MYSTIC FORCES AND THE CONDUCT 0F LIFE - SDIR

translated from the French by Juliette MAXWELL

PREFACE

With this re-edition, I have brought a few clarifications to theoriginal text. In fact, Mystic Forces is one thing and Conductof Life another. There is a twofold task for the man who wants togain Heaven : on the one hand, to make use of the absolute forces likeloving one's neighbour, faith, prayer, sacrifice, death, the exampleof Christ; and on the other, not to make use of other forces, certainmethods which seemingly resemble the first ones, like the will,esotericism, illuminism, practices of clairvoyance, of the miraculous,of the impassive. In other words, I wished to show in all possibleways what should be done and what not to do, what should be believedand what not to believe, what should be desired or repulsed, so asto make oneself as worthy as possible to receive God's bounty.

To eliminate any ambiguity in the reader's mind, I have set out thetitles of these twelve lectures, too concise perhaps, and I have,here and there, in the text outlined definitions and reinforcedaffirmations. If my faithful readers find this new edition to theirliking, I beg them to be so good as to pass it around as much as theycan. We work not for ourselves do we, but for Him in whoseremembrance these pages have been written. From Him alone they willreceive the power of persuasion and light.

I

MYSTIC FORCES AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE

Where two or three are joined together in my Name, I am in themidst of them.

(matthew xviii. 20)

The subject on which I wish to talk to you is very old but ever new; anyway, in the years to come it will become a passionate reality.It is our eternal Friend, Christ, whom we will try to remembertogether, even though our remembrances can never be but stammerings.Christ, no one knows Him, but He himself, the Father who sent Him andthe Spirit that serves Him. No being, understand, none, I say, hascaught more than a glimpse of Him. The searching gaze of mastertheologians, the burning hearts of the saints, the meditations ofphilosophers have never caught but one of the thousand glitteringsthat edge his cosmic halo. Angelico prepared himself by fasting topaint his celestial faces and sketched them while crying from loveand compassion. By what burning penances, by what adoring tearsshould he not, he who claims to tell the intimate of the Word,introduce his speech ?

Surely, I will fall short of my task. So you must help me. For thatmatter even though without comparison Jesus performed fewmiracles in Nazareth because His countrymen were incredulous.

You understand that it is your faith I am claiming. Your faith, notin myself but in what I am saying ; not in what I am doing but in Himabout whom I wish to speak to you. If, as soon as I present myself toyou, 1assume towards you certain responsibilities and above all thatto be useful to you, you too, by the mere fact that you have come,you assume duties or, rather, obligations towards the ideal which isour common concern.

There is a mutual give and take as between collaborators.

If I am so bold as to talk to you about eternal realities, I giveyou the tacit promise to render them tangible and alive to you, togive them body, to make you feel their immanent presence under theveils of everyday banalities. I must make it possible for you todiscover new ways of thinking, loving and acting. New landscapes mustunfold before you. I must lift you above the down-to-earth ; Imust exalt you with the intoxication of Heaven ; you must be setaflame like everlasting torches ; the thirst for Heaven must dry youup ; the sudden pangs of sacrifice must consume you ; and finally,something must rise in the hearts of everyone of you and cry : toserve, to serve, that is my vow.

Will it be given to me to arouse this enthusiasm ? And if such apower responds to my unworthy prayer, will it still last when youhave passed this threshold ?

It does not matter ; the effort must be attempted even if it is

known that it will be short-lived.

The task of the speaker is so heavy, as you can well see, that heneeds the help of his audience.

There are two schools of thought on this.

I could, first of all, flatter the innate propensity of men for whatis wonderful and, very gently, step by step, convert it into aliking for things eternal.

Or I could, openly, fight magic, ritual, esoteric wisdom, and showtheir precarious bases and their, on the whole, narrow horizons ;then, on these ruins, I could build a new temple or a chapel.

But the first method seems a little too diplomatic ; as to thesecond one, I know that Heaven likes demolition no more than theanimation of corpses. When a creature or an institution becomeobsolete, they fall down by themselves. And what I should do if yourwishes did not correspond with mine ? What I propose to you is aneffort. Here it is : What I have to tell you is even simpler thanwhat religion teaches us. Expect from me only commonly known ideas,but which are forgotten as they are buried beneath numerous layers ofsilt within you. Some of these ideas will seem incredible, perhaps;but, because your soul has heard them before, on the threshold of aprevious eternity, you will believe me, no matter how rude my blowsagainst your present mental state.

I ask first of all for your attention.

If you listen to me as you would a teacher or an artiste who is onlya man with talent, your willingness to remember and understand willbe sufficient. But, if you wish the inner sanctuary to open to thesounds of divine harmonies, then more than a mental attitude isrequired. It is your heart that you must give. Come to him who isspeaking, no matter how unworthy he is, as to the voice of your ownconscience. You and he are coupled forces ; let your ascendant wishesand his descending effort join, let them reunite, let them fusetogether so that, from their union, a spiritual child be born.

Anyhow, if I am here at all, it is because you have called me here.The present minute is always the result of countless unknownyearnings. Although your mind may not remember it, your heart hascried out on a night of intellectual or moral distress ; and thereflection of that cry remains printed on the faces of many amongst you.

You were anxious ; the ideal inside you has been looking for theideal outside you ; and, as any wish acts by itself and finallycreates its own satisfaction, your wish, after many voyages into theinvisible, many hardships, many disappointments, has finally broughtus together, you and me.

Often you have been overwhelmed with fatigue, disheartened withoutreason. It was the anxious search of your mind among those seethingworlds spreading beyond imagination into the hidden yonder, where weare only dust.

Well ! the common wish of Heaven, which has brought us together,will make me intelligible to you if it is really about Heaven that Iam talking. But if you yearn for God and I try to steer you towardsthe Eden of occultism or esotericism, then we will not understand eachother. Also and this is the stumbling block on which our mutualemotions may clash if I talk to you about the Father, the Son, theSpirit, as the deep Light within yourselves very well knows They are,whereas your ego, your intelligence, your will hunger only for the wonderful and not the divine , then my wish and yours, runningalong different paths, will not meet, neither will they bear fruit.

What I ask from you then is to be simple. For one hour every week,one short hour, become simple again. When returning to this room, theatmosphere of which is still alive with the fluttering of angels'wings, let your hearts recover the artlessness of childhood. Forgetwhat you are and what you have been. Scientists, forget your sciences; philosophers, forget your many wisdoms ; all of you, forget yourvices, for all of us, we are, we may have been or we may becomecriminals.

Try not to say while you are listening to me : this is fromPlotinus; this is Hinduism . To learn is an art; to forget is an artalso. Thus, forget : you, women, your sufferings and your passions;you, men, your ambitions ; you, young people, your fanaticism ; you,old people, your weariness. Tell yourselves, for one hour, that onceagain you have become untaught, candid, small children; for, although

I am nothing, I know nothing, I can do nothing, perhaps why not Certainty, Peace, Beatitude may descend on you, under the cover of mydull and clumsy sentences.

Tell yourselves : twice, a hundred times in my life, I have searchedfor God; perhaps this hour is the hour for the meeting ?

Make room in yourselves for that blessed moment. Let the Angel findthe house empty; let the spark descend on to dry kindling; let theseed fall on to a seedless soil. If we could look, we would seemiracles any time.

Nevertheless, do not expect revelations from me. The great,fundamental ideas of inner life are the least known today.Everywhere, man is fond of mystery; but, in civilized man, thisinclination easily becomes a mania. This is one of the greatobstacles which prevent us from acceding to Truth. Only what issimple is true. This axiom should guide our intellectual search; ourpsychic state is narrowly linked to its observance.

Only what is simple is true. This axiom should guide our intellectualsearch; our psychic state is narrowly linked to its observance. Infact, the complications of the self evoke a similar complication ofthe non- self ; or, in order to speak more clearly, ourconsciousness sees Nature through the prism of personality. Ahomogeneous prism will transmit an exact and clear picture, a dullcrystal will give an indistinct one. Even more so as our mind is notan inert substance; it possesses a magnetic attraction whichsometimes reaches very far into the invisible for the correspondingforms of the non-self.

The more the self is one, the more it is capable of perceivingobjective unity; and its unification depends on its simplification.How can we simplify ourselves you will ask. By forgetting ourselves,by denying ourselves personal acquisitions and satisfactions. Thus,the rare men who reached the summit of mystic asceticism are in noway distinguishable from the crowd; their inner splendour remainshidden, even from the psychologists who watch them live.

This self-abnegation is one of the characteristics of these poorin spirit whom Christ beatifies ; it needs simplicity of the soul,a child's spontaneity, a candour which only the dawns of veritableregeneration see bloom. That is the meaning of that maxim of SaintAnthony the Hermit : there is no perfect prayer if the worshipperis aware he is praying .

Any enrichment of our being first requires an impoverishment; anyacquisition requires a renunciation. In stating these paradoxes, I amnot trying to lead you to the Oriental schools which, in order toorientate Knowledge, kill the wish to know. This procedure isexcellent for those who do not know the way to absolute life; we,disciples of Christ, know that, to become one with our Master, in andpart of Him, we need three things :

self-renunciation, but not to kill desire,

bear our cross, but not to evade duty,

follow Christ, but no other god.

