High Mysticism by Emma Curtis Hopkins
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – Repentance – The Silent Edict
From the Divine Heights there has been vouchsafed to all ages One Heavenly Edict. All the everlasting pages struck off by men under the white flames of inspiration, have been the result of knowing or unknowing obedience to the Soundless Mandate of the Lofty One inhabiting Eternity:
“Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.”
A clearly unified instruction runs in almost verbatim language through all the sacred or charmed books of the world. It is the live wire insulated by absurd dogmas and ungodly imaginations. It is the footpath of the immortals. It is the mirific science. Whoever can read its supernal lines, undiverted by their company of errors, is in the way of salvation. It is that swift, subtle faculty possessed by us all, whereby we look whithersoever we will, to the Deity ever beholding us, or to the dust beneath, without the aid of our physical eyes. “Thou canst not behold Me with thy two outer eyes, I have given thee an eye divine.”
— Upanishads.
This fleet, subtle sense is our incorporeal eye. It is the one faculty of our immortal soul which we continually make use of. It is the creature made subject to maya, not willingly, but in the hope of redemption of the body, as Paul wrote to the Roman Christians.
The exaltation or lifting up of this sense toward that Vast, Vast Countenance ever shining toward us as the This looking faculty antedates mind, and though offering itself to the service of mind, transcends it in achieving power. For it is primarily what we most see, and not what we most think, that constitutes our presence, power and history.
“It is not possible for anything to take place save in connection with an onlooker,” reads an inspired line in the Vedic Hymn.
If we exalt this swift sense, or look unto Him whose ever repeated mandate is, “Behold Me, behold Me,” we receive back over the track of our vision tonic and viability to the mind, endurance and beauty to the body, joy and fearlessness to the emotions, integrity and intrepidity to the moral character.
All that we think is made up of the objectives toward which we have directed this deathless, achieving visional power. All that this posit we call body exhibits is the set of accretions that has come over the inner visional track.
“That thou seest, that thou beest.”
We collect sadness and depression from directing this mystic eye toward human faces. Because of this manner of attention did Solomon weep so loudly his retainers trembled. Sanity and soundness are the characteristics of the mind of those who do not project their prehensile vision toward objects that gratify the five outer senses. They who see toward the Heights are invulnerable to honor or contempt, praise or dispraise. Their probity, sincerity and courage lapse not.
“For that thou seest, man,
That too become thou must;
God if thou seest God,
Dust if thou seest dust.”
With closed eyes, still let the gaze be heavenward; there on the fair unspeakable Heights is the home whence we all came hitherward to view the ways of destruction:
“Thou turnest man to (see) destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.” — Psalm of Moses.
To look upward with the mystic eye is to start on the saving Tao. “Look unto Me, and be ye saved — I will turn away your captivity from before your eyes — when ye turn unto Me seeking My face,” declared the two great prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah.
“With the flash of one hurried glance I attained to the vision of that which Is. And Thou didst not give me any peace till Thou wast manifest to the eye of my soul,” cried St. Augustine of Tagaste, in one of his illuminated moments.
The farther toward the celestial zenith we send the limitless eye, the deeper is our assurance of our own divine origin and transcendent Selfhood. For truly the Highest is the Nearest, the most distant yet most present, and we are in His image.
“The Highest and the Inmost are one,” declared the two great mystics, Behmen, and Hugo of St. Victor.
“Look up, my comrade!
When on the glances of the upturned eye
The plumed thoughts take travel, and ascend
Through the unfathomable purple mansions,
Treading the golden fires, and ever climbing,
As if t’were homewards winging — at such time
The native soul, distrammelled of dim earth,
Doth know herself immortal, and sits light
Upon each temporal place.” — Violenzia.
“If then there be any incorporeal eye, let it come forth from the body, and to the Vision of the Beautiful. Let it fly up and be lifted into air; not figure, not body, not ideas, seeking to contemplate, but that rather the Maker of these: The Quiet, The Serene, The Stable, The Invariable, The Self, all things and only The One; The Like to Itself, which neither is like to another.”
— Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria.
In high moments of recognition of the light that transcends reason, man transcends himself, and writes more wisely than he knows.
