A Great Need

As long as people have traveled, Eastern and Western cultures have exchanged ideas. However, Americans became increasingly interested in eastern spirituality after World War II.

Historian Brian Ireland explained that many Euro-Americans felt drawn to Eastern religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. They saw them as alternatives to the organized Western religions their families practiced (Ireland, Brian. “The Hippie Trail and the Search for Enlightenment.” Oxford University Press, 2018). Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Euro-Americans simplified, decontextualized, and incorporated the faiths and practices into their music, protests, and fashion sense.

Ladinsky, like many of his peers, found inspiration and meaning in eastern Spirituality. His interest in Indian spiritual leader Meher Baba’s teachings eventually led him to the Persian poet Hafez.

If readers take Ladinsky at his word about his vision of Hafez, “A Great Need” belongs to a long tradition of automatic and visionary/prophetic writing.

Automatic and visionary/prophetic writing happens when the writer feels they have become a vessel for a spiritual being’s message. Visionary writing usually depicts religious revelations. The visionary/prophetic writer typically recounts what they saw or were told by a higher being during a moment of spiritual ecstasy. Comparatively, automatic writing is more a form of possession. Encyclopedia.com defines it as work that is “produced without the control of the conscious self.” Automatic writing rose in popularity during the American 19th- and 20th-century Spiritualist movements. Mediums allegedly channeled ghosts, who either took control of their hand or deposited messages in the medium’s mind. The ghost or medium then wrote the message.

Authors within this genre include 20th-century poet Jack Spicer, medieval European mystics Margery Kempe and Saint Hildegard von Bingen, 20th-century American novelist William S. Burroughs, and modern American poet Lucille Clifton. Sometimes, these works reveal a moral message.

Ladinsky claims, “I had an astounding dream in which I saw Hafiz as an Infinite Fountaining Sun (I saw him as God), who sang hundreds of lines of his poetry to me in English, asking me to give that message to his ‘artists and seekers’” (Ladinsky, Daniel. “Preface.” The Gift, pp. 6-7). Ladinsky’s account parallels Saint Hildegard von Bingen’s depiction of her encounters with the Christian god: “And behold! In the forty-third year of my earthly course, as I was gazing with great fear and trembling attention at a heavenly vision, I saw a great splendor in which resounded a voice from Heaven, saying to me, […] ‘Say and write what you see and hear,’” she wrote in Scivias (Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias).

Regardless of whether Ladinsky truly spoke with Hafez, Ladinsky most likely possesses familiarity with the genre and its tropes. Besides growing up in a Jewish-Catholic home, he received an education at various small colleges and the University of Arizona. He first became interested in Eastern spirituality after reading God Speaks, a manifesto by Indian spiritual leader Meher Baba.

Sufism—which Hafez practiced—has a specific term for religious visions and revelations called Aḥwāl (or ḥāl in singular). Aḥwāl are moments when a person receives an emotion from God or learns about a new aspect of God. Two types of aḥwāl are wudd when constant awe replaces anxiety, and murāqabah, the fear or joy someone feels depending on which aspect of God reveals to them. Arguably, “A Great Need” comes closest to expressing either wudd or murāqabah. “A Great Need” arguably soothes the addressee by implying that “holding hands” with others will keep them safe amongst a dangerous backdrop. The awe and praise implied by a “great need” (Line 2) leading the group to hold hands while “climbing” (Line 4) arguably overcomes the dangerous terrain, which potentially mirrors wudd. Alternatively, readers may interpret the revelation about the journey’s danger as an aspect of God’s creation that invokes fear similarly to murāqabah.

Like many visionary and automatic works, “A Great Need” also teaches readers a spiritual lesson purportedly passed down during a supernatural encounter. The poem talks about the importance of not “letting go” (Line 5) and working as a team when situations become hazardous or difficult to accomplish alone.