Mystical Mind, Mystical Heart

by Anthony De Mello

Mystics tell us that, in addition to the mind and heart with which we ordinarily communicate with God, we are, all of us, endowed with a mystical mind and mystical heart. These are faculties that make it possible for us to know God directly, to grasp and intuit Him in His very being, though in a dark manner, apart from all thoughts and concepts and images. You are surrounded by God, yet you don’t see God because you “know” about God. The final barrier to the vision of God is your God concept. You miss God because you think you know.

The great Chinese sage, Lao Tse, said, “The one who knows does not say; the one who says does not know.” God cannot be described. For example, suppose that I’d never smelt a rose before, and I asked you what the fragrance of a rose smelled like. Could you describe it for me? Of course not. Well, if you cannot describe a simple thing like the fragrance of the rose, how could you describe the Almighty? Whatever words you would use would fall short. Any image that your mind makes will be more unlike God than like God.

The experience of God is totally beyond description or imagination. There is far too much God talk and the world is sick of it. There’s too little dropping of illusions, dropping of errors, dropping of attachments and cruelty, too little awareness. That’s what the world is suffering from.

The highest knowledge of God is to know God as unknowable. All revelations, however divine, are never any more than a finger pointing to the moon. As it is said in the East, “When the sage points to the moon, all the idiot sees is the finger.” So, the first thing in connecting to God is to acknowledge that your ideas of God are all inadequate.