“No man when in his wits attains prophetic truth and inspiration, but when he receives the inspired word his intelligence is enthralled.” — Plato.
Lifting the inner eye to Him who is above reason lights the two outer eyes to see the world in a new aspect, gives the tongue new descriptions of the world, and tips the pen with fadeless phrases. And that descending light, compelling transformation of all surrounding objects, is the mystic river of which the angel told Ezekiel, “. . . everything shall live whithersoever the river cometh, and everything on its banks shall be healed.”
The healing of the mind to think supernal truth waits upon that light which only the uplifted mystic eye can bring to mind. The transfiguration of matter waits upon the flawless ecstasy which only the mystic eye can find. Order and beauty hide their sublime mysteries till on the Tao’s magic path the tireless vision speeds toward the Origin of beauty and order.
“In heaven there is laid up a pattern which he who chooses may behold, and beholding, set his own house in order. The time has now arrived at which they must raise the eye of the soul to the Universal Light which lightens all things. With the eye ever directed toward things fixed and immutable which neither injure nor are injured — these they cannot help imitating. But I quite admit the difficulty of believing that in every man there is an eye of the soul which by the right direction is re-illumined, and is more precious far than ten thousand bodily eyes.”
— Plato.
As down the sides of Hermon, the unapproachable, trickle cooling dews to refresh the hot valleys, so falls a reviving miracle of newness upon the children of earth when they penetrate beyond the stars to Him who proclaimeth forever, “Behold, I make all things new.”
As balm from the trees of old Gilead in far past days soothed the hurts of the Jews, so the Dayspring from on high doth visit them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide their feet into the way of peace. Nothing we can do, or say, or think can quench the downfalling reconciliation and empowerment, the preserving and healing, while to the High Edict responsive we lift up our eye to the hitherward smiling Countenance of the Lover ever with us, the Lord of Hosts His name.
He, abiding as the Great Different gives peace which nothing can invade. His benedictions confer resistless might. Therefore, “Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God. . .”
This deathless visional faculty is our only achieving power. It is not dependent upon thoughts of mind or bodily actions, though to them it yields itself day by day in omnipotent servitude. Left to itself it flies away to the Elysian Fields, its rightful resting place.
So eagerly did the untaught seers of the past long to have this immortal faculty find its rightful direction, they willingly practiced mortifications of the body, denied self, affections as well as appetites, to give it freedom. But it asks no such sufferings on the part of the mind or body to give it power to tame and glorify them. It asks only their will that it go homeward.
It is the immaculate of us. Though age and decrepitude have cramped the flesh, senility has sapped the mind, and sickness has blinded the eyes and thickened the ears, yet the wrecked old man lifts up his sightless eyes and smiles. With the immortal and ever young mystical eye he beholds things celestial. And then he drops the robe of clay, hastening to be identified with his joy-giving vision. Had the eye been lifted to the mountains of help in earlier days, he would have transfigured and renewed his flesh, instead of leaving it to the moth and the sod.
All the other faculties in daily use are maculate. The mind can become vitiated, the body can become diseased, but though this all-accomplishing sense can bring back on its beams the nature of that upon which it may be stayed, itself has received no tinge of similitude . . . the same out of itself, the same in itself — a-se-ity.
With this all-accomplishing sense we are to repent-to return. “. . . but now (God) commandeth all men everywhere to repent,” declared Paul to the Athenians.
“Repent . . . and turn away your faces from all your abominations” was Ezekiel’s admonition.
“The eye of the soul, which is literally buried in an outlandish slough, is by right science lifted upwards.”
— Plato.
And this is that return which hath divine reward: “Return unto me, and I will return unto you,” said the heavenly voice to Malachi.
The mind cannot return, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” The footsteps of flesh cannot return, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.”
“For these are but the distance of the strengthless from the Stronger, the short-lived from the Eternal, and the phantasy from the Like-to-Itself-Only.”
— Hermes Trismegistus.
But the heavenly vision rests her fleet splendor in the high Source from which the flawless and immortal soul sprang forth:
“I have given thee an eye divine with which to behold My power.”
— Upanishads.
By turning the celestial faculty toward the heights we are taken above the thought circuit to the watch:
“Watch ye therefore” — “What I say unto you I say unto all, WATCH.” — “Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when He cometh shall find watching.”
