Divine I am inside and out,
and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from.
Walt Whitman

The Self is pure consciousness.
No one can ever be away form the Self… You are the Self.
Ramana Maharshi

I have been following a singular mystical vision for over twenty years. All my work – nine books, numerous articles, book chapters, blogs, interviews, classes, lectures and conference presentations – embodies this timeless and unchanging vision. What is this original revelation? It is the direct experience of the world as divine in substance, form and consciousness. It’s all God! Literally. Not the anthropomorphic God created by humans in their likeness, but a living, divine and conscious universe of infinite beauty, love, and flow that we can learn to experience directly.

Everything I have written comes from this timeless well of mystical consciousness – the firsthand experience of the divine – which was humanity’s original religion. Upon its central revelations were built numerous world theologies shaped by culture, era, geography and personality, each one a prism refracting the original pantheistic awareness into unique belief systems. If we want to understand the sacred, and particularly if we wish to transform our current human crisis, consciousness elders must return to the mystical experience of a divine being in a divine world, an experience that becomes increasingly available in sacred aging. How?

As we release the past in our new and unprecedented longevity, as we cease performing old roles and duties to make space for new possibilities, something begins to happen inside – awareness arises of a pristine, thought-free, and lucidly-transformative consciousness. Buried beneath the tarmac of old beliefs, identities, and decades of performing, this new consciousness carries the potential for a new way of being in the world. So it is that aging represents the manger for a new blossom of self to be received, welcomed and nourished, heralding the potential for the Divine Human.

For decades we adapted to what was expected of us – in family, school, jobs and relationships. Freed from these natural constraints, resting in the quietude of later life, this new growth of consciousness intensifies. Can you feel it? Something completely new is happening in your psyche. Hold it as you would a newborn child; be loving, tender, centered, peaceful, quiet, and aware. This new growth won’t happen if you continue laying down more tarmac. Let the old self go; cradle this new emerging “you.”

Now wait in the pregnant silence. Don’t force, direct or coerce it. Instead dwell in its vast inner spaciousness. Sense it. Feel it. It’s alive and aware. Give it room in your soul. This expansion of consciousness signals the coming of a new kind of human being. The future has waited an eternity for this “you” to come forward. Be still. Be gentle. Be patient. Pay attention. The mystics across time and religion tell us that a single divine consciousness pervades the universe and this timeless interior awakening is your opening to it. As Meister Eckhart said, “In my soul, God not only gives birth to me as his son, He gives birth to me as Himself and Himself as me…My truest I is God.” Stay in the manger. Be still. Wait.

Conscious aging invites us on a journey into God in this lifetime. As our journey deepens in a mystical merging with the inner divine, the self-concept steadily dissolves. We experience our own divine nature and the world grows ever more luminous and sacred in our sight. In this self-transmuting process, the personality transforms, becoming more loving, altruistic, compassion and joyous. We are what we have been looking for and we spread love like a lighthouse sweeping its beacon over the land and sea. Our light touches everyone we meet. Then we understand again: Change yourself and you change the world.

This union with the One blesses our inborn timeless self, activating its gifts to share with the world. Wherever we go, ripples of joy and love radiate throughout eternity. As we are made new in every moment, so our light shines ever brighter. And the loving possibilities we envision from inside this oneness can change the world, for in mystical consciousness, divisions or separations no longer exist.

How do we know when we have experienced divinity as our own consciousness? The telltale signs are a sudden eruption of bliss, joy, happiness, love, generosity, rapture and gratitude, along with a noetic clarity that we embody the very substance and consciousness of God, the same pure brilliant energy composing the living, conscious intelligent universe. Soon we cease fretting about beliefs, theology or religious practices and know first hand that God is the ground of being, the ultimate nature of all, and we, too, are that.

John C. Robinson is a clinical psychologist with a second doctorate in ministry, an ordained interfaith minister, the author of nine books on the psychology, spirituality and mysticism of aging along with numerous articles, book chapters and guest blogs. His major works include Death of the Hero, Birth of the Soul; But Where Is God: Psychotherapy and the Religious Search; Ordinary Enlightenment; Finding Heaven