Mys­tics some­times pos­sess mys­ter­i­ous powers. Not long ago I heard of an old South Amer­ic­an sham­an who had been invited to a ‘civ­il­ised’ coun­try to give a lec­ture. It is said that the great eld­ers know great secrets, but no one expec­ted the sham­an to stroll unnoticed through the detect­or gates at the entrance, without the finely tuned device regis­ter­ing a thing! The true mys­tic is here – and yet he is not here.

In an ordin­ary man the same mys­ter­i­ous mir­acle takes place, only in reverse, when the spir­itu­al part of him is wholly lost in mat­ter. Is this mim­icry too, or rather a loss of con­scious­ness? His body here, and his aware­ness lost along the way?

Con­ceal­ment is admit­tedly a kind of decep­tion, a pre­tence, one with a pur­pose that can be jus­ti­fied: as a rule, to ensure sur­viv­al. To blend into the sur­round­ings, to go unnoticed, to lie low and simply wait for some ter­ror to strike, or per­haps to be aver­ted… We might even regard this as the first law of good hor­ror, yet con­ceal­ment is not pecu­li­ar to screen­plays, it often occurs invol­un­tar­ily in nature, and at other times life forces such beha­viour upon us.

The mys­tic – whatever reli­gion or cul­tur­al main­stream he may belong to – is always half a heretic, because he stands out from the ranks. Pos­sessed of per­son­al insights, he usu­ally finds it hard to con­form to offi­cial lines and expect­a­tions, he is hard to man­age, and little under­stand­ing attends him in his life­time. After his death, how­ever – espe­cially if he has become fam­ous – he belatedly acquires a host of friends, sup­port­ers and admirers, ah well, the world, and man in it, is like that.

To ward off incom­pre­hen­sion, to secure their own inner peace, or to veil their insights, mys­tics employ mim­icry. I would not call it capit­u­la­tion, nor even a read­i­ness to com­prom­ise, but merely an inno­cent means of keep­ing the peace when the free mys­tic, in the full­ness of his insights, presents him­self as ignor­ant or as one liv­ing in bond­age. When con­scious­ness rules the body to the degree it does in our sham­an’s case, there is no longer any need for proofs. Feats and proofs are needed by begin­ners, by begin­ner mys­tics and by a begin­ner audi­ence. The begin­ner who boasts of his abil­it­ies is not try­ing to dazzle oth­ers, but to cloak his own weak­ness, to jus­ti­fy and con­vince him­self. The great ones no longer seek to con­vince either their audi­ence or them­selves. Thanks to their stable inner val­ues, they know what they have at their com­mand, they are aware of their strength, and they know their lim­its as well.

Good Advice for Suc­cess­ful Con­ceal­ment

  • › Know everything, but let no one know you.
  • › Suc­cess­ful adapt­a­tion to the pat­tern is like the sol­dier who is asked wheth­er he has a cam­ou­flage uni­form and replies that he has, only he can’t find it…
  • › True con­ceal­ment: be present in such a way that no one notices you, and be absent in such a way that every­one believes you are present!
  • › Inverse mim­icry: you must decide, do you adapt to your sur­round­ings, or do your sur­round­ings adapt to you?

If a healthy man is put in a strait­jack­et, he goes mad. The mad­man no longer does, and neither does the mys­tic, for it is all the same to him what is said about him, all the same who thinks what, all the same what prac­tice oth­ers pur­sue. Because free­dom is only for autonom­ous people!