Beloved Students:

I greet you this month in the holiness of your becoming. As you seek to move more deeply into the Divine, know that you are fully supported by the spiritual plane. Know also that the real work of transformation is the most beautiful of earthly creations. May you have every conceivable blessing as you enter your full wisdom and compassion potential.

Our focus for this month regards coming to know the Divine. Unfortunately, in a world that tends to be very linearly focused, often one’s capacity to know the Divine is replaced with a lesser condition: knowing about the Divine. Of course, “knowing about” is at least a giant step away from the direct experience of the real knowing. While it is this direct experience that every spiritual tradition seeks to instill in its disciples, the coming of age in a technological world has convinced most that these two are virtually the same thing.

There is a huge focus on knowing about in today’s world. Were this not so, the Internet would not be so popular.It provides access to limitless amounts of information – a dream come true for those who want to know about. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with knowing about the world in which you live, nor the ideas that have arisen to inspire, explain, postulate and dabble in the phenomenal world. However, do not confuse such with direct experience. One could study virtually everything – literally knowing all about the monkey dance that is done ceremonially each year in Bali. Were one a “walking encyclopedia” on the topic (perhaps even able to lecture for hours on it), still such utterly pales in the face of directly experiencing the dance. The same holds true of particle accelerators, natural pigments – even farming. Considering such, how much greater the truth when it pertains to one’s relationship with the Divine?

I realize that many seek spiritual aid from the Internet. In fact, there seems to be a growing tendency to replace the old-fashioned, direct relationship to a spiritual teacher with a kind of virtual teacher. Clearly, there is nothing wrong with seeking information via the Internet to facilitate one’s greater learning, or expand one’s access to specific materials. Indeed, you will discover many sources and much, much material to tell you about the Divine. However, it is prudent to remember that simply filling your mind with notions about the Divine may actually stand in the way of directly experiencing the Divine.

When you read the stories of the lives of the great mystics, the salient fact with which you are struck is the degree to which these mystics knew the Divine. The names they ascribed to the Divine, while varied, matter little. The significant point that brings the outsider into the inner space of the mystic is that profound and unequivocal connection to the Divine, which became the driving love factor in the lives of these individuals. While you may not know exactly what they experienced at a personal level, it is clear each knew God.

In the current time, many seem to fear a direct experience of the Divine. After all, some think, “If such an experience arose in my life, I couldn’t go back to being my old self.” In fact, this is true. None of the great mystics ever went back to being their old selves – nor did they want to. The fact that so many never again needed food or sleep says something of the profound nature of directly experiencing the Divine. To be caught up in the mystic’s trance – losing the reference point of a self – is the stuff of supreme transformation.

What is it that allows the ecstatic trance of the mystic to occur? Simply stated, one must be open to allowing oneself to be engulfed in the oceanic wave of Divine love. The problem is that as long as there is the reference point of a self, most are unable to open to the vastness of that love. The self is just too small to contain all that love. Consequently, most draw away from the Lover, contenting themselves to knowing something about the Lover, but not intimately knowing the Lover. The “I” can know a great deal about the Divine Lover, but the direct experience of the Lover and the ocean of love can be entered only from the “we.”

This is why so many mystics wrote or talked about the Beloved of the Soul. In merging with the Beloved, the self as a reference point dissolves. The Unitive experience reveals itself only as the Divine Lover and the Beloved merge into the Infinite. Indeed, terminology derived from spoken human language must necessarily fall short in describing the Unitive state. What can be known, however, is that for millennia, great mystics found a way to directly know God.

Certain qualities are readily apparent in those who generate direct experience of the Divine. One of the most observable of those qualities is what is termed a “pure heart.” Jesus referred quite specifically to this in His Sermon on the Mount when He said, “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.” All too often, Christians believe He was referring to the reward of the faithful after physical death. In this case, however, He spoke quite literally. Certainly the early Christian mystics knew such to be true, for many of them directly experienced union with God. Unfortunately, the church has been ambivalent, at best, in its teachings on ecstatic trance. While on one hand such is held up as the mark of sainthood, should one actually come forward confessing s/he has experienced this state, they would, on the other hand, likely be branded as a heretic.

Another observable quality of the mystic is a devotional component that may appear quite childlike. The heart opens at the least provocation, and remains open even in circumstances that would generally be regarded as “unbearable.” The eye of their inner seeing is always focused on the Beloved, and the loving exchange between Lover and Beloved is more vitally alive and powerfully sustaining than any other force or factor in life. One’s total sustenance can be drawn from this love connection; and just as the local self dissolves into love, so too does the conventional reality with fears of living and dying.

Please join me this month in listening to the lecture I gave in Denver on September 5^th of this year, entitled Into The Heart Of God. May you be inspired to move deeply and intimately into the Divine. May you directly experience the Divine, and may the compelling Unitive force be the source for great confidence and profound sustenance in your life. Know that I support you completely in this magnificent opening. May your hearts be healed, and may you share that wholeness with all beings everywhere.

Your loving Teacher,
Djwhal Khul