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Author Topic:   Chapter 8: Mystical Mysteries That Change Your Life
starr33
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posted March 16, 2009 12:11 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for starr33     Edit/Delete Message
Mystic Path to Cosmic Power: Chapter 8
By Vernon Howard

Mystical Mysteries That Change Your Life


Author and mystic, P.D. Ouspensky, wrote an interesting novel called the Strange Life of Ivan Osokin. Ivan, a young man who finds life intolerable, visits a wise magician to complain, “If only I could go back through the years and start again. If only I could do things differently.” The magician assures him that it would not make the slightest difference-he would repeat the very same mistakes. In disbelief, Ivan asks to be sent back for a test. Agreeing, the magician sends I van back twelve years.

Ivan goes through the very same dismal experiences. Everything tragic that happened before happens again. He is amazed to find that, in spite of all his good intentions, he has no power to alter the course of his life. Ivan returns to the magician in complete bewilderment to ask what it is all about. The magician explains: For events to be different, Ivan himself must be different. His very inward nature must be transformed, made new. A new nature, which calls for persistent self-work, will set new causes into motion for him. Then, everything will be different.

The Mystic Path leads to total transformation of our reactions toward life. How amazing it really is. Everything is seen in a different light. What we previously thought vital becomes trivial; what we used to ignore, we now treasure. We see that riotous social conditions need not mean disturbance within us. We clearly realize that freedom’s inner kingdom cannot be touched by exterior attacks.

We delightedly perceive that we can truly choose to change from victim to victor. We can stop running so frantically through our day, for we understand that we really did not want to race so breathlessly; we merely did not know what else to do. But now we know. We have caught that first magnificent glimpse of a higher world.

We also sense the secret of continued progress: We need only refuse to accept our present vision of this new World as the limit of the World.


A Life-Changing Technique


In our everyday affairs we clearly see the need for placing things in their right order. We know the foundation of a home must come before the roof; we realize we must trim the vegetables before cooking them. The very same principle of the-right-order-of-things must prevail in our psychic life if we are to avoid confusion and achieve success.

This single idea, faithfully understood and applied, could mark the turning point of your life.
A man wants to be happy. Fine. He can be happy. But, if he places happiness as his first order of business, he will not find it. He will find temporary thrills or distractions, not abiding contentment. He must proceed in the right order. Happiness follows a sincere effort at self-discovery. We cannot possibly be happy, if we are strangers to ourselves. Self-understanding is the door to quietude.

Let’s see how it goes in other areas:

Change yourself, rather than working to change others.

Place the inner man in control of the outer.

Abandon the false before seeking the true.

Be loving and you will be loved.

Attend to the reason you felt hurt, not to those who hurt you.

Set inner integrity before good works.

Place thinking before speaking.

Be a real person, then a social person.

Understand yourself, then try to know others.

Set self-awareness before self-gratification.

Destroy negative attitudes, not negative conditions.

Place small efforts before great determination.

Maybe you face an unexpected and disturbing crisis. What is the right order to meet this crisis? Do not attack it directly. That only makes things worse. Rather, immediately connect it with everything you know about the Mystic Path. Suppose you feel that your life is shallow, spinning in pointless circles. What does the Mystic Path say? Well, it says you feel this way only as yet because you have not returned to your original nature. Also, it tells you to seek more self-knowledge. It gently points out that such despair is totally unnecessary. And so on. All this leads to the answer-but it will be entirely different from what you now imagine!

Remember your purpose in working with the principles of the Mystic Path. You want a change of being. Do not practice merely to have something to do. Your goal is a new self.

“Please discuss the right order of things in connection with our physical appetites. We overeat; we’re obsessed with sex.”

Physical appetites in themselves are normal. You are enslaved when you place your gratification of them before your understanding of them. We are slaves to whatever we don’t understand. Food and sex are powerful stimulants. Stimulation is a craving of the false self. People fear that by losing these cravings they will be left with nothing to live for. In truth, they will have something for which to live for the first time.


The supreme right order was clearly presented hundreds of years ago: Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven and all else will be added to you.

