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children :::
branches ::: Christian Mysticism, Jewish Mysticism, Mysticism

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object:Mysticism
class:subject


Islamic mysticism
Jewish mysticism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_mysticism
  Kabbalah

Christian mysticism

Indian
  Hinduism
  Tantra
  Sikhism
  Buddhism

Taoism



see also :::

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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [3] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
Jewish_Mysticism
mystic
Sufism
SEE ALSO


AUTH
Angelus_Silesius
Bulleh_Shah
Joseph_Campbell
Kahlil_Gibran
Mansur_al-Hallaj
Saadi
Sri_Ramakrishna
Thomas_Merton
Virgil
William_Blake
William_Butler_Yeats

BOOKS
Evolution_II
General_Principles_of_Kabbalah
Heart_of_Matter
Infinite_Library
Leaves_of_Grass
Let_Me_Explain
Liber_ABA
Modern_Man_in_Search_of_a_Soul
Mysticism_and_Logic
Mysticism_at_the_Dawn_of_the_Modern_Age
Mysticism_Christian_and_Buddhist
Plotinus_-_Complete_Works_Vol_01
Process_and_Reality
Savitri
Sex_Ecology_Spirituality
Tagore_-_Poems
The_Act_of_Creation
The_Book_of_Light
The_Divine_Milieu
The_Key_to_the_True_Kabbalah
The_Perennial_Philosophy
The_Way_of_Perfection
The_Wit_and_Wisdom_of_Alfred_North_Whitehead
Toward_the_Future

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
00.01_-_The_Approach_to_Mysticism
02.12_-_Mysticism_in_Bengali_Poetry
07.22_-_Mysticism_and_Occultism
1.fua_-_Mysticism
3.02_-_Mysticism
3.03_-_The_Consummation_of_Mysticism

