Mysticism

“ Mysticism is almost everywhere synonymous with what is most visionary in religion and most obscure in speculation. But a history of Mysticism—old visions and old obscurities—who is bold enough to expect a hearing for that? Is the hopeful present, struggling toward clear intelligence, to pause and hear how, some hundreds of years ago, men made themselves elaborately unintelligible? ”

“ At one end of the scale, therefore, we have the so-called negative language of mysticism, which describes the supersensuous in paradox by refusing to describe it at all; by declaring that the entry of the soul upon spiritual experience is an entry into a Cloud of Unknowing, a nothing, a Divine Darkness, a fathomless abyss. The curious thing is, that though here, if anywhere, the mystic seems to keep his secret to himself, as a matter of fact it is just this sort of language which has been proved to possess the highest evocative power. ”

“ Now that simplifying act, which is the preliminary of all mystical experience, that gathering of the scattered bits of personality into the one which is really you--into the "unity of your spirit," as the mystics say--the great forces of love, beauty, wonder, grief, may do for you now and again. These lift you perforce from the consideration of the details to the contemplation of the All: turn you from the tidy world of image to the ineffable world of fact. But they are fleeting and ungovernable experiences, descending with dreadful violence on the soul. ”

“ Mysticism has always been accustomed to express the transports of its divine passion by metaphors borrowed from the amorous phraseology of earth. It has done this with every variety of taste, from the grossness of some of the most eminent Romanist saints, to the beautiful Platonism of Spenser’s Hymns of ‘Heavenly Love’ and ‘Heavenly Beautie.’ But nowhere has metaphor branched so luxuriantly into allegory as in the East, and nowhere in the East with such subtilty and such freedom as among the Persian mystics. ”

“ Every great religion has originated in mysticism and by mysticism it lives, for mysticism is what John Wesley called 'heart religion.' When this dies out of any creed, that creed inevitably falls into mere formalism. ”

“ Who will not see that we have here no literary exercise, but the fruits of an experience of peculiar intensity? It answers exactly to one of the best modern definitions of mysticism as "in essence, the concentration of all the forces of the soul upon a supernatural Object, conceived and loved as a living Person." [161] "Love and desire," says the same critic, "are the fundamental necessities; and where they are absent man, even though he be a visionary, cannot be called a mystic." ”

“ Mysticism throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries occupied, in the thinking and religious world, a position almost identical with that of Spiritualism in our day. Like its modern offshoot, mediæval Mysticism could be superimposed on any cult or habit; like Spiritualism, it lent itself equally to a grossly sensual, or an abstract and idealist interpretation. ”

“ Hence, much which is really magic is loosely and popularly described as mysticism. They represent as a matter of fact the opposite poles of the same thing: the transcendental consciousness of humanity. ”

“ There you have the mystic’s vision of the Universe, and the mystic’s way of purification, enlightenment and ecstasy, bringing new and deeper knowledge of reality as the self’s interest, urged by its loving desire of the Ultimate, is shifted from sense to soul, from soul to spirit. There is here no harsh dualism, no turning from a bad material world to a good spiritual world. ”

“ There is a great vogue for the name of mysticism, and though much of it is superficial and its meaning indistinct, it is pretty clear that men are not thinking so much of that mysticism which seeks God by abstraction from all visible and created things, but rather of that which would penetrate through them to some meaning at their heart, some presence which they half disclose and half conceal. ”

“ Without the ardent prayers of the mystics, the vivid spiritual life they lead, what would the sum of human spirituality be? How can we tell what we owe to the power which they liberate, the currents which they set up, the contacts which they make? The land they see, and of which they report to us, is the land towards which humanity is going. They are like the look-out men upon the cross-trees, assuring us from time to time that we are still upon our course. ”

“ The justifiable elements in mysticism, then, may be said to include: the insistence on the legitimate place of feeling in religion as a real and vital experience; the emphasis on one's own conviction and faith; the real difficulty of expressing the full meaning of the religious experience; the demand for a complete ethical surrender to God; and the faith in the real unity and worth of the world in God. Now if one tries to bring together these justifiable elements in mysticism, the truly mystical may all be summed up as simply a protest in favor of the whole man—the entire personality. ”

“ The poet of mysticism, then, delves into the mystic sources of our deeds, and makes us stand reverent with him before the unknowable forces by which we are controlled. Naturally he is obliged to shape his visions in dim outline. ”

“ Mysticism is a phase of thought, or rather, perhaps, of feeling, which from its very nature is hardly susceptible of exact definition. It appears in connexion with the endeavour of the human mind to grasp the Divine essence or the ultimate reality of things, and to enjoy the blessedness of actual communion with the highest. The first is the philosophic side of Mysticism; the second, its religious side. The thought that is most intensely present with the mystic is that of a supreme, all-pervading, and indwelling Power, in whom all things are one. ”

“ The extraordinary vogue of and immense adherence to Spiritism would alone prove that, whilst the widespread interest that is taken in mysticism is a yet healthier sign that the world will no longer be content to be fed on dry husks and the chaff of straw. ”

“ But, on the other hand, when anybody speaking of mysticism proposes an object that is less than God—increase of knowledge, of health, of happiness, occultism, intercourse with spirits, supernormal experience in general—then we may begin to suspect that we are off the track. ”

“ The sunlight inebriates him, the winds delight him, the very effort of the journey is a joy. Magic presences throng the roadside, or cry salutations to him from the hidden fields. The rich world through which he moves lies in the fore-ground of his consciousness ”

“ In mysticism that love of truth which we saw as the beginning of all philosophy leaves the merely intellectual sphere, and takes on the assured aspect of a personal passion. Where the philosopher guesses and argues, the mystic lives and looks; and speaks, consequently, the disconcerting language of first-hand experience, not the neat dialectic of the schools. Hence whilst the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains a diagram—impersonal and unattainable—the Absolute of the mystics is lovable, attainable, alive. ”

