Practical Mysticism in Modern Living. Part 2 of 5. Mystical Directives to Personal Action

 

(Transcript by Tob Hawk)

We have a number of points we want to cover this evening, I'll make sure we don't forget any of them, I all got to carefully noted here proper scholastic manner. First of all, we want to clarify certain basic problems in connection with Mysticism as they relate to our personal conduct so we have to come now to an extension of our concept of definition in action, in the conduct of life.

Mysticism represents a basic and entirely natural instinct toward action, in other words, we have people who we variously judge. We say at one individual he is naturally critical. We say of another he is naturally suspicious. We may say of a third he is naturally self-centered. But when we speak of a mystic we merely say “he is naturally a mystic”. Now it is just this kind of basicness that our problem involves. The individual who is naturally critical is not aware that he has cultivated criticism, but he has, whether he knows it or not. He has gradually permitted a certain tendency of his character to become more and more exaggerated and perhaps as the result of early environment he has inevitably dropped into an attitude. An attitude which will gravitate against him throughout life.

In the same way of thinking it is not right to assume that Mysticism is something acquired something that represents a sect, or a creed, or a belief which can be adopted by the mind at will or pleasure. Mysticism is a natural condition and the only reason why we do not all express it, or do not all live in its rather simple and gentle structure, is that we have permitted other characteristics to become exaggerated, so that our mystical potential is ignored or neglected. Man being a total being in himself, having within his own nature all potential out of universal potential, cannot be deficient essentially in anything necessary for his completeness or his security. Therefore his insecurity and his incompleteness arise not from natural privation within himself, but from his own attitudes and decisions, and by the virtue or vice of having cultivated certain propensities and having neglected others perhaps equally important or of greater importance.

Thus we now think of our Mysticism merely as the individual being himself, allowing those values and qualities, which are part of his being, to appear in their own proper and normal way. We know that Mysticism must have a certain normalcy, otherwise it could not result in normalcy. The individual cannot attain any security by departing from realities. But it is the mystic, of those of similar interests or parallel courses of pursuit, that attain security whereas those with other attitudes less constructive, less total, less unified do not attain security. Thus we must assume that those qualities which bring into man's life the greatest fullness for himself, these qualities bear the basic authority of nature, or nature is continuously attempting to reveal to us those courses of procedure most likely to be constantly and universally beneficial.

Now as most persons, if they have this mystical equation within themselves, are unable to draw upon it for their immediate needs in many occasions and circumstances. Wonder how this mystical value can be released or developed to become a present help in time of emergency. It is obvious that criticism from a tendency develops into a powerful dominant in life. Mysticism from a tendency may also develop into a powerful dominant, but just as surely as criticism grows by exercise so Mysticism grows by exercise, and as certainly as criticism is strengthened by beholding around itself things which appear to deserve criticism so Mysticism grows and strengthens by observing around itself those things in which the mystical attributes are dominant or obvious.

Thus according to our site, our vision, our constant awareness of things we find support either for our strength or our weakness. In nature as we all know nearly every position that man can occupy intellectually or emotionally may be regarded as justifiable by argument but only certain attitudes or situations are justifiable by consequence and one of our first important lessons is therefore to recognize that the mystical equation is sustained, justified, supported by the most powerful of all evidence - the evidence of consequence. Against this evidence, once we begin to recognize it, intellectual and emotional debate are fruitless. The individual in the presence of a fact must accept this fact to the degree that he is capable of apprehending the fact. It is only when he is unable to perceive that which is true that he can deny it. It is only when his own reason, judgment and attitude forbid him the acceptance of truth that he can reject it. In this concept of Mysticism therefore the mystical attitude, or the mystical release in life, must arise from certain natural and inevitable processes within the temperament itself. These processes are not essentially intellectual, they are processes of experience. We assume always that experience is the one undeniable authority, that out of experience we must come finally to certain conclusions. These conclusions being inherent in the experience and the experience itself being an evidence or manifestation of life in action. All experience reveals the nature of good and evil. All experience points out the strength and weakness of conduct, or action on any level, on any particular subject that may be under immediate consideration.

Thus Mysticism being natural. It is essentially something to be rescued rather than to be cultivated. It is something which being present like a seed in the earth must be given the kind of care necessary to cause that seed to germinate and grow. Mysticism is not something we must create, something we must import, something that we must receive as a benediction from others, it is a seed within our own consciousness, it is a part of our own internal life. But it is only through a certain dedication or devotion to that seed and to the proper laws governing its development and unfoldment that we can have the full benefit of the maturity and growth and fruitfulness of this seed.

Therefore we find that all things in life which are meaningful involve some effort or responsibility. That which requires no effort is not rewarding. That which is not founded in some degree of human dedication is seldom worthwhile, useful or permanently beneficial. Thus if we are anxious to release our own native Mysticism to experience it as a normal growth of ourselves and therefore something which we need not defend, which need not be creedalized or sectarianized but may be constantly available to us as a stream of living water rising from interior fountains of our natures. In order to know this experience and to know it with certainty we must make certain adjustments, adjustments perhaps with the historical or traditional phase of Mysticism which alone provides us immediately with the keys to things that we must do. But it should be understood that all disciplines, or theories, or concepts about Mysticism are merely means of bringing to our attention that which becomes valid only by our own experience. We cannot be mystics by conversion, unless we wish to assume that we are converting ourselves when we so live that we reveal to ourselves the facts of ourselves. This constitutes the only true means of becoming certainly and faithfully aware of those principles that are necessary for our living.

So in our practical application we begin with the recognition that the end of our endeavor is that we shall know by experience. That we shall have things happen to us that are so completely undeniable that there can be no rebellion against them, no resistance to them and no denying that they represent a diviner law working in the natural world. This also we should bear in mind that Mysticism per se requires no defense. It is not something that is sustained by argument or protected jealously by some secretiveness of our own. That which can be assailed must be assailed, that which is true cannot be assailed. Therefore it needs neither defender nor can it be injured by accuser. It remains in its own nature and substance as it is and men approach it or retire from it according to their natures, but its own nature is unchangeable. This is a certain security where it gives us confidence that at the root of life there are values which are eternal, true and ever-present.

Nature is so constructed that the mystical equation is forever available to us not by some miraculous or extraordinary experience, for as Lord Bacon says “it is not necessary for deity to convince us through miracles in as much as the commonest of his works are sufficiently miraculous in themselves”. This thought is very, i think, very noble and proper to our consideration so we're now going to take some of the aspects of practical Mysticism and look into them for a moment. We have somewhat defined opposition for this evening therefore we will say that the search for Mysticism is a search involving the use of the power of insight.

