Home
Welcome. This site is intended to serve as a resource center for information about the lives and teachings of the mystics.
A mystic is one who has experienced his or her transcendent identity as the one all-pervading Spirit. This experience, 'the mystic's vision', occurs as one's individual consciousness is uplifted by grace to union with the eternal Source of all consciousness and all being.
In the time of the ancient Greeks, the formulation of the precepts relating to this experience came to be called "mysticism", or "gnosis", and we still use these words today. Mysticism is not limited to any one religious tradition; the 'mystical vision' may be thought of as the origin and fountainhead of all authentic religious teachings and religious traditions.
To appreciate the long history of mysticism, it is essential to know something of the lives and teachings of those mystics who have gone before. They come from every religious tradition and every nationality. You will find a chronological presentation of the great mystics of the various religious and philosophical traditions in my History of Mysticism. This book is no longer available in a print edition, but it is available in a recently revised Twenty-fifth Anniversary edition on amazon's 'Kindle' ($5.99), and on Barnes and Noble's 'Nook' ($5.99). For availability of my other titles, please see my "Book Catalog" in the Menu on the upper left.
A listing and display of all my titles, along with availabilities, may be found in the Book Catalog, including a listing for my latest book, Mystical Theology, which is currently available as an ebook on amazon's Kindle reader ($4.99). This book, along with Body And Soul: An Integral Perspective, represents my own experience and the culmination of my lifelong deliberations on the Divine Reality. Check them out.
There are a few words about myself in the section: About Swami Abhayananda.
And, finally, you will find a few of my Proems in the section: Songs In Praise of God.
I do hope you take the time to read and enjoy all of the above selections. Thank you.
Questions or comments may be addressed to me at: abhayananda@bellsouth.net.
"There is one Consciousness. It is the Consciousness of the One Being. And all the manifested universe exists within that one Consciousness. The various objects of this manifested universe move and operate, not by individual forces or laws of physics, but in and by that One. Immersed in that one Consciousness, united with it, one sees that: "all things move together of one accord; assent is given throughout the universe to every falling grain." Who, then, is doing what? In Him we live and move. In Him one Will operates throughout. And we, mere dust motes dancing in His sunbeam, are swallowed and encompassed in His light. Look within, and see the Truth.
"... A personage in a dream is not only permeated with the consciousness of the dreamer, he is made of the consciousness of the dreamer. He is essentially identical with the consciousness of the dreamer. In just the same way, we are not only permeated by God's Consciousness, we are made of His essence; we are projections of His light. And our consciousness is essentially identical with the Consciousness of God.
"Our bodies are His light-forms, and we are animated and made conscious by the all-pervading presence of His living Consciousness. When we look within ourselves, we discover that we are Him. For, just as a dream-person looking within to enquire who he is would discover that he is in fact the dreamer, so do we, enquiring within, discover that we are the limitless Mind in whom all things and all beings exist.
"...You and I—we are alive in God. Become awake and sense Him—within you, around you, constituting your body and your awareness, the earth, the heavens. This ocean of existence is His. Nothing exists outside of God. To know God is to know one's Self. It is to know the originating Mind of the Father, the One. It is to know the Source of all existence, the Source of all consciousness, and the Source of all bliss. What will you do with this knowledge? Praise Him in your thoughts, and in your words and in your actions. Find your delight in Him—seeing only Him, loving only Him, praising only Him. But we cannot even use the word "Him". We cannot speak of God in the third person, for who would be the third? Even the two—"I" and "Thou"—is an illusion, a false duality that will be dissolved when the one Identity is revealed."
* * *
(Some of the pages on this website may not appear if you are using Internet Explorer as your browser. Try using another browser, such as Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.)