For what we are concerned with, you and I, at the moment, only thefirst effort is necessary. If we wish to understand each other, if wewish that our gathering be fruitful and bring forth a Light, self-renunciation is necessary and sufficient, that is to say that wemust be one.

As to me, I must forget whatever I know about you, your opinions andyour hearts ; I must see in you only the Flame, straight and pure, ofdivine search. As to you, not only should you stop your externaldisagreements with one another but also your inner disagreements withyour temperament, your character, your mentality, your education andthe immortal desire for the Ideal which has brought you here.

***

But the most drastic and shortest method to obtain this simplicity,this enthusiasm, which I do not fear asking from you, consists ofacquiring the very mysterious and very powerful force of faith andthen setting it in action. Let us examine this with the utmost care.

For the Catholic theologian, who in this case is of a rather similaropinion to that of the Brahminical theologian, faith is thesubstantial representation of what we hope, the assertion of what is

not apparent, supernatural Knowledge, i. e. impossible to attain forman and gods in spite of the glorious abilities which may be theirs.

An astronomer talks to me of the rivers of Mars. I believe him ; thathas nothing to do with faith because I can repeat his experiments ; Ican, with the means granted to the adepts, go and check theinformation on the spot. An angel says : Jesus is the only son ofGod. If I believe him, that is faith, because it is impossible by ourreason as well as by our senses physical or transcendental tocheck this fact. Esoteric, alchemical, magical,astrological interpretations, which are subjective to religiousmysteries do not belong to faith ; they are natural, human, relativeconcepts. The formula of the act of faith is not precisely thatdictum : I believe because it is absurd , but : I believe,although it seems absurd to me .

Faith aims at God, and God only. In this, faith is unique and trulyuniversal, for it acts above forms, rites, laws, religions. Faithsaves any man ; ittransmutes into good any act evil in itself when carried out in thepure intention of the Absolute.

This Absolute, God, whose essence is universal, plenary, physical if I dare say so for lack of a more expressive term we do not see,neither do we feel ; however, we are certain that It is there,because our inner principle of eternity knows and acknowledges theexternal principle of eternity from which it proceeds ; but theorgans of this divine soul : mind, intelligence, awareness, are notsufficiently refined to record those sublime lights.Whatever man may finally be able to perceive by his own means is noteternal.

Faith, in spite of lack of understanding, non-perception,non-intuition even, is a complete acquiescence, an unshakableagreement of the will to the word of God. Alone, amongst allreligions, that of Christ demands this effort from us. To speak thetruth, we do not accomplish this alone ; it is Christ, deep in ourhearts, who makes us aware of the pre- secular words or eternalWisdom. And thus, faith unites us with the Word Jesus, makes us onewith Him, brings about our regeneration in God and saves us.

An immutable faith keeps danger at bay because it throws us into theabyss of the Almighty. It performs all the miracles because itasserts thesupernatural. It cures the incurable and purifies the criminal,since it upsets everything in us and re-organizes us fundamentally.Nothing is impossible to whosoever possesses even the smallestportion of faith, and the promises of God in this respect are nomere metaphors. One in its essence, all-powerful in its effects,faith requires only one condition : to be brought to life by actseven more than by words. Material work only supplies nutrition tospiritual plants. By the same token, vice versa, the main intentionof the heart, sublimated by faith dynamizes the work of our hands.

Everything sacrificed to an idea reinforces it, if action is thetest of faith, doubt is its enemy ; it disperses our forces, faithconcentrates them. Let us drill ourselves not to doubt. So, a sickperson prays to be cured ; if he is not, he must retain the samecertainty of hope, in spite of all logic. So once again, you havecome expecting something new and you are going to be disappointed.Come back anyway, come back until the end for, certainly, one dayyou will see the Light.

The most beautiful fruit which ripens on the tree of faith is not thegift of performing miracles, it is patience. Patience, a wonderfuland mysterious force by which, Christ guarantees to us, we manage topossess our souls. To possess our souls means that all that, whichconstitutes this very complex whole that we are, really becomes ourproperty, that we master ourselves, that we know ourselves perfectly triple initiation to the baptism of the Spirit.

Here we can see the reason why the Apostle Paul makes thisapparently superfluous comment : Faith comes from our sense ofhearing. There exists, in fact, a secret relationship between themysteries of Heaven and the acoustic fluids, between the sense ofhearing and the sense of God. Music, in its efforts to express whatis inexpressible, provides the same teaching. But let us not getinvolved in the fascinating labyrinth of mystic sciences ; and nowthat we have finished outlining the state of mind in which one wholistens to a religious discourse must be, little remains to be saidfor our conclusion.

***

The most important of these states of mind, which I ask from you,transforms your life into a ceaseless battle. Start this battle withthe certainty of victory, and you will vanquish. For here thebattlefield is the moral world. This struggle is balanced by a culture: brotherly love. Notice those two mystic types : the soldier ofGod, the gardener of God ; we will often have to come back to them inthe course of these talks.

Work is the body of faith. The most excellent work, charity, will beits most beautiful part. In the present conjuncture, you have acertain kind of charity to spread for your faith to live and act. Youhave something special to realize before in your hearts can rise theemotions, the exaltations, the prostration in which the enrapturedsight of uncreated Light throws us. Behold : When man considers withproper gravity the vast complications of life, at once he sees thenecessity for help. He finds it in the invisible sphere where themind has chosen to reside ; and, according to his character, he usesthose auxiliary forces, he urges them or he tries to master them.

If the self lives in the dwelling of matter, he will turn to thematerial forces ; if the self lives in the dwelling of fluids, he willturn to the various magnetisms ; if the self lives in the dwellingof intelligence, he will turn to the mental forces, and so on. Ifthat self knows the supernatural Light, he will turn to the mysticforces.

What these forces are, at least the main ones, we will study in latertalks. For today, it is sufficient for us to know that they existwithin easy reach, that they surround us, that we are impregnatedwith them and that it depends on our willingness to embody them inourselves.

The whole atmosphere is full of spirits. Not only angels and demons,but creatures of all grades, in which good and evil are mingled ininfinitely varied proportions. If common religious teaching mentionsonly beings good or evil forever, it is no doubt to prevent themajority from falling into that dangerous inquisitiveness which triesto satisfy itself by the practice of magic.

Patristic literature, although it mentions the Spirits of Nature,does not dwell on them. To speak the truth, there are no beings whoare forever fixed in Darkness, and there are very few they can becounted who are for ever fixed in Light. We were angels ; we facethe alternative of becoming demons or rising again, higher than theangels. But what we are interested in at the moment is to know thatwe have a great host of invisible listeners and onlookers. You havebrought with you, every one of you, a cohort of spirits : ghosts ofyour ancestors, spirits of your descendants, spirits of your presentparents, auxiliary, hostile, enlightening, corruptive spirits. Youhave not a hatred, a friendship, a wish, an enthusiasm, a care, a joy,a tear which does not exist individualized in the inner spaces ofyour personality before becoming an apparent and tangible reality.

The very objective of our gathering calls and brings around us anumber of entities proportional to the volitive energy, to thefervour we have brought with us to reach this objective, to the roomwe have allocated it in our hearts.

To perceive these entities, to classify them, to accept some andreject others, that is what we should not do ; that is not within ourprovince. We have, you and I, to consider one thing only, the onenecessary thing . Let all these presences, all these energies, good,evil or wavering, return just now to their respective abodes with ajoy, a comfort, a refreshment.

What should we do Reconcile ourselves, make peace with all thesebeings? This is not a banal maxim ; it is a formula of spiritualdynamics, simple, efficient, precise in its use, general in itseffects ; it is a strict law, it is a battery of immeasurable energies.

To remain at peace with men, animals, plants, stones, objects,ideas, events, time, passions, angels, demons and the dead, we takenothing more from them than what the Law has ordered them to give us; it means to welcome them all with a smile ; to offer themspontaneously what they are longing for. It is an immense, tireless,very secret charity ; it is the most constant, the most immutable,the most serene self-control ; it is the return to the fold of thescattered flock. It is an episode of the cosmic battle in the chaosfrom which surges, here and there, like lightning, the ineffablepresence of the incomprehensible Being, the angel of Peace who,however, came to bring war and light a certain fire in this world :our Jesus.

If we offend nobody, all these creatures will come to us, becausethey hunger for Light and it is only through the heart of man thatthey can see the glory of God. That glory is harmony, it is peace ;we can assimilate it only if we live in His kingdom. Let us pacify,gentlemen ; let us pacify our bodies, our senses, our minds and theplaces where we toil most conscientiously. Do not be anxious aboutthe invisible, the mysteries, the secret things ; nothing is secretbefore God ; and we have gathered here to learn again how to live inGod.

To live in God ; A wish unheard-of in its audacity, a simple wishfor simple hearts. I have asked you for many things before offeringyou anything in it is not I who am presenting you with the diamondsexchange. I have nothing to offer you, or rather, and pearls of theheavenly Treasure ; it is that God, that Father, towards whom I wouldlike to sway you with an irresistible impulse.

The Father, He is all things to each of his Children. He hasoverturned his creation to make Himself accessible to all. Lift upyour eyes and you will see Him ; turn to Him and He will open hismerciful arms to you.