Now insight is direct cognition. Insight means not only seeing within but it means a kind of appreceding which is rooted completely in direct cognition of value. Insight is through-sight, it is the sight of a thing which is deceived not by its appearances, nor is it rationally deceived by its defenses or emotionally deceived by its pleadings and protestations. Insight is that which is not deceived, because it is concerned not with the appearances of things directly but with their substances and essences. The cultivation of insight then suggests the need for a clairvoyant power of some nature or the extension of our sensory perceptions into the ability to perceive into internals. Actually however insight as termed in Mysticism does not immediately require any extra sensory perception whatsoever. Insight is for man complete perceiving. It is a perceiving in which cognition is true, right, honorable and sufficient because it is not adulterated by prejudice or opinion, because it is not diluted by tradition, nor is it overwhelmed by what we commonly refer to as human authority. Insight then is free sight. It is site free to see.

Now our way of life bestows certain physical freedoms upon us. To attain these freedoms our ancestors fought gallagher, defending with their lives the right for physical freedom. We today are searching for other kinds of freedoms, not only the four freedoms but perhaps one of the most important and that is the freedom to think straight, the freedom of insight, the freedom to perceive the thing as it is and against this great desire and reasonable and purposeful freedom we have arrayed not only the prejudices of others, but the involved complicated mechanism of self-deceit. Consequently insight must achieve a gradual victory over self-deceit.

Self-deceit is often very subtle, difficult to cope with. In as much as it represents angles and faculties and phases and aspects of temperament which we have gradually come to regard as essential parts of our own natures, one of the difficulties then is that wherever we are asked to change an attitude, we assume that we are asked to change ourselves. This is not essentially true for in most instances the attitude does not represent the self, the attitude is something that already has enslaved the self, thrown it into bondage, imprisoned it and prevented its free impression and expression. We must therefore assume that the self by its own nature desires honor, desires to know and desires to perceive the fact of things but against this natural desire is false conditioning which inevitably causes us to become victimized by negations and distortions of our own mental and emotional nature. Therefore insight is nothing but honest vision of thing as it is.

Now to attain honest vision the individual must for the most part reduce a certain kind of equation within himself. Honesty is not something that can be cultivated. You cannot say “day by day in every way i will be more and more honest”. That might be an evident courageousness but it is not sustainable in action. We cannot cause honesty to increase because honesty is not something that has of itself the nature of increase. Honesty is something that is and because it is and because it is universal in its own nature, because it is everywhere, not more distant nor nearer, but all permeating and all penetrating, and because honesty of itself is unassailable therefore can never be destroyed, never be corrupted, never be prevented from being itself.

Our situation is not the write valiantly like some Saint George to the salvation of honesty. Our real problem is to eliminate the dishonesty in ourselves. We cannot make anything more honest but we can cause all things to be less dishonest. This is a very subtle negation but it is one of the greatest importance. It is it is present everywhere in which we have the egoism of the human mind assuming that it can add or subtract in relation to the substance of things. This it cannot do, it can either accept more or less of this substance, and what we would term “the increase of honesty” is merely the acceptance of it in our own nature to larger and larger degrees. It has nothing to do with an actual increase in the circumstance or fact of honesty itself. Man may be dishonest all his life and yet live with an intrinsic honesty within himself. He may live dishonestly in a world filled with honesty and be untouched by it. It is his own relationship to himself that determines therefore his ability to release, reveal or express certain eternally present values.

Insight therefore is merely the recognition that honesty is that which remains when dishonesty ceases. The individual who affirms, that if he does not do wrong, he will do nothing, is not substantially correct. To cease doing wrong does not mean the end of action, it simply means the end of wrong action, or of the wrong use of action. The individual whose mind and emotions are no longer victims of error will then find an automatic release of virtue or correctness through his nature. We are blocked by our own limitations and by our own misinterpretations of values. If we get out of our own way value continues to express itself as was intended and as must always be the law and nature of value. Insight to us is a gradual conviction that the individual by internal experience can become aware, can know through a direct and immediate cognition the fact of universal value. Mysticism is an aspect of this universal value. Mysticism is this value largely in terms of conduct and peculiarly applicable to human beings. The mystic is not a person who ceases all action but who rather exchanges the grossness of conditioned action for a fuller value sense in which his action becomes more significant, although quite possibly less violent. We have no proof whatever that violence of action adds anything to its significance and we have much proof that violence of action exhausts the individual and places him in situations in which it is ever more difficult for him to retain insight, even what degree of it he would otherwise possess.

So insight is direct cognition, may tell the thoughtful person that there is ever available to him the proper substance of insight that toward which insight is naturally turned and this thing toward which it is turned is valuable, or essence, or substance, or reality. That this reality is available at all times and in any situation and in every situation and that every condition which arises is one of conditioned value that is one in which value is variously frustrated by that which is not valuable, causing innumerable complications and emergencies in the practice of human conduct.

Insight therefore tells us also that value may be revealed in two ways - either through a direct appreception of itself or an indirect recognition of it as the result of the tragedy of allegiance to that which is not valuable. The individual may therefore grow directly by clinging to the truth or he may grow indirectly by exhausting error. Unfortunately however in exhausting error he's ought to exhaust himself and everyone else. Consequently in the conserving of energy and the preservation of life for his own good and for the good of his associates, it is far better that he shall become so far as is possible dedicated to insight, to the effort to perceive and experience value.

The commonest form of insight, the most natural form is that by means of which we become sensitive to motive and sensitive to the underlying elements of a situation. Insight permits us to penetrate appearances whether these appearances are favorable or unfavorable in an effort to determine value in contrast to appearance. Man having a mind, which is capable of individual intellection, is capable of conduct contrary to his own instincts. The individual is capable therefore of deceit, he is capable of pretending one thing and practicing another. We know this without very much use of insight. We recognize this as one of the common problems of our time and as a result of this we become profoundly suspicious of the conduct of those around us.

Now suspicion is by itself a negative value. It is something which if maintained long enough will produce detrimental effects upon the mental, emotional and physical structure of man. Therefore we must assume that in the natural plan of things suspicion is not a virtue. That it is not a faculty that is given to man for his preservation. If it was it would be used in this way without interfering with the basic integrity of the individual. If suspicion were a proper faculty the individual would grow by the use of it. He would also find himself enjoying better and more continuous security because of this attitude. Such is not the case and the history of suspicion as it passes gradually into a clinical condition as mental disease shows clearly that the only thing that suspicion rewards itself with is more suspicion and that if this allows is allowed to pile up indefinitely it becomes pathological. Thus suspicion does not solve anything.