All miracle workers have practiced the principle of watching. Moses, the genius in leadership, speaks unto the nation of slaves:
“Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew to you.” For the “Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.”
And this is forever, inevitably, the prayer of the supernally inspired leader of men: “Look down from Thy holy habitation, from heaven, and bless Thy people. . . .” And they shall pass in safety through Red Seas of difficulty, though all the powers of mind and matter oppose them.
And this is forever the joyous chant of the liberated people: “He looked on our affliction, and our labor, and our oppression, and He brought us forth out of darkness, with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm.”
Elisha the seer stood with gaze transfixed toward a seraphic host in the mountains round about Samaria. “They that be with us are more than they that be with them,” he said to his servant who watched with him. And though the king of Syria had sent soldiers to slay the lonely prophet, they were not able to hurt him, for mystic defense transcends the sharpest swords.
Is it not promised: “I will give power unto My two watchers” — new powers, miraculous powers!
St. Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, rose to almost supreme power in his church, by persistently gazing toward the twelve stars in the diadem of Mary in Paradise. He urged others to do likewise: “If the winds of temptation blow fiercely upon you, look to these stars. If you find yourselves in a sea of trouble, look to these stars. If you are tossed on the waves of pride, ambition, envy, look to these stars, and invoke the name of Mary.”
Earlier, Hosea, making note of such as St. Bernard, cried, “They return, but not to the Most High.”
Savonarola pictured before his inner eye a monastery for a holy resting place from turmoil and strife. Its monks should all be men come not to be ministered unto, but to minister. And it is recorded that so influential did the outcome of his vision grow, that great citizens begged to join the Dominicans, and riotous processions, idle songs and fightings ceased on the streets of beautiful Firenze. With his inner eye on the commanding form of a warning visitant from the shores of mystery, Savonarola drew order out of chaos, and established a new form of government in the city of the Medici. In a time of dearth and danger, loaded wheat ships arrived, and the enemy’s troops were not able to reach the people under the protecting ministry of Savonarola the seer.
All the forces of the universe cooperate with vision toward beatific ideals. It is not till the eye descends to prowl among the viciousness and crimes of men that war and martyrdom succeed. So descending did Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed, forget to show the glories of the heavenly land, and he perished in exile. Jeremiah lamented so profoundly over the mistakes of the Jews that he was martyred in Egypt. Elisha never lost his high watch, and even his bones were life-giving. His whole pathway on earth was strewn with miracles. For no weapon formed against the comrade of angels can prosper — radiating forever what he assimilates.
Hufeland secretly eyed the unspoilable region of spiritual health in his diseased patients, and they recovered.
The Hidden Actual readjusted the molecules and atoms of the manifest, to harmonize with Hufeland’s untaught visional practice. Gordon noted that those who reported to him their procedure while demonstrating miraculous cures, mentioned seeing with their inner eye some gesture or image symbolic of, or identical with, the healing about to show forth. Maxwell watched the fleet, ethereal light which he discovered filling all quarters of the universe, and he declared that by watchful use of it the ailing among mankind might all be made whole.
The difference between the great men whose names have attracted the attention of mankind, as to endurance in memory, and strength in perpetuating their doctrines, has depended upon the uplift they have given to the hidden eye whereby the mind receives elation or depression.
Socrates came not to teach any positive doctrine, but to convince man of the ignorance of his mind. His highest science got no higher than that men act wrongly because they form erroneous judgments. Upon being told that he was the wisest man, he said it probably was true, for he knew enough to know that he knew nothing, while no one else seemed to know that much. The ignorance of a man’s mind is a dark zone to fix the all-collecting eye upon. No joyous inspiration fulgurates from that Ethiopic field.
Gautama Buddha cried, “I will now seek out a noble law, unlike the worldly methods known to men. I will oppose the scourges of the world, old age and death, disease and poverty.” And at last he proclaimed that in order to be blest, man must keep eight conditions, and the first is right view: “For it is not possible for anything to take place save in connection with an onlooker.” Thirty thousand miracles of achievement followed in his wake, and one-third of the human race hold him and his sayings in loyal reverence to this day.
