This book is about spirituality: i.e. about that existential attitude with which a person tries to respect the will of a power superior to himself in addition to his own will in making his decisions; the power may be invisible, yet can be experienced.
From the Holy Spirit to the Inner MasterExcerpts p.131 ff.
This book is about spirituality: i.e. about that existential attitude with which a person tries to respect the will of a power superior to himself in addition to his own will in making his decisions; the power may be invisible, yet can be experienced. Such a religiously existential attitude assumes that the person holding it has certainty that such a power exists, that it is kindly predisposed towards humans, but that it can also hold a human responsible and punish him.
To attain such certainty is not a task for one's intellect. Thus, it cannot be taught, but instead results from experience -albeit from a special kind of experience. It cannot be acquired through conscious volition, as medical experience can or gardening skills for that matter. The kind of experience that leads to spiritual certainty just happens. That it happens depends on the action of an intrapsychic dynamism completely inaccessible to one's will, which theology has called grace. Even though man doesn't have "the granting of grace" under his control, he can prepare his soul for grace to take place. In archaic times, that was a matter for spiritual schools. The know-how that masters of spirituality had consisted primarily of knowledge of how to go about preparing one's soul for grace to take place.
Let us leave for the second part of this book the question as to how one should go about doing this with the empirical knowledge that modern man has acquired over the obsolete, archaic world view - in now trying to find the type of spirituality that would be right for the modern level of consciousness.
Translation and Internet adaptation by This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
{/viewonly}
