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		<b><font face="Times New Roman"><i>The Approach to Mysticism</i> </font>
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		<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="center">&nbsp;</p>

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<font face="Times New Roman">MYSTICISM is not only a science but also, and in a greater
degree, an art. To approach it merely as a science, as the
modern mind attempts to do, is to move towards futility, if
not to land in positive disaster. Sufficient stress is not laid on
this aspect of the matter, although the very crux of the situation lies here. The mystic domain has to be apprehended not
merely by the true mind and understanding but by the right
temperament and character. Mysticism is not merely an
object of knowledge, a problem for inquiry and solution, it is
an end, an ideal that has to be achieved, a life that has to be
lived. The mystics themselves have declared long ago with no
uncertain or faltering voice: this cannot be attained by intelligence or much learning, it can be seized only by a purified
and clear temperament.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The warning seems to have fallen, in the modern age, on
unheeding ears. For the modern mind, being pre-eminently
and uncompromisingly scientific, can entertain no doubt as
to the perfect competency of science and the scientific method
to seize and unveil any secret of Nature. If, it is argued,
mysticism <i>is</i> a secret, if there is at all a truth and reality
in it, then it is and must be amenable to the rules and
regulations of science; for science is the revealer of Nature's
secrecies.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But what is not recognised 
in this view of things is that there are secrecies and secrecies. The material 
secrecies o f Nature are of one category, the mystic secrecies are of another. 
The o are not only disparate but incommensurable. Any man with a mind and understanding of average culture can see and handle the 'scientific' forces, but not the mystic forces. A</font>

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Page 287<hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">scientist once thought that he had clinched the issue and cut
the Gordian knot when he declared triumphantly with reference to spirit seances: 
&quot;Very significant is the fact that spirits appear only in closed chambers, in 
half obscurity, to somnolent minds; they are nowhere in the open air, in broad 
daylight to the wide awake and vigilant intellect!&quot; Well, if the fact is as it 
is stated, what does it prove ? Night alone reveals the stars, during the day 
they vanish, but that is no proof that stars are not existent. Rather the true 
scientific spirit should seek to know why (or how) it is so, if it is so, and 
such a fact would exactly serve as a pointer, a significant starting ground. The attitude of the jesting Pilate is not helpful
even to scientific inquiry. This matter of the Spirits we have
taken only as an illustration and it must not be understood
that this is a domain of high mysticism; rather the contrary.
The spiritualists approach to Mysticism is not the right one
and is fraught with not only errors but dangers. For the spiritualists approach their subject with the entire scientific apparatus—the only difference being that the scientist does not
believe while the spiritualist believes.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Mystic realities cannot be reached by the 
scientific consciousness, because they are far more subtle than the subtlest
object that science can contemplate. The neutrons and positrons are for science today the finest and profoundest object-forces; they belong, it is said, almost to a borderland where
physics ends. Nor for that reason is a mystic reality something
like a mathematical abstraction, &#8730;-n for example. The mystic
reality is subtler than the subtlest of physical things and yet,
paradoxical to say, more concrete than the most concrete
thing that the senses apprehend.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Furthermore, being so, the mystic domain is of infinitely
greater potency than the domain of intra-atomic forces. If one
comes, all on a sudden, into contact with a force here without
the necessary preparation to hold and handle it, he may get
seriously bruised, morally and physically. The adventure into
the mystic domain has its own toll of casualties—one can lose the mind, one can 
lose one's body even and it is a very common experience among those who have tried the path. It is<br>
not in vain and merely as a poetic metaphor that the ancient
seers have said</font>
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Page 288<hr>

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<i>
<font face="Arial">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</font><font face="Times New Roman"> Ksurasya dhara nisita duratyqya<sup>1</sup></font></i><p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<i><font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</font></i><font face="Times New Roman"><i>&nbsp;nayamatma balahinena labhyah<sup>2</sup></i><sup>
</sup> </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The mystic forces are not only of immense potency but of a
definite moral disposition and character, that is to say, they
are of immense potency either for good or for evil. They are
not mechanical and <i>amoral</i> forces like those that physical
sciences deal with; they are forces of consciousness and
they are conscious forces, they act with an aim and a purpose.
The mystic forces are forces either of light or of darkness,
either Divine or Titanic. And it is most often the powers
of darkness that the naturally ignorant consciousness of man
contacts when it seeks to cross the borderline without training or guidance, by the sheer arrogant self-sufficiency of mental
scientific reason.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ignorance, certainly, is not man's ideal condition—it leads
to death and dissolution. But knowledge also can be equally
disastrous if it is not of the right kind. The knowledge that is
born of spiritual disobedience, inspired by the Dark ones, leads
to the soul's fall and its calvary through pain and suffering on
earth. The seeker of true enlightenment has got to make a distinction, learn to separate the true and the right from the false
and the wrong, unmask the luring <i>Mara,</i> say clearly and unfalteringly to the dark light of Lucifer—<i>apage Satana,</i> if he is to
come out into the true light and command the right forces. The
search for knowledge alone, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, the path of pure scientific inquiry and inquisitiveness,
in relation to the mystic world, is a dangerous thing. For such
a spirit serves only to encourage and enhance man's arrogance
and in the end not only limits but warps and falsifies the knowledge itself. A knowledge based on and secured exclusively
through the reason and mental light can go only so far as that
faculty can be reasonably stretched and not infinitely—to
stretch it to infinity means to snap it. This is the warning that
Yajnavalkya gave to Gargi when the latter started renewing
her question <i>ad infinitum.</i> Yajnavalkya said, &quot;If you do not
stop, your head will fall off.&quot;</font>

