Religious mysticism

“ We have no right, therefore, to invoke its prestige as distinctively in favor of any special belief, such as that in absolute idealism, or in the absolute monistic identity, or in the absolute goodness, of the world. It is only relatively in favor of all these things—it passes out of common human consciousness in the direction in which they lie.
So much for religious mysticism proper. But more remains to be told, for religious mysticism is only one half of mysticism. The other half has no accumulated traditions except those which the text-books on insanity supply. ”

“ 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 weak and volatile nature is smitten, on a first interview with the mystics, with a rage for mysticism—is for turning mystic straightway, and is out of patience, for six weeks, with every other form of Christianity. The cold and proud nature scorns their ardour as a phantasy, and (to its own grievous injury) casts out the warmth they bring. ”

“ It should also be borne in mind that every historical example of a mystical movement may be expected to exhibit characteristics which are determined by the particular forms of religious deadness in opposition to which it arises. I think that it is generally easy to separate these secondary, accidental characteristics from those which are primary and integral, and that we shall then find that the underlying substance, which may be regarded as the essence of Mysticism as a type of religion, is strikingly uniform. ”

“ And first we notice that those enthusiasts for the corporate idea who condemn the mystics as religious egoists seem to forget that they are contradicting themselves; that if their vision of the Church of Christ as a mystical body be true, then the mystic’s ascent to God cannot be a flight of the Alone. The poisonous implication of that phrase—true in its context but always misunderstood—has stuck like mud to the white robes of the saints. But the mystic is not merely a self going out on a solitary quest of Reality. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The classic religious mysticism, it now must be confessed, is only a 'privileged case.' It is an extract, kept true to type by the selection of the fittest specimens and their preservation in 'schools.' It is carved out from a much larger mass; and if we take the larger mass as seriously as religious mysticism has historically taken itself, we find that the supposed unanimity largely disappears. ”

“ It is true that right through the history of Christian mysticism there has been a line of insurgent mystics who have made this refusal; whose direct vision of spiritual perfection has brought with it so overwhelming a sense of the imperfection, formalism, unreality, the dreadfulness of religious institutions, that it has forced them into a position of more or less acute revolt from the official church. So clear has been their own consciousness of the spiritual world that the soul’s life and growth, its actual and individual rebirth, have shone out for them as the only things that matter. ”

“ The reward was worth the sacrifice; but "God reveals Himself in many ways," and the spiritual Christianity of the modern epoch is called rather to the consecration of art, science, and social life than to lonely contemplation. In my last two Lectures I hope to show how an important school of mystics, chiefly between the Renaissance and our own day, have turned to the religious study of nature, and have found there the same illumination which the mediæval ascetics drew from the deep wells of their inner consciousness. ”

“ When mysticism plays in high poesy on the theme of the Divine Nearness, in the mood that “sees God in clouds and hears him in the wind,” it quickens religious emotion, but affords no genuine illumination in theology. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Between them lie the great religions, which might be described under this metaphor as representing the ordinarily habitable regions of that consciousness. Thus, at one end of the scale, pure mysticism “shades off” into religion—from some points of view seems to grow out of it. No deeply religious man is without a touch of mysticism; and no mystic can be other than religious, in the psychological if not in the theological sense of the word. At the other end of the scale, as we shall see later, religion, no less surely, shades off into magic. ”

“ Mystical conditions may, therefore, render the soul more energetic in the lines which their inspiration favors. But this could be reckoned an advantage only in case the inspiration were a true one. If the inspiration were erroneous, the energy would be all the more mistaken and misbegotten. So we stand once more before that problem of truth which confronted us at the end of the lectures on saintliness. You will remember that we turned to mysticism precisely to get some light on truth. Do mystical states establish the truth of those theological affections in which the saintly life has its root? ”

“ In necromancy, astrology, alchemy, palmistry, table-turning, and other delusions, we have what some count the essence, and others the reproach, of Mysticism. But these are, strictly speaking, scientific and not religious errors. From the standpoint of religion and philosophy, the important change is that, in the belief of these later mystics, the natural and the spiritual are, somehow or other, to be reconciled; the external world is no longer regarded as a place of exile from God, or as a delusive appearance; it is the living vesture of the Deity ”

