Here are two excerpts from Mikhail Naimy’s “The Book of Mirdad” that I enjoyed reading today. The first passage speaks about the Supreme Consciousness that many call “God,” but Naimy says is better called “I”—His only Word (pardon the masculine reference to God; it’s Naimy’s use, not mine).
The second comes from a chapter on prayer where Naimy, in the person of Mirdad, starts off with: “You pray in vain when you address yourselves to any other gods but your very selves.” He refers us back to the Creative Word, the Supreme Consciousness, “I.”
Meister Eckhart says that God’s “I” is the same as our “I.” Beautiful. The eye with which I see God is exactly the same eye with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowledge and one love.
Here’s how Naimy puts it:
“Though each of you be centred in his I, yet are you all encentred in one I, even the single I of God.
God’s I, O monks, is God’s eternal, only word. In it is God—The Consciousness Supreme—made manifest. Without it He would be a silence absolute. By it is the Creator self-created. By it is the Formless One made to take on a multiplicity of forms through which the creatures shall pass again to formlessness.
To feel Himself; to think Himself; to speak Himself God need not utter more than I. Therefore is I His only word. Therefore is it THE WORD.”
And…
“Remember that the key to Life is the Creative Word. The key to the Creative Word is Love. The key to Love is Understanding. Fill up your hearts with these and spare your tongues the pain of many words, and save your minds the weight of many prayers, and free your hearts from bondage to all gods who would enslave you with a gift; who would caress you with one hand only to smite you with the other; who are content and kindly when you praise them, but wrathful and revengeful when reproached; who would not hear you save you call, and would not give you save you beg; and having given you, too oft regret the giving; whose incense is your tear; whose glory is your shame.
Aye, free your hearts of all those gods that you find in them the Only God who, having filled you with Himself, would have you ever full.”
I. That’s God. I. That’s me and you. Filled with “I,” we’re full of God.
The trick is, I think, being filled just with “I,” pure consciousness, and nothing else.
That’s why nothing is the way to God.
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