How To Be Loving


We live in a universe governed by spiritual and psychological principles. We have nothing to do but understand and ally ourselves with them. This was the entire foundation of the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, a Dutch mystic.

We start by realizing that our deeper self already knows and understands. Like a powerful underground spring seeking to burst above ground, so do life-principles seek to break through our hardened attitudes. As we permit the break-through, things that have puzzled us for years clear up. We see why everything happened to us the way it did.

Take the principles governing love between man and woman. The ability to give love and to receive it are equal. A man can offer a woman genuine love but, unless she is on the same level of love, she can neither receive nor reciprocate. We cannot receive anything above our own level any more than we can stand on the ground and reach a peach at tree top.

There is no point whatever for an unloving man searching around for a woman to love him. He will meet endless frustration. In the first place, he would not recognize a genuinely loving woman if he met one. Secondly, a loving woman would wisely see that she and the man had noting in common. A love relationship between two people of widely separated psychic levels is impossible. There is no attraction between them. Like attracts like. Love can only be attracted by and returned by love.

Another principle to bear in mind is that the false self has no real existence. But because we wrongly assume that we are this artificial self, we confusedly act from it. It is as if a man put on a gorilla suit and, unthinkingly, assumed that he really was the gorilla. By thinking and acting from that false premise, he behaves awkwardly wherever he goes. Consciousness of his true identity makes the gorilla-in-man fall away, permitting him to behave skillfully. When the Mystic Path asks us to give up our false sense of self, it asks only that we give up our awkwardness.


Living in harmony with universal principles can be compared with playing the piano. We know when we are following the music and we know when we strike a wrong note. We can hear the difference immediately. Likewise, when feeling discord in our lives, we know we have failed to play the cosmic composition correctly. But the disharmony need to continue. We were not made for failure. We can look again and practice some more. We can learn to play it rightly.

“You once said that mysticism is a system for mental health. I imagine a grasp of its principles helps us to think clearly.”

We learn to see things as they really are, not as we imagine they are. For example, we must stop associating change with loss. Notice how you fear that change will take things away from you? Psychologically, change is never a loss; it is change only. Watch how your world brightens as you let this idea enter your daily events.

Your Four Golden Keys


Yes, there will be times when we get weary. Our studies, books, and seekings may seem futile. Expect it to happen; it happens to everyone on the Path. For one thing, we are governed by the principle of alternating effort-and –relaxation. A change of pace is necessary for refreshment. When tiredness or discouragement sets in, don’t be upset. Quietly set the books aside and have some tea and cake. Have no fear in doing this. If the intention is right, we are naturally drawn back again to our studies, revived, and ready for the next upward step.

All we need is a decision to seek the light. When that is done, all else is done for us.
A sing of deepening insight: When you see how one psychological principle connects with another. You might for example, see how :Resist not evil” connects with the law of not worshiping false gods. How? When we resist something, perhaps an unkind remark, the very resistance implies a belief that that remark can harm us. We are, therefore, worshiping a false and powerless god-the unkind remark. Non-resistance calls the bluff and destroys the falsity.

The first step through harmonizing with universal law is to hear of them. Let me present four simple and basic steps which readers found helpful in my previous book, Psycho-Pictography. Called “Your Four Golden Keys to New Freedom and Happiness,” they are:

1. A sincere desire for inner change: Self-transformation begins from the moment we earnestly wish to be a different kind of person.

2. Contact with workable principles: We must connect ourselves fwith a source of genuine help, perhaps a book, or an enlightened teacher, or with our own inner light.

3. Self-honesty: With endurance, happiness comes gradually but definitely, like a blinking light that finally glows permanently.

4. Persistence:With endurance, happiness comes gradually but definatley, like a blinking light that finally glows permanently.

As we read and work with mystic principles found in a book, we experience a mysterious change within. What we formerly took as attractive words and phrases now turns into a very definite feeling. This means that we have seen beyond the words; the intuitive self has broken through to transform an intellectual idea into a living experience.