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME
1.kbr_-_Abode_Of_The_Beloved
1.kbr_-_Are_you_looking_for_me?
1.kbr_-_Between_the_Poles_of_the_Conscious
1.kbr_-_Brother,_I've_Seen_Some
1.kbr_-_Chewing_Slowly
1.kbr_-_Dohas_(Couplets)_I_(with_translation)
1.kbr_-_Dohas_II_(with_translation)
1.kbr_-_Do_Not_Go_To_The_Garden_Of_Flowers
1.kbr_-_Friend,_Wake_Up!_Why_Do_You_Go_On_Sleeping?
1.kbr_-_Hang_Up_The_Swing_Of_Love_Today!
1.kbr_-_Having_Crossed_The_River
1.kbr_-_He's_That_Rascally_Kind_Of_Yogi
1.kbr_-_Hey_Brother,_Why_Do_You_Want_Me_To_Talk?
1.kbr_-_Hiding_In_This_Cage
1.kbr_-_His_Death_In_Benares
1.kbr_-_Hope_For_Him
1.kbr_-_How_Do_You
1.kbr_-_How_Humble_Is_God
1.kbr_-_I_Burst_Into_Laughter
1.kbr_-_I_Have_Attained_The_Eternal_Bliss
1.kbr_-_I_have_been_thinking
1.kbr_-_I_Laugh_When_I_Hear_That_The_Fish_In_The_Water_Is_Thirsty
1.kbr_-_Illusion_and_Reality
1.kbr_-_I_Said_To_The_Wanting-Creature_Inside_Me
1.kbr_-_I_Talk_To_My_Inner_Lover,_And_I_Say,_Why_Such_Rush?
1.kbr_-_It_Is_Needless_To_Ask_Of_A_Saint
1.kbr_-_Ive_Burned_My_Own_House_Down
1.kbr_-_I_Wont_Come
1.kbr_-_Knowing_Nothing_Shuts_The_Iron_Gates
1.kbr_-_Lift_The_Veil
1.kbr_-_Looking_At_The_Grinding_Stones_-_Dohas_(Couplets)_I
1.kbr_-_maddh_akas_ap_jahan_baithe
1.kbr_-_Many_Hoped
1.kbr_-_My_Body_And_My_Mind
1.kbr_-_My_Body_Is_Flooded
1.kbr_-_My_Swan,_Let_Us_Fly
1.kbr_-_O_Friend
1.kbr_-_Oh_Friend,_I_Love_You,_Think_This_Over
1.kbr_-_O_Servant_Where_Dost_Thou_Seek_Me
1.kbr_-_Plucking_Your_Eyebrows
1.kbr_-_Poem_13
1.kbr_-_Poem_14
1.kbr_-_Poem_15
1.kbr_-_Poem_2
1.kbr_-_Poem_3
1.kbr_-_Poem_4
1.kbr_-_Poem_5
1.kbr_-_Poem_6
1.kbr_-_Poem_7
1.kbr_-_Poem_8
1.kbr_-_Poem_9
1.kbr_-_Tell_me_Brother
1.kbr_-_Tentacles_of_Time
1.kbr_-_The_bhakti_path...
1.kbr_-_The_Bride-Soul
1.kbr_-_The_Dropp_And_The_Sea
1.kbr_-_The_Guest_Is_Inside_You,_And_Also_Inside_Me
1.kbr_-_The_Impossible_Pass
1.kbr_-_The_Light_of_the_Sun
1.kbr_-_The_Lord_Is_In_Me
1.kbr_-_Theres_A_Moon_Inside_My_Body
1.kbr_-_The_Self_Forgets_Itself
1.kbr_-_The_Spiritual_Athlete_Often_Changes_The_Color_Of_His_Clothes
1.kbr_-_The_Swan_flies_away
1.kbr_-_To_Thee_Thou_Hast_Drawn_My_Love
1.kbr_-_What_Kind_Of_God?
1.kbr_-_When_I_Found_The_Boundless_Knowledge
1.kbr_-_When_The_Day_Came
1.kbr_-_When_You_Were_Born_In_This_World_-_Dohas_Ii
1.kbr_-_Where_do_you_search_me
1.rt_-_A_Dream
1.rt_-_A_Hundred_Years_Hence
1.rt_-_Akash_Bhara_Surya_Tara_Biswabhara_Pran_(Translation)
1.rt_-_All_These_I_Loved
1.rt_-_Along_The_Way
1.rt_-_And_In_Wonder_And_Amazement_I_Sing
1.rt_-_At_The_End_Of_The_Day
1.rt_-_At_The_Last_Watch
1.rt_-_Authorship
1.rt_-_Babys_Way
1.rt_-_Babys_World
1.rt_-_Beggarly_Heart
1.rt_-_Benediction
1.rt_-_Birth_Story
1.rt_-_Brahm,_Viu,_iva
1.rt_-_Brink_Of_Eternity
1.rt_-_Broken_Song
1.rt_-_Chain_Of_Pearls
1.rt_-_Closed_Path
1.rt_-_Clouds_And_Waves
1.rt_-_Colored_Toys
1.rt_-_Compensation
1.rt_-_Cruel_Kindness
1.rt_-_Death
1.rt_-_Defamation
1.rt_-_Distant_Time
1.rt_-_Dream_Girl
1.rt_-_Dungeon
1.rt_-_Endless_Time
1.rt_-_Face_To_Face
1.rt_-_Fairyland
1.rt_-_Farewell
1.rt_-_Fireflies
1.rt_-_Flower
1.rt_-_Fool
1.rt_-_Freedom
1.rt_-_Friend
1.rt_-_From_Afar
1.rt_-_Gift_Of_The_Great
1.rt_-_Gitanjali
1.rt_-_Give_Me_Strength
1.rt_-_Hard_Times
1.rt_-_I
1.rt_-_I_Am_Restless
1.rt_-_I_Cast_My_Net_Into_The_Sea
1.rt_-_I_Found_A_Few_Old_Letters
1.rt_-_Innermost_One
1.rt_-_In_The_Country
1.rt_-_In_The_Dusky_Path_Of_A_Dream
1.rt_-_Journey_Home
1.rt_-_Keep_Me_Fully_Glad
1.rt_-_Kinu_Goalas_Alley
1.rt_-_Krishnakali
1.rt_-_Lamp_Of_Love
1.rt_-_Last_Curtain
1.rt_-_Leave_This
1.rt_-_Let_Me_Not_Forget
1.rt_-_Light
1.rt_-_Little_Flute
1.rt_-_Little_Of_Me
1.rt_-_Lord_Of_My_Life
1.rt_-_Lost_Star
1.rt_-_Lost_Time
1.rt_-_Lotus
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_II_-_Come_To_My_Garden_Walk
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_IV_-_She_Is_Near_To_My_Heart
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_LII_-_Tired_Of_Waiting
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_LIV_-_In_The_Beginning_Of_Time
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_LVIII_-_Things_Throng_And_Laugh
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_LVI_-_The_Evening_Was_Lonely
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_LXX_-_Take_Back_Your_Coins
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_VIII_-_There_Is_Room_For_You
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_V_-_I_Would_Ask_For_Still_More
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XIII_-_Last_Night_In_The_Garden
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XIX_-_It_Is_Written_In_The_Book
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XL_-_A_Message_Came
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XLII_-_Are_You_A_Mere_Picture
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XLIII_-_Dying,_You_Have_Left_Behind
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XLIV_-_Where_Is_Heaven
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XLVIII_-_I_Travelled_The_Old_Road
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XLVII_-_The_Road_Is
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XVIII_-_Your_Days
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XVI_-_She_Dwelt_Here_By_The_Pool
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XXII_-_I_Shall_Gladly_Suffer
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XXVIII_-_I_Dreamt
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XXXIX_-_There_Is_A_Looker-On
1.rt_-_Maran-Milan_(Death-Wedding)
1.rt_-_Maya
1.rt_-_Meeting
1.rt_-_Moments_Indulgence
1.rt_-_My_Dependence
1.rt_-_My_Friend,_Come_In_These_Rains
1.rt_-_My_Polar_Star
1.rt_-_My_Pole_Star
1.rt_-_My_Present
1.rt_-_My_Song
1.rt_-_Ocean_Of_Forms
1.rt_-_Old_And_New
1.rt_-_Old_Letters_
1.rt_-_One_Day_In_Spring....
1.rt_-_Only_Thee
1.rt_-_On_The_Nature_Of_Love
1.rt_-_On_The_Seashore
1.rt_-_Our_Meeting
1.rt_-_Palm_Tree
1.rt_-_Paper_Boats
1.rt_-_Parting_Words
1.rt_-_Passing_Breeze
1.rt_-_Patience
1.rt_-_Playthings
1.rt_-_Poems_On_Beauty
1.rt_-_Poems_On_Life
1.rt_-_Poems_On_Man
1.rt_-_Poems_On_Time
1.rt_-_Prisoner
1.rt_-_Purity
1.rt_-_Rare
1.rt_-_Religious_Obsession_--_translation_from_Dharmamoha
1.rt_-_Roaming_Cloud
1.rt_-_Sail_Away
1.rt_-_Salutation
1.rt_-_Senses
1.rt_-_She
1.rt_-_Shyama
1.rt_-_Signet_Of_Eternity
1.rt_-_Silent_Steps
1.rt_-_Sit_Smiling
1.rt_-_Sleep
1.rt_-_Sleep-Stealer
1.rt_-_Song_Unsung
1.rt_-_Still_Heart
1.rt_-_Stray_Birds_01_-_10
1.rt_-_Stray_Birds_11-_20
1.rt_-_Stray_Birds_21_-_30
1.rt_-_Stray_Birds_31_-_40
1.rt_-_Stray_Birds_51_-_60
1.rt_-_Stray_Birds_61_-_70
1.rt_-_Stray_Birds_71_-_80
1.rt_-_Stray_Birds_81_-_90
1.rt_-_Stream_Of_Life
1.rt_-_Strong_Mercy
1.rt_-_Superior
1.rt_-_Sympathy
1.rt_-_The_Astronomer
1.rt_-_The_Banyan_Tree
1.rt_-_The_Beginning
1.rt_-_The_Boat
1.rt_-_The_Call_Of_The_Far
1.rt_-_The_Champa_Flower
1.rt_-_The_Child-Angel
1.rt_-_The_End
1.rt_-_The_First_Jasmines
1.rt_-_The_Flower-School
1.rt_-_The_Further_Bank
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_IV_-_Ah_Me
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_IX_-_When_I_Go_Alone_At_Night
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LI_-_Then_Finish_The_Last_Song
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LIX_-_O_Woman
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LVII_-_I_Plucked_Your_Flower
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LV_-_It_Was_Mid-Day
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXI_-_Peace,_My_Heart
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXIV_-_I_Spent_My_Day
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXIX_-_I_Hunt_For_The_Golden_Stag
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXVIII_-_None_Lives_For_Ever,_Brother
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXXIX_-_I_Often_Wonder
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXXV_-_At_Midnight
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXXXIII_-_She_Dwelt_On_The_Hillside
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXXXIV_-_Over_The_Green
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXXXI_-_Why_Do_You_Whisper_So_Faintly
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XI_-_Come_As_You_Are
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XIII_-_I_Asked_Nothing
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XIV_-_I_Was_Walking_By_The_Road
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XIX_-_You_Walked
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XL_-_An_Unbelieving_Smile
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_X_-_Let_Your_Work_Be,_Bride
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XLIII_-_No,_My_Friends
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XLII_-_O_Mad,_Superbly_Drunk
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XLIV_-_Reverend_Sir,_Forgive
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XLVIII_-_Free_Me
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XLVI_-_You_Left_Me
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XLV_-_To_The_Guests
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XVI_-_Hands_Cling_To_Eyes
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XVIII_-_When_Two_Sisters
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XX_-_Day_After_Day_He_Comes
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXII_-_When_She_Passed_By_Me
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXIV_-_Do_Not_Keep_To_Yourself
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXI_-_Why_Did_He_Choose
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXIX_-_Speak_To_Me_My_Love
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXVIII_-_Your_Questioning_Eyes
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXVII_-_Trust_Love
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXVI_-_What_Comes_From_Your_Willing_Hands
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXXIV_-_Do_Not_Go,_My_Love
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXXVIII_-_My_Love,_Once_Upon_A_Time
1.rt_-_The_Gift
1.rt_-_The_Golden_Boat
1.rt_-_The_Hero
1.rt_-_The_Hero(2)
1.rt_-_The_Home
1.rt_-_The_Homecoming
1.rt_-_The_Journey
1.rt_-_The_Judge
1.rt_-_The_Kiss
1.rt_-_The_Kiss(2)
1.rt_-_The_Land_Of_The_Exile
1.rt_-_The_Last_Bargain
1.rt_-_The_Little_Big_Man
1.rt_-_The_Lost_Star
1.rt_-_The_Merchant
1.rt_-_The_Music_Of_The_Rains
1.rt_-_The_Portrait
1.rt_-_The_Rainy_Day
1.rt_-_The_Recall
1.rt_-_The_Sailor
1.rt_-_The_Source
1.rt_-_The_Sun_Of_The_First_Day
1.rt_-_The_Tame_Bird_Was_In_A_Cage
1.rt_-_The_Unheeded_Pageant
1.rt_-_The_Wicked_Postman
1.rt_-_This_Dog
1.rt_-_Threshold
1.rt_-_Tumi_Sandhyar_Meghamala_-_You_Are_A_Cluster_Of_Clouds_-_Translation
1.rt_-_Twelve_OClock
1.rt_-_Unending_Love
1.rt_-_Ungrateful_Sorrow
1.rt_-_Untimely_Leave
1.rt_-_Unyielding
1.rt_-_Urvashi
1.rt_-_Vocation
1.rt_-_Waiting
1.rt_-_Waiting_For_The_Beloved
1.rt_-_We_Are_To_Play_The_Game_Of_Death
1.rt_-_When_And_Why
1.rt_-_When_Day_Is_Done
1.rt_-_When_I_Go_Alone_At_Night
1.rt_-_When_the_Two_Sister_Go_To_Fetch_Water
1.rt_-_Where_Shadow_Chases_Light
1.rt_-_Where_The_Mind_Is_Without_Fear
1.rt_-_Who_Is_This?
1.wby_-_A_Bronze_Head
1.wby_-_A_Coat
1.wby_-_A_Cradle_Song
1.wby_-_A_Crazed_Girl
1.wby_-_Adams_Curse
1.wby_-_A_Deep_Sworn_Vow
1.wby_-_A_Dialogue_Of_Self_And_Soul
1.wby_-_A_Dramatic_Poem
1.wby_-_A_Dream_Of_A_Blessed_Spirit
1.wby_-_A_Dream_Of_Death
1.wby_-_A_Drinking_Song
1.wby_-_A_Drunken_Mans_Praise_Of_Sobriety
1.wby_-_Aedh_Wishes_For_The_Cloths_Of_Heaven
1.wby_-_A_Faery_Song
1.wby_-_A_First_Confession
1.wby_-_A_Friends_Illness
1.wby_-_After_Long_Silence
1.wby_-_Against_Unworthy_Praise
1.wby_-_A_Last_Confession
1.wby_-_All_Souls_Night
1.wby_-_A_Lovers_Quarrel_Among_the_Fairies
1.wby_-_Alternative_Song_For_The_Severed_Head_In_The_King_Of_The_Great_Clock_Tower
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_Complete
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_I._First_Love
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_II._Human_Dignity
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_III._The_Mermaid
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_IV._The_Death_Of_The_Hare
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_IX._The_Secrets_Of_The_Old
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_VI._His_Memories
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_VIII._Summer_And_Spring
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_VII._The_Friends_Of_His_Youth
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_V._The_Empty_Cup
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_X._His_Wildness
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_XI._From_Oedipus_At_Colonus
1.wby_-_A_Meditation_in_Time_of_War
1.wby_-_A_Memory_Of_Youth
1.wby_-_A_Model_For_The_Laureate
1.wby_-_Among_School_Children
1.wby_-_An_Acre_Of_Grass
1.wby_-_An_Appointment
1.wby_-_Anashuya_And_Vijaya
1.wby_-_A_Nativity
1.wby_-_An_Image_From_A_Past_Life
1.wby_-_An_Irish_Airman_Foresees_His_Death
1.wby_-_Another_Song_Of_A_Fool
1.wby_-_Another_Song_of_a_Fool
1.wby_-_A_Poet_To_His_Beloved
1.wby_-_A_Prayer_For_My_Daughter
1.wby_-_A_Prayer_For_My_Son
1.wby_-_A_Prayer_For_Old_Age
1.wby_-_A_Prayer_On_Going_Into_My_House
1.wby_-_Are_You_Content?
1.wby_-_A_Song
1.wby_-_A_Song_From_The_Player_Queen
1.wby_-_A_Stick_Of_Incense
1.wby_-_At_Algeciras_-_A_Meditaton_Upon_Death
1.wby_-_At_Galway_Races
1.wby_-_A_Thought_From_Propertius
1.wby_-_At_The_Abbey_Theatre
1.wby_-_A_Woman_Homer_Sung
1.wby_-_A_Woman_Young_And_Old
1.wby_-_Baile_And_Aillinn
1.wby_-_Beautiful_Lofty_Things
1.wby_-_Before_The_World_Was_Made
1.wby_-_Beggar_To_Beggar_Cried
1.wby_-_Blood_And_The_Moon
1.wby_-_Broken_Dreams
1.wby_-_Brown_Penny
1.wby_-_Byzantium
1.wby_-_Colonel_Martin
1.wby_-_Colonus_Praise
1.wby_-_Come_Gather_Round_Me,_Parnellites
1.wby_-_Consolation
1.wby_-_Coole_Park_1929
1.wby_-_Coole_Park_And_Ballylee,_1931
1.wby_-_Crazy_Jane_And_Jack_The_Journeyman
1.wby_-_Crazy_Jane_And_The_Bishop
1.wby_-_Crazy_Jane_Grown_Old_Looks_At_The_Dancers
1.wby_-_Crazy_Jane_On_God
1.wby_-_Crazy_Jane_On_The_Day_Of_Judgment
1.wby_-_Crazy_Jane_On_The_Mountain
1.wby_-_Crazy_Jane_Reproved
1.wby_-_Crazy_Jane_Talks_With_The_Bishop
1.wby_-_Cuchulains_Fight_With_The_Sea
1.wby_-_Death
1.wby_-_Demon_And_Beast
1.wby_-_Do_Not_Love_Too_Long
1.wby_-_Down_By_The_Salley_Gardens
1.wby_-_Easter_1916
1.wby_-_Ego_Dominus_Tuus
1.wby_-_Ephemera
1.wby_-_Fallen_Majesty
1.wby_-_Father_And_Child
1.wby_-_Fergus_And_The_Druid
1.wby_-_Fiddler_Of_Dooney
1.wby_-_For_Anne_Gregory
1.wby_-_Fragments
1.wby_-_Friends
1.wby_-_From_A_Full_Moon_In_March
1.wby_-_From_The_Antigone
1.wby_-_Girls_Song
1.wby_-_Gratitude_To_The_Unknown_Instructors
1.wby_-_He_Bids_His_Beloved_Be_At_Peace
1.wby_-_He_Gives_His_Beloved_Certain_Rhymes
1.wby_-_He_Hears_The_Cry_Of_The_Sedge
1.wby_-_He_Mourns_For_The_Change_That_Has_Come_Upon_Him_And_His_Beloved,_And_Longs_For_The_End_Of_The_World
1.wby_-_Her_Anxiety
1.wby_-_Her_Dream
1.wby_-_He_Remembers_Forgotten_Beauty
1.wby_-_He_Reproves_The_Curlew
1.wby_-_Her_Praise
1.wby_-_Her_Triumph
1.wby_-_Her_Vision_In_The_Wood
1.wby_-_He_Tells_Of_A_Valley_Full_Of_Lovers
1.wby_-_He_Tells_Of_The_Perfect_Beauty
1.wby_-_He_Thinks_Of_His_Past_Greatness_When_A_Part_Of_The_Constellations_Of_Heaven
1.wby_-_He_Thinks_Of_Those_Who_Have_Spoken_Evil_Of_His_Beloved
1.wby_-_He_Wishes_His_Beloved_Were_Dead
1.wby_-_High_Talk
1.wby_-_His_Bargain
1.wby_-_His_Confidence
1.wby_-_His_Dream
1.wby_-_Hound_Voice
1.wby_-_I_Am_Of_Ireland
1.wby_-_Imitated_From_The_Japanese
1.wby_-_In_Memory_Of_Alfred_Pollexfen
1.wby_-_In_Memory_Of_Eva_Gore-Booth_And_Con_Markiewicz
1.wby_-_In_Memory_Of_Major_Robert_Gregory
1.wby_-_In_Taras_Halls
1.wby_-_In_The_Seven_Woods
1.wby_-_Into_The_Twilight
1.wby_-_John_Kinsellas_Lament_For_Mr._Mary_Moore
1.wby_-_King_And_No_King
1.wby_-_Lapis_Lazuli
1.wby_-_Leda_And_The_Swan
1.wby_-_Lines_Written_In_Dejection
1.wby_-_Long-Legged_Fly
1.wby_-_Loves_Loneliness
1.wby_-_Love_Song
1.wby_-_Lullaby
1.wby_-_Mad_As_The_Mist_And_Snow
1.wby_-_Maid_Quiet
1.wby_-_Meditations_In_Time_Of_Civil_War
1.wby_-_Meeting
1.wby_-_Memory
1.wby_-_Men_Improve_With_The_Years
1.wby_-_Meru
1.wby_-_Michael_Robartes_And_The_Dancer
1.wby_-_Mohini_Chatterjee
1.wby_-_Never_Give_All_The_Heart
1.wby_-_News_For_The_Delphic_Oracle
1.wby_-_Nineteen_Hundred_And_Nineteen
1.wby_-_No_Second_Troy
1.wby_-_Now_as_at_all_times
1.wby_-_Oil_And_Blood
1.wby_-_Old_Memory
1.wby_-_Old_Tom_Again
1.wby_-_On_A_Picture_Of_A_Black_Centaur_By_Edmund_Dulac
1.wby_-_On_A_Political_Prisoner
1.wby_-_On_Being_Asked_For_A_War_Poem
1.wby_-_On_Hearing_That_The_Students_Of_Our_New_University_Have_Joined_The_Agitation_Against_Immoral_Literat
1.wby_-_On_Those_That_Hated_The_Playboy_Of_The_Western_World,_1907
1.wby_-_On_Woman
1.wby_-_Owen_Aherne_And_His_Dancers
1.wby_-_Parnell
1.wby_-_Parnells_Funeral
1.wby_-_Parting
1.wby_-_Paudeen
1.wby_-_Peace
1.wby_-_Politics
1.wby_-_Presences
1.wby_-_Quarrel_In_Old_Age
1.wby_-_Reconciliation
1.wby_-_Red_Hanrahans_Song_About_Ireland
1.wby_-_Remorse_For_Intemperate_Speech
1.wby_-_Responsibilities_-_Closing
1.wby_-_Responsibilities_-_Introduction
1.wby_-_Roger_Casement
1.wby_-_Running_To_Paradise
1.wby_-_Sailing_to_Byzantium
1.wby_-_September_1913
1.wby_-_Shepherd_And_Goatherd
1.wby_-_Sixteen_Dead_Men
1.wby_-_Slim_adolescence_that_a_nymph_has_stripped,
1.wby_-_Solomon_And_The_Witch
1.wby_-_Solomon_To_Sheba
1.wby_-_Spilt_Milk
1.wby_-_Statistics
1.wby_-_Stream_And_Sun_At_Glendalough
1.wby_-_Supernatural_Songs
1.wby_-_Sweet_Dancer
1.wby_-_Swifts_Epitaph
1.wby_-_Symbols
1.wby_-_That_The_Night_Come
1.wby_-_The_Apparitions
1.wby_-_The_Arrow
1.wby_-_The_Attack_On_the_Playboy_Of_The_Western_World,_1907
1.wby_-_The_Ballad_Of_Father_Gilligan
1.wby_-_The_Ballad_Of_Father_OHart
1.wby_-_The_Ballad_Of_Moll_Magee
1.wby_-_The_Ballad_Of_The_Foxhunter
1.wby_-_The_Balloon_Of_The_Mind
1.wby_-_The_Black_Tower
1.wby_-_The_Blessed
1.wby_-_The_Cap_And_Bells
1.wby_-_The_Cat_And_The_Moon
1.wby_-_The_Chambermaids_First_Song
1.wby_-_The_Chambermaids_Second_Song
1.wby_-_The_Choice
1.wby_-_The_Chosen
1.wby_-_The_Circus_Animals_Desertion
1.wby_-_The_Cloak,_The_Boat_And_The_Shoes
1.wby_-_The_Cold_Heaven
1.wby_-_The_Collar-Bone_Of_A_Hare
1.wby_-_The_Coming_Of_Wisdom_With_Time
1.wby_-_The_Countess_Cathleen_In_Paradise
1.wby_-_The_Crazed_Moon
1.wby_-_The_Curse_Of_Cromwell
1.wby_-_The_Dancer_At_Cruachan_And_Cro-Patrick
1.wby_-_The_Dawn
1.wby_-_The_Death_of_Cuchulain
1.wby_-_The_Dedication_To_A_Book_Of_Stories_Selected_From_The_Irish_Novelists
1.wby_-_The_Delphic_Oracle_Upon_Plotinus
1.wby_-_The_Dolls
1.wby_-_The_Double_Vision_Of_Michael_Robartes
1.wby_-_The_Everlasting_Voices
1.wby_-_The_Fairy_Pendant
1.wby_-_The_Falling_Of_The_Leaves
1.wby_-_The_Fascination_Of_Whats_Difficult
1.wby_-_The_Fish
1.wby_-_The_Fisherman
1.wby_-_The_Folly_Of_Being_Comforted
1.wby_-_The_Fool_By_The_Roadside
1.wby_-_The_Ghost_Of_Roger_Casement
1.wby_-_The_Gift_Of_Harun_Al-Rashid
1.wby_-_The_Great_Day
1.wby_-_The_Grey_Rock
1.wby_-_The_Gyres
1.wby_-_The_Happy_Townland
1.wby_-_The_Hawk
1.wby_-_The_Heart_Of_The_Woman
1.wby_-_The_Hosting_Of_The_Sidhe
1.wby_-_The_Host_Of_The_Air
1.wby_-_The_Hour_Before_Dawn
1.wby_-_The_Indian_To_His_Love
1.wby_-_The_Indian_Upon_God
1.wby_-_The_Ladys_First_Song
1.wby_-_The_Ladys_Second_Song
1.wby_-_The_Ladys_Third_Song
1.wby_-_The_Lake_Isle_Of_Innisfree
1.wby_-_The_Lamentation_Of_The_Old_Pensioner
1.wby_-_The_Leaders_Of_The_Crowd
1.wby_-_The_Living_Beauty
1.wby_-_The_Lover_Asks_Forgiveness_Because_Of_His_Many_Moods
1.wby_-_The_Lover_Mourns_For_The_Loss_Of_Love
1.wby_-_The_Lover_Pleads_With_His_Friend_For_Old_Friends
1.wby_-_The_Lover_Speaks_To_The_Hearers_Of_His_Songs_In_Coming_Days
1.wby_-_The_Lovers_Song
1.wby_-_The_Lover_Tells_Of_The_Rose_In_His_Heart
1.wby_-_The_Madness_Of_King_Goll
1.wby_-_The_Magi
1.wby_-_The_Man_And_The_Echo
1.wby_-_The_Man_Who_Dreamed_Of_Faeryland
1.wby_-_The_Mask
1.wby_-_The_Meditation_Of_The_Old_Fisherman
1.wby_-_The_Moods
1.wby_-_The_Mother_Of_God
1.wby_-_The_Mountain_Tomb
1.wby_-_The_Municipal_Gallery_Revisited
1.wby_-_The_New_Faces
1.wby_-_The_Nineteenth_Century_And_After
1.wby_-_The_Old_Age_Of_Queen_Maeve
1.wby_-_The_Old_Men_Admiring_Themselves_In_The_Water
1.wby_-_The_Old_Pensioner.
1.wby_-_The_Old_Stone_Cross
1.wby_-_The_ORahilly
1.wby_-_The_Peacock
1.wby_-_The_People
1.wby_-_The_Phases_Of_The_Moon
1.wby_-_The_Pilgrim
1.wby_-_The_Pity_Of_Love
1.wby_-_The_Players_Ask_For_A_Blessing_On_The_Psalteries_And_On_Themselves
1.wby_-_The_Poet_Pleads_With_The_Elemental_Powers
1.wby_-_The_Ragged_Wood
1.wby_-_The_Realists
1.wby_-_The_Results_Of_Thought
1.wby_-_The_Rose_In_The_Deeps_Of_His_Heart
1.wby_-_The_Rose_Of_Battle
1.wby_-_The_Rose_Of_Peace
1.wby_-_The_Rose_Of_The_World
1.wby_-_The_Rose_Tree
1.wby_-_The_Sad_Shepherd
1.wby_-_The_Saint_And_The_Hunchback
1.wby_-_The_Scholars
1.wby_-_These_Are_The_Clouds
1.wby_-_The_Second_Coming
1.wby_-_The_Secret_Rose
1.wby_-_The_Seven_Sages
1.wby_-_The_Shadowy_Waters_-_Introduction
1.wby_-_The_Shadowy_Waters_-_The_Harp_Of_Aengus
1.wby_-_The_Shadowy_Waters_-_The_Shadowy_Waters
1.wby_-_The_Song_Of_The_Happy_Shepherd
1.wby_-_The_Song_Of_The_Old_Mother
1.wby_-_The_Song_Of_Wandering_Aengus
1.wby_-_The_Sorrow_Of_Love
1.wby_-_The_Spirit_Medium
1.wby_-_The_Spur
1.wby_-_The_Statesmans_Holiday
1.wby_-_The_Statues
1.wby_-_The_Stolen_Child
1.wby_-_The_Three_Beggars
1.wby_-_The_Three_Bushes
1.wby_-_The_Three_Hermits
1.wby_-_The_Three_Monuments
1.wby_-_The_Tower
1.wby_-_The_Travail_Of_Passion
1.wby_-_The_Two_Kings
1.wby_-_The_Two_Trees
1.wby_-_The_Unappeasable_Host
1.wby_-_The_Valley_Of_The_Black_Pig
1.wby_-_The_Wanderings_Of_Oisin_-_Book_I
1.wby_-_The_Wanderings_Of_Oisin_-_Book_II
1.wby_-_The_Wanderings_Of_Oisin_-_Book_III
1.wby_-_The_Wheel
1.wby_-_The_White_Birds
1.wby_-_The_Wild_Old_Wicked_Man
1.wby_-_The_Wild_Swans_At_Coole
1.wby_-_The_Winding_Stair
1.wby_-_The_Witch
1.wby_-_The_Withering_Of_The_Boughs
1.wby_-_Those_Dancing_Days_Are_Gone
1.wby_-_Those_Images
1.wby_-_Three_Marching_Songs
1.wby_-_Three_Movements
1.wby_-_Three_Songs_To_The_One_Burden
1.wby_-_Three_Songs_To_The_Same_Tune
1.wby_-_Three_Things
1.wby_-_To_A_Child_Dancing_In_The_Wind
1.wby_-_To_A_Friend_Whose_Work_Has_Come_To_Nothing
1.wby_-_To_An_Isle_In_The_Water
1.wby_-_To_A_Poet,_Who_Would_Have_Me_Praise_Certain_Bad_Poets,_Imitators_Of_His_And_Mine
1.wby_-_To_A_Shade
1.wby_-_To_A_Squirrel_At_Kyle-Na-No
1.wby_-_To_A_Wealthy_Man_Who_Promised_A_Second_Subscription_To_The_Dublin_Municipal_Gallery_If_It_Were_Prove
1.wby_-_To_A_Young_Beauty
1.wby_-_To_A_Young_Girl
1.wby_-_To_Be_Carved_On_A_Stone_At_Thoor_Ballylee
1.wby_-_To_Dorothy_Wellesley
1.wby_-_To_His_Heart,_Bidding_It_Have_No_Fear
1.wby_-_To_Ireland_In_The_Coming_Times
1.wby_-_Tom_At_Cruachan
1.wby_-_Tom_ORoughley
1.wby_-_Tom_The_Lunatic
1.wby_-_To_Some_I_Have_Talked_With_By_The_Fire
1.wby_-_To_The_Rose_Upon_The_Rood_Of_Time
1.wby_-_Towards_Break_Of_Day
1.wby_-_Two_Songs_From_A_Play
1.wby_-_Two_Songs_Of_A_Fool
1.wby_-_Two_Songs_Rewritten_For_The_Tunes_Sake
1.wby_-_Two_Years_Later
1.wby_-_Under_Ben_Bulben
1.wby_-_Under_Saturn
1.wby_-_Under_The_Moon
1.wby_-_Under_The_Round_Tower
1.wby_-_Upon_A_Dying_Lady
1.wby_-_Upon_A_House_Shaken_By_The_Land_Agitation
1.wby_-_Vacillation
1.wby_-_Veronicas_Napkin
1.wby_-_What_Then?
1.wby_-_What_Was_Lost
1.wby_-_When_Helen_Lived
1.wby_-_When_You_Are_Old
1.wby_-_Where_My_Books_go
1.wby_-_Who_Goes_With_Fergus?
1.wby_-_Why_Should_Not_Old_Men_Be_Mad?
1.wby_-_Wisdom
1.wby_-_Words
1.wby_-_Young_Mans_Song
1.wby_-_Youth_And_Age

