“The rapidity of my walk imagination cannot follow.”
A sage walked through the city. She came back glowing, and said, “What a joy!” A pupil of the sage was keen to see the same sights. He followed the route she had taken, but came back seized with repugnance. He asked, “Why did you and I see such different cities?” The sage answered, “We walked in different rhythms.”
The mystic’s walk crosses the bridge between the visible and invisible. Yes, the mystic sees the ordinary sights: the gutter, the butcher’s shop, the vacant look in the eyes of weary commuters. But the mystic sees more as well.
The mystic perceives the intricate web of life. The stagnant water in the gutter once surged in ocean waves and flew through the sky in clouds—and will again. The flank in the window came from a cow whose mother loved her. But she suffered rough treatment, and was kin to cattle for whom ancient forests are being bulldozed (sealing the doom of their teeming inhabitants). Buried in the chests of the ennui-stricken office-goers are hearts capable of an emotion as vast as the universe.
The mystic’s stride encompasses all of this, and more besides. Pressing onward, the mystic surpasses the boundaries of the bounded world. Vistas of light, energy, and vibration blaze into sight as the molten undercurrents of the universe disclose themselves. As the mystic hurls toward the center of everything, Being unveils its mysterium tremendum: only I exist.
Being is not a destination to which the imagination can walk. But Being imagines the universe and walks in it.