Yet says the person, who has been gradually indoctrinated with suspicious attitudes by circumstances around him, “how can we protect ourselves without being suspicious? How can we make certain that without suspicion we will not be exploited? How can we say that a dozen times we have been subjected to the deceit of others and that we should approach these others the 13th time with a good hope and a cheerful countenance?” This looks as though it is almost more than flesh can bear and we are inclined to assume that the effort to do so is little short of ridiculous. It is as long as we approach with the same attitudes and with the same equipment that we approached before and which attitude and equipment led to our immediate exploitation.

Insight is not suspicion. Insight however is fact hunting and fact finding. Nearly every individual who is deceived and who thereby becomes inclined to be suspicious is not deceived because of his honesty, but he is deceived primarily because of his lack of insight. He is deceived by his selfishness. One of the most common forms of deceit that we contact is the individual who for a quick profit is lured into an unreasonable or unprofitable investment. This lack of insight is obvious. He should have realized that when he engaged in an enterprise in which common sense told him the hazards were far greater than the probabilities of reward, he should have faced this fact honestly, immediately and factually. He should have realized that he took a long chance because he expected more than reasonable profit. This was not a virtuous action but a foolish one, arising from his own cupidity, cupidity is destructive to insight, what leads to conduct which sustains suspicion and as surely as he is himself exploited, others become suspicious of him if he offers or promises that which he cannot reasonably fulfill.

Thus in the individual lies the factor which different from insight leads him to a different kind of estimation of other persons. Criticism, suspicion - these attitudes are not the same as a factual analysis of the problem. A factual analysis depends entirely upon a non-emotional impersonal recognition of value. The recognition of the abiding location of the fact of the matter. Insight then is the quickest, easiest, most natural way to become strong. It protects the person from his own weakness, from his own gullibility, which is a form of weakness. It prevents him from contributing to the delinquency of another. It does not place him in relationships with others by which suspicion can reasonably result. Insight then is always a factual look at something. Usually facts have a certain charm about them. Facts are not very often truly bad, it is the failure to find the fact that results in what we call evil. The fact may be ridiculous, ludicrous, amusing, it may be entertaining, it may be everything that you can think of until it falls upon us to our detriment, and for it to do this it must be misinterpreted and misapplied in our own lives.

Insight can therefore begin with a proper evaluation of situations around us and the gradual releasing of our minds from these vast unsemantic expressions of total acceptance and total discarding of things. Nothing is all this or all that and the moment prejudice comes in fact flies out the window. Insight is our quiet ability to penetrate all subterfuge and to perceive those obvious symptoms which never fail to be present. The only way we can be deceived is to close our eyes to obvious facts and to close our eyes thus results in a penalizing and when we have been penalized for several times, we are afraid that we will be penalized again. So we wander about waiting for the worst, whereas the answer lies not in this procedure but in simply opening our eyes which have been closed through all the previous episodes. By the simple opening of our awareness so that we become naturally and normally conscious of the inevitable associate factors, the symptoms, which are never separate from any situation in life. Every situation is the result of causes which can be estimated. Every situation leads to effects which can be evaluated. And it is our failure to observe causes and evaluate effects. It is our failure to judge things by their values and their principles. This is the mistake or the type of mistake which leads us into most of our unpleasant situations.

Insight is not something which you should sit down and say “this afternoon i will turn it on and while i am turning it on i will examine the condition which has arisen”. Insight should be as natural to us as criticism. Insight should be the ability to see a little further into every stone wall than we have ever seen before. Insight should be an attitude toward observing things. It should be the power of the individual to accept more evidence, consciously and subconsciously, because he has not closed his attention to that evidence, because he has not willfully refused to see it or has allowed some prejudice or attachment or detachment to stir his mind away from normal perception.

Insight is clear sight because the sensory perceptions normally and properly used will carry with us, with them, into our consciousness not only the immediate structure of things but a certain aura of overtones. These overtones are visible or can be determined by the senses. They can also be estimated after the phenomena has been accepted by the rational faculties and the individual can instinctively and intuitively gain an ability to perceive value, or the absence of it, as easily as he now perceives the rising of the sun or watches the traffic ahead of him. In some ways under certain stressful stressful emotional pressures we do develop certain overtones, perhaps one of the most common of these developments today is in the case of the motorist. The motorist subconsciously, if he's a good driver, and if there were not millions of good drivers that would be very few of us left alive, the motorist because he is in a constant condition of emergency does have a degree of insight in relation to driving. Very much in excess of his insight on other subjects he sees, he recognizes, he almost sees behind him, he becomes able to make note of the slightest variation in traffic patterns, he becomes almost intuitively aware of what the driver in front is going to do, because the old day of arm signals is practically extinct. It requires a moderate degree of telepathy to get home. Because he has to have it to survive man develops it and it is quite amazing how rapidly his coordination also adjusts itself to an emergency. Without time to consciously think at all the good driver will nearly always do the one thing that is possible under the situation unlikely to reduce a tragedy or a difficulty to the minimum. Drivers have told me, that where an accident was obviously only a split second away, that in that split second it seemed as though eternity never moved, that split second became longer than an hour and in that split second a tremendous amount of intellection was possible, and in that split second the individual was frequently able to actually completely avert the accident, although there seemed to be no time for such judgment. He discovered that he had the faculty of instantaneous analysis and judgment but he had not used it.

This is perhaps a a shallow similitude toward insight but it is in this direction, it is the power of the individual to see more than he realizes, react more intelligently than he consciously knows and to a verdict condition by the total union of his faculties. Such faculties exist, are available to man but he simply does not use that and the principal reason why he has trouble with them is because in daily life his prejudices are stronger than his emergencies and he never gets that clear flash of direct and complete insight. It is as though he were intoxicated with the psychic toxins of his own wrong thinking, which can be just as detrimental to him as they are in the form of alcoholic intoxication on a highway. His reflexes are reduced on the highway by the alcohol in his blood. In private and civilian life man's reflexes to insight are reduced by the psychic toxin of his attitudes and on the true insight is therefore not available to him.

