Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 256
THE NATURE OF REVELATION. Sometimes an intuitive experience, without sound or vision, may in reality be a type of external revelation. Many a saintly person describes such experiences of losing his awareness of the world around him and sinking into a state of inner consciousness. He returns to the surface of the outer realities at last, carrying a message like a pearl diver breaks surface with a handful of pearls. Seemingly the subject in this case has an inner experience of something which at its source is without words or images. It is just an intense, ecstatic experience which begins to wear robes of words as it emerges. Yet the impact on him is so powerful as though he had heard someone speak to him directly and clearly during his conscious hours of wakefulness. But the external revelation cannot be identified merely by the impression of the receiver or the manner in which he describes that experience. The only dependable criterion apart from the verified, well-established truthfulness of the person, is the nature of the contents. It is not enough for the receiver to be true, but the contents of the revelation must also bear an internal testimony of their truthfulness. . The distinction mentioned above, between psychic experiences and a genuine revelation from on high, may not be clearly understood by the unfamiliar. Yet the person involved often recognizes it to be a message from on high because the nature of the message is totally unrelated to his personal knowledge and psychic experience. . But the genuineness of revelation is more reliably identified by outsiders with the help of external evidence. . The external evidence may be available to contemporary people, or it may not be available because it may emerge later in time with the emergence of things which are predicted. None could have imagined them because they belong to a future era of knowledge and discovery. The truth of such revelations are in fact meant to convince the 250