Mystery, O Mystery
Or, how to reason yourself into not knowing
"If you have understood, then what you have understood is not God."
- St. Augustine
David’s small room at the assisted living facility was filled floor to ceiling with piles of books and papers. An avid reader and writer from his days as a college professor, at 90, his body was failing, but his mind remained sharp. When I walked in for our first hospice Chaplain visit, he was in his wheelchair at a table littered with notes and dog-eared books, typing away on his computer.
“Oh, good,” he said without looking up. “You’re here. Sit.” He pointed to a chair next to him.
I moved a stack of magazines from the chair and sat down. He turned to face me, adjusted his glasses, and folded his frail hands in his lap.
“Tell me,” he said, with an academic pause. “Do space and time exist?”
I can’t tell you how much I love conversations like this. It’s what I live for. They don’t happen often, but when they do, I am all in.
“I don’t know,” I responded. “What do you think?” (Chaplains ask questions: that’s our job.).
“First, we have to talk about Existence. What does ‘exist’ mean?” And so began his lecture. “To exist comes from the Latin for ‘to stand out.’ Space and time do not stand out, they are the underlying principle of the universe, therefore, they do not exist.”
I couldn’t disagree. His logic was sound.
“But,” he continued without pausing. “What arises from space and time does stand out. Things are distinctions. You and I are simply distinctions in space and time.”
“So we exist?” I interjected.
“Yes.” He said, and took a long, labored breath. “But what happens when we don’t?”
I was about to launch into questions about the afterlife, a concern for many of my patients, but he didn’t give me a chance.
“We simply go back into space and time.” He already had it all figured out.
“Are you OK with that?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, and his shoulders sunk a little.
He went on to say that he is a lifelong Atheist and thinks religion is childish. Things like Heaven, Love, Beauty are just gibberish, and a paternalistic God with a long beard is ridiculous. That may be so, I said, but explained that what he was talking about – space and time, existence and afterlife – are actually spiritual subjects, and while they don’t involve Theism – a belief in a deity – they still involve Ultimate Reality. In fact, I told him, I suspected he was a more spiritual man than he would like to admit.
“Tell me more,” he leaned in.
I explained that his understanding of form arising from the formless, distinct, but not separate, is a concept common to Buddhist, Hindu and Daoist thought, as well as the mystical traditions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. God/Source is formless and Man/Things form; distinct, but not separate from one another. Similarly, the concept of God/Source/Dao/Ultimate Reality as not existing, i.e. not standing out, but, like space and time, the underlying principle of the universe —everywhere and everything—, is at the heart of spirituality.
He sat pensively for a long moment. “But how does that happen? How does form arise from the formless?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “It’s a mystery. THE mystery.”
His eyes lit up. “Ah, Yes! Mystery, O Mystery!”
Like David, many of us hide our spirituality in intellectualism, either from fear of appearing “childish” or woo-woo or because thinking about spirituality is easier than actually doing it. We spend our time furiously debating philosophy and the finer points of obscure texts or doing complicated mathematics to determine the number of angels that can fit on the head of a pin. Others become obsessed with spiritual techniques; exotic forms of meditation or ritual that make us think we are doing something “spiritual,” but really just give us something else to think about. Basically, we go for anything that will keep our discursive minds engaged trying to figure it all out because we are more comfortable there, in the “I know.”
Not knowing, mystery, or the unknowable is uncomfortable for us. But that’s where all the true spirituality lies. That’s why Zen koans exist: to shock us out of our intellectual knowing. You can’t figure them out with your mind. It’s also one of the purposes of meditation: to stop the discursive mind long enough for something else to emerge. It’s how the mystics come to their understanding, by starting with not knowing and accepting that life, God/Source/Reality is a great mystery.
What interested me was that David, the Philosophy Professor, had reasoned himself into mystery. He allowed himself to get to the point of not being able to answer his own questions – What is life? What happens when we die? -- and he was willing to stay there. He didn’t try to comfort himself by going back into “I know.” He didn’t want answers; he liked wrestling with the questions, knowing that he might never know the answers. So, we spent the next half hour talking about how living in mystery opens everything up to possibility.
For some people, certainty gives comfort, but for others, mystery is more exciting. For David, letting mystery be mystery gave him something to live for and took away the fear of dying. He could be curious and interested in what was happening – or might happen - instead of fearing or expecting the worst. It gave his active mind something to do instead of just waiting around to die. It kept him engaged in living, which is the whole point at the heart of mystery.
What would happen if we allowed ourselves to rest in the mystery? To remain curious about what was happening? To see it all as so very interesting? Not just at the end of our lives, but now? Every day? How much anxiety would fall away? How much fear, depression and despair would lift? And how much more would we actually learn about the ultimate mystery of Life/God/Source itself?
“I’m glad you don’t have answers,” he said when I prepared to leave.
“Me, too.” I said. “Next week?”
“We can talk about art.”
“Yes, let’s talk about art. Another mystery.”
“Another mystery,” he waved cheerfully, and went back to typing on his computer. I couldn’t help but wonder what he was writing.
Maybe a mystery?
“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.” ― Anaïs Nin
I’m going to read this several times. Thank you.
This is so beautifully written. I look forward to your talk with David about art. 😘