To try to correct this situation, to practice it a little, to try to see more about things, to observe their values and their relationships, so that instead of merely an optical phenomenon we record with it something of the cause of itself, something of the consequence of itself. One of the greek philosophers suggested it in this way: through a certain familiarity man is aware of the overtones of certain conditions around him, a man looking at a tree in bloom can with his mind see the fruit that is to come upon that tree, he knows that the flowers of the tree, the blossoms will become fruit in due time, and by a slight extension of his thinking he can see the growth of this tree from the seedling in which it started, he can restore these thoughts to his mind or they may almost spring to his mind when he contemplates the tree, especially if he has some interest in the subject. If the payment of his mortgage depends upon the fruit he will see the fruit before it is there. He will judge it, he will estimate it, he will try to imagine anything that might prevent it from developing and he will do all that he can to preserve the naturalness of the situation in order that he may survive himself. It is the same with all incidents in life, if these incidents are truly important to us we will anticipate them, we will observe them and contemplate them, not in a long and arduous intellectual process, but intuitively, instinctively, by insight. We will search not for the incident but for the value and in so doing we will gradually enlarge these auric overtones for the values of things lie in their overtones rather than in the objects themselves. And our search for Mysticism is always our search for value.

Now the next point is important to us also. Mysticism emphasizes continuously the presence of what we might term a spiritual factor, a spiritual idealistic equation in every situation that is contemplated. Mysticism therefore must move from the sincere conviction that in every problem that we know there is a god in it somewhere. Mysticism particularly emphasizes the discovery of the god equation and this god equation represents the essential good, the spiritual fact in things. This is however not so valuable to us unless this emphasis has some practical meaning for us. It was true that the old american indian saw god in fire and heard him in the wines, that is true but we have to find our utility, our practical application of this principle. To affirm that there is a god in things is to affirm that there is a good in things and also to affirm that all things have concealed within them somewhere a spiritual equation which means an equation of value. This equation of value usually impacts itself upon our experience as the equation of lesson, of meaning, of that which it can help us to know, or to understand, or to attain, or to achieve concerning which we were previously ignorant in some essential part or degree. Consequently the spiritual essence of value for us in everything that occurs is instruction.

The individual who is living to learn will have a far more significant and successful life than the individual who is merely living to gain. Gain is precarious in these times and for each gain there must be a loss. Consequently gain brings little if any actual security. On the other hand the individual who lives for lessons or at least very largely accepts lesson as an essential value in life can hardly have a life that is a failure. He can hardly resist the recognition of the magnificence of existence if he is willing to accept life as a way of learning. This does not mean that learning must be painful. We have come so completely and entirely to the conclusion that learning is a miserable and uncomfortable procedure, that it is hard for us to conceive that learning can be beautiful, that learning can be good and that learning can be important. If therefore in connection with our basic study we take the attitude that learning is the spiritual equation in the things that we do, then we find a divine nature or insight in everything and about everything that is possible for us to understand and to know. If then on this basis of thinking we attempt to grasp the experience value of things we do not have the difficulties in accepting life that would otherwise be present. If we are able to accept learning as the spiritual integrity which justifies life, if we are more interested in being happy because we have learned that being happy because we have been successful we will have a great possibility of a rich and full life. If however our happiness must result only from situations that meet our personal approval, we are going to have usually a troublesome time.

Thus Mysticism has as one of its basic concepts the discovery of the spiritual equation, the recognition that whatever happens encloses within itself a vital meaning, that the discovery of this vital meaning always justifies any trouble, misfortune or pain necessary to attain that meaning, that there is no failure in life except the failure to attain meaning. A failure to attain meaning fortunately is rare because nature by its own natural energies persists in revealing meaning until it is presented so fully, completely and inevitably, that we must ultimately turn toward it and accept it. Spiritual insight, or the spiritual equation, helps the mystic therefore to realize continuously that this is a divine world and that these things which happen to us and to others, which do not appear to be divine, have within them a divine meaning and that this meaning has as its end goal and ultimate man's mystical experience of god as good. That out of all these things the person can achieve the victory, the victory of self over all circumstances that can arise and that this victory in itself is made possible by man realizing that the word ‘Self’ is not only a symbol of our personal natures but of the god-self in us by which all things are possible, including that degree of insight which is man's power to perceive the god in the things that have burdened him, afflicted him, frightened him. This discovery is possible and it is the mystic who attempting sincerely and honorably to find this equation, to know it, to recognize it and to accept it into himself, relaxing with it or to it, and remembering as all mystics must remember that it is not man of himself that accomplishes these things but as Jesus said “it is the father and i that do it the works” and it is part of the essential concept of Mysticism to discover the spiritual equation, which simply means the equation in which it is the father in us that do it the works and that this spiritual value gives us the power, gives us the eternal and everlasting right to perceive the truth, to exercise our own natures toward the attainment of a reality which is possible because we are of the substance of reality. Were we not of this substance we could not know it. But because we are of this substance we can attain it through dedication, through relaxation away from error, from recovering from all self-pity and self-censure and simply quiet affirming that which Mysticism has forever affirmed, namely the spiritual equation, which means the absolute justice in the substance of things and that this justice has as its principal end that each human being in the course of its natural growth and unfoldment shall become aware of this justice, shall ultimately rejoice in this justice and shall perceive in this justice the first and perfect testimony of the presence of god in all things.

This concept then is the next point in our study of the mystical equation.

The next factor that i want to speak of is Mysticism as a way of binding what we know to what we do. This is a very important equation. Intellection can permit us to contemplate the most glorious and wonderful vistas of reality. Mysticism however is not a philosophy per se, nor a religion. Mysticism is a kind of action. Mysticism is therefore an active force, acting with instead of contrary to the large patterns of universal action. That which moves with life may not appear to move because it moves with the total picture of things but this is the most important and graceful motion of all for it is motion in Dao, as the chinese call it, a motion in infinite motion and there's a great difference in the life of man between motion and commotion. Motion is a movement with life. Commotion is a shadow boxing with errors. Motion is therefore a blowing of life into its own natural and proper purposes and applications.