It is as though you attend a lecture by a famous astronomer who tells you about the wonders of the moon. He explains its size, distance from the earth, and so on. You absorb the facts, but they do not excite you emotionally. Then, as the lecture ends, you step outside to look directly at the brilliantly yellow moon. What a difference between the words and the experience!


The Mystery Of Tao


Out of the East drifts that mystical fascination known as Tao. At first glance, it appears too airy a philosophy for the modern man bustling around his cash registers and space rockets. But wait a minute. Let’s look. We don’t want to miss anything.

Taoism, which means The Way, was founded by the ancient mystic, Lao-tse. Years later, his teachings were explained and expanded by his chief follower, Chuang-tse.

What is it? What does it have to say to busy people? No system is more to the point than Tao: Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; don’t wish things were different. That only creates sorrow. Go along. Let Reality be Reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. Be like a pebble carried effortlessly along the stream of life.

Why? Why, that is the way to harmony. It is the little ego-self that vainly thinks it controls nature. It doesn’t. It doesn’t need to. But every time it tries, it falls and cries. How strange that we should even ask why we should not interfere with the course of events. Why, that is the only road to what we really want-aquiet garden in the midst of a rowdy world.

Tao points out, “The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.”
Riches? Fame? Power? How empty. With Tao, you have genuine wealth that never fades away. And you don’t need to shout it around. If you have a pocketful of gold, it is just as valuable whether others know about it or not.

“But,” the bustling man protests, “We can’t just drift. We must take the initiative; we must do something.”

I can almost hear Lao-tse’s gentle reply, “Yes, I am afraid that’s your whole problem. You are always doing something. In your anxiety to gain a goal, or relieve a pressure, you do something impulsive. So you create a second problem.
Slow down. Don’t fear to be without an immediate solution. Let your receptive mind supply the answer. It is just as useless and unnatural to work at living as it is to force a ball to roll downhill.

Too different from the usual? Let’s see. Don’t resist life, says Lao-tse. So does Christ. See the folly of egotistical strivings, urges Tao. So does the New Testament, and William James, and Arthur Schopenhauer, and Erick Fromm, and Albert Schweitzer, and Henry David Thoreau-plus anyone else who has at least glimpsed the lofty life.

Peace and contentment, in spite of a noisy world. That is the simple message of Tao. Nothing airy about that.

Try it. Make the following experiment for the next thirty minutes: Let life happen. Let anything happen the way it wants, with no resistance and no objection. Go about as if you need not think about anything. Your first surprise will be that your usual duties go on very nicely as before. Secondly, you will catch a grand glimpse of the effortlessly flowing of Tao. You do not carry; you are carried.

Where To Find Lasting Loyalty


“You frequently say that we can live in this rough world without getting roughed up. I really don’t see how this can be so.”

An illustration will help. If you ride an airplane along rough ground, you get bumped. If you fly above the bumps, they are still there for other people, but they cannot jolt you. You are carried aloft by a new sense of self.

“But what if I get jolted in the meantime?”

Be encouraged by this principle: Any shock or tragedy, when met with self-awareness, can never again shock with the same intensity and will eventually disappear altogether.”

“What is an example of useful shock or tragedy?”

Loss. Whenever a man loses something of value he suffers a degree of shock. He should then work with and rely upon the mystical principles he has absorbed. He can then come out upon a higher level then before. Everything depends upon the right use of shock. Rightly used, we loosen the chains; wrongly used, they grow tighter. Suppose you lose someone important to your happiness. You gain strength by seeing that you were depending upon external values which have no permanency. Maybe you lose popularity or power. Become aware that you were using them for a needless sense of identity. Correctly used, shock diminishes future shock.

Notice that our human level of living goes from one betrayal to another. Look at it. You cling to youth and are betrayed by advancing years. Your wealth and position threaten to leave you at any moment. Your ambitions and your careers show treachery by keeping you anxious over them. Your relatives and friends betray you by changing, or disappearing, or quarreling.

It is not negative to face all of this. It is tremendously positive. It means that the yearning you have for something far better can now be heeded. Having been betrayed long enough on the human level, you are ready for that lofty level where loyalty only exists.

