Believing in the Mystery

The God That Has No Name

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Agnosticism & the Definition of God

How religions define God is crucial to agnostics. If God is defined in a way that suggests a deep and specific knowledge of God, then the agnostic is going to be skeptical. If, on the other hand, the definition is vague and open-ended, and if the writer admits that they don’t really know, then the agnostic is going to be intrigued.

Testing the definition then becomes a matter of speculation and experience, of free-thinking and phenomenology, rather than specific geo-historical assumptions, definitions, and doctrines. As Whitman points out, the world is larger than anything we can come up with. Exploring it doesn’t necessarily lead to a church or a philosophy:

I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!) / My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods, / No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair, / I have no chair, no church, no philosophy, / I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange, / But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll, / My left hand hooking you round the waist, / My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.

One of the reasons I include Whitman in this study of agnosticism is that he constantly brings the otherworldly back to this world. He questions sacred notions and transcendent ideals “to leap beyond yet nearer bring.” He explores the spiritual as a mystery that isn’t to be found in a book, or in a theological debate aiming to define such things as God, mystical experience, or how to reach God. For him, the spiritual exists as an enduring Mystery, one that takes many forms but ultimately must be processed, or experienced phenomenologically, by “the fathomless human brain”:

Not words of routine this song of mine, / But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring; / This printed and bound book — but the printer and the printing-office boy? / The well-taken photographs — but your wife or friend close and solid in your arms? / The black ship mail’d with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets — but the pluck of the captain and engineers? / In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture — but the host and hostess, and the look out of their eyes? / The sky up there — yet here or next door, or across the way? / The saints and sages in history — but you yourself? / Sermons, creeds, theology — but the fathomless human brain, / And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?

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Defining the Indefinable

Neither Whitman nor the Daoists believe that what they write can possibly convey the essence of what they believe to be the greatest transcendent Force in the universe, a Force they insist has no name yet they provisionally call the Dao (the Way) or Being. Their stance here is hardly unique: in Adonais (1821) Shelley marks the gap between all art, including the art of language, and the goal of the neoplatonic artist: "Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak / The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak."

Yet the Daoists go farther in their skepticism about words: whereas Whitman and Shelley write copiously, peopling the Neoplatonic One with names for its many emanations, Laozi views words with great suspicion: "The way is forever nameless... / Only when it [i.e. the Dao or uncarved block] is cut are there names. / As soon as there are names / One ought to know that it is time to stop." Yet Laozi nevertheless uses the way, the great, the Mother, the One and the uncarved block to name the Dao. Zhuangzi has a more precise point of view: "what is valuable in words is the ideas they convey. But those ideas are a sequence of something else; — and what that something else is cannot be conveyed by words."

A Note on Sources

Please note that to minimize clutter I avoid page numbers, except where these clarify references. I also often replace single and double quotes with italics, and I omit parentheses used by James Legge when doing this doesn’t alter the meaning. For instance, when he writes, Who can determine (the qualities that are in) all things?” I quote this as Who can determine the qualities that are in all things?” Yet when when he writes, if we call it the Great (Tao), I leave the parentheses.

W refers to Walt Whitman, Complete Poetry and Selected Prose (Houghton Mifflin 1959)

D refers to The Daodejing (old spelling: The Tao Te Ching, trans. D.C. Lau, Penguin 1963)

Z refers to The Zhuangzi (The Writings of Chuang Tze, trans. James Legge, Julien Press 1959)

For Whitman, the subject of words leads him to that something else which is beyond words: “I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words, / All merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings of the earth... / Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print cannot touch." Although speech is the twin of his vision, "it is unequal to measure itself"; it cannot match the vision itself. Therefore, like the Daoists, he concedes that he shouldn’t "conceive too much of articulation."

Whitman's view that "there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell," leads him to see the limitations of his writing: "The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections, / They scorn the best I can do to relate them"; "I cannot say to any person what I hear — I cannot say it to myself — it is very wonderful." Zhuangzi also sounds a note of humility after a cumbersome attempt to expound on existence and non-existence: "Now I have said what I have said, but I do not know whether what I have said be really anything to the point or not." Zhuangzi warns a student, "I have communicated to you but the outward letter of my doctrine, and have not communicated its reality and spirit; and do you think that you are in possession of it?"

Whitman and Zhuangzi realize that nothing can be said to the point concerning the reality and spirit of Being or Dao. Yet both exceed the restrictions of the greater knowledge that "stops at what it does not know," at "the argument that needs no words" (Z 238). Neither completely follows through with the vow to "never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best" (W 165). Complete silence is for the mystic, however, not for the poet or writer. Whitman and Zhuangzi have the wisdom of the mystic, yet the practical insight of an artist.

