Bottomless bottom
Man,
who are you so that God can fall into you? Who are you so that you
can fall into God? Who are you so that Agape of God can be widespread
in you? You are infinite gaping profoundness.
It
is to be feared that here our contemporary obviousnesses cannot
follow any more. Don't they count on a radical finiteness,
a strict immanence
and a total enclosure
of the human reality? What remains is a simply virtual 'I', a phenomenal
appearance of an 'id' in a dead end. A 'that' which wishes biological
impulses. A 'that' which speaks by blind structures. A 'that' which functions
with absurd mechanics. Such is not the starting obviousness of the mystic
Johan Tauler. His psychology of the human depths or his spirituality
of divine depths don't know any bounds. Man is infinitely open, open
on a bottomless bottom. And here, in this opening, is played the
decisive adventure of man with God and of God with man.
Without 'you' the mystery of God does not know where to communicate itself
nor where to share itself. This mystery starts, for you, with 'your'
mystery. Here the great Christian difference should immediately be marked. The divine mystery is identified with your mystery,certainly. However your mystery is already more than yours. Your
mystery is embarked where you are not any more alone master on board of
yourself. Where you exist deeply only in the crossing of yourself, in
going through your deeper difference, in the gaping of your 'same'
towards the 'Other'.
The
basic essentials of your life is played and decided on another plan
which is not any more that of the daily obviousnesses. An 'elsewhere'
which is however closer and more present that all the mundane
presences and proximities, since it coincides with your absolute
interior. The interior is not a closed little world of your
intimacies. The interior is an unfathomable abyss. The interior is an
infinite universe. It is this interior which gives sense, order and
value to your outside.
The
vertical crossing emerges between ultimate heights and ultimate
depths; the accent can be put on one or the other. Johan Tauler speaks more often about the abyss
than of the heights. Per moments, he speaks about both at the same
time, as if the inconsistency of the image underlined their
inaccessibility. Bottomless altitude or culminating depth. In turn or
at the same time they mean the great vertical difference compared to
the horizontality of the middle, the ultimate divine mystery in man.
From a Christian standpoint this verticality is not only an
orientation or a projection. It is an ontological dimension of the
being. It brings to light the hierarchical basis of the
anthropological constitutions, and among them, below or above them,
structures a dimension capable of God.
In
the centre of man, where human becomes divine and where the divine
becomes human, where the spirit takes a body and where the body marries the
spirit, There must be a reality to which the mystics give various
names. The Bible calls it quite simply the 'heart'.
The 'heart' is like an 'interface' between all the dynamics in the depths
of man. Far from being postulated by
the theory, the 'heart' is an experimental reality, immediate data of
the spiritual experience itself. It is not discovered in surface. But
all you need is to go down deep enough and find yourself quasi
naturally at home.
The
'heart' is like the 'hot source' of our spiritual
dynamics
rich of a residual reserve of energy which
remains to it since his originating creation. It is deep fidelity
with the large breath of the origins. Like the small child you never
cease being, the heart, at the bottom of yourself, lives in very
great proximity with his first 'nativity'. It says quite 'naturally',
quite 'naively', a serene 'yes' to the being, in fundamental
agreement with the true nature of the things. Yet before the next
thousand 'complications' of existence.
Of
this interiority gaping on God,
Saint Augustin delivers, through his 'Confessions', the very deep
experience of an alive heart with its alive God. This God who
calls me even before I call him.
This God who is already there before I
pray to him. This God who is more
interior in me than I am in myself…
You are too great to belong only to yourself!
Go down… Go down in your transcendent
depths. Go with the vertical movement which delivers you to
the Other one and which at the same time delivers you to your own
deep truth. As soon as you begin your descent, however, a thousand
reasons arise not to go down!
We
are unaware of he basic essentials of our life. At the same time we
know what
we are unaware of. Or at least we can know. If there were not this
knowledge which includes our ignorance, we could live, like the
animal, free of any metaphysical concern. But that is refused to us.
Our ignorance is thus not radical! Our ignorance is about a lapse
of memory. Face to this amnesia, something like an 'anamnesis' becomes necessary.
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