There is a technique for winning all this. Simply stated, the technique is this: We must cease to know so many wrong things. We must willingly let go of the vanity and pride that pretends it has already won. That exit of the false makes room for the true. A Sufi mystic sums up:

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment;
Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.

-Jalal-uddin Rum

I want to tell you how enormously important all these principles are to you. I am not questioning your intelligence when I say that you may not as yet see how overwhelmingly vital they are to your life. Quietly accept the fact that you nay not, as yet, have grasped the magnificence of it all-though it is quite possible that you have your first grand glimpse.

It is a thousand times more valuable than anything else you now posses. Work to see this. So much-so very much more that you can imagine-depends upon it. These ideas are not my personal opinions. They are far beyond that. They are the very truths that set you free.

Be Of Good Cheer


Many mysteries are solved when we see that life consists of various levels of understanding. Everyone occupies a different level. For one thing, we see that we fail at many things because we try to claim the success of the higher level while still occupying a lower one. That is like trying to claim the contents of an apartment on the sixth story while actually living on the third story. To claim the rewards of a certain level, we must actually be on that level.

We will also see that on a lofty level of living there is no such thing as competition. On the human level of business, and politics, and male-female relations, competition exists. But higher up, there is no such thing. You and everyone else ha[ve] all and everything needed. Competition and limitation have no meaning. Do any of us compete for the air we breathe? That is how it is up there.

It is urgent for us to see this: Nothing can improve until we see the link between our psychological level and the things that happen to us. If we are secretly blaming people or events for our problems, we miss the mark completely. There is a human cause for everything troublesome, and that cause is the very person who experiences the effect!

Frustration occurs when we try to do without first understanding. We cannot possibly act successfully above our own level of insight, but we can work to raise the level. Understanding is doing, the kind that returns a profit. Do not race ahead of your understanding; let it be like a torch that goes ahead to light up the Path for you.

Here is a mystery to unravel: Each new upliftment must be preceded by a plunge into the darkness, like a train going upward through a tunnel. Why must darkness and uncertainty precede our exit into the sunlight of a higher level? This darkness indicates a willingness to shed vain illusions that we already know this or that. It is a state of honest receptivity to wisdom greater than our own. The time-honored mystical classic, Theologia Germanica, explains, “And so his hard-won not-knowing becomes his highest knowledge.”

I we insist that we already know what it is like beyond the tunnel, we deceive ourselves. What we imagine will be but a counterfeit manufactured by our conditioned desires.

It we dare the darkness, we find the light. When human reasoning completely fails to entice answers, they come. We cannot force ourselves to think clearly, but we can become aware that we are not in clarity. Consciousness of our confusion then leads to a new kind of clearness in which there is no more doubt. It should not bother us in the slightest to suspect that there might be something wrong with the way we think. To the contrary, it should excite us, for we are on the doorstep to fantastic discoveries.

Be of good cheer. You have often asked yourself whether there is something above and beyond your present routine life. There is. Just as the wind is not meant for enclosure in a room, neither are you meant for confinement within your thoughts and feelings. True living is just as free as the wind.


Mystical Teachings About The Future

What proceeds from all this? Everything for which you have been searching. I am not speaking merely of spiritual benefits, but of all those down-to-earth reliefs everyone wants.
What do you want for your physical health? Relaxation from muscular tension? No more headaches? Abundance of natural energy? No more exhaustion? Restful Sleep? You can have them. Take it as true that you will feel better and stronger. Health-power increases as you step upward to new levels.

There is a story about the small boy attending a party next-door to his own house. Seeing a couple of the other children depart, he thought it was also time for him to leave. The hostess asked, “What’s your hurry?” He thought it over for a moment, then yelled over to his mother, “Mom, what’s my hurry?”

That story illustrates another reward-freedom from a nagging sense of anxious haste. Our dawning awareness leads us to ask, “What’s my hurry?” Listening carefully, the answer comes, “None at all.”

And we are unhappy, uneasy, strained, oppressed, and fearful we shall be shallow. For over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living which we know we are passing by. Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power. It only we could slip over into that Center?
-Thomas R. Kelly, A Testament of Devotion


We can slip over into that Center. Any time we really choose.

