A Heartfelt Look

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

William Wordsworth: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood 

Children do see the world as Wordsworth describes, and as he himself did as a child.  Great poets keep that freshness of perception well into their adult years.  Extraordinary poets, like Milton and Blake in English literature, never lose it.  It is the kind of perception I mean when I talk about spiritual perception.  It is a form of perception originating in the heart.  Wordsworth himself alludes to this in the closing lines of the same poem:

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Scientist and priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote early last century: “The time has come to realize that an interpretation of the universe—even a positivist one—remains unsatisfying unless it covers the interior as well as the exterior of things; mind as well as matter.” (The Phenomenon of Man:35-36).  But to see as the poet and the poetic scientist saw means to perceive through the proper organs of perception, else the reality is not seen, and not being seen is thought not to exist.  Bahá’u’lláh writes: "O servants! Eyes are needed if one is to see, and ears, if one is to hear. Whoso in this blessed Day hath not heard the divine call hath indeed no ear. By this is not meant that bodily ear that is perceived by the eye. Open your inner eye, that ye may behold the celestial Fire, and listen with the ear of inner understanding, that ye may hear the delightsome words of the Beloved." (The Tabernacle of Unity:80)

This is the level of the rhapsodic intelligence, the ecstatic mind, the enlightened heart.  There is not, except in a dichotomous world, an emotional mind and a rational mind, making the emotional by definition irrational and by implication less intelligent.  Their union is where real wisdom is manifest, where a poetics of knowledge and sacred science begins.  Here inspiration flows freely and certainty is known: the perennial and the novel are present.  Here the human intelligence enters an impersonal dimension of pre-established universal harmony.  Whenever the human intelligence catches some glimpse of this, or feels it in some powerful way, a great energy is released and one feels caught up in something greater than oneself.  This experience does not bring us down to Reality, but uplifts us to It.  We see the world “apparelled in celestial light.”  We “behold the celestial Fire”,  “hear the delightsome words of the Beloved”, experience "thoughts too deep for tears."

To achieve a spiritual perception of all things requires a new state of mind, a blending of mind and heart in a higher relationship.  It means to advance into a unified consciousness; the two become one, where mind and heart are not intellect and emotion, but the spiritual intelligence.  To describe this new power of perception as a new state of mind is serviceable at best, because we have no similar phrase like a new state of heart.  To indicate this sea-change in the human intelligence we use phrases like transformation of soul.  This is because things are held together at the soul-level, for it is there within the untapped potentials of the human soul that unities of a higher order reside waiting to be manifestly connected with the inner realities of creation.  Either by mind or heart, thought or feeling, through science or religion, one can first connect with and engage the spiritual. It is the heart that often leads the way, for while the mind knows and comprehends indirectly via thoughts and ideas, the heart understands through direct perception. But their harmonious interaction is the manifestation of the spiritual intelligence.

The heart is the lover, our sense of belonging with the universe, a feeling of empathy with all things, an identifying with the other, not just viewing it.  Love is the one and fundamental substance of the universe, what makes it into a creation, and the remover of all subjective distance.  Mind is order and form perceived objectively out there or in here, but the perceiver is viewing.  It is our sense of separation and objectivity, and when mixed with awe and dread, even alienation.  The spiritual intelligence is both of these together; their union, yet separation, at the highest levels of meaning, knowing and loving, substance and form.  This is the union of opposites making the "thing" whole or holy.

And what is going on within us during these “moments.”  The authors of Heartmath state: ‘According to our studies, at those elusive moments when we transcend our ordinary performance and feel in harmony with something else—whether it’s a glorious sunset, inspiring music, or another human being—what we’re really coming into sync with is ourselves….we’re at our optimal functioning capacity.” (Heartmath:39)

A brilliant philosopher calls this consciousness the “numinous state of mind’ and describes how to achieve it: “This mental state is perfectly sui generic and irreducible to any other; and therefore, like every absolutely primary and elementary datum, while it admits of being discussed, it cannot be strictly defined.  There is one way to help another to an understanding of it.  He must be guided and led on by consideration and discussion of that matter through the ways of his own mind, until he reach a point at which ‘the numinous’ in him perforce begins to stir, to start into life and into consciousness.  We can cooperate in this process by bringing before his notice all that can be found in other regions of the mind, already known and familiar, to resemble, or again to afford some special contrast to, the particular experience we wish to elucidate.  Then we must add: ‘This X of ours is not precisely this experience, but akin to this one and the opposite of that other.  Cannot you realize for yourself what it is?’  In other words our X cannot, strictly speaking, be taught, it can only be evoked, awakened in the mind; as everything that comes ‘of the spirit’ must be awakened.” (Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy:46) 

 Sociologist Andrew Greeley wrote: “An experience of the sacred orders the world because it not only provides a channel for man to come into contact with the really real, the numinous; it also enables him to share in the work of ordering reality.” (Unsecular Man: 167) 

Numinous consciousness, ecstatic reason, the spiritual intelligence—all names for the same state--is, I believe, our first consciousness, which is a consciousness of God and the sacred.  In children and primitives the sacred provokes an inchoate stirring of powerful feelings.  It is urgent, active, compelling to action, alive.  But with the development of the “rational” powers of the mind numen becomes nomen, power becomes a named power.  With naming comes power to channel to some extent this transcendent power, to let it flow through one’s being to become the gradual unfolding of the constituent elements of one body of experience.  These higher reaches of thought are essentially mystical, though the child inhabits them naturally, or, better, they inhabit him until overlaid with sediments of human learning.  The Sacred enters our tissues, rearranging atoms and molecules and magnetically charging our cells with love and knowledge.  Children have the sacred intelligence in abundance.  Perhaps Jesus had this in mind when He said in words I’ve quoted before: "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (The Book of Matthew, 18:3)  We need joy to approach the sacred, or the vibrations of its visitation will break us apart.