The world-conquering Jesus crowned the doctrine of the exaltation of the supernal sense with immediate demonstrations:
“Father, I will that they may behold my glory.” And multitudes came unto Him, and He healed them every one. To the blind man with the clay upon his eyes He said, “Look up.” To all people in times of calamity, He said, “Look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.”
This is the arcane way. It is high mysticism, whether knowingly practiced, as science, or unwittingly and spontaneously exercised, as inspiration. By science, which is the knowledge of invariable orderly processes, inspiration follows speedily. By inspiration, to which great works are easy and masterful deeds are simple, the science comes slowly following after.
The mystics of all ages have trusted to their inward eye. While turning it to behold their own personal emotions or affairs they have wrought out no beauty of action or quickening language. While directing it toward the unnameable and undescribable King of Kings, they have astonished their own age and all ages, by their miraculous performances and noble aphorisms.
What made the shoes wax not old upon the feet of the Israelites forty years in the wilderness? Their gaze was ever toward the High Imperishable One, and even their garments partook of His unspoilable beauty.
What saved Hezekiah from dying, when even the powerful Isaiah had declared, “Thou shalt die, and not live”?
His outer eyes with their dimming sight were following the uplook of that sense which we are all in constant use of for life or for decay. So swiftly did the life river come rushing down that flume of immortality that even the death-dealing Isaiah felt it, and turned to cry, “Thou shalt live!” He must now speak in tune with Hezekiah’s resistless vision, for in the pathway thereof there is no death.
What turned Jacob from destruction, when reasonable terrors shook him all night long, by the Jabbok Brook? “I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.”
What lifted Job out of his boils, and set his feet in joyous security, at a time when the children of fools and base men held him in derision, and the days of affliction had taken hold upon him? “My witness is in heaven, and my record is on high.” What saved Daniel from the jaws of famishing lions, giving him answer to the lamentable voice of the king, as from within a calm tabernacle? He had watched the untrammeled God and His fleet angels.
Turning his gaze from the faces of men to his own divine ego, Julius Caesar wrought over his fellow-men like a god. “It does amaze me,” cried Cassius to Brutus, “that a man of such feeble temper should so get the start of this majestic world!” Though Caesar’s gaze be high, yet it is not to the Most High, the Hebrew Hosea would explain. High mysticism calls for highest uplook toward the glory of the Highest.
“Thou canst upraise thyself by thyself,
and rouse thyself by thyself;
for self is the lord of self, self is the refuge of self.”
— The Bhikshu.
Cervantes beheld with persistent inner eye the image of his mad Don Quixote, and ended his life in a madhouse. Why not, if “that thou seest, man, that too become thou must”?
Elisha set his watchful eye toward the Cause of Elijah’s greatness, and not toward the prophet speeding starward in the fiery chariot. “Where is the God of Elijah?” he calls, and down over his fingers fall curative ethers that change poisoned pottage to nutritious food; into his breath runs quickening fire that the dead cannot resist; salt takes on a new savor, bread and corn forget their limitations, at the new tones of his voice.
“He that looketh toward Me, though least among men, his words shall be regnant.”
And also,
“Me whoso worships,
he, completely transcending the qualities,
is able to become the Supreme.”
— Bhagavad Gita.
A meek man prayed, “Show me, then, 0 King of all those mystics of superhuman powers, Thy Exhaustless Self.”
And the meek man cried, “I behold Thee! Thou art greater than Brahma! Thou art of infinite valor and immeasurable power! Thou art the Primeval God! Thou art the Knower! There is none equal to Thee! 0 Thou with majesty unimaged! I behold Thee on all sides!”
By vision toward Transcendence the meek man became awake to Immanence. Omnipresence is but the garment of the Highest. None can find the Tao by way of discoursing of Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Omniscience. By the uplift of the inner eye toward the countenance of Him that weareth these garments, the two outer eyes are baptized with high altar fires to see the glowing land of splendor through which we ever walk, the finished work of One who saith, “Behold Who hath created.”
As the mystically opened eyes behold the everywhere- completed splendor, the shadows of disorder are not remembered. But this glowing land yields not its sights to him whose mystic eye has not brought back over the pathway of obedience to the Heavenly Edict the soft alkahests that dissolve the films of blindness.