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
00.00_-_Publishers_Note
00.01_-_The_Approach_to_Mysticism
00.01_-_The_Mother_on_Savitri
00.02_-_Mystic_Symbolism
0.00_-_The_Book_of_Lies_Text
01.03_-_Mystic_Poetry
01.08_-_Walter_Hilton:_The_Scale_of_Perfection
0_1966-05-18
0_1967-05-24
0_1968-05-22
0_1972-03-29a
02.08_-_Jules_Supervielle
02.09_-_Two_Mystic_Poems_in_Modern_French
02.11_-_Hymn_to_Darkness
02.12_-_Mysticism_in_Bengali_Poetry
02.13_-_Rabindranath_and_Sri_Aurobindo
03.11_-_The_Language_Problem_and_India
04.02_-_Human_Progress
04.03_-_The_Eternal_East_and_West
05.12_-_The_Revealer_and_the_Revelation
07.21_-_On_Occultism
07.22_-_Mysticism_and_Occultism
1.00a_-_Introduction
1.00_-_Introduction_to_Alchemy_of_Happiness
1.00_-_Preliminary_Remarks
1.01_-_Adam_Kadmon_and_the_Evolution
1.01_-_An_Accomplished_Westerner
1.01_-_Foreward
1.01_-_Fundamental_Considerations
1.01_-_Historical_Survey
1.01_-_How_is_Knowledge_Of_The_Higher_Worlds_Attained?
1.01_-_Maitreya_inquires_of_his_teacher_(Parashara)
1.01_-_On_knowledge_of_the_soul,_and_how_knowledge_of_the_soul_is_the_key_to_the_knowledge_of_God.
1.01_-_the_Call_to_Adventure
1.01_-_The_Cycle_of_Society
1.01_-_The_Human_Aspiration
10.23_-_Prayers_and_Meditations_of_the_Mother
1.02_-_In_the_Beginning
1.02_-_Karmayoga
1.02_-_The_Concept_of_the_Collective_Unconscious
1.02_-_THE_NATURE_OF_THE_GROUND
1.02_-_The_Pit
1.02_-_The_Two_Negations_1_-_The_Materialist_Denial
1.03_-_PERSONALITY,_SANCTITY,_DIVINE_INCARNATION
1.03_-_THE_GRAND_OPTION
1.04_-_A_Leader
1.04_-_GOD_IN_THE_WORLD
1.04_-_Narayana_appearance,_in_the_beginning_of_the_Kalpa,_as_the_Varaha_(boar)
1.04_-_SOME_REFLECTIONS_ON_PROGRESS
1.04_-_The_Gods_of_the_Veda
1.04_-_The_Paths
1.05_-_Adam_Kadmon
1.05_-_Prayer
1.05_-_The_Activation_of_Human_Energy
1.05_-_THE_HOSTILE_BROTHERS_-_ARCHETYPES_OF_RESPONSE_TO_THE_UNKNOWN
1.05_-_THE_NEW_SPIRIT
1.05_-_Vishnu_as_Brahma_creates_the_world
1.06_-_Being_Human_and_the_Copernican_Principle
1.06_-_LIFE_AND_THE_PLANETS
1.06_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_2_The_Works_of_Love_-_The_Works_of_Life
1.06_-_The_Objective_and_Subjective_Views_of_Life
1.07_-_Savitri
1.07_-_The_Farther_Reaches_of_Human_Nature
1.07_-_The_Three_Schools_of_Magick_2
1.08a_-_The_Ladder
1.08_-_Attendants
1.08_-_Origin_of_Rudra:_his_becoming_eight_Rudras
1.08_-_The_Depths_of_the_Divine
1.08_-_The_Gods_of_the_Veda_-_The_Secret_of_the_Veda
1.08_-_The_Historical_Significance_of_the_Fish
1.10_-_The_Secret_of_the_Veda
1.12_-_The_Superconscient
1.13_-_THE_HUMAN_REBOUND_OF_EVOLUTION_AND_ITS_CONSEQUENCES
1.15_-_Index
1.17_-_Astral_Journey__Example,_How_to_do_it,_How_to_Verify_your_Experience
1.18_-_Asceticism
1.19_-_The_Curve_of_the_Rational_Age
1.2.1.04_-_Mystic_Poetry
1.2.1.11_-_Mystic_Poetry_and_Spiritual_Poetry
1.22_-_THE_END_OF_THE_SPECIES
1.25_-_SPIRITUAL_EXERCISES
1.43_-_Dionysus
1.51_-_How_to_Recognise_Masters,_Angels,_etc.,_and_how_they_Work
1.83_-_Epistola_Ultima
1913_06_15p
1929-07-28_-_Art_and_Yoga_-_Art_and_life_-_Music,_dance_-_World_of_Harmony
1954-06-30_-_Occultism_-_Religion_and_vital_beings_-_Mothers_knowledge_of_what_happens_in_the_Ashram_-_Asking_questions_to_Mother_-_Drawing_on_Mother
1956-08-15_-_Protection,_purification,_fear_-_Atmosphere_at_the_Ashram_on_Darshan_days_-_Darshan_messages_-_Significance_of_15-08_-_State_of_surrender_-_Divine_Grace_always_all-powerful_-_Assumption_of_Virgin_Mary_-_SA_message_of_1947-08-15
1958-09-10_-_Magic,_occultism,_physical_science
1f.lovecraft_-_Medusas_Coil
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Horror_at_Red_Hook
1.fua_-_Mysticism
1.kbr_-_Abode_Of_The_Beloved
1.kbr_-_Are_you_looking_for_me?
1.kbr_-_Between_the_Poles_of_the_Conscious
1.kbr_-_Brother,_I've_Seen_Some
1.kbr_-_Chewing_Slowly
1.kbr_-_Dohas_(Couplets)_I_(with_translation)
1.kbr_-_Dohas_II_(with_translation)
1.kbr_-_Do_Not_Go_To_The_Garden_Of_Flowers
1.kbr_-_Friend,_Wake_Up!_Why_Do_You_Go_On_Sleeping?
1.kbr_-_Hang_Up_The_Swing_Of_Love_Today!
1.kbr_-_Having_Crossed_The_River
1.kbr_-_He's_That_Rascally_Kind_Of_Yogi
1.kbr_-_Hey_Brother,_Why_Do_You_Want_Me_To_Talk?
1.kbr_-_Hiding_In_This_Cage
1.kbr_-_His_Death_In_Benares
1.kbr_-_Hope_For_Him
1.kbr_-_How_Do_You
1.kbr_-_How_Humble_Is_God
1.kbr_-_I_Burst_Into_Laughter
1.kbr_-_I_Have_Attained_The_Eternal_Bliss
1.kbr_-_I_have_been_thinking
1.kbr_-_I_Laugh_When_I_Hear_That_The_Fish_In_The_Water_Is_Thirsty
1.kbr_-_Illusion_and_Reality
1.kbr_-_I_Said_To_The_Wanting-Creature_Inside_Me
1.kbr_-_I_Talk_To_My_Inner_Lover,_And_I_Say,_Why_Such_Rush?
1.kbr_-_It_Is_Needless_To_Ask_Of_A_Saint
1.kbr_-_Ive_Burned_My_Own_House_Down
1.kbr_-_I_Wont_Come
1.kbr_-_Knowing_Nothing_Shuts_The_Iron_Gates
1.kbr_-_Lift_The_Veil
1.kbr_-_Looking_At_The_Grinding_Stones_-_Dohas_(Couplets)_I
1.kbr_-_maddh_akas_ap_jahan_baithe
1.kbr_-_Many_Hoped
1.kbr_-_My_Body_And_My_Mind
1.kbr_-_My_Body_Is_Flooded
1.kbr_-_My_Swan,_Let_Us_Fly
1.kbr_-_O_Friend
1.kbr_-_Oh_Friend,_I_Love_You,_Think_This_Over
1.kbr_-_O_Servant_Where_Dost_Thou_Seek_Me
1.kbr_-_Plucking_Your_Eyebrows
1.kbr_-_Poem_13
1.kbr_-_Poem_14
1.kbr_-_Poem_15
1.kbr_-_Poem_2
1.kbr_-_Poem_3
1.kbr_-_Poem_4
1.kbr_-_Poem_5
1.kbr_-_Poem_6
1.kbr_-_Poem_7
1.kbr_-_Poem_8
1.kbr_-_Poem_9
1.kbr_-_Tell_me_Brother
1.kbr_-_Tentacles_of_Time
1.kbr_-_The_bhakti_path...
1.kbr_-_The_Bride-Soul
1.kbr_-_The_Dropp_And_The_Sea
1.kbr_-_The_Guest_Is_Inside_You,_And_Also_Inside_Me
1.kbr_-_The_Impossible_Pass
1.kbr_-_The_Light_of_the_Sun
1.kbr_-_The_Lord_Is_In_Me
1.kbr_-_Theres_A_Moon_Inside_My_Body
1.kbr_-_The_Self_Forgets_Itself
1.kbr_-_The_Spiritual_Athlete_Often_Changes_The_Color_Of_His_Clothes
1.kbr_-_The_Swan_flies_away
1.kbr_-_To_Thee_Thou_Hast_Drawn_My_Love
1.kbr_-_What_Kind_Of_God?
1.kbr_-_When_I_Found_The_Boundless_Knowledge
1.kbr_-_When_The_Day_Came
1.kbr_-_When_You_Were_Born_In_This_World_-_Dohas_Ii
1.kbr_-_Where_do_you_search_me
1.mah_-_If_They_Only_Knew
1.rt_-_A_Dream
1.rt_-_A_Hundred_Years_Hence
1.rt_-_Akash_Bhara_Surya_Tara_Biswabhara_Pran_(Translation)
1.rt_-_All_These_I_Loved
1.rt_-_Along_The_Way
1.rt_-_And_In_Wonder_And_Amazement_I_Sing
1.rt_-_At_The_End_Of_The_Day
1.rt_-_At_The_Last_Watch
1.rt_-_Authorship
1.rt_-_Babys_Way
1.rt_-_Babys_World
1.rt_-_Beggarly_Heart
1.rt_-_Benediction
1.rt_-_Birth_Story
1.rt_-_Brahm,_Viu,_iva
1.rt_-_Brink_Of_Eternity
1.rt_-_Broken_Song
1.rt_-_Chain_Of_Pearls
1.rt_-_Closed_Path
1.rt_-_Clouds_And_Waves
1.rt_-_Colored_Toys
1.rt_-_Compensation
1.rt_-_Cruel_Kindness
1.rt_-_Death
1.rt_-_Defamation
1.rt_-_Distant_Time
1.rt_-_Dream_Girl
1.rt_-_Dungeon
1.rt_-_Endless_Time
1.rt_-_Face_To_Face
1.rt_-_Fairyland
1.rt_-_Farewell
1.rt_-_Fireflies
1.rt_-_Flower
1.rt_-_Fool
1.rt_-_Freedom
1.rt_-_Friend
1.rt_-_From_Afar
1.rt_-_Gift_Of_The_Great
1.rt_-_Gitanjali
1.rt_-_Give_Me_Strength
1.rt_-_Hard_Times
1.rt_-_I
1.rt_-_I_Am_Restless
1.rt_-_I_Cast_My_Net_Into_The_Sea
1.rt_-_I_Found_A_Few_Old_Letters
1.rt_-_Innermost_One
1.rt_-_In_The_Country
1.rt_-_In_The_Dusky_Path_Of_A_Dream
1.rt_-_Journey_Home
1.rt_-_Keep_Me_Fully_Glad
1.rt_-_Kinu_Goalas_Alley
1.rt_-_Krishnakali
1.rt_-_Lamp_Of_Love
1.rt_-_Last_Curtain
1.rt_-_Leave_This
1.rt_-_Let_Me_Not_Forget
1.rt_-_Light
1.rt_-_Little_Flute
1.rt_-_Little_Of_Me
1.rt_-_Lord_Of_My_Life
1.rt_-_Lost_Star
1.rt_-_Lost_Time
1.rt_-_Lotus
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_II_-_Come_To_My_Garden_Walk
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_IV_-_She_Is_Near_To_My_Heart
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_LII_-_Tired_Of_Waiting
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_LIV_-_In_The_Beginning_Of_Time
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_LVIII_-_Things_Throng_And_Laugh
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_LVI_-_The_Evening_Was_Lonely
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_LXX_-_Take_Back_Your_Coins
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_VIII_-_There_Is_Room_For_You
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_V_-_I_Would_Ask_For_Still_More
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XIII_-_Last_Night_In_The_Garden
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XIX_-_It_Is_Written_In_The_Book
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XL_-_A_Message_Came
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XLII_-_Are_You_A_Mere_Picture
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XLIII_-_Dying,_You_Have_Left_Behind
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XLIV_-_Where_Is_Heaven
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XLVIII_-_I_Travelled_The_Old_Road
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XLVII_-_The_Road_Is
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XVIII_-_Your_Days
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XVI_-_She_Dwelt_Here_By_The_Pool
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XXII_-_I_Shall_Gladly_Suffer
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XXVIII_-_I_Dreamt
1.rt_-_Lovers_Gifts_XXXIX_-_There_Is_A_Looker-On
1.rt_-_Maran-Milan_(Death-Wedding)
1.rt_-_Maya
1.rt_-_Meeting
1.rt_-_Moments_Indulgence
1.rt_-_My_Dependence
1.rt_-_My_Friend,_Come_In_These_Rains
1.rt_-_My_Polar_Star
1.rt_-_My_Pole_Star
1.rt_-_My_Present
1.rt_-_My_Song
1.rt_-_Ocean_Of_Forms
1.rt_-_Old_And_New
1.rt_-_Old_Letters_
1.rt_-_One_Day_In_Spring....
1.rt_-_Only_Thee
1.rt_-_On_The_Nature_Of_Love
1.rt_-_On_The_Seashore
1.rt_-_Our_Meeting
1.rt_-_Palm_Tree
1.rt_-_Paper_Boats
1.rt_-_Parting_Words
1.rt_-_Passing_Breeze
1.rt_-_Patience
1.rt_-_Playthings
1.rt_-_Poems_On_Beauty
1.rt_-_Poems_On_Life
1.rt_-_Poems_On_Man
1.rt_-_Poems_On_Time
1.rt_-_Prisoner
1.rt_-_Purity
1.rt_-_Rare
1.rt_-_Religious_Obsession_--_translation_from_Dharmamoha
1.rt_-_Roaming_Cloud
1.rt_-_Sail_Away
1.rt_-_Salutation
1.rt_-_Senses
1.rt_-_She
1.rt_-_Shyama
1.rt_-_Signet_Of_Eternity
1.rt_-_Silent_Steps
1.rt_-_Sit_Smiling
1.rt_-_Sleep
1.rt_-_Sleep-Stealer
1.rt_-_Song_Unsung
1.rt_-_Still_Heart
1.rt_-_Stray_Birds_01_-_10
1.rt_-_Stray_Birds_11-_20
1.rt_-_Stray_Birds_21_-_30
1.rt_-_Stray_Birds_31_-_40
1.rt_-_Stray_Birds_51_-_60
1.rt_-_Stray_Birds_61_-_70
1.rt_-_Stray_Birds_71_-_80
1.rt_-_Stray_Birds_81_-_90
1.rt_-_Stream_Of_Life
1.rt_-_Strong_Mercy
1.rt_-_Superior
1.rt_-_Sympathy
1.rt_-_The_Astronomer
1.rt_-_The_Banyan_Tree
1.rt_-_The_Beginning
1.rt_-_The_Boat
1.rt_-_The_Call_Of_The_Far
1.rt_-_The_Champa_Flower
1.rt_-_The_Child-Angel
1.rt_-_The_End
1.rt_-_The_First_Jasmines
1.rt_-_The_Flower-School
1.rt_-_The_Further_Bank
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_IV_-_Ah_Me
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_IX_-_When_I_Go_Alone_At_Night
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LI_-_Then_Finish_The_Last_Song
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LIX_-_O_Woman
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LVII_-_I_Plucked_Your_Flower
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LV_-_It_Was_Mid-Day
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXI_-_Peace,_My_Heart
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXIV_-_I_Spent_My_Day
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXIX_-_I_Hunt_For_The_Golden_Stag
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXVIII_-_None_Lives_For_Ever,_Brother
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXXIX_-_I_Often_Wonder
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXXV_-_At_Midnight
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXXXIII_-_She_Dwelt_On_The_Hillside
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXXXIV_-_Over_The_Green
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_LXXXI_-_Why_Do_You_Whisper_So_Faintly
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XI_-_Come_As_You_Are
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XIII_-_I_Asked_Nothing
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XIV_-_I_Was_Walking_By_The_Road
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XIX_-_You_Walked
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XL_-_An_Unbelieving_Smile
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_X_-_Let_Your_Work_Be,_Bride
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XLIII_-_No,_My_Friends
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XLII_-_O_Mad,_Superbly_Drunk
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XLIV_-_Reverend_Sir,_Forgive
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XLVIII_-_Free_Me
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XLVI_-_You_Left_Me
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XLV_-_To_The_Guests
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XVI_-_Hands_Cling_To_Eyes
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XVIII_-_When_Two_Sisters
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XX_-_Day_After_Day_He_Comes
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXII_-_When_She_Passed_By_Me
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXIV_-_Do_Not_Keep_To_Yourself
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXI_-_Why_Did_He_Choose
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXIX_-_Speak_To_Me_My_Love
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXVIII_-_Your_Questioning_Eyes
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXVII_-_Trust_Love
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXVI_-_What_Comes_From_Your_Willing_Hands
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXXIV_-_Do_Not_Go,_My_Love
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXXVIII_-_My_Love,_Once_Upon_A_Time
1.rt_-_The_Gift
1.rt_-_The_Golden_Boat
1.rt_-_The_Hero
1.rt_-_The_Hero(2)
1.rt_-_The_Home
1.rt_-_The_Homecoming
1.rt_-_The_Journey
1.rt_-_The_Judge
1.rt_-_The_Kiss
1.rt_-_The_Kiss(2)
1.rt_-_The_Land_Of_The_Exile
1.rt_-_The_Last_Bargain
1.rt_-_The_Little_Big_Man
1.rt_-_The_Lost_Star
1.rt_-_The_Merchant
1.rt_-_The_Music_Of_The_Rains
1.rt_-_The_Portrait
1.rt_-_The_Rainy_Day
1.rt_-_The_Recall
1.rt_-_The_Sailor
1.rt_-_The_Source
1.rt_-_The_Sun_Of_The_First_Day
1.rt_-_The_Tame_Bird_Was_In_A_Cage
1.rt_-_The_Unheeded_Pageant
1.rt_-_The_Wicked_Postman
1.rt_-_This_Dog
1.rt_-_Threshold
1.rt_-_Tumi_Sandhyar_Meghamala_-_You_Are_A_Cluster_Of_Clouds_-_Translation
1.rt_-_Twelve_OClock
1.rt_-_Unending_Love
1.rt_-_Ungrateful_Sorrow
1.rt_-_Untimely_Leave
1.rt_-_Unyielding
1.rt_-_Urvashi
1.rt_-_Vocation
1.rt_-_Waiting
1.rt_-_Waiting_For_The_Beloved
1.rt_-_We_Are_To_Play_The_Game_Of_Death
1.rt_-_When_And_Why
1.rt_-_When_Day_Is_Done
1.rt_-_When_I_Go_Alone_At_Night
1.rt_-_When_the_Two_Sister_Go_To_Fetch_Water
1.rt_-_Where_Shadow_Chases_Light
1.rt_-_Where_The_Mind_Is_Without_Fear
1.rt_-_Who_Is_This?
1.wby_-_A_Bronze_Head
1.wby_-_A_Coat
1.wby_-_A_Cradle_Song
1.wby_-_A_Crazed_Girl
