posted February 05, 2009 01:24 AM         

The Mystic Path To Cosmic Power by Vernon Howard (1967)

Your Miraculous Source Of Help

King Canute, the Danish ruler of England, was worshiped and flattered by his subjects. They thought he possessed supernatural powers which could keep them safe and happy. Being a wise monarch, Canute looked for a dramatic way to teach his subjects about the Higher Power.

One day, while visiting the seashore at Southampton, he ordered a char be brought to him. When the puzzled attendants obeyed, the king commanded, “Set the chair in the sand, in the path of the incoming tide.” As they did so, Canute sat down in the chair and asked, “Now, do you think the tide will obey me if I command it to stop? We shall see.”

Canute commanded the tide to halt. It crept closer. He shouted the order once more. The tide advanced to splash around his ankles. The king continued his demands; the sea continued to splash against him with increasing force. Finally, an impudent wave broke over the entire royal party, causing everyone to retreat, dripping wet.

“Now you see,” King Canute merrily called out, “that the highest of human persuasion is as nothing when compared with Natural Laws. Do not seek to control Universal Truth, but ally yourself with it.”

Today, in Southampton, Great Britain, a bronze tablet reads: On this spot, in the year 1032, King Canute rebuked his courtiers.

King Canute may not have realized it, but he dramatized the very message of mysticism: “Don’t worship human beings. All human effort is egotistical and blundering. Don’t hesitate to abandon so-called human power. Honestly, now, what has it done for you? There is a Higher Power. You may not realize it as yet, but there is something far above and beyond the human intellect. Let’s search it out together.”

How To Contact Higher Power

In the deep corners of their minds people secretly ask, “Really, now, is there a Higher Power who can help me? I know that we all profess to believe in something far above our humanhood, but…well, quite frankly, why am I unable to contact this miraculous source of help?”

Yes, there is a Higher Power. Yes, man can make contact, and, if he could only see it, he has never been separated from it. In reality, we can no more be separated from Higher Power than one section of sky can be separated from another. All is One.

At this point, we can say that it makes no difference what term we use when referring to the miraculous source of help. The word is not the thing. We can use the terms God, Higher Power, Supreme Intelligence, Reality, Truth, whatever we like.

“I am utterly confused about reality, or Truth, or whatever term we use. Can you help us identify it?”

Do not try to identify Truth. If you do, your identifications will be based on your human desires and imaginations. This builds as unreal concept. And that, in turn, gets you into an endless mess of illusions and frustrations. Forget trying to identify Truth. Instead, work on yourself as outlined in these classes. Then, eventually, you will see that Truth is something entirely beyond mental concepts. It is not something you think about, as you might think about a beautiful meadow, but an actual experience; you are within that meadow.

Here is where man makes his mistake when seeking contact with Higher Power: He seeks it through his limited mental faculties. It cannot be done. The conditioned human mind can think about, memorize, speculate, even believe, but it cannot penetrate spiritual skies. Something far greater than mere thought is needed in order to know.

How can we know? Through awareness, which is quite a different thing than conditioned thought. We must become aware of the Kingdom of Heaven already within. That is why we are walking the Mystic Path.

It helps to remember the wise counsel of Meister Eckhart: “People should think less about what they ought to do and more about what they ought to be. If only their being were good, their works would shine forth brightly. Do not imagine that you can ground your salvation upon actions; it must rest upon that you are.”

The Difference Between Thought And Awareness

Many years ago an East Prussian philosopher decided to write and lecture on the power of human logic and reason. To his astonishment he found that there was a wall beyond which human intellect could not pass. That startling discovery revolutionized his life. Reversing himself completely, he declared the existence of a Force completely unlike mind-power. He declared furthermore, that this mysterious Force is available to anyone who wants it badly enough. The seeker must be willing to seek beyond his limited mental forces.

That discovery was made by Immanuel Kent, giant among mystic-philosophers. It can also be your discovery.

