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A fraternal amendment to the
statements of a good many persons that will mention The
Revelation of Arès as being a mystic experience:
The traditional mystic's peculiarity is his or her belief that
he or she can directly experience God and his or her salvation
through piety, asceticism and renunciation of
worldly life without recourse to religion and religious laws and/or
sacraments.
The Arès Pilgrim too believes
that he or she can directly experience God and his or her salvation
without recourse to religion and religious laws and/or sacraments, but
not through piety, asceticism and renunciation to worldly life. The
Arès Pilgrim believes that God and salvation are found when man's penitence is
completed (Rev of Arès 16/17, 30/10/11), that is, when a
man or woman performs love,
forgiveness, peace,
self-release (freedom)
from all prejudices, spiritual intelligence and the
harvest (Rev of Arès 5/2, 6/2, 31/6,
etc.) of other penitents who
from generation to generation will add together to make up the small
remnant
of good people whose influence will end up bringing about the Day
of global happiness (31/8-12). That
will not be performed in mystical seclusion, but it will be performed
right in the middle of the world and its everydaylife
of sufferings (28/25-26, 37/9) as well as joys
and festive times (9/7, 30/11).
If mysticism as experience of
salvation without recourse to religion can apply to spiritual Life, as it is meant in The Revelation of Arès,
an Arès Pilgrim is no more than a nice fellow mystic, well aware that he or she will
be saved only by striving to become good
and help other people to become
good and that he or she in so doing will recover the image
of the Creator
of love (Genesis 1/27).
Some people tell me, "But you saw and heard Jesus in 1974 and then God
in 1977. That was direct experience of God, a mystical experience,
wasn't it?"
I reply, "No, that was just a direct experience of the surnatural. I would
get the experience of God much later, after spending a long
time achieving my penitence, that is, becoming
a man much better than the one I had been. Until the achievement
all was just potentiality, all was just efforts and efforts and I had
no proof that they were reasonable and would end up successful.
Until then all was just words and ideas in the pages of The
Revelation of Arès, which has no real existence until it is
achieved (Rév
d'Arès 35/5-6). I personally believe in God, though mind
you penitence can be achieved by people who do
not recognize God (28/11-14),
provided they believe in Good. What a great
expectation! How great God's generosity!"
Our
mysticism, if we have any, is performed in direct relation to the
world. It is the mysticism of the practical Good.
No flattering iconography of such a mysticism. Notably, its glory (Rev of Arès
37/9) disappears under the problem of time, of the huge time that efforts
to be good take.
The necessity of time is
misunderstood by some people who, when newcomers in the assembly,
expect perfect good men to be
there. They rub shoulders with brothers and
sisters,
whom they judge are disappointing fellows. They fail to see that those novices of
a beginning small remnant make up not an
angel assembly, but a magma
of penitents in the making,
only would-be brothers, but no
consummate brothers. They do not
understand that the assembly is
not a refuge, but a dough trough, and they leave, because they
think they are already good bread and do not want to be "kneaded". Sadly,
almost nobody is good bread in the world. Love, therefore humility, is
as necessary to persevere in assembly
life as it is to be happy with life in the world where one cannot
receive anything but what one has given, if one happens to receive
anything.
The Aresian faith is only mystical in absolute realism,
which is not the peculiarity of traditional mysticism, which borders on
spiritual emotional ecstasy.
Sacrifice etymologically means "to
achieve the sacred." Now, an Arès Pilgrim is aware that he or she is
neither saved by the sacrifice of a god incarnate on a cross to
redeem him or her from sin, nor saved by his or her own asceticism as
hard as possible. It is his or her own sin,
that is, his or her own evil, that an Arès Pilgrim sacrifices—in
accordance with his or her own freedom to be good or evil—by striving
to be good.
An Arès Pilgrim is aware that the addition of goodnesses, if the number of penitents is to increase much, will some Day (Rev of Arès 31/8) end up in global Goodness, whose billions of atoms the Arès Pilgrim's part of goodness will be a constituent.
This is a long rocky path (Rev of Arès 25/5),
just the opposite of what a famous traditional mystic, Krishnamurti,
said: "Truth is a country with no paths." By saying that Truth is that the world has to change
(Rev of Arès 28/7) The Revelation of Arès means that the change will be achieved through slow, long movements towards the Saint's Mountain (7/1-9)
and four generations will not be enough (24/2) to reach the end.
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