Song of the Abbey

In an ancient abbey on a remote hilltop they sang to their god in harmony.

A tenor and a bass, a clutch of sopranos and a few mellifluous altos, whose voices rose up and above the gothic arches to the heavens themselves.

The great Cathedrals and abbeys were modelled upon the celestial, and their architects and craftsmen were skilled indeed, to say nothing of those who wrote their music.

A believer or an infidel, what difference could it possibly make in such surroundings and with such voices.  Even the most dogged of non believers are transported. As to where, who knows, and in such transport of delight, does it matter.

Eyes closed and minds emptied, to be filled by a fecund nothingness of pure beauty, a transportation to a realm where no evil exists and where eternity spins it’s never ending web through spirals of stars and galaxies and infinite universes. Where the physical becomes ephemeral, where mass melds with mind, where all exists and nothing.

If there is a divine, then no finer path, no better access could be found.   Consciousness becomes…other.

Along the empty roads, through the remote fields and forests around the Abbey, something happens to wanderers. It is something some become accustomed to feeling, a  peaceful un-connectedness. Or rather connectedness to a different state, another plane where all somehow seems to become clear. Where the mind settles and seems to speak to itself in a very different way. Or is it something else which speaks; who knows.

Dissipation, dissolution feel strangely close at such times but hold no fear.  Perhaps a journey’s end approaches and yet a disappearance seems no great wrench, but rather a continuance into a realm of pure mind. Away from a world so often imperfect and unfinished.  Those who have been there have tried so often to describe such a feeling, such a realm, but once back in a more accustomed frame of mind, the experience is always difficult to portray convincingly or with any accuracy.

At such times and in such places there is knowledge, certainty and gentle peace. Everything is convincingly well and as it should be. Doubt and anguish, anxiety and blackness disappear. Those in such states become, are for a time, something other than what they have been. Or rather their consciousness does, for  body seems of  little relevance in such moments.

Do the doubts come flooding back, the terrors of physical “reality”, the apparent necessity to co-exist with those who seemed bent on war rather than peace, destruction rather than mutuality. Competition not cooperation and kindness.

Perhaps. The blackness of the world can be so pervasive, so overwhelming.  But these waking revelations seem so real, so tangible that it feels they could banish imperfection for ever.

Chemicals the cynics would claim, a particular atomic mix which brings on strange visions of other states of being, other modes of existence.

Yes, but thus is also produced that same mundane physical reality which they claim is “all”. Why should it be all.  Why should those same chemicals, that same mix of primal energy, not create alternate states just as real as those we call life.

What we usually see is surely not “all”. Sages and seers claim to see beyond the myopic dullness most believe to constitute “reality”.  Science probably sees very little of the grand scheme of things, despite the depressing certainty pretended by the pure physicalist.

Not for all, the narrow dogma of earthly religion, not for all the confines of “this is true” or “that”.

And yet profound truth is what all faith points at, an alternate reality dimly seen, as if by candlelight in a darkened cellar.

It may not be a literal truth that this or that prophet saw what he claimed to, or did what was claimed on his behalf. Maybe the Red Sea never was parted, the ark never built or floated upon Ararat or elsewhere. And yet somewhere, somehow the “miraculous” seems to exist. And when truly understood, the inexplicable is perhaps not a miracle at all, but an aspect of a greater reality not readily seen and not currently comprehensible by mere mammals.

Truth, revelation can be found within.  Perhaps for some it can be bestowed as a gift by wise men or gods, but there are few epiphanies on roads, to Damascus or elsewhere.

For most, it does not come in a sudden flash, a blinding, an instant enlightenment.  Perhaps a few may suddenly see reality, but for the rest it is the work of a lifetime of thought, of study even, as the mists slowly clear and shapes emerge from the confusion of existence.

However peace is found, however truth is stumbled upon, the world will never look the same again.

Perhaps personal serenity will be permanent, more likely it will come and go. But those who have experienced it will never be persuaded to “fight for King and Country”.  To work as a slave in the businesses of modern titans. To descend to hatred or violence.

The scales will have fallen from the eyes, paths will be switched, life will not be the same again.