MYSTICS AND ETHICS

Man's ethics do not always correspond to the degree of his mystique while he is still spiritually evolving. Sometimes, he has to carry with him the dead weight of a still sacrificial, fragmented and precarious ethics on his high mystical flights.

So dense is the opacity of the ego’s many lives that from the initial stage, self’s light cannot fully illuminate the thick walls of man’s egoistic embodiment - and that inability is the greatest torment for the divine Self in man about to become Christlike. Sometimes his human ego moans in cruel agony when facing the torments of life and says: “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of sufferings be taken away from me.” But soon, his divine Self exclaims: “Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

Sacrificial ethics is the struggle that man faces while seeking his spiritual evolution. This struggle is imposed by the circumstances of the environment in which he lives, his attachments, and his surroundings, keeping him in that “comfort” zone. Man is born free, but wherever he walks, he carries his shackles... imprisoned in his culture, manners and customs, churches, concepts and values, and relative morality. Therefore, being accommodated to this state of circumstances is difficult to break without sacrificing his tyrannical ego. And for this liberation to take place, an intense work of self-knowledge is required to free the mind from this ego-imposed dross.

Thayumanavar, spiritualist philosopher, poet and considered an Indian saint, states in one of his poems:

 

“You may control a mad elephant;

You may shut the mouth of the bear and the tiger;

You may ride a lion;

You may play with the cobra;

By alchemy, you may eke out your livelihood;

You may wander through the universe incognito;

You may make vassals of the gods;

You may be ever youthful;

You may walk on water and live in fire:

But control of the mind is better and more difficult.”

 

Or, as another sage said: when the soul is in harmony with the universe, its hands can guide the steps of an elephant, with only a hair attached to its trunk!