Austin Osman Spare, Rumi, Sayings of the Desert Fathers, and Catholic neutrality

excerpted from THE WAY OF WONDER: a return to the mystery of ourselves, by Jack Haas

“Ye vainly labour at the rotten kingdom of Good and Evil.

I say that Heaven is Catholic and

none shall enter with susceptibility of either.”

Austin Osman Spare

            Let us note here that, as the original intention of the word ‘catholicity’ (i.e. open, or broad-mindedness) implies, we must continually advance into, and accept, the vast expanse of our unknowable beings, for the absolute, non-dualistic, living ‘isness’, or ‘suchness’, or ‘beingness’ of being becomes apparent only in the absence of all value judgments.

           As such, Frank de Lima, a comedian and ex-catholic deacon, confessed, “I’m very much a product of the church, but sometimes I think my real religion is innocence.”

And so, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,” wrote Rumi, “there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.”

           The western way, then, is not one of dogma, but one of surrender- absolute, epistemological surrender. Indeed, mystery is the true church within which we unavoidably prostrate in worship of being. We are baptized not in water, but in disbelief.

This awe-full benediction is pronounced in one of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, which, concluding this section, runs: “Truly Abba, Joseph has found the way, for he said: I do not know.”

excerpted from:

THE WAY OF WONDER: a return to the mystery of ourselves

by Jack Haas

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Mystical books, visionary art, and fine art photography by Jack Haas