It is to this supreme Great Work that I invite you. No one isincapable of it ; and the existence of every man of good will,whatever it may be, offers him a design for his work andopportunities for progress which are specially suited for him andwhich are proportional to his strength.

Let us start this ascetic movement together. Let us, you and I,right at this moment, start to work on the wonderful statue of theangel we will one day be. Did I say the angel ? No ; let us moresimply wish to become worthy of the name of man which is ours ; nocreature has a more beautiful name since our Jesus agreed to bear it.

THEORETICAL MYSTICISM

He that receives me, receives Him that sent me

(matthew x, 40)

If you take the trouble of meditating on these words of our Jesus no, not of meditating, but of loving them from the bottom of yourheart you will know immediately all that I wish to tell you andeven much more. Try it when you are lonely.

The definitions that have been given of mysticism all vary becauseeach author has considered it from a different angle. According tothe official philosophy, it is a sort of contemplation in which thehuman being unites with God through an incomprehensible process.According to theology, it is an intuitive knowledge arrived at in thesilence of the rational operations of comprehension. According toits etymology (*), any system, the methods and results of which aresecret, is mysticism.

(*) Mysticism, from the Greek muein : to close one's mouth.

In that case, all those who think or act in the extraordinary regionsof consciousness are mystics. These definitions are too broad ; thephilosophical vocabulary of the French language is lacking inprecision. Religiousness, idealism, spiritualism, esotericism,transcendentalism, occultism, magism, hermeticism, psychism, theosophy,cabbala, gnosis, Sufism are not synonymous expressions and, overall, the terms do not equate with mysticism.

We may consider as a mystic any man who, no matter what his religionis, links himself only with God, setting aside all living creaturesand devoting all his forces to accomplishing the will of the Father.

Mysticism is not only a method of contemplation and ecstasy ; neitheris it only the physiology of the soul; it is also many other things(*). Once a being entrust himself, from the bottom of his heart, tothe hands of the Father, his path is changed ; his works, which varyaccording to his abilities and the needs of the general evolution,are led, step by step, by special spiritual agents which replace theordinary guidance each man is provided with according to hisprofession or his aptitudes.

(*) Modern philosophers define mystic union as an extremely narrowfocusing of the attention which exalts the intellect, uses it formerknowledge and realizes unity of consciousness. William James addsthat he then is in communication with a superior world through thesubliminal consciousness. According to St. Augustinus and St.

Bernardus, there is no link between mystic knowledge and previousknowledge, for in true ecstasy communication with the Absolute isestablished. This last opinion is the correct one.Psycho-physiology has discovered again Patanjali's old assertionwhich he himself had copied from the lost works of the Rishis : anysensation is, in the final analysis, a hyperphysical contact. Moderntheologians infer from this that psychical sensations are psychicalcontacts. That is to say that a world, or worlds, invisible andobjective exist. Superb conclusion for us, the civilized, to findourselves in agreement with the lowest of the Papuans ! The OldTestament, the New Testament, the Fathers, all, however, say thesame thing !

The mystical path leads directly to the divine level, to the Realmof Mercy and Love ; and the air that one breathes while following itcomes directly from the same eternal horizons.

To some souls, thirsting only after the Absolute, science is notsufficient, religion is too cautious, esotericism too complicated. Theyhave a presentiment of a science of all sciences, a religion of allreligions, an initiation of which all the secret schools give onlythe corrupted debris. There is a way of knowing by which knowledgeis instantaneous, a rite less religion by which man is in directcommunication with the Father, an initiation that cannot be gained,but may be freely granted, which gives us the supreme power : ofbringing ourselves within God's hearing somewhere, in that vastworld, is the master of all masters. He never fails anyone'sconfidence who submits himself to His august hands. A Light, silent,invisible but inextinguishable, beyond evaluation, is there forwhosoever wishes to take it and use it to lighten the dark places inhis own heart, in the profundities and in the firmaments. Thisremarkable Light is Love ; and mysticism is the science of Love.

It is the geometry of the soul, someone has said. Yes, forPythagoreans ; but, for Christians, it is the very life of the soul,rolling out the waves of its occult and very ancient splendour to itsoutermost organs : our conscious faculties.

As to the mystic forces, all of these are the means by which Godhelps us, sending them to us directly, immediately, expressly,because it is beyond us, to carry out this task alone. The one andonly Bestower is He who was known as Jesus of Nazareth.

The procedures for summoning these forces are all given in theGospel and can be found only there.

You will forgive me for the dogmatic aspect of these statements. Therarer the object of a study, the more its outline must be preciselydefined.

We will now investigate the characteristic traits of mysticism.

* *

The beliefs of the mystic are a perpetual challenge against reason ;according to common reasoning, his wisdom is madness. Today,Catholicism is chided for not taking into account the developments ofscience and of contemporary thought ; I am a paltry theologian and avery poor devotee ; but I am astounded by the lack of understandingof so many modernistic priests of what are the essentials of thereligion they pretend to teach. The original character ofChristianity is, in fact, this notion of the supernatural which noother religion mentions. For the philosopher, for the scientist, forthe esotericist, the supernatural does not exist, because they believethey know everything and they claim to explain everything ; for themystic, the supernatural does exist, because he knows nothing ; thatis the essence of Christianity.

This concept is that of constant participation of the Absolute inthe province of the Relative ; that of faith in the solicitude of theFather ; that certainty that, as He is almighty, there is always amiracle ready to meet our urgent needs ; all these are thecorollaries of intuitive evidence with which the mystic is illuminated: that Jesus is the Father's only Son, and God Himself.

Exegesis, criticism, manuscripts, interpolations, misinterpretations,variations in dogma and discipline, arguments within a School, allare immaterial to the disciple ; they are the sound of foreign words,the cries of children on the public square. He has in himself anindisputable certainty, an unassailable evidence, like the splendourof the sun. Whilst it is in the womb, does a child needidentification papers to know that its mother actually is its mother ?

Mysticism is a homogeneous whole ; all its molecules are fixed,necessary and in mutual harmony, like the inhabitants of the eternalKingdom of whom this doctrine represents the common badge. Becausethe Absolute looms over everyone, comes close to everyone in the formof the Word, this solicitude is perfect and these cares embrace ourwhole being. Thus God can directly, without symbols, withoutmediator, be made one with the substance of any soul capable ofreceiving such an extraordinary visitation.

Do you realize, Gentlemen, how wonderful and extravagant this ideais ? No, all imagination fades and all intelligence falls before sucha sight. The Absolute actually descending into the Relative, withoutthe intervention of an angel, a priest, a rite, a formula; into thesuper-intellectual, the beyond imagination nakedness, into theterrifying abyss of faith, into the sevenfold darkness of the senses,reason, will, spiritual loneliness, psychical night, the annihilationof the self ?

Thus, the gymnosophist meditations, the fasting of Orientalascetics, we know that they do not lead to the Absolute as theseswise men do not want to follow the lonely Traveller who broke thetrail. But our theologians themselves admit that God can bestow thevirtues of His Grace on the soul by a means other than thesacraments. Some elite beings, as a result of their extraordinaryobservance of Heaven's laws, receive its gifts directly. The Wordsends these gifts to them by special messenger. Just as during Mass,the character of the bread and of the wine are transubstantiated,the Word performs an identical miracle in the hearts capable ofreceiving Him. He who, knowing that his enemy is deadly, invites himto his table, serves him, kisses and forgives him, in the mind ofsuch a disciple Christ Himself creates new organs, transforms intoHis own flesh the dying cells and into His own blood the cells thatlove the murderer (*).

(*) The organic, biological, living effect of this transforming unionmust be insisted upon ; only those who have experienced it arecapable of recounting it. That is why theoreticians speak about it insuch a dull and clumsy manner. Thus, for example, they say : Themystic state is a special state of consciousness, ineffable,transitory, passive, modifying knowledge and love . (W. james) Ecstasy is an invasion of the consciousness by a pure, affectivestate. At the extreme, all thought having disappeared, feeling onlyoccupies consciousness, in the shape of an intense affective state ;it is the direct perception of the non-self . ... It is theabsorption of the consciousness in the non-self by boundless love .(godfernaux) It is a return to the affective state, almostundifferentiated, not known, only felt . (Risox). Cf, also Recejac,Pacheu, Ribet, Goerres, Boutroux, Seraphim, etc., etc. All this islike the Bhakti Yoga of India rather than like the Gospel of Christ;these definition givers lack practical experience of the divine Life.

Let us stand off a little to look at the mystic organon as a whole.

** *

The myriad shapes that make up the Universe are the refracted imagesof a certain number of light sources scattered amongst it. Thesesources are the limbs, the organs, the faculties, the powers of theWord. And each religion, with its theology, its liturgy and itshierarchy, is the living image of one of the aspects of this centralWord. Religions thus are not at all of equal value ; but althoughall of them can lead man to eternal salvation, some of them are morecomplete, more active, more true than others.

