—Ernest Holmes

A mystic is not a mysterious person but is one who has a deep, inner sense of Life and his unity with the Whole. There is nothing mysterious in the Truth, so far as It is understood, but all things seem mysterious until we understand them.

A mystic is one who intuitively perceives Truth and, without mental process, arrives at Spiritual Realization. It is from the teachings of the great mystics that the best in the philosophy of the world has come. Who was there who could have taught such men as these? By what process of men­tality did they arrive at their profound conclusions? We are compelled to recognize that Spirit alone was their Teacher; they were indeed taught of God. Our great religions have been given by a few who climbed the heights of spiritual vision and caught a fleeting glimpse of Ultimate Reality. No living soul could have taught them what they knew.

The great poets have been true mystics who, through their poems, have revealed the Presence of God. Men like Robert Browning, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Homer, Walt Whitman, Edward Rowland Sill, and others of like nature, have given us poetry which is immortal, because they had a spiritual sense of life.

Great spiritual philosophers are mystics. The old prophets were mystics—David, Solomon, Jesus, Plotinus, and a score of others, all had the same experience—the sense of a Living Presence. The greatest music ever composed was written by the hand of a mystic, and the highest and best art has come from men of spiritual perception.

Man has compelled nature to do his bidding. He has harnessed elec­tricity, caught the wind, trapped steam, and made them do his will. He has invented machines to do the work of thousands. He has belted the globe with his traffic, and built up a wonderful civilization; but in few cases has he conquered his own soul. The mystic has revealed things that do not pass as ships in the night. He has revealed Eternal Verities and has plainly taught us that there is a Living Presence indwelling ALL. This constitutes the greatest intellectual and spiritual heritage of the ages. The balance of our knowledge of God must come as a direct impartation from Him. We must learn it for ourselves.

The mystic does not read human thought, but rather he senses the atmosphere of God. The mystics of every age have seen, sensed, and taught THE SAME TRUTH! The mystic experiences of the ages have revealed ONE AND THE SAME TRUTH! Mystics have all sensed one identical Reality, and their tes­timony is in no way confusing, because the Spirit within them has borne witness to the same Truth.

The mystics have been perfectly normal people. They did not think of themselves as mystics, that was their language. It was natural to them—perfectly normal. They have been people like Jacob Boehme, a cobbler, pegging away at his shoes, who, looking up, saw in the gera­nium plant the reflection of the Cosmos—the very soul of God; like Jesus looking into the heart of nature; like Moses reading God’s Law from a burning bush.

The teaching of the mystics has been that there should be conscious courting of the Divine Presence. There should be a conscious receptivity to It, but a balanced one. As one of the

Apostles said, in substance, that he would rather speak ten words with his understanding than ten thousand with confusion. “God is not the author of confusion but of peace.” The great mystics have been intensely and pre-eminently sane people, sound people.

The philosophy of Jesus will remain sound when the belief in a material universe shall have been rolled up like a scroll and numbered with the things once thought to be real. So will be the philosophy of Buddha, Plato, Socrates, Emerson and Walt Whitman, and the philos­ophy we are writing about today. It is through the teachings of the illu­mined that the Spiritual Universe reveals Itself, imparting to us what we know about God. What we directly experience ourselves, and what we believe others have expe­rienced, is all we can know about God.

Jesus taught a Power transcen­dent, triumphant, absolute, positive, against which lesser laws meant nothing. By Its very Presence It heals. The mystics did not contend or argue with people. There was noth­ing to argue about. THEY SAW and KNEW. They are the great revealers to man of the nature of the Universe, and the relationship of man to God. •

Adapted from The Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes, published by Tarcher Publishing.

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