If it would be disastrous to feel that acceptance of material such as is here presented is equivalent to an understanding of Paul, it would be still more disastrous to imagine that even a complete comprehension of Paul as disclosed in his writings is an understanding of the Truth.
For Paul, in his writings, does not so much as attempt to deal with method. It is as if a man should cast seed into the ground and leave it to spring and grow up.
We must not think, because he is silent, that Paul is ignorant of method. There are twice seven years after the Damascus episode which are undocumented and unaccounted for,—in Arabia, Syria, Cilicia. What was he doing during those years, that the men of Lycaonia, when he first started out in his rôle as missionary, must needs instinctively recognize him as a being of a different order? Learning the method, perhaps among the Essenes. Practicing the method.
This matter of method has never been committed openly to writing. The torch has been passed on from disciple to disciple. This is the true apostolic succession. When Jesus said "Neither cast ye your pearls before swine" he was simply formulating what has always been approved practise. Method can come only after the recognition of present state and the determination at all costs to attain the ableness to achieve normality. It was at this recognition and this determination that Paul was aiming in his letters, not at method.
"The thyrsus bearers are many but the mystics are few." Method is the strait gate and few there be who find it. At the same time it is not occult or esoteric. "Go and wash in Jordan seven times." But, simple as it is, it is only for those who have "died."