However, a common feature links them, a fanatical character withoutwhich they would not longer be religions : this is formalism. It isto formalism that they owe the solidity of their existence, but itis also formalism which limits their spiritual developments. Throughrites, religions receive the strength to resist the onrush of thecenturies and the social changes ; through rites, the immensemajority of the faithful strengthen the weakness of their will ;through rites, the invisible and mediatory hierarchies between thedevotees and their god receive extra sustenance.

But also, through rites, ecclesiastical leaders sometimes veertowards illusory, temporal objectives, the faithful often forget Godfor the mediators, and the latter may also fail in their strictobedience. Thus, in everything there is evil and there is good.

We can thus say that all religions originate from true mysticism andthat it is re-established at their end ; but in the course ofhistory, it undergoes, because of misunderstandings or humanbetrayals, fairly long and profound eclipses. To recover it, we must

step back and after having freed ourselves from acquired opinions andprejudices, we must examine with a simple and free mind the words ofthe founder himself of the religion we study.

This is, Gentlemen, the task that I, with a certain audacity, urgeyou to undertake. You are all capable of undertaking it. In effect,to go backwards is to return to a source, to delve into the depths.Thus, return to the very deep and hidden source, at the bottom ofyour heart, from which falls, drop by drop, the water of eternalsprings. Formalism also exists in you ; rid yourselves of it ; becomesimple again ; but do not start until you feel strong enough to holdon until the end. If not, keep to the common path. Because rites areliving beings which have gathered colonies of living beings in yourpersonal unseen just as in the collective unseen of your religion ;they are sentries ; they obey their instructions ; they serve he whopractices them and ignore he who denies them.

The inhabitants of this occult world provide the faithful withsupport in return for some offering, I mean some tangible effort,which the desire of the devotee transmutes into fluid ; and the samewith abstinence, vigils, indulgences, pilgrimages.

Besides these agents, there are, in the religious host, the spiritsof the departed, all sorts of beings, infra-human and supra-human,different from the angels and demons per se. They are the ones whotransmit prayers, litanies, ceremonies, disciplines, fasting, songs,lights, scientific and philosophical works of art, in a word all thethings which constitute the physical body of religion. They bring usin return granting of prayers, blessings, cures, illuminations.

All these auras, all these fluid currents are created substances,natural although unknown ; faith, sanctity divine substances fanaticism, tyranny infernal substances direct them.

In this orb of ambient or mediating fluids reigns the law of theshock of recoil. This is a reaction equal and opposite to the action.There is always a hell sunk into the antipodes of a paradise.

But the paternal Goodness definitely does not close His arms tothose who cannot resolve themselves to the ways of the Church,levelled, surrounded with barriers, studded with guards. Libertarianscan still escape ; the lowest of savages may reach eternal life assalvation is accomplishment of the Father's will and this consists ofloving one's neighbour.

However, impatience of any kind is so strong in us that here we muststress the imperative need for him, who rejects external religion, tosubmit all the more strictly to the literal observance of the Gospel.On the pretext of advancing faster by sidestepping the accessoryforms, the burden of the essential commandments cannot be thrown tothe ground.

The path of the free mystic is direct ; he takes a direct short-cutalong the cliff-side of the mountain. The ground there is rugged, theslopes are steep and the storms terrible, the air there is purer, thesmells are wilder and more pungent, the horizons more beautiful andthe light brighter. Very few people are met there, very poor people,shepherds, ploughmen, the old soldier on reconnaissance. Anyway, Iwould never dare to advise taking this narrow path ; those who feelstrong enough to take it decide by themselves. There are giddiness,nightly terrors, landslides, thieves sometimes, wild animals also.That is your way, you the violent ones, by which you will storm thedivine citadel. The unknown way, the glorious way, the way ofsolitude and of the lonely, the way of the messengers of Light, ofthe bearers of eternity, of the martyrs of the Ideal ; may we one daymake our climb in this welcome distress, in this physical and mentalagony where, in solitude, shines the great torch of Love !

Without doubt, only those who have long and patiently obeyed strictand detailed disciplines brave its cliffs, its storms and itsadventures. Man can only free himself by carrying his chains and notby rejecting them, by paying his debts and not by repudiating them.

In general, we follow the path on which the gods have placed us ; wemust be very wise in the first place to be able to choose.Nevertheless the purifying of the motivation of our acts, howevermodest they be, can increase tenfold their range ; so that with thesmallest portion of free will we can still achieve a good job.

Everything comes in its own time, although we can delay or hastenthis time. An earthly life is brief, it is a few minutes of the longday of our journey, you will think. Oh ! you do not love God, it isbecause you are not eaten up with longing for His coming, it is

because the sufferings around you do not move you, it is because youare not thirsting after Light, hungering after universal Beatitude.What do not earthly lovers suffer because of a meeting they havemissed ? How to describe then the desolation that devastated the heartof the disciple deprived of his Master's presence ?

We are all linked together, you will say again ; we will not reachour goal without the others ; hence, it is not worth giving ourselvesthe trouble. On the contrary ; because the least effort of any oneof us benefits all, because solidarity unites all human beings, fromEarth to Neptune and from Aldebaran to Antares, we are obligated tomake the greatest efforts. To feel that my tiny work profitsthousands of beings, does that not increase my enthusiasm tenfold,does that not give me the sweetness of the sacrifice cheerfullyembraced ?

The first characteristic of the mystic, and note this, Gentlemen,for future diagnostics, is a zest for life, eagerness for work,serenity in times of want, deep peace in the anguish of physical andmoral sufferings, all things which are, after all, still external.Because the soul does not suffer.

Thus observance or non-observance of the rites are not mysticalsigns, but the recourse to God alone and the strength to act.

Is extraordinary knowledge is a third mark of mysticism ?

No, I shall answer at once. These are not indispensable things, butlittle indulgences by which our Friend incites us to progress. Themystic is not a lover of occult sciences. For him, Science, conceivedas a whole of set notions, does not exist. Science, according tohim, is infinitely varied ; it varies with each second because, witheach second, things change, the centres of perception change, thestate of the environment changes.

For example, the hypothesis of re-incarnations. It is very seldomthat knowledge of anterior lives is useful. The pseudo-revelationswhich can be obtained on this subject by mediums, by somnambulists,by intuition, by transcendental meditation, hamper our progress morethan they help it. Those who sincerely observe themselves can wellsee it ; the privileged few for whose benefit the Past lifts itsveil, all say that this knowledge is for them an ordeal rather than ahelp. If you think about the mixture of pride, of laziness andanxiety which constitutes the basis of our nature, you will have nodifficulty in admitting that this opinion is right.

The doctrine of-re-incarnations is a comforting one, you say. You donot, therefore, believe in God if you look for consolation elsewherethan in His Word which He repeats unceasingly in your hearts ! Sinceyou sorrow over someone dead, thinking it unfair, your god is acruel tyrant ! Otherwise you are being inconsistent with yourselves.

Neither is the power of looking into the future a characteristic ofmysticism. Not only since the Xlth century, but since the coenobitesof the Thebaid, since St. Paul himself, all the mystics thought thatDoomsday was imminent. The Catholics like St. Vincent Ferrier, theGnostics, the Albigenses, the Vaudois, the laity, the Lutherans, theCalvinists, the Jansenists themselves have prophesied immediate,final and utter catastrophes. The positivists laughed at this. In away, all of them were right.

The Master has said : I shall come like a thief . Nobody willthus be able to forecast the moment of His manifestation in the roleof Universal Judge or of Regenerator of our minds. Moreover, theearth is not a homogeneous block, like a crystal; it is a mass inoperation ; it is a cross-roads. It contains everything as far assubstances and beings are concerned ; it has diseases ; it is givenremedies, it undergoes surgical operations. These are all partialjudgements ; they take place on the living, interior plane. We arenot aware of them, but some clairvoyants can see them. There will be agreat reckoning, that is certain, but the due date is not known ; noadept can calculate it.

Here is still another reason why prophesy is not a definitecharacteristic of mysticism. When a heart follows the way of Christ,it beats more quickly than the others ; but also, it enjoys, muchearlier than the mass of the herd, the beauty of the horizons it hasdiscovered. It is thus entirely natural that the mystic sees thefuture, lives certain scenes in advance, which are still in theinvisible, in which his spiritual family will participate only in acentury or more. The judgement is one of these scenes ; and as theconsciousness of the clairvoyant has the use only of pictures of thephysical world for comparison, the dimmest of the lights from the

interior world seems to him so magnificent, so high, so pure, thathe believes pictures of very local phenomena to be universal.

The transcendental faculties and the powers are no proofs either ofthe mystical way. We, watching from outside, we can well see thepuppets, but not the hands that put them in motion ; we see miracles,ecstasies ; we are ignorant of the force which produces them ; a manmay have become a cripple as a result of a crime or self-sacrifice.Let us not impulsively give our confidence to those who do admirablethings. If they belong to the Light, they will not hold our reserveagainst us.

** *

By what then can we recognize the true mystic, beside his passionfor charity ?

By his belief in the divinity of Jesus, a unique divinity, a divinitythat stems from nature and not from evolution ; by his activecharity, by his inner humility.

