First, I am using the term Mystic in my own specific meaning. I apply it to those who have acquired the double, who have employed the super-sensorable world as an integrated working aspect of their sensorable world. Who operate on ‘both’ levels.
These are people who have mastered the second task of the path. The first task is the security and health of the physical body - karmic facts excluded. That means all that the physical implies - our physical world, its primary milestones of food, shelter, and security, in all that those words signify in their widest terminology.
I am not saying such a person does not go through physical calamities of financial, health and relationship. That’s the road - we can’t ask for comfort. I am saying they have built within themselves the readiness, the competence and the willingness to adapt to all and every situation that confronts them. Failure is allowed, but not on an inner level of potent capacity. We can suffer profound disaffection with the physical world, but that is part of the second task. The first task is creating a competent machine of survival in every condition we could possibly meet - how we use that machine is an aspect of our second task, the task of the soul.
The Mystic has mastered the task of the soul. This means she has found balance in her sentience. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune now find her a formidable opponent to overthrow. Again, not without vulnerabilities, but past a definite threshold, such that each time you meet her, you are likely to meet a consistency palpable beneath the surface fluctuations of a fertile personality.
A Mystic however has also mastered one highly critical faculty: she has activated the double. How is that done? Unfortunately this is not the place to go into that, but it is the subject of considerable bewilderment. My personal experience has demonstrated that it is commensurate with our astral self recognising our physical self, to the point where it takes an active role in the life and journey of that physical self.
The double is a being of astounding qualities. Every creature has an astral component - an inorganic being. Aware creatures, like humans and animals, but also very old trees etc, have a special type of inorganic being. Each human has an astral self, which becomes the primary vehicle of awareness after death. The Mystic uses the same vehicle, but with one fantastic difference. The double, an astral self, has a quality of awareness that is significantly different to the ordinary person. It has ‘self-directing’ faculties and powers.
Look clearly at what this means. The ordinary person’s astral body is predicate. It’s entire existence is conditional, on the life of the physical emotions during life, and on their unwinding, of stored memory, after life. It is a puppet on the strings of external influences - it has minimal free will. It’s existence proceeds according to law, to the command of associations, and extinguishes on the exhaustion of those associations. The double however, is an astral being who has acquired agency. And there you have it, in a nutshell.
Agency means it is no longer a predicate. It is an active instigator in its own right. It still comes under the law, but it comes under a different law - the law of awareness. It also extinguishes, but instead of through the exhaustion of stored associations, it has the ability to create new associations, such that it exhausts on its deeper layers of energy. In theory, it could live, comparative to the physical, forever. But there are deeper laws of evolution, that will inevitably come knocking.
The double creates new associations, because it has an active awareness, that can seek out new experiences, un-predicated on life’s associations. I expect there will always remain some threads back to those associations, so it is very wise, as a Mystic, to taste and scan the widest possible array of sensations possible, on both an outer and inner dimension. Much could be said about that process.
On death, the Mystic’s double catches The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light. And carries it away on a melody of fantastic possibilities - contained only by the imagination.
Such is the prize of those who have mastered the second task, and who have secured for themselves the death of a Mystic - the Vehicle of Adventure!
