious experience. I move-- I'm changing my-- moving to the next segment I'm
scheduled [INAUDIBLE].
There is a mystic element in all religious experience because central to religious is the sense of
the awareness on the part of the experiencer that he is in touch with that which to him is ultimate.
Now, there is a meditative confusion about what the claim of the mystic is. It would be a very
interesting thing, if we had the time and the courage, to go around the room and ask each one of
you, what is your idea of a mystic? It'd be very illuminating to us and to you also.
I remember going to an assembly of students once, and I got in in the afternoon. I was doing my
talk in the evening on some aspect of this whole problem that we are considering here. I
happened to go into the men's room, and there were two young fellas in there. And they didn't
know who I was. I didn't care for that matter [INAUDIBLE].
But they said, who is this guy that's coming in from so and so and so who's supposed to speak
tonight? I don't know, never heard of him. What's he going to talk about? And one fella said,
well, I think that it's something about taking rabbits out of a hat.
[LAUGHTER]
Now, this is literally true. And the other fella said, well, I wouldn't miss it.
[LAUGHTER]
In the first place, mysticism is thought of as being pathological. Some queer and curious
aberration of mind generated by emotional instability. Leuba's book on the psychology of
mysticism, which you ought to read sometimes when you-- if we were going for a year rather
than three weeks, it'd be interesting to take some time and work at it.
But his whole point is the pathology of this curious kind of religious experience. It is obvious
that I do not subscribe to this. The claim of the mystic is that he is in primary touch or contact
with ultimate reality, which for the most part, he labels God, God.
This claim has two rather curious elements inherent in it. One, that it is given, the experience is
given. By given I mean that it is a part of the given-ness of his life. It isn't something that he
achieves, it isn't something that he wrests from the stubborn, and unyielding, and recalcitrant
4
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hands of a determined universe. No, nothing like that. But the first claim is that this is a part of
the given, a part of that which is essentially him.
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And in that sense, it is without merit or demerit. In that sense it is a grace. Now, there are many
mystics who do not go along with this, but in essence, this is one of the first claims-- that this
quality of experiencing the ultimate is inherent in the very ground of his being.
Another way of saying it, that for him it is a part of the given-ness of God in him. And in this
sense, he makes no exclusive claim to it, for it is-- it meaning the sense of the ultimate-- a part of
the given-ness of the creator to his creation.
Now, the religious theory for the Christian mystic-- and I'll say something about the others at a
later point. But the religious basic to the mystic's claim is as follows-- God is the creator of life.
And more importantly, God is the creator of the living substance, that out of which particular
expressions of life emerge, [? for ?] [? instance ?] themselves.
It is an essential I've been calling the ground all along, that God is not merely the creator of life,
but the creator of the living substance, the life stuff that [? for ?] [? instances ?] itself in form,
shape, characterization, classification. But these are phenomenological. They are not inherent.
Now, another way of saying that is that God has not left himself without specific witness in the
totality of his creation. Now, any, any, any religion, any-- well, I'd say any good religion-- but
any religion can accept the general proposition that God has not left himself without witness in
his creation, his signature, the thing we've been talking about-- reading here and talking about.
Now, generally the Christian draws a line there. The Christian can accept this fact that God has
not left himself without a witness in his creation. But what the Christian is unwilling to accept is
that God has not left himself without specific witness in all of his creations.
And this opens up a whole area. I simply call your attention to it. Then, the religious theory in
the first place is that God is the creator of life and the living substance, that out of which all
concretions emerge, that out of which all particulars come, all the [? for ?] [? instances, ?] all the
this-and-that-ness emerge.
But he goes further. It says that God is the creator of existence. Now, this boggles the mind. I am
not sure, I am not sure, or I'm not sure, or I am not sure that the mind can grasp this. Now what it
says, you see, is that God bottoms existence, that there is no thing, no particular, no
manifestation, no anything that is outside of the sweep of the divine context.
