On Words and Mystics

He had once told her that words are everything. Even when we lie submerged in a fathomless ocean of silence, words make their presence felt through their very absence. Even when you cannot speak, it is the wall of speechlessness that enshrouds you that suddenly makes you seem so alive.

'Out the very depths of my misery have I called out to you O Lord' runs one prayer in the Old Testament.

He would sometimes wonder why people go to art school and mess around with paints and pastels when you can quietly sit down at home and sketch with your words. Colours are to a painter what words are to a lover of language. Landscapes are to the former what mindscapes are to the latter.

He often used to think that what people call 'religion' is largely irrelevant. Irrelevant to whom? To him, maybe. But not to some of the great mystics of Europe whom he would avidly read about. There was a common feature of their lives which used to fascinate him.

St Teresa of Avila, for instance. She knew that there was a God of Love waiting for her, and yet she also knew that this side of the grave she would never attain that complete beatific vision of her God.

To go through an entire life-time knowing that the Beloved exists, waiting for you, and also knowing that the Beloved can never be truly possessed with your mortal frame --- that is a pain, a most overwhelming pain, that would crush the heart of any human being. Any human being but a mystic.