The Mystery

Living in the world, having a Divine origin and a Divine destiny, means that you are living in two different realities at once. Your spiritual reality will emerge later in life, once you have gained some maturity and have realized the limits of the world and your worldly existence. Before that, you were gaining a foothold in the world to attempt to become a functional human being in relationship with others, taking on the responsibilities and the difficulties of living in manifest reality.

For many people, this will occupy their entire existence here. And for a great many people they will be bound by poverty and oppression, never to discover their greater spiritual reality, never to discover the other side of their lives.

You are living in two different realities, for you have never left Creation. Even while you walk this world in seeming Separation, a distinct person with a distinct personality and identity, you are still part of Creation. You are still part of the Ancient Home that you left to come here, for you cannot leave Creation in truth.

So you have a mind for the world and you have a holy Mind, the Mind We call Knowledge. Knowledge is the part of you that never left, that is not living in Separation, that is still connected to God and Creation. For you could never really leave God and Creation, even to live in such a very different reality, as living in the world, as living in the physical reality.

This is a mystery to you now, for you have assumed a worldly mind and a worldly perspective. And though you have your individual rendition of that, it is still very similar to everyone else’s, the differences here being not very great in reality.

So you have a manifest life and you have a mysterious life. What you need to know is that your mysterious life holds all of the meaning and value and purpose for you living in the manifest reality.

Try as you might, you cannot fulfill yourself out in the world. Being a worldly person, trying to achieve fulfillment or success, you can never satisfy the deeper part of you, your deeper nature. This can only be fulfilled by eventually recognizing the greater purpose that has brought you into the world—to accept this purpose and to follow it and to fulfill it.

This satisfies the need of the soul, the greatest and most profound need you have within you. For after you have satisfied the needs of the body and the needs of the mind, you come to the greatest need, the most fundamental need, the need that is driving you even at this moment.

The reason that this need exists within you is that you are here for a greater purpose. The deeper Mind within you, the Mind of Knowledge, knows this, of course, and is prepared to guide you and to protect you so that you can discover and fulfill this greater purpose.

You cannot escape the fact that you have a dual nature. And you cannot leave one for the other. So many people try. You cannot leave the world to become an entirely spiritual person because you still have to take care of the affairs of your life. You are still in relationship with others and all the difficulties that they can produce. You still have the needs of the body. You are still a citizen of a nation. You are still engaged with the world.

Likewise, you cannot give up your spiritual reality to become a completely worldly person, or you will never have a real sense of your life and destiny. And you will never understand or be able to experience consistently the greater purpose that has brought you here.

You will make all your decisions based upon your ideas or the ideas of your culture. You will be bound and chained to your culture. It, more than you, will dictate who you are with, what you will do, what you will value and what you will avoid. And you will not be a free person, even if you live in a free nation.

There is no avoiding your real spiritual nature and your worldly nature. Though they are entirely different, and you cannot unite them fully, you must accept the reality of both—a reality that is distinct within each realm. Here the mind of the world, your worldly mind, is very different from the Mind of Knowledge.

Your worldly mind is weak and impressionable. It is subject to your desires and the priorities of your culture. It is constantly afraid of loss, afraid of disapproval, afraid of deprivation and afraid of death. It is driven by fear and desire. It knows not of what is true within you, and so it is subject to other powers. It is easily influenced and manipulated. It is easily seduced.

Without Knowledge to guide it, it is weak but also dangerous and destructive. It needs a guiding hand. It was not meant to be a god. It was not meant to be your sole reality. It is really meant to serve the deeper Mind within you, to be a vehicle of expression for a greater reality, the Reality of God.

Your personal mind cannot understand the Mind of Knowledge. It can only follow it and learn to work in harmony with Knowledge. The manifest cannot understand the Mystery, but the Mystery is the more powerful of the two.

All the great inventions, the great innovations, the great services to humanity, in all fields of endeavor, have come from the Mystery—the impulses from the Mystery, the guidance and direction from the Mystery. This is what has led unique individuals to do uncommon things, to act in a selfless manner, and to achieve things that others had neither thought of nor would seek to fulfill.

So people even in the wealthy nations live like slaves—slaves to the addictions of culture, slaves to their compromises, slaves to their own self-judgment, slaves to the dictates and requirements of their family and their communities. Though they may be adorned with beautiful things, inside they are unknown to themselves and know not of their greater purpose and destiny here. True accomplishment and fulfillment are deprived from them, and the greater need of the soul goes unfulfilled. And they are restless as a result.

