Wandering With The Cherubim: A Commentary on the Mystical Verse of Angelus Silesius–The Cherubinic Wanderer

Wandering With The Cherubim

A Commentary on the Mystical Verse of Angelus Silesius–The Cherubinic Wanderer

by

Swami Nirmalananda Giri

(Abbot George Burke)

Published by Light of the Spirit Press

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Light of the Spirit Monastery

P. O. Box 1370

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All rights reserved.

Bisac categories:

1. OCC012000 BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Mysticism

2. REL012040 RELIGION / Christian Living / Inspirational

3. REL062000 RELIGION / Spirituality

4. OCC019000 BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Inspiration & Personal Growth

1st edition

07062023

Preface

This commentary is based on the translation by J. E. Crawford Flitch. The biographical introduction was written for another translation by Paul Carus, better known for his translation of Buddhist texts published under the title The Gospel of Buddha .

Unfortunately there is no complete translation of The Cherubinic Wanderer, and translators have chosen only those verses that appeal to them (or that they can understand), and have arranged according to subject, not the order of the original German. I have kept Crawford’s arrangement as there is some merit in it.

Perhaps the major problem is in the translator’s desire to render Silesius’ words in meter and rhyme to match the original. German is far more suited to this for an English translation than other languages, yet meaning is certainly at times being sacrificed to manage this.

The Cherubinic Wanderer consists of several sections. The first number at the end of a verse designates which of those sections, and the second number the sequence the verse appears in that section.

As is usual in Western writings, self almost always means the ego-self, and not the divine Self as in Eastern texts. So in some verses I have changed self to ego-self to make Silesius’ real meaning clear.

For such a profound subject this book is brief. But the principle on which it is based is simplicity itself: the mystical unity and mystical identity of God, creation and man.

When the future Swami Turiyananda met Sri Ramakrishna he told him that he spent several hours each day studying Vedanta. Ramakrishna was amazed, and cited the words of Adi Shankaracharya, the greatest Vedantist of all: Brahman is real. The world is illusory. The jiva is nothing but/other than Brahman. How then, he asked would someone spend hours a day on books that said nothing but these few words. With a shock Turiyananda realized he had been wasting his time. So he began focusing on yoga sadhana instead to realize his true Self which was one with Brahman.

The verses of Silesius are presented in sections according to broad subject. Many subjects may seem to be unrelated to non-dual realization, such as that on love, but what Silesius says in each one should be viewed from the standpoint of Advaita. For example, to the one who loves God there is none other than God–not even himself. Sri Ramakrishna often said, What is knowledge? And what is the nature of this ego? ‘God alone is the Doer, and none else’–that is knowledge. I am not the doer; I am a mere instrument in his hand. Therefore I say: ‘O Mother, Thou art the Operator and I am the machine. Thou art the Indweller and I am the house. Thou art the Driver and I am the carriage. I move as Thou movest me. I do as Thou makest me do. I speak as Thou makest me speak. Not I, not I, but Thou, but Thou.’

Johannes Scheffler: Angelus Silesius

ANGELUS SILESIUS

By Paul Carus, 1908

Mysticism is, as it were, a short cut of sentiment to reach a truth otherwise inaccessible under given conditions… I have devoted more time to a renewed perusal of one of the most prominent and interesting mystics of Germany, Johannes Scheffler, or as he is better known by his adopted name, Angelus Silesius, who was born in 1624 at Breslau, and died in 1677. While mystics of the type of Jacob Boehme and Swedenborg present their views in long essays of a philosophical nature which read like the dreams (or if you prefer, the vagaries) of a prophet, Angelus Silesius condenses his views in short apothegms, written in a somewhat archaic style, mostly in simple verse, and often with crude rhymes. [No attribution is given by Carus for this quotation.]

Since this mystical thinker is little known in the countries of English speech, and since only a few of his verses have been translated, we present here to our readers an additional selection which will serve as instances of the peculiar God-conception of the mystics, so much like Buddhistic Nirvana; also the mystic ethics of quietism, the mystic psychology and mystic religion which teach man to seek salvation through breaking down the limits of the ego. By overcoming egoity it is promised that man shall attain divinity. Peculiarly noteworthy is the mystic’s sensual conception of piety, and the representation of the soul’s relation to God as a kind of mystic marriage. All this is typical of a certain kind of mysticism which exercised such a powerful influence at the end of the Middle Ages, but has now entirely lost its influence on mankind.

