This Sunday, I heard a talk that put a lot of emphasis on “The Mystery”. This, out of the rising tide of interest in mysticism in New Age and New Thought circles – even in some traditional churches.
At first, my response was that nothing was a mystery. Everything is knowable if we give it our attention. I have an early teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, to thank for that expectation. As he used to say, Knowledge is Structured in Consciousness. If you expand consciousness, you expand the container of knowledge and thus allow it’s growth.
But in chatting with a friend about it, I realized I was being rather narrow. I have certainly not always experienced the path this way. It may occasionally feel like stepping off a cliff into a void. In fact, having the willingness and trust to step into the unknown is key at several points in the process. This is indeed the unknown, the mystery.
However, making it all an inherent mystery is not as useful a way to put it. I think it’s healthy to frame everything as knowable. It may take some time to unfold for us but the taste of a strawberry is only a mystery until we taste it. Enlightenment is only a mystery until it is lived. And then we ironically discover we never were not. It was only for us to discover what we already are, over the edge of that mystery “cliff”.
On the other hand, if you come to the process expecting to know before you allow, you fail. The mind can certainly conceptualize just about anything. But if it has not been the experience, if it is not lived, then that is not it. It’s just a story of the mind.
So use the maps but allow it to be a mystery. When you find the door, be willing to step into the unknown. And then it will be known. You are That.
Davidya
Dya. you say it’s healthy to frame everything as knowable. I’d say that it’s healthy to frame everything as trustable, even if it’s not knowable.
Another thing, even after we’ve tasted the strawberry, there’s still an element of mystery about the whole thing. For example, how the strawberry even tastes that way; how we even are able to taste!
Hmmm, maybe I’m confusing wonder with mystery…
Can one have a sense of wonder if all is known?!
Hi Share
You make an excellent point. To be able to know, you have to be willing to trust the process. If you don’t it won’t unfold and become known. So trust is more fundamental.
My point was just relative to the mystery. If you consider it inherently a mystery, you imply it cannot be known.
The strawberry was an analogy. When you know through recognizing you are it, all the nuances of the object are known. It’s origins, nature, process, etc. Including the strawberry if you choose to explore that.
Certainly. Creation is so astonishingly vast and complex that the more you know the more awe and wonder there is of what is yet to be known.
Keep in mind here that knowable doesn’t mean all-knowing. There is the potential to know anything about anything. But we’re still what Buckminster Fuller called Special Case. Our experiencing mechanism is a point value of the totality. We know one thing at a time. It can be a very big thing, like the Universe or the Cosmic Body. But we gain knowledge in increments.