Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, April 01, 2008


The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten -
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire.

- Kabir, Sufi poet & Master


Well, I suppose that everyone has their own ideas, despite various religions trying to tell us what the “truth” is. Is Kabir “right”? That just because the body rots, the soul (whatever he means by “soul”) doesn’t automatically “join with the ecstatic”? If it doesn’t, where does that energy (or whatever) go? The questions about the nature of existence are endless – and I find them fun to ponder!

What I feel, personally, is that Existence is One. I have long felt that way. In mortality there are indeed “intimations of immortality” (Keats?). Christianity, by some interpretations, says that how you behave “on earth” determines whether you “go to Heaven” or not. I don’t understand this to be about reward or punishment ; that’s the worldview of religious control freaks. I understand this simply to point out that all stages of Life share a character - “what is found now is found then”. Things overlap, blend. Pre-earthly Life, Earthly Life, and post-Earthly Life (and whatever other dimensions there may be!) are not separate.

Well, if this doesn’t confuse your day, nothing will!

Bottom line: I love the phrase “an apartment in the City of Death”! It is definitely going to be the title of something I write. Could there be a better image of the utter sadness of missing what lies at the heart of Life?

Simple: No love here, no love there. The One Path flows through the whole Mystery.

Brian+