27 May 2026

Why Have There Been So Few Saints?

Looking back in history, one is struck by how few recognised saints seem to have existed amongst the billions who have lived. Why is this you might ask?

My theory is that, typically, the spiritual acolyte, just like the rest of us, embraces the human mind, contrary to what one might suppose. Most of us turn our minds outwards and engage with the world, while the acolytes turn inwards to study themselves or God. For the spiritually inclined, controlling their thoughts and developing strong morals does, indeed, lead to great moral purity and harmony with God’s laws. They may even succeed in negating the power of the mind to a certain extent (I’ll come to spiritual ‘realisation’, shortly). But because the human condition is so deeply ingrained in us, it’s a long, hard path. It seems few emerge victorious within their allotted human lifespan to the point of becoming widely revered for their saintly ways.

What’s the alternative? The answer is simple but not obvious. It turns out that we can never truly become what God wants us to be by embracing our minds, regardless of the direction we head in or the progress we make. There’s an upper ceiling to where such a path leads. We’re told countless millions of spirits are now in the condition of having perfected their human nature, being free of sin and living in harmony with God’s laws. Their place of habitation is indeed a heaven of sorts. Perhaps if we were to meet them, we would regard some or all of them as saints by comparison with our own spiritual condition.

But the true saints in history never really embraced their minds. Instead, they embraced God, but predominately not through their minds. Instinctively, they opened up their emotions to God, indulging in deep, reverent prayers beseeching God to embrace them. These emotions have their origin in the soul, not the mind. In doing so, they opened up their soul and received a great inflowing of God’s divine love, brought by God’s Comforter, which fundamentally changed them. Over time, as this process was repeated, they were utterly transformed to become the real living saints of history. This is the road less travelled, which is why so few real saints have ever existed.

Although they didn’t achieve the colossal stature of Jesus, who became wholly divine during his lifetime, they, nevertheless, demonstrated striking similarities. What is not widely understood is that this divine path leads to much faster progress than the path of developing one’s natural love and perfecting one’s nature. Nor is it just a different trajectory – it leads us to a completely different place: God-realisation rather than self-realisation. I’ve discussed the implications of each of these two outcomes elsewhere.

Today, only a relatively small number of us walk the divine path, and very few have done so from a young age. Consequently, these true saints in the making are almost invisible in terms of their global presence. Even so, their hidden impact on the world in terms of neutralising darkness through the divine light that they shine is considerable. All of us benefit from this.

Of course, their motivation is to become God’s humble servants rather than to be recognised as saints. But the barometer of real spiritual change in this world will be when we can look up in admiration at the leaders of our societies and feel the saintly, God-given love that they emanate. It’s been predicted that this will only happen once our societies break down and we recognise that our trust in our leaders and secular lifestyles has been misplaced. These events will herald the dawn of a new golden age of peace and harmony on the earth.