1.wby_-_Adams_Curse
1.wby_-_A_Deep_Sworn_Vow
1.wby_-_A_Dialogue_Of_Self_And_Soul
1.wby_-_A_Dramatic_Poem
1.wby_-_A_Dream_Of_A_Blessed_Spirit
1.wby_-_A_Dream_Of_Death
1.wby_-_A_Drinking_Song
1.wby_-_A_Drunken_Mans_Praise_Of_Sobriety
1.wby_-_Aedh_Wishes_For_The_Cloths_Of_Heaven
1.wby_-_A_Faery_Song
1.wby_-_A_First_Confession
1.wby_-_A_Friends_Illness
1.wby_-_After_Long_Silence
1.wby_-_Against_Unworthy_Praise
1.wby_-_A_Last_Confession
1.wby_-_All_Souls_Night
1.wby_-_A_Lovers_Quarrel_Among_the_Fairies
1.wby_-_Alternative_Song_For_The_Severed_Head_In_The_King_Of_The_Great_Clock_Tower
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_Complete
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_I._First_Love
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_II._Human_Dignity
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_III._The_Mermaid
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_IV._The_Death_Of_The_Hare
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_IX._The_Secrets_Of_The_Old
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_VI._His_Memories
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_VIII._Summer_And_Spring
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_VII._The_Friends_Of_His_Youth
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_V._The_Empty_Cup
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_X._His_Wildness
1.wby_-_A_Man_Young_And_Old_-_XI._From_Oedipus_At_Colonus
1.wby_-_A_Meditation_in_Time_of_War
1.wby_-_A_Memory_Of_Youth
1.wby_-_A_Model_For_The_Laureate
1.wby_-_Among_School_Children
1.wby_-_An_Acre_Of_Grass
1.wby_-_An_Appointment
1.wby_-_Anashuya_And_Vijaya
1.wby_-_A_Nativity
1.wby_-_An_Image_From_A_Past_Life
1.wby_-_An_Irish_Airman_Foresees_His_Death
1.wby_-_Another_Song_Of_A_Fool
1.wby_-_Another_Song_of_a_Fool
1.wby_-_A_Poet_To_His_Beloved
1.wby_-_A_Prayer_For_My_Daughter
1.wby_-_A_Prayer_For_My_Son
1.wby_-_A_Prayer_For_Old_Age
1.wby_-_A_Prayer_On_Going_Into_My_House
1.wby_-_Are_You_Content?
1.wby_-_A_Song
1.wby_-_A_Song_From_The_Player_Queen
1.wby_-_A_Stick_Of_Incense
1.wby_-_At_Algeciras_-_A_Meditaton_Upon_Death
1.wby_-_At_Galway_Races
1.wby_-_A_Thought_From_Propertius
1.wby_-_At_The_Abbey_Theatre
1.wby_-_A_Woman_Homer_Sung
1.wby_-_A_Woman_Young_And_Old
1.wby_-_Baile_And_Aillinn
1.wby_-_Beautiful_Lofty_Things
1.wby_-_Before_The_World_Was_Made
1.wby_-_Beggar_To_Beggar_Cried
1.wby_-_Blood_And_The_Moon
1.wby_-_Broken_Dreams
1.wby_-_Brown_Penny
1.wby_-_Byzantium
1.wby_-_Colonel_Martin
1.wby_-_Colonus_Praise
1.wby_-_Come_Gather_Round_Me,_Parnellites
1.wby_-_Consolation
1.wby_-_Coole_Park_1929
1.wby_-_Coole_Park_And_Ballylee,_1931
1.wby_-_Crazy_Jane_And_Jack_The_Journeyman
1.wby_-_Crazy_Jane_And_The_Bishop
1.wby_-_Crazy_Jane_Grown_Old_Looks_At_The_Dancers
1.wby_-_Crazy_Jane_On_God
1.wby_-_Crazy_Jane_On_The_Day_Of_Judgment
1.wby_-_Crazy_Jane_On_The_Mountain
1.wby_-_Crazy_Jane_Reproved
1.wby_-_Crazy_Jane_Talks_With_The_Bishop
1.wby_-_Cuchulains_Fight_With_The_Sea
1.wby_-_Death
1.wby_-_Demon_And_Beast
1.wby_-_Do_Not_Love_Too_Long
1.wby_-_Down_By_The_Salley_Gardens
1.wby_-_Easter_1916
1.wby_-_Ego_Dominus_Tuus
1.wby_-_Ephemera
1.wby_-_Fallen_Majesty
1.wby_-_Father_And_Child
1.wby_-_Fergus_And_The_Druid
1.wby_-_Fiddler_Of_Dooney
1.wby_-_For_Anne_Gregory
1.wby_-_Fragments
1.wby_-_Friends
1.wby_-_From_A_Full_Moon_In_March
1.wby_-_From_The_Antigone
1.wby_-_Girls_Song
1.wby_-_Gratitude_To_The_Unknown_Instructors
1.wby_-_He_Bids_His_Beloved_Be_At_Peace
1.wby_-_He_Gives_His_Beloved_Certain_Rhymes
1.wby_-_He_Hears_The_Cry_Of_The_Sedge
1.wby_-_He_Mourns_For_The_Change_That_Has_Come_Upon_Him_And_His_Beloved,_And_Longs_For_The_End_Of_The_World
1.wby_-_Her_Anxiety
1.wby_-_Her_Dream
1.wby_-_He_Remembers_Forgotten_Beauty
1.wby_-_He_Reproves_The_Curlew
1.wby_-_Her_Praise
1.wby_-_Her_Triumph
1.wby_-_Her_Vision_In_The_Wood
1.wby_-_He_Tells_Of_A_Valley_Full_Of_Lovers
1.wby_-_He_Tells_Of_The_Perfect_Beauty
1.wby_-_He_Thinks_Of_His_Past_Greatness_When_A_Part_Of_The_Constellations_Of_Heaven
1.wby_-_He_Thinks_Of_Those_Who_Have_Spoken_Evil_Of_His_Beloved
1.wby_-_He_Wishes_His_Beloved_Were_Dead
1.wby_-_High_Talk
1.wby_-_His_Bargain
1.wby_-_His_Confidence
1.wby_-_His_Dream
1.wby_-_Hound_Voice
1.wby_-_I_Am_Of_Ireland
1.wby_-_Imitated_From_The_Japanese
1.wby_-_In_Memory_Of_Alfred_Pollexfen
1.wby_-_In_Memory_Of_Eva_Gore-Booth_And_Con_Markiewicz
1.wby_-_In_Memory_Of_Major_Robert_Gregory
1.wby_-_In_Taras_Halls
1.wby_-_In_The_Seven_Woods
1.wby_-_Into_The_Twilight
1.wby_-_John_Kinsellas_Lament_For_Mr._Mary_Moore
1.wby_-_King_And_No_King
1.wby_-_Lapis_Lazuli
1.wby_-_Leda_And_The_Swan
1.wby_-_Lines_Written_In_Dejection
1.wby_-_Long-Legged_Fly
1.wby_-_Loves_Loneliness
1.wby_-_Love_Song
1.wby_-_Lullaby
1.wby_-_Mad_As_The_Mist_And_Snow
1.wby_-_Maid_Quiet
1.wby_-_Meditations_In_Time_Of_Civil_War
1.wby_-_Meeting
1.wby_-_Memory
1.wby_-_Men_Improve_With_The_Years
1.wby_-_Meru
1.wby_-_Michael_Robartes_And_The_Dancer
1.wby_-_Mohini_Chatterjee
1.wby_-_Never_Give_All_The_Heart
1.wby_-_News_For_The_Delphic_Oracle
1.wby_-_Nineteen_Hundred_And_Nineteen
1.wby_-_No_Second_Troy
1.wby_-_Now_as_at_all_times
1.wby_-_Oil_And_Blood
1.wby_-_Old_Memory
1.wby_-_Old_Tom_Again
1.wby_-_On_A_Picture_Of_A_Black_Centaur_By_Edmund_Dulac
1.wby_-_On_A_Political_Prisoner
1.wby_-_On_Being_Asked_For_A_War_Poem
1.wby_-_On_Hearing_That_The_Students_Of_Our_New_University_Have_Joined_The_Agitation_Against_Immoral_Literat
1.wby_-_On_Those_That_Hated_The_Playboy_Of_The_Western_World,_1907
1.wby_-_On_Woman
1.wby_-_Owen_Aherne_And_His_Dancers
1.wby_-_Parnell
1.wby_-_Parnells_Funeral
1.wby_-_Parting
1.wby_-_Paudeen
1.wby_-_Peace
1.wby_-_Politics
1.wby_-_Presences
1.wby_-_Quarrel_In_Old_Age
1.wby_-_Reconciliation
1.wby_-_Red_Hanrahans_Song_About_Ireland
1.wby_-_Remorse_For_Intemperate_Speech
1.wby_-_Responsibilities_-_Closing
1.wby_-_Responsibilities_-_Introduction
1.wby_-_Roger_Casement
1.wby_-_Running_To_Paradise
1.wby_-_Sailing_to_Byzantium
1.wby_-_September_1913
1.wby_-_Shepherd_And_Goatherd
1.wby_-_Sixteen_Dead_Men
1.wby_-_Slim_adolescence_that_a_nymph_has_stripped,
1.wby_-_Solomon_And_The_Witch
1.wby_-_Solomon_To_Sheba
1.wby_-_Spilt_Milk
1.wby_-_Statistics
1.wby_-_Stream_And_Sun_At_Glendalough
1.wby_-_Supernatural_Songs
1.wby_-_Sweet_Dancer
1.wby_-_Swifts_Epitaph
1.wby_-_Symbols
1.wby_-_That_The_Night_Come
1.wby_-_The_Apparitions
1.wby_-_The_Arrow
1.wby_-_The_Attack_On_the_Playboy_Of_The_Western_World,_1907
1.wby_-_The_Ballad_Of_Father_Gilligan
1.wby_-_The_Ballad_Of_Father_OHart
1.wby_-_The_Ballad_Of_Moll_Magee
1.wby_-_The_Ballad_Of_The_Foxhunter
1.wby_-_The_Balloon_Of_The_Mind
1.wby_-_The_Black_Tower
1.wby_-_The_Blessed
1.wby_-_The_Cap_And_Bells
1.wby_-_The_Cat_And_The_Moon
1.wby_-_The_Chambermaids_First_Song
1.wby_-_The_Chambermaids_Second_Song
1.wby_-_The_Choice
1.wby_-_The_Chosen
1.wby_-_The_Circus_Animals_Desertion
1.wby_-_The_Cloak,_The_Boat_And_The_Shoes
1.wby_-_The_Cold_Heaven
1.wby_-_The_Collar-Bone_Of_A_Hare
1.wby_-_The_Coming_Of_Wisdom_With_Time
1.wby_-_The_Countess_Cathleen_In_Paradise
1.wby_-_The_Crazed_Moon
1.wby_-_The_Curse_Of_Cromwell
1.wby_-_The_Dancer_At_Cruachan_And_Cro-Patrick
1.wby_-_The_Dawn
1.wby_-_The_Death_of_Cuchulain
1.wby_-_The_Dedication_To_A_Book_Of_Stories_Selected_From_The_Irish_Novelists
1.wby_-_The_Delphic_Oracle_Upon_Plotinus
1.wby_-_The_Dolls
1.wby_-_The_Double_Vision_Of_Michael_Robartes
1.wby_-_The_Everlasting_Voices
1.wby_-_The_Fairy_Pendant
1.wby_-_The_Falling_Of_The_Leaves
1.wby_-_The_Fascination_Of_Whats_Difficult
1.wby_-_The_Fish
1.wby_-_The_Fisherman
1.wby_-_The_Folly_Of_Being_Comforted
1.wby_-_The_Fool_By_The_Roadside
1.wby_-_The_Ghost_Of_Roger_Casement
1.wby_-_The_Gift_Of_Harun_Al-Rashid
1.wby_-_The_Great_Day
1.wby_-_The_Grey_Rock
1.wby_-_The_Gyres
1.wby_-_The_Happy_Townland
1.wby_-_The_Hawk
1.wby_-_The_Heart_Of_The_Woman
1.wby_-_The_Hosting_Of_The_Sidhe
1.wby_-_The_Host_Of_The_Air
1.wby_-_The_Hour_Before_Dawn
1.wby_-_The_Indian_To_His_Love
1.wby_-_The_Indian_Upon_God
1.wby_-_The_Ladys_First_Song
1.wby_-_The_Ladys_Second_Song
1.wby_-_The_Ladys_Third_Song
1.wby_-_The_Lake_Isle_Of_Innisfree
1.wby_-_The_Lamentation_Of_The_Old_Pensioner
1.wby_-_The_Leaders_Of_The_Crowd
1.wby_-_The_Living_Beauty
1.wby_-_The_Lover_Asks_Forgiveness_Because_Of_His_Many_Moods
1.wby_-_The_Lover_Mourns_For_The_Loss_Of_Love
1.wby_-_The_Lover_Pleads_With_His_Friend_For_Old_Friends
1.wby_-_The_Lover_Speaks_To_The_Hearers_Of_His_Songs_In_Coming_Days
1.wby_-_The_Lovers_Song
1.wby_-_The_Lover_Tells_Of_The_Rose_In_His_Heart
1.wby_-_The_Madness_Of_King_Goll
1.wby_-_The_Magi
1.wby_-_The_Man_And_The_Echo
1.wby_-_The_Man_Who_Dreamed_Of_Faeryland
1.wby_-_The_Mask
1.wby_-_The_Meditation_Of_The_Old_Fisherman
1.wby_-_The_Moods
1.wby_-_The_Mother_Of_God
1.wby_-_The_Mountain_Tomb
1.wby_-_The_Municipal_Gallery_Revisited
1.wby_-_The_New_Faces
1.wby_-_The_Nineteenth_Century_And_After
1.wby_-_The_Old_Age_Of_Queen_Maeve
1.wby_-_The_Old_Men_Admiring_Themselves_In_The_Water
1.wby_-_The_Old_Pensioner.
1.wby_-_The_Old_Stone_Cross
1.wby_-_The_ORahilly
1.wby_-_The_Peacock
1.wby_-_The_People
1.wby_-_The_Phases_Of_The_Moon
1.wby_-_The_Pilgrim
1.wby_-_The_Pity_Of_Love
1.wby_-_The_Players_Ask_For_A_Blessing_On_The_Psalteries_And_On_Themselves
1.wby_-_The_Poet_Pleads_With_The_Elemental_Powers
1.wby_-_The_Ragged_Wood
1.wby_-_The_Realists
1.wby_-_The_Results_Of_Thought
1.wby_-_The_Rose_In_The_Deeps_Of_His_Heart
1.wby_-_The_Rose_Of_Battle
1.wby_-_The_Rose_Of_Peace
1.wby_-_The_Rose_Of_The_World
1.wby_-_The_Rose_Tree
1.wby_-_The_Sad_Shepherd
1.wby_-_The_Saint_And_The_Hunchback
1.wby_-_The_Scholars
1.wby_-_These_Are_The_Clouds
1.wby_-_The_Second_Coming
1.wby_-_The_Secret_Rose
1.wby_-_The_Seven_Sages
1.wby_-_The_Shadowy_Waters_-_Introduction
1.wby_-_The_Shadowy_Waters_-_The_Harp_Of_Aengus
1.wby_-_The_Shadowy_Waters_-_The_Shadowy_Waters
1.wby_-_The_Song_Of_The_Happy_Shepherd
1.wby_-_The_Song_Of_The_Old_Mother
1.wby_-_The_Song_Of_Wandering_Aengus
1.wby_-_The_Sorrow_Of_Love
1.wby_-_The_Spirit_Medium
1.wby_-_The_Spur
1.wby_-_The_Statesmans_Holiday
1.wby_-_The_Statues
1.wby_-_The_Stolen_Child
1.wby_-_The_Three_Beggars
1.wby_-_The_Three_Bushes
1.wby_-_The_Three_Hermits
1.wby_-_The_Three_Monuments
1.wby_-_The_Tower
1.wby_-_The_Travail_Of_Passion
1.wby_-_The_Two_Kings
1.wby_-_The_Two_Trees
1.wby_-_The_Unappeasable_Host
1.wby_-_The_Valley_Of_The_Black_Pig
1.wby_-_The_Wanderings_Of_Oisin_-_Book_I
1.wby_-_The_Wanderings_Of_Oisin_-_Book_II
1.wby_-_The_Wanderings_Of_Oisin_-_Book_III
1.wby_-_The_Wheel
1.wby_-_The_White_Birds
1.wby_-_The_Wild_Old_Wicked_Man
1.wby_-_The_Wild_Swans_At_Coole
1.wby_-_The_Winding_Stair
1.wby_-_The_Witch
1.wby_-_The_Withering_Of_The_Boughs
1.wby_-_Those_Dancing_Days_Are_Gone
1.wby_-_Those_Images
1.wby_-_Three_Marching_Songs
1.wby_-_Three_Movements
1.wby_-_Three_Songs_To_The_One_Burden
1.wby_-_Three_Songs_To_The_Same_Tune
1.wby_-_Three_Things
1.wby_-_To_A_Child_Dancing_In_The_Wind
1.wby_-_To_A_Friend_Whose_Work_Has_Come_To_Nothing
1.wby_-_To_An_Isle_In_The_Water
1.wby_-_To_A_Poet,_Who_Would_Have_Me_Praise_Certain_Bad_Poets,_Imitators_Of_His_And_Mine
1.wby_-_To_A_Shade
1.wby_-_To_A_Squirrel_At_Kyle-Na-No
1.wby_-_To_A_Wealthy_Man_Who_Promised_A_Second_Subscription_To_The_Dublin_Municipal_Gallery_If_It_Were_Prove
1.wby_-_To_A_Young_Beauty
1.wby_-_To_A_Young_Girl
1.wby_-_To_Be_Carved_On_A_Stone_At_Thoor_Ballylee
1.wby_-_To_Dorothy_Wellesley
1.wby_-_To_His_Heart,_Bidding_It_Have_No_Fear
1.wby_-_To_Ireland_In_The_Coming_Times
1.wby_-_Tom_At_Cruachan
1.wby_-_Tom_ORoughley
1.wby_-_Tom_The_Lunatic
1.wby_-_To_Some_I_Have_Talked_With_By_The_Fire
1.wby_-_To_The_Rose_Upon_The_Rood_Of_Time
1.wby_-_Towards_Break_Of_Day
1.wby_-_Two_Songs_From_A_Play
1.wby_-_Two_Songs_Of_A_Fool
1.wby_-_Two_Songs_Rewritten_For_The_Tunes_Sake
1.wby_-_Two_Years_Later
1.wby_-_Under_Ben_Bulben
1.wby_-_Under_Saturn
1.wby_-_Under_The_Moon
1.wby_-_Under_The_Round_Tower
1.wby_-_Upon_A_Dying_Lady
1.wby_-_Upon_A_House_Shaken_By_The_Land_Agitation
1.wby_-_Vacillation
1.wby_-_Veronicas_Napkin
1.wby_-_What_Then?
1.wby_-_What_Was_Lost
1.wby_-_When_Helen_Lived
1.wby_-_When_You_Are_Old
1.wby_-_Where_My_Books_go
1.wby_-_Who_Goes_With_Fergus?
1.wby_-_Why_Should_Not_Old_Men_Be_Mad?
1.wby_-_Wisdom
1.wby_-_Words
1.wby_-_Young_Mans_Song
1.wby_-_Youth_And_Age
2.00_-_BIBLIOGRAPHY
2.01_-_On_Books
2.03_-_The_Christian_Phenomenon_and_Faith_in_the_Incarnation
2.03_-_The_Eternal_and_the_Individual
2.05_-_The_Religion_of_Tomorrow
2.13_-_On_Psychology
2.15_-_Reality_and_the_Integral_Knowledge
2.19_-_Feb-May_1939
2.19_-_The_Planes_of_Our_Existence
2.20_-_Nov-Dec_1939
2.24_-_The_Evolution_of_the_Spiritual_Man
2.25_-_List_of_Topics_in_Each_Talk
2.25_-_The_Higher_and_the_Lower_Knowledge
3.00_-_Hymn_To_Pan
3.00_-_Introduction
3.01_-_Natural_Morality
3.01_-_The_Principles_of_Ritual
3.02_-_King_and_Queen
3.02_-_Mysticism
3.02_-_The_Formulae_of_the_Elemental_Weapons
3.02_-_The_Psychology_of_Rebirth
3.03_-_The_Consummation_of_Mysticism
3.04_-_LUNA
3.05_-_The_Formula_of_I.A.O.
3.07_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Soul
3.1.05_-_A_Vision_of_Science
3.15_-_Of_the_Invocation
3.2.05_-_Our_Ideal
3.2.10_-_Christianity_and_Theosophy
3.21_-_Of_Black_Magic
3.6.01_-_Heraclitus
4.01_-_Conclusion_-_My_intellectual_position
4.01_-_Sweetness_in_Prayer
4.01_-_The_Presence_of_God_in_the_World
4.02_-_BEYOND_THE_COLLECTIVE_-_THE_HYPER-PERSONAL
4.03_-_Prayer_to_the_Ever-greater_Christ
4.03_-_The_Special_Phenomenology_of_the_Child_Archetype
4.03_-_THE_ULTIMATE_EARTH
4.07_-_THE_RELATION_OF_THE_KING-SYMBOL_TO_CONSCIOUSNESS
4.08_-_THE_RELIGIOUS_PROBLEM_OF_THE_KINGS_RENEWAL
4.1.01_-_The_Intellect_and_Yoga
5.01_-_ADAM_AS_THE_ARCANE_SUBSTANCE
5.01_-_EPILOGUE
5.04_-_THE_POLARITY_OF_ADAM
5.08_-_ADAM_AS_TOTALITY
5_-_The_Phenomenology_of_the_Spirit_in_Fairytales
6.0_-_Conscious,_Unconscious,_and_Individuation
7_-_Yoga_of_Sri_Aurobindo
APPENDIX_I_-_Curriculum_of_A._A.
Blazing_P3_-_Explore_the_Stages_of_Postconventional_Consciousness
BOOK_II._--_PART_III._ADDENDA._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_II._--_PART_II._THE_ARCHAIC_SYMBOLISM_OF_THE_WORLD-RELIGIONS
BOOK_I._--_PART_I._COSMIC_EVOLUTION
BOOK_I._--_PART_III._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
ENNEAD_06.05_-_The_One_and_Identical_Being_is_Everywhere_Present_In_Its_Entirety.345
Liber
Liber_111_-_The_Book_of_Wisdom_-_LIBER_ALEPH_VEL_CXI
Liber_46_-_The_Key_of_the_Mysteries
Liber_71_-_The_Voice_of_the_Silence_-_The_Two_Paths_-_The_Seven_Portals
r1914_04_08
Sayings_of_Sri_Ramakrishna_(text)
Sophist
Symposium_translated_by_B_Jowett
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_1
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_2
The_Act_of_Creation_text
The_Dwellings_of_the_Philosophers
The_Logomachy_of_Zos
Timaeus

