{Emptiness of the Spirit (2)}[5th September 1988]

[Redbook5:343][19880905:1150]{Emptiness of the Spirit (2)}[5th September 1988]

19880905.1150

The Emptiness of the Spirit* – does open one’s eyes to the World: everything around becomes brighter, clearer, and filled with meaning. But start to plan – in this case, a booklet on local geography and history – hide the Emptiness, and you lose the brightness, the clarity and the meaning.

To think that many years ago I had this, and lost it!**

I have written near to the beginning of my booklet, [titled] ‘The Descent of the Spirit’:*** ‘The Spirit is Emptiness; | And the Emptiness pours out Truth.’;**** and then: ‘The Spirit descends | Like a Dove, like a Flame, like an Eagle | It swoops, on the Man | Cowering under its wings….’# (The second experience is referred to in earlier Journals.)#*

Are they the same? As experienced, nearly but not quite: there is a fulness [sic] of substance or meaning in the Spirit descending which is qualitatively greater than that of the Emptiness of the Spirit. Nevertheless[,] Emptiness describes both of them, I think, although differently. I think that this is the difference between the Spirit of God within a Man (Emptiness of the Spirit) and God the Spirit (The Spirit Descending). I believe also that the Spirit of God within a Man can rise#** to meet and fuse with God the Spirit.#*** This is to be expected, as to God the Spirit they are One.

*[See [Redbook5:336-341][19880904:2022]{Emptiness of the Spirit}[4th September 1988]ff

& cf [Redbook5:126-127][19880527:2240e]{The Burden}[27th May 1988];

[Redbook1:206][19710612]{Vacant Possession}[12th June 1971],

[Redbook1:196A][19710206][Emptiness][6th February 1971],

[Redbook2:129-132][19780829:2025d]{Publication [continued (5)]}[29^th August 1978]]

**[eg? [Redbook1:206][19710612]{Vacant Possession}[12th June 1971], &

[Redbook1:196A][19710206][Emptiness][6th February 1971]?]

***[Unfinished; effectively abandoned. Deliberately ambiguous title. Maybe one or two good things in it, eg the first two lines quoted above at ****, and the description of the luckless traveller trapped on the top deck of the (No.11?) bus who is approached by the writer of the Descent of the Spirit…. <20190128>]

****[OK]

#[As a matter of form, not OK]

#*ref III. [[Redbook3:113-114][19870404:1821h](DEVELOPMENT (2): {Invocation and Inspiration})[4th April 1987],] {113}

(& in II?) [Apparently not; see fn** to the Journal entry referred to above in this fn.]

#**cf Shelley, ‘To a Skylark’, ([Shelley], Poetical work, O[xford] U[niversity] P[ress], 1970, p602.)#****

[& ?cf George Meredith, ‘The Lark Ascending’,## which inspired the composer Ralph Vaughan-Williams’ work of the same name.]

#***[Rearranged from the original ‘the Spirit of God’, which was clearly a mistake, on <891011>]

#****[

To a Skylark

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!

Bird thou never wert,

That from heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O’er which clouds are bright’ning,

Thou dost float and run,

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;

Like a star of heaven

In the broad daylight

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere

Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear

Until we hardly see—we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud,

As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,

Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower,

Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aerial hue

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves:

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,

Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine:

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal

Or triumphal chaunt

Matched with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt,

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance

Languor cannot be:

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest, but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,

Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow

The world should listen then, as I am listening now!

(Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 – 1822)

]

##[

He rises and begins to round,

He drops the silver chain of sound

Of many links without a break,

In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake,

All intervolv’d and spreading wide,

Like water-dimples down a tide

Where ripple ripple overcurls

And eddy into eddy whirls;

A press of hurried notes that run

So fleet they scarce are more than one,

Yet changingly the trills repeat

And linger ringing while they fleet,

Sweet to the quick o’ the ear, and dear

To her beyond the handmaid ear,

Who sits beside our inner springs,

Too often dry for this he brings,

Which seems the very jet of earth

At sight of sun, her musci’s mirth,

As up he wings the spiral stair,

A song of light, and pierces air

With fountain ardor, fountain play,

To reach the shining tops of day,

And drink in everything discern’d

An ecstasy to music turn’d,

Impell’d by what his happy bill

Disperses; drinking, showering still,

Unthinking save that he may give

His voice the outlet, there to live

Renew’d in endless notes of glee,

So thirsty of his voice is he,

For all to hear and all to know

That he is joy, awake, aglow,

The tumult of the heart to hear

Through pureness filter’d crystal-clear,

And know the pleasure sprinkled bright

By simple singing of delight,

Shrill, irreflective, unrestrain’d,

Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustain’d

Without a break, without a fall,

Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical,

Perennial, quavering up the chord

Like myriad dews of sunny sward

That trembling into fulness shine,

And sparkle dropping argentine;

Such wooing as the ear receives

From zephyr caught in choric leaves

Of aspens when their chattering net

Is flush’d to white with shivers wet;

And such the water-spirit’s chime

On mountain heights in morning’s prime,

Too freshly sweet to seem excess,

Too animate to need a stress;

But wider over many heads

The starry voice ascending spreads,

Awakening, as it waxes thin,

The best in us to him akin;

And every face to watch him rais’d,

Puts on the light of children prais’d,

So rich our human pleasure ripes

When sweetness on sincereness pipes,

Though nought be promis’d from the seas,

But only a soft-ruffling breeze

Sweep glittering on a still content,

Serenity in ravishment.

For singing till his heaven fills,

’T is love of earth that he instils,

And ever winging up and up,

Our valley is his golden cup,

And he the wine which overflows

To lift us with him as he goes:

The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine

He is, the hills, the human line,

The meadows green, the fallows brown,

The dreams of labor in the town;

He sings the sap, the quicken’d veins;

The wedding song of sun and rains

He is, the dance of children, thanks

Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks,

And eye of violets while they breathe;

All these the circling song will wreathe,

And you shall hear the herb and tree,

The better heart of men shall see,

Shall feel celestially, as long

As you crave nothing save the song.

Was never voice of ours could say

Our inmost in the sweetest way,

Like yonder voice aloft, and link

All hearers in the song they drink:

Our wisdom speaks from failing blood,

Our passion is too full in flood,

We want the key of his wild note

Of truthful in a tuneful throat,

The song seraphically free

Of taint of personality,

So pure that it salutes the suns

The voice of one for millions,

In whom the millions rejoice

For giving their one spirit voice.

Yet men have we, whom we revere,

Now names, and men still housing here,

Whose lives, by many a battle-dint

Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint,

Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet

For song our highest heaven to greet:

Whom heavenly singing gives us new,

Enspheres them brilliant in our blue,

From firmest base to farthest leap,

Because their love of Earth is deep,

And they are warriors in accord

With life to serve and pass reward,

So touching purest and so heard

In the brain’s reflex of yon bird;

Wherefore their soul in me, or mine,

Through self-forgetfulness divine,

In them, that song aloft maintains,

To fill the sky and thrill the plains

With showerings drawn from human stores,

As he to silence nearer soars,

Extends the world at wings and dome,

More spacious making more our home,

Till lost on his aërial rings

In light, and then the fancy sings.

(George Meredith, 1826-1909)

]

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