Spiritual awareness and human thought are two entirely different things. We must never forget this. The human mind can begin the quest, but it cannot make the actual discovery of Reality. The human mind can raise the sail in order to begin the voyage, but, having done that, it can only (and need only) rest and let the winds of Reality carry it to port.

Now, while living on this earth, we need both spiritual awareness and human thought. The human mind, which consists of memorized data, is useful for remembering how to tend the garden, or figure finances, or greet someone in the morning. But awareness is far above mechanical memory; it is Reality itself.

Dr. Suzuki, the Zen master, explains:

The intellect raises the question, but fails to give it a satisfactory solution. This is in the nature of the intellect. The function of the intellect consists in leading the mind to higher field of consciousness by proposing all sorts of questions which are beyond itself. The mystery is solved by living it, by seeing into its working, by actually experiencing the significance of life…

This explains one of the great mysteries of life: How can someone who is brilliantly successful in public affairs be such an utter failure in his private life? For example, a wealthy businessman may be dominated by personal anxieties which cause domestic conflict. The answer is simple enough: There is no connection between his worldly success springing from the mental level, and spiritual skill arising from the True self within. It is like oil and water which have their separate functions in a engine, but do not mix.

“Then what is the difference between a person whom we would call mentally mature and one who is spiritually aware?”

A spiritually aware person is always mentally mature, but a mentally mature man is not necessarily an aware man. An individual on the lowest step of awareness is higher than someone on the highest step of intellectual maturity. The mentally mature man is ready to step up to higher consciousness. He has rid himself of enough mental junk to make room for greater insight.

Summary: Human thought races around the jungle in a frantic effort to find a way out. Spiritual awareness stands quietly on a hilltop overlooking the jungle, from which it clearly sees the way out.

You Will Win!

How can we contact this purifying Higher Power? By lifting the veils of illusion that hang between the human mind and reality. By seeing that the veils of the ego-self block the light. By seeing this we penetrate into the innermost secret of human happiness, earthly and eternal.

It is not the lofty sending station that is out of order; it is our receiving set. Somehow we sling to the notion that something is wrong up there. We are like a man with a broken television set complaining that the TV station won’t send him pictures.

In his essay Spiritual Laws, Ralph Waldo Emerson sums up the mystical principle:

“A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong…Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.”

It is only when we dare to float upon this stream of awareness that we really know that everything is just fine. It is a peculiarly contradictory state-we do not have the slightest idea of where we are going, and yet we are completely unafraid. “We feel and know that we are eternal.” (Baruch Spinoza) We know for sure that all is well.

I want to speak to you with unreserved candor. Do you know what finally determines whether or not we find ourselves in the stream of wisdom and power? It is the way we take a truth we don’t want to hear. Anyone can run away, evade, pretend to accept, but this is not heroism and it so not genuine individuality. It is commonplace; it is what the mass of men and women do. That is why most people are far unhappier than they appear to be.

You see, all of us have degrees of resistance to the very truth that could save us. It is the very nature of the false self to resist and resent anything that threatens its tyranny. But if you are tired of paying the price, you can stop. You can be a genuine individual who refuses to run away from what appears to be a threat, but which actually, what you want more than anything else in life.

Stand up for yourself! You will win. Little by little, you will win. You may be reluctant to start because you are not sure what it is all about; you don’t know whether all this makes sense. But it makes the only sense there is. So start.

Do not think that willingness to contact Higher Power must include the strength to do it. In fact, power comes only when we see our helplessness. We must see this unemotionally, simply as a fact, without shame or despair. This is what the New Testament means by losing our life in order to find it. Willingness does not mean strength; it means only a definite decision to change the direction of life.

How To Favor Yourself

Success in life depends upon the headquarters from which we take orders. Picture a soldier on the battlefield between two military headquarters. To be his left is the genuine headquarters, maintained by his own army. To his right is a counterfeit station, set up by the enemy to deceive him, to make him go wrong. His success depends upon his choice between the two.

We always receive accurate guidance from our genuine headquarters within. It is never wrong. The instructions may appear confusing at times; we may have difficulty in carrying them out, but we are good soldiers; we follow along. Sooner or later, falsehood must surrender to Truth.

