Hazrat Inayat Kahn, Joseph Campbell, Alipi, wonder, and the mystery of God

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

When we have come to see everything as mystery, including ourselves, and we have come to know that God is the one mystery which is everything, then we shall come to realize that ...we are the mystery which is God; that is, having forgotten what we thought we knew, and what we think we are, we find that we exist wholly ensconced in the one-limitless-enigma, and, in fact, not only are we in that enigma, but we actually are The Enigma. And that Enigma, for a great part of history, has been called God. We are Mystery. We are God.

Ah, but wait a minute, how is that possible? How could we be both ignorant and God at the same time? And the answer, as we shall see in the following pages, is: nobody knows (not even God).

But first, regarding the immanent nature of Mystery- the fact that we are the greatest of wonders to ourselves- Joseph Campbell states: “Not the animal world, nor the plant world, nor the miracle of the spheres, but man himself is now the crucial mystery”. And Lindsay Clarke's character proffers, “It’s my contention that there are mysteries enough in here [tapping at his breast] to keep a man occupied without meddling in foreign parts.”

“When we think of that sense and that feeling, or that inclination, which makes us affirm the word ‘I’, it is difficult to point out what it is, what is its character; for it is something which is beyond human comprehension.”

Hazrat Inayat Kahn

The mystery is in us. Wonder lies within; God, or Heaven, or the ‘Kingdom of Spirit’, call it what you will, it is that which lies nowhere but inside us.

Alipi announced: “¼if that which thou seekest thou find not within thee, thou wilt never find it without thee. If thou knowest not the excellency of thine own house, why dost thou seek and search after the excellency of other things? The universal Orb of the world contains not so many great mysteries and excellencies as a little Man, formed by God in His image. And he who desirest the primacy among the students of Nature will nowhere find a greater or better field of study than himself.”

excerpted from:

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

by Jack Haas

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