Zhuangzi cleverly reconciles the contradiction implied in all 'mystical writings':

Heaven, Earth, and I were produced together, and all things and I are one. Since they are one, can there be speech about them? But since they are spoken of as one, must there not be room for speech?

Whitman avoids the contradiction by stating that what is essential in his writing goes beyond his writing: "For it is not what I have put into it that I have written this book"; "The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything"; "Thy very songs not in thy songs"; "It is not to be put in a book, it is not in this book." Fortunately for those who seek wisdom, the writer remains in this contradiction, in this never-ending attempt to transfuse the 'glory' through a verbal brand of 'fitting truth':

That which eludes this verse and any verse… / Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme, historians in prose, / Which sculptor never chiseled yet, nor painter painted, / Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter'd, / Invoking here and now I challenge for my song” (W 331).

Notwithstanding, neither the poet nor the writer ever successfully meets the challenge, for that 'something' which eludes verse and prose is ineffable. Laozi states: "The way that can be spoken of / Is not the constant way"; "The way is forever nameless." Likewise, Whitman asserts that "It is without name — it is a word unsaid, / It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol."

Paradoxically, since there’s no one name for Being or Dao, many names are used to suggest it. Laozi writes, “I know not its name / So I style it 'the way.' / I give it the makeshift name of 'the great’.” Zhuangzi calls the Dao the great Heaven, Unity, Mystery, Illuminator, Framer, Boundlessness, Truth, and Determiner. Speaking of the Perfect Tao, Zhuangzi says, “And if we call it the Great (Tao), it is just the same. There are the three terms, — Complete, All-embracing, the Whole. These names are different, but the reality sought in them is the same; referring to the One thing.”

The Daoists use any given name for the Dao according to the context. In the same way, Whitman states that "There can be any number of supremes," and he uses names such as the Union, Religion, earth-eidolon, Democracy, and Comrade, according to the context in which he is referring to Being. Among terms common to Whitman and the Daoists are the One, It, Nothing, the Mother, the female, and God.

The Earth is often used by Whitman for Being, yet for the Daoists it is more a correlate than a symbol for the Dao. This makes sense, given that however kosmic Whitman claims to be, he remains far more physical and worldly than the Daoist sage, who is mesmerized by the peaks of mountains, the mountain mist that wraps the peaks, the swirling clouds that wrap the globe, and the Milky Way that suggests a path through the universe.

There’s also a similarity between Whitman's America or Union and Laozi's empire. The latter is often referred to in the Daodejing, and it’s clear that Laozi is deeply concerned about its unity and well-being. Though less obviously than Whitman's America, it’s a socio-political entity which becomes a symbol for unity of diversity: "A large state is the lower reaches of a river — / The place where all the streams of the world unite." According to Laozi, when the Dao is cultivated in the empire, "its virtue will be pervasive." Whitman often has visions of this ultimate, Golden Age pervasiveness. At these times, America is a transcendental Union and a mystical Union, blending the mortal with immortal. For Whitman the ultimate state of the nation may be faintly seen in the present, yet its full glory lies in the future. Yet for the Daoists this glory lies largely in an idealized, simple past.

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The Source, Sustenance and Destination of Life

Being and the Dao are in many ways close to the Indian concept of Brahman, which has its roots in the transcendent yet manifests itself in the universe as the Trimurti, that is, as a combination of Creator, Preserver and Destroyer. Laozi suggests that life is born from the Creator yet the Creator comes from the Transcendent: "The myriad creatures in the world are born from / Something, and Something from Nothing." This "Nothing" Whitman calls transcendent, Nameless, and the huge first Nothing. Zhuangzi states: “In the Grand Beginning (of all things) there was nothing in all the vacancy of space; there was nothing that could be named. It was in this state that there arose the first existence.” In "Chanting the Square Deific," Whitman calls this Nothing the One and Santa Spirita. It’s the source of Old Brahm or Saturnius, Christ or Hermes, and the sudra face or Satan.

The Dao too appears to be the creator of the Creator: “I know not whose son it is. / It images the forefather of God.” (D 60); “From It came the mysterious existence of spirits, from It the mysterious existence of God.” (Z 291). Being or the Dao is seen as the source of God and the source of all life: “The way begets one; one begets two; two begets three; three begets the myriad creatures (D 103). The two are yin and yang, Heaven and Earth: "communicating together, a harmony ensued and things were produced" (Z 487).

