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| Being Nothing Whosoever finds (Love), finds Nothing and All Things; that is also certain and true. But how finds he Nothing? Why, I will tell thee how. He that findeth it, findeth a Supernatural Supersensual Abyss, which hath no Ground or Byss to stand on, and where there is no Place to dwell in; and he findeth also Nothing is like unto it, and therefore it may fitly be compared to Nothing; for it is deeper than any Thing, and is as Nothing with Respect to All Things, forasmuch as it is not comprehensible by any of them. And because it is Nothing respectively, it is therefore free from All Things; and is that only Good, which a Man cannot express or utter what it is; there being Nothing to which it may be compared, to express it by. Jacob Boehme I am she who is not. And if I should claim to be anything of myself, I should be lying through my teeth! ... For you {God} alone are who you are, and whatever being I have and every other gift of mine I have from you, and you have given it all to me for love, not because it was my due. St. Catherine of Sienna The understanding, the memory and the will are in a fearful void, in nothingness. Love this immense void. Love this nothingness since the infinitude of God is in it. Jean Pierre de Caussade To live authentically is to live in the full awareness of the nothingness of one's self. Heidegger This greater part (of absolute divine Love) shows her her nothingness, naked without covering; such nakedness shows her the All Powerful through the goodness of divine righteousness. These showings make her deep, large, supreme, and sure. For they make her always naked, All and Nothing, as long as they hold her in their embrace. Marguerite Porete God is not something... God is beyond nothing and beyond something... God cannot be called "this" rather than "that". Nicholas of Cusa Student: There were men in the olden days who saw the face of God. Why don't they see it any more? Rabbi: Because nowadays no one can stoop so low. When I gazed at myself I saw myself no more. Rumi Till we see our nothing we cannot understand the value of our Being. Traherne It's not what you look like to others, nor your mirror-image, nor your ideas and memories. It's that shady nothing out of which the world is made. Thomas Traherne Jesus said: "What I now seem to be, that am I not. And so speak I, separating off the manhood." Acts of John Penetrate into the Centre of Nothingness. Creep as far as ever thou canst into the truth of thy Nothingness, and then nothing will disquiet thee. By this Gate thou must enter into the happy land of the living, where thou wilt find the greatest Good, the breadth of Love, the beauty of Justice, the straight line of equity and Righteousness and, in sum, every jot and tittle of Perfection. Molinos It had the biggest head you ever saw. A great enormous thing, - like nothing. A huge big -- well, like a -- I don't know -- like an enormous big nothing. A.A. Milne, "Winnie The Pooh" Become pure till you neither are nor have this or that; then you are omnipresent and, being neither this nor that, are all things. Meister Eckhart Things are all the same in God: they are God Himself. Meister Eckhart As long as I am this or that I am not all things. Meister Eckhart I am not in the world; the world is in Me. D.E. Harding O, the world's soul will never be united with mine, till what appears outside me, as though it always meant to be inside me, delightedly alights in me. Rilke More, more! Is the cry of a mistaken soul; less than All cannot satisfy man. Blake To reach satisfaction in all desire its possession in nothing To come to possess all desire the possession of nothing To arrive at being all desire to be nothing St. John of the Cross There is a very pure and indefinite and complete conviction that God is everything, and that nothing else is worth having. Dom John Chapman How cometh it to pass that into such as me Floweth Almighty God, into one drop of the sea? Angelus Silesius All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop. Ramana Mahrarshi Man as he now is has ceased to be the All. But when he ceases to be an individual, he raises himself again and penetrates the whole world. Plotinus I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you - nobody - too? Then there's a pair of us! Don't tell! they'd banish us - you know! How dreary - to be - somebody! How public - like a frog - To tell your name - the livelong June - To an admiring bog! Emily Dickinson Have you ever felt like nobody? Just a tiny speck of air, When everyone's around you And you are just not there. Karen, aged 9 Pooh got up slowly and began to look