Ideal philosophy strikes the lofty note of the Sacred Edict when it forgets to maunder and prowl among reasonings begotten of unlifted vision. Now and then its voice rises like the sound of an invisible choir on the airs of night: “Keep your eye on the Eternal and your intellect will grow. Honor and fortune exists for him who remembers that he is in the presence of the High Cause.”
The Egyptian thrice-great priests of Amen Ra caught the soundless teachings of the heights: “He is by Himself, yet it is to Him that everything owes existence. Becoming eye-witnesses, behold Him, and in beholding be blest. He is not light, but the Cause that light is. He is not mind, but the Cause that mind is. Nor spirit, but the Cause that spirit is. Let us lay hold of the Beginning, and we shall make way with quickness through everything. For the spectacle hath something peculiar; those that shall attain to the contemplation, it detains and attracts as the magnet stone the iron. But now as yet we are not intent upon the vision. So many men are body devotees they can never behold the Vision of the Beautiful. Why, 0 men, have ye given yourselves over to death, having power to partake of immortality?”
The Chinese of old had sages who spoke of returning to the High Deliverer:
“Returning to the Root means rest. He who regulates his attitude by Him will become one with Him. He is the good man’s treasure and the bad man’s deliverer. If princes knew the Tao the ten thousand things would of themselves reform. They would be restrained by the simplicity of the Ineffable. Homeward is the Tao’s course. Who knows the way that is not trodden, and the argument that needs no words?”
The Hindu watchers toward the fronting horizon sometimes lifted their forward-caught, kundalini-bound sight, to the topless Heights, and hymned the rise of man from death and reincarnation: “Whoso worships Me, committing to Me all actions, regarding Me as the Supreme End, and to nothing else turning, for him I become without delay, the rescuer from the ocean of death- bearing, migratory existence. By reason of My being the Onlooker the universe revolves. Those devoted to the gods go to the gods; to the ancestors go those devoted to ancestors. Those go to the evil spirits who worship them, and My worshipper also comes to Me. I am beyond the destructible, and superior even to the indestructible; therefore in the Vedas am I called The Supreme. Whoso sees the Supreme, sees indeed.”
The ancient Hebrews filled their scrolls with prophecies of the day when all mankind should look to the far heights for the opening of their outer eyes to see the supernal lands through which, ever stumbling, they with downcast gazing do daily travel. And the pages of their sacred books blaze with inspired urgings to greet the onlooking Deity: “The eyes of man, as of all the tribes of Israel, shall be toward the Lord. And the Lord shall be seen over them. The Lord of hosts shall defend them.” “Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!” “Seek ye me, and ye shall live.”
The Taoist declared that this is the rest for which the earth-wearied are panting. The prophet of Israel saw that the coming rest from competition and struggle would be irksome to the age of hurry: “The burden shall be rest, in the day when the eyes of man shall be turned toward the Lord.” “This people refuseth the waters of Shiloh (rest) that go softly, and rejoice in Rezin” (warfare — strenuous exertion).
The saving effects of the exalted attention are oft- times proclaimed by the Jewish psalmists: “Because thou hast made the . . . Most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.” “Who is like unto Him who exalteth Himself to dwell on high? — He raiseth up the poor out of the dust — that He may set him with princes.”
History discloses that no word of self-disparagement or thought of fear counts against the saving grace that hastens to defend, or against the tender mercy that upholds, when that deathless soul faculty, the inner eye, lifts toward the Absolute beyond the Light, where not Spirit, but the Cause that Spirit is, doth ever call, “Behold who hath created.”
“We have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon Thee.” And the Ammonites, Moabites, and Seirs, or the difficulties, inherited difficulties, and causes for discouragement, fled away from the besieged Jehosophat.
In simple. meekness the king had stated his humiliating status, but he did the one thing he with all his army knew how to do — he looked, not with some mysterious sense we have to search for, we who are commanded to lift up our attention to the same all-accomplishing One, but with the everyday-used inner sense with which we can look back to our native city, or forward to the sunset.