Johannes Scheffler was born of Protestant parents at Breslau, the capital of Silesia, in 1624, and was baptized in the same year on Christmas day. Having passed through the usual course of education at a gymnasium he went to the Universities of Strassburg, Leyden and Padua where he studied medicine and philosophy. At the last mentioned place he took his doctor’s degree in 1647. For three years, 1649-1652, he served as Court Physician to Duke Sylvius Nimrod of Oels, who was a pious but decidedly one-sided Protestant.

Scheffler’s mystic inclinations had long before alienated him from the dogmatic and anti-artistic spirit of the religion of his birth which during the middle of the seventeenth century was more severe and bigoted than ever before or afterwards. At the same time there was a religious revival in the Roman Catholic world which proved attractive to him, and so it was but natural that finally in 1653 he severed his old affiliations, and joined the Church that by the mystical glamor of its historical traditions was most sympathetic to him.

The zeal with which Scheffler embraced Roman Catholicism made him unjust toward the Protestant persuasion and implicated him in very unpleasant controversies.

Having become persona grata in the aristocratic circles of Austria, Scheffler became Court Physician to the Emperor in 1654; ten years later, in 1664, he was appointed chief Master of Ceremonies at the court of the Prince Bishop of Breslau, with the title Counsellor.

His devotion led him in 1661 to enter the order of St. Francis, commonly called the Brotherhood of Minorites. Having fallen a prey to consumption, he died July 9, 1677, in the institution of the Knights of the Cross of St. Matthews in Breslau.

Though by education a physician and a scientist, Johannes Scheffler was a mystic and a poet. His most famous book is entitled The Cherubinic Wanderer, and it is from this that the present selection has been made. It was followed by another pious effusion entitled Heilige Seelenlust oder geistliche Hirtenlust der in ihren Jesum verliebten Psyche. He is also the author of several church songs which breathe fervor and piety. Like Newman’s Lead, kindly Light! these have become the common property of Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. Some of his songs have been translated into English, notably, Earth has nothing sweet and fair.

We have tried in vain to find a likeness of Johannes Scheffler. The only portrait that we can discover is a caricature in an invective lampoon entitled Wohlverdientes Kapitel. (Well deserved Chapter) published in 1664, in which our mystic is represented as a peddler of spectacles, rosaries, cards, dice, and other similar wares.

No attempt has been made to disfigure the expression of his face, and we have reason to believe that it bears a certain likeness to the man. In his signature he calls himself "Archiater et physicus Olsnensis," which means that he was court physician and surgeon of the small duchy of Oels in Silesia.

Section One

Godhead

Turn wheresoe’er I will, I find no evidence

of End, Beginning, Center or Circumference. (2.188)

Everything we perceive: objects, thoughts, feelings, all things internal and all things external, are really stages in a series of arisings, subsidings and changes. There is no end to anything, nor can we possibly trace something back to a beginning. Inside and outside are also just steps in a chain of varying manifestations. When we really see this, not just theorize, then we will realize that there is only One. And that One is beyond concept or speech.

Therefore although we may coin descriptive titles for That, the only designation (vachaka–spoken form) of That was divinely revealed to the very first human beings that were manifested (not created) on earth. That designation/invocation is Soham–I Am That. Soham, therefore is the path to God. (This is explained in Soham Yoga: The Yoga of the Self.)

The Thought and Deed of Deity

Are of such richness and extent

That It remaineth to Itself

An Undiscovered Continent. (1.263)

No one can perceive the thoughts and deeds of God, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9). Ways and thoughts are just symbolic terms for divine phenomena that simply cannot be comprehended only by Divinity itself. Actually, God does not think or act. What it really is that looks to us like thought or deed is completely beyond the scope of any but God himself, because it is God himself.

A Loaf holds many grains of wheat

And many myriad drops the Sea:

So is God’s Oneness Multitude

And that great Multitude are we. (6.174)

We are a part of the Divine Unity. The One is the many and the many are the One. The Bhagavad Gita defines the highest knowledge as that by which one sees the one indestructible Being in all beings, undivided in the divided (many) (18:20). Yet earlier in the Gita it is said about all states of being: I am not in them–they are in me (7:12). That is, God encompasses all things, but nothing encompasses God because God alone is infinite and all else is finite. There is no doubt that in speaking of the relation of the Absolute to the relative we say contradictory things, but that is because language and the minds that produce and contain it simply cannot encompass all of relativity, much less the Absolute that contains it.

