THE VIEW OF MYSTICS

What is the nature of Reality, that which ultimately IS?  How much is our picture of it, what we know of it, or what we think we know of it, dependent upon what, with our limited range of perception, we are able to see of it?  Might it not be at least a possibility that, if our range of perception were enlarged, we would see it quite differently?

Mystics have been found in all ages, in all parts of the world and in all religious systems.  Out of their experience and their reflection on that experience have come the following assertions:

1. This phenomenal world of matter and individual consciousness is only a partial reality, and is the manifestation of a Divine Ground in which all partial realities have their being.

2. It is the nature of us humans that not only can we have knowledge of this Divine Ground by inference, but also we can realize it by direct intuition, which is superior to discursive reason.

3. Our nature is not a single but a dual one.  We have not one but two selves, the phenomenal ego, of which we are chiefly conscious and which we tend to regard as our true self, and a non-phenomenal eternal self, an inner person, the spirit, the spark of divinity within us, which is our true self.  It is possible for us, if we so desire and are prepared to make the necessary effort, to identify ourselves with our true self and so with the Divine Ground.

4. It is the chief end of our earthly existence to discover and identify ourselves with our true self.  By doing so, we will come to an intuitive knowledge of the Divine Ground and so apprehend Truth as it really is.  Not only this, we will enter into a state of being which has been given different names, such as eternal life, salvation, and enlightenment.

All this rests on two fundamental convictions:

1. Though it may be to a great extent atrophied and exist only potentially in most of us, we possess an organ or faculty which is capable of discerning spiritual truth, which is as much to be relied upon as are our other sense organs.

2. In order to be able to discern spiritual truth, we are, in our essential nature, spiritual; in order to know spiritual truth, we are partakers of it.  Potentially at least there is kinship between it and our soul.  This is to say, we are not creatures set over against it.  We participate in it; we are, in a real sense, "united" with it.