Theosophy Cardiff, Wales, UK:- Mysticism by Annie Besant

THEOSOPHY

CARDIFF

Theosophical Society, Cardiff Lodge,

206 Newport Road,

Cardiff, Wales, UK, CF24 – 1DL

Annie Besant

Mysticism

Annie Besant

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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 Israel did or did not wander through a physical desert seems to him to

be of infinitesimal importance; many nations have wandered through many deserts.

But the spiritual Israel wanders ever through spiritual deserts in its search

for the promised land, and this is ever fresh, ever true, and he reads the story

in the spiritual light and finds in it much that consoles, much that

illuminates. He sees a Moses in every Prophet of humanity, pillars of fire and

of cloud in every guidance of a nation. Nor is the Mystic without justification

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 lake of Gennesaret.

First published 1925

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