Saying 52 of the Gospel of Thomas: "His disciples said to him, 'Twenty-four prophets spoke in Israel, and all of them spoke of you.' He said to them, 'You have omitted the one living in your presence and have spoken (only) of the dead.'"
One can notice -- one may discover -- that this Path of the Masters, also called Sant Mat, does not solely have a focus of looking back to an earlier time of now deceased prophets and saints, like we usually find in the mainstream, conventional, exoteric religions and institutions. Rather -- what’s especially fascinating and noteworthy about a living mystic path and school of spirituality like Sant Mat is, there are Living Buddhas, Living Rumis, Living Hildegards, Living Kabirs, Living Masters or Meister Eckharts, Living Ones with us NOW, here on terra firma in the Twenty-First Century.
For it is the ability to truly listen that gives birth to an awareness of a message, and an appreciation of a messenger. An Infinite God could never have a limited number of inspired words, or be forever bound by bookbinders. If there is no inspiration now, how could there ever have been any inspiration in days gone by? There is also no missing element or trace mineral, once supposedly present in the water supply during the middle ages or earlier times but now gone, that once caused the appearance of prophets and saints, and allegedly accounts for their "absence" now. What was true then is true now. The same need that brought great souls into the world during past centuries is still with us. My experience and belief is that the age of prophets, apostles, masters or saints is still with us, that there is a Living Gnosis NOW. There are living Masters in the world today. The reality and not the illusion of having a guru, begins here, with this openness to the possibility of Living Ones NOW.