Be Discriminating With Mystical Teachers

I don't align with much of Paul Bruntons' perspective on things but these insights are very well articulated:

-Because a man has had some kind of inner revelation it does not follow that everything in life and the universe has become plain to him and that he has become a kind of human encyclopedia.

[Youtube playlist of influential non-dualists acting as a human encyclopedia for sensitive topics that they are unqualified to give guidance on: https://bit.ly/3l6U0ZX]

-It is the thinking mystic who can best explain mysticism to others and even to himself. And it is the active mystic who can best demonstrate its worth.

-The mystic who claims that his knowledge is verbally incommunicable and that it is useless trying to explain it intellectually, is stretching a difficulty into an impossibility.

-One way to test a mystical claim is to push it out farther & farther until it reaches its (potentially) ridiculous ultimate!

-Those who provide quick and facile answers to such hard questions about man's lot and life merely act as unwitting purveyors of deception.

-It is easy to understand that it is not necessary to accept the gibberings of absurd quacks merely because one is willing to accept the revelations of true mystics. But it is not generally known that even these revelations need also to be screened by critical judgement.

-When inquiring into the genuineness of the teachings of one who claims to have received direct guidance and revelation, a seeker must remember that subconscious complexes are very important in this connection. If he inquires into the background and associations of the seer or mystic he will doubtless find the seeds out of which many of the revelations have grown--with or without the seer's conscious assistance.

-We are all too familiar with mystical revelations which lack substance, abound with old clichés, lose themselves in a woolly vagueness.

-This explains the moral weaknesses of some mystics who have given us great teachings. Few have taken the pains to undergo a thorough re-education of their whole being, and to bring it into proper equilibrium, involving its development, to be practitioners of their own preachment.

-The charlatanism which accompanies several of these cults need not necessarily be deliberate; it may also be unconscious. This is possible in cases where their founder's earnest efforts resulted in a partial mystical illumination but where his imagination was unrestrained and his speculations unguarded, his critical judgement and reasoning power undeveloped, while the ambitions of his ego were strong enough to push him into premature leadership.