As rational and spiritual entities we have the ability to transcend our narrow ego-selves, and find the essence of our being not only within us but also extending beyond. At some time in our lives we become aware of something numinous, spiritual, surpassing comprehension, a sense of the oneness of everything in nature. Because we have experienced it, no one can convince us our experience is not true.
What is truth? It is not a doctrine to be believed, or an object to be discovered by the tools of research. Truth is the universe as it really is, in contradistinction to what it appears to be. What we see, hear, or feel is refracted by our points of view and may be wrongly interpreted. In our search for the meaning of it all we may be drawn to this or that seer or prophet, to some visionary or, unhappily, be taken in by a charlatan. Each of these types has many gradations, because some may be misled where others may be aware they do not measure up to their claims. The seeker, therefore, has to be discriminating in making a choice.
A prophet is supposed to be divinely inspired, a revealer or mouthpiece for God or for his own inner god. The revelation may yield insights about the universe, mankind, or life generally; or it may foreshadow coming events. The term prophet is applied to certain figures in the monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In the Old Testament, Micah prophesied that "they shall beat their swords into plowshares" (4:3); in the New Testament, both John the Baptist and Jesus are referred to as prophets; and in the heritage of Islam, Mohammed is the preeminent prophet, the spokesman for Allah. In Western culture, the word is applied to any individual who claims to foresee the future, such as Nostradamus, for example.
In the main, we may say that a genuine prophet is one who has a powerful influence for good upon his or her fellows, a capacity to aid in the transmuting of character from a self-centered bias to a more open, spiritual level. Such are the sages of all times, clear-sighted like the Buddha and Christ, who see through the illusions of material life into the inner, causative planes of being.
William James reminds us that in most religions there is an awareness of what is divine, and some sort of response to divinity, however it may be viewed. While on the one hand there may be loyalty to a set of dogmas that must be accepted on faith, on the other there can be direct experience of godhead — God transcendent; "outside" of ourselves yet in the cosmos, or immanent, our inner god. Truth in any one religion is what is common to all, and to claim exclusive possession of truth is to deny the universality of the mystical at-onement that Martin Buber called the "God-I" and "I-Thou" relationship. This obviously is an inner communion of the heart, and the universality of a concept or teaching is the test of its possible truth. Whatever is true has been taught in all times and in various expressions of language. Each new presentation may shed light on what has gone before, but never destroy or contradict it.
There are all sorts of visions, and-visionaries are those who intuit something beyond the appearances of the physical world yet clothe their visions with images from their own minds. For example, Swedenborg described the inhabitants of other worlds as wearing Swedish national costumes. Such instances emphasize the need for a trained discrimination before we can accurately interpret what we are seeing in the astral realms.
The term "astral," meaning starry, has entered common speech via avant-garde publications, books, and other literature. The word relates to a spectrum of substances/energies ranging from below the physical with which we are familiar, to highly rarefied levels beyond our daily experience. The lower astral interpenetrates our material world and contains imprints of various kinds, some not at all wholesome. People who are sensitive and impressionable may be visionaries who, because of inexperience and lack of control, may misinterpret what they perceive. Before one can become a true clairvoyant (the word means "clear-seeing"), considerable discipline is needed: in willpower — to control one's faculties and not be controlled by them; and in understanding — to be able to distinguish reality from appearances.
To "see clearly" thus means to see intuitively or with spiritual clarity and insight. Sometimes, great religious figures have been mis taken for visionaries; at other times, visionaries have been mistaken for prophets. As for charlatans: they are those who claim to be what they are not: messengers from God, or from masters or adepts. Authenticity is not guaranteed by sincerity of belief, or by any outer insignia. While many charlatans or impostors know at the outset of their career that they are not what they claim to be, constant utterance of those pretensions may convince even themselves, and this in turn may persuade or influence those who hear them. This suggests that part of the reason why pretenders attract large followings is what appears to be the sincerity of the claimants. Another reason may arise in the fact that many people sense within themselves the presence of something grander than the ego or personality. They yearn for a direct experience of it, a conscious relationship, and look for anyone offering to bring about an awareness of this self-conscious kind.
The real "light-bringers," however, reveal themselves by their innate characteristics: Are they compassionate individuals, humanitarians first and foremost? The fire of spiritual genius works a magic upon receptive people. World teachers have always said it is useless to look outside ourselves for the light; we should look within. Hui Nēng, the Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Ch'an, told a disciple who had asked him for additional instruction: "If you turn your light inward you will find what is esoteric — within you."
If one wishes to follow certain practices
in order to reach the Buddha [outside],
I do not know where he can expect to find
the real Buddha.
If one can in his own mind see the real Buddha
That will bring about his realization of Buddhahood.
He who does not seek the real Buddha in himself
but seeks him outside,
Is surely a man of great delusion.
What, then, is the need for spiritual teachers or prophets if within ourselves is the goal of evolution and the road to reach it? We need reminders that we are more than our physical selves; that, as with everything else in the cosmos, we are ensouled. From time to time enlightened individuals have re-sounded the gong that was struck far back in the night of time when human beings first became selfconscious. The effect of this was an enflamement that began with the compassionate sharing of mind-fire by godlike beings who, it has been said, engendered in each of us an image of the "ground plan" of the consciousness-side of the universe. But immersion in the material as pect of earth life dims the tones and overtones of the primeval truths, and so with each age the gong is struck anew, evoking echoes of the vibration that still thrills through the cosmos.
No one can live alone, for we are all bound together more intimately than we realize. Perhaps what we need most in our pursuit of an understanding of truth, is a hunger for it, conviction, and commitment. If we but try to find the thread that leads out of the labyrinth of illusions in our daily lives, the attempt will achieve more than can be imagined. Those who have indeed achieved, the perfected individuals whose very presence profoundly affected all within their influence, were notably unselfish. The status-seeking that originates in egoism had disappeared from their nature long before they played their role on the world stage. All that is needed to follow the path to which they point is to be virtuous and emulate their commitment to their fellow human beings.
(From Sunrise magazine, October/November 1982. Copyright © 1982 by Theosophical University Press)