Our mystical situation then shows that man has a kind of knowledge. Now knowledge is a natural acquirement of man, knowledge is the negative pull of this intuitive kind of insight, knowledge is a learning about things, about conditions involving arts, and sciences, and crafts, and traits. Knowledge however is not as sterile as it seems to be because knowledge to the mystic becomes in every instance another example of the presence of the divine in action. Therefore the great mathematician says ‘God geometrizes’. He has found god in mathematics, as baron Emanuel Swedenborg found him. The great physicist finds god in atoms. The great biologist finds god in tissue. The astronomer finds god in space. Everywhere knowledge as we know it becomes a living witness and testimony to the presence of divine power. But the transformation of knowledge so that man moves from this realization, if all knowledge reveals god, then the application of knowledge reveals worship, and to the mystic worship may be therefore practiced in any field of learning, or in any department of living, or in any pursuit of man, so long as this pursuit is ennobled by and enlightened by man's personal acceptance, that this form of learning or this type of work, or craft is a service to god and nature.

If man is capable of recognizing the dignity of action, he realizes that all action is meditation, all work is prayer and as the mystical scenes of the holy land said two thousand years ago “the perfect water of baptism is the sweat of human toil”. These mystics worshipped through work and one of the points of Mysticism that is tremendously significant is the idea of bringing the element of worship into work, that worship is not apart from every other purpose of man, nor is worship a burdensome and heavy theological procedure. The greeks who were among the great theologians of all time worshiped with laughter. Man worships through the joyous recognition of the presence of the divine power in all of his labors and his pursuits. The great artist sees in God the supreme artist. This the great architect sees in deity the supreme artificer of all things, therefore the architect builds for the glory of God. The housewife keeps our home for the glory of God. The businessman is true to the responsibilities of his professional trade not only for profit but primarily in order that through him the law may be made manifest and to the degree that he keeps the law he does good business, all words to the contrary notwithstanding, and to the degree that through his own conduct he reveals his interior a perception of law and order, to that degree he lives a life of constructive action.

The application is twofold therefore. Man perceiving the common works of man gains from this an uncommon insight into the will of god. Man performing the common works of his own hands perceives in this process the release through his own nature of divine powers for the simplest thing that man can do, cannot be done, unless the energy, the life, the God, the father in him do it the work. Man cannot raise his hand, except that life energy in him raises that hand and to the mystic this life ever energy is the ever-present reflection or testimony to the availability of the divine power.

So Mysticism binds us to a new concept of life and religion. A very simple and natural one. Not a concept exaggerated, or hypocritical, or dramatic, but a simple concept that by the daily practice of the realization of the presence of the divine power in all things, man gradually increases in righteousness, increases in the interior beauty of his own life and comes by degrees to that peace which truly surpassed understanding. He does it not by great works, or special achievements, but by ever mindfulness that when he reaches out his hand, it is the hand of god that he reaches out and when with this hand he takes the hand of another he takes into his own hand also the hand of god. This mystical exposition of things brings about the end of enmities and such disjointed relationships has afflict us and burden us, yet there is no drama, no artificial sense of virtue, it is simply the fourth rightness of a true and complete and substantial conviction that these things are true and that by the practice of them their greater truth and utility will be inevitably demonstrated for the individual by these practices is rewarded according to his works and gains further reward because of extending capacities to perceive and appperceive these values working in himself.

Now the next point in connection with Mysticism that i think we should bear in mind is, if you will go back through the story of Mysticism, you will find the peculiar humility which has marked the lives of most mystics. This humility results from what has been termed introspection. Introspection is the individual turning into himself with a natural and proper sense of inquiry. Introspection is the person examining himself with the same honesty and forthrightness with which he has sought to examine other circumstances and as surely as in other circumstances he sought for the god and the truth in those circumstances. So turning his introspection into himself he seeks also for the god and the truth within his own nature. The individual the mystic in his introspection becomes certainly aware however that there are two natures within him. One of these natures is essentially the cause of his trouble, the other nature is his hope of glory. The cause of his trouble lies in that disjointed or separated nature which is represented as an intellectual entity or an entity based upon its own selfness or even its selfishness whereas behind and beyond this is the divine nature in man, having its root in the same divinity, which all things commonly share in union and togetherness.

Thus the mystic turning into himself seeks not essentially and factually to be good to other people and to condemn himself. Any more than he would be good to himself and condemn others on a different level of enlightenment. It is no more proper that we should belittle ourselves, than that we should belittle others. It is no more reason why we as individuals should think of ourselves only as repentant sinners any more than it is proper for us to think of ourselves as only as arrogant fools. There is a proper and moderate attitude in all these matters.

Actually the individual who goes toward Mysticism because he practices introspection becomes aware of the workings of the divine will through himself. He perceives his abilities, the flashes of genius which may have come to him, he becomes able to estimate more accurately his potentials, he knows what he should be doing and how he should be doing it, he recognizes the neglect, which he has suffered at his own hands, he recognizes his tendencies to evasions and to unnecessary confusions and complexes, he recognizes the shortcomings of his disposition, he realizes natural tendency to his suspicions and cruelties, to his condemnations and intolerances. These things by introspection he becomes more and more aware of, recognizing that in these faults he possesses within his own nature, those faults which in the world around him most terrify him, when they are possessed by others. He realizes also that in these common faults he shares life with others, that the very situations which he resents in them he is nurturing within himself. Thus a certain humility, a certain reasonableness of attitude must naturally result.

But this does not mean constant self-condemnation, nor does it mean that we should be less mindful of the regeneration of our own natures than we are of trying to assist others for improvement. the great trouble in most cases is man's instinctive tendency to turn from himself trying to reform or change others without giving adequate thought to the introspective process of recognizing his own relationship with others. At various stages in his mystical development it may be that his great bridge between himself and others will be his faults, for these he will obviously share with us and as he expects others to be patient with his shortcomings so must he likewise be patient with theirs. Thus instead of taking a position of arrogance he recognizing his own infirmities, becomes more companionable or more equal with others whose faults are likewise equal to his own. Out of this attitude then he gets away from the holier than thou position which is always very unfortunate, he comes rather to a democracy of faults in which we all live together while we still abide in an autocracy of truths. In this situation introspection must naturally lead to the individual making some reasonable effort to change his own life, not by a violent effort again to overcome his vices and develop his virtues, but through this peculiar intuitive insight, because it is obvious from centuries of observation and reflection that the moment that the individual really experiences the nature of his own false situation, the moment he knows it is false he cannot continue to defend it, he can only defend it as long as he has not experienced the fact that he is wrong. He may intellectually argue himself in and out of anything, but once he has come to the interior realization that a situation is not right, he cannot rest until he does something about it. His own inner consciousness moves in upon him.