Much has been said about Jesus over recent years; but themisunderstandings multiply ; each innovator monopolizes Him.Nevertheless, He is at the same time farther and nearer than we thinkHe is ; He is the greatest and the smallest, the farthest and thenearest, the Alpha and the Omega. It is towards Him that the mysticstrives, towards His unknown work ; it is in the new roads He hasopened between Heaven and Earth that I would like you to walk ; Iwould like you to benefit from His outpourings. To see Him, you willhave to get out of this immense creation, to break the chains ofTime, to leap beyond the limits of Space, to contemplate calmly theinconceivable abyss of original nothingness. But no man canaccomplish these works ; the Buddhas themselves have not been able todo it. They produce however in the most grandiose way the archetypeof the superman; they have risen to the supreme peaks of knowledgeand willpower ; but the last step they have not been able to make,because only God can take a living being, radically alter its way oflife, change its conditioned life to eternal life, in a word,recreate it.

No matter how vast an intelligence may be, no matter how forcible awillpower may be, it is impossible for them to make themselves vasterthan nature or stronger than the Demiurge of whom both areoffsprings. Those to whom the word reveals itself, those whom Hisshining face lights up without dazzling them, those He chooses, inall fairness and in all goodness, admire Him, love Him, see Him ; butthey cannot understand Him. This illumination is always a favour;what I mean is that it is too precious for any effort to oblige it tohappen like a simple and fatal chemical reaction for example. But ourFriend is moved by our small works, and He gives us, throughkindness, what the rigid laws of Destiny were denying us.

Amongst us, men of the XXth century, those who adhere unshakeably toJesus' existence, to His divinity, to His omnipotence, to His triumphover death, are the same as those to whom He made Himself known twothousand years ago, in the familiar form of a very gentle, very goodand very mysterious traveller. That is why He used to say : Thisgeneration will not pass before such events have taken place ,

These are the privileged of the present day. Before, when they metthe Friend, they were not privileged; it was a trial, proportioned totheir strength, a trial in which some of them did not succeed. To thelatter, a second trial was offered a few years ago.

All those who have not seen the Light, whom Mammon or a false scienceor pride have blinded, they are not lost forever ; somepossibilities of seeing the Living truth are still offered to thembefore the next judgement. They too will return to the fold, butmuch later, and after many setbacks and misfortunes. But their timewill come ; that is sure. The Father has not given life to anycreature to allow it to be lost utterly. It is only that there arevarious ways between the earth and Heaven; it takes a centuryfollowing some; these are the shortest ; for others, it takeshundreds of centuries.

The authentic disciple of Jesus no longer is a servant but a friend.He is lucky to have perceived something of the Word by means otherthan books, metaphysics and abstractions. Fortunate in having seenthe poignant beauty of this Word shining on the perpetual sufferingsto which the love that devours Him has reduced Him ; a beauty whichpermeates like a luminous dew, an exalted and glowing beauty whenJesus offers Himself, with no resistance to the cruel forces of eviland ugliness. The admirable stature of the universal Lord then

distils the eternal Light like a breath of gold and insubstantialdiamonds. The august forms of His appearance which, when calm,radiate a holy awe, take on an ineffable pathos in the tremendousanguish in which His tenderness for humanity, the minds and theworlds throws Him. Then He radiates, our Christ with the gentle eyes; He radiates with an unbearable brightness, vibrating in his entirebody with the shimmering halo of red flames of Love. The cosmicauroras drift around Him, like dark fringes on His coat ; His barefeet shine like snow on high peaks and His divine hands, hardened bywork, are strong and warm like the sun which gilds the vines on thehills.

His breath is like the surge of the great waves in the zodiacalstorms. Motionless, eternally, He is still to be found everywhere atthe same time ; one and multiple, every one of the seeds He sows inthe vast fields of the Father holds Him completely ; and,indefatigable, He bestows the superabundant emanations of His ownlife to the abysses, the atoms, the gods and the infusoria.

He, Love, maintains worlds from ever and forever ; He is the onethat, with His own hands, launches the streamer comets from theupper Abyss to the lower Abyss ; He speaks and a world is born ; Helooks, and here come running, the Death that frees and the Renewalthat beatifies. With Him, everything is Heaven, without Him, Edensare dull and frozen hells.

Invincible athlete, living pillar of the world, tireless pilgrimamongst the nebulae and the galaxies, magnificence of all theglories, virtue of all the sanctities, silent healer, triumpher overdeath, such is He in front of whom the mystic prostrates himself andon whose tracks he endeavours to walk.

If he works, he knows it well, it is because Jesus has built thisuniverse with His own hands ; if he writes, it is because the authorof the Book of Life has imparted to Him His Art ; if he gatherstogether harmonies, it is because the deep voice of the Wordcreates, animates, unifies and tunes to the voices of beings, fromthe howling of the demon to the melodious whisper of the seraph. Forthis unfathomable abyss of perfections, no walls, no mountains, novalleys, no precipices exist ; through Him the disciple can see,through Him he understands the mysteries and controls the spirits.

His gentleness is all powerful ; inexhaustible source of theImpossible, the Uncreated, the New, the Unheard-of, the Ineffable,the Unrevealed, in His left hand lie the ashes of vanished worlds, inHis right hand shine the seeds of future worlds. Master of theuniverses, benefactor of men, conqueror of hell, Jesus accepts fromthe disciple his clumsy and touching weakness ; in the heart whichrises so painfully towards Him, He sees only its sincerity. How thennot to love that God who makes himself our brother and who retainsof His greatness only what is necessary to give us confidence andleave us the merit of our effort ?

Such is, Gentlemen, the general aspect of mysticism, of mymysticism. We still have to study its discipline, its prerogativesand its aim.

PRACTICAL MYSTICISM

Father, that the Love wherewith you have loved me may be in them

(john XVII, 26)

I propose today to examine with you the practical part of mysticism :its methods, the prerogatives it confers, the goal it pursues. Thelandscape is immense. I shall none the less endeavour to forget noneof the sites whose contemplation may help to taste the savoury,pacifying magnificence of the whole.

And firstly, who is called to mysticism ?

The advice : Be perfect like your heavenly Father is perfect wasgiven to all the people as an irresistible conclusion to the Sermonon the Mount. Thus, in spite of what Origen, Clement of Alexandria,St. Jerome amongst others say, there are not two Christianities, onefor the masses and one for the elite ; or, rather, there should notbe, where the conduct of life and discipline are concerned, if theChristian community truly wanted to reduce itself to its originalsimplicity.

According to the formal doctrine of the Gospel, the disciple worksand waits ; he holds back from his reward; he accepts the wage whichhis Master offers him. The Spirit alone distributes knowledge of the

mysteries and the power of the miracles ; the ministers of the cultare initiators and operators only as far as that Spirit gives themthe faculty for this.

The striving towards perfection is thus the normal task of anyChristian. And if I place myself beyond the ecclesiastical viewpoint which after all is only one viewpoint amongst hundreds I can seeno reason for allowing any pre-eminence to the contemplative life.The word of Jesus about Mary sitting at His feet : She has chosenthe good portion did not apply to the way the two sisters behavedbut to their intentions.

The way of the contemplative crosses the highlands ; that of the manof action is in the canyons ; but both join at the peaks, there wherethe immutable re-descendSun of unitive Love perpetually magnifies anycreature and any object.

And, however hard to measure these two things are, I can still seeas many sufferings in the wear and tear of secular life as in thevigils of the life of austerity.

Thus everybody can become a mystic, but only at a certain time. Whenthe moral fibres have been stretched to breaking point, when thereactions brought about by our indiscretions become too violent, thehard granite of our hearts starts to crumble. We mistrust ourstrength; until then we have been climbing the lush foot-hills of themountain of the Self, we will redescend amongst the boulders andstart again from pride towards humility, from great joys towardsbitter sufferings, from glory towards anonymity, from wealth topoverty. The Precursor has risen in us ; his rough voice lashes ;remorse comes, then repentance. God has just conquered'; his narrowroyal road can be seen afar off; we enter the deserts of penitencewhere lie in wait for us the purifying agonies, the desolatingsolitudes, and finally that blessed death which immediately precedesthe rebirth into the Light and beatitude in the Spirit.

I hear some complaining that Heaven is so slow in coming. Who arethey ? The lukewarm; in a myriad of thoughts, they have hardly onethat goes towards God; whereas, indefatigable, the Friend looks afterthem to receive their faintest good intentions. Souls have takenthousands of centuries to come down to here ; why should they riseagain in just an instant ? Should they not rebuild in Light thefaculties they had in Darkness ? Should they not restore, at least apart of, the depredations they have committed, return the unlawfulbooty ?

Delicate work, difficult negotiations. Thus the masters of spirituallife brim over with advice. The great psychic task consists oftransmutating natural man into divine man.

Contrary to the adepts who perfect that natural man, the mysticsthink that, by exalting the faculties of the self, the self is exaltedtowards, transcendental egoism, a very inner pride, a very mentalavarice. Time cannot become eternity; finite dimensions cannotpractically pass to the infinite. So, the living gods whoseintelligence, power, sensitivity are millions of times stronger,greater, more exquisite than ours, some of these resplendent beingsonce were men ; they have progressed. But only Jesus can take acreature and give it rebirth in theabsolute Spirit.

Manou, Krishna, Fo-Hi, Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Lao-Tzu, Socrates,Mohammed sublimate and refine ; Jesus only regenerates and createsanew. The simple conversion of man's will is sufficient.

