Back Cover

John O' Donohue was awarded a Ph.D. In philosophical theology from the University of Tübingen in 1990. His book on the philosophy of Hegel, Person als Vermittlung, was published in Germany in 1993 and his book of poems, Echoes of Memory, was published in 1994. His new book, Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Hunger To Belong, is now available in hardcover. He lectures and holds workshops in Europe and America and is currently researching a book on the mysticism of Meister Eckhart. He lives in Ireland.

When St Patrick came to Ireland in the

fifth century AD, he encountered the Celtic

people and a flourishing spiritual tradition

that had already existed for thosands of

years. He discovered that where the Christians

worshipped one God, the Celts had many and

found divinity all around them: in the rivers,

hills sea and sky. The ancient Celtic reverence

for the spirit in all things survives today -

a vibrant legacy of mystical wisdom that is

unique in the Western world.

Now, in this exquisite book, Irish poet

and scholar John O'Donohue shares with

us the secrets of this ancient world. Using

authentic Irish prayers and blessings, he

reveals the treasures that lie hidden within

your own soul and the 'secret divinity' in

your relationships. As he traces the cycles of

life and nature, he draws from the holy waters

of Ireland's spiritual heritage to lead you to

a place where your heart can be healed and

nourished. It is a place where you will discover

your own anam cara, your true 'soul friend'.

'A rare synthesis of philosophy, poetry

and spirituality... a powerful and life-

transforming experience for those who

read it' Deepak Chopra, author of

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, Frankfurt, 1989.

Augustine, The Confessions, London, 1945.

Aristotle, De Anima, London, 1986.

Aristotle, Ethics, London, 1976.

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Boston, 1969.

Jean Baudrillard, Fatal Strategies, New York, 1990.

John Berger, Ways of Seeing, London, 1981.

Ian Bradley, The Celtic Way, London, 1993.

Marie Cardenal, The Words to Say It, London, 1983.

Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica, Edinburgh, 1994.

P. J. Curtis, Notes from the Heart: A Celebration of Traditional Irish Music, Dublin, 1994.

Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, New York, 1989.

Brendan Kennelly (ed.), The Penguin Book of Irish Verse, London, 1970.

Thomas Kinsella (trans.), The Taín, Oxford, 1986.

Denise Levertov, The Poet in the World, New York, 1973.

Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, Pittsburgh.

Mary Low, Celtic Christianity and Nature, Edinburgh, 1996.

Caitlín Matthews, The Little Book of Celtic Blessings, Element Books, Shaftesbury, 1994.

John Moriarty, Dreamtime, Dublin, 1994.

Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, London, 1992.

Gerard Murphy, Early Irish Lyrics, Oxford, 1956.

P. Murray (ed.), The Deer's Cry: A Treasury of Irish Religious Verse, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1986.

Kit and Cyril O'Cérin, Women of Ireland, Tir Eolas, 1996.

Noel Dermot O'Donoghue, The Mountain behind the Mountain: Aspects of the Celtic Tradition, Edinburgh, 1993.

John O'Donohue, Person als Vermittlung. Die Dialektik von Individualitat un Allgemeinheit in Hegels 'Phanomenologie des Geistes'. Eine Philosophisch-Theologische Interpretation, Mainz, 1993.

Daithi O'hOgain, Myth, Legend and Romance. An Encyclopaedia of the Irish Folk Tradition, New York, 1991.

Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. Stephen Mackenna, London, 1991.

M. Merleau Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, London, 1981.

Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith. An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, London, 1978.

Michael A. Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying, Chicago, 1994.

Rupert Sheldrake, The Rebirth of Nature, London, 1990.

Cyprian Smith, The Way of Paradox. Spiritual Life as taught by Meister Eckhart, London, 1987.

George Steiner, Real Presences, London, 1989.

Helen Waddel, The Desert Fathers, London, 1962.

David Whyte, The Heart Aroused, New York, 1995.

A BLESSING FOR DEATH

A BLESSING FOR DEATH

I pray that you will have the blessing

of being consoled and sure about your own death.

May you know in your soul that there is no need to be afraid.

When your time comes, may you be given every

blessing and shelter that you need.

May there be a beautiful welcome for you in the

home that you are going to.

