The Fish Never Leaves The Water
by Hieromonk Crustacean
somewhat of a "Fish Out Of Water Manifesto," kinda sorta like
“Just sit there right now.
Don’t do a thing.
Just rest.
For your separation from God is the hardest work in this world.
Let me bring you trays of food
And something you like to drink.
You can use my soft verse
As a cushion
For your head.”
--Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”
--Emily Dickinson
Poetry has a way of taking us by hand and leading us right into the heart of the matter --and when the matter is God, I find
the results to be staggering and breathtaking. This to me is what J.D. Salinger meant when he said, through his narrator
Buddy Glass, that a great poet will "take you within an inch of your life" --not your ego's life, but your true life: God's life.
When poetry does this, it is usually fleeting; we read and admire, maybe feel that rush of the Word of God coming from
our heart, rushing through our blood, to meet the words head-on....then we put the book down and gradually or abruptly
we are reabsorbed back into our separate selves.
Religion/spirituality attempts to do the same, and then go the final inch. It attempts to acquaint you with your true life so
thoroughly that, rather than being transitory, the acquaintance will last your lifetime and beyond; so powerful should the
recognition of your true life be, that any thought of an obstacle between you and God should eventually (or in some cases,
suddenly) cease. If poetry lops off the top of Emily Dickinson's head, religion aims to come for the rest of her.
The difference between religion and spirituality is a matter of popular usage more than anything else. My experience in
20th/21st century America is that when people say they are "spiritual but not religious," what they usually mean is they
believe in God or any other kind of spiritual entity but do not accept the traditional Judeo-Christian explanations of what that
God/entity is, nor the customs and rituals that accompany traditional worship. (Often this will also be expressed as
something akin to "I don't believe in organized religion.") Free to explore the smorgasbord offerings of the world's spiritual
traditions, the Western spiritualist may find affinity with another particular tradition --in which case, though self-identifying
as spiritual, he/she is really a practitioner of another culture's religion-- or in the case of people like Joseph Campbell,
Huston Smith and Aldous Huxley, their affinity lies with the whole buffet table, for their joy and nourishment is in seeing
that all are well-fed more than in their own feast. Religious folks in all cultures tend to frown on this approach, and
sometimes for good reason: a non-commital perspective can speak of a lack of devotion (though I'd heartily disagree in the
case of all three people I mentioned). In one of the volumes I just gave back to the friend who lent it to me, Rumi had a
great poem addressed to "spiritual windowshoppers;" its message was basically this: buy something, just so you can be part
of the flow of commerce.
I agree, and frankly I could not care less about the distinction between religion and spirituality, or organized and
disorganized. What does interest me, passionately, to no end, is the distinction between our symbols of the Divine One and
the substance of the Divine One, and the way that the interplay between the two --one finite, the other infinite; one tangible
and subject to change, the other intangible and eternal-- creates every single idea and concept that we encounter in the
realm of religion and spirituality.
In the second half of Part Two [of the Camerado Chronicles], we spent a good deal of time looking at symbol and
substance, and what can happen when we equate them, when we assume the particular symbols that we use to understand
God are synonymous with God rather than analogous. We end up taking the unity of the human family and dividing it into
distinct camps with very drastic differences in their preferred use of symbols to portray the same substance. And of
course it doesn't stop there --each camp, while agreeing on the most basic symbols, will also divide into subcamps, and
these into sub-subcamps, until you have new splinter camps forming over disagreement about some of the most
microscopic symbolic minutia you could imagine. This scenario in and of itself is not a problem --it's what makes the
smorgasbord so rich with such diverse flavors. Those within each camp who realize this can look to neighbors in other
camps and feel a deep affinity because underneath the symbolic differences the substantial unity is ever present.
There only arises a problem when these symbolic differences are mistaken for substantial differences; now there is no
unity, the fissures between subcamps run deeper than the surfaces, and in the case of the larger "base camps," all the way
to the core of our existence, to the point where even our true God wars with another false god. This may be all just good
theater from God's perspective --drama for drama's sake-- but for the actors who take the surface of life and all of it's
divisions seriously, there is little consolation other than the belief that they are right and everyone else has it wrong. At the
extreme end of attachment to the symbols and identity only with one's particular campsite (such as we see in militant
Zionist and Islamic fundamentalists, and Christians like Oliver B. Greene [preacher whose literalist Revelations tract starred
in an ealier chapter]), one can almost seem to lose touch with the substance of God in the clamor to validate the symbols.