This subtle faculty, swifter than the fleetest thought, being steadfastly rested upon any unknown point, can bring back to the waiting mind all the facts that pertain to the resting place. That we have let it fall most abidingly upon already transpired events, and drawn it away from the unexperienced, has been our own choice, indicating not at all the inadequacy of the able sense.
Columbus set his eye toward an unknown and unbelieved-in shore, and landed his ships upon it. Thus goes he toward the unknown I AM, who sets his eye Himward. “Take sanctuary with Him alone, 0 Bharata’s son, and thou shalt find the eternal abode.”
Speech follows the direction of the visional sense. A man’s words therefore soon expose why he is unfortunate or triumphant, great or inconsequent.
“Therefore will I direct my prayer unto thee,
whom my outer eyes behold not, and I will look up.
Early in the morning will I lift mine eyes unto thee.”“The ruffian looked at me, and wrought against me . . . diseases.
So mayest Thou heal me, Thou most glorious One.”
— Zend Avesta.
It is the lifting up of this sense out of the network of materiality, the wheel of incessant grind, that takes man above his disasters and difficulties. “Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net,” cried David.
David’s net was the wheel of events that harassed him, exactly as untoward events and disappointing circumstances worry the sons of men today. Down into these shadows streams a divine radiance, discovering to such as turn their gaze toward the Source of the Light Hypostatic, another outlook over affairs, more than compensating for the failures that menaced while the gaze was buried in misfortunes.
One above looketh toward man and his affairs. He is of purer eyes than to behold evil. Looking unto Him giveth some gleams of His view, for, “In thy light shall we see light.”
Nothing David could say disturbed these effulgent beams from doing according to their own upholding ordinance, when Ezra was fearing his downfall. “When I said, my foot slippeth, thy mercy, 0 Lord, held me up,” he gratefully acknowledged. Had he not practiced the precept of the sages of the ages, by which practice he must experience that they who look to the far Heights never falter? Had he not looked to the Source of the mercy that saves? Notice how the Greeks and Romans thanked the merciful beams from heavenly Mercury, touching them with magistral to poverty, and removing from their heads the guilt of their deceits.
Innocentius of Carthage, overcome with speechless emotions of fear and grief, looks to Him who alone can strengthen him for his crucial hour. Suddenly he finds that the surgical operation he has prayed for strength to survive, has been performed by invisible agency, and the saws and knives of material science are not necessary. For the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that have the single eye that filleth the body with light, and delivereth them.
“Thus shall all the bodily world become free from old age and death,
from corruption and decay, forever and ever.”
— Vendidad.
Ignorance counts nothing against one whose attention is steadfastly set toward the Countenance that shineth as the sun in his strength. Each one of us is darkly untutored on some vital point. In the day of effulgence from above, the ignorant master and the ignorant scholar shall perish out of the earth. For they shall all be taught of the High Supreme, not wisdom, but the Cause that wisdom is: “Thus will I magnify myself, and I will be known in the eyes of many nations.” “And I will show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. If Of new information has the Original of wisdom abundant store, to give in liberal measure when He is sought as the Author of intelligence. Therefore exalt Him and He shall shed new light upon thee, and upon all the inhabitants of earth. For by the obedience of one shall many shine forth.
Speak unto Him face to face, and no longer speak of Him. Speak unto Him over and over, as did Asaph the seer. Three times in the midst of his song did he chant, “Turn us again, 0 God, and cause Thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.” By repetition he welded the attention of his wandering-eyed, weak-minded people toward the saving and illuminating heights.
No sage of earth has ever declared himself any other than a seeker after the way of the light that can raise the dead and heal the foolish; but Jesus of Nazareth said, “I am the way.” Appolonius, who cured the diseased and called back the dying, travelled far to find if Indian or Egyptian priests could give him the law of life. But none could declare it, for all that they had spoken of the life-bringing light had been spoken in moments transcending their natural reason. “I am the life,” said Jesus of Nazareth.
Gautama, who wrought many miracles, proclaimed himself a seeker after truth. “I am the truth,” said Jesus of Nazareth. “We look for one to overcome nature’s dominion,” said Plato. “I have overcome the world,” said Jesus of Nazareth. “I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things,” said the woman at the well, echoing Plato’s expectation. “I that speak unto thee am he,” said Jesus of Nazareth. “I know that my brother shall rise again in the resurrection, at the last day,” said Martha. “I am the resurrection,” said Jesus of Nazareth.
