In 1841 Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an essay that is, at once, oddly insightful and wonderfully honest regarding a topic which has become very nearly anathema, the light and wisdom that is contained within all men and the inability of the frail human mind to create its own wisdom in the absence of this light. He reasons, through the lens of history, that the great thoughts and deeds of human endeavor have come from a source beyond mere intellect and are, rather, discovered through humility and obedience to, what he termed, the Over-Soul by seekers of truth. The poignance of his essay is revelatory of Emerson’s own connection with the Over-Soul and his words ring with truth that is too seldom available to readers in this century of intellectual over-stimulation. We have available every conceivable turn of a phrase or possibility of gods to worship in the multitudes of media literally at our fingertips and yet all of the truth contained in so many words had already been distilled hundreds of years ago for all men to read, words distilled by those men who were allowed insight into their own souls by virtue of their honesty and humility of purpose.
Those men, who endeavored to find not their own rationality but the reality of those things beyond the corporeal veil, those things which are ineffable yet more real than any object which may be grasped and tooled, are the lamps which reveal the blueprints of the foundation of the infinite realm made flesh which was laid before the creation of the universe. Those men speak true wisdom that resonates within those whose minds and bodies are attuned to the delicate symphony of life celebrating its Maker and all of it is within us waiting to be set free if we would only let go of our own vainglorious prejudice towards the matter we have named reality and instead seek to find the driving force that animates and distills the physical world into an ultimate perfection that is the beneficiary of evolution. Evolution drives everything to the fulfillment of its nature, the nature that is irrevocable, irresistible, and inevitable in the end. Evolution is the hand of God at work within the frivolity of the quantum, leaving the choice of the observer to create its own destiny yet already knowing the final composition that the march of time will produce.
This final picture, the masterpiece of creation is revealed to itself gradually through the mechanism of time. Being outside of time allows our Creator the vantage point of omniscience and the miracle of revelation is simply the gradual unveiling of the Magnum Opus to the hearts and minds of all and especially to the men who endeavor to glimpse beyond the next fold. Being unable to contain their own enthusiasm, this enthusiasm, to the masses, appears as insanity in many cases. It becomes a fervor and zeal that blinds the witness to all encumbrances, driving them forth into the turmoil and fray created by the force of their vision of the next turning of life into spirit, the next evolution of mankind. Mankind must submit to its own evolution. It has no choice; although it will resist or challenge the torrential current that draws it to an inevitable conclusion out of ignorance or fear, the destination is set and the painting complete. The only task left to the world is to learn to distinguish the resistance from the revelation and Emerson has a few words of advice to allow that distinction to be made:
“The great distinction between teachers sacred or literary; between poets like Herbert, and poets like Pope; between philosophers like Spinoza, Kant, and Coleridge, – and philosophers like Locke, Paley, Mackintosh and Stewart; between men of the world who are reckoned accomplished talkers, and here and there a fervent mystic, prophesying half-insane under the infinitude of his thought, is that one class speak from within, or from experience, as parties and possessors of the fact; and the other class from without, as spectators merely, or perhaps as acquainted with the fact on the evidence of third persons. It is of no use to preach to me from without. I can do that too easily myself. Jesus speaks always from within, and in a degree that transcends all others. In that is the miracle. That includes the miracle. My soul believes beforehand that it ought so to be. All men stand continually in the expectation of the appearance of such a teacher. But if a man do not speak from within the veil, where the word is one with that it tells of, let him lowly confess it.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It bears repeating, “…where the word is one with that it tells of…”
The word, truth, must be one with truth; otherwise words are the mere utterances of simpletons casting self-aggrandizing spells into the aether, in other words sin. And though lies can only lead those who have freely chosen to be separate from the truth further into the darkness the lie is still a blemish on the perfection that is the magnum opus and it must be stricken from perfection else it is not perfection; and those who have chosen to seek to be closer and closer to the light grow stronger in their vision and conviction with each step and speak into the world the honesty that unfolds perfection and light even to death because they have seen the opus magnum and its sheer beauty must not and cannot be soiled.
Read “The Over-Soul” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It will be a step towards the light and divine nature of the universe that will lead you upon a journey of unfathomable rewards and if you find a splinter of the light it contains that you can hold then let it be so, for the light is not capable of being hidden and it will shine from you as a beacon to those who seek it.
But what do I know? I’m just a dummygod.