Now it is very important that this inner consciousness shall not immediately become involved in some kind of a psychotic pattern and get him into further complications. It is not that he must go out and engage in his terrible struggle, his interior consciousness as it warms his inner life, as he becomes intuitively introspectively aware of the true nature of his inner life. This situation naturally remedies itself. It is the degree of insight which he is able to direct upon his own problem that determines the rapidity with which he can solve it. Once he has completely internally renounced it, his failing cannot live, not because he fights it, but because he can no longer sustain it or justify it, and the moment he cannot justify it emotionally or rationally he cannot preserve it. It falls away not because he kills it but because its source of nutrition, his own continuous repetition of the fault, is removed and that which is not sustained by his own action loses its own significance and gradually disappears, not by being fought with but simply by being outgrown, which is the only way we can ever get out of anything.

An introspection is a way in which we gain a measure of internal growth and by this measure of internal growth we become capable of putting ourselves in a school with our own consciousness as the school master and in this situation, coming little by little to a formal and complete allegiance with these mystical values which constitute the truth of the matter, when we are able to achieve these values we are able to accomplish self-examination without self-condemnation. We have no more right to condemn ourselves than we have others. What we have to do is to do exactly as we would with a small wayward child having discovered its needs, these needs perhaps being in within ourselves. We must do what is necessary to make sure that our own inner life is ordered and strengthened by such natural methods, such orderly and proper procedures and such loving discipline, as we will give to a small child in difficulty or in problem.

Now another important factor of Mysticism is of course that it is highly idealistic. In practical standpoint idealism is not quite the same as spirituality. A spirituality relates to the nature of a substance for spirituality is that which is bestowed by spirit, or which exists by virtue of spirit, or which has its own root and substance in spirit and is possible only because spirit exists. Idealism on the other hand represents a gradual maturing and enriching of man's interior comprehension. Idealism is a state resulting from the happy sublimation of man's emotional and mental life and the gradual union of these two in a positive and normal psychic entity. This idealism consequently becomes a true realism. We oppose realism to idealism, this is a false opposition, it is not true in nature. iIdealism actually is nothing but man's ability to apperceive that the inevitable good in things promises certain ends consistent with itself and an idealist is one who is convinced of the ultimate rightness of things and the ultimate victory of that right over every illusion or delusion of man or collective groups in society. Idealism is therefore the belief that the world has moral purpose, that the world has a job which it is doing for itself and for all its creatures, that man, the universe and the world are moving victoriously together for the fulfillment of a universal good.

Idealism then implies that all things have in themselves an ideal structure and an ideal structure is an in this sense an idea structure. An idealism goes back to the platonic concept of archetypes, affirming that there is an archetype of good, an archetype of beauty, an archetype of reality, that all things exist within this pattern cannot be separated from it, cannot be cast out of it in any way and must ultimately fulfill it and that what we call the problem is simply man's own personal delay of inevitables. He cannot prevent them but he can dawdle along with them to his own discomfort and discontent longer than is necessary, according to the will and nature of his kind.

Idealism also carries in Mysticism a concept of monoism and this means that in Mysticism not only is archetype or is the divine nature of things beautiful and good, but it is total unity. Consequently the mystic, as part of his natural mystical expansion, begins to create bridges by means of which nothing is left separate, that there are no longer ins and outs, there are no longer fors and against, that there are no longer deadly opposites into which all things in nature are divided. The division itself is an illusion and that the motion of Mysticism toward the true state of insight is the gradual experiencing through of illusion, particularly the illusion of separateness. Therefore in the true and natural substance of things division is incidental, belonging only to certain stages or conditions of life. Division also exists primarily upon the level of the five senses and has its greatest sphere of influence on the material world where bodies appear to be completely and entirely separate. Yet this separateness of effects is itself suspended from a unity of causes and even this separateness of effects is not as real as it appears to be, for all effects are still bound within the circle of the unity of causes. This was a basic pythagorean formula and philosophy and Mysticism have always held firmly to it in the thousands of years in which these forms of learning have descended to us.

Thus Mysticism as an experience is a gradual recognition of the era of division. Mysticism representing a natural evolution of man is moving even in our time taught overcoming barriers - racial, national, religious, sectarian, creedal, industrial - all barriers by which individuals are artificially divided from each other must finally disappear and the recognition that life may be individual but never separate. The individual has his own personality, his own capacities, his own powers and abilities, but because he is himself does not prevent him from also being all other selves.

Thus Mysticism implies the absolute unity of god, that all so-called creative agencies exist within one divine nature and that deity is the source of the eternal life of man. Being undivided, this life in man is likewise undivided, and that therefore there is only one life, variously manifesting through an infinitude of evolving forms, but substantially and essentially one life. Because life is one life cannot damage anything but itself, life cannot be deceived out of anything but itself, life can be suspicious of nothing but itself, it can be critical of nothing but itself, it can go to war on nothing but itself, therefore all of these pursuits are themselves illusionary in as much as they are conflicts arising in the appearances of things, when the substance of these things can never enter into conflict, because it is indivisible, eternal and one.

This concept in Mysticism leads again to a contribution to conduct. It assists us to a speedy and quick sympathy. It helps us to recognize the instinct to see in those in trouble ourselves in trouble and the moment we create this we have one of the simplest forms of mystical experience. If when we see an individual in trouble, we instinctively see ourselves in this place likewise, we will handle the situation perhaps with a little more understanding than otherwise would be possible. It does not mean that we will all or any of us can understand all things, but it gives a tendency toward a more simple, direct and natural recognition of value and by this recognition of value a participation in unity. Thus in whether it be the yoga of India, or the concept of union in greek Mysticism, or in Egyptian metaphysics, always this idea of oneness lies in the root of Mysticism and because of this oneness being a law, being a value, being an eternal truth ever present in nature, man experiences a common participation in the divine love, in the divine wisdom, and in the divine law.

Thus there is no possibility of man being belittled out of his birthright. He cannot lose his birthright, he can only obscure it. It cannot be taken from him, but he can become unaware of it as one who sleeps. But if he awakens into the mystical apperception of this, he becomes, as Saint Paul says “the firstborn of them that sleep”. He becomes capable of awaking from the sleep of division into the waking fullness of realization of identity, of unity, of one purposeless. This he does not cultivate, does not rationalize, does not intellectualize, he merely experiences it by the very process of remaining receptive to the true motion of life within his own consciousness. These things flow in upon him if he will not obscure them by false attitudes, by means of which these experiences are forbidden to him by his own action and concept.

