Nagasawa Katsutate

"Spiritual Learning is [a method of learning in which one] personally witnesses and verifies the genuine existence of deities by training oneself single-mindedly in the principles of spirit possession, while taking the divine classics and national histories as one’s basis. By personally apprehending their [i.e., the deities’] loftiness and might, one understands why the world of our country’s divine classics is unparalleled. Hereby one understands for the first time the original principles of the establishment of the universe, the configuration of the planet earth, the boundary between the manifest and arcane realms, and the reason why the grandson of Heaven [i.e., Ninigi-no-mikoto, Amaterasu’s grandson] descended to earth. Thus one becomes awed by the mighty virtue of the Heavenly Deity who is the Imperial Ancestor, and can understand why our Imperial Household is honorable and mighty, and why shrines exist. However, this Spiritual Learning is mutually complementary with the study of the divine classics. Only by both studying the divine classics and personally experiencing the existence of deities can one understand their mighty virtue. One cannot truly comprehend the mysterious wonders of the divine classics merely by the philological analysis carried on by scholars from ancient times. Only by experiencing the genuine existence of the deities through the method of spirit possession can one understand the arcane, distant, subtle and marvelous original principle of our realm of the deities."