MOONLIGHT PRAYER
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MOONLIGHT PRAYER
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Gnosis in the most basic
sense is a knowing relation to The Being through which it is sensed
and recognised in all its awesomeness - both as a source of inner knowing
and as a being quite distinct from the human self and identity we know. The
felt character of this relation can be likened to the feeling one
might have if a human being towards whom one feels an unbounded awe and
respect for had just entered the room. Such a degree of awe and respect that
one felt impelled to bow one’s head in humility and reverence, except that
for the gnostic the ‘room’ is a space one makes room for in oneself,
and the bowing of one’s head is an inner act – the ego turning its gaze
inwards, not looking but listening itself into the inner silence of
that space and knowing - simply knowing – that there is a being there to
listen to. In listening ourselves into this silence and into
this space we listen ourselves into The Being. Inward listening of this sort
has a distinctly prayerful character, because it has a knowingly
relational character. One knows there really is ‘someone there’ –
a being that one is listening to. One knows that one is not just
listening to ‘oneself’ but to The Being. The essence of ‘gnostic’ prayer is
not so much an inward speaking but rather a prayerful listening of this sort
- one in which the ego becomes silent and bows its head in silent reverence
to a being that it can sense but not see. And yet it is precisely this
prayerful inward listening that truly speaks, that silently calls to
and addresses The Being, saying to it: ‘I know You are there’, ‘I
acknowledge Your reality even though I cannot see You’. A listening that
says also: ‘I humbly and respectfully sink myself into Your
knowing and Your being, so that I can once again know You as the very ground
of my being and my knowing’. In Two Men Gazing at the Moon Friedrich
captures the fundamental mood of reverent, prayerful contemplation. In the
dim and mysterious light of the Moon the two men are able to meditatively
sink themselves into the very ground of their being. They share in an
intimate knowing relation to The Being, symbolised by the ghostly
apparition of the Moon, a relation which only the sturdy rocks and humbly
bowed and uprooted tree bears witness to. One man rests his arm on the
shoulder of the other as if to reassure himself of his human being.
Does his gaze rest on the Moon or sink into the crevice opened up beneath
the roots of the tree? Is ‘The Being’ itself Moon or Man, rock or crevice?
Is it illumined by the mysterious light of the Moon, or by the meditative
inner gaze of the men? Both and neither. |