This is why once you have satisfied the basic needs of the body and the mind, and you have established a position for yourself in the world, and can at least communicate with others at a fundamental level successfully, and can manage your affairs fundamentally, the deeper need of the soul begins to emerge and with it the mystery of your life.

Of course, people are afraid of the Mystery. They think it will deprive them of what they want. They think it will overtake them or destroy them. All kinds of fears and ridiculous notions are projected upon the growing reality of the Mystery.

The Mystery is relegated to religious figures or religious institutions or systems of belief. But the Mystery is still the Mystery. You know not where it comes from or what it will do. It is the part of you that is free—free of all of the constraints that hold you down, that keep you from recognizing and experiencing your deeper nature and your unique gifts to the world.

Knowledge is not corrupted by the world, the deeper Mind. It is free of the constraints of the world. It is not afraid of destruction and death because it is immortal. Though the body will perish eventually and may even undergo terrible experiences, this deeper part of you is immortal and cannot be destroyed.

You are afraid of loss, future loss. You are afraid of losing everything you have. You are afraid of losing your mind. You are afraid of losing your position in society. You are afraid of losing your financial stability and security. You are afraid of losing the love and respect of your friends and family. You are afraid of being an outcast. You are afraid of personal failure. You are afraid of war. You are afraid of deprivation. You are afraid of violence. You are afraid of attack. You are afraid to lose your loved ones. You are afraid of loss.

But there is a part of you that cannot be lost. You cannot lose it. You cannot destroy it. You cannot even cause it great agony, and that is why it is so very different from the mind that you think with—your worldly mind; your mind that is a product of your culture, your family, and your worldly experiences.

What great confidence it will give you to know that you have such a deeper Intelligence within you and that it can and will guide you in all things. It will show you what is important and will distinguish that from everything else. It will guide you to know who to be with and how to be with them and how not to fall prey to all the seductions and traps of beauty, wealth and charm.

The mind will never feel secure without Knowledge to guide it. Your worldly mind will never be at ease and at peace without your greater Mind to direct it. Your life will never come into real balance until your deeper nature is discovered and is allowed to arise in your experience.

This is the Mystery. We call it the Mystery because it is unknown to your worldly mind, and your worldly mind cannot explain it, define it or understand it completely.

This is the Mystery of where you have come from and where you will go beyond this life, the Mystery of who guides you and those mysterious forces that seem to abide with you in times of great need and confusion. It is the Mystery of why certain things happen inexplicably. This is the Mystery of having events occur that you did not plan, but which prove to be very important for you.

The Mystery will not overtake your life completely. You cannot simply be a passive follower. You must be actively engaged in the world and use all of your worldly wisdom, to whatever extent it has been achieved. And only here will your deeper Mind guide you. If you are indolent and irresponsible, if you want to live in some kind of spiritual welfare, Knowledge will not arise, and you will be left with your own disillusionment to face.

You are here to serve. Service is your ultimate expression of your greater nature and the reality and the presence of the Divine in the world. But this is service not simply for a reward, not simply service to gain social recognition or even Divine approval. It is not service based upon restitution. It is not service as a kind of payment for your former errors.

It is something that emerges naturally within you, from a deeper conscience within you. It is not a compensation. It is a natural expression of your deeper nature and an early indicator of your greater work in the world.

People want the Mystery to give them everything they want, but the Mystery has other plans for them. People want the Mystery to create miracles for them, to give them financial security and to bring them love and companionship and the perfect employment and wonderful health and all of this as if God were your servant and errand boy, serving your wandering, changing desires.

But the Mystery has greater plans for you, and they are not your plans. They are not the plans that you have based upon culture and upon personal insecurity and need. And it is this relinquishment on your part, the willingness to have your plans and understanding superseded by something greater, more mysterious and more profound that begins to open the doors of revelation for you.

Here you finally realize the truth that you are not your mind, you are not your body and that your deeper nature can function in a much more expansive and creative universe. Even though you are still limited by physical reality—by the constraints of your body and by the constraints of your situation to a great degree—the power and presence of the Mystery within you can often exceed these limitations and allow you to see, know and do things that other people do not see, do not know and cannot do.

This is the evidence made manifest of a greater reality working through you—bringing clarity, balance and power to your life, providing service to others. Here there is no Master. There is no superhuman. There is no super man or super woman. There is only the person who is allowing the Mystery to guide them and to give them a greater direction and purpose.

