What Are We About?

The problem with our communication is that we think it has to be about something. Is there a form of communication where we are not about, but simply are, sharing the fierce vulnerable radiance of our pure being?

Isn't that what we really want to do when we communicate, though we hide it behind words and concepts, plans for the future and stories of the past?

In this new age, why not extend the mystical experience from our inner life to life in community, life in communication? Mystical experience has a precise definition: it means immediate communion with Truth, or Spirit. Most religious experience is mediated through words, doctrines, images of scripture and symbols of ritual. There are also human mediators between the believer and the Spirit: priests, prophets, ministers, popes, imams, rabbis. Traditional religion has been a second-hand experience of Truth, just as most communication has been second-hand communication, mediated by and about things.

But in every religion, there have been mystics: those who had the courage to ask, "Why can't I commune immediately with God, without the mediation of another?" These mystics found God in their own being, in the hidden depths of their own consciousness, "intimeor intima meo" in St. Augustine's words: "more inward to me that I am to myself."

If there can be a non-mediated communion between the soul and God, why can't there be such mystical communion between two persons?

What would mystical communication between two persons be like? What would a whole community be like if its members were immersed in mystical communication? Would community relationships not express the qualities of communion with God?

Radiance of two flames merged in one fire: do these two flames create the greater fire, or did they arise from that fire to begin with?

Divine fire is the third person in every living relationship. God's presence pervades all intimacy.

I am not talking about sex, for sex is about something! - about fulfilling the primal drives of the body. Fulfilling those needs is neither bad nor good: it is just nature. But for humans seeking spiritual relationship, fulfilling the sex drive can hijack real communication. In fact, the deepest communion of lovers often happens in the gentle silence after sex.

Mystical communication is far more intimate and mindful than sex. It is more like musicians improvising together, who seem to know which note the other will play in the moment, as if they both are being played by some invisible cosmic musician.

What would be the nature of words in such intimacy? Words that no longer need to be about anything? Words that simply convey the electrical thrill of Presence? Wouldn't such conversation be pure poetry, beauty for its own sake?

What would be the role of silence in such intimacy? Would silence not be the very substance of the communication? Silence not as absence, not as waiting, but as fulfillment. Silence streaming with the nectar of complete affection.

What would be the role of fingers, lips, ears, skin? A pantheistic sexuality pervades every cell of the enlightened body, every leaf of the tree, every cloud and raindrop falling from the sky. Nature overflows with the orgasm of Mother Divine and Lord Shiva, the green earth in all its abundance their perpetual love-making. In such pan-sexual spirituality, the fruition of human community, would there be any need for sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children? And if there was, it would be ever so gentle, tender, and full of respect.

And what of the eyes? Eyes gazing into the eyes of the other, eyes gazing into the Self, the Self in the other, the other in the Self, dissolving all distinction between inner and outer.

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