The test of what you accept as true is the way you go through your day. Do not try to change your day; seek to alter what you accept as true. Then, effortlessly, your day will change in favor of yourself.

You need not understand everything in order to start favoring yourself. Start right where you are. You need not understand the secret process by which air refreshes the body; you need only to breathe. Likewise, live along without worry or strain over the whole process of life. Here we meet one of those seeming contradictions which become quite clear after awhile: The less you strain your mind, the more it contacts the Higher Power that works through you and for you.

The soldier on the Mystic Path encounters many valuable challenges. One of them is a sudden discouragement about it all. He wonders whether it is worthwhile. Old doubts and feelings, which he thought were far behind him, suddenly loom up again. He is stabbed by dread that the whole thing may be only a dream world of his own illusions. Such periods of temptation are perfectly normal; expect them to come. Such a crisis came to George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends. He waited patiently. Suddenly, the dawn broke through with peaceful assurance.

Another crisis is the uneasiness of self-condemnation. There is no one in the entire world who condemns you. You yourself are the only person who condemns you-and pointlessly. In reality, there is no condemnation whatsoever, but as long as you think there is, you ache. Not only that, but a man dwelling with the illusion of self-condemnation is compulsively driven to do things that increase the illusion. There is no man, nor god, nor past experience to condemn you. You are free and you are free right now. Will you try to see this?

Go all out to contact Higher Power. So not take half measures. Do not hesitate to ask boldly for far more. Who asks a king for a penny?

Abandon Human Effort

We remain weak as long as we cling to unhealthy attitudes. What if a man bought a prize-winner steer and fed it all sorts of delicacies that he assumed the steer would like, rather than what nature decrees. That steer would win no more prizes. Likewise, we must not set up stubborn assumptions about what we need. The test of a genuine need is so simple that millions miss it: Does it make me genuinely happy, or does it lead to even more despair?

Unhealthy attitudes lurk behind all personal tragedies. What an incredible situation! I have known hundreds of people living their lives on the rocks of alcoholism, emotionally-induced illness, sex frustrations. Do you know what they fear when I point out the need for dismissing their destructive attitudes? They fear that by giving them up they will lose control of their lives!

Receptivity to right ideas places us in the right position. If we want an elevator to carry us upward, we cannot stand in the street. We must stand upon the surface capable of uplifting us. We must stand with a mind courageously willing to abandon lower levels. By standing on the platform of Reality, it lifts us all by itself.

We should be very glad we get tired of working so hard at living. The abandonment of useless human effort is just the thing we need for contacting Higher Power. By abandonment I mean setting aside ego-directed drives, such as, planning contriving, desiring, hoping, yearning, speculating, demanding, straining, claiming, influencing, dominating. All these interfere with the natural flow of the inner life. We contact the Higher Power only as we loosen our attachments to them. And then, at some magic moment, we change from driven men to carried men.

No one should ever feel bad if Self-Observation reveals that he or she is presently on a lower level. On the contrary, we should be glad, for only this discovery makes upliftment possible. It is the foolish person who imagines he has nothing to learn. Also, remember, the Mystic Path has no moral judgments. There are no such things as good and bad, superior or inferior. We don’t consider a five year old child inferior to a child of ten. We simply realize that everyone is on a different level of insight and awareness.

As you cover all these ideas, let your previous studies in religion or psychology enter. You will see how everything agrees.

My own early search and study covered enough books to fill a small library. I investigated every teacher and system from Aristotle and Apolinarianism to Zeno and Zen. The teachings varied in outer forms, but all agreed on the essentials: Man’s task is to awaken to his true identity. The Kingdom of Heaven is within. Spiritual truths are discovered with an entirely new kind of thinking, quite distinct and vastly superior to the mind that builds bridges and sells merchandise.

Sure steps To Awakening

Along the Mystic Path we, again and again, come across the sign: Wake up! In this section we meet a number of short and effective eye-openers:
People think that life has hundreds of problems. It hasn’t there is only one problem. The lost child doesn’t know the way home.

