Chapter 5: The Seamless Garment of Love Mysticism and Ego-Death The conventional mind is a reflection or reaction to
psycho-physical experience. The conditions or states of mind
may seem to be within and subtler and higher than the body,
and even independent of the body. Therefore, the mind tends
to imply the existence of a separate, separative, and
independent inner self, ego, or soul. Therefore, until the
mind is transcended, we are bound and deluded by experience,
knowledge, states of mind, and the sense of an independent
or threatened inner self. But the mind and the ego (or
independent self) are only a complex process of reaction or
contraction in the brain, or the body-mind as a whole, and
of the reactive or contractive modification of the
All-Pervading Life-Principle. Therefore, the illusions of
mind and ego must be transcended through prior intuition of
the Life-Principle and Transcendental Consciousness that are
the true Identity of the individual body-mind. (Only in the
case of the radical intuition of the Transcendental
Condition and Identity of the body-mind may psycho-physical
experience be engaged in total freedom.) Mysticism is a conventional form of knowledge, or mind.
It is a matter of the entrance of attention into the higher
plane of the brain-mind. It is a matter of self-fulfillment,
or ego-fulfillment, via the inward glorification of
independent consciousness. But the Truth is Realized only
after ego-death, or transcendence of the brain and the mind.
Therefore, mysticism is not the ultimate stage of human
evolution. In fact it is only the fifth of the seven
evolutionary spiritual stages of human life. In the sixth stage of human life, the root of mind and
conventional self-consciousness is found, and the mental
self submits or dissolves in the Radiant Energy or
Consciousness in which the bodily self is arising (as a
contraction, or superficial modification). This is
ego-death-from which the “eyes” of the true Self or
Transcendental Consciousness open, beyond all qualification
by mind, internal psychic phenomena, or any gestures of
self-attention. Then the Radiant Life of the world stands
clearly Revealed in all conditions of existence. And the
body becomes the single instrument of Divine Communion or
Sacrifice in the Living and Radiant Reality. Therefore, in the seventh stage of life, when the
independent inner being is no longer the basis of existence,
the total bodily being is Transfigured by the Radiant Bliss
of Consciousness, which is Transcendental Love.