But your mind knows not of the Mystery. It can only recognize it and open itself to its power and presence. This is the practice that people undertake in the study of Steps to Knowledge, the spiritual pathway that has been given to humanity at this great turning point in human evolution, at this time of increasing upheaval, uncertainty and discord in the world.

Steps to Knowledge brings your worldly mind into an alignment and into a deeper experience of the Mystery within you. This is a preparation not created by the intellect. It is not a product of one man’s creativity or invention. It is a gift of the Divine for a struggling humanity.

Here your worldly mind learns to think productively, creatively and in harmony with your deeper nature, allowing a transference of power and a deeper reality to emerge within you. It is a mysterious process because it is beyond the realm and reach of the intellect. That is why you can experience it fully, but never fully understand it. You cannot conceptualize it and say, “This is it!”

That is why mastery and achievement are more subtle and have more to do with the Mystery than with the magnificence of the intellect. The intellect is a wonderful instrument of communication. It is immensely creative. But it can only function in its fullness, in its greatest capacity, in service to the Mystery.

The Mystery is God, you see. Here you can experience God without understanding God. You can receive the blessings of the Creator without understanding how or why you receive these. Here you are always humble, and humbled, in the face of the greater power that is working through you and through others to direct humanity to a Greater Reality in the future and to prepare humanity for the great difficulties and the great change that are coming to the world.

People try to understand all these things with the intellect, and to a certain extent they can see the reality of this great change. They can certainly feel it at a deeper level. But only Knowledge knows what is coming over the horizon. Only the Mystery knows how you can prepare for a future that will be so unlike the past.

Only God can bring you to God. Only the Mystery knows the Mystery. Only the Mystery knows who you are and why you are in the world at this time and what you must do specifically and whom you must meet and where you must go to fulfill your greater destiny here.

Here the Mystery transcends religious distinctions, systems of belief and institutions. Here the Mystery transcends your great spiritual heroes, even those who have been deified, even those around whom whole religions have been created. This takes you beyond the manifestations and the boundaries of culture and intellectual understanding—opening your eyes to see greater things, opening your ears to hear greater things, opening your heart and your mind to know greater things.

While it is so true that a person can dedicate themselves to a religious life, but never really experience the Mystery very deeply at all. They are religious in their intellectual understanding and in their self-definition, in their values and pursuits, but it does not mean they have really made the Divine connection yet. And when they do, if they do, it will take them beyond their self-definitions. It will take them beyond their system of belief. It will take them beyond the limits and the boundaries of the intellect.

That is why so many people are afraid of the Mystery, you see. They are afraid of what lies beyond the limits and boundaries of their understanding. And yet within them, there is always a deference to a greater power of some sort. To whatever they may ascribe that greater power to, there is always the need to yield to a greater power. But without the Mystery, this becomes a form of self-subjugation and dangerous submission to political and economic forces. This is why people can follow and so fervently believe in individuals who are wholly destructive and corrupt.

You can only give yourself to the Mystery. If your approach is true and authentic—without hidden motives, without clever manipulations, without secret desires—then your connection will be real and true. It will unite you with people. It will give you compassion and tolerance. And it will show you that violence and conflict can never be successful in resolving the fundamental needs and problems of humanity.

Here you will need a real pathway to follow, whether it be a traditional pathway or part of the New Revelation from the Creator, which is now in the world today. You will need a competent guide and teacher, for you yourself cannot see your blind spots and are prone to make serious mistakes in your understanding and your recognition of the Mystery.

You will need strong companions who can bear witness to the power of Knowledge and who they themselves are undergoing a process of preparation to engage with the Mystery. You will need strong support. You will need honest correction from others. You will need a community of Knowledge to be a part of. You will need to practice on your own and learn how to direct your mind instead of being a slave to your mind.

You will have to alter your course in life. This brings about a natural reshuffling of your priorities and values into something that is much more in alignment with your deeper feelings and experience. You will need a true teacher, and they are very hard to find in the world, but the Powers that serve your emergence will bring you to them.

This is part of the Mystery, you see. For while you have a worldly family, you have a Spiritual Family as well—those within the world and beyond who are here to engage you in your greater purpose for being here and who are themselves deeply connected to the Mystery.

