"The Godhead is as void as though it were not," said Eckhart. "Pass from the station of `I' and `We' and choose for thy home Non-entity. For when thou hast done the like of this, thou shalt reach the supreme felicity," wrote Qurratulayn, a Persian poetess, nearly a century ago. We may begin to grasp the meaning of such statements by grasping the conception that Infinite Mind is the formless, matterless, Void, Spirit. Mortal error is mistaking forms for final realities instead of penetrating to their essence, Mind. Whatever can be said about the unnameable "Void" will be not enough at least and merely symbolic at most. The mystic's last Word is the Freemason's lost Word. It can never be spoken for it can never be heard. It is the one idea which can never be transferred to another mind, the one meaning which can never get through any pen or any lip. Yet it is there--the supreme Fact behind all the myriad facts of universal existence. To elevate any form by an external worship or an internal meditation which should be given only to the formless Void is to elevate an idol in the place of God. Muhammed is reported to have once said that the worship of any one other than the great Allah, i.e., "the Beginningless, the Endless," was the first of major sins. Yet to honour the sublime No-thing by thought or rite is hard for the unmetaphysical. And it requires much metaphysical insight to perceive its truth. The cold impersonality of this idea is at first repelled by us with something like horror. A change in this attitude can come about only gradually at most. But if we perseveringly pursue our quest of truth we shall overcome our aversion in the end. If it be true that Truth is not something we can utter, that the Nameless cannot fitly be represented by any name, we may however continue to use any word we like, provided we keep its limitations clearly in our understanding of it. After all, although the thinking intellect creates its own image of truth, it is the Overself that starts the creative process working. But in the end we shall have to reserve our best worship not for a particular manifestation in time but for the Timeless itself, not for a historical personage but for the impersonal Infinite.
-- Notebooks Category 28: The Alone > Chapter 1 : Absolute Mind > # 116
-- Perspectives > Chapter 28: The Alone > # 52
