the roundabout way on the so-called Direct mystical path, will be thrown down by their own being, by themselves, because they will surely cling to one of the new, and, till this time unknown joys, which are developing on the Direct mystical path. An unwise lay person can thus think about the path of mystical and spiritual development whatever they want, but they can never avoid the fulfilment of all of their desires reaching for pleasures, perhaps sensory, perhaps supersensory, which are, despite everything, only sensory pleasures. For, this is the reality, stemming from a psychological law. From this very psychological law it follows, that a life process can never be finished by an intervention of will, but always only by living through, and perhaps even living-out everything, which was predetermined by the arisen desires. Even the most sophisticated forms of Indian asceticism failed due to the lack of knowledge of this fact. They were conceived to suppress the driving forces of being and these forces have always slipped out of the hands of the will of every ascetic, like snakes with a slippery skin. Even when these ascetics engaged against them ardent suffering, they didn’t succeed because, by that, they have only developed feelings of suffering, which were a process by which hellish states were realised, and never the heavenly or superheavenly ones. The knowledge, which created this opinion about asceticism, however doesn’t mean the approval of apolausticism. Apolausticism is only something like an allopathic treatment of the soul deeply diseased with sensory desire, and thus has nothing in common with the intended mystical joyfulness. The latter results from inner freedom or from inner freeing, the basis of which is the flight of a healthy spirit into the far-flung inner spaces. Only when a person, by admitting the influences of continual sensory stimulation will become ill in their spirit, sensory cravings unfold in them, and these will replace the inner freedom of an emotionally and mentally healthy human, uncorrupted by sensory wanting. When a person loses this inner health, they will start to constantly seek sensory excitements, which make the body vibrate with an emotional or tactile gratification. When this happens, the joyfulness of a internally relaxed person will disappear from their memory. They will then start to believe only in a substitute of the true joyfulness, in the sensory excitements. These, as indulging in physical feelings, do not make them stronger and healthier, but are driving them into a hangover by whose repetition they will get extensively ill in mind, body and spirit. Therefore it is common, that those who start to search for solutions of the problems of life on the paths of mysticism, first have to heal themselves from an incorrect conception of the idea of joyfulness. They have to strive for distinguishing between that substitute springing from gratification of unbridled sensory desires, and the true joyfulness, which, in turn, springs from the overcoming of sensory desires. This however requires renunciation of the world, an asceticism of its kind, which follows from a genuine absence of craving. For, those who do not overcome sensory cravings in the broadest extent of this task, will never find the mystical goal. Only those, who have cured themselves from sensory desires by their total extinguishment, will. Spirituality Studies 1 (2) Fall 2015 35 (3)
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