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<font size="2" face="Times New Roman">1 &quot;Sharp as a razor's edge, difficult of going, hard to traverse is that path!&quot;</font><font size="2">
</font>

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<font size="2" face="Times New Roman">2 &quot;This spirit is a thing no weakling can gain.&quot;</font><font size="2">
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Page 289<hr>

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<b>
<font face="Times New Roman">II</font></b>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The mystic truth has to be approached through the heart.
&quot;In the heart is established the Truth,&quot; says the Upanishad:</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">it is there that is seated eternally the soul, the real being, who
appears no bigger than the thumb. Even if the mind is utilised
as an instrument of knowledge, the heart must be there behind
as the guide and inspiration. It is precisely because, as I have
just mentioned, Gargi sought to shoot up—like &quot;vaulting ambition that o'erleaps itself&quot; of which Shakespeare speaks—through
the mind alone to the highest truth that Yajriavalkya had to
pull her up and give the warning that she risked losing her<br>
head if she persisted in her questioning endlessly.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For true knowledge comes of, and means, identity of being.
All other knowledge may be an apprehension of things but not
comprehension. In the former, the knower stands apart from
the object and so can envisage only the outskirts, the contour,
the surface nature; the mind is capable of this alone. But
comprehension means an embracing and penetration which
is possible when the knower identifies himself with the object.
And when we are so identified we not merely know the object,
but becoming it in our consciousness, we love it and live it.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The mystic's knowledge is a part and a formation of his life.
That is why it is a knowledge not abstract and remote but
living and intimate and concrete. It is a knowledge that pulsates
with delight: indeed it is the radiance that is shed by the purest
and intensest joy. For this reason it may be that in approaching
through the heart there is a chance of one's getting arrested
there and not caring for the still higher, the solar lights; but
this need not be so. In the heart there is a golden door leading to the deepest 
delights, but there is also a diamond door opening up into the skies of the brightest luminosities.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For it must be understood that the heart, the mystic heart,
is not the external thing which is the seat of emotion or passion;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">it is the secret heart that is behind, the inner heart—<i>antarhrdaya
</i>of the Upanishad—which is the centre of the individual consciousness, where all the divergent lines of that consciousness
meet and from where they take their rise. That is what the
Upanishad means when it says that the heart has a hundred
channels which feed the human vehicle. That is the source, the</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">fount and origin, the very substance of the true personality.
Mystic knowledge—the true mystic knowledge which saves and
fulfils—begins with the awakening or the entrance into this
real being. This being is pure and luminous and blissful and
sovereignly real, because it is a portion, a spark of the Divine
Consciousness and Nature: a contact and communion with it
brings automatically into play the light and the truth that are
its substance. At the same time it is an uprising flame that reaches out naturally to higher domains of consciousness and
manifests -them through .its translucid dynamism.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The knowledge that is obtained without the heart's instrumentation or co-operation is liable to be what the Gita 
describes as Asuric. First of all, from the point of view of knowledge itself, it would be, as I have already said, egocentric, a
product and agent of one's limited and isolated self, easily
put at the service of desire and passion. This knowledge,
whether rationalistic or occult, is, as it were, hard and dry
in its constitution, and oftener than not, negative and destructive—withering and blasting in its career like the desert
simoom.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; There are modes of knowledge that are occult—and to that
extent mystic—and can be mastered by practices in which the
heart has no share. But they have not the saving grace that
comes by the touch of the Divine. They are not truly mystic—the truly mystic belongs to the ultimate realities, the deepest
and the highest,—they, on the other hand, are transverse and
tangential movements belonging to an intermediate region
where light and obscurity are mixed up and even for the greater
part the light is swallowed up in the obscurity or utilised by it.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The mystic's knowledge and experience is not only true and
real: it is delightful and blissful. It has a supremely healing
virtue. It brings a sovereign freedom and ease and peace to the
mystic himself, but also to those around him, who come in
contact with him. For truth and reality are made up of love
and harmony, because truth is, in its essence, unity.</font>
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