The Mirdad Mysteries week 4
Condemn no one
Quotes from The book of Mirdad, chapter 10
There is no judgment in my mouth, but Holy Understanding. I am not come to judge the world, but rather to unjudge it. For ignorance alone likes to be decked in wig and robe and to propound the law and mete out penalties.
The most unsparing judge of ignorance is ignorance itself. Consider man. Has he not, in ignorance, cloven himself in twain thereby inviting death upon himself and all the things that make up his divided world?
I say to you, there is not God and man. But there is God-Man or Man-God. There is the One. However multiplied, however divided, it is forever one. God’s oneness is God’s everlasting law. It is a self-enforcing law. Nor courts nor judges does it need to publish it abroad or to uphold its dignity and force.
The Universe – the visible of it and the invisible – is but a single mouth proclaiming it to all who have but ears to hear. Is not the Sea – though vast and deep – a single drop? Is not the Earth – though flung so far – a single sphere? Are not the spheres – though numberless – a single universe? Likewise is mankind but a single man. Likewise is man, with all his worlds, a singleness complete.
God’s oneness, my companions, is the only law of being. Another name for it is Love. To know it and abide by it is to abide in Life. But to abide by any other law is to abide in nonbeing, or death.
Life is gathering in. Death is a scattering out. Life is a binding together. Death is a falling away. Therefore is man – the dualist – suspended twixt the two. For he would gather in, but only through scattering out. And he would bind, but only by unbinding. In gathering and binding, he is in keeping with the Law; and Life is his reward. In scattering and unbinding he sins against The Law; and death is his bitter prize.
Yet you, the self-condemned, would sit in judgment over men who are, like you, already self-condemned. How horrible the judges and the judgement! Less horrible, indeed, would be two gallows-birds each sentencing the other to the gallows. Less laughable two oxen in one yoke, each saying to the other ‘I would yoke you’. Less hideous two corpses in one grave exchanging condemnations to the grave. Less pitiful two stone-blind men each plucking out the other’s eyes.
Shun every judgement seat, my companions. For to pronounce a judgement on anyone, or anything, you must not only know The Law and live comfortably thereto, but hear the evidence as well. Whom shall you hear as witness in any case at hand? Shall you summon the wind into the court? For the wind aids and abets in any happening beneath the sky. Or shall you cite the stars? For they are privy to all things that take place in the world. Or shall you send subpoena to the dead from Adam till this day? For all the dead are living in the living.
To have an evidence complete in any given case the cosmos must needs be the witness. When you can hail the cosmos into court, you would require no courts. You would descend from judgement seat and let the witness be the judge.
When you know all, you would judge none. When you can gather in the worlds, you would condemn not even one of those who scatter out. For you would know that scattering condemned the scatterer. And rather than condemn the self-condemned, you would than strive to lift his condemnation. Too overburdened now is man with burdens self-imposed. Too rough and crooked is his road. Each judgement is an added burden, alike to the judge and the judged.If you would have your burdens light, refrain from judging any man. If you would have them vanish of themselves, sink and be lost forever in the Word. Let Understanding guide your steps if you would have your pathway straight and smooth. Not judgement do I bring you in my mouth, but Holy Understanding.
Each day is Judgement Day. Each creature’s accounts are balanced every twinkling of an eye. Nothing is hid. Nothing is left un-weighed. There is no thought, no deed, no wish but are recorded in the thinker and the doer and the wisher. No thought, no wish, no deed, go sterile in the world, but all beget after their kind and nature. Whatever is in keeping with God’s Law, is gathered unto Life; whatever is opposed is gathered unto death.
Your days are not alike. Some are serene. They are the harvestings of hours rightly lived. Some are beset with clouds. They are the gifts of hours half asleep in death and half awake in Life. While others dash on you astride a storm, with lightning in their eyes, and thunder in their nostrils. They smite you from above, they whip you from below; they toss you right and left; they flatten you onto the earth and make you bite the dust and wish you were never born. Such days are the fruit of hours spent in willful opposition to the Law.
So is it with the world. The shadows already athwart the skies are not a whit less ominous than those which ushered in the Flood. Open your eyes and see. When you observe the clouds riding the south wind northward, you say they bring your rain. Why are you not as wise in measuring the drift of human clouds? Can you not see how fast have men become entangled in their nets?
The day of disentanglement is at hand. And what a fearful day it is! With heart and soul-veins have the nets of men been woven over the course of, lo, so many centuries. To tear men free of their nets, their very flesh must needs be torn; their very bone must needs be crushed. And men themselves shall do the tearing and the crushing.
When the lids are lifted – as surely they shall be! – and when the pots give out whatever they contain – as surely they shall do! – where would men hide their shame and whither would they flee?
In that day the living shall have envy of the dead, and the dead shall curse the living. Men’s words shall stick within their throats and the light shall freeze upon their eyelids. Out of their hearts shall issue scorpions and vipers, and they shall cry in awe: ‘Whence come these vipers and these scorpions?’, forgetting that they lodged and reared them in their hearts.
Open your eyes and see!
Right in this Ark, set as a beacon to a floundering world, there is more than you can muddle through. If the beacon have become a snare, how terrible must be the state of those at sea!
Mirdad will build you a new ark. Right in this nest shall he found it and rear it. Out of this nest shall you fly unto the world bearing not olive twigs to men, but Life inexhaustible. For that you must know The Law and keep it.