Foundations of all Revelations - Paragraph 1

Before Roberts moves into the Major Revelations she gives us a short synopsis on something she calls “knowing,” or, another way she phrases it, the “foundation of all revelations.” While the concept of “knowing” is something she has previously touched on in this essay, i.e., there are two kinds of knowing, it is interesting that she now refers to “knowing” as both foundational for revelation and offers it as a needed precursor for what she will be saying concerning major revelations. Let’s see what we can make of the text: 

Foundation of all Revelations

“There is in every human being a “knowing” that ever remains pre-intellectual and preconscious. The mind has no access to this knowing. It can never be grasped by the intellect as a piece of knowledge. We do not even know how we know this “knowing” exists. Though this “knowing” is ever present, it is not a feeling or experiential “presence” of any kind. It has no aura of the mystical or supernatural. This knowing is simply “there”, yet nowhere in particular. To say it is “in our very bones”, is an apt metaphor for its inherent nature.”

How does one speak of something that can’t be grasped intellectually, that isn’t a feeling or presence, and is everywhere but nowhere? This sounds like a riddle! How might it come about that we humans have something inherent in our nature that can be unknown to us? How has Roberts come to this certainty of which she speaks? She will fill in some of these questions, but for today we’ll be exploring a few things I notice for myself while reading this paragraph. 

If there is one thing I have learned from my mystic friends, both contemporary and passed, it is that our usual way of knowing cannot get us to God. I’ll forgo a list of the mystic friend’s names, but this understanding is present both in our Christian Contemplative Tradition along with many other faith traditions. Just like Roberts, we too can talk about revelations following the revelatory experience, but we must be clear that the normal mind of linear, either/or thinking  is not able to make sense of revelatory knowing.   

This mind that insists on separating everything into understandable categories is the antithesis of a mind open to unknowning. If you pay really close attention to your mind you can sense the grasping energy it is often engaged in. There is an insatiable need to know, to understand, to comprehend, to label in order to make sense of things. The idea of grasping is another one of those ideas that most spiritual traditions tell us is a problem. Spiritual practice consists of surrendering and letting go, something the mind does not like to do.

Then there is this idea that “it is not a feeling or “experiential” presence of any kind” with “no aura of the mystical or supernatural.” The one thing that Roberts has made clear for me is that when I do have an “experience” it is my experience alone. In other words, it is not the experience of This that she speaks of. The This has its own experience, which is not mine, which is its own “knowing.” While that may be a stretch for some, this This can be known, but not along the lines that we are use to knowing things. 

Someone who talks about the This can be found in the Christian mystic text The Cloud of Unknowing. The author speaks of a “"darkness", I mean a privation of knowing, just as whatever you do not know or have forgotten is dark to you…for this reason, that which is between you and your God is termed…a cloud of unknowing.” Here again we find this concept of knowing and unknowing, which seems to be quite an adequate and obligatory way to speak of This for those who are familiar with it, as I believe Roberts was intimately acquainted with. 

So what am I understanding her to be saying? There are a couple of things that come to mind. First, we can not insist, grasp, or intellectualize our way to this This. The second is implied, but given there are many mystics, masters, and teachers who write about revelatory things from a place of certainty than there must be a path we can traverse in order to come in contact with such “knowing.” Such a path seems to open us to both a new way of “knowing” and the “knowing” itself; the This. There are, of course, many paths and practices, but as Jim Finley says, “once you find your path, practice it.”  A.H. Almaas would say “worship it.”

While this sounds easy and straightforward, i.e., to find a path and walk it, it is not. We humans are prone to both wander and become distracted, always looking to the horizon for the answer. Let’s stop it, the answer is within and with a consistent practice that Inner Guidance becomes clearer and clearer. This synopsis today invites me to be intentional with my practice. And how do I know I am being intentional? I know it when it does not feel rigid, but, instead springs from a natural playfulness that arises from the heart. Here is to a joyous day practicing in a playful way.