Now, you can see the kind of moral problems that creates [? at ?] [? once. ?] I don't know why
this popped into my mind, but it's too good for me to keep. It's just good to break the tension.
A friend of mine sent me a clipping a couple years ago, and it was about a mother and her little
girl. And the little girl kept harassing her mother as only little girls know how to do. And finally,
the mother said, now, if you don't stop doing this, when you die, you will not go to heaven. And
she said, oh, yes I will.
[LAUGHTER]
5
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I will go right up there where God is, and I'll go in and out of the room, in and out of the room.
And finally, in disgust he will say, either come in or go out, and I'll come in.
[LAUGHTER]
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Now, the notion, the notion, that God bottoms existence implies, you see, that there is not, nor
can there be, anything underscore that outside of the divine context. That has startling, baffling
moral problems. Name one of them, quickly. Can you?
[INAUDIBLE]
Yes, yes, I suppose so. Yes, I guess that's right, because the mind cannot conceive of a
beginning. The mind can only conceive of beginnings. What other kind of problem it creates?
What does it say [INAUDIBLE]?
I'm sorry?
What does it say for [INAUDIBLE]?
Yeah, evil. Yeah. You see the logic of this is that the contradictions of life can never be final or
ultimate, that all contradictions, then, are limited. All dualisms are temporary.
Think what that means in terms of the simple problems of human beings. Everybody in this room
has been in situations in which the contradictions with which he was wrestling or she was
wrestling seemed ultimate, seemed to be final, without solution.
Even in the book, where there is an emphasis upon what seems to be an ultimate dualism,
between heaven and hell, for instance, what does the book finally say about this? There shall
come a time when God will be all and [? in ?] all. It's a daring thing that the contradictions of
life, that the dualisms of life exhaust themselves-- they run out.
Now, this is the basic religious theory upon which particularly the Christian mystic rests his-well, I started to say rest his case, but he's not under judgment. But he does whatever he does
with it.
That God is the creator of life and the living substance-- that's the [INAUDIBLE], the creation of
the forms of life and that out of which the forms emerge. God is the creator of existence so that
there is no thing that is outside of the divine context.
So when the mystic then goes down this way and comes up inside of the form out there, what
he's saying is that there is no expression of life or manifestation of life that is not [? frontally ?]
and fundamentally centered in the creativity of God. And you can see why they cause so much
trouble in the church.
Well, three minutes [INAUDIBLE]. Let's quit. Now, I didn't ask you whether you had anything
to ask me. I'll stop-- I promise you, tomorrow morning-- yes?
6
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Transcription
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I went to the bookstore, and they didn't have the books in.
Oh, yes, I--
Pitts Theology Library
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[INTERPOSING VOICES]
7
�
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<iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-095_A.html" ></iframe>
Location
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University of Redlands, Redlands, California
Internal Notes
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Edits: for- instance; creates at once; God will be all and in all - GL 5/20/19
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1970s
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394-095_A
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Thurman, Howard
Title
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On Mysticism, Part 3 (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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audio
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<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019.
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GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13042600.321303 4037296.9410534))
Date
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1973-02
Description
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This recording is the third 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. Building upon Thurman conception of being a "time binder," he notes that utopian conceptions of harmony are not unobtainable. Drawing from his wider work of "racial memory," Thurman indicates in this recording that humanity's restorative relationship with the animal kingdom provides an inkling for God's participation with humankind in the pursuit of harmony. This harmony has existed before, and in a movement towards this redemptive harmony, Thurman suggests, there is an innate movement towards humanity's created intent.
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Description by Dustin Mailman
A.E. Hotchner
Alexander Pope
aliveness
awareness
common ground
communication
creation
dualism
ecology
George Cross
gorilla
harmony
journey
myths
Papa Hemingway
pathology
Plato
polar bear
potentiality
prayer
priest
racial memory
rattlesnake
Ringling Brothers
sanctification
self-consciousness
sovereignty
substance
theodicy
Thomas More
time binder
utopia
vulgarity
warthogs