Of course, the idea that anyone can be out of touch with the substance of God is an abstraction and an illusion unto itself.
One can certainly be out of touch with the locally popular symbols, or all symbols in some cases, but it is impossible to
disconnect from the substance. For a person to think this, is to give in to a uniquely human neurosis that I believe is
caused by the very use of symbols itself (and now we are finally getting to the crux of what Fish Out Of Water is all about).
Consider, if you will, a fish: it is born in the water, and spends its entire life in the water. It doesn't have a "no water"
experience in its memory to which it can draw a contrast; consequently it probably does not "see" the water that forms the
base of its entire surroundings, nor would it be inclined to give thought to the fact that it is continuously surrounded by
water (similarly, other than coal miners and avid spelunkers, we who dwell on the earth's surface live almost our entire
lives within the sky, and we are inclined to think just as little about that). Likewise, no one has to teach the fish how to
swim, or how to use its gills to draw oxygen from the water. Nothing about this fish's watery existence feels foreign to it,
and if you asked the fish where it's home is or where its heaven is, if the fish could speak, I am certain it would say
something like, "Well, right here, of course."
Are we all together on this? Does it all make sense --except for the talking fish?
OK, now dig this: when a human being feels separate from or out of touch with the substance of the Divine One/God, this
is similar to our little fish friend one day just going into a state of panic and thinking, "Hey, where's the water?? I don't see
any water!! How am I going to swim? How am I going to breathe? Oh no I'm going to die!!!" Silly little fish, we think,
as we watch it thrash about in the throes of anxiety in its aquarium: the water is all around him!
This must be what we look like from the perspective of God, or of a person who has realized his/her union with the
infinite, eternal, Divine One.
The fish, in this illustration, never leaves the water, but you could say that it thinks itself out of the water. This is what we
do with the Divine Reality that we in the West tend to call "God:" we think ourselves out of God.
A real fish, of course, would never do such a thing. We have to give it the mental capacity to create verbal concepts and
abstractions, attaching symbolic meaning to its perceptions, in order to let it represent a human being in this illustration.
The technique of anthropomorphism has always been used by the storytellers of the world to convey meaningful ideas
about the unique human existence and our perceptions, which unlike those of the fish (as far as we can tell) are entirely
symbol-based. Religion provides not just an example of this practice as a storytelling craft, but probably the best example,
because the subjects it discusses cannot be addressed at all without the use of symbols. One can describe a person or a
finite object without using its name, or point at it without using words at all. But one cannot describe God without using
personifying symbols, nor can one point at God without creating confusion. ("You're saying this chair is God? That guy
over there in the white robe is God?")
So what is our personified fish telling us in this illustration? If we can stop thinking ourselves out of God, we will realize
that the union with the Divine One that we crave is already there. The fish never leaves the water. No magnitude or
amount of sin can sever or corrupt this union --except in your own mind. The fish never leaves the water. There is
nothing you must say or do or achieve or attain to create this union that existed before you were born, and try as you might
--and God knows you will-- there is no way you can undo yourself from God''s ever-present, all-encompassing embrace --
except in your own mind.
The fish never leaves the water.
Rilke said it like this (translated from his native German obviously; and this poem, I believe, also illustrates this difficulty of
expressing the truth of God's omnipresence through language):
"Only in our doing can we grasp you.
Only with our hands can we illumine you.
The mind is but a visitor;
it thinks us out of our world.
Each mind fabricates itself.
We sense its limits, for we have made them.
And just when we would flee them, you come
and make of yourself an offering.
I don't want to think a place for you.
Speak to me from everywhere.
Your Gospel can be comprehended
without looking for its source.
King David of Israel seemed attuned to God's omnipresence as well when he penned these words that appear as part of
Psalm 139 in the King James Bible (translated from Hebrew):
7 Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
8 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, thou art there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
10 Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.
12 Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are
both alike to thee.