That conversion is repentance. A cherub has pierced the sick heartwith an arrow. Then man knows with despair that he has prostituted,disfigured, tortured that so beautiful image of which he should havebeen the faithful guardian ; he sees in himself an ignorant heartthat he would so much have wished to keep pure. He thus accuseshimself with the heartfelt sincerity of the guilty one bewailing hissin ; he gives himself over to the reprisals of the ministers ofimmanent Justice.

From now on, his existence will be expiation ; from the lowest worksof his flesh to the rarest palpitations of his mind, he will converteverything into a perpetual holocaust. Behold the face of pain andviolence of mysticism; it is its tears and its ravages that I wish toshow you today. Nowadays there is much void talk sensitivity hasturned into oversensitivity, and tolerance into scepticism.Gentleness is active only when it is poured by the hands of work andenergy. We will have many meetings with it later ; for the timebeing, let us study the face of effort.

This multiple effort is summarized in renunciation. It is the birthof divine offspring ; it is our soul giving birth to our mind.Certainly, the human personality is great and vast; but he onlyglorifies himself by where he touches Nothingness : by its self; andit knows nought of the winged essences which one day will take it tothe Absolute. Now, in the history of any soul comes an hour when thePromethean vulture alights on it; but it prefers a proud agony on thelonely rock to an insipid life in the populous plains.

However, pride is a powerful explosive. The harder the rock, thegreater the effect of dynamite on it; the stronger the soul, thefiercer the fight, the more its vitality increases. If the greatleaders of men want their disciples to suppress their joys, painsand desires, it is to invigorate the fibre of the character and togive more strength to the relaxation of the will. Is strength notimperturbable ?

However, if we are gods, in a certain sense, we are also and howmuch so thoughtless little children. The great, pompous words bywhich we build ourselves up to be heroes are like the wooden swordand the tin-plated armour thanks to which any little boy imagineshimself to be a general. Which man, amongst the most notorious ones,does not cavort around with a broom handle between his legs ?

On the other hand, to judge the emptiness of a thing, it isnecessary to have tried it out; this is what hardships,disappointments, anguish, triumphs, intoxication and despair are for.What Life asks from us is that we live. And the mystic, as he wantsto live with the most intense and deepest plenitude, accomplishesall acts with all his heart, with all his strength, with all hissoul and with all his thought , but he offers the fruits of it tohis brothers around him.

Universalize this attitude and you will see the great, compassionateface of Renunciation. Let me, to define its outline, reproduce thevigorous and pathetic image which an extraordinary painter has drawn.

Amongst the types of superior humanity that XVIth century Spainoffered the world, there is one which by the fire of his enthusiasmsurpasses by far all the conquistadors of the Ideal. This is thereformer of the Carmelites, John of the Cross. This little monk,wretched, puny, sickly, ragged, feeding on garbage, to his superiorsa disgrace, is one of those geniuses ahead of the rest of humanity bymany centuries. He did not go ahead carefully by successive stages;he did not purify himself by measured disciplines ; he did not light,one by one, the lamps of the inner sanctuary. No : everything in himwas sudden, welling up, final; he saw the Absolute and instantlyplunged therein ; he is about to leave and, behold, with a singlebeat of his wings he arrives ; he probed the terrible bareness of theprimordial Abyss and he shed everything at once; he had thepresentiment of eternal Light and, seizing it all at once, he dartedit to us.

A burning torch made of all the torches that burned in that land ofpassion, this monk summarizes the tenacity of the prehistoric Reds,the stern eagerness of the old rabbis, the pride of the Arabs. Hegoes beyond his homeland, he even goes beyond his religion. That iswhy I can talk freely of the catholic saint before an audiencecomposed of mixed religions. Let us follow in our thoughts thatcarmelite who speaks in a quiet voice the most burning words. The roadis not long ; but the landscape is fearsome.

Two ways, he says, are open to the common run of mankind. The firstone leads to happiness on earth ; the second one to paradise.

Give up rest, the pleasure of life, honours, the somewhat materialpleasures offered by civilization : all the moralists, even theheathens, teach that herein lies wisdom.

But our monk pushes us further ; he jolts us ; he wants us to drinkthe same wine that intoxicates him.

Renounce knowledge of the occult ; renounce, even where the resultsare demonstrably good, the acquisition of any power whatsoever;renounce the caressing sweetness of the angels' breath whichrefreshed your pious brow ; do not try to see messengers in thesoothing dreams of the night, to detect their intervention in theweft of your life ; give up the joys of intelligence, art and love ;give up holy ecstasy ; give up even the harmonious ma- magnificence ofparadise... Nothing, nothing, nothing and nothing ;

Renounce knowing anything by your intellect'-;

Renounce all comfort;

Renounce all society;

Renounce all certitude;

And finally,

Renounce even the hope of any reward.

And, from within his thatched cell, the carmelite with the burningeyes sheds on this fivefold darkness the faint lights of hope : You will be all the more as you would be less.

What a knowledge of man ! What a mastery of the springs of the will! What a sharp tang of the ashes which are the magnificent summits ofthe Universe facing the eternal hills ! Let us try to direct thedazzling sparks shaken by Brother John's torch in the caverns of thesoul.

Here is the principle-making unity of perception, intelligence andaction. Here is the intermingling of purifying, illuminating andunitive life which the theologians try to analyse. These are thesubtle demons which people the cloisters with delusions. This is,finally, the only plant which, in the cracks of the inner rock, bearsfruit; it is the attack on the self down to the most secret refuges.

One must break off from the attraction of thinking, from thesweetness of feeling, even from unpleasant objects. One must drivethe will when one is tired ; and to hold back the will when one isfull of strength. We must live as we imagine that Jesus would livewere he in our place ; not to perceive or allow ourselves that whichwould not tend to God ; in any case, adopt the most unpleasant, themost belittling, the most tiring way.

This is the school of real patience : inglorious virtue whichhowever allows us to resume control of ourselves. Usually, one is toostrong in thought and too weak in action. To accept what Heaven sendsus every day is half of the task. This requires trust in God and itis, after all, a very reasonable sentiment : What do we know of ourwishes, even the most familiar or the most noble ones ? What do weknow of our acts, even of the most heroic ones ? What do we know ofour supremacy ? Nothing. It is written : if you wish salvation,take up your cross and not : Have visions, perform miracles orbecome scientists.

The mystic studies or rather experiments with the nothingness ofhimself by means of a triple purification which St. John of the Crosscalls a threefold night. If your knowledge of symbolism enables youhere to establish a curious set of analogies, simply take care thatthese will be similar and not identical.

The first night is the most painful because it surprises. Thedisciple had called for Love and it is Death, its gloomy consort whicharrives. Misfortune, sadness, mockery, discouragement, sickness,indifference to incurable despairs, these are painful visitations,much more so than the mere end of this body. But these sufferingsbring salvation; they clothe our interior with splendour. Not onlyare they short-lived but they descend on us as a grace. Understand itwell, the mystic does not remain in that darkness ; it is like theembassy of Light and Happiness.

When we have lost all taste for Nature, men, ideas and ourselves, inthe depth of that night which seems to be infinite, the imperceptibleglimmer of dawn can be detected.

Here our merciless guide goads us on again. Go on, he says ; onforeseeing the ineffable visit, sacrifice it; beg your Master that Hereserves the blessing of His presence for those who do not yetsuspect its possibility; since you, yourself, know, through thecertainty of faith, the reality of this ecstasy. If the marvellousoccurs, accept it and be thankful in the most abject humility; if itgoes away, be thankful still, in the most plenary and smilingabnegation.

Oh ! Gentlemen, one must have experienced the wonder of the sensiblepresence of Heaven to appreciate the heroism of such a sacrifice.

***

Thus, will you in your minds, that is, in reality, look at God ?First of all, forget books. Immerse yourselves in life, maternal,

superabundant, fruitful. Listen with your heart to the beating tothe universal heart. Leave alone analyses and calculations ; youralgebra must be the lightning that lights the fire of Love; yourmicroscopes will be the anxieties of an ever watchful charity.

The most beautiful books of the saints seem removed from reality andspecious so much they sometimes complicate the Gospel. I dare almostsay that mystic theology is an invention of men. For God is simple ;He goes to the simple people; and the way to Heaven is simple.However, to assume the right to scorn books one must have read a lot.

What is forbidden is not knowledge, it is deification of theintelligence. The first of the intellectuals is Lucifer. True hebears a light; but it is frozen by pride ; it dies in the sensualityof being alone, and it resurges endlessly through a tenacious will todominate. The fallen archangel is the ideal of those who areintoxicated by the strength of their thought'; he was created forlife but he preferred its inverted image because he reigns therein,whereas in the other he would have to serve.

We will all, at some time, undergo the fearsome test of the tree ofscience. Let us prepare for it by understanding that God is not tiedto any form. Here is the dusk of the third night, the longest, themost devastating. To bear it, tell yourselves that it concerns aheart consumed by the wish for the Absolute.

