WHAT The MYSTICS HAVE TAUGHT
Ernest Holmes
Cosmic Consciousness - Illumination (Continued)
"Illumination will come as man more and more realizes his Unity with the Whole, and as he constantly endeavors to let the Truth operate through him. But since the Whole is at the point of the Inner Mentality, it will be here alone that he will contact It. "Speak to Him, thou, for He hears." Always in such degree as one has spiritual sense, he realizes universality in his own soul. The great mystics have had that sense and have felt the possibility of an immediate communion with the Universal Spirit. This essence has run through all theologies and has been the cause of much of their vitality. Theology with all its weakness has been stronger in its strength than it has been weak in its weakness, because the vital elements in it have been greater than the devitalizing ones. It would not have lived unless this were true.
The only God man knows is the God of his own Inner Life; he can know no other. To assume that man can know a God outside himself is to assume that he can know something of which he cannot be conscious. This does not mean that man is God; it means that the only God that man knows is within, and the only life man has is from within. God is not external but is Indwelling, at the very center of man's life. This is why Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven is within and why He prayed: "Our Father which art in Heaven."
The great mystics like Jesus have taught that as we enter into the One, the One enters into us and becomes us and is us. They have taught the "Mystical Marriage," the union of the soul of man with the Soul of God, and the Unity of all Life. The great mystics while sensing this Unity - the Universality of all things - have also sensed the individualization of Being and the individuality of Man as a Divine Reality. Tagore, in seeking to explain this, says that the individual is immersed in, but not lost in, Nirvana, and he uses the illustration..."as an arrow is lost in its mark," still remaining an arrow. The mysticism of Buddha did not teach the annihilation of the soul, but the eternality of an ever-expanding principle of the soul."
Ernest Holmes
Cosmic Consciousness - Illumination (Continued)
"Illumination will come as man more and more realizes his Unity with the Whole, and as he constantly endeavors to let the Truth operate through him. But since the Whole is at the point of the Inner Mentality, it will be here alone that he will contact It. "Speak to Him, thou, for He hears." Always in such degree as one has spiritual sense, he realizes universality in his own soul. The great mystics have had that sense and have felt the possibility of an immediate communion with the Universal Spirit. This essence has run through all theologies and has been the cause of much of their vitality. Theology with all its weakness has been stronger in its strength than it has been weak in its weakness, because the vital elements in it have been greater than the devitalizing ones. It would not have lived unless this were true.
The only God man knows is the God of his own Inner Life; he can know no other. To assume that man can know a God outside himself is to assume that he can know something of which he cannot be conscious. This does not mean that man is God; it means that the only God that man knows is within, and the only life man has is from within. God is not external but is Indwelling, at the very center of man's life. This is why Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven is within and why He prayed: "Our Father which art in Heaven."
The great mystics like Jesus have taught that as we enter into the One, the One enters into us and becomes us and is us. They have taught the "Mystical Marriage," the union of the soul of man with the Soul of God, and the Unity of all Life. The great mystics while sensing this Unity - the Universality of all things - have also sensed the individualization of Being and the individuality of Man as a Divine Reality. Tagore, in seeking to explain this, says that the individual is immersed in, but not lost in, Nirvana, and he uses the illustration..."as an arrow is lost in its mark," still remaining an arrow. The mysticism of Buddha did not teach the annihilation of the soul, but the eternality of an ever-expanding principle of the soul."
No comments:
Post a Comment