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	<TITLE>THE
APPROACH TO MYSTICISM</TITLE>
	
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<font size="4">THE
APPROACH TO MYSTICISM</font></B></p>
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<b><font size="4">The
Approach to Mysticism</font></b></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>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></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>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 <I>the
</I>revealer of Nature's secrecies.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>But what is not recognised in this view of things is
that there are secrecies and secrecies. The material secrecies of
Nature are of one category, the mystic secrecies are of another. The
two 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. </FONT>
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<span style="font-size:10pt;">Page – 3</span><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>A scientist once thought that he had clinched the issue
and cut the Gordian knot when he declared triumphantly with reference
to spirit s<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&eacute;</FONT>ances: &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></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>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, √<FONT FACE="OpenSymbol">√</FONT> 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></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Furthermore, being so, the mystic domain is of<I>
</I>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 not in vain and merely as
a poetic metaphor that the ancient seers have said</FONT><BR>
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<span style="font-size:10pt;">Page - 4</span><BR>

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<FONT SIZE=3><I>K<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">ş</FONT>urasya dh<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">ÄrÄ
niśitÄ duratyayÄ&sup1;</FONT></I></FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3 FACE="Luxi Serif"><I>nÄyamÄtmÄ balahinena
labhyah&sup2;</I></FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3><I>or</I></FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>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></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>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>M<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">Ära,</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman Baltic, serif">
</FONT></I>say clearly and unfalteringly to the dark light of <I>Lucifer
– 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><font size="2"><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2><FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&sup1;</FONT>&quot;Sharp as a
razor's edge, difficult of going, hard to traverse is that path!&quot;</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=2><FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&sup2;</FONT>&quot;This spirit is a thing no 
weakling can gain.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </FONT>
<FONT SIZE=3>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </FONT></P>
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<span style="font-size:10pt;">Page - 5</span><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The mystic truth has to be approached through the heart.
&quot;In the heart is established the Truth,&quot; says the
Upanishad: 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 Yajnavalkya
had to pull her up and give the warning that she risked losing her
head if she persisted in her questioning endlessly.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>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></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>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></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>For it must be understood that the heart, the mystic
heart, is not the external thing which is the seat of emotion or
passion; it is the secret heart that is behind, the inner heart -
<I>antarhrdaya<FONT FACE="Times New Roman Baltic, serif"> </FONT></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><BR>

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<span style="font-size:10pt;">Page - 6</span><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>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></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>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></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>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></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>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></P>
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<span style="font-size:10pt;">Page - 7</span></P>
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<a href="-00_Ccontent"><img src="/Nolini/Volume-2/_Gif_Image/home03a.gif" width="36" height="46" border="0"></a></P>
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