"Glorify God in your Body." ~1 Corinthians 6:20
Spirituality is not the renunciation of the senses, but their refinement to the subtlest of all sensations: God. God is the most sensuous of delights.
Meditation refines sensation through silence. Our spiritual practice cultivates finer perception until taste and smell may sense the flavor and fragrance of pure Being; sight may gaze at the light shining from Divine Darkness; touch may feel the inner caress of this breath, or the hug of earth's respiration through the skin; and hearing may listen to the hum of silence, which contains the music of galaxies.
Subtler than these five sense organs is the sixth, the mind. Meditation refines the mind just as it refines the other organs of perception. When the restless mind settles into stillness, we transcend thought, no image limits awareness, the bliss of emptiness becomes full, and the mind can relish infinity.
Subtler than mind is the seventh sense organ, the soul. The soul is I Am, but it is not the opposite of matter; it is simply at the other end of the spectrum. Matter and spirit are one continuum of divine energy, from the dense to the subtle. The dense is the incarnate glory of the subtle, and the subtle is the healing nectar within the dense outer form. Soul is the fine end of this continuum, the most refined organ of sensation.
When, through meditation, the soul becomes "poor in spirit," it inherits boundless wealth. In the heart of silence, the soul transcends soulness, flows beyond the root of individuality, and enters the seed of Christ-Consciousness. This loss is rich indeed. For when the droplet becomes the sea, the sea becomes the droplet. Now Christ is the Self of the soul. So the scripture says, "No longer I, but Christ who lives in me." (Galations 2:20)
The Christian mystics spoke of the exquisitely subtle relationship of the soul and Christ as a love affair. Just so, in ancient Indian poets expressed this affair as the love-tryst of Radha and Krishna in the garden of Vridavan. In the Hebrew Bible, ancient Canaanite marriage hymns are gathered into the Song of Songs to represent the union of the bride and the royal bridegroom, which is why the Song of Songs has always been the favorite Biblical book of Western mystics, at once the most sensuous and spiritual of poems. Those who interpret the Song of Songs as mere sensuality, and those who interpret the book as mere mysticism, both miss the exquisite paradox. It is not one or the other. It is a book about the mystical sensuality of God.
When we enter into this marriage, all our senses feel the transcendental kiss of the Divine, who has created the earth and its sensory pathways just to lead us back to this place: the wild garden in the heart, where the seed is stored. For when God speaks to us, God uses everything - plants, animals, human faces, dust. God uses all creatures to kiss us daily.
Everything in this world is a message from God. And where is God? Deep inside your chest. That is why we must not hesitate to let the world radiate from the heart as the cosmic sensation of God, the passion of a soul so voluptuously in love that she transcends all boundaries.
God whispers to our soul, "You are the garden, I am the Spring." And the soul sings, as the bride in the poem, "My beloved is mine, and I am my beloved's. Come into your garden, and feed among the lilies."
Painting by Rene Bull, 1913
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