Back to Home Page or Contents Page or Past and present beliefs or Index

Castle of the Interior Man

The mystical term for the seven steps of spiritual growth in which the soul ascends toward Divinity: 1. Through prayer and concentration on God; 2.prayer directed toward obtaining knowledge of the mystical significance of the manifested reality; 3. self-renunciation, or the so-called "dark night of the soul"; 4. surrendering of personal will to God; 5. a state of union with Divinity in which the person's will and God's will becomes one; 6. a state of ecstasy in which the soul is filled with love and joy; 7. the mystical marriage with God, where the inner being enters heaven. A.G.H.