sense, it is the final understanding of all experience. When spiritual experience is described as mystical one should not assume that it is something supernatural or entirely beyond the grasp of human consciousness. All that is meant is that it is not accessible to limited human intellect until it transcends its limits and is illumined by direct realisation of the Infinite. Christ pointed out the way to spiritual experience when he said, “Leave all and follow me.” This means that man must leave limitations and establish himself in the infinite life of God. Real spiritual experience involves not only realisation of the soul on higher planes, but also a right attitude towards worldly duties. If it loses its connection with the different phases of life, what we have is a neurotic reaction that is far from being a spiritual experience.
The spiritual experience that is to enliven and energise the New Humanity cannot be a reaction to the stern and uncompromising demands made by the realities of life. Spiritual experience not born of escape Those without the capacity for adjustment to the flow of life have a tendency to recoil from the realities of life and to seek shelter and protection in a self-created fortress of illusions. Such reaction is an attempt to perpetuate one’s separate existence by protecting it from the demands made by life. It can only give a pseudo-solution to the problems of life by providing a false sense of security and self-completeness. It is not even an advance towards the real and lasting solution; on the contrary, it is a side-tracking from the true Path. Man will be dislodged again and again from his illusory shelters by fresh and irresistible waves of life, and will invite upon himself fresh forms of suffering by seeking to protect his separative existence through escape.
