Universal Theology & Life in the Other Worlds

In the third and final volume of The Meaning of Life, Professor Whiteman, a mathematician and mystic (who will be celebrating his 100th birthday in November 2006) has completed the mammoth task he set himself, namely to incorporate his own mystical experiences into a world view. As he writes in the Preface, ‘What we are to consider here is the experience of the divine Reason (Logos) in everything of life, always working for the advancement of the good. The experience which gives or leads to this is today described as mystical. So here we study what has been said or depicted regarding the mystical, also the way to proceed for its attainment and development, and what the most notable teachers in the past have seen fit to declare. ‘This third volume on the “meaning of life” deals accordingly with the fruits of spiritual development in three chief ways. Firstly, every conclusion reached is based on and in accord with the mystical and psychical experience granted to me over the course of about eighty years (some even earlier). . . . Secondly, there is need an intensive study of ancient scriptures, which I have felt obliged to study in the original languages: Vedic, Sanskrit, Pali, Hebrew and Greek [as] translations of these scriptures have almost invariably been made by scholars lacking mystical experience. . . . Knowledge of quite another kind is also needed, philosophical and indeed mathematical in character, if the consistent rational development of objective phenomena in other-world states of life (and even in the physical world) is to be understood. . . . In the Historical Survey, Part III, I have restricted the enquiry to writings reasonably taken to refer to first-hand mystical experience in history up to about 120 C.E. . . . there is good reason to believe that, after that date, the earlier and genuine accounts of mystical experience have been built on by theologians and others who had not been granted that experience.’