Centers of Light

 "Joy is prayer--joy is strength--joy is love." --Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Bliss of Identity

All nature is taught in radiant ways to move
All beings are in myself embraced
O fiery boundless heart of joy and love,
How are you beating in a mortal's breast!

It is your rapture flaming through my nerves
and my cells and atoms thrill with You;
My body your vessel is and only serves
As a living wine-cup of Your ecstasy.

I am a center of your golden light
And I its vast and vague circumference;
You are my soul great, luminous and white
And Yours, my mind and will, and glowing sense.

Your spirit's infinite breath I feel in me;
My life is a throb of your eternity.
--Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems
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The Idea of Tantra
When you are alone and in your own place, you are dancing for the god and identifying with it. This whole idea is basic to Tantra: to worship a god, you must become that god. No matter what you call the god or think it is, the god you worship is the god you are capable of becoming.
The power of a deity is that it personifies a power that is in Nature and in your nature. When you find that level, then you are in play. That is the work of art in general, because art is really worship.
--Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art of Living

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Does God Exist?
Perceptible and yet not perceptible; invisible and yet powerful, real like the energy--charged air, wind, storm, as important for life as the air we breathe: this is how in ancient times people imagined the Spirit, and God's "invisible" workings... Spirit as understood in the Bible, means--as opposed to flesh, the force or power moving from God.
An "invisible" force that is effective, powerful, creative, or destructive for life in judgement, in creation, in history, in Israel and later in the [Christian] Church. It comes upon one powerfully or gently, stirring up love, ecstasy, often producing extraordinary phenomenon, active in great minds of courage, of Moses, warriors, singers, prophets and prophetesses.

The Spirit is not--as the word itself might suggest--the spirit of mankind. This is the Spirit of God, who in the [oneness] Holy Spirit is the light of all creation and the world. He is not any sort of magic, supernatural aura, or magical being of an animistic kind.
The Spirit is the One, the God himself. He is God close to mankind and the world... comprehending, bestowing, but not bestowable, free, not controllable; he is life giving love, power and force. A wind blowing through all of Creation by divine will, but not by any force."
He comes where he is willed and stays afar from where he is not, in a sort of Divine wisdom, the Spirit waits to be called.
--Hans Kung, Does God Exist?

Sufism

"Whoever has no Master, has Satan as his Master."

Sufism has been part of the corporeal body of Islam for most of its history. The term sufi is known from at least the eighth century C.E.; it is from the word for wool (suf), a symbol of purity by the wearer of such a garment. The suf indicated also that there was an obvious degree of spiritual proximity to God. It is a representation of the ideal mode of worship towards God, with the whole of the heart, mind and body. Sufism is practiced throughout Islamic history as a way to access the divine love, wisdom and knowledge of the Creator which are the basis of mysticism. Sufism then has nothing to do with what authors of the book, Sufism: Love and Wisdom by Jean-Louis Michon, Roger Gaetani call, "the sectarian movements which mostly in the Western world, have used its name, fame, and even some psycho-spiritual practices to attract a naive clientele with the promise of quick spiritual advances."

"The Doctrine of Unity," writes the authors is central to Islamic revelation; 'unity is expressed by the testimony of Faith." Also accompanying the Doctrine of Unity are the concepts of the Universal Man, Mohammad the Prophet and Envoy. All who strive to imitate his virtues, and perfect intellect, pray so as to recover ones' own "pristine nature." Then there is the "Way of Recollection" without consideration or acknowledgment of human free will, places man in a garden, "naturally submitting to the Creator, and thus celebrating His praise..." What is generally known as "The Book of God," the Quran guides the believer to the paths of salvation through the sacred traditions bestowed upon every human community in history.

Finally the Sufis say,"whoever has no Master, has Satan as his Master..." Those who dare to travel to God by their own means are doomed to fail in the Islamic mind. Islam teaches that the "rebellion against God takes place on the level of the psyche, not on that of the body. The flesh is only an instrument for the tendencies originating within the psyche." So then it is the mind and spirit which must be lifted up and trained so as to go the way of truth. These are a few of the topics considered in this book of essays by various authors.