“ At the end of a prolonged course of lectures, sermons, tea-parties, and talks with earnest persons, the inquirer is still heard saying--too often in tones of exasperation--"What is mysticism?"
I dare not pretend to solve a problem which has provided so much good hunting in the past. It is indeed the object of this little essay to persuade the practical man to the one satisfactory course: that of discovering the answer for himself. ”

“ And yet we must not overlook the profound, irreplaceable services that are rendered by Mysticism,—provided always it remains but one of two great movements of the living soul,—even on the points in which it thus approximates to Pantheism. ”

“ Is not the drama of the divine life incarnate, humbling and limiting itself to the human life to save it, essentially a dramatic representation of that other experience, of the divine life limiting itself and mysteriously emerging within each soul, to transmute, regenerate, infinitize it, which the mystics describe to us? ”

“ Reality indeed, the mystics say, is "near and far"; far from our thoughts, but saturating and supporting our lives. Nothing would be nearer, nothing dearer, nothing sweeter, were the doors of our perception truly cleansed. You have then but to focus attention upon your own deep reality, "realise your own soul," in order to find it. "We dwell in Him and He in us": you participate in the Eternal Order now. The vision of the Divine Essence--the participation of its own small activity in the Supernal Act--is for the spark of your soul a perpetual process. ”

“ Mysticism is the immediate feeling of the unity of the self with God; it is nothing, therefore, but the fundamental feeling of religion, the religious life at its very heart and centre. But what makes the mystical a special tendency inside religion, is the endeavour to fix the immediateness of the life in God as such, as abstracted from all intervening helps and channels whatever, and find a permanent abode in the abstract inwardness of the life of pious feeling. ”

“ In mysticism the will is united with the emotions in an impassioned desire to transcend the sense-world, in order that the self may be joined by love to the one eternal and ultimate Object of love; whose existence is intuitively perceived by that which we used to call the soul, but now find it easier to refer to as the “cosmic” or “transcendental” sense. This is the poetic and religious temperament acting upon the plane of reality. In magic, the will unites with the intellect in an impassioned desire for supersensible knowledge. ”

“ Now, Mysticism is a body of spiritual methods and processes, based, like the Masonic body of ethical methods and processes, on these same doctrines. Every man who believes in God and immortality is the raw material of a mystic; every man who believes that there is a discoverable way to God is on the path of conscious mysticism. ”

“ Philosophers and monks alike employ the word mysticism and its cognate terms as involving the idea, not merely of initiation into something hidden, but, beyond this, of an internal manifestation of the Divine to the intuition or in the feeling of the secluded soul. It is in this last and narrower sense, therefore, that the word is to be understood when we speak of mystical death, mystical illumination, mystical union with God, and, in fact, throughout the phraseology of what is specially termed Theologia Mystica. ”

“ The Century Dictionary defines Mysticism as “any mode of thought or phase of intellectual or religious life in which reliance is placed upon a spiritual illumination believed to transcend the ordinary powers of understanding.” ”

“ To accept this position is to reduce mysticism to the status of a spiritual plaything. On the contrary, if the experiences on which it is based have indeed the transcendent value for humanity which the mystics claim for them--if they reveal to us a world of higher truth and greater reality than the world of concrete happenings in which we seem to be immersed--then that value is increased rather than lessened when confronted by the overwhelming disharmonies and sufferings of the present time. ”

“ It is evident that from the point of view of their psychological mechanism, the classic mysticism and these lower mysticisms spring from the same mental level, from that great subliminal or transmarginal region of which science is beginning to admit the existence, but of which so little is really known. ”

“ He will learn that mysticism is a philosophy, an illusion, a kind of religion, a disease; that it means having visions, performing conjuring tricks, leading an idle, dreamy, and selfish life, neglecting one's business, wallowing in vague spiritual emotions, and being "in tune with the infinite." ”

“ The mystic is “in love with the Absolute” not in any idle or sentimental manner, but in that vital sense which presses at all costs and through all dangers towards union with the object beloved. Hence, whilst the practice of magic—like the practice of science—does not necessarily entail passionate emotion, though of course it does and must entail interest of some kind, mysticism, like art, cannot exist without it. We must feel, and feel acutely, before we want to act on this hard and heroic scale. ”

“ This tendency, in great mystics, gradually captures the whole field of consciousness; it dominates their life and, in the experience called "mystic union," attains its end. Whether that end be called the God of Christianity, the World-soul of Pantheism, the Absolute of Philosophy, the desire to attain it and the movement towards it--so long as this is a genuine life process and not an intellectual speculation--is the proper subject of mysticism. ”

“ Second, since mysticism is native to the soul of man and the common experience of all who rise above the animal, it is not an exclusive possession of any set of adepts to be held as a secret. Any man who bows in prayer, or lifts his thought heavenward, is an initiate into the eternal mysticism which is the strength and solace of human life. ”

“ Mysticism is, in essence, little more than a certain intensity and depth of feeling in regard to what is believed about the universe; ”

“ Mysticism for the mystic himself is characterized by a personal experience through which the ordinary limitations of life and the passionate pursuits of the soul are transcended, and a self-evident conviction is attained that he is in communion, or even in union, with some self-transcending Reality that absolutely satisfies and is what he has always sought. ”

“ First of all, then, I ask, What does the expression 'mystical states of consciousness' mean? How do we part off mystical states from other states?
The words 'mysticism' and 'mystical' are often used as terms of mere reproach, to throw at any opinion which we regard as vague and vast and sentimental, and without a base in either facts or logic. For some writers a 'mystic' is any person who believes in thought-transference, or spirit-return. ”