Imagine there’s a a sun in the heart of every human being, covered with a thick black blanket. Some people believe in the sun and some people don’t. Those who believe read about it in sacred sun scriptures, which contain special teachings about the sun of God. Each teaching is like a set of coordinates pointing to a specific point on the black sphere. The believers dutifully mark the point on a map. As they progress through the teachings, they collect more and more points on their map and begin to notice connections between them. The rationalist types will find logical connections and the very keen ones will even go to the trouble of developing a philosophical system based on these connections. They might call it “theology”. The non-rationalist types will find correspondences between the points via sympathetic magic. Some will even build a fantastical, poetical system and call it “theosophy”.
Other believers will come along and look at the map and try their best to follow the directions and precepts put there by the map-makers. These are the followers of “exoteric” religion. They are mostly interested in what they should do and how they should behave. The more closely they follow the map, the better they feel about themselves.
But rather than marking, listing, organizing and mapping the original sacred teachings into a system, there are those believers who just receive the teachings as they are given. You could say they “meditate” on them, reading them with a special attitude of receptive attention called “lectio divina”. Often they get a vague sense of what the teaching is really pointing to, but occasionally, the penny drops, they experience an epiphany, a “eureka” moment, and a hole is opened in the blanket. Light shines through the blanket, like a star in the night sky.
These are the followers of “esoteric religion”. They do not claim credit for this “shining through”. They understand that they were just in the right place at the right time. They are blessed with each revelation through an act of mysterious grace from beyond. They were in a sacred place, and a holy word tore a hole in the blanket of the heart.
First one star, then two, then eventually, as they continue to study and meditate on the sacred scriptures, hundreds begin to shine. Now instead of points on a two-dimensional map, they can see the actual contours, and the shape and size of the sun plotted in three dimensions, not through inferential, deductive reason or creative imagination, but with their own eyes. A sun made of stars.
These believers, who can see the sun, can see the organic relations between each of the “stars” and intuit the simple whole of which they are expressions. They are the “holy men” and “holy women”, who have direct access to the divine, and have developed the faculty of divination, which is the ability to see and experience the holy in the real world.
It can happen that the holes are big enough and numerous enough that a tipping point is reached (often triggered by a psychedelic blast) and the sun bursts through and burns up the blanket completely. These are not just holy men and women. These are the “suns of God”.
“I heard the voice of Jesus say,
‘I am this dark world’s Light;
Look unto me, thy morn shall rise,
And all thy days be bright:’
I looked to Jesus, and I found
In him my Star, my Sun;
And in that light of life I’ll walk
Till travelling days are done.”
the way of the holy mushroom 