Course XIV - Teaching 3: Three Ascetic Rules
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.
This Mystical Union, which transforms man into God, should not be imagined like a line traced forward, for nothing follows a straight line in the created Universe, but one should imagine it like an oscillating luminosity led toward certain center.
Dualists, creationists and animists were those who more strenuously fought for getting this Mystical Union; the very concept of their doctrine demands this because they make a total difference between spirit and matter. This concept brings to souls an intense eagerness for soaring from matter to spirit. So, among dualistic philosophers there were great speculative mystics who achieved the Union with God.
But the absolutists, monists and pantheists were not exempt of having great mystics for this reason, but always in a sense that was more passive than speculative.
But this trend to achieve the intuitive sense of the spirit manifests in all human beings, and even more among those who reached certain point in the Path of Evolution.
All great beings reached a perfect Union with God at moments of great elevation, whether by strenuous and intense work or by total surrender of their powers. But there are people who want to experience this ecstasy not only at certain moments but also to produce it at will by means of discipline and exercise.
Since immemorial times there were men devoted to Mystical Asceticism during their whole life. After you compare every school and sum up every teaching got by continuous practice, experience and studies, you can see how the gist of all these texts and philosophies lies on three rules, namely:
- Method of Life;
- Continuous Effort; and
- Mind Control.
The Method of Life is a cell reorganization of the physical body, which prepares matter for its ascent. The physical body as a whole should remove toxins produced by bad habits and take new and fit substances by which spiritual vibrations can freely reach cerebral centers of the practitioner.
So, through the Method of Life, one removes obstacles, particularly bodily diseases, morbid habits of the subconscious, nervous weakness, exhaustion of organic energy, and muscular tremor in those who are not accustomed to high vibrations.
Continuous Effort means to be indispensably and continuously devoted to achieve the object.
Mental sloth acquired when one does not bring mental centers into action is overcome by devoting continuously to the exercise of prayer. Pressed efforts of the will, the mind moves negative waves and images away, and traces new cerebral grooves by habituating thought to concentrate on divine matters.
Ordinary emotions move to the brain by means of Continuous Effort and on the light of analysis lose their basic value; then you check emotionality and transform imaginative mental forms into ideals or into unique images by helping the exercise of meditation instead of damaging or distracting it.
So the practitioner achieves Mind Control. Mind surpasses the mental surge and controls it; so it can reflect on itself the Divine image and feel the ecstasy of God’s Presence.
As soon as one gets Mind Control, the latter guides the soul toward God and ecstasy in two ways: by speculation or by relaxation, by active prayer or by passive prayer.
Speculation fixes the mind in a continuous way on only one object and eventually the mind gets into oneself, becomes oneself and then the soul can penetrate depths of the Divine Essence by following that path.
Relaxation removes continuously any thought and eventually and slowly the soul, which is entirely empty, has only one thought: the Divine Realization.
But the relaxation method cannot be achieved without effort. Certain mystics put the beginner on this road, which is too much dangerous and inadvisable. Some people enter quite easily this path by an ancestral inclination, but even in the beginning they have to be forced to follow the ordinary path.
The man should not forget that he is man and that, if the soul has divine possibilities, he never has to reject his high mission entrusted: simply, to be a man.
One should always humbly pray the Masters to guide the soul through the Right Path.
“Oh you thousands and thousands of men who fought and strove in one way or another, on one earth or another, on one creed or another to achieve the Union of the Soul with God, and taught this teaching to men: Patañjali in India, Priests in Egypt, Christian Climacus and Casianus, Ramakrishna and Emerson in these times, unknown Children of the Mother, all of you are called today to write on your minds and hearts, only in ten words, the eternal rules of this great doctrine: Through Body Control, by Continuous Effort and by concentrating the Mind on the Spirit, the Soul joins to God in Mystical Wedding.”