Withstand that desire, says John of the Cross ; if your heart driesup in the deserts, bear it; suffer despair and paralysis of the will;it is your inner? most depths which are going to be ploughed up,turned upside down, torn asunder. All the temptations are rushingup, the most disgusting, the most seductive, the coarsest, the mostsubtle. Suffer them. Do not move. Accept the gusts. Look withinyourself without blinking. You believe that you are rejected by theFather because at this moment you see yourself as you are; your mindswoons in ever- recurring agonies of dismemberment, denudation,powerlessness ; it falls alive into hell. No man, no reading canhelp you ; remorse, inability to pray, to think, to act, overwhelm you.

This darkness is unimaginable to whomsoever has not experienced it.However, its ever-increasing horror reaches an extreme. The Masterwatches the disciple. And the latter, with all his failing strength,keeps his heart towards the Being to whom he has given himself.

In that moment of total silence gushes, like a smouldering fire, thevehement, inextinguishable Love. It burns everything in the poor,broken heart, in this precious heart on to which come down themerciful hands of the Friend, who has finally appeared.

Everything lights up in the inner sky, from the marrow of the bonesto the summit of the spirit. That Friend washes away any blemish andeven the memory of the blemish in this heart, carried before thedivine throne, where it will receive the supreme initiation : thebaptism of the Spirit.

Sometimes, and then it is a rare blessing, the Friend shows Himselfin person. Under the rags of the poor, under the uniform of theprince, beautiful as a seraph, disfigured by fatigue and martyrdom,it does not matter. His servant recognizes Him with certainty. Noknown joy can then attain the ecstasy of that meeting ; the spirit ofthe disciple shakes the bars of the corporeal prison ; he rushes intothe Master's arms ; he falters, he is reborn, he is transfigured.Overwhelming joy, immutable peace, limitless love. What can be saidof these mysteries, whose ceremonies take place where the gaze of thegods themselves cannot reach ?

But how many despairing vigils before the purple of that dawn ! Thepersevering searcher will know that dawn for it is written : Towards mid-night, behold the bridegroom comes , and further : Ishall come as a thief .

I squander repetitions, I know it. But there are thoughts againstwhich everything in ourselves rebels ; we must force ourselves toallow them in ; and those thoughts are the most fruitful ones in us.Some repetitions seem indispensable to me, and I have reasons toimpose them on you.

All the strange pictures before which we have just passed are onlythe veils of the real mystic drama. The prudent Church watches, evenwhen it seems to set her children free. Thus what is real mysticism ?Here I cannot answer clearly, because of certain proprieties, becauseof the incapacity to which the human language is reduced before thescenes of the everlasting Kingdom.

The effort demanded by the Gospel is an uprooting, a transplantation.Amongst the myriad of angels serving Christ, there are some who aresent to each disciple to change the weft of his destiny, to bringhim spiritual nourishment, to teach him, to care for him, toencourage him, in a word to remake all the cells of his physical,mental and psychic being. But the collaboration of the man they serveis indispensable to them. To sow in us the seeds Jesus entrusted tothem we must, by our will for asceticism, break the soil of our hearts.

The effects of these mysterious cares are not distinctly recorded inour conscience, especially at the beginning. They blend in with thehard-to-analyse feeling of the divine presence. A philosopher willfind proof of this presence; a devout man, through an ardentmeditation will build up an animated image (*). All these effortsattract the real Presence and make us able to bear it; but it cannotbe forced; it always remains independent, gratuitous. The bestformula for bringing about this wonderful sweetness is an abundantpractice of charity. A true disciple is already on the way to freedom; he sees God everywhere ; he does not believe Him to be governed byconditions of time or place. God, the carmelite of Avila used tosay, God is in the kitchen as well as in the cells or in the Oratory. Some recluses in Islam, India and China also believe this. Thisomnipresence is not abstract; it is real, biological, alive. Toexperience it, calls for constant courage ; but everyone can reach it.

The mystic is fed with special nourishment. Any creature sustainsitself in the environment to which it belongs ; Look at the plants,the animals, our fluidic body, our mental body. And it is the sameexternal environment by which it is formed and by which it repairsitself that each of our bodies perceives.

Thus, to feel God, even in a most tenuous way, our self must feed ondivine nourishment. Simple- mindedness is that manna, and renunciationprocures it; we have seen it just now. The disciple will thus pursuewhat society shuns : lack of success, scorn, difficulties. Tomiracles, mysteries, magnificence, he is indifferent; sacrificeconstitutes his life itself and love is its flame.

(*) Thus the commentaries on the Exercises by Saint Ignatius ofLoyola.

The mystic is the antithesis of the adept. He wants to conquernothing ; his freedom, his most intimate feelings, he forsakes them;he tries to become the most ignorant, weak and enslaved of allcreatures. Just as the Word immolates itself always and everywhere,just as the blood cells die to give back life to the dying cells ofthe muscles, the mystic, in his sphere, gives without respite. Hefinishes by not noticing that he is giving. Strength, time, money,tastes, affections, opinions, reputation : he offers them to anybodywho believes he can find some comfort or some profit in them; evenhis wish for eternal Beauty he would give to save any of hisbrothers from Darkness.

From where can man take such vigour ? It is his Friend who gives itto him. Remember that the servant of God lives, in an extraordinaryworld ; the world of Faith. He feels loved by God. Logically,practically, he adopts the series of assertions which faithpromulgates ; his God is a living, loving, tangible god who givesLife. He gives us the sense by which we can see Him. For if His lightdoes not penetrate, fill our souls, like the star of Bethlehem in theeyes of the shepherds, we will not believe. It is because God makesus see that the truth of faith remains invisible to the eyes of theintelligence.

Faith is also the sole instrument for mystic work. The disciple hasinvisible friends who become the more numerous as his visible friendsbecome rare. They are his old slaves ; they are all those extra-human creatures whom, during the centuries of his selfish evolution,he had submitted to his tyranny.

He has set them free and he makes it his duty to compensate themprogressively for the services they rendered him of old. Heunderstands that today he is only the result of his past; that hispresent personality is only an aggregate without any consistency,since it is built in the mirages of the black light and in theghosts of the self. On the contrary, according to how much thedisciple tries from now on to want nothing but the will of the Father,his acts become real, living, definitive, fruitful; his prayers becomereal, active, victorious.

Little by little, he enters a world of glory where the feelingswhich are here called charity, faith, humility, resignation, goodnessare tangible, real nourishing substances, organized forms, living

beings, complete societies of unknown individualities. His mindbecomes a favourite residence for certain of these lofty creaturesand, little by little, his whole person, including his body, changesthe quality of his life, moves away from the obscure attractions andsettles in the realm of light, purity, peace.

I wanted to tell you in more detail about the prerogatives of themystic. I lack the time. Besides, the next talks will provide all theopportunities for bridging this gap. We must summarize.

We have only described the general characteristics of the mysticpath. Every pilgrim there retains his original physiognomy ; everydisciple is a world apart. But the clear feeling of the divine linksthem all. Something in them goes beyond human nature and makes themout of place amongst the geniuses by whom our race is honoured andenlightened. Their viewpoint is inaccessible, their gaze is special,their motive is beyond common aims. They are unaware of whateverybody knows or claims to know ; but they know what everybody elsedoes not know : that the Father sends His son wherever He is asked.And their existence is a continuing request.

The privileges of the disciple are not a morbid inequality, butnatural bloomings helped by moral discipline and engendered by thedirect intervention of the Word. The extraordinary phenomena appearonly as fleeting accidents ; so Saint Theresa, having reached thesummit of divine union, no longer experiences ecstasy; Ignatius ofLoyola retains the clear feeling of the divine presence while talkingwith a cardinal over administrative business. Those I have known inpossession of the keys to the Treasure of Light were good family menwhom nothing set apart from their neighbours.

This robust psychic health, this constant mastery of the self, thisadmirable common sense, this true goodness, always sink their rootsinto a passionate soul. The mediocre and the meek never produceanything. Francis of Assisi dreamed of glory ; Loyola, who should notbe judged on his work altered by secret interests, was quick-tempered; Francesco di Borgia was an ambitious man ; I could give you similarexamples by the dozen. Physiological temperament predisposes tovisions, to ecstasies ; but essential union remains independent of thenature of the person and possible to all mentalities.

So, mysticism is reached only by practising charity, resignation,trust in God, humility. Such a method is too simple in the eyes ofthe crowd; honestly, it is a very hard method. Eyes that can gazeinto the sun are rare. The mass can understand and use only outwardand ritual religion. Some, who believe they are more intelligent,try to conquer esoterism. The Father considers with the same smilethe efforts of all His children. To all, even to those who turn theirbacks to Him, He dispenses a light proportional to the weakness oftheir organs, an assimilable food, a task that is within their powers.

It is this uninterrupted adaptation of the essential Truth to ourintelligence, this answer endlessly replied to our questions, whichconstitute the silent and very occult descent of the Holy Spirit toearth. The interpreters of this supreme Initiator are many ; butthey are often not up to their task. His most active agents are notthose whose names impose themselves on the memory of men, even in theelite phalanx of the mystic writers. He, who is praised by everyone,is only great according to Nature; he, who is persecuted by everyone,is probably great in the eyes of God.

