into the mystic ...

As many faiths, so many paths. All paths lead to God. --“If one takes any twig of a spreading bush it will be quite correct to say that from twig to branch, and from branch to limb, and from limb to trunk, every part is derived from the root, but none of them is exclusively so derived. To say of any particular twig that it is the only true twig would be absurd.” (*Tolstoy, Introduction to an Examination of the Gospels, 97)

The communal unity of the sons and daughters of men, the love of all men and women among themselves, is not an aim towards which we should strive-- but rather, this unity, this love of people for one another, is our natural condition into which all children the world over are born daily. To live towards an ideal consisting of anything less than this is truly an infringement upon our natural, inborn propensity for peace, goodness, and love of all mankind-- our true, innate likeness to God.

The reality of God is revealed to us everywhere, and is always immediately accessible. To consciously know God is a constituent part of our natural endowment from birth. The God which we ourselves ultimately are can be found both in the intimate depths of Who and What we are as well as in the everyday world of life all around us.

Wakeful daylight consciousness is itself a mystic theophany of the grandest and most epic proportions-- for it is the awakening of the Spirit from its long slumber in matter, the opening of the eyes of God upon the material beauties of His manifest Creation. God is in no way hidden; it is only that our eyes have not yet learned to see properly exactly Who and What is right before us, everywhere and everywhen, here and now. God has no need to be revealed --by the prophets, the Master Jesus, or anyone else at all-- because His Presence is everywhere close and familiar to all men and women (if they had the eyes to see, and the ears to hear).

God is not, as some modern theologians have claimed, ‘Wholly Other’-- God is the Self and the Whole of All. And God is most definitely not, as others have proclaimed, 'dead' at all -- God is Life itself, the livelihood that is all around us, the Life in which we live, the Movement by which we move, the very Being of our own innermost beings.

The true function of religion is not to provide any codified system of ‘truths,’ but rather to divinize its initiates. … In order to be truly religious, one must strive to recapture and relive the experiences that led to the founding of one’s chosen religious tradition; one must work wholeheartedly -- and open-mindedly-- toward uncovering the metaphors germane to one’s tradition that point to the deeper Reality they serve to symbolize and embody.

True religion is therefore not a private matter of prayerful piety-- it is a mystic sensitivity that actively recognizes and responds to the natural pulse of the Living God in each and every aspect of the natural world, the theophanic thrill of living that opens our eyes to the true nature of Reality everywhere in and around us always. ...