The Vessel Must be Empty to be Filled

by Roy K Austin
(Dorset England)

Thought is the opposite of true meditation and in our world
it hardly ever stops. We need a new religion, a new philosophy
and therefore, a new awareness of the world, fit for this
twenty first century. A century where each one of us may begin
to intuit and feel the world as a whole, so that our lives have
meaning.

Now faith, unlike belief, is always open to new visions of the
world. One might say empty˜. Belief however cannot be faith
for belief is a closed mind full of preconception. The draw-bridge
is up, so to speak, guarding its particular contents back to its
first principles of misinterpretation. True faith is more like
being in love with that which infinitely transcends finite vision.
That which always ˜is which remains untouched by our thoughts.
To be at the foot of mystery without preconception is the only
true, spiritual position. It is the finite before the infinite, the small
before the vast and great. We may then be touched by the infinite,
or the divine in such a way as to be fed, with increased ascending
consciousness. Always on guard against our innate tendency to
interpret and misinterpret. - J.D. Krishnamurti reminds us that
when the small projects upon the great it can only come up with
a small answer. Man has done this repeatedly, down through the
ages, thus we have mind-sets, closed and locked up in their own
particular keeps. For such people there is no other way of looking
at the world and their religions have proved to be in the past,
quarrelsome and divisive. Today is no exception, as with the
culture gaps they give rise to which are downright dangerous.

What is as opposed to that which is not does not need knowledge
of itself in us, for we are what IT is doing. Doing to itself. In as much
as we become aware of this and are prepared to be before its
mystery without thought, then we would be more attuned to the
causal spirit within us which is that mystery. Getting closer to a new
and holistic religion or spiritual condition for our future world.

May our thought and reason be for a world within that awareness!
Doubt everything born of thought, beware of tradition for it is what
the human mind has wrought and just look at the state of the world.
Doubt all except doubt itself, because ultimately, the universe is
something and the cause of that universe appears from nothing.
Nothing being simply the face of that which transcends finite, human
vision. We may intuit realms of consciousness beyond space and time
(and for me this is undoubtedly true) but, if I were mistaken about this
I would never know it.

The potential, unique relationship we may have with the divine is like
knowing without knowing. An intuition that somehow imbues a certainty
until we try to circumscribe or name it, when it is entirely lost.
In short, true mysticism is that where

No preconception
Blocks or fills its mind,
The void is its capacity,
Its fruit, the windfall kind.

(From Mystic Seed. Roy K. Austin)