for himself. A.A. Milne, "The House At Pooh Corner" I have a house where I go Where no-one can be. A.A. Milne, "Now We Are Seven" The more he looked inside the more Piglet wasn't there. A.A. Milne, "The House At Pooh Corner" "Hullo, Piglet," he said. "I thought you were out." "No," said Piglet, "it's you who were out, Pooh." "So it was," said Pooh, "I knew one of us was." A.A. Milne, "The House At Pooh Corner" "Is anybody at home?" called out Pooh very loudly. "No." said a voice. "Bother." Said Pooh. "Isn't there anybody here at all?" "Nobody." A.A. Milne, "Winnie The Pooh" "But this is Me." Said Bear, very much surprised. "What sort of Me?" "Pooh Bear." "Are you sure?" said Rabbit. A.A. Milne, "Winnie The Pooh" "Hullo Rabbit," he said, "is that you?" "Let's pretend it isn't," said Rabbit, "and see what happens." "I've got a message for you." "I'll give it to him." A.A. Milne, "Winnie The Pooh" At one of the great Court banquets where everyone sat according to his rank while awaiting the appearance of the King, a plain, shabbily dressed man entered the hall and took a seat above everyone else. His boldness angered the Prime Minister who demanded that he identify himself and acknowledge if he were a vizier. The stranger replied that he ranked above a vizier. The astonished Prime Minister then asked if he were a prime minister. Again the man replied that he was above that position. When asked if he were the King himself he answered that he was above that too. "Then you must be a Prophet", declared the Prime Minister; to which the man again asserted that he ranked above that position. Angrily, the Prime Minister shouted, "Are you then God?" to which the man calmly replied, "I am above that too". Contemptuously, the Prime Minister declared, "There is nothing above God". In reply the man said, "Now you know my identity. That nothing is me". A. Reza Arasteh, "Rumi The Persian" I've been freed from the self that pretends to be someone, and in becoming no one, I begin to live. It is worthwhile dying, to find out what life is. T.S. Eliot And when there was no longer a place for him on the boards, he would become the candle snuffer, the man who lights them and then, at the end, puts them out one by one. But since he'd know all the parts, they would take him on as prompter: his voice would be, as it were, in all the voices. He was overcome with a feverish joy at the thought of being in one instant so many people living out so many adventures. Little Lazarus had no limits; and it was in vain that he gave a friendly smile to his own reflection, which came back to him from a bit of mirror stuck between two beams, for he had no specific shape. He possessed a thousand shapes. Marguerite Yourcenar, "Two Lives and a Dream" It is its nature to be natureless. Meister Eckhart This affair is like the bright sun in the blue sky, shining clearly, changeless and motionless, without diminishing or increasing. It shines everywhere in the daily activities of everyone, appearing in everything. Though you try to grasp it, you cannot get it; though you try to abandon it, it always remains. It is vast and unobstructed, utterly empty. Like a gourd floating on water, it cannot be reined in or held down. Since ancient times, when good people of the Path have attained this, they've appeared and disappeared in the sea of birth and death, able to use it fully. There is no deficit or surplus: like cutting up sandalwood, each piece is it. Ta-hui Often one flies just for the excitement of speed and power, but that's nothing. Any fool of a passenger gets it -- it's little more than a physical thrill. I want to fly for the sake of the flash of seeing that comes now and then -- almost as if one died bodily, and escaped from oneself, and saw out on the other side. But I can't tell you what it is I see. I can't even remember it myself. It will be the same with you. Some day the kind of exaltation you told me of, that comes to you after days and days of thought, will suddenly become more than it has ever been before -- and you will see. Then you'll come back, just as I come back to earth, and you won't be able to tell what you've seen -- or remember it. But the thing you can't describe and can't remember will be the whole of life to you. Sometimes you'll call it God, and sometimes you'll feel that it's nothingness, and that you've given up your life to nothingness. And in what way you'll reach it, I don't know. Maybe through solitude. I doubt it. I believe you'll find what you're looking for in the world, not in withdrawing from it. Charles Morgan, (A pilot speaking to a scholar.) "The Fountain" back to top |
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