Continuing this series of the Evolution of Prayer,Paper 91, pg 1000 in the Urantia Book.
7] Mysticism, as a technique of the cultivation of the conscious of the prescence of God,is altogether praiseworthy, but when such practices lead to social isolation and culminate in religous fanatism, they are all but reprehensible.Altogether too frequently that which the overwrought mystic evaluates as divine inspiration is the uprisings of his own deep mind.The contact of the mortal mind with it's indwelling Thought Adjuster, while often favored by devote meditation, is more frequently facilitated by wholehearted and loving service in unselfish ministry to one's fellow creatures.
The great religous teachers and the prophets of the past ages were not extreme mystics.They were God-knowing men and women who best served their God by unselfish ministry to their fellow mortals.Jesus often took his apostles away by themselves for short periods to engage in meditation and prayer, but for the most part he kept them in service contact with the multitudes. The soul of man requires spiritual exercise as well as spiritual nourishment.
Religous ecstacy is permissible when resulting from sane antecedents, but such a experiences are more of a outgrowth of purly emotional influences than a manifestation of deep spiritual character.Religous persons must not regard every psycologic presentiment and every intense emotional experience as a divine revelation or spiritual communication.Genuine spiritual ectasy is usually associated with outward calmness and almost perfect emotional control.But true prophetic vision is a superpsycologic presemtiment. Such visitations are not pseudo hallucinations, neither are they tranclike ecstasies.
The human mind may perform in response to so-called inspiration when it is sensitive to either to the uprisings of the subconscious or the stimulas of the super-consciousness.In either case it appears the individual that such augmentations of the content of consciousness are more or less foreign.Unrestrained mystical enthuiasm and rampant religous ecstasy are the credentials of inspiration, supposedly divine credentials.
The practical test of all these strange religous experiences of mysticism, ecstasy, and inspiration is to observe whether these phenomena cause a individual:
1. To enjoy better and more complete physical health.
2. To function more efficiently and practically in his/her mental life.
3. More fully and joyfully to socialize his/her religous experience.
4. More completely to spiritualize his/her day-by-day living faithfully discharging the commonplace duties of routine mortal existence.
5. To enhance his/her love for, and appreciation of, truth, beauty, and goodness.
6. To observe currently reconized social, moral, ethical, and spiritual values.
7. To increase his/her spiritual insight--God Consciousness.
But prayer has no real association with these exceptional religous experiences.When prayer becomes overmuch aesthetic, when it consists almost exclusively in beautiful and blissful contemplation of paradisiacal divinity, it loses much of its socializing influence and tends toward mysticism and the isolation of its devotees.There is certain danger associated with overmuch private praying which is corrected by group praying, community devotions. You can join Unsolved Mysteries and post your own mysteries or
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