A Dance of Divine Light

In a 1993 interview with Mark Thompson, author Andrew Harvey notes the following.

I had a series of unexpected and shattering mystical breakups [in India] that led me to experience the divine dimension. I prefer the word “breakup” to “breakdown” because I think you do break completely, but you break into another dimension in which you are at the same time infinitely more fragile, more awake, and more loving.

It was through this experience that I’ve come to understand what Rumi means: the absolute inadequacy of normal consciousness, the necessity to fling away all our conditioning of every kind if we are ever going to know the truth, the divine truth, about our real self.

. . . Choosing not to betray the truth in its “madness” [is] a hair-raising thing, but it [teaches us] that reputation is nothing and that the only valuable thing is to remain true to the soul.

Remain true to the soul, and life magically transforms itself around you. You go “mad” into the divine – like Rumi and all other mystics – and know the whole of reality as a dance of divine light. The world reveals itself as a field of what Rumi called kibriya – divine glory.

[Here] you find the courage to stay “mad,” to stay with an endless capacity for transformation – for going on and on dissolving your own assumptions and certainties. In fact, you come to trust enough to remain perpetually bewildered so as always, always to be vulnerable to miracle.

– Andrew Harvey
“Rebirth Through the Wound”
in Mark Thompson’s Gay Soul: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit and Nature
pp. 49-50

For The Wild Reed’s 2010 Holy Week series (featuring excerpts from Andrew Harvey’s book Son of Man: The Mystical Path to Christ), see:
Jesus: Path-Blazer of Radical Transformation
The Essential Christ
One Symbolic Iconoclastic Act
One Overwhelming Fire of Love
The Most Dangerous Kind of Rebel
Resurrection: Beyond Words, Dogmas and All Possible Theological Formulations
The Cosmic Christ: Brother, Lover, Friend, Divine and Tender Guide

Recommended Off-site Link:
Andrew Harvey's Official Website

Image: Zita Azazi.