PRIMARY CLASS

subject
SIMILAR TITLES
Christian Mysticism
Jewish Mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism and Logic
Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age
Mysticism Christian and Buddhist

DEFINITIONS

Abelson, Jewish Mysticism, p. 64.]

Abe\son,j. Jewish Mysticism. London: G. Bell, 1913.

All these nidhis are the objects of special worship by the Tantrikas. They differ from the nava-nidhi, or nine treasuries or jewels of wisdom referring to a consummation of spiritual development in occult training, occult life, or mysticism generally. In theosophy the “seven jewels of wisdom” are seven of the nine nava-nidhi.

Alpiel: In Hebrew mysticism, a demon who rules over fruit-trees.

Alpiel—in Hebrew mysticism, an angel or

Animal magnetism: According to all schools of mysticism, occultism and esoteric philosophy, a force which causes a fluid emanation to issue forth from all men, animals and even inanimate objects as an aura (q.v.) or as a form of light; some persons can emit it, for purposes of magic healing, from their eyes or the tips of their fingers.

Another movement of thought worthy of note was Neoplatonism. Grounded by Ulrich of Srassburg on texts found in Albert the Great, this movement gathered momentum, particularly in Germany under Dietrich of Freiberg until it ended in the mysticism of Meister Eckehart (+1327).

Anpiel: In Hebrew mysticism, the angel ruling the birds.

Applicable in mysticism to any entity or thing which was subject to understanding in three manners. Thus even time could be considered as threefold because of being divisible in our human conception into past, present, and future, etc.

Arariel: In Hebrew mysticism, the angel who presides over the waters.

Ascetic (Asceticism) ::: (Gre. to hold oneself under control) A general term for one who follows rigorous bodily and spiritual discipline to enhance spiritual experiences and rewards. Often connected with mysticism.

Ashtavadhaza: In Hindu mysticism, the ability to grasp or attend to different matters at the same time.

Asura: In Hindu mysticism, a fallen angel or demon, hostile to the gods (devas).

Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430.   St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents.   Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided.   Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients.   S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings").   This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism).   (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment.   Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect.   Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good."   In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love.   In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909).   Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint.   The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value.   (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey).   (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience.   (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria.   (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers:   subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists);   logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality);   metaphysical objectivism (values   --or norms or ideals   --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.

Azael: In Hebrew mysticism, one of the angels who rebelled against God.

Azazel: The mysterious creature dwelling in the desert to which the Hebrews of biblical times sent forth their scapegoats (q.v.). In latter Hebrew mysticism, this name was used as that of one of the fallen angels.

Barael—in Jewish mysticism, one of the 7

Baruch III.] In Muller, History of Jewish Mysticism,

Berdyayev, Nikolai Alexandrovitch: (1874-1948) Is a contemporary Russian teacher and writer on the philosophy of religion. He was born in Kiev, exiled to Vologda when twenty-five; threatened with expulsion from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917, he became professor of philosophy at the University of Moscow. In 1922, he was expelled from the Soviet Union and he went to Berlin, where he established his Academy of Religious Philosophy. He moved his school to Paris and established a Russian review called Putj (The Way). His thought resembles that of the Christian Gnostics (see Gnosticism), and it owes a good deal to German idealism and mysticism (Boehme). He is a trenchant critic of systems as diverse as Communism and Thomistic Scholasticism. His most noted works are: Smyisl Istorii (The Meaning of History), Berlin, 1923; Novoye Srednevyekovye (transl. as The End of Our Time, N.Y., 1933), Berlin, 1924; Freedom and the Spirit, N. Y., 1935. V. J. Bourke, "The Gnosticism of N. Berdyaev", Thought, XI (1936), 409-22. -- VJ.B.

Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition.

Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition.]

Mysticism: Any philosophy, doctrine, teaching or belief centered more on the worlds of the Spirit than the material universe, and aimed at the spiritual union or mental one-ness with the Universal Spirit, through intuitive and emotional apprehension of spiritual reality, and through various forms of spiritual contemplation, or disciplines. Mysticism in its simplest and most essential meaning is a type of religion which puts the emphasis on immediate awareness of relation with God, direct and intimate consciousness of Divine Presence. It is religion in its most acute, intense and living stage. The basic idea of all mysticism is that the essence of life and of the world is an all-embracing spiritual substance which is the true reality in the core of all beings, regardless of their outer appearances or activities.

Mysticism ::: A word originally derived from the Greek and having a wide range of meaning in modern Occidentalreligious and philosophical literature. A mystic may be said to be one who has intuitions or intimations ofthe existence of inner and superior worlds, and who attempts to ally himself or to come intoself-conscious communion with them and the beings inhabiting these inner and invisible worlds.The word mysticism, of course, has various shades of significance, and a large number of definitionscould easily be written following the views of different mystical writers on this theme. From thetheosophical or occult point of view, however, a mystic is one who has inner convictions often based oninner vision and knowledge of the existence of spiritual and ethereal universes of which our outerphysical universe is but the shell; and who has some inner knowledge that these universes or worlds orplanes or spheres, with their hosts of inhabitants, are intimately connected with the origin, destiny, andeven present nature of the world which surrounds us.Genuine mysticism is an ennobling study. The average mystic, however, is one who lacks the directguidance derived from personal teaching received from a master or spiritual superior.

Mysticism ; Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews.]

Mysticism]. In occultism the archons are primor¬

Mysticism; Muller, History of Jewish Mysticism;

Mysticism, p. 362, Domiel is mistakenly confused

Mysticism, p. 38.] It is said ( Bereshith Rahha) that the

Mysticism .]

Mysticism The doctrine that the nature of reality can be known by direct apprehension, by faculties above the senses, by intuition. “Mysticism demands a faculty above reason, by which the subject shall be placed in immediate and complete union with the object of his desire — a union in which the consciousness of self has disappeared, and in which therefore subject and object are one” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed. “Mysticism”). It overlaps in meaning such terms as the Neoplatonic ecstasis, and the theosophy of Iamblichus.

Boehme, Jacob: (1575-1624) Of Gorlitz, was the son of poor parents, received little formal schooling, studied the Bible and the works of Pastor Valentine Weigel assiduously. He became noted as a mystic, theosophist, and in his own day was called the German Philosopher. He wrote in German but his early followers translated his works into Latin, hence it is difficult to distinguish his personal thought from that of his school. He thought that all reality, even God, contains a duality of good and evil, the universe and man's soul are nothing without God. He has had much influence on later German and Russian mysticism. Chief works: Aurora, Vierzig Fragen von der Seele, Mysterium Magnum, Von der Gnadenwahl. Deussen, J. Boehme, uber sein Leben u. seine Philos. (Kiel, 1897). -- V.J.B.

Bradley, Francis Herbert: (1846-1924) Dialectician extraordinary of British philosophy, Bradley sought to purge contemporary thought of the extremely sensationalistic and utilitarian elements embodied in the tradition of empiricism. Though owing much to Hegel, he early repudiated the Hegelian system as such, and his own variety of Absolute Idealism bases itself upon no scheme of categories. His brilliant attack upon the inadequate assumptions of hedonistic ethics (Ethical Studies, 1877) was followed in 1883 by The Principles of Logic in which his dialectic analysis was applied to the problems of inference and judgment. It was, however, his Appearance and Reality (1893) with its famous theory of "the degrees of truth" which first disturbed the somnambulism of modern metaphysics, and led Caird to remark upon "the greatest thing since Kant". In later years Bradley's growing realization of ultimate difficulties in his version of the coherence theory led him to modify his doctrines in the direction of a Platonic mysticism. See Essays on Truth and Reality, the second edition of the Logic Collected Essays, etc. -- W.S.W.

Brahmarandhra (Sanskrit) Brahmarandhra [from brahman cosmic spirit + randhra opening, fissure, cavity] Brahman’s crevice; a mystical suture or opening in the crown of the head, through which a person leaves his body at death. Connected with the heart by means of the sushumna-nadi, a psychovital channel in the spinal column. “A mystic term having its significance only in mysticism” (TG 63). Anatomically the fontanel is a soft, pulsating, unossified area in the skull of an infant, which hardens as the child develops.