Another benefit connects with the future. The question comes, “Does the Mystic Path enable us to foresee our future, or is prophecy a fake?”

There is authentic prophecy by which you can foretell your inner future. By working at self-transformation, you can accurately predict easy living. As for outer events, you need pay no attention to them beyond your normally intelligent plans. When living from your True Self, you have no concern with future finances or friendships. You truly take no thought for tomorrow. The new Cause within you makes everything right without unnatural effort on your part.

“What does the Mystic Path tell us about heaven?”

Heaven is not a place; it is a lofty level of psychic development. Love is heaven. So is peace, understanding, compassion, tenderness. Hell is also a psychic condition; one of ignorance and unawareness. Hatred is hell. So is anger, arrogance, jealousy, competitiveness, and especially fear. Heaven or hell are right now-as you well know without me even telling you. You get your first foot into heaven by courageously facing the fact that you presently have none if its peace.

“I have at least a glimpse of my own pretenses. How can I stop?”

A small child imitates a famous soldier or great Indian chief, but at maturity he finds no pleasure in artificial roles. He yearns for his real self. As he heads toward it, he stops playing great-man, or famous-man, or dynamic-man. Then, he loses the torment in playing these shallow roles. Try to see that you are acting; then , the costume falls away of itself.


How To Work For Yourself Profitably

People are puzzled over the part they should play in transforming their lives. They say, “Where must I make a personal effort and where should I be still and receptive to the truth?”

Never forget, receptivity is your personal effort. It is the whole works. You must not try to do anything else, for, in fact, you can’t do anything else. If we, standing in darkness, do our part by opening the door, the light rushes out to meet us.


Receptivity has many interesting areas. For example, our protests and objections to a truthful statement make a fine source for self-study. Notice how quick we are to object, and deny, and argue, whenever a new idea presents itself. We may think that we argue because we already know the truth, when, in fact, honest reflection reveals the opposite: we protest because our artificialities are threatened with exposure. This could lead to the honest insight, “Well, I’m not as sure as I thought. Here is an opportunity to crack through my false ideas.”

As strange as it seems, receptivity means that you don’t take anybody’s word for anything. This is mental laziness, and what a painful price is paid. But refusing to be gullible does not mean that we become cynical. It means we must test everything for ourselves.

You often read a story or see a film going like this: The hero sets out to accomplish some noble task, such as carrying life-saving medicine to a remote jungle tribe. Every step calls for super-heroism: his mission is blocked by jealous officials, or he is threatened by jungle storms, or he is foolishly attacked by the very natives he hopes to help. But he persists and wins. We admire him.

Our admiration is our awakened sense of nobility. We know that the true hero must often stand alone, must persist in spite of danger from foolish men, that he must prefer integrity to popularity, goodness to applause.

The Mystic Path calls for the bravest and best within us. Uprightness. Integrity. Honesty. Fearlessness. That is all. There is nothing complex about success.

Make up your mind to go all the way. Do not hesitate. Do not compromise. Place the Truth above all else. Do not be afraid. The most helpful obstacles are the insurmountable ones.

And don’t apologize. You need apologize for nothing. You are a free and dignified human being. Whether aware of it or not, you are.

I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood;
I see that the elementary laws never apologize….

- Walt Witman

It is all very simple. If you will really fight for yourself, you will win.


Helpful ideas from this chapter

1. Inward transformation magically changes everything else.

2. Place first things first.

3. Work to understand spiritual and psychological principles, for example, love attracts love.

4. Remember the Four Golden Keys supplied in this chapter.

5. Let life happen. Flow with it. Live effortlessly.

6. Try to see the connection between your level of understanding and the things that happen to you.

7. Be of good cheer!

8. The future is all good to the person who conscientiously works upon his inner life.

9. Open the door of your mind to positive ideas and impressions.

10. Walk along the Mystic Path accompanied by the bravest and best within you.

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"...we see that we fail at many things because we try to claim the success of the higher level while still occupying a lower one."

~Vernon Howard

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Randall
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