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From Intellect to Intuition - Chapter Seven - Intuition and Illumination
The way to that freedom has always been understood by the Christian Church and is called the "Way of Purification." It entails the purifying or rarefaction of the lower body nature, and the wearing away of the veil of matter, which hides the light within each human being. The veil must be pierced and there are many ways of doing it. Dr. Winslow Hall in Illuminanda tells us of three ways, the way of Beauty, the way of the Intellect, and the way of the Soul. Through beauty and the search for the reality which has produced it, the mystic forces himself behind the outer form and finds the good and the wonderful. - Hall, W. Winslow, M.D., Illuminanda, page 93. Dr. Otto deals with this in his [153] exegesis of the faculty of "divination," that capacity to recognize with awe and wonder the essential holy and beautiful behind all forms. - Otto, Rudolf, The Idea of the Holy. His chapter is well worth careful consideration. Thus the mystic "divines" (through the divine within himself) the reality which the veil of matter hides. This is the way of the senses. Then there is the way of the intellect, of the intense focusing of the mind upon a problem and upon the form aspect in order to arrive at the cause of its being. In this way, the scientists have made so much progress and have penetrated so far within the veil that they have arrived at a something which they call "energy". Dr. W. Winslow Hall defines the third way, as follows: "The way of the soul is at once the oldest and the widest of the three ways... for the soul does more than pierce the veil of matter; it identifies itself both with the veil and with the Reality behind the veil. Thereby soul and veil and Reality are felt to be one." - Hall, W. Winslow, M.D., Illuminanda, page 94. We are thus brought back to the idea of Wholeness and of Oneness with the Universe, which we touched upon earlier, and Dr. Hall adds that "I would define illumination as an overwhelming sense of oneness with The Whole." - Hall, W. Winslow, M.D. Illuminanda, page 21. Let us attempt at this point to express as simply as possible where our conclusions have led us, and see what has happened to the man who has carried forward his education from the stage of memory training and the grasping of information to that of [154] a conscious use of the intellect and from then on into the realm of the conscious knower. Through concentration and meditation he has achieved a large measure of mind control and learned how "to hold the mind steady in the light." The consciousness then slips out of the lower self (out of the realm of awareness of the brain and the mind) and the mystic passes into the contemplative state, wherein he functions as the soul, and realizes himself as a Knower. The nature of the soul is knowledge and light, and its realm of existence is the kingdom of God. All the time that this identification with the soul continues, the mind is held steady and refuses all response to contacts emanating from other states of awareness, such as those coming from the emotional and physical worlds. Absorbed in union with God, transported into the "Third Heaven" (like St. Paul) and contemplating the beatific vision of Reality, he knows nothing, sees nothing, hears nothing except the phenomena which are appropriate to the world in which he is living. But in that world, he hears, and sees, and knows; he becomes aware of Truth, unveiled and freed from the glamor which the veil of matter casts upon it; he listens to the Wisdom which is stored up in his own unfathomable soul, and is that Wisdom itself, for subject and object no longer exist for him: he is both and knows it. He enters into the Mind of God - that universal storehouse of knowledge whose door stands ever open to those individual minds which can be sufficiently quieted and controlled to permit [155] of their visioning the door and passing through it. And still, throughout all this transcendental process, the mind has been held steady in the Light. Presently, however, the contemplative state comes to an end, and the mind is swept into a renewed activity, an activity based on its reaction to the light, and on its power to register and record the information with which the soul seeks to dower it. The energies of the soul have been outward-going into the world of divine realities. Now the focus of attention changes, and Deity turns its eyes upon the waiting instrument, and seeks to impress upon it as much of its Wisdom and Knowledge as it is capable of receiving and reflecting.
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