  “called Hermetic and Esoteric Sciences. In the West, the Kabbalah may be named; in the East, mysticism, magic, and Yoga philosophy, which latter is often referred to by the Chelas in India as the seventh ‘Darshana’ (school of philosophy), there being only six Darshanas in India known to the world of the profane. These sciences are, and have been for ages, hidden from the vulgar for the very good reason that they would never be appreciated by the selfish educated classes, nor understood by the uneducated; whilst the former might misuse them for their own profit, and thus turn the divine science into black magic” (TG 237).

Castle of the Inferior Man: In mysticism, the allegorical name of the seven stages of the soul’s ascent toward the Divinity.

Celestial Body Taken from Coleridge, who divined that in the human celestial body must be stored the memory of all preexistent experiences of the soul. The phrase is said to mean the thought-vehicle of the monad in devachan, through which functions the manasic ego (Key 137). The range of stored memory of experiences varies in extent according to the degree of sublimity of the different vestures. Ancient mysticism taught that the self has several vestures, each of which may be called a body or sheath through which the monad acts and by which it comes in contact with the particular worlds in which it may be functioning. “There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial” (1 Cor 15:40). For instance, the Vedantic classification of the kosas (sheaths of atman) gives annamayakosa (physical body), pranamayakosa (vital-astral body), manomayakosa (psychological or lower manasic body), vijnanamayakosa (higher manasic body), and anandamayakosa (buddhic body). In the Taraka Raja-Yoga system are the following upadhis or vehicles of atman: sthulopadhi (gross vehicle), sukshmopadhi (subtile vehicle), and karanopadhi (causal vehicle or self).

Cherub: In Hebrew mysticism, a winged celestial being, part human and part animal, serving as the chariot of the Almighty and as guardian angel. (Plural: Cherubim.)

Cited in Jewish mysticism tracts. [Rf. M. Gaster,

Day of Yahweh: In Hebrew mysticism, the Day of Judgment.

deity mysticism ::: A peak experience of oneness with phenomena in the subtle state. Can also refer to any form of mysticism or experiential oneness with a deity form.

Dictionary of Mysticism ; Redfield, Gods IA Diction¬

Dictionary of Mysticism. See Gaynor.

Dictionary of Mysticism

"Dionysius" used the word to express a type of "Theology" rather than an experience. For him and for many interpreters since his day, Mysticism stands for a religious theory or system, which conceives of God as absolutely transcendent, beyond reason, thought, intellect and all approaches of mind. The way up is a via negativa. It is Agnostia, "unknowing knowing". This type of Mysticism, which emerged from the Neo-Platonic stream of thought might be defined as Belief in the possibility of Union with the Divine by means of ecstatic contemplation.

“ . . . Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. The Synthesis of Yoga

Divine Nothingness: In Jewish mysticism, the principle taught by the Habad school, that “the Divine is without limitation and opposed to all ‘something,’ which is limited. The divine is the ‘nothing’ that subsumes all limitation and finiteness.” (M. Buber)

Dobbins, Dunstan. Franciscan Mysticism. New York:

Ecstasy: (Gr. ekstasis, displacement, a trance) The enraptured condition of the mystical spirit which has reached the climax of its intuitive and affective experience. Of brief duration, it is physiologically negative (resembling trance) but, according to some mystics, psychologically very rich. Usually said to be concomitant with a spiritual union of the soul with higher reality. See Mysticism, Ptotinism. -- V.J.B.

Egyptian Gnostics; Gaynor, Dictionary of Mysticism.]

emanations of God). In Jewish mysticism, yetsirah

Encyclopedia', Gaynor, Dictionary of Mysticism].

Esoterism (G) Indication of a doctrine or knowledge, open only to initiates. The practice of rituals and usages belonging to esoteric knowledge is also called ‘occultism’. Furthermore there is connection with words as ‘spirituality’ and ‘mysticism’ and with the spiritual training proces of ‘yoga’.

Firmament Combines the meanings of support, expanse, and boundary; a translation of the Latin firmamentum (a support), which again renders the Greek stereoma (a foundation). The Hebrew is raqia‘ (an unfolding or expanse). The ordinary European meaning is the vault of heaven or sky. It is often identified with air, called the breath of the supporters of the heavenly dome in Islamic mysticism; in India the ethery expanse is the domain of Indra, and one reads of the 1008 divisions of the devaloka (god-worlds) and firmaments. It also relates to the supporters, pillars, or cosmocratores in so many ancient cosmogonies, said to uphold or support the world.

formless mysticism ::: A peak experience of oneness with phenomena (or lack thereof) in the causal state. Can also refer to meditative formless absorption, nirvikalpa samadhi, jnana samadhi, the Void, the Abyss, Ayin, Urgrund, etc.

Gaynor, Dictionary of Mysticism.]

Gaynor, Dictionary of Mysticism.] The Olympian

Gaynor, Frank. Dictionary of Mysticism. New York:

Gazali: Born 1059 in Tus, in the country of Chorasan, taught at Bagdad, lived for a time in Syria, died in his home town 1111. He started as a sceptic in philosophy and became a mystic and orthodox afterwards. Philosophy is meaningful only as introduction to theology. His attitude resembles Neo-Platonic mysticism and is anti-Aristotelian. He wrote a detailed report on the doctrines of Farabi and Avicenna only to subject them to a scathing criticism in Destructio philosophorum where he points out the self-contradictions of philosophers. His main works are theological. In his writings on logic he wants to ensure to theology a reliable method of procedure. His metaphysics also is mainly based on theology: creation of the world out of nothing, resurrection, and so forth. Cf. H. Bauer, Die Dogmatik Al-Ghazalis, 1912. -- R.A.

Ghazal (P) Short poem from Persian mysticism of a maximum of fifteen double verses.

glory. In Jewish mysticism, Pahadron is the chief

Gnosticism: A creed representing a mixture of the doctrines of the Babylonian, Egyptian, Indian and Christian religions, occultism, astrology and magic, as well as parts of the Hebrew Kabalistic teachings. Its origin is still a matter of debate. According to the Encyclopedia of Religion by V. Ferm, “Gnosticism is now regarded as pre-Christian Oriental mysticism.” All Gnostic sects had their priests who practiced astrology and the magic arts, and it is claimed that the Gnostics continued to celebrate the ancient Greek mysteries, too. The Church regarded the Gnostics as heretics and sorcerers and persecuted them as such.

Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic

Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradi¬

Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradi¬

Gnosticism; the word was created by modern scholors to refer to the sects of the Late Antiquities that shared a similar cosmology and soteriology. More recently the definition has been widened in some circles to mean any form of mysticism or esotericism. However, this has largely happened as a result of ignorance as to the technical purpose of the term.

Govinda, Lama Anagarika. (1898-1985). Born Ernst Lothar Hoffmann in Kassel, Germany, he served in the German army during World War I, after which he continued his studies at Freiburg University in Switzerland. He became interested in Buddhism while living with expatriate European and American artists on the Italian island of Capri, during which time he published his first book, The Basic Ideas of Buddhism and Its Relationship to Ideas of God (1920). In 1928, he sailed for Ceylon, where he studied meditation and Buddhist philosophy briefly with the German-born THERAVĀDA monk NĀnATILOKA MAHĀTHERA (who gave him the name Govinda), before leaving to travel in Burma and India. While visiting Darjeeling in the Himalayas in 1931, he was driven by a spring snowstorm to a Tibetan monastery at Ghoom, where he met Tomo (Gro mo) Geshe Rimpoche, a DGE LUGS PA lama. Govinda later held brief teaching positions at the University of Patna and at Shantiniketan, publishing essays in The Mahā Bodhi, the journal of the MAHĀBODHI SOCIETY, as well as various Theosophical journals. His lectures at Patna resulted in his book The Psychological Attitude of Early Buddhist Philosophy (1961) and his lectures at Shantiniketan led to Psycho-Cosmic Symbolism of the Buddhist Stupa. While at Shantiniketan he met a Parsi woman, Rati Petit (who assumed the name Li Gotami), whom he would marry in 1947. In 1942, he was interned by the British at Dehra Dun along with other German nationals, including Heinrich Harrer. During 1947-1948, Lama Govinda and Li Gotami traveled to some of the temples of western Tibet. During their travels, they met a lama named Ajorepa Rimpoche, who, according to Govinda, initiated them into the BKA' BRGYUD order. Returning from Tibet, Lama Govinda and Li Gotami set up permanent residence in India, publishing Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism in 1960. He spent the last two decades before his death in 1985 lecturing in Europe and the United States. His last years were spent in a home in Mill Valley, California, provided by the San Francisco Zen Center.

he is the “demiurge of classical Jewish mysticism.”

Henri Delacroix, Etude d'Histoire et de Psychologie du Mysticisme (Paris, 1908); Baron Friedrich von Hügel, The Mystical Element of Religion (London, 1908); Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism. (London, 1911); William James, Varieties of Religious Experience (New York, 1902); Rufus M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion (London, 1909). -- R.M.J.

History of Jewish Mysticism.] In the Babylonian

History of Jewish Mysticism. See Muller.

History of Jewish Mysticism.]

Hypnotism: “A peculiar state of consciousness, artificially induced, which liberates subconscious powers in the subject, puts him en rapport with the hypnotizer, makes him accept and meticulously execute any of his [the hypnotizer’s] suggestions, whether hypnotic or post-hypnotic, which do not conflict with deeper instincts of self-preservation and morality, and produces strange psychological effects as anaesthesia and the remarkable control over organic processes of the body. In hypnotic sleep the waking stimuli are strongly resisted, the sleeper hears and answers.” (N. Fodor.) Occultists and believers in mysticism consider hypnotism a form of black magic (q.v.) unless it is used for expressly beneficial ends.

Immanence: (late Lat. Immanere, to remain in) The state of being immanent, present, or in dwelling. In Medieval Scholasticism a cause is immanent whose effects are exclusively within the agent, as opposed to transient. For Kant the immanent is experiential as opposed to non-experiential or transcendent. In modern metaphysics and theology immanence signifies presence (of essence, being, power, etc.), as opposed to absence. According to pantheism the essence of God or the Absolute is completely immanent in the world, i.e. is identical with it. According to Deism God is essentially absent or transcendent from the world. According to immanent theism He is both immanent (in presence and activity) and transcendent (in essence) with respect to it. Mysticism in its broadest sense posits the mutual immanence of the human and the divine. -- W.L.

Immanence: Latin for in-dwelling. In general philosophical terminology, this term refers to an activity producing its effects from within, or to an entity whose being within something else contributes to the existence of the latter. In theology, the term refers to the complete or partial identification of the Deity with the world. (The belief in the absolute immanence of God in the universe is equivalent to pantheism.) Mysticism in its broadest sense posits the mutual immanence of the human and the divine.

Ineffable Name: In mysticism and occultism, the true name of God which must not be pronounced.

in fewish Mysticism-, Mathers, The Kabbalah Un¬

in Jewish Mysticism, p. llOff.]

in Jewish Mysticism ; Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic

In patristic and scholastic Christianity: the creator God, the Ens Realissimum, Ens Perfectissimum, Sui Causa, and the God of mysticism generally (Erigena, Hugo of St. Victor, Cusa, Boehme, Bruno).

In the numerical mysticism of ancient Egypt five crocodiles, for instance, were represented as in the celestial Nile, and the emanating deity calls forth these crocodiles in his fifth creation. The number five, as well as other numbers, was sacred to the Gnostics, hence five words signifying the five mystic powers attained by the initiate were written upon the garment in their interpretation at the glorification of Jesus. In classical Greece the E Delphicum, a sacred symbol, was the numeral five. There were five ministers of Chozzar (the Gnostic Poseidon); and in the Hindu mythology Brahma is represented as uttering five words or vowels at the creation. From another standpoint, five is the “universal quintessence which spreads in every direction and forms all matter” (SD 2:583). See also PENTAGRAM

In the orthodox Christian view of its theological Trinity the three persons of the Godhead are not three gods but one God, and yet three Persons or individuals. So that we have one Godhead who is three-in-one, and yet one-in-three, which is not three gods, nor yet one God, but both. Moslems aver that the Christian Trinity is not one God in three aspects, but actually three gods manifesting as one, and the strict monotheism of Islam refuses to admit the logical monstrosity. The Christian Churches lost sight of the mystical origin of its own trinity out of the neo-Pythagorean and Neoplatonic mysticism.

In the symbolism of Hafiz (14th-century mystic Persian poet) dervish is one who has reached the highest degree of spirituality by giving up worldly possessions and in a beggar-like appearance holds the secret of alchemy. In later times, people who did not understand the subtleties of mysticism took the symbolic rejection of the material world too literally and the attitude of certain dervishes also contributed to this misconception, particularly during the Safavids, who were themselves dervishes, followers of the Sharia or Shariat (the outward rituals of religion).

It is not historically sound to find the essentia of Mysticism in ecstasy, or in a via negativa, or in some kind of esoteric knowledge, or in mysterious "communications". The essentia of Mysticism is the experience of direct communion with God.

Jerusalem of above: In Jewish mysticism, the heavenly counterpart of the city of Jerusalem on Earth.

- .Jewish Mysticism and the Legend of Baalshem.

Jewish Mysticism.] In The Dabistan, p. 136, other

Jewish Mysticism, p. 117.]

Jewish Mysticism, p. 127.]

Jewish Mysticism .]

- .Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Tal¬

Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Tal¬

Jivakosa: In Hindu mysticism, a case or sheath which envelops the personal soul.

kabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition, p. 53.]

kabah mysticism, a guardian angel of the 6th hall

Kabala(h) or Kabbala(h) ::: (Kabalism) (Heb. qabbala, receiving tradition). Jewish Mysticism; basic book is the Zohar, written by Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai in the 2nd century CE.

Kabshiel—in Jewish mysticism, an angel who,

kahah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition .]

Kmiel—in Jewish mysticism, an angel of the

labadist ::: n. --> A follower of Jean de Labadie, a religious teacher of the 17th century, who left the Roman Catholic Church and taught a kind of mysticism, and the obligation of community of property among Christians.

Lhagpa (Tibetan) lhag pa. In Tibetan astrology and mysticism the planet Mercury, symbolized by a hand. His solar house is Gemini, which signifies the arms and hands; like them he stands for action and executive skill. Equivalent to the Sanskrit Budha. Also Wednesday.

Lilith: In Jewish mysticism, a female demon who seduces mortal men. (Cf. succubus.) Specifically, the first wife of Adam before the creation of Eve.

Lucifer (Latin) Light-bringer [cf Greek Phosphoros; or Eosphoros dawn-bringer]; the planet Venus, the morning star. Lucifer is light bringer to earth, not only physically as the brightest of the planets, but in a mystical sense also. In mysticism he is the chief of those minor powers or logoi who are said to rebel against high heaven and to be cast down to the bottomless pit — the so-called war in heaven and the fall of the angels. This allegory is found also in the legend concerning Prometheus, in the Hindu Mahasura who rebels against Brahma and is cast by Siva into patala, and in the Scandinavian Loki. In the cyclic sweep of evolution, spirit has first to descend or become involved in differentiation and in the worlds of matter, so that worlds and beings may be brought forth and evolved. The logoi who thus bring the light may allegorically be said, like Prometheus, to steal the fire, and their assertion of divine free will may be construed into an act of evolutionary rebellion; yet such is their karmic function as well as duty.

Major Trends in fewish Mysticism. The name de¬

- .Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York:

Matrubhateswara: In Hindu religious mysticism and occultism, Ishwara (the Personal God) in the manifestation as the Mother.

Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition, p. 53.]

Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition, p.

Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition.]

Merkabah ::: (Heb., “chariot”). The "chariot vision" was an integral element of mysticism signifying a vision of divinity.

Messiah; Messias: In Hebrew mysticism, the Savior who will come to restore the Chosen People to its rightful place in the world.

Miao: In Chinese mysticism, this word has two meanings: (a) Mystery of existence, which is unfathomable. (Lao Tzu.) (b) Subtlety, such as the subtle presence of the Omnipotent Creative Power (shen) in the myriad things.

Muller, Ernst. History of Jewish Mysticism. Oxford:

Muller, History of Jewish Mysticism, p. 120.]

Muller, History of Jewish Mysticism, p. 152.]

Muller, History of Jewish Mysticism.] Philo calls

Muller, History of Jewish Mysticism .]

Mutazilite: (Ar. seceders) Member of a Shiite sect of Islam dating from the 8th century, which stood for free will and against divine predestination. Mysticism: Mysticism in its simplest and most essential meaning is a type of religion which puts the emphasis on immediate awareness of relation with God, direct and intimate consciousness of Divine Presence. It is religion in its most acute, intense and living stage. The word owes its origin to the Mystery Religions. The initiate who had the "secret" was called a mystes. Early Christians used the word "Contemplation" for mystical experience. The word "mystical" first came into use in the Western World in the writings ascribed to "Dionysius the Areopagite", which appeared at the end of the fifth century.

mystic ::: a. --> Alt. of Mystical ::: n. --> One given to mysticism; one who holds mystical views, interpretations, etc.; especially, in ecclesiastical history, one who professed mysticism. See Mysticism.

mystical ::: a. --> Remote from or beyond human comprehension; baffling human understanding; unknowable; obscure; mysterious.
Importing or implying mysticism; involving some secret meaning; allegorical; emblematical; as, a mystic dance; mystic Babylon.