This Man demonstrated His declarations by prompt proofs. He set the bands of death at naught, saying, “No man taketh my life from me, I lay it down myself.” He nullified the limitations of matter, as, looking up, He multiplied food, and walked upon the waters.
And whether this Man is speaking as an historic character, not yet having shown that in His own person He transcends death, or as a risen and triumphant glory, exhibiting to all beholders a body that cannot be absorbed into death, He is ever setting His seal upon the doctrine that had preceded Him, that all great transactions come into manifestation by reason of the right view of some steadfast seer.
When disasters of nations come, and earthquakes, with seas and waves roaring, “then look up.” — Luke 21. — “And Jesus looking up, … cried with a loud voice, Lazarus come forth,” and the dead arose. — St. John 11.
On the three circuits where He found mankind struggling, He met them with the reviving elixirs of the heavenly vision, and caused them to outdo themselves. He put into living text the lost old Persian declaration that, “with right glance and right speech a man superintendeth the animate and inanimate.”
On the first circuit, He stretches out His hand and touches wine, bread and clay, and they obey His will to step out of their captivity to habit. The wines of the mystic islands rise through the Cana waters. Bread unfolds from the ether’s mysterious opulence. Clay hides the sightless eyeballs till the eye divine sends healing light, and clay shows strange hidden fire as the child of Nain quickens to life.
On the second circuit, He sends forth His voice and there is overplus of increase for the needy, and His hearers learn the mystery of the Logos, alive in every spoken word baptized by beams from the life-giving God.
On the third circuit, He warms the fishermen with coals which no man’s hands have kindled, and prepares them to live henceforth by the dispensation of daily miracles wrought from above, that they may be the joy and enlightenment of ages to come.
On the first circuit, He finds people appreciating the tangible and material things of life, and He blesses the material things with something from above, but He says, “Flesh profiteth nothing.”
On the second circuit, He finds certain among His hearers advocating the power of thought, urging the dominion of mind, and he blesses the thoughts of mind with something from above, as He says, “I will give you a mouth and wisdom,” but also says, “In such an hour as ye think not,” and “Take no thought.”
All the transforming power which He uses on matter and mind He draws from above, teaching plainly that matter and mind must forever keep within restricted bounds of performance, till all the world looks up and draws down authority to unseal their limitations. “Canst thou by taking thought (alone) make one hair white or black?” “Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching.”
Those who set their attention toward the Countenance of the High and Lofty One inhabiting Eternity, are in the way of those ransomed from sin, disorder and death. And the ransomed are offered two songs: “The Song of Moses, and the Song of the Lamb.”
A song is a perpetually recurring note of speech or singing, concerning some one theme. “I am become their song,” cried Job. The ransomed return with singing. They know the Name of the Highest, which stands among men for The Absolute, as Origin of Being, Might, Majesty. . This Name was the song of Moses and of Zoroaster, those personifications of strength in leadership by the inspiration of Deity.
It is the Name taken up by all who lift the incorporeal eye toward the Author of Being, Might, Majesty. It is the Name the earliest known Egyptians had buried with them in their tombs, as full of the significance of immortality. It is as immaculate as the vision that is uplifted.
It is not the final name of the Cause of Being, Cause of Truth, Cause of Spirit; for as to proper name for the Father, the Unbegotten, there is as yet none known among men.
“These terms — Father, God, Creator, Lord — are not names,
but terms of address derived from His benefits and works.”
— Justin Martyr.
But the Name which is called the Song of Moses is the highest name speakable by man at his present stage of expression. It has no reference to benefits or works. It stands by itself alone. It is applied to no other but One. It is, I AM THAT I AM. The term of address, or name God, stands for many objects of worship; the substantive Spirit, has many significations. It may mean one of twenty different descriptives; the name Lord, is employed in ten different ways, but the I AM THAT I AM is One. “When the children of Israel shall say to me, What is His name? what shall I say unto them?” “Say . . . I AM hath sent me unto you.” And He “led them by the right hand of Moses with his glorious arm, dividing the water before them, to make Himself an everlasting Name.”
