Above: Reflection by Odilon Redon
 

Studying God
by Mervyn Brady

When a person enters a religion or School, they immediately begin to learn new words and knowledge. Words become the principle mode of communication. At this point we are not so much looking for truth as enjoying it. As I learned The System (the Fourth Way), intuition was beginning to replace deduction and the Emotional Centre, like a Spider's web, began to make connections to all sorts of previous happenings in my life.

This new knowledge bathed me in a new kind of experience; one where new and exciting knowledge was entering and creating an impetus in the Emotions that began to increase in speed and enjoyment. I began to realize something very important. I could not study God like the Theologians and Priests. He was an unknown God to me and there was plenty of room for enormous intellectual speculation on their part as they squabbled among themselves about who or what he was.

I remember the day when I saw that God made me in his own likeness and that what was in me was in God and vice versa. So if I started to study me, I was studying God. This was a revelation to me and added a turbo charge or "third force" to my work. I noticed that the jet engine that had entered my work had not necessarily entered my fellow students as well. They were getting more and more active and constantly inventing and coming up with new ways to "Work on Themselves".  I was studying God. 
 

Thy Music, by John Melhuish Strudwick

The Lute Will Beg 

You need to become a pen

In the Sun´s hand.

We need for the earth to sing

Through our pores and eyes.

The body will again become restless

Until your soul paints all its beauty

Upon the sky.

Don´t tell me, dear ones,

That what Hafiz says is not true,

For when the heart tastes its glorious destiny

And you awake to our constant need

for your love

God´s lute will beg

For your hands. 

~ Shams al-Din Hafiz Shirazi

Decalcomania, by Rene Magritte