Whitman's Being also takes many cosmogonic forms: the "twilight and burying ebb" weaves from "Sleep, Night, Death itself, / The rhythmus of Birth eternal." America the "Dispensatress" is "set in births and joys"; the poet's sun gives "so liberally" its "fructifying heat and light"; and "womanhood divine" is "source of all, whence life and love and aught that comes from life and love." Similarly, in Daoism the "mysterious female / Is called the root of heaven and earth" (D 62), and the sage Fu-hsi got the Dao "and by It penetrated to the mystery of the maternity of the primal matter" (Z 292). According to Laozi, the Dao which images the forefather of God may be the fore-mother of the world: “There is a thing confusedly formed, Born before heaven and earth… / It is capable of being the mother of the world.”

Apart from being feminine or without gender, the creative aspect of Whitman’s Being is also seen as masculine. In Passage to India, the nameless transcendent is the Comrade, the Elder Brother, the spiritual fountain — affection's source, as well as “the fibre and the breath, shedding forth universes.” Zhuangzi states that the sage "enjoys himself at ease with the Author of all things," who is the correlate or sovereign of Heaven. Generally, however, the creative aspect of Being or Dao is seen as feminine, or as the Great Genderer devoid of gender — as in Zhuangzi's assertion that "Notwithstanding the greatness of heaven and earth, their transforming power proceeds from one lathe."

Without a human or sexual analogue, the Dao is mysterious in its function as Creator. For Laozi, it’s only "like the ancestor of the myriad creatures" and "Darkly visible, it only seems as if it were there." And for Whitman the "dim beginning" is part of the eternal Eidolon. (The Wikipedia entry on Eidolon has the following: “Whitman’s poem by the same name in 1876 used a much broader understanding of the term, expanded and detailed in the poem. In Whitman's use of the term we can see the use broaden to include the concept of an oversoul composed of the individual souls of all life and expanding to include the Earth itself and the hierarchy of the planets, Sun, stars and galaxy.”)

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Brahma, or the "dim beginning," is only one aspect of the trinity of creation, preservation and destruction: “Ever the dim beginning, / Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle, Ever the summit and the merge at last, / (to surely start again) / Eidolons! Eidolons!” The growth and rounding of the circle are Whitman's optimistic terms for what happens between Brahma's creation and Shiva's destruction. For Whitman, "the good is universal," "antiseptic yet, cleaving, suffusing all.” Preservation and success are certainties: “it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us — and without luck must be a failure for us, / And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency.” The Earth, or Being, "shuts none out." Though silent, it remains effective: "To her children the words of the eloquent dumb mother never fail." Hence "motion does not fail, and reflection does not fail . . . and the voyage we pursue does not fail."

Zhuangzi states that "All things are nourished by it, without their knowing it," and "small as is an autumn hair, it is indebted to this for the completion of its form." The all-embracing, overflowing influence of Dao is summed up by Zhuangzi: “All beneath the sky, now rising, now descending, ever continue the same through this. The Yin and Yang, and the four seasons revolve and move by it, each in its proper order.” Because Dao "overspreads and sustains all things," it cannot fail any thing. Whitman fills out the list of those things it cannot fail: “It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried… / Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth, / Nor any thing in the myriad of spheres, nor the myriads of myriads that inhabit them, / Nor the present, nor the least whisp that is known.”

Among the list of those people it cannot fail is Whitman’s man "tubercled by rum" and "the brutish koboo call'd the ordure of humanity." Laozi's Dao is also impartial in its aid: “The way is the refuge for the myriad creatures. It is that by which the good man protects, And that by which the bad is protected.” Whitman makes this point forcefully by bringing in a personal note. He states: "I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my [insane] brother." These agents give way, for "The Lord advances, and yet advances, / Always the shadow in front, always the reach'd hand bringing up the laggards."

The same note of amazement is struck by the Master (presumably Laozi) in one of Zhuangzi's stories, where the Master says, “How still and deep is the place where the Dao resides! How limpid is its purity! Metal and stone without It would give forth no sound. They have indeed the power of sound in them, but if they be not struck, they do not emit it. Who can determine the qualities that are in all things?”

This statement gets at the fine line between theism and agnosticism characteristic of Daoism: Zhuangzi feels there’s a theistic spirit in the depths of all things, yet he refuses to define it and he defies us to determine its qualities. The agnostic would of course say that there may or may not be such a spirit in the depths of things, but at this point we’re dealing with personal speculations and feelings. We’re dealing with the realm of phenomenology, which doesn’t allow for final conclusions. Because there’s no appeal to outside definitions, historical circumstances, chosen scriptures, or chosen people, it becomes very hard to argue about it. Hence Zhuangzi’s notion that “Disputation is proof of not seeing clearly.”