The Truth is stronger than thought, emotion, desire, sex, regret, money, fear, boredom, the past, the future; stronger than anything in life. None of these can ever trouble the mystic-man.

When new students came to Greek philosopher, Pythagoras, the very first lesson they heard was, “Learn to be silent. Let your quiet mind listen and absorb.”

We try to reassure ourselves with our human thoughts, but mental gymnastics cannot help us and we know it. Trying to uplift ourselves with conditioned ideas is like trying to get upstairs by pacing around the basement. A new kind of mind is needed.

The less your external comforts from friends, position, money, the more your inner comfort from the Higher Power. Now, whatever you do, do not take this as religious or philosophical speculation. Take it as a practical fact, for that is exactly what it is.

A perfect method for awakening is to examine the results of our daily reactions. If they are harmful, we know we need more consciousness.

The reason Truth affects a man so powerfully is because he already knows it deep within. All emotional feeling toward Truth is a response, a recognition. We may accept it, or reject it, but we see it.

We cannot be free of nagging desires through suppression. That is like trying to keep a rubber boat beneath the water. But we can remove compulsive desires altogether by understanding their nature.

Whenever you work in harmony with a mystic principle, you ally yourself with a force ten-thousand times greater than you know.

Awakening starts when we actually see our hypnosis. We must suspect that we are entirely different people than we thought we were.

You can be guided accurately by an inner voice, but your first task is to separate it from all the counterfeits. And someday you will see that this inner sense of guidance was right all along.

Since distress is caused and felt by the artificial self, ask, “If I extinguish this false self, who is left to get distressed?” There is no one left.

The Mystic Path has the simplest morality possible: Whatever helps us to awaken is right; whatever keeps us hypnotized is wrong.

Fifteen Ways To Gain New Strength

Fresh energy flows from you into every daily project when you:

1. See the attractiveness of the higher life.

2. Don’t accept unhappiness as necessary.

3. Increase your self-awareness.

4. Abandon self-defeating attitudes.

5. Insist upon strict self-honesty.

6. Try to understand your desires.

7. Make simple and persistent efforts.

8. Refuse to sacrifice your integrity to anyone.

9. No longer take excitement as happiness.

10. Stop wasting energy in negative emotions.

11. Make self-change your aim in life.

12. Don’t identify with anything.

13. Listen carefully to mystical principles.

14. Make self-discovery your daily hobby.

15. Want the Truth more than anything else.

Select any one of these as your mental exercise for the next few days. Think it through, try to see its full significance. That is how you add new strength.

Let’s illustrate point 1: See the attractiveness of the higher life:

A younger archer was imprisoned for accidentally trespassing upon the king’s private hunting grounds. The king, notorious for his harsh justice, ordered the young man imprisoned indefinitely. Though allowed to roam around the prison yard, he could see nothing of the outside world, for the prison was surrounded by a tall wall of eucalyptus trees. Years passed. The prisoner gradually lost interest in the outside world. He felt a dull sort of comfort in his routine existence. He walked about as if in a daze, performing his lobos mechanically. To most of his guards he appeared content, but one or two noticed a horrifying hostility deep down in his eyes.

One day a new and kindly king took the throne. Hearing of the prisoner, he ordered his release. His jailors took him to the prison gate and opened it wide. The prisoner glanced puzzledly and apprehensively outward, then turned around and walked back to his cell.

The king, as wise as he was kindly, gave new instructions: “Each morning set a new attraction outside the gat. Set them progressively farther and farther away. Then, open the gate before the prisoner.”

The attractions were set out as instructed. One morning the attraction was a friendly villager, then new clothing, then fresh fruits. Step by step, the prisoner lost his liking for the habitual and suppressed life. Each new attraction of the other world gave him a fresh sense of freedom. Gradually, he led himself to liberty and happiness.

Anyone who feels imprisoned by life can do likewise.

Freedom From Injustice

Baffled by what happens to you? You cannot see why this defeat or that sorrow comes your way? These perplexities are daily events to millions of people.

