Tuesday, August 25, 2015
The Mystery
Eddington, the physicist, is nearest to the mystics, not in his airier flights of fancy, but when he says quite simply, "Something unknown is doing we don't know what."
Alan Watts
On the Plight of the Mystical Poet
Poets are, by definition, outside conventional society. The majority of folk do not read poetry, never think of poetry, consider poetry irrelevant to the "real world." And, should they stumble on a poem, they tend to "like" whatever resonates with and reflects their own experience.
But mystical poets--ah, here the number shrinks even more. To this calling, only a few are drawn, claiming an audience of seemingly ever dwindling readers. Who Is Rumi? the many may ask. And with that revelation, a door is closed, a window fastened down. These folks shun the realm of mystic revelation captured in language. Communication on such topics is seemingly impossible.
For the mystical realm is one outside the boundaries of ordinary experience. It does not resonate with the everyday, the familiar. It falls far from the arena of daily life--"things that matter": love, money, fame, clothing, family, promotions and raises at work, even the details of ordinary experience. It might as well be written in a foreign language, tongue of some other planet, region left dark on the maps.
To write mystical poetry is like becoming a member of a secret society. It is the realm of the outsiders, the unconventionals, the heretics, the ones who dwell in a region that is, in fact, invisible to most. Nonetheless, it exists and compels, and calls into being the languaging of that which cannot be spoken, the realm of the ineffable which constantly beckons to be heard, a mystery never fully unraveled.
Mystical poets do not win prizes, nor stand in front of audiences to receive accolades. They remain mainly invisible, behind the scenes, lost to view in the headlong flow of the daily. Yet the mystic poets exist even today, ever striving, like Sisyphus, to lift the boulder of expression higher up the mountain, catch the features of the ultimate in their net of words. Rumi and Mirabai still capture the hearts of many and their words resonate quietly throughout our world.