“ 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. ”

“ This last poem represents the culmination of the romantic-mediæval method in the strongest antithesis to the epic treatment of a given story. The mediæval mysticism in matters of religion is a familiar and accepted fact. Yet the modern divorce between religion and life is so profound that this religious mysticism is oddly regarded as something apart and by itself, not as the application by men to religion of their ordinary way of thinking about anything which moved them at all deeply. ”

“ Almost any religious system which fosters unearthly love is potentially a nursery for mystics: and Christianity, Islam, Brahmanism, and Buddhism each receives its most sublime interpretation at their hands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those who use it with the greatest conviction are not theorists. They are the practical mystics, who are intent on making maps of the regions into which they have penetrated.
Moreover, this is no mere question of handing on one single tradition. The mystics describe their movement from appearance to reality in many different ways, and use many incompatible religious symbols. The one constant factor is the discrimination of three phases of consciousness, no more, no less, in which we can recognize certain common characteristics. ”

“ In the religious domain the mystic aspires towards union with God, and wishes to free the soul from the body and its earthly shackles. He longs for repose, repose of the soul, and finds it in mysticism. ”

“ It is the tendency of all symbols to petrify or evaporate, and either process is fatal to them. They soon repudiate their mystical origin, and forthwith lose their religious content. Then comes a return to the fresh springs of the inner life—a revival of spirituality in the midst of formalism or unbelief. This is the historical function of Mysticism—it appears as an independent active principle, the spirit of reformations and revivals. But since every active principle must find for itself appropriate instruments, Mysticism has developed a speculative and practical system of its own. ”

“ In current language we often include under the word mysticism all the tendencies—often far from Christian—which give predominance in the religious life to vague poetic elements, impulses of the heart. The name of mystic ought to be applied only to those Christians to whom immediate relations with Jesus form the basis of the religious life. ”

“ And, next, it must be plain to any one endowed with an appreciable dose of the mystical sense, and with a sufficiently large knowledge of human nature and of religious apprehension in the past and present,—that, if it is doubtless possible quite erroneously to treat all men as having a considerable element of mysticism in them, and hence to strain and spoil souls belonging to one of the other types: it is equally possible to starve those that possess this element in an operative degree. ”

“ As this path has been pursued in all ages and nations by persons of widely divergent creeds, it is clear that however much mysticism has been identified with special spheres of religious thought and activity, it is independent of all. ”

“ Natural mysticism can also be experienced in the reality of daily life: nature, music, literature, art, childbirth, distress, sex, anaesthetics, et cetera, can be triggers for a mystical experience, some leading to transcendent illuminative insight, and others to a more natural extrovertive mysticism (Borchert 1994:27) . Given the prevalence of experiences such as the foregoing, deracinated from church allegiance and religious ideation, there has been an increasing appreciation for nonreligious mystical experience. ”

“ We learn a lesson for ourselves, as we see one class among them forsaking common duties for the feverish exaltation of a romantic saintship, and another persisting in their conceited rejection of the light without, till they have turned into darkness their light within.
But the interest attaching to Mysticism is by no means merely historic. It is active under various forms in our own time. ”

“ Introvertive mysticism may be characterised by an inner realisation of peace; the oneness of all reality; emptiness – entering the void; or pure consciousness. On the other hand, extrovertive mysticism is often experienced in nature mysticism, which is not necessarily religious, but exhibits feelings of wonder, bliss and rapport with creation. In addition to the foregoing, the mystical experience can effect a realisation of panentheism, namely the reality of the divine in the beauty of the natural world, experienced, amongst others, as ‘transcendence of space and time [...] ”

“ I should certainly like to see some one settle for us definitively the questions which lie at the root of mysticism, such as these, for example:—Is there an immediate influence exerted by the Spirit of God on the spirit of man? ”