Mystic, Mysticism ::: (adj. mystical; from Greek for “initiant” into religious “mysteries”). A vaguely used term to indicate certain types of behavior or perspective that goes beyond the rational in the quest of what is considered to be the ultimate in religious experience (often described as union or direct communion with deity). See also kabalah, gnostic.

mysticism, Azrael is the embodiment of evil. In

mysticism ::: Mysticism The belief that one can rise above reason to achieve direct union with God or the Divine through meditation and intuition. In mystical practices, one attempts to merge with God or the Divine through a disciplined quest to achieve enlightenment. Some forms of mysticism include the Kabbalah, Sufism (Islam), Yoga, and Buddhism.

mysticism, Metatron is the personified Logos.

mysticism ::: n. --> Obscurity of doctrine.
The doctrine of the Mystics, who professed a pure, sublime, and wholly disinterested devotion, and maintained that they had direct intercourse with the divine Spirit, and aquired a knowledge of God and of spiritual things unattainable by the natural intellect, and such as can not be analyzed or explained.
The doctrine that the ultimate elements or principles of knowledge or belief are gained by an act or process akin to feeling or


mysticism, the angel of deliverance. [Rf. Abelson,

mysticism ::: The pursuit of achieving communion, identity with, or conscious awareness of ultimate reality, the divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, or insight. Traditions may include a belief in the literal existence of dimensional realities beyond empirical perception, or a belief that a true human perception of the world goes beyond current logical reasoning or intellectual comprehension.

Mystic: While the original meaning of the word, as used in ancient times, was “initiated in the mysteries,” the modern connotation is “one who believes in or practices mysticism.”

Nabi: In Hebrew mysticism, an interpreter of oracles, a messenger of the deity or spirit. The Nabis were not magicians, but seers.

Natorp, Paul: (1854-1924) Collaborating with Cohen, Natorp applied the transcendental method to an interpretation of Plato, to psychology and to the methodology of the exact sciences. Like Cohen, Natorp really did not contribute to the scientific development of critical philosophy but prepared the way for philosophical mysticism. Cf. Platos Ideenlehre, 1903; Kant u. d. Marburger Schule, 1915. -- J. K.

nature mysticism ::: A peak experience of oneness with phenomena in the gross state.

Nava-nidhi (Sanskrit) Nava-nidhi The nine jewels; in Hindu mysticism, “a consummation of spiritual development . . .” (TG 225).

Neo-Platonism ::: A line of development from the philosophy of Plato that emphasized the mystical dimensions of its dualistic view of reality, so that union with the ultimate One was a major goal. Influenced the development of mysticism in each of the three religious traditions.

neoplatonism ::: n. --> A pantheistic eclectic school of philosophy, of which Plotinus was the chief (A. D. 205-270), and which sought to reconcile the Platonic and Aristotelian systems with Oriental theosophy. It tended to mysticism and theurgy, and was the last product of Greek philosophy.

Neopythagoreans The Pythagoreans of Alexandria and other cities on the Mediterranean coast in the 1st century with whom Apollonius of Tyana is often classed. As happened to the Neoplatonists, the atmosphere of the later Greco-Roman world was not conducive to abstract philosophy, and hence the tendency of the times produced the practical mysticism characterizing both the viewpoint of the Pythagoreans and the Neoplatonists. Both schools were highly philosophic and used abstract philosophic speculation; yet predominant in both was the yearning for the attainment of inner spiritual illumination by practices of physical abstinence and by purity of life.

Nishitani Keiji. (西谷啓治) (1900-1990). Japanese philosopher and member of what came to be known as the KYOTO SCHOOL, a contemporary school of Japanese philosophy that sought to synthesize ZEN Buddhist thought with modern Western, and especially Germanic, philosophy. Nishitani was schooled in Ishikawa prefecture and Tokyo and graduated from Kyoto University in 1924 with a degree in philosophy. A student of NISHIDA KITARo (1870-1945), the founder of the Kyoto School, Nishitani became a professor in the Department of Religion at Kyoto University in 1935 and from 1937 to 1939 studied with Martin Heidegger in Freiburg, Germany. He later chaired the Department of Modern Philosophy at Kyoto Prefectural University from 1955 to 1963. In such works as his 1949 Nihirizumu (translated in 1990 as The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism) and Shukyo to wa nani ka ("What Is Religion?," 1961, translated in 1982 as Religion and Nothingness), Nishitani sought to synthesize German existentialism, Christian mysticism, and what he considered to be Zen experience. Where German philosophy, which is governed by logic and cognitive thinking, addressed ontological questions regarding the self, he argued that such means as Christian mysticism and Zen meditation could complement German philosophy in constructing a path to a complete realization of the self. Nishitani took issue with Nietzsche's nihilism by borrowing from the Buddhist concept of emptiness (suNYATĀ) to argue that recognition of the self as empty brings one to an understanding of things as they are (viz., the Buddhist concept of suchness, or TATHATĀ), and hence a true understanding and affirmation of oneself. Nishitani's philosophical justification of Japan's wartime activities, notably his contributions to the well-known journal Chuokoron ("Central Review") in the early 1940s, has become a controversial aspect of his work.

nondual mysticism ::: A peak experience of oneness with phenomena arising in gross, subtle, and causal states.

Ob: In Hebrew mysticism and occultism, the Spirit of Ob personifies the evil aspects of the astral light (q.v.).

of Mysticism.]

of Jewish Mysticism, Nibra Ha-Rishon must be

Padmapani (Sanskrit) Padmapāṇi The lotus-bearer; one name in Tibetan mysticism of the bodhisattva Chenrezi, equivalent to the Sanskrit Avalokitesvara. His female aspect is equivalent to the Chinese Kwan-yin. On the manifested planes Padmapani is “the progenitor (in a spiritual sense) of men. . . . He is, evidently, like Daksha, the synthesis of all the preceding Races and the progenitor of all the human Races after the Third, the first complete one . . .” (SD 2:178). Thus Padmapani has cosmic, terrestrial, and human meanings.

Pahadron—in Jewish mysticism, the chief angel

pedia of Religions; Gaynor, Dictionary of Mysticism ;

Philosophical Library, Inc., New York, N. Y., publishers of Hindu Philosophy by T. Bernard, An Encyclopedia of Astrology by N. de Vore, An Encyclopedia of Religion by V. Ferm (ed.), Forgotten Religions by V. Ferm (ed.), Introduction to Comparative Mysticism by J. de Marquette, The Splendour That Was Egypt by M. A. Murray, Dictionary of Philosophy by D. D. Runes (ed.), and Christian Science and Philosophy by H. W. Steiger.

Prince of the Torah: In Jewish mysticism, “the angel who represents the Torah [the Holy Scriptures] in Heaven. The elements, the forces of nature, and the nations, which according to Jewish tradition, are seventy in number, are represented by their respective princes, who are either angels or demons.” (M. Buber.)

Pururavas (Sanskrit) Purūravas In Hindu philosophical mysticism and epic literature, the son of Budha, regent of the planet Mercury and equivalent to cosmic wisdom. Budha is given as the son of Soma, the moon, and Ila or Ida, the ethereal earth. Pururavas is an extremely occult character, mentioned both in the Vedas and Puranas. In the Vedas he seems to be connected with the functions of the sun, Surya, while according to later writers he is one of the ten belonging to the class of visvadevas. His cosmic functions are those belonging to the realms of mahat or cosmic mind, and therefore Pururavas is that faculty of cosmic intelligence which guides cosmic evolution and directs it. The visvadevas are entities whose fields of activity are the intermediate region of our universe.

Pythagoreanism: The doctrines (philosophical, mathematical, moral, and religious) of Pythagoras (c. 572-497) and of his school which flourished until about the end of the 4th century B.C. The Pythagorean philosophy was a dualism which sharply distinguished thought and the senses, the soul and the body, the mathematical forms of things and their perceptible appearances. The Pythagoreans supposed that the substances of all things were numbers and that all phenomena were sensuous expressions of mathematical ratios. For them the whole universe was harmony. They made important contributions to mathematics, astronomv, and physics (acoustics) and were the first to formulate the elementary principles and methods of arithmetic and geometry as taught in the first books of Euclid. But the Pythagorean sect was not only a philosophical and mathematical school (cf. K. von Fritz, Pythagorean Politics in Southern Italy, 1941), but also a religious brotherhood and a fellowship for moral reformation. They believed in the immortality and transmigration (see Metempsychosis) of the soul which they defined as the harmony of the body. To restore harmony which was confused by the senses was the goal of their Ethics and Politics. The religious ideas were closely related to those of the Greek mysteries which sought by various rites and abstinences to purify and redeem the soul. The attempt to combine this mysticism with their mathematical philosophy, led the Pythagoreans to the development of an intricate and somewhat fantastic symbolism which collected correspondences between numbers and things and for example identified the antithesis of odd and even with that of form and matter, the number 1 with reason, 2 with the soul, etc. Through their ideas the Pythagoreans had considerable effect on the development of Plato's thought and on the theories of the later Neo-platonists.

Quietists A type of religious mysticism which arose within the Roman Catholic Church in Italy and Spain during the latter half of the 17th century, especially in connection with a priest named Miguel de Molinos, who published his Spiritual Guide in Rome in 1675. The book of this apparently simple and pious man shows how to attain a state of inward peace by withdrawal of the thoughts and desires from all earthly matters and fixing them in contemplation of what the aspirant conceives to be the divine and in prayer. This he regarded as the only essential, doctrine and ritual being of no consequence. His views won great popularity and he received high favors from the Pope; but they did not at all suit the purposes of those then in power. Molinos was condemned and imprisoned and a persecution instituted against Quietists in general.

quote :::All down the ages the Yogis and seers of India have worshipped the Word-God, or Sound-God, and around that idea is centered all the mysticism of sound or utterance.

Rationalism ::: A general term for the perspective that holds that everything is actually or potentially understandable by human reason. See also agnosticism, atheism, mysticism.

Raziel, and other tracts of magic and mysticism.

RELIGION The emotional task of religion has been that of freeing man from fear and anxiety, of giving him faith in life and in the power of good; and of mysticism in all religions that of granting enduring bliss and &

[Rf. 3 Enoch ; Muller, History of Jewish Mysticism .]

[Rf. Danielou, The Angels and Their Mission ; Gaynor, Dictionary of Mysticism; Doresse, The Secret Books of

[Rf Gaynor, Dictionary of Mysticism; Heckethom,

[Rf. Mullers, History of Jewish Mysticism, p. 52.]

SAINT Emotional genius, man on the highest level of the higher emotional stage, or the stage of culture. The saint has attained the emotional ideal of a loving relationship to all living things. However, it remains to realize the mental ideal - knowledge of reality and the purpose of action - before the self is finished with the human kingdom. (K 1.34.17)

When the self can maintain itself in the highest emotional consciousness (48:2), the individual is what Christian mysticism calls a saint. K 7.17.12


Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von (1775-1854) Founder of the philosophy of identity which holds that subject and object coincide in the Absolute, a state to be realized in intellectual intuition. Deeply involved in romanticism, Schelling's philosophy of nature culminates in a transcendental idealism where nature and spirit are linked in a series of developments by unfolding powers or potencies, together forming one great organism in which nature is dynamic visible spirit and spirit invisible nature. Freedom and necessity are different refractions of the same reality. Supplementing science -- which deals with matter as extinguished spirit and endeavors to rise from nature to intelligence -- philosophy investigates the development of spirit, theoretically practically, and artistically, converts the subjective into the objective, and shows how the world soul or living principle animates the whole. Schelling's monism recognizes nature and spirit as real and ideal poles respectively, the latter being the positive one. It is pantheistic and aesthetic in that it allows the world process to create with free necessity unconsciously at first in the manner of an artist. Art is perfect union of freedom and necessity, beauty reflects the infinite in the finite. History is the progressive revelation of the Absolute. The ultimate thinking of Schelling headed toward mysticism in which man, his personality expanded into the infinite, becomes absorbed into the absolute self, free from necessity, contingency, consciousness, and personality. Sämmtliche Werke, 14 vols. (1856, re-edited 1927). Cf. Kuno Fischer, Schellings Leben, Werke und Lehre; E. Brehier, Schelling, 1912; V. Jankelevitch, L'Odysee de la conscience dans la derniere philosophie de Schelling, 1933. -- K.F.L.

Scholem, fewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism,

Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism,

Sephiroth: A Hebrew term for “the mystical and organically related hierarchy of the ten creative powers emanating from God, constituting, according to the kabalistic system, the foundation of the existence of the world.” (M. Buber: Tales of the Hasidim.) The ten Sephiroth are: 1. The Divine Crown (Kether); 2. The Divine Wisdom (Hokhmah); 3. The Intelligence of God (Binah); 4. The Divine Love or Mercy (Hesed); 5. The Divine Power of judgment and retribution (Gevurah or Din); 6. The Divine Compassion (Rahamin) which mediates between God’s Power of judgment and His Mercy; 7. The Lasting Endurance or Firmness of God (Netsah); 8. God’s Majesty or Splendor (Hod); 9. The Foundation of all active forces in God (Yesod); 10. The Kingdom of God (Malkhuth), which the Zohar usually describes as the mystical archetype of Israel’s community. (The above terms are based on the interpretations given by G. G. Scholem in Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Other authorities occasionally adopt different terminologies. Thus, the fourth of the Sephiroth is frequently called Tiphereth, Beauty.)

Sh'nei Luchot Ha-B'rit ::: Ethical work combining halakha, midrash, and mysticism, by Isaiah ben Abraham he-Levi Horowitz (c. 1565-1630); Central Europe, land of Israel.

spiritual ::: The word “spiritual” has at least four major usages: 1. “Spiritual” refers to the highest levels in any developmental line (e.g., transrational cognition, transpersonal self-identity, etc.). 2. “Spiritual” is a separate developmental line itself (e.g., Fowler’s stages of faith). 3. “Spiritual” refers to a state or peak experience (e.g., nature mysticism). 4. “Spiritual” means a particular attitude or orientation, like openness, wisdom, or compassion, which can be present at virtually any state or stage.

Sri Aurobindo: " . . . Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. The Synthesis of Yoga

Sufism: A classical development of mysticism and a reaction from the legalism and rigidity of orthodox Islam. Being a sect seeking to attain a nearer fellowship with God by scrupulous observation of the religious law, it represents an infiltration into Islam of the Christian-gnostic type of piety with its charismatic and ascetic features. Gained many of its converts from the heterodox Moslems in Persia. -- H.H.

Sufism: A system of Mohammedan mysticism, arising chiefly in Persia. It offers steps toward union with God, as repentance, abstinence, renunciation, poverty, patience, trust. Love is the keynote to the Sufi ethics.

Sufi, Sufi, Sufiism [from Arab suf wool; sufi he who wears woolen garments] A school of thought that emphasizes the superiority of the soul as opposed to the body. A Sufi wears harsh, raw woolen garments constantly irritating his skin to remind him that the body is the part which prevents the soul from attaining higher goals. The first public pronouncement of mysticism in Moslem lands is attributed to Rabi‘a, who lived in the 1st century of the Hejira (622 AD) and expounded the theory of divine love: God is love, and everything on earth must be sacrificed in order eventually to attain union with God. However even before the time of Mohammed there were two principal schools of Arabic thought: the Meshaiuns (the walkers), who later became the metaphysicians after the appearance of the Koran, and the Ishrachiuns (the contemplators) who became affiliated with the Sufis. The Sufis, in fact, put an esoteric interpretation on the Koran, as well as the collected saying of Mohammed, the Sufi movement representing an infiltration into the rigidity of Islamic doctrine of the pre-Islamic mystical or quasi-occult stream of thought, especially from Persia. Blavatsky states that the Sufis acquired their “proficient knowledge in astrology, medicine, and the esoteric doctrine of the ages” from the descendants of the Magi” (IU 2:306).

T’ai chi: In Chinese mysticism, the Great Ultimate.

T’ai ch’u: In Chinese mysticism, the “great beginning,” interpreted as the primal condition when “there was non-being which had neither being nor name” and as the origin of the vital force (ch’i).

Tasawwuf (A) Islamic mysticism, Sufism

Tauler, Johannes: (1300-1361) was an outstanding German mystic and preacher. Born in Strassburg, he entered the Dominican Order and did his philosophical and theological studies at Cologne, where he was probably influenced by Eckhart. He was most interested in the ethical and religious aspects of mysticism, and, like Eckhart, he concentrated on an analytical intuition of his own consciousness in his endeavor to grasp the immanent reality of God. Die Predigten Taulers, ed. F. Vetter, (Berlin, 1910) is the most recent edition of his sermons. -- V.J.B.

tasawwuf ::: Sufism; the Sufi way of life; mysticism.

tasawwuf ::: (تصوف taṣawwuf) mysticism; the Sufi way of life.

the Egyptian Gnostics; Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism.]