Awesome. You go King Dave! (woop, woop, woop!) Nothing in the KJB stirs up the Word of God feeling in me more
than that passage. Of course, this understanding did not prevent him from writing many other psalms which show that he
was still very capable of thinking himself out of God. David was a poet after all, not a yogi, or even a rabbi --and that's
exactly why his writing speaks to us. We can feel that fluctuation in his sense of intimacy with God that we tend to feel as
our minds wander in and out of "contact" with the Divine.
One more poem. This one is a Hermit Crab original. I think it fits into this discussion with uncanny precision; it involves a
fish, but I wasn't thinking at all about Fish Out Of Water --I was thinking about a friend whose husband goes to Alaska for
three months every year to fish for salmon. She had sent me a very nice, inspiring collection of quotations about writing,
and I just wanted to give her a couple cheery Quaker poems in return. But this is exactly what the FOOW message of this
chapter is all about:
CATCH AND RELEASE
If Jesus were a fisherman,
would He catch every fish in the lake,
throw them all in a crowded bucket,
and bring them home to his private aquarium?
I believe He would reel in one fish,
and say unto him, "My child,
your place is in this lake.
These are holy waters,
for God has blessed them with His sacrifice.
There are hungry men all along the shore
who would drag you out and pray upon your flesh.
Go and tell your brothers and sisters
not to take the bait!"
Then He would drop the fish back into the water,
and cast again.
The audible double-entendre of "pray" and "prey" indicates that the men on the shore do not represent the irreligious
"worldly" influences that are usually blamed for leading people astray. These surely can be a distraction to the spiritual life,
but this is already so well-documented and much-discussed that I don't have much to add. What I think needs to be
addressed --especially, but not exclusively, in the Judeo-Christian traditions-- is the way our attachment to the symbolic
forms of religion separates us, in our minds, from the substance of God; how religion itself, paradoxically, makes us think
about God and think ourselves out of God at the same time.
This is crucial for understanding why so much time has been spent drawing the lines between Christotheism and Biblianity
in Parts One and Two --liberating the former from the latter, for the eventual upliftment of both-- and why every church,
synagogue, mosque and temple needs a mystical wing, even for its own health.
For if we are fish, and the Bible is correct that Jesus made His disciples "fishers of men," (Matthew 4:19) then it is the
church that is responsible for making Christians feel like fish out of water.
(As a footnote to this chapter, let me add that some people, myself included, would say the fish illustration is not accurate
because it does not go far enough in depicting the intimacy of our relationship with the Divine One. Symbolically, God is
the water in this illustration, but the fish himself remains a pocket of non-God, as well as the pastel-colored aquarium
rocks, the plastic seaweed, the castle and the mermaid figurine. And this glass case that surrounds the water and
everything within it --what's all the stuff on the outside if not God?
I deliberately left the illustration as it is because this is a point where I think we can all agree to start. A created fish
(person) surrounded by uncreated Water (God) epitomizes the monotheistic model of our relationship with the Divine, and
this is as far as orthodox Christians are generally willing to go. The idea that God is also the fish and all the aquarium
equipment, plus everything outside the aquarium, is usually called pantheistic, a buzzword that draws an automatic talk-to-
the-hand reaction from the Christian mainstream (and probably that of the other monotheistic faiths as well, such as
Judaism and Islam). Pantheism, you see, is very unbiblical, and is usually the explanation of choice for why mystics,
Christian and non-Christian, are people who have been led astray.
I didn't intend to challenge that notion with the fish illustration. For one thing, pantheism as understood in the West and by
Christian scholars is a fabrication; it doesn't exist anywhere but in their minds. In other words, none of the so-called
pantheistic religions or philosophies of the East are actually pantheistic. This isn't the place to explain why, but the
simplistic notion that professes that God and the created universe are synonymous is a Western misconception of Eastern
beliefs that we have not equipped ourselves to understand. If we want to have a go at understanding them here in the
Chronicles, we will have to equip ourselves, and I'll be taking on that daunting task in the following chapters.
Equally daunting, and just as important, I will be attempting to show that traditional monotheism is an unfeasible
philosophy, given the professed qualities of God held by monotheistic faiths, and will begin to lay a foundation for an
understanding of a middle road between the illogicalities of mono- and pantheism, in a way that will uphold and give due
respect to all of our most cherished symbolic perceptions of our Creator. Not any one particular set, not some of them --
all of them.)
copyright 2004 by Hermit Crab
a Fish Out Of Water production