The Perfect God in Manifestation

What is a mystic?

A mystic is not a mysterious person, but he is one who has a deep inner sense of Life and Unity with the Whole. He is one who intuitively perceives Truth and who, without mental process, arrives at Spiritual Realization, or a state of self-realization.

Today’s civilization is built upon the teachings of a few people who intuitively perceived Spiritual Truth. Moses, who gave us our great code of law, perceived that we live in a Universe of Law.

Our greatest code of ethics was given through the perception of the prophets culminating in such teachings as those of Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth.

Who could have taught such men as these? We are compelled to recognize that Spirit alone was their Teacher. They were, indeed, taught of God, and the rudiments they learned through great orders — both mystic and occult.

The great poets have been true mystics and have revealed through their poems the Presence of God and our Lord Jesus Christ: Browning, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Whitman, Homer, and others.

All true philosophers are mystics. The old Prophets were mystics — David, Solomon, Jesus, Socrates, Plato, Buddha, Plotinus, Emerson, and a score of others. They all experienced the sense of a Living Presence.

Man has compelled nature to do his bidding through the use of electricity, steam, nuclear energy, etc., but few men have conquered their own souls.

The very best we have in civilization is the result of the mystic sense. Nothing resulting from modern inventions and discovery — as wonderful as they are — compares with the teachings of Jesus. He and the other mystics revealed the Eternal Verities — not the ephemeral creature comforts of the animal they have seen in the mirror.

The mystic is vastly different from the psychic, and we will discuss the psychic in the next lesson.

What have the mystics taught?

1. There is but One Ultimate Reality, which is here now; if we could but see it, we can be so reflected.
2. There is a Personal God; that is, a God personal to all who know and sense him. God is not anthropomorphic; that is, He does not have human form, but HE consciously works in and through man.
3. Having been illumined by Christ-light, having seen through the veil of matter, or through self, and perceived the Spiritual Universe, they have taught that the Kingdom of God is now present and needs but to be realized.
4. Evil is not an ultimate reality but simply an experience of the Soul on its journey toward Reality. It is not an entity, but an experience necessary to some degree for self-unfoldment. It is not a thing of itself, but simply a misuse of power in a false pattern.
5. They have taught the ultimate salvation of all people and the immortality of every Soul. Damnation has been as foreign to the thought of the mystic as any belief in evil must be to the Mind of God.
6. Man should have no burdens and would have none if he turned to “The One.”
   “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
   (Matthew 11:28)
7. We live in One Life. “For in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)
8. The Real self is God-given and cannot be denied. It is the place where God comes to a point of Individualized and Personified Expression in and through our personality which in a way is the total expression of all Life times in the Soul expression.
9. The Soul is on its way back to its Father’s House. Every Soul will ultimately reach its Heavenly Home. “I have said: ‘Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the Most High’.” (Psalm 82: 6)
10. Intuition in man (to which instinct in animals is similar) guides man if he will allow it to operate through him, or from the self.

 

All mystics have been normal people, living among men in the world of affairs in a perfectly natural way — not shrouding themselves in a cloak of mystery. Some of them did not even realize they were mystics until they were forced by their experiences.

It is impossible to put into words what a mystic sometimes sees and almost impossible to believe the reports of what he sees. He sees Reality in a flash which illuminates his whole being, and he, himself, sees a Light so brilliant that he is actually blinded for as long as several days.

Illumination will come as man more and more realizes his Unity with the Whole and as He constantly endeavors to let the Light operate through him.

Seeking to emulate the mystics, we should turn within and find god. The time will come when all the world will try to solve its problems through the power and Light of Spirit, “from the highest to the lowest.”

The arbitrary process of evolution ceased when man became an individual. Any further evolution will be through self-recognition; but back of man is the Whole of Life surging to express Itself. That is what we know as the Divine Urge, the Instinctive, Omniscient “I AM” in man — always pushing him on and up.

That person has the greatest power who most completely recognizes himself to be one with the Infinite Mind, through self. Evolution will be complete when man has conscious control of the spiritual forces which surge for expression.

The answer to every question — the solution to every problem — is within man. Heaven is within man; Jesus said: “The Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21) Man used to think of an arbitrary God who sent some to Heaven and some to Hell.

In this new order, we realize that there is Divine Being. But to avoid new error, we must go much deeper than thinking of God as simply a Principle or Law. God is the Infinite Spirit, the Limitless, Conscious Life of the Universe, the One Infinite Person within Whom all people live.

Man is in God and God is in man just as a drop of water is in the ocean and the ocean is the drop of water. That is what Jesus meant when he said: “I and my Father are One.” (John 10:30)

We must neutralize confusion and doubt. We should take time every day to conceive of ourselves as being tranquil, poised, and powerful — always in control of every situation and as being always the highest concept of the Divine which we can imagine.

Who is the Christ, the Son, begotten of the only Father — the first-born Son of God, the Father?

Christ means the Universal Anointed One of Sonship of which each member is composed. That is why we are spoken of as members of that One Body and why Paul told us: “Let this Mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2: 5) It is partially experienced as a Universal Idea because each person has and is self which is the Sun of his body or temple.

There is a point in the supreme moment of Realization where the individual is given up and merges with the Universe, but not to the loss of his personality. Where a sense of the Oneness of all Life so enters his being, there is no sense of otherness.

It is here that the mentality performs seeming miracles because there is nothing to hinder the Whole from coming through.

A practitioner should take a certain time every day to meditate within himself — to realize that the words which he speaks are the words of Truth. The great teaching plainly shows the way to liberty and freedom. It is a pathway continuously unfolding from a Limitless Source to a Limitless Source.

“Arise, shine, for thy light is come.” (Isaiah 60:1)

“I am that I am.” (Exodus 3:14)