The next point in Mysticism, that is important, is a brief consideration of the contribution of intuition to the mystical appreceptive power. Intuition is a very important thing, dealing often and substantially with events and circumstances, but intuition is a dangerous thing also, for intuition can be so easily mistaken for other processes. It can be mistaken for the individual's own personal preferences, coming out from within the subjective nature of himself. Intuition therefore in its trueness must be cultivated, but that which is a pseudo form of intuition must be also deserved, lest it afflict and burden the life and make the achievement of the final end more difficult than would otherwise be the case. By the cultivation of intuition, by the recognition of the intuitive faculty in man, we also come into the presence of a kind of apperception of the nature of consequences of things. Intuition is not what we might sometimes think it is. Merely a faculty based in some metaphysical cause, intuition is only a clear statement that every individual at all times knows more than he thinks he knows. Intuition means that there are faculties which he is using, the testimonies of which he is not consciously accepting. He also must realize that intuition means a penetration into value and for the most part it tells us that the human mind is divided into a surface structure and a submerged part. While the surface structure is most highly individualized with modern man, the submerged part is still a tremendous reservoir of receptive areas and into this receptive field their flow stimuli which we do not consciously register and while the mind on the surface of things is moving in one direction, perhaps to the fulfillment of its personal opinions and prejudices, there is a subjective layer that is already able to lend great help in the straightening out of confusing situations, if the mind will accept this contribution. Often the mind consciously will not accept, therefore intuition may express itself through a series of extra-sensory experiences in sleep, in vision, or through so-called clairvoyant or clair-audient revelations, but many of these so-called contributions from unknown space are actually arising from man's own larger nature, a nature submerged but real.

The tying of the objective consciousness with intuition is more or less the reversal of the motion of knowledge in man. Our normal procedure is to accept stimuli from the outside, pass this stimuli through the sensory perception into the brain, where it is rationalized into a series of concepts or ideas. Mysticism affirms that through the practice of quietism, which is an essential mystical discipline, it is possible to relax this process, so that the individual is not constantly rummaging his environment for stimulation. That gradually he can achieve a relaxation of the accumulating faculty of the mind. The mind forever drawing to itself data, facts and statistics, becomes hopelessly involved in analysis, comparison and the critical processes which we have already mentioned. If however this mental process can be relaxed, it is possible for it to be reversed and for certain essential facts, already retained within consciousness, to flow outward through the mind and to appear as intuitional, or creative, or miraculous mental activities, so that the person suddenly seems to know more than he knows, to think better than he thinks and to become aware of things which normally would not be within his consciousness. This means that this has been moved in, from what Pope Emerson might term “the overself”, from the collective superior part of his own nature, which is forever available to him, if he will relax the pressures of his personality and be receptive to it.

The cultivation of intuition is the cultivation of observation plus reflection. It is the attunement of the outer senses to perceive the overtones of things immediately occurring because this process of perceiving overtones is the source of our intuitional content. If we can bring this into conscious focus then we have the availability of intuitional power immediately and at the time most suitable to prevent a false attitude from arising in the mind.

If therefore we can become reflective upon overtones, upon small things, we can become truth detectives. A detective, whether it be a real one or such an imaginary creation as the genius of all time Sherlock Holmes, a detective looks for clues. Clues are obvious things generally overlooked. Man is looking for clues to the mystery of life. Man is looking for clues to the facts of things and to the realities, and he is also searching industriously for a clue to a better way of life for himself and his kind. These clues are present, they are not impossible things, they are not miraculous nor does one have to be a clairvoyant to find them. It merely means trained observation of the phenomena plus a natural undistorted ability to contemplate that which is observed.

Thus the person observing more and reflecting more wisely upon what is observed comes into a larger participation in the fact and those who have not attained this will regard his achievements as miraculous and they will be as astonishing to those who know him as Sherlock Holmes magnificent examples of induction and deduction were ever baffling to poor old Dr Watson. This baffledness was simply that Dr Watson had eyes but saw not, of course he was a convenient foil for the infallible Homes, but the principle is that we all overlook an equation and if we are not sure whether we have overlooked something or not, there's always one way to prove it. If what happens appears to be unjust, we have overlooked something. We might as well get to work on it. If the thing that happens appears to be a prime and inevitable cause of misery, we have overlooked something and if the thing we have had occurs to us is totally and completely bad, we have overlooked something, because nature does not function in this way. We have simply failed to see the more subtle clues and if we saw those and reflected upon them we would be able to restore the dignity of nature, the honor of man and the divinity of god. It is merely that we have overlooked a vital factor and this overlooking is what the mystic meant, when he pointed out the tremendous need of the cultivation of the balance of observation, reflection, polarization in consciousness, that everything that we take in must be thoroughly digested. It is the part that we neglect to consider. It is the part that we cast aside through disinterest. It has something to do with our own prejudices which close us to the ability to see certain clues and as we know as great experts have said there is no such a thing as a perfect crime and there is no such a thing as an individual in a situation that is perfectly impossible, there has to be a hole in it somewhere. Now there are crimes that have never been solved, and there are human situations that have not been solved, not because they were not solvable, but because human ingenuity was not able to discover the correct clues. They are there. Man will not at this time discover them all, it is not supposed that he should. But it is that he shall become more observing and more reflecting and by so doing, remove the attitude of accident or unrighteous destiny with which so many persons afflict themselves and others. This idea that there is justice for others and no justice for themselves. This attitude shows we haven't noticed several important clues and if we do not notice them we will never solve the problem.

