MYSTICISM
From the writings of Annie Besant, a pioneer of the
Theosophical Movement
and President of the Adyar based Theosophical Society from
1907 to 1933
Cardiff, Wales, UK, CF24 – 1DL
theosophycardiff@uwclub.net
Annie Besant 1847 - 1933
In the early
centuries of Christianity, as we know from the writings of many of the Fathers,
and more surely by the Occult Records,there existed
in the bosom of the Christian Church the venerable institution of the
Mysteries, in which the purified met superhuman Instructors, and learned from
the lips of the Holy Ones the secrets of the 'Kingdom of Heaven'. After the
Christ had thrown off His physical body, He taught His disciples for many
years, coming to them in His glorified subtle body, until those who knew Him in
the flesh had passed away. So long as the Christian Mysteries endured, Jesus
appeared at them from time to time, and HIs chief
disciples were constantly present at them. So long as this state of things continued,the exoteric and the esoteric teachings of
Christianity ran side by side in perfect accord,and
the mysteries supplied to the high places in the Church men who were true
teachers for the mass of believers, being themselves deeply instructed in the
"hidden things of God", and able to speak with the authority which
comes from direct knowledge They, like their Master, "taught as having
authority and not as the scribes".
But after the
disappearance of the Mysteries, the state of affairs slowly altered for the
worse, and a divergence between the exoteric and esoteric teachings showed
itself ever increasingly until a wide gulf yawned between them, and the mass of
the faithful, standing on the exoteric side, lost sight of the esoteric wisdom.
More and more did the letter take the place of the spirit, the form of the
life, and there began the strife between the Priest and the Mystic that has
ever since been waged in the Christian Church.
The Priest is
ever the guardian of the exoteric, the recipient of the faith once delivered to
the saints, the officiant of the sacraments, the
custodian of the outer order,the transmitter of the
traditions, becoming more authoritative from age to age. His to repeat
accurately the sacred formulæ ; his to watch over a
changeless
orthodoxy; his to be the articulate voice of the Church; his to hand on the
unaltered record. Great and noble is his task, and invaluable his services to
the evolving masses of the populace. It is he who consecrates their birth,
sanctions their marriage,hallows their death; he
consoles them in their sorrows and purifies their joys; he stands by the
bedside of the sick and the dying, and gilds the clouds of mortality with the
sun of an immortal hope. He brings into sordid lives the one gleam of poetry
and of colour that they known; he enlarges their narrow horizon with the vistas
of a radiant future; he gladdens the mother with the vision of the Immortal
Babe; he saves the desperate youth with the tenderness of the celestial Mother;
he raises before the eyes of the sorrowful the crucifix that tells of a sorrow
that embraces and consoles their grief; he breathes into the ear of the dying
the pledge of the Easter resurrection, How could Humanity tread the earlier
stages of its journey without
the
Priesthood that directs, rebukes, and comforts; the universality of the office
tells of the universality of the need.
Far other is
the Mystic, the lonely dweller on the mountain-side, climbing in advance of his
race, without help from the outer world, listening ever for the faint whisper
of the God within. Humblest of men as he faces the depths of Divinity around im and the unsounded abysses of the Divinity within, he
seems
arrogant as
he withstands the edits of external authority, and rebel as he bows not his
neck to the yoke of ecclesiastical order.
With his
visions and his dreams and his ecstasies,with his gropings in the dark and his flashes from a light supernal
that dazzles more than it illuminates, with his sudden irrational
exaltations
and his equally sudden and unreasoning depressions, what has he to oppose to
the clear-cut doctrines and the imperial authority of the exoteric creed? Only
an unalterable conviction which he can neither justify nor explain; a certainty
which leaves him stuttering when he seeks to expound it, but remains unfaltering
in face of all rebuke and al reprobation. What can the Priest do with this
rebel, who places his visions above all scriptures, and asserts an inalienable
liberty in the face of the demand for obedience? He has no use for him, no
place for him; he disturbs with his curb less fantasies the settled order of
the household of faith. Hence a continued struggle, in which the Priest for a
awhile seems to conquer, but form which the Mystic emerges victor in the end.
The combat
seems an unequal one, since the Priest has behind him the strength of a
splendid tradition, of a centuried history, of a
changeless authority, and the Mystic stands alone, unfriended.
But it is not so unequal as it seems; for the Mystic draws his strength from
That which gives birth to all religions, and he
bathes in the
waters that regenerate, in the flood of Eternity. So in the ever-recurring
conflict, the Priest conquers in the world material, and is defeated in the
world spiritual; and the Mystic, rebuked, persecuted, crushed, while dwelling
in the body;, becomes the Saint after the body has dropped from him, and
becomes a voice of the Church that silenced him, a stone in the walls that
imprisoned.
