Human Development
Consciousness of mystical poverty
Description:
A mystical interpretation of poverty seems to be an innate idea among the spiritual, and is particularly strong in the New Testament. It is the first vow of the monastic life. Fana, the Sufi term for mystical annihilation in God, is considered, popularly but heretically, to be a state of union. Esoterically, fana is the annihilation of the individual human will before the will of God, "nothing in possession, possessed by nothing". In Europe it is the consciousness exhibited by St Francis, the "little poor one" of Assisi, whose state was such that he took "Lady Poverty" as his spouse.