Course XIV - Teaching 16: Mystical Steps Synthesized

Every rule aiming at achieving the Divine Union has its exception.
Certain souls never knew Meditation and others ignored Concentration but reached a perfect Union with God. Any indiscriminate imposition of these rules on everybody is to ignore that every soul is a separate world and needs its own rules and an especial development to reach the goal.
When one wants to impose certain rules, these rules are good for some souls, but counteracting for others. It is necessary much ductility, much discrimination and much discretion to find the torch and kindle the fire of mystical life in the soul.
But most times the disciple needs to practice all exercises to be prepared for the Divine Union.
Concern, attention and, in short, Discursive Meditation enable the thought for certain image; but the mind oscillation that Discursive Meditation produces disappears as soon as the discourse finishes.
This absence is replaced by affective Meditation, and by loving the image produced, time and again is fixed on this image. Here many little mental oscillations take place, but there is not capacity for Realization with those vortices that the thought usually emits.
The mental wave has to become more and more intense and constant until its repercussion on the whole universal environment.
So, one passes from affective Meditation to Concentration on the image devised. Concentration fixes the mind on this image and charges the mental wave with the cosmic substance by which it gets accustomed to sustain itself. Even so, as soon as Concentration ends, its effects disappear, but by repeated concentration time and again, the mental vortex becomes so vast and sustained that looks at the forged image with all its parts, all its forms and all its measures, and the known image is carried away by the vortex.
In short: the object becomes subject.
It is then when the mind cannot leave what has conquered, because it is there, ever present and ever alive, in a permanent state of Union.
But also those who follow the above-described process must not be tied to the rule that has led them until the end of the Path.
As potential experience always forges a future of happiness, likewise practical experience is a stumbling-block on the road to progress.
Many souls practiced all rules of Meditation, Concentration and Contemplation, received enormous benefits and enjoyed the Ecstasy of the Divine Love, but their regulatory predisposition to Union became a habit and, sometimes, is cause of delay and of an impenetrable rampart preventing them from passing to the knowledge of Mysticism and from establishing a definitive point of permanent Union.
A truly wise soul is ever free; it takes and gives, and makes use and throws away, even in regard to greatest rules of inner life.
It is difficult to determine the opportune moment when crutches can be thrown away, and to know when those means that we used can be replaced by our effort of will-consciousness.
One has to enter the ocean of life entirely nude; none shall be able to enter the Sancta Sanctorum not disposing before of his experiences, even of his holiest and more solemn experiences.
Everything, absolutely everything, even the most perfect Master is only a fellow traveler on the Mystical path, and has to be left behind when the illuminating light becomes an impediment and blocks the other Light emerged at the back of Him: the Eternal Light.