In the Roman Catholic
Church this combat has been waged century after century, with the same result
continually repeated. Teresa, rebuked and humbled by her confessor, arises as
S. Teresa for unborn generations. Many a man and many a
women,
regarded askance, treated with scorn by their contemporaries, become the
cynosures of countless millions of eyes, eyes of the faithful, descendants of
the faithful who decried. And on the whole it is as well that it should be so,
until the stern training of old is re-established; else would every dreamer be
taken as a
Mystic, and every hysteric as a Revealer. Only the true Mystic can walk unblenching through the fire of rebuke, "even in hell
can whisper, 'I have known'". Moreover,r the
Roman Catholic Church alone has preserved a systematic
training
within the 'religious life', a real preparation for the occult life, ever recognised in theory even if challenged and suspected in
practice. Hence has she so many Saints, and such grace and tenderness of
spiritual beauty, that one is fain to pardon her the cruelties of her
Priesthood for the sake of the
rich streams
of spiritual life poured by her Mystics over the arid deserts of the outer
world. And one can understand, while reprobating, the fierceness with which she
guarded the ground that made such growths of saintliness possible, and made her
deem the superstition and bigotry of the masses but a small price to pay for
the keeping sacred from profane touch the inner seeds which flowered out into
the world as the Saints
In
Protestantism there has been no systematic training, and hence no soil in which
the rare flower might readily root itself and grow. Few and far between are the
Mystics in the Protestant community, though Jacob Boehme
rises, splendid, gigantic, as though to show that even the absence of all
training cannot stifle the Divinity of the Spirit which is Man.More
than any other phase of christianity does
Protestantism need the presence of Mystics in its midst, the touch of the
living Spirit to save it from the arid letter. But this is is
a subject that needs separate treatment, which elsewhere I hope to give.
Theosophy is the reassertion of Mysticism within the bosom of very living
religion, the
affirmation of the reality of the mystic state of consciousness and of the
value of its products. In the midst of a scholarly and critical generation, it reproclaims the superiority of the knowledge which is drawn
from the direct experience of the spiritual world, and, facing undaunted the splendour of the accumulated results of research,
historical and scientific,
facing
undaunted the new and menacing Priesthood of Science and of Criticism, it
affirms he greater splendour of the open vision, and
the royalty of the Kingdom into which may pass 'the little child' alone. The
primary experience of Mysticism is direct communion with the unseen, the
recognition of the Gods
without by
the God within, the touching of invisible realities, the passing with opened
eyes into the worlds beyond the veil. It substitutes experience for authority,
knowledge for faith, and it finds its guarantee in the 'common-sense' of all
Mystics, the identity of the experiences of all who traverse the grounds
untrodden by the profane.
The results
of mystic experiences show themselves in a method of interpretation applied to
all doctrines and to all scriptures, a method which justifies itself by the
light it throws on obscurities rather than by reasoned arguments. It is, in all
ages, the method of the Illuminati.
An example
will show the method better than efforts at explanation. Let us take the
doctrine of the Atonement. The Mystic sees in this Christian doctrine one of
the ways in which is told the ancient but ever new story of the unfolding of
the
human Spirit
into self-conscious union with God. He sees the Atonement wrought by the
unfolding of the Christ in man as the reflection in the human consciousness of
the second Aspect in the Divine Consciousness, gradually shining out into
clearness and beauty. As the Christ in man matures so is the atonement wrought,
and it is completed when the Son, rising above separation, knows himself as one
with Humanity and one with God, and in that knowledge becomes a veritable Saviour, a true Mediator between God and Man, uniting both
in His own person,and thus making them one. The
Mystic cares not to argue about the dead-letter meaning of any dogma; he sees
the heart of it by the light of his own experience, and to him its true value
lies in its inner content, not in its outer history.
So also with
Scripture. It may, or may not, have an outer accuracy as history; its value
lies in its exposition of the facts of the spiritual world. Whether a physical
But the
spiritual
in thus
reading the Scriptures; for S.Paul in Galatians iv.,
has thus dealt with the story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael; and
all the early Fathers of the Church sought the inner meanings and care little
for the outer words.
For the
educated Christian of today, who would not cut himself wholly off from the old
moorings, this method of interpretation is vital, and only by the direct
knowledge gained in the mystic state of consciousness can he preserve his
religion amid the changes brought about by modern research. The Higher
Criticism is undermining all his authorities; subtly, but in deadly fashion,
its burrowing's have taken the ground away beneath
their feet; and only a thin crust remains, which at any moment may give way,
and let the whole structure crash down into irretrievable ruin.
The Church can
no longer be built on historical authority; it must build itself on the rock of
experience, if it would survive the tempest which roars around it. Mysticism
can give it the surest certainty in all the world, the certainty of mystic
experience continually renewed. The Christ within is the only guarantee of the
Christ without - but no further guarantee is needed. Because the Christ lives
undeveloped in every human Spirit, the Christ developed is a historical fact;
and those in whom the mystic Christ is developing can look across the gulf of
centuries and recognise the historical Christ; nay,
can transcend the limitations of the physical, and know Him in His living
reality as surely, and more fully, than His disciples knew Him when He
walked by the
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Theosophy and the Number Seven
A selection of articles
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The Spiritual Home of Urban Theosophy
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Quick Explanations with Links to More Detailed Info
What is Theosophy ? Theosophy Defined (More Detail)
Three Fundamental Propositions Key Concepts of Theosophy
Cosmogenesis Anthropogenesis Root Races
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The Seven Principles of Man Karma
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Colonel Henry Steel Olcott William Quan Judge
The Start of the Theosophical
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The Three Objectives of the
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Glossaries of Theosophical Terms
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THE PHYSICAL PLANE THE ASTRAL PLANE
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THE LAW OF SACRIFICE MAN'S
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A Modern Revival of Ancient Wisdom
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The Secret Doctrine – Volume 3
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Esoteric Christianity or the Lesser Mysteries
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