Theism: (Gr. theos, god) Is in general that type of religion or religious philosophy (see Religion, Philosophy of) which incorporates a conception of God as a unitary being; thus may be considered equivalent to monotheism. The speculation as to the relation of God to world gave rise to three great forms: God identified with world in pantheism (rare with emphasis on God); God, once having created the world, relatively disinterested in it, in deism (mainly an 18th cent, phenomenon); God working in and through the world, in theism proper. Accordingly, God either coincides with the world, is external to it (deus ex machina), or is immanent. The more personal, human-like God, the more theological the theism, the more appealing to a personal adjustment in prayer, worship, etc., which presuppose either that God, being like man, may be swayed in his decision, has no definite plan, or subsists in the very stuff man is made of (humanistic theism). Immanence of God entails agency in the world, presence, revelation, involvement in the historic process, it has been justified by Hindu and Semitic thinkers, Christian apologetics, ancient and modern metaphysical idealists, and by natural science philosophers. Transcendency of God removes him from human affairs, renders fellowship and communication in Church ways ineffectual, yet preserves God's majesty and absoluteness such as is postulated by philosophies which introduce the concept of God for want of a terser term for the ultimate, principal reality. Like Descartes and Spinoza, they allow the personal in God to fade and approach the age-old Indian pantheism evident in much of Vedic and post-Vedic philosophy in which the personal pronoun may be the only distinguishing mark between metaphysical logic and theology, similarly as in Hegel. The endowment postulated of God lends character to a theistic system of philosophy. Much of Hindu and Greek philosophy stresses the knowledge and ration aspect of the deity, thus producing an epistemological theism; Aristotle, in conceiving him as the prime mover, started a teleological one; mysticism is psychologically oriented in its theism, God being a feeling reality approachable in appropriate emotional states. The theism of religious faith is unquestioning and pragmatic in its attitude toward God; theology has often felt the need of offering proofs for the existence of God (see God) thus tending toward an ontological theism; metaphysics incorporates occasionally the concept of God as a thought necessity, advocating a logical theism. Kant's critique showed the respective fields of pure philosophic enquiry and theistic speculations with their past in historic creeds. Theism is left a possibility in agnosticism (q.v.). -- K.F.L.

them. [Rf. Gaynor, Dictionary of Mysticism.]

theosophy ::: n. --> Any system of philosophy or mysticism which proposes to attain intercourse with God and superior spirits, and consequent superhuman knowledge, by physical processes, as by the theurgic operations of some ancient Platonists, or by the chemical processes of the German fire philosophers; also, a direct, as distinguished from a revealed, knowledge of God, supposed to be attained by extraordinary illumination; especially, a direct insight into the processes of the divine mind, and the interior relations of the divine nature.

There are three synonymous words in modern Persian often interchangeably used — Sufi, Aref, and Darvish — each with its own nuance. Sufi represents the most institutionalized Islamic mysticism, while Aref and Erfan (school of thought-cognition) conveys cognitive aspects of mystic teachings and are more philosophic; Dervish and Darvishi (state of being Dervish) conveys freedom from attachments to worldly possessions. Hafi (the most loved and best known of the mystic poets) often refers to Sufis as those who rigidly adhere more to religious teachings than cognitive aspects of truth. These differences occurred when the mystics, due to religious persecution, had to veil their ancient beliefs with religious teachings. This made their teachings appear ambiguous, as a result of which, some confused esoteric mysticism with esoteric religion.

The sacred Name, the sacred Word, were always esteemed in the Jewish religion. Also in Islam, that great religion whose mysticism the West is only beginning to discover, one finds the doctrine of

The structural mture of this ideal ordering reflects, of course, the Spinozistic view of the real. Ultimate reality, as Causa sui and as substance, is all-inclusive. Causality is immanent causality, and every determinative being lies within the one substantial being. Spinoza's doctiine of attributes, infinite and finite modes, serve to express both the all encompassing and systematic nature of the one ultimate reality and to distinguish and to determine the status of finite beings within this reality. In its immanentism as well as in its rational mysticism, the doctrine of Spinoza is not improperly regarded as a Plotinism re-directed by the influence of Descartes and invigorated by the enterprise of modern science. -- A.G.A.B.

“The term Triyana is also used to denote the three schools of mysticism [in India] — the Mahayana, the Madhyimayana and Hinayana schools; of which the first is the ‘Greater,’ and the second the ‘Middle,’ and the last the ‘Lesser’ Vehicle. All and every system between the Greater and the Lesser Vehicles are considered ‘useless.’ Therefore the Pratyeka Buddha is made to correspond with the Madhyimayana. For, as explained, ‘this (the Pratyeka Buddha state) refers to him who lives all for himself and very little for others, occupying the middle of the vehicle, filling it all and leaving no room for others.’ Such is the selfish candidate for Nirvana” (TG 344-5).

the wheels.” [See Abelson, fewish Mysticism.]

The word, furthermore, has been loosely used for esoteric, gnostic, theosophical types of "knowledge", not capable of verification. It has been used, too, for the whole area of psychic phenomena and occult happenings, borderland phenomena. The result of this confusion has been that in scientific laboratories the word mysticism often connotes spurious knowledge, occult lore or abnormal phenomena. The Germans use the word Mysticismus for this dubious type of knowledge and Mystik for the loftier types of experience.

Three senses of "Ockhamism" may be distinguished: Logical, indicating usage of the terminology and technique of logical analysis developed by Ockham in his Summa totius logicae; in particular, use of the concept of supposition (suppositio) in the significative analysis of terms. Epistemological, indicating the thesis that universality is attributable only to terms and propositions, and not to things as existing apart from discourse. Theological, indicating the thesis that no tneological doctrines, such as those of God's existence or of the immortality of the soul, are evident or demonstrable philosophically, so that religious doctrine rests solely on faith, without metaphysical or scientific support. It is in this sense that Luther is often called an Ockhamist.   Bibliography:   B. Geyer,   Ueberwegs Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Phil., Bd. II (11th ed., Berlin 1928), pp. 571-612 and 781-786; N. Abbagnano,   Guglielmo di Ockham (Lanciano, Italy, 1931); E. A. Moody,   The Logic of William of Ockham (N. Y. & London, 1935); F. Ehrle,   Peter von Candia (Muenster, 1925); G. Ritter,   Studien zur Spaetscholastik, I-II (Heidelberg, 1921-1922).     --E.A.M. Om, aum: (Skr.) Mystic, holy syllable as a symbol for the indefinable Absolute. See Aksara, Vac, Sabda. --K.F.L. Omniscience: In philosophy and theology it means the complete and perfect knowledge of God, of Himself and of all other beings, past, present, and future, or merely possible, as well as all their activities, real or possible, including the future free actions of human beings. --J.J.R. One: Philosophically, not a number but equivalent to unit, unity, individuality, in contradistinction from multiplicity and the mani-foldness of sensory experience. In metaphysics, the Supreme Idea (Plato), the absolute first principle (Neo-platonism), the universe (Parmenides), Being as such and divine in nature (Plotinus), God (Nicolaus Cusanus), the soul (Lotze). Religious philosophy and mysticism, beginning with Indian philosophy (s.v.), has favored the designation of the One for the metaphysical world-ground, the ultimate icility, the world-soul, the principle of the world conceived as reason, nous, or more personally. The One may be conceived as an independent whole or as a sum, as analytic or synthetic, as principle or ontologically. Except by mysticism, it is rarely declared a fact of sensory experience, while its transcendent or transcendental, abstract nature is stressed, e.g., in epistemology where the "I" or self is considered the unitary background of personal experience, the identity of self-consciousness, or the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifoldness of ideas (Kant). --K.F.L. One-one: A relation R is one-many if for every y in the converse domain there is a unique x such that xRy. A relation R is many-one if for every x in the domain there is a unique y such that xRy. (See the article relation.) A relation is one-one, or one-to-one, if it is at the same time one-many and many-one. A one-one relation is said to be, or to determine, a one-to-one correspondence between its domain and its converse domain. --A.C. On-handedness: (Ger. Vorhandenheit) Things exist in the mode of thereness, lying- passively in a neutral space. A "deficient" form of a more basic relationship, termed at-handedness (Zuhandenheit). (Heidegger.) --H.H. Ontological argument: Name by which later authors, especially Kant, designate the alleged proof for God's existence devised by Anselm of Canterbury. Under the name of God, so the argument runs, everyone understands that greater than which nothing can be thought. Since anything being the greatest and lacking existence is less then the greatest having also existence, the former is not really the greater. The greatest, therefore, has to exist. Anselm has been reproached, already by his contemporary Gaunilo, for unduly passing from the field of logical to the field of ontological or existential reasoning. This criticism has been repeated by many authors, among them Aquinas. The argument has, however, been used, if in a somewhat modified form, by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz. --R.A. Ontological Object: (Gr. onta, existing things + logos, science) The real or existing object of an act of knowledge as distinguished from the epistemological object. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ontologism: (Gr. on, being) In contrast to psychologism, is called any speculative system which starts philosophizing by positing absolute being, or deriving the existence of entities independently of experience merely on the basis of their being thought, or assuming that we have immediate and certain knowledge of the ground of being or God. Generally speaking any rationalistic, a priori metaphysical doctrine, specifically the philosophies of Rosmini-Serbati and Vincenzo Gioberti. As a philosophic method censored by skeptics and criticists alike, as a scholastic doctrine formerly strongly supported, revived in Italy and Belgium in the 19th century, but no longer countenanced. --K.F.L. Ontology: (Gr. on, being + logos, logic) The theory of being qua being. For Aristotle, the First Philosophy, the science of the essence of things. Introduced as a term into philosophy by Wolff. The science of fundamental principles, the doctrine of the categories. Ultimate philosophy; rational cosmology. Syn. with metaphysics. See Cosmology, First Principles, Metaphysics, Theology. --J.K.F. Operation: "(Lit. operari, to work) Any act, mental or physical, constituting a phase of the reflective process, and performed with a view to acquiring1 knowledge or information about a certain subject-nntter. --A.C.B.   In logic, see Operationism.   In philosophy of science, see Pragmatism, Scientific Empiricism. Operationism: The doctrine that the meaning of a concept is given by a set of operations.   1. The operational meaning of a term (word or symbol) is given by a semantical rule relating the term to some concrete process, object or event, or to a class of such processes, objectj or events.   2. Sentences formed by combining operationally defined terms into propositions are operationally meaningful when the assertions are testable by means of performable operations. Thus, under operational rules, terms have semantical significance, propositions have empirical significance.   Operationism makes explicit the distinction between formal (q.v.) and empirical sentences. Formal propositions are signs arranged according to syntactical rules but lacking operational reference. Such propositions, common in mathematics, logic and syntax, derive their sanction from convention, whereas an empirical proposition is acceptable (1) when its structure obeys syntactical rules and (2) when there exists a concrete procedure (a set of operations) for determining its truth or falsity (cf. Verification). Propositions purporting to be empirical are sometimes amenable to no operational test because they contain terms obeying no definite semantical rules. These sentences are sometimes called pseudo-propositions and are said to be operationally meaningless. They may, however, be 'meaningful" in other ways, e.g. emotionally or aesthetically (cf. Meaning).   Unlike a formal statement, the "truth" of an empirical sentence is never absolute and its operational confirmation serves only to increase the degree of its validity. Similarly, the semantical rule comprising the operational definition of a term has never absolute precision. Ordinarily a term denotes a class of operations and the precision of its definition depends upon how definite are the rules governing inclusion in the class.   The difference between Operationism and Logical Positivism (q.v.) is one of emphasis. Operationism's stress of empirical matters derives from the fact that it was first employed to purge physics of such concepts as absolute space and absolute time, when the theory of relativity had forced upon physicists the view that space and time are most profitably defined in terms of the operations by which they are measured. Although different methods of measuring length at first give rise to different concepts of length, wherever the equivalence of certain of these measures can be established by other operations, the concepts may legitimately be combined.   In psychology the operational criterion of meaningfulness is commonly associated with a behavioristic point of view. See Behaviorism. Since only those propositions which are testable by public and repeatable operations are admissible in science, the definition of such concepti as mind and sensation must rest upon observable aspects of the organism or its behavior. Operational psychology deals with experience only as it is indicated by the operation of differential behavior, including verbal report. Discriminations, or the concrete differential reactions of organisms to internal or external environmental states, are by some authors regarded as the most basic of all operations.   For a discussion of the role of operational definition in phvsics. see P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics, (New York, 1928) and The Nature of Physical Theory (Princeton, 1936). "The extension of operationism to psychology is discussed by C. C. Pratt in The Logic of Modem Psychology (New York. 1939.)   For a discussion and annotated bibliography relating to Operationism and Logical Positivism, see S. S. Stevens, Psychology and the Science of Science, Psychol. Bull., 36, 1939, 221-263. --S.S.S. Ophelimity: Noun derived from the Greek, ophelimos useful, employed by Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) in economics as the equivalent of utility, or the capacity to provide satisfaction. --J.J.R. Opinion: (Lat. opinio, from opinor, to think) An hypothesis or proposition entertained on rational grounds but concerning which doubt can reasonably exist. A belief. See Hypothesis, Certainty, Knowledge. --J.K.F- Opposition: (Lat. oppositus, pp. of oppono, to oppose) Positive actual contradiction. One of Aristotle's Post-predicaments. In logic any contrariety or contradiction, illustrated by the "Square of Opposition". Syn. with: conflict. See Logic, formal, § 4. --J.K.F. Optimism: (Lat. optimus, the best) The view inspired by wishful thinking, success, faith, or philosophic reflection, that the world as it exists is not so bad or even the best possible, life is good, and man's destiny is bright. Philosophically most persuasively propounded by Leibniz in his Theodicee, according to which God in his wisdom would have created a better world had he known or willed such a one to exist. Not even he could remove moral wrong and evil unless he destroyed the power of self-determination and hence the basis of morality. All systems of ethics that recognize a supreme good (Plato and many idealists), subscribe to the doctrines of progressivism (Turgot, Herder, Comte, and others), regard evil as a fragmentary view (Josiah Royce et al.) or illusory, or believe in indemnification (Henry David Thoreau) or melioration (Emerson), are inclined optimistically. Practically all theologies advocating a plan of creation and salvation, are optimistic though they make the good or the better dependent on moral effort, right thinking, or belief, promising it in a future existence. Metaphysical speculation is optimistic if it provides for perfection, evolution to something higher, more valuable, or makes room for harmonies or a teleology. See Pessimism. --K.F.L. Order: A class is said to be partially ordered by a dyadic relation R if it coincides with the field of R, and R is transitive and reflexive, and xRy and yRx never both hold when x and y are different. If in addition R is connected, the class is said to be ordered (or simply ordered) by R, and R is called an ordering relation.   Whitehcid and Russell apply the term serial relation to relations which are transitive, irreflexive, and connected (and, in consequence, also asymmetric). However, the use of serial relations in this sense, instead ordering relations as just defined, is awkward in connection with the notion of order for unit classes.   Examples: The relation not greater than among leal numbers is an ordering relation. The relation less than among real numbers is a serial relation. The real numbers are simply ordered by the former relation. In the algebra of classes (logic formal, § 7), the classes are partially ordered by the relation of class inclusion.   For explanation of the terminology used in making the above definitions, see the articles connexity, reflexivity, relation, symmetry, transitivity. --A.C. Order type: See relation-number. Ordinal number: A class b is well-ordered by a dyadic relation R if it is ordered by R (see order) and, for every class a such that a ⊂ b, there is a member x of a, such that xRy holds for every member y of a; and R is then called a well-ordering relation. The ordinal number of a class b well-ordered by a relation R, or of a well-ordering relation R, is defined to be the relation-number (q. v.) of R.   The ordinal numbers of finite classes (well-ordered by appropriate relations) are called finite ordinal numbers. These are 0, 1, 2, ... (to be distinguished, of course, from the finite cardinal numbers 0, 1, 2, . . .).   The first non-finite (transfinite or infinite) ordinal number is the ordinal number of the class of finite ordinal numbers, well-ordered in their natural order, 0, 1, 2, . . .; it is usually denoted by the small Greek letter omega. --A.C.   G. Cantor, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, translated and with an introduction by P. E. B. Jourdain, Chicago and London, 1915. (new ed. 1941); Whitehead and Russell, Princtpia Mathematica. vol. 3. Orexis: (Gr. orexis) Striving; desire; the conative aspect of mind, as distinguished from the cognitive and emotional (Aristotle). --G.R.M.. Organicism: A theory of biology that life consists in the organization or dynamic system of the organism. Opposed to mechanism and vitalism. --J.K.F. Organism: An individual animal or plant, biologically interpreted. A. N. Whitehead uses the term to include also physical bodies and to signify anything material spreading through space and enduring in time. --R.B.W. Organismic Psychology: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, an instrument) A system of theoretical psychology which construes the structure of the mind in organic rather than atomistic terms. See Gestalt Psychology; Psychological Atomism. --L.W. Organization: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, work) A structured whole. The systematic unity of parts in a purposive whole. A dynamic system. Order in something actual. --J.K.F. Organon: (Gr. organon) The title traditionally given to the body of Aristotle's logical treatises. The designation appears to have originated among the Peripatetics after Aristotle's time, and expresses their view that logic is not a part of philosophy (as the Stoics maintained) but rather the instrument (organon) of philosophical inquiry. See Aristotelianism. --G.R.M.   In Kant. A system of principles by which pure knowledge may be acquired and established.   Cf. Fr. Bacon's Novum Organum. --O.F.K. Oriental Philosophy: A general designation used loosely to cover philosophic tradition exclusive of that grown on Greek