Indian peoples have been driven to practice Mysticism from the beginning of their civilization. From early disciples of Great Initiates of the new race to mysterious dwellers in the Himalayas, numberless men have devoted their lives to study and practice Divine and ecstatic things, leaving for posterity examples, writings and documents as the foundation of every ascetic school until our days.
It is very important to know Christian Mysticism and be able to see how the West practices in its own way and with its own names, every ascetic exercise to reach the Divine Union.
Mystical Asceticism means the process by which the soul strives or is driven by its ancestral destiny to realize God.
“Asceticism” refers in particular to the controlled exercise or effort, while “Mysticism” refers to the act of joining partially or totally the soul with God.
On the Ascetic Road, particularly during the first times, a Spiritual Director must guide the soul through his proper path to reach the Mystical Union of the soul with God.
Spiritual Retirement or entire detachment from the world during a year is indispensable to a proper development of ascetic exercises.
When a disciple is sufficiently advanced in concentration, he can abstract his mind whether in the most silent cavern or in the most boisterous metropolis, but as disciplinary postulate has to seek his periodical detachment from the world.
If the soul may start the ascetic path for personal purposes, as it progresses in his practices fatally has to understand that the only reality that it seeks is not the conquest of certain powers but the Divine Union.
Apparently, Man and God are two different things, but after man removes the veils of illusion, he realizes God, and then those things are like only one. This is happiness and paradise, and that is why, even being unaware of it, the individual being on earth hankers for spiritual perfection and for meeting God.
Meditation refers to sensitive aspects of the soul.
Meditation is an imaginative discourse; it is useful because brings into play all mental forces of the individual being by guiding them toward the achievement of the sensation wished.
This method will be particularly useful for beginners when they enter the way of Meditation, and will facilitate extraordinarily this exercise.
First Meditation.
Subject: The Black Lady.
Effects: Abhorrence.
The practice of this Meditation leads the soul to consider its wrongs and faults, and to abhor them; every perverse act committed by the practitioner becomes a living picture that causes him to suffer and purge his evils.
Concentration is an exclusive gift of the mind, a mechanical thought power to sustain and fix closely an idea. This gift has not anything to do with kindness of the heart or spiritual aspirations of the soul.