inine, even as modern thought has come to realize God as
Father-Mother.

In all mystical writings, we find the conclusion that there is no _one way_
in which the seeker may find reunion with The Beloved.

"The ways of God are as the number of the souls of men," declare the
followers of Islam, and "for the love that thou wouldst find demands the
sacrifice of self to the end that the heart may be filled with the passion
to stand within the Holy of Holies, in which alone the mysteries of the
True Beloved can be revealed unto thee," is also a Sufi sentiment, although
it might also be Christian or Mohammedan, or Vedantan.

Indeed, if the student of Esotericism, searches deeply enough, he will find
a surprising unity of sentiment, and even of expression, in all the variety
of religions and philosophies, including Christianity.

It has been said that the chief difference between the message of Jesus
and those of the holy men of other races, and times, lies in the fact that
Jesus, more than his predecessors, emphasized the importance of love. But
consider the following lines from Jami, the Persian mystic:

"Gaze, till gazing out of gazing
Grew to BEING HER I gazed on,
She and I no more, but in one
Undivided Being blended.
All that is not One must ever
Suffer with the wound of absence;
And whoever in Love's city
Enters, finds but room for one
And but in Oneness, union."

These lines express that religious ecstacy which results from spiritual
aspiration, or they express the union of the individual soul with its mate
according to the viewpoint. In any event, they are an excellent description
of the realization of that much-to-be-desired consciousness which is
fittingly described in Occidental phraseology as "cosmic consciousness."
Whether this realization is the result of union with the soul's "other
half," or whether it is an impersonal reunion with the Causeless Cause, The
Absolute, from which we are earth wanderers, is not the direct purpose of
this volume to answer, although the question will be answered, and that
soon.

From whence and by whom we are not prepared to say, but the "signs and
portents" which precede the solution of this problem have already made
their appearance.

Christian students of the Persian mystics, take exception to statements
like the above, and regard them as "erotic," rather than spiritual.

Mahmud Shabistari employs the following symbolism, but unquestionably seeks
to