The water of divine Truth flows on to the earth from two sources :the Gospel and the Conscience. If they do not quench our thirst, aswe would hope, it is because the darkness within us, drinking longdraughts from them, corrupts them by its sole contact. Ourconscience thus needs comfort, and Heaven wanted nothing to befalsified in the only evidence which remains to us of his Angel Jesus: in the Gospel.

When I say that the Gospel contains all initiations, written andoral; that it encloses the wisdom of the Chings, the Vedas, theAvestas, the Pyramids and the Torah, the scientists will smileincredulously. And in effect, the assertion seems rash on my part, Iwho have no pretension as to science or esoterism, I am sure of whatI claim; and perhaps you will contemplate with surprise, in thecourse of these talks, the perspectives opened up by such a simpleand benign word from the Friend of creation.

Here are the last strokes of the outline I had promised you. Takeinto consideration all of these frescos, no matter how imaginary theymay seem. Think not only about your own culture, but about the needsof the time we live in.

When an epoch is populated with clairvoyants, prophets andmiracle-workers, you must not despise it a priori. Many diverse causesare involved. The powers from Below may project a light, as brightto our ignorant eyes as the powers from Above. The earth is notisolated ; it is in ceaseless communication with other stars ; it isa caravanserai ; what is there to be amazed at if, from time totime, the souls who come to work down here, come from the realms ofmagic, of occult science, of spiritual vices ?

Lost amongst the crowd of the curious, lovers of the occult,ambitious of secret societies, those proud of being followers, thereare nobler souls who, after a detour into the material sciences orinto esoterism, finally return to the bracing air and the healthysun of God's Kingdom. In this confusion of seekers, the sign by whichthe genuine one can be recognized, is faith in Jesus-Christ. Whateverthe mistakes of those who have gathered in the shadow of the cross,they always come to repentance ; they are never irrevocably wrong;they never take the left-hand path for more than a few centuries ;they may be dazzled by prestige for they are not safe from seduction;but they retain true concepts on the capital points.

Heaven always takes care of sincere hearts. Let us look for truthwith all our physical strength, with all our cerebral power, with allour love; soon it will show itself to us as identical with the Word,it will grow within us and will lead us to the Father.

I have shown you heights, Gentlemen. Nobody can reach them at thefirst attempt. Even if our heart is set ablaze in a second, it takesa certain time for the fire to spread to the rest of our being. Thus,let not these heroisms I have talked about dishearten you. It is thequality of the effort that is worthwhile and not its quantity.

I am telling you, the Father does not let the least sacrifice gowithout an immediate reward. The most fleeting impulse brings theangels closer to us. The least costly charity, if it is forgetful ofitself, shines a brightness within us. Let us live henceforward inthe eternal; every one can rise to it; and we will receive all theconfirmations and all the consolations.

CHRISTIC INITIATION

No man puts a piece of new cloth unto an old garment ...

(matthew ix, 16)

It is rather rash for someone who has only one hour to attempt thestudy of such a vast subject. But are all subjects not beyond ourlimitations ? And can they not, all of them, lead us to an unknownpanorama of the dazzling summits of Truth ? Furthermore, the subjectof this talk will allow me to give my opinion on several subjectsthat I consider essential. More and more, as the years go by, thestruggle, in the occult worlds, becomes more tumultuous ; subtletraps are placed and tempting baits are offered to the seeker at allthe bends in the path. To be able to judge, decide, and choose yourway, you must know all the opinions. Naturally, I believe I know thetruth ; the theories of eclecticism, which are the fashion nowadays,have no sense. For why should anyone speak if he believes he ispropagating errors ? If the most absolute conviction does not driveus, our voice is dead ; it is a useless and vain noise.

But I do not want, nor should I, to sweep anyone along by myself. Ifit is really about Truth that I am speaking, it is not I who shallmake you recognize it, Truth itself will speak, in the very depth ofyour hearts, the invincible, definitive and certain words. In therealm of spiritualism, the roads are so many, the road forks sofrequent they have barely been covered over the last decades thatweariness overcomes us, that the desperate wish to see a light, tohear at last the comforting voice of a helping Friend consumes us !And the deeper one goes into spiritualism, the more swiftly come thislanguor ant this thirst.

Do not be shocked if I come to you as possessing this Certainty, asseeing that Light and as knowing that Friend. If I considered them astemporary, I would not have the right to later on assert certainaxioms. Thus, you will be good enough not to see scornful attacks inwhat I am about to tell you ; I just believe that nowadays therespectable name of tolerance is wrongly attributed to eclecticism anddilettantism. All opinions are respectable, all opinions contain apart of truth; but those which go beyond the level of intelligenceare no longer a mixture of false and true ; they are, because oftheir stature, either completely false or completely true.

Where can the infallible criterion be found ? In Knowledge, answers

ancient Wisdom ; in Love, answers Christie Wisdom. We are going toconfront the teachings of our Jesus with those of His humanpredecessors, from the four viewpoints of Initiation, Knowledge,Morality and utter Perfection ; and we will try, if God wills, toconclude in a few words on the definitive choice of the spiritual path.

First of all, what is Initiation ? It is the entirety of works thatrender man conscious of a way of universal life other than that onthe physical, earthly level. Hence the neophyte of Hellenism andChristianity, hence the dwidja of Brahmanism. Therefore, it isnecessary to die on the material level and to be born again to aninvisible life which nevertheless is real, objective, substantial.

As the invisible levels are countless, so initiations are countlessalso. Some are vain, just phraseology ; others are speculative, othersstill are practical. In our era, only the frameworks of the ancientmystic disciplines remain. So freemasonry shows a rather completepicture of the initiation of the Pyramids ; Catholicism is arejuvenation of Brahmanism, especially as far as the liturgy isconcerned. The somewhat exclusive European brotherhoods do not keeptheir promises ; the contemporary self-styled Rosicrucians knownothing of Helias Artista. He who has read all the books and whowants to go further believes he must go to those faraway countrieswhere, so tradition asserts, the last adepts live in silence.However, Truth dwells in the depth of our being, in a silentexpectation which is infinitely more beautiful and more complete,immutable, eternal, beatifying. But let us leave all that.

The secret science of matter is alchemy; the science of power ismagic ; that of man is psychurgy; and that of the extra-earthlyessences is the Ancients' Theurgy. These four degrees of Knowledgeexisted always ; even today they are being disseminated in certaincentres in China, India, Persia, Arabia and northern Africa. Theymust be wanted and overcome; they are not given; the road is shownand the candidate progresses at his own risk and according to hisstrength. How many tales I could tell you on this subject; how manysaddening stories of marred lives given up to some mania because oftackling guardians who were too strong. Read Zanoni by BulwerLytton and especially the magnificent Axel by the genialVilliers de 1'Isle-Adam ; you will see exactly how littlecompassionate are those possessors of the secret of science towardsthe failures of the candidates.

On the contrary, Christ says : Break not the bruised bough; snuffout not the candle. This is because men, no matter how wise theyare, have no forbearance, because they always feel themselves to beslaves of Time. Even those admirable adepts, whose little knownnames have a halo of superhuman prestige, whose heroic persistenceand deep abnegation know how to persevere for lifetimes in the sameresearch, whose personal ambition is dead and whose being, by sheerwillpower, is no more than the incarnation of a metaphysicalprinciple, those gods in fact, they know the fear of failure.

But the Father, His Angel, the Son, and their mutual Glory, theSpirit, possess the quiet patience of the all-mighty and of eternity.

Creatures can only teach from the outside to the inside ; theinstructor must impress one of the pupil's senses ; an adept or agenius teaches us by talking to the double, to the astral body, or tothe mental body; it is always through a cover of the self that thehuman initiator will reach this self. Only the Father and those Heassigns can speak directly to the self. So Christie initiation isessential, one, internal, supreme; that is why it cannot be overcomebut only received.

Each religion contains an esoterism, but it is not esoterism whichexteriorises a religion ; it is religion, or rather some of itsrepresentatives who draw a secret doctrine from the general doctrine.Religions, in a certain sense, represent the highway, easy, yes, butlonger; initiations are the shortcuts, the smuggler's paths, painful,dangerous, but which lead faster to the summits of immaculate snowwhere the soul can soar towards the Infinite.

Or rather, the same applies to all religions, except to theChristian religion. In effect, as the keys of the Gospel mysteriesare, not in hieroglyphs, but in the student's heart, so the word ofChrist is the highway or the messenger according to the pilgrim'sstrength, according to whether he is moderate or violent. Violence here is not at all the intentional effort of the adept ; it issomething so beyond the reasonable mental categories, it is such asuperhuman effort, an abnegation so absolute that I fear to shock youby giving you an example of it; I fear to not be able to make youunderstand this bewildering intoxication which throws toward death

the hearts set alight by the torch of Love. The greatest poets fallshort when expressing certain ecstasies ; all the more would I bepresumptuous to want to describe them. If one of you has thatviolence in himself, he will surely find alone the opportunity touse it.

To initiate oneself is an important affair. It is not sufficient tosay or believe that one is Rosicrucian ; It is not sufficient tobreak bread ceremoniously, to discourse on symbols, to be successfulin a few alchemical experiments, nor to act intentionally from adistance. Let us be wary of literature ; nowadays, the least authorhas himself called dear Master and the least amateur in occultismjust Master .