The All proceedeth from the One,

And into One must All regress:

If otherwise, the All remains

Asunder-riven manyness. (5.1)

Everything comes from the One (is manifested by the One) and everything returns (merges back into) the One. There is no creation from nothing, rather a manifestation of what has been forever in God as both potency and potential.

Manifestation goes in cycles of projection and withdrawal by the creator, Brahma (not Brahman). The period of projection is day and the period of withdrawal is night. Therefore the Bhagavad Gita says: At the approach of Brahma’s Day, all manifested things come forth from the unmanifest, and then return to that at Brahma’s Night. Helpless, the same host of beings being born again and again merge at the approach of the Night and emerge at the dawn of Day (8:18-19). This process never stops, but it is possible for us to transcend it and not have to enter it–though we can if we wish to.

Further on in the Gita the subject of both the former verse and this verse is resumed: All this world is pervaded by me in my unmanifest aspect. All beings dwell within me, but I do not dwell within them. And yet beings do not dwell within me: behold my Divine Yoga. Sustaining beings and yet not dwelling in them, I myself cause all beings to come into manifestation. As mighty winds move everywhere, yet always dwell in the ether, know that even so do all beings dwell within me. At the end of a kalpa [cycle], all beings merge into my Prakriti [field of creative energy]: at the beginning of another kalpa, I myself send them forth. Resting on my Prakriti, I send forth again and again this entire multitude of beings, helpless under Prakriti’s power. And these acts do not bind me, sitting as one apart, indifferent and unattached in these actions. With me as overseer Prakriti produces both the animate and the inanimate; because of this the world revolves (9:4-10).

Manifestation changes, but the Manifestor does not. therefore Saint James describes God as Being with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning (James 1:17). There is not even a shadow change in God. God always IS.

God is an utter No-thingness,

Beyond the touch of Time and Place:

The more thou graspest after Him,

The more He fleeth thy embrace. (1.25)

God is an utter No-thingness. We must never equate no-thing with nothing. God is the absolute No-thing. That is, he is not a relative, finite object that can be comprehended or known in an absolute sense. Our minds only know things even if they are non-material (such as thoughts and emotions) or even metaphysical. He is Reality and Being, but he is not in any sense a thing. All things exist in and because of him. He pervades all things and is one with all things, yet no thing contains him in the sense of encompassing or confining him.

Please realize that human beings, being on the top part of the bottom rung of the evolutionary ladder, are simply incapable of comprehending anything about God. Those higher up on the ladder comprehend more and more about God, but they never know him in his infinity. Yet, we can arise into awareness of our oneness with him. We can seek, find, somewhat know and enter into God, but these are just words enabling us to say something about the matter. They are not precise or even accurate. But we need something, because–awakened or unawakened–there is an innate urge in human beings that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being. For we are also his offspring (Acts 17:27-28). We exist with God, therefore he is our Father and Mother and we are his children. Within us is his divine, eternal likeness (Genesis 1:26) which we are all eventually to realize, experience and manifest.

Beyond the touch of Time and Place. One of the first things I learned from Indian philosophy was the fact–which I accepted immediately, having intuited it for years–that time and space are fundamental illusions, not fundamental realities as the West thinks. God, by his very nature, transcends and negates time and space, as the lives of his saints demonstrate over and over. Therefore to look for God within the realms of time and space is to look in vain, though hints of him and his presence can be encountered by the persistent seeker.

The more thou graspest after Him, the more He fleeth thy embrace. Fundamentally, this is because God is not external to us and can never be an object in his true being. Only when we find our Self can we find him in the depths of our being as the Essence of our being.

What hath been told of God is not enough for me:

My life and light flow from the Super-Deity. (1.15)

The idea is that words cannot convey God to anyone. Usually they will confuse us or give us a wrong impression about the Absolute Reality. Therefore a person who has had some glimpse of God will be dissatisfied with what philosophers or theologians have to say about him.

The truth is that God is but an aspect of Infinite Being that is only God in relation to the world–not to himself or to those in total, conscious unity with him. This is why great mystics have spoken of going beyond God–not beyond the Infinite Itself, but beyond the tiny conceptualizations of God that have come from finite minds that themselves must be passed beyond to even begin learning the Reality beyond themselves.

Naturally, such an opinion is often (usually) condemned in East and West as atheism or nihilism by those still caught in the verbal jugglings called truth by those to whom such an exalted view is both incomprehensible and reprehensible blasphemy. A lot of Christian mystics have gone into the fire or the dungeon cell for speaking what they have come to know. That is why silence is best