Here you can be a Buddhist, or a Christian, or a Muslim or a Jew and be guided by the Mystery. You are not guided by rules and dictates, laws and customs here, except those which you must accommodate to function in society. Your heart is given to a Greater Power and to a greater manifestation

Here there will be no conflict between the Christians and the Muslims, the Buddhists or the Jews or between any group because you are all connected to the Mystery. And in the Mystery, there is no conflict. There are only different avenues of expression. There are only different systems of thought to work through, different cultures to work through—all to bring a greater unity, a greater harmony and a greater power to humanity.

At this moment, you can think of many things you need, and even more things perhaps that you want or think that you want. But if you have enough food to eat and a roof over your head and clothing to protect you against the winds of the world, then your greatest need now is for the Mystery.

This is a power that will save and redeem you, bring to you fulfillment and true relationship, and will guide and direct your life in ways that you could never discern from your intellect or from your worldly mind. This is a power that will utilize all of your wisdom and physical and mental abilities, and elevate them as well, as your life moves into an arena of greater contribution, greater relationship and greater recognition.

Here you will have to have faith that the Mystery is there during all the times when you are not experiencing it, for the Mystery does not manifest every day. The Mystery does not speak to you every day. The Mystery does not care what clothes you put on your body or what you choose to eat for dinner. It is concerned with greater matters.

You have a mind and intellect to deal with the particulars of your life, with the daily management of your affairs, with the organization of your time and activities. That is in the [province] of your intellect. The Mystery will guide you when there are real conflicts, real confusion and difficult decisions to make to keep you on track with your greater destiny, which awaits you down the road.

If you understand you are working with the Mystery and do not try to define it or give it a definition or a purpose according to your understanding, you will be able to allow part of your mind to always be open to its counsel, its guidance and its wisdom.

You have an open mind, not to everything in the world, but to the power and presence of this guidance, which over time you will come to recognize and distinguish from all other forces, all other delusions, all other fantasies that may exist beyond the visual range, beyond the manifestation of the world.

Consider these things. Utilize the directives that We have given you here today. Put them in front of you and keep them in front of you. Allow your understanding to grow and to expand. Do not contract it or limit it by trying to have conclusions about something which you really cannot yet understand.

Allow the Mystery to be the Mystery. But understand you have a deeper Mind that is beyond the influences of the world, that cannot be corrupted, that cannot be manipulated, that cannot be seduced or induced. For it is connected to God. It responds to the Will of God and to those Spiritual Forces who are here to assist you in your life and to oversee humanity’s development and successful emergence into a universe full of intelligent life—matters which are far beyond your personal concerns and your personal understanding.

Treat the manifestation practically, wisely, using the wisdom and the skills you have developed, and be open to developing more skill and wisdom here, for you will greatly need it. But do not confuse the Mystery with the manifestation.

The manifestation you must understand and can understand to a very great degree, but the Mystery is the Mystery. It exceeds your capacity. It is bigger than you are. It is bigger than the world. Do not try to define it according to religious terms or limit it to a religious ideology, but allow it to be the Mystery. Then it can flow freely through you and to you, and you will not close the door to it or obstruct it by attempting to guide it or to understand it.

It is a conduit of power. It is the golden thread of your life. It is your connection to the Divine. It exists above and beyond the realm of your intellect. It speaks of a deeper nature that existed before you came into the world and that you will experience once you leave this world. It has everything to do with who you are and why you are here, whom you must meet, what you must do, what you yourself must avoid, what you yourself must discern. It will reveal to you the hazards of life that you cannot yet see and how to navigate an increasingly uncertain and discordant world.

What greater gift could God give to you? If you think that God could simply satisfy all your wandering desires, you would become ever more enslaved in the world, ever more burdened with the world, ever more trapped, ever more encumbered by your beliefs and possessions. Freedom would be unknown to you, and you would live in constant anxiety over the loss of these things.

God is here to liberate you, not to impoverish you. God is here to free you, not to encumber you or trap you. This you must discover for yourself, for Our words alone will not be enough to allay your fears and your anxieties.

God’s New Revelation will reveal the Mystery ever so clearly and speak to the Mystery and of the Mystery. You must learn to think of the Mystery, and to hold reverence for the Mystery, and be open to the Mystery—allowing your understanding to be incomplete, allowing your mind to be without conclusions, bearing witness to a Greater Power that over time will emerge in your life and which you will be able to see emerging in the lives of certain people who are undergoing the greater preparation in their lives.