Next, he is protected from the soul-destroying conclusions of
pure monism, inevitable if its logical implications are pressed
home: that is, the identity of substance between God and the
soul, with its corollary of the total absorption of that soul in
the Being of God as the goal of the spiritual life. For the
thorough-going monist the soul, in so far as it is real, is
substantially identical with God; and the true object of
existence is the making patent of this latent identity, the
realization which finds expression in the Ved?ntist formula "That
art thou." But Kab?r says that Brahma and the creature are "ever
distinct, yet ever united"; that the wise man knows the spiritual
as well as the material world to "be no more than His footstool."
[Footnote: Nos. VII and IX.] The soul's union with Him is a love
union, a mutual inhabitation; that essentially dualistic relation
which all mystical religion expresses, not a self-mergence which
leaves no place for personality. This eternal distinction, the
mysterious union-in-separateness of God and the soul, is a
necessary doctrine of all sane mysticism; for no scheme which
fails to find a place for it can represent more than a fragment of
that soul's intercourse with the spiritual world.
Pages:
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30