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Whitman’s Protectress and Sustainer emerges in the form of rain:

I descend to lathe the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe, / And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn; / And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin, and make pure and beautify it.

The Protectress and Sustainer acts like Shelley's clouds that change, but cannot die and like Keats’ Autumn, who loads and blesses. Whitman’s Mother of All also resembles Brahman in that she lies behind the powers of Nature: "All gather and all harvest, / Yet but for thee O Powerful, not a scythe might swing as now in security."

The themes of life's continuing source, and security, are also brought together in Whitman's treatment of America, or the sacred Union: “Protectress absolute, thou! bulwark of all! For well we know that while thou givest each and all, (generous as God,) / Without thee neither all nor each, nor land, home, / Nor ship, nor mine, nor any here this day secure, / Nor aught, nor any day secure.”

Laozi sums up the themes of power and natural sustenance: “The myriad creatures in virtue of the One are alive… / Without what gives them their potencies gods might spend themselves; / Without what makes it full the valley might run dry.”

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The End of the Natural Cycle

After the dim beginning and the rounding of the circle comes the summit and merge at last (W 8). Whitman states that Death comes "unannounc'd, in horror and in pang" and is "a minister of Deity." By collecting and vasting all, Death, or the Sea, crumbles life into "A windrow-drift of weeds and shells."

Yet for both Whitman and the Daoists death is generally not terrifying but a peaceful end. It’s often seen as the natural destination or resting-place of life. For Zhuangzi, life seems to float along, and death seems to be a resting. For Whitman, death is lovely and soothing, a deliveress. Symbolically, it’s like the Sea, in that life's currents flow toward it: death "pickest and cullest the race in time, and unitest nations"; it’s the "Mysterious ocean where the streams empty"; "In I myself, in all the world, these currents flowing, / All, all toward the mystic ocean tending." Similarty, Laozi states that "The way is to the world as the River and the Sea are to rivulets and streams."

Death completes the cycle of creation, preservation and destruction. For the Daoists it’s a going, or returning, home, and for Whitman it’s the reason-why and invisible need of life.

Death as a destination even becomes a way to arrive at Being. Zhuangzi states that the sages "consider life to be an appendage attached, an excrescence annexed to them, and death to be a separation of the appendage and a dispersion of the contents of the excrescence." Whitman states that when the "ties loosen" that connect us to life, "Then we burst forth, we float … O joy!" Death is also a path from Being back to life; it rounds the circle so well that the dim beginning comes once more into view. Zhuangzi states:

The ancients described death as the loosening of the cord on which God suspended the life. What we can point to are the faggots that have been consumed; but the fire is transmitted elsewhere, and we know not that it is over and ended.

The same mixture of belief in immortality and doubt as to where one will end up is seen in Whitman's "Wafting to other work, to unknown songs, conditions." Although Whitman occasionally sees death as "A haze — nirwana — rest and night — oblivion," he generally believes optimistically that death leads to a happy cycle of rebirth or samsara. He believes that "other births will bring us richness and variety."

Though with less enthusiasm than Whitman, Zhuangzi suggests that life isn’t ended by death: all things "have that for which they wait and on its arrival they die; they have that for which they wait, and then again they live." Generally, Whitman and the Daoists believe in the natural cycle of regeneration, in the "start again" after the "merge at last" (W 8). Both would seem to agree with Emerson, who draws on the Bhagavad-Gita to express man's immortality: “If the red slayer thinks he slays, / Or if the slain think he is slain, / They know not well the subtle ways / I keep, and pass, and turn again.”

Agnostics would note that Emerson's view comes to us at three removes, first from Emerson, second from the text of the Bhagavad-Gita, and third from what the writer of that text would have us believe is the mouth of Krishna. Agnostics deeply consider, and keep a respectful distance from, the authority that people claim for sacred texts. The more grandiose the claim, the greater the distance. Closer to home, agnostics believe that Emerson, an American writer we can relate to historically and culturally, could hardly know that what Krishna proclaims is in fact true. As a result, agnostics prefer the deeper sense of doubt expressed by Zhuangzi: "we know not that it is over and ended." The agnostic hopes that Whitman and the author of the Bhagavad-Gita are right, yet when it comes down to what they actually believe, they have to confess simply, "we know not."

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