The next point in Mysticism has been already suggested, but we must carry it just a little further and that is the relationship or polarization between analysis and synthesis. The synthetic does not mean the artificial but for many persons a synthesis arising from intellectual speculation can be artificial. Synthesis like Mysticism itself is an instinct. It is an instinct to put broken things together. It is not merely the instinct to find unity in all things, that we have already discussed under the idea of monoism in one of its essential forms. Synthesis is the tendency that we have to restore that which is broken. The tendency that we have to take the small parts of a beautiful thing and fit them together again to preserve them. It perhaps lies behind the idea of the small child on the picture puzzle, which he tries to reassemble or in order that he may discover the true picture. In life we have a handful of pieces, like a picture puzzle, and we are all children and we're trying to put the picture puzzle together, and our real motive may be only to see what it looks like when we get through, but actually this is not far from the circumstance which concerns us, for the picture cannot be complete while a single part is missing, and the picture that we must have of the purpose of life and the significance of the universe and our own participation in things cannot be perfect while pieces are missing. These pieces generally represent undeveloped faculties in our own consciousness, or neglected clues, or overlooked truths, or discarded facts which we have relinquished through prejudice, but whatever be the cause the picture will never be fully revealed until we put all the parts together correctly. Life is largely concerned therefore with the effort to put the parts together and we observe small children confronted psychologically with testings of this kind and we observe that after a little while some of them become tired and they simply take their hand and they throw upon all the parts they have already put together, they just want no more of it. Other children painstakingly put the pieces together wrong, completely ignoring the fact that there is not the faintest resemblance of the fitting together as they should. You would think the child could see, that these involved parts simply could not match up, yet the child is blissfully unaware of it and may even go so far as to put the whole thing together wrong and then point it out victoriously, he is one. Whether the child really believes this is hard to say but certainly adults do it every minute with the problem of life. They will carefully put a picture together as wrongly as possible and then sit down and break their own hearts weeping over the fact the picture isn't pretty. Chaos is never beautiful. Things done wrongly and assembled badly never give us the satisfaction that comes with things properly and naturally ordered. So in life we have many problems that confront us. The problem of synthesizing or bringing together the elements of a private life, a public life, a religious responsibility, a political allegiance, the duties we owe to ourselves, our family, our children, our nation, all of these things are parts that have to be put together. Also in more detail our attitudes, the affections with which we hold some, the dislikes which we turn towards others, the attachments which we form, the detachments which we overstress, the responsibilities we owe to one and no responsibilities to another as close or even closer. All of these inconsistencies must be solved.

Mysticism realizes that the true vision of the universe cannot arise from inconsistency. An inconsistency is just a picture puzzle the parts of which are not put together properly. When the parts are joined in their natural and reasonable order the full picture is always revealed and in the case of the universe the picture is always good, the picture is always beautiful, the picture is always true. It is our own impatience which prevents us from putting it together, or our own disbelief in the picture itself. We can look at the parts and we can say there is no picture, but then we have to admit, that we have broken a basic rule of life, we have not really tried to find out if there was a picture or not, for as surely as we intelligently try the picture will appear. It is only when we refuse to begin, refuse to accept the fact that the parts will go together, that we can deny it.

This type of attitude is blindness, blindness to value and for this there is no reward in nature. Mysticism then also is this problem of synthesis, this constant repairing of broken things, the instinctive desire of the individual to put things in order, rather than to contribute to their disorder. The moment such an attitude arises in him, he will not gossip, because gossip separates and takes things apart. He will not exercise jealousy for this is a dividing and destroying emotion. He will not follow lines of thought which are forever placing things in separate categories. He will not allow himself to become so partisan that he will be unable to recognize the common good. By degrees he will find new and better ways to mend broken values, or broken relationships, or broken patterns in life, always realizing that in unity there is strength and that in the mending of broken things the individual reveals a certain sensitivity, a certain religious spiritual value, for he is never more the servant of truth, he is never more worshiping god, than when he is trying to mend or put together the broken things of life. In this there is a certain wonderful sympathy, wonderful understanding and a wonderful peace and satisfaction, that comes from the realization that we have taken things and made them whole and have given a certain miraculous unity to the discords and fragments which have made up life. We become truly great magicians and wonder workers when we perform the miracle of restoring that which is broken and bringing it back into harmonious accord with the parts of itself. Thus we also constantly reveal the original shape and when we put things together their archetypes or their divine plans and designs become known and knowable to us.

Now there's one more point that i want to make in connection with this subject this evening and that is the relationship of Mysticism to authority. We have frequently mentioned that the mystic accepts the authority of the eternal internal. That Mysticism is actually the recognition of the absolute authority of the divine will in the affairs of men. Mysticism however in this sense of authority does take a certain attitude of the divine autocracy of things. The mystic realizes that while the universe is as near absolute justice, as it is ever possible for man to conceive, that the entire universe is ruled over by unalterable and eternal principles and laws. The authority of these cannot be questioned, nor can the laws themselves be broken without a consequence consistent with the mistake, or the evil, or the weakness involved. Therefore a man lives in a universe in which he must accept the authority of the right, the authority of good over all other conditions, the authority of truth over error, the authority of spirit over matter, the authority of life over death, the authority of eternity over time. These authorities are inevitable and the mystic seeks to live in the kind of world in which there is no conflict between his personal desires, his personal attitudes and this inevitable authority.

Therefore the very simple concept “not my will but thine be done” in which the individual accepts absolutely the inevitability of the divine will but this does not mean that he becomes ignorant, becomes fanatical, ceases to seek for himself or ceases to learn. What he is learning for however is different. Instead of man learning in order that he may live his own life, he uses learning now as the inspirational key, by which he can become able to live the divine life. Learning then is the revelation of the divine purpose to man through arts and sciences, and these arts and sciences only fulfill themselves to the degree, that they contribute to the final revelation of the truth and inevitability of the divine will. In Mysticism man is seeking ever for a more perfect obedience, for a more complete adjustment, realizing that this adjustment means the exhaustion of knowledge, not the evasion of it, that the individual through various forms of knowledge ascends gradually to such knowledge as may be useful in achieving identity with reality. Thus through all arts and sciences man gains certain apprenticeship and by so becoming an apprentice, he becomes aware for every art and science has its laws, its rules and its principles and only by obedience to these can man advance the purposes of these sciences and arts. In engineering the problem of stress is a good example. Man must obey the laws of stress, he must also compensate for stress mathematically, he must know exactly what he is doing or under some circumstance the bridgey fashions will collapse. Therefore building a bridge is a problem in obedience to universal law and the individual who says “i care nothing for law, i will build it my way” will have a bridge that collapses. It is knowledge becoming more and more completely enlightened through learning and more and more completely dedicated to the fulfillment of the essential laws, by which all things exist in nature.

Mysticism simply wishes to take the principle of knowledge and illuminate, which is to dedicate this knowledge and its overtones, and its implications, proving that all knowledge brings men back to god, that all wisdom and experience lead the individual to the interior realization of the presence and the immediate fact of the divine within. These points enable us to take the mystical principles and apply them variously, according to our own lives and our own conditions. Also pointing out that the beginning of Mysticism is in the understanding of the present state of things, the search for the valuable clue, the ability to take the immediate crisis and dissolve it, bringing it into harmony with universal order and universal purpose and by achieving a victory of the interior over external things, and the restoration of our natural hope faith and charity. In these pursuits and in these activities we achieve the natural ends and the practical immediate concerns of the classical concept of Mysticism.