The Name I AM, addressed to the Highest, wakens the spirit of authority, majesty, undefeatable courage, in the breast of even the meekest and weakest of men. “I have wrought with you for my name’s sake,” spake His voice to Ezekiel.
The Name I AM THAT I AM brings up from the deep wells of hidden strength in all men the sincerity, boldness and intelligence of leadership, and that originality of action and language which have characterized the heroes of the ages, whose names have lived so long in history that they have become myths.
It is recorded of one of these, that in deepest humility, asking of the Self-Existent face to face, His most order- bringing Name, he heard the words, Ahmi Yot AhmiI AM THAT I AM. And this man became ruler of a kingdom, and founder of the Wisdom of the Magi. He had touched the leading note of that Ineffable Name which is key to the mysteries of the universe.
This Name is the first utterance of those who set their attention toward the Heights, whence fall the kindling sparks that burn away the films hiding the finished splendor of the realm through which we walk.
And the Song of the Lamb is the second utterance of the upward-visioned among us. It is the name JESUS CHRIST. “In My Name,” said He that was slain. “In His Name,” said His disciples. And it is declared that they never preached any doctrine except the power of His Name. This was their Song. It is a Name as immaculate as the Name I AM. It always means, God with us. It is the Amita Buddha, the Ahura Mazda, the Emmanuel. It is that Name of the Lofty and Everlasting I AM which represents His nearness and immanence. Name above principalities and powers, it is the Name of newness, of healing, and of comforting tenderness. It gives the baptism of the quickening Spirit. It is the greatest and quickest God-formulating Name.
It is the Name that restores the Lost Word, the now unspeakable Name of the Self-Existent Deity.
The Moravians hymn the power of this Name:
“Should I reach my dying hour,
Only let them speak that Name;
By its all-prevailing power
Back my voice returns again.”
And they tell of miracles of calling back from the dark defile of voiceless death to sunlit life, by the resurrecting energy of this Name.
The rulers of the Jews in Jerusalem, Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and many that were of the kindred of the high priest, A.D. 33, knew well the Magian power contained in certain names, and they asked, “By what name have you wrought this miracle?” “By the Name of Jesus Christ,” answered the Christian Apostles.
The risen Christ, appearing suddenly, said, “Preach repentance . . . in My Name . . . beginning at Jerusalem.” And Jerusalem means THE SELF.
Begin with yourself to repent, to return. Lift up the willing inner sight toward the Supreme One, whose Soundless Edict through the ages is, “Look unto Me, and be ye saved.” Taste the first manna which the upward watch sprinkles over the unfed brain and heart. This is reasonable service. It is mirific obedience.
Facing toward the Heights, where the smile of the Comforting One begins its beaming Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Omniscience, speak from the heart the two greatest Names ever written or spoken on earth. They are the only response the heart can make when the mystic eye is first uplifted. Without the uplift of the deathless sense the Names may be but heathen repetitions. For liberation is not achieved by the pronunciation of the Name without direct perception. But consonant with the upward watch, these terms of address to Deity are the planting of the feet upon the rock of power and the transmeable hills of security.
“He sent from above, he took me;
he drew me out of many waters; . . .
Thou also hast lifted me up on high,
above them that rose up against me.”
Whatever comes upon you this day, or threatens to disturb or overthrow at any time, turn then from it toward that High Deliverer looking hitherward, and within the silent heart, sing the two Wonderful Songs of the Seers of the ages:
“0 High and Lofty One inhabiting Eternity! Clothing Thyself with Thine own Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Omniscience, as with a garment — hiding Thy goodness and majesty with names, and unspeakable names! I know Thou Art, and the Name of power and glory I must address to Thee is, I AM.
O Countenance beholding me, looking toward me through the ages! Breath of the everlasting life in me, and manna to my fadeless substance! Thy Name that folds me round with tenderness, and lifts me high above the pitfalls of my human destiny, is, JESUS CHRIST.”
The Practice of the Presence of Deity, through obeying His one great commandment, “Look unto Me,” removes the sense of limitation and danger. This Second Study tells us to persist in obedience till we thoroughly experience the five liberations mentioned on page 32.