To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words. –Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
We human beings equate appearance with reality, we equate concepts with things and we equate the expressible with the ineffable and the sublime. Seeking to become aware of the ineffable and the sublime is the first step in our journey. Seeking a sense of the ineffable and the sublime is crucial for without this sense there are no metaphysical challenges, there is no awareness of being as being, there is no awareness of value as value and there is no possibility for art to become art.
Reason and being rational ends at the shore of the known. The ineffable and the sublime exist on the ocean beyond the shore. The route to the ineffable and the sublime is often remote from experience and understanding. Experience, reason and understanding are not able to travel beyond the shore. The ineffable and the sublime lie beyond the land where we measure, evaluate and weigh.
We do not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure or because reason fails to provide us the answers. We sail in order to be open to the experience itself for hidden within the experience the ineffable and the sublime lie waiting for us. The paradox, of course, is that if we sail in order to find them we will, indeed, miss them.
We human beings are citizens of two worlds, we are invited to embrace a dual allegiance: we are open to the ineffable and the sublime in one world and we name and engage reality in the other world. Between the two is a gap that will never be closed. These worlds are distant and close – another paradox. The gap is as wide as the Pacific Ocean and as close as what lies beyond our last breath.
The tangible we evaluate with our reason; the sacred we touch via the ineffable and the sublime. The ineffable and the sublime open pathways to the sacred – and the sacred cannot be captured by any words we might utter. Words hinder us from experiencing the sacred and from experiencing the ineffable and the sublime.
Beyond the beauty of external forms, there is more here: something that cannot be named, something ineffable. –Eckhart Tolle
Searcher-Seeker 