unutterable goodness

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Elliot addresses art, philosophy, religion, history, and politics with what I call an “interested detachment.” He is overwhelmingly curious, and unstoppably inquisitive, but he is not very emotional. He is British, after all. While reading his books, one gets only the rarest hints toward his personal beliefs on any subject, most especially in regards to religion and politics. But for a very brief moment, he lets down the veil, and lets us see in. Tell me what you think of his experience. I don’t know what I think...


(p 373) "I had come to a small village on the edge of the desert to follow an unlikely clue. Years before, I had read an enigmatic mention of a ‘monastery in Persia’ where visitors were said to weep spontaneously on entering a particular room. I had often wondered whether such place might really exist, and was sceptical of the universality of the claim. There are no monasteries in Iran, but there are shrines raised to the saints of the Sufi tradition, whose followers dedicated themselves to the life of the spirit.

"In one such place, a kindly dervish showed me to the shrineroom of the saint. I could not have guessed that I had found the place until, sitting there alone, I found myself sobbing uncontrollably. Not with tears of either joy or pain, but of feeling in the grip of a presence, a force of unutterable goodness. Others have described a similar experience. Religious persuasion, or the lack of it, does not seem to be relevant. All testify to an encounter with an entity of overwhelming benevolence, and a feeling of having been overcome and reduced, momentarily, as if to dust. "