The mystic-man knows why things happen as they do. Better yet, he knows the solution-his own awakened state.

We can take a common complaint and see both its cause and solution- the only solution you will ever find:

“With all our laws and moral persuasions, why is there so much injustice in the world?”

Because hypnotized men are incapable of justice. I must speak frankly to you about this. Please follow very carefully.

“We’ll follow.”

A hypnotized man’s only idea of justice is having what he wants, what he insists he has coming to him. If he gets his demand, to him that is justice. If denied, he calls it injustice. His entire false scale of justice rests on whether or not be gats his demand. This is why we have endless conflict between people and nations. No one ever stops to inquire whether his very demand may be unhealthy or unnecessary to his true interests.

“Then there can be no justice among hypnotized men? How dreadful.”

Not dreadful for you, if you are awake. Again, please follow carefully; you have no idea of the gold here. When you are awake, human injustice cannot possibly hurt you. No matter what happens, you are at peace.

“I don’t understand how this is possible.”

The government taxes you unjustly? You are not your money; you cannot lose yourself. Your spouse betrays you? You have not abandoned your true identity to him or her, so you retain your inner quietness.

“If only I could believe that!”

Don’t try. Persist along the Mystic Path. You will have the personal experience of all this. You can live among every sort of human injustice and it will be as nothing to you. I am not speaking religiously or idealistically. I am giving you a fact.

“Yes, I sense that you know what you are talking about. It is just that I’m not awake enough to comprehend.”

Let the habitual human self fade away. Seek to contact the Higher Power. You’ll be amazed at how feelings of injustice fade away as far as you are concerned. Nobody and nothing can touch you. How can a runaway car hurt someone soaring high in an airplane?

Overcoming Barriers To Higher Power

What prevents our contact with the force above human mind-power? It is essential to know and to end it. Simply stated, it is negativity; all forms of negativity. Like a bloke of wood prevents two magnets from drawing together, so does negativity block us from our good.

Recall the mystic principle: We must become aware of a negativity before it can be destroyed. It is absolutely impossible to break free from a harmful state as ling as we are not conscious of its existence. It is highly heroic to suspect that we might have unseen negativities.

Shocks and crises reveal them. A person meeting business failure, ill health, disgrace, or rejection has a wonderful opportunity to observe negative reactions. How amazing! The very shock we dislike so intensely is trying to tell us something of extraordinary value. The false self, the cause of all our troubles, is self-destructive. Having shocked us, we can use the shock to destroy the false self. This is what the wise mystic does.

One reason we cling to negative states is that they give us a strange sort of pleasure. For instance, a person rejecting a helpful truth can pretend that he is a strong and independent thinker who needs nothing from anyone. We must ask whether we are willing to give up such unhealthy feelings in order to find healthy pleasure in psychic maturity.

Remember, it is taking a positive action to remove the negative. Is it good or bad to remove weeds from a garden?
We have been fooled long enough. We must make up our minds on that point. You have paid enough; it is time to quit. Quit thinking that you must halt before the barrier of inner negativity. You need not. You can crash through. There is not a single harmful thought, or emotion, or circumstance that can really separate you from the lofty life. Wherever we see a negative state, that is where we can destroy it.

“All these things you say arouse string reactions in me. I can’t explain them, but they are quite different from any usual feeling. Why do I react like this?”

Because there is something in you that knows.

To contact higher power

1. You presently possess a Force entirely different from human mind-power and vastly superior to it.

2. Use your mind to raise the sails, but let the winds of psychic awareness carry you forward.

3. Human thought-power is useful and necessary for human affairs. Spiritual awareness is necessary for inner freedom.

4. You will win!

5. Take orders only from the headquarters of your True Self.

6. There is no condemnation whatsoever. This becomes a relieving fact when you really see it.

7. If it helps us to awaken, it is right. If it keeps us asleep, it is wrong.

8. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is more attractive than the New Life existing outside the walls of the ego-self.

9. You can so transform yourself that you will never again be pained by feelings of injustice.

10. As we remove negativity, contact with Higher Power grows stronger.