Course XVII - Teaching 1: Contemplative Vocation

All men are destined to divine contemplation.
Worldly life is opposite to contemplative life, and that is why people do not understand what contemplation is. Two opposite things cannot be real in themselves.
Contemplation is necessary because is the last possibility of man. This does not mean all men are contemplative by nature, but the meaning of “contemplation” should be wider and universal.
Contemplation is not a characteristic path to certain souls, or adapted just to certain temperaments. A man finds in contemplation the only means to experience directly and totally the Divine Truth –the Divine Mother.
Contemplation is not a possibility, but a truth. Only a living experience of the soul is real knowledge. You doe not know because you understand, but because you “are”.
The contemplative path is not one-sided, but integral.
Contemplation as life is not a continuous exercise of certain prayers, but a permanent state incorporated to the total reality of life –both active and passive. This identification leads rapidly to a supernatural knowledge of divine things, which people often understand as contemplation.
If contemplation was disconnected from active life, its comprehensive fruit would not be a universal truth.
Contemplation is a spontaneous consequence of renunciation, and evidence of the very Truth.
Contemplation is a connection that keeps the integral life united, because contemplation is a simple underlying state of living experiences.
Contemplation is not to reach a final understanding point, but a condition of dynamic life in the soul, which remains a substantial contact with the Divine Mother.
To turn spiritual life into a truth is to experience directly and personally the Divine Truth. Otherwise, in the Buddha’s words, “It is as a peasant counting the cattle of his neighbor”.
Contemplation is an immediate possibility for all those who are strong enough within and can be continuously faithful to their vocation of divine freedom.
So, one cannot speak of living in the world and of contemplative life. The world is not against contemplation; but appetites, desires and attachments counteract contemplation. Contemplative life is not a type of particular life; it is the life of a soul that is dead to things of the world.
To differentiate action from contemplation does not mean that souls may exclude, by temperament, their inner contact with the Divine Mother. On the contrary, contemplation grants higher capacity of action, because it multiplies the power of the soul by renouncing to a personal action.
There are rules of inner and external discipline; these rules are commonly seen as contemplative life, but they are more suitable means leading to a real and methodical practice of Renunciation; only this practice guides the soul to spiritual contemplation.
Realization has to produce the extinction of the soul –a soul is a compound– and we should overcome ascetically our continuous and natural resistance, that is to say, our fight against our own extinction. Extinction of the soul does not mean annihilation; it acts as an instrument of the spirit. The world is the kingdom of the soul, and life is a continuous projection outward.
External attraction is great ignorance, and our reason cannot destroy this attraction, but concrete facts do. To set ourselves free of our possessions is not enough: we have to break possessiveness. Attraction cannot exist without an illusory possession.
The world attracts by means of material, affective and intellectual possessions. But its attraction is not only direct, but also through worldly internal states, which move us away from contemplation.
Many souls live ascetically amid mortification and prayer, and do not understand how, after so many efforts, they keep the same type of attitude before the world, and remain in the dark before the Divine Mother: these souls are worldly within.
We are worldly within when we live centered on the world, not on Renunciation. Saint John of the Cross says: who cares how thin is the thread that ties a bird if this thread always shall prevent this bird from flying.
This does not mean that our spiritual contemplation shall occur just in the end of the path. We may be imperfect, but not worldly. A central idea must move the soul, and this idea may differ from our words. Very often we talk of our attachment to something because we fear this tie is not broken.
Many fervent souls usually experience great outbursts of divine love while they pray, but are unable to contemplate because they still possess many emotions, which should be purified and calmed. Great soul movements never become a quite high prayer. When prayer is higher, inner movements are much simpler and more essential; then it is just a state of presence as a simple movement in itself.
Contemplation is the only good of the spirit, because contemplation is a direct contact with the Divine Mother. We are told contemplation is blissful, but not in a sensorial sense. Here senses are inactive and practically non existent. The soul sense is deep and simple, but never emotional. To reach a real contemplation we should be deprived of emotions, because emotions do not respond to our will. Virtuous deeds stop being acts, and become super-understanding and human tolerance through direct contact with the reality and truth of life. At the same time, this is an absolute spiritual solitude, within our reach after a great sensorial solitude.
This solitude is like that of a snowy peak, –inaccessible to the majority of mortals.
We have to descend to our inner solitude, –to our absolute solitude in the heart. But we have to descend alone. There is an inaccessible place to all in our soul, with the exception of the Son and the Divine Mother. There is the Son’s treasure.
First you experience a sensorial solitude; you feel alone –nobody can be with you or near you. Later there is a wonderful spiritual solitude; “She is Alone with Him Alone”.
This is not a permanent active awareness of divine company, but a total taste of being and eternity, and also a taste of becoming inaccessible to contingencies of life and beings. You can descend to them, but they cannot come to you.