You are not going somewhere strange. You are

going back to the home that you never left.

May you have a wonderful urgency to live your

life to the full.

May you live compassionately and creatively

and transfigure everything that is negative

within you and about you.

When you come to die may it be after a long

life.

May you be peaceful and happy and in the

presence of those who really care for you.

May your going be sheltered and your welcome assured.

May your soul smile in the embrace of your

anam cara.

THE DEAD BLESS US

THE DEAD BLESS US

I feel that our friends amongst the dead really mind us and look out for us. Often there might be a big boulder of misery over your path about to fall on you, but your friends amongst the dead hold it back until you have passed by. One of the exciting developments that may happen in evolutionand in human consciousness in the next several hundred years is a whole new relationship with the invisible, eternal world. We might begin to link up in a very creative way with our friends in the invisible world. We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them? They are now in a place where there is no more shadow, darkness, loneliness, isolation or pain. They are home. They are with God from whom they came. They have returned to the nest of their identity within the great circle of God. God is the greatest circle of all, the largest embrace in the universe which holds visible and invisible, temporal and eternal as one.

There are lovely stories in the Irish tradition of a person dying and then meeting all their old friends. This is expressed powerfully in a wonderful novel by Mairtin Ó'Cadhain called Cré na Cille. This is about life in a graveyard and all that happens between the people buried there. In the eternal world, all is one. In spiritual space there is no distance. In eternal time there is no segmentation into today, yesterday or tomorrow. In eternal time all is now; time is presence. I believe that this is what eternal life means: it is a life where all that we seek, goodness, unity, beauty, truth and love, are no longer distant from us but are now completely present with us. There is a lovely poem by R. S. Thomas on the notion of eternity. It is deliberately minimal in form but very powerful:

I think that maybe

I will be a little surer

of being a little nearer.

That's all. Eternity

is in the understanding

that that little is more than enough.

Kahlil Gibran articulates how the unity in friendship, that we call the anam cara, overcomes even death: 'You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.' I would like to end this chapter with a lovely prayer poem from thirteen-century Persia.

Some nights stay up till dawn as the

moon sometimes does for the sun.

Be a full bucket, pulled up the dark

way of a well then lifted out into light.

Something opens our wings, something makes

boredom and hurt disappear.

Someone fills the cup in front of us, we taste

only sacredness.

(trans. R. Bly)

THE DEAD BLESS US

THE DEAD BLESS US

I feel that our friends amongst the dead really mind us and look out for us. Often there might be a big boulder of misery over your path about to fall on you, but your friends amongst the dead hold it back until you have passed by. One of the exciting developments that may happen in evolutionand in human consciousness in the next several hundred years is a whole new relationship with the invisible, eternal world. We might begin to link up in a very creative way with our friends in the invisible world. We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them? They are now in a place where there is no more shadow, darkness, loneliness, isolation or pain. They are home. They are with God from whom they came. They have returned to the nest of their identity within the great circle of God. God is the greatest circle of all, the largest embrace in the universe which holds visible and invisible, temporal and eternal as one.

There are lovely stories in the Irish tradition of a person dying and then meeting all their old friends. This is expressed powerfully in a wonderful novel by Mairtin Ó'Cadhain called Cré na Cille. This is about life in a graveyard and all that happens between the people buried there. In the eternal world, all is one. In spiritual space there is no distance. In eternal time there is no segmentation into today, yesterday or tomorrow. In eternal time all is now; time is presence. I believe that this is what eternal life means: it is a life where all that we seek, goodness, unity, beauty, truth and love, are no longer distant from us but are now completely present with us. There is a lovely poem by R. S. Thomas on the notion of eternity. It is deliberately minimal in form but very powerful:

I think that maybe

I will be a little surer

of being a little nearer.

That's all. Eternity

is in the understanding

that that little is more than enough.

Kahlil Gibran articulates how the unity in friendship, that we call the anam cara, overcomes even death: 'You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.' I would like to end this chapter with a lovely prayer poem from thirteen-century Persia.

Some nights stay up till dawn as the

moon sometimes does for the sun.

Be a full bucket, pulled up the dark

way of a well then lifted out into light.

Something opens our wings, something makes

boredom and hurt disappear.

