Exploring mystical ideas in Annalee Skarin's "Temple of God"

After publishing Heavenly Ways of Earth's Graduates, a reader wrote to me that she knew about the book because it had been mentioned in another one by an American author she liked named Annalee Skarin (1899 – 1988?). I remembered I had a copy of that book somewhere, so I started digging around and found it buried in a box under the bed.

Skimming through it again after many years to find the mention of Heavenly Ways, I was stunned by what I read. At first glance, Annalee Skarin's The Temple of God seems like rantings by a fiery Old Testament prophet, goading readers on to no less a goal than becoming one with God. She infuses her work with numerous quotes from the Bible and the Book of Mormon. She also rails against all churches for having missed the point by not teaching the importance of the interior process of truly living God’s word as Jesus taught. She included her own beloved Mormon church, which excommunicated her for statements such as these (as well as for the fact that she was a woman and thus not authorized to lead or receive the word of God).

Nevertheless, Annalee’s works have remained in constant publication over the years. It became clear to me that her extraordinary fire stems from her great love and devotion, which she diligently cultivated and which helped impel her upward on the spiritual path. From her vantage point she could see so clearly what we too need to do to come up higher; like Jeremiah and other prophets of old, her intent is to shake and wake us up. There is something in her words that rings of the light and fire of the Divine, as she tries to explain in as many ways as she can think of the understandings of God’s power and laws which have to her become so very clear.

But what really surprised me was how her detailed revelations so closely matched those made by other great mystics of the world. Here are a few examples to explain a bit about what I mean.

As with all lovers of the Divine, Annalee was aware of the importance of going within and stilling oneself from the world’s outer vibrations in order to realize one’s own Divine nature. In particular, she knew about the form of a specific type of meditation which I have been taught to practice, that involves meditating upon the inner light and sound of God through awareness at the level of the third eye. It is an ancient tradition known to those of several Eastern religions, and it also involves simran, mental repetition of the names and attributes of the Divine as constantly as possible. While Annalee does not, of course, use that word, she does say that one must continually praise God with love and gratitude. This, I realized, was her own form of simran.

I have no doubt that when she describes the ineffable Name of the Christ Light as being the vibration that runs the entire cosmos, she is referring to the divine sound which ancients knew created all matter. In The Temple of God she called it “the eternal, glorified symphony of the Universe that holds the keys of eternity and the very powers of God.” Mystics over the centuries have used many words for this divine Christic vibration of the Godhead, including Naam, Naad, the Om, the audible lifestream, the music of the spheres, and the voice of your mind.

I discovered that Annalee also knew about the mystic fires on the altar of the heart, as well as about the second person of the Trinity—the one who is called the “Christ,” that is, the one who is anointed with the great light and vibration of the Divine.

Finally, through her own dynamic and personal experiences, this mystic also realized that when one contacts the inner divine presence many times until one can live almost continually in its light, one becomes transfigured with that light. This is a process she and some members of the Mormon Church called “translation.” Annalee herself wrote that it was the same as Jesus’ transfiguration on the Mount, and that when this occurs, one begins to step out of the usual realm of physical limitations.

In reference to such occurrences, here are a few fascinating and cryptic little statements from The Temple of God, each of which is covered in further detail in our book Rising Up Into the Divine – World Mystics on the Ascent of Your Soul:

· “It (the mind) can center itself in an atom and examine its component parts.” Strange as this may sound, it is not an unrealistic or unproven statement. In the late 1800s, at least four people, three of them theosophists, could do this seemingly impossible feat of seeing inside an atom to its component quarks, a power recorded of some yogis in the East, as well as occasionally in the West, where it is called “magnifying clairvoyance.”

· “It (levitation) is the law Christ used in walking on the Sea of Galilee . . . Even as all evil thinking gives gravity the power to exert its rightful claim, so too does love fulfill the law of levitation.” Levitation is a phenomenon demonstrated by great saints of both East and West that has been well-documented over the centuries.

· “The glorified Christ ray, issuing out of his own being, makes it possible for one to travel forth to any directed spot with the speed of Light.” Here Annalee is writing of yet other powers attributed to many saints of East and West, including astral travel, levitation, and/or bilocation.

· “Always your thoughts are you expressing yourself. They are the projection of what you have built into yourself as it is thrown out upon the screen of eternity.” From this and many other statements in the book, one can see that the author had a deep understanding of what we now call New Thought, and of how the thoughts we think can, in conjunction with the light and power of God, create our own external reality.

In summary, this mystic knew that at that at some point in one’s spiritual development it is possible to demonstrate a number of “yogic” powers, which she simply referred to in her writings as the “powers” of God. Such facts highlighted for me that “the truth is the truth,” no matter where one finds it—even if it be from a Mormon lady from rural Idaho who was born in 1899 and had no formal education past the eighth grade. Considering all of the above, along with the very timbre and vibration of the book itself, the reader may come to the same conviction as I did that Annalee Skarin was a modern American mystic who had realized the Divine in a way most mortals never dream possible.