[John to Mark]
However, the Allah that can be named is not the real Allah, so
worship always evolves into idolatry.
[Arlo]
Just jumping in with agreement, John, and I think this is, in fact, a
very important statement. Indeed, "the Allah that can be named is not
the real Allah" is the same thing as what I said earlier, "the moment
you speak you create incompleteness". The issue (for me) is not to
abolish "idolatry", as this would entail perhaps the cessation of all
human discourse, but the level of "looseness" or "playfulness" one brings.
In other words, so long as one keeps in mind always that the "words"
are analogies of something always "more than words", that
"wordifying" experience always brings incompleteness, then one can
approach those patterns as "pointers". This is, however, not easy, as
history has borne out that the "exoteric" has always found a more
populous base than the "esoteric". Confusing the "pointer" or
"analogy" with the "ineffable" has been, perhaps, humanity's longest
and ongoing struggle. We prefer religion to spirituality, we prefer
"God" to the void, we prefer "one book" to the unknowable riddle.
"The quality that can be defined is not the Absolute Quality." And
yet Pirsig wrote two books offering a "definition" of Quality.
(Paradox alert! Saying "Quality is undefinable" is itself a
definition of Quality!)
The key, if you will, is to hold the "idolatrous" words as loosely as
possible, while using them to point beyond themselves; use a
definition to point towards the undefinable; use a statement to point
to the analogous nature of language, and hope that others will bounce
off your words and towards the void, while knowing that many will
always get fixated on, and will never be able to move past, the words
themselves.
Or we can all just stop talking entirely... an option, I suppose. :-)
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