Someone fills the cup in front of us, we taste

only sacredness.

(trans. R. Bly)

ARE SPACE AND TIME DIFFERENT IN THE ETERNAL WORLD?

ARE SPACE AND TIME DIFFERENT IN THE ETERNAL WORLD?

Space and time are the foundation of human identity and perception. We never have a perception that does not have each of these elements in it. The element of space means that we are always in a state of separation. I am here. You are there. Even the person that you are closest to, the one you love, is still a separate world from you. That is the poignancy of love. Two people become so close that they really want to become one; but their separate spaces keep the distances between them. In space we are always separated. The other component of perception and identity is time. Time always separates us too. Time is primarily linear, disjointed and fragmented. All of your past days have disappeared; they have vanished. The future has not come to you yet. All you have is the little stepping-stone of the present moment.

When the soul leaves the body, it is no longer under the burden and control of space and time. The soul is free; distance and separation hinder it no more. The dead are our nearest neightbours; they are all around us. Meister Eckhart was once asked, where does the soul of a person go when the person dies? He said, no place. Where else would the soul be going? Where else is the eternal world? It can be nowhere other than here. We have falsely spatialized the eternal world. We have driven the eternal out into some kind of distant galaxy. Yet the eternal world does not seem to be a place but rather a different state of being. The soul of the person goes no place because there is no place else to go. This suggests that the dead are here with us, in the air that we are moving through all the time. The only difference between us and the dead is that they are now in an invisible form. You cannot see them with the human eye. But you can sense the presence of those you love who have died. With the refinement of your soul, you can sense them. You feel that they are near.

My father used to tell us a story about a neighbour who was very friendly with the local priest. There is a whole mythology in Ireland about Druids and priests having special power. But this man and the priest used to go for long walks. One day the man said to the priest, where are the dead? The priest told him not to ask him questions like that. But the man persisted and finally, the priest said, 'I will show you; but you are never to tell anyone.' Needless to say, the man did not keep his word. The priest raised his right hand; the man looked out under the raised right hand, and saw the souls of the departed everywhere all around as thick as the dew on blades of grass. Often our loneliness and isolantion is due to a failure of spiritual imagination. We forget that there is no such thing as empty space. All space is full of presence, particularly the presence of those who are now in eternal, invisible form.

For those who have died, the world of time is also different. Here we are caught in linear time. We have forgotten the past; it is lost to us. We cannot know the future. Time must be totally different for the dead because they live now within a circle of eternity. Eariler we talked about landscape and how the Irish landscape resisted linearity. How the Celtic mind never liked the line but always loved the shape of the circle. Within the circle, beginning and ending are sisters and they belong within the shelter of the unity of the year and the earth, which the eternal offers. I imagine that in the eternal world time has become the circle of eternity. Maybe, when a person goes into that world, he can look back at what we call past time here. He may also see all of future time. For the dead present time is total presence. This suggests that our friends amongst the dead know us better than they can ever have known us in life. They know everything about us, even things that may disappoint them. But since they are now transfigureed their understanding and compassion is proportionate to everything they come to know about us.

DEATH TRANSFIGURES OUR SEPARATION

DEATH TRANSFIGURES OUR SEPARATION

In Connemara the Graveyards are near the ocean, where there is a lot of sandy soil. To open the grave the sod is cut on three sides. It is rolled back very carefully from the surface of the field, but it is not broken off. Then the coffin is put down. The prayers are said and the grave is blessed and filled. Then the sod is rolled out over the grave so that it fits exactly over the opening. A friend of mine calls it a 'Caesarean section in reverse'. It is as if the womb of the earth, without being broken, is receiving back the individual who once left as a clay shape to live in separation above in the world. It is an image of homecoming, of being taken back completely again.

It is a strange and magical fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here. Rilke said: 'Being here is so much.' It is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed. We are here. We are wildly and dangerously free. The more lonely side of being here is our separation in the world. When you live in a body, you are separate from every other object and person. Many of our attempts to pray, to love and to create are secret attempts at transfiguring that separation in order to build bridges outwards so that others can reach us and we can reach them. At death this physical separation is broken. The soul is released from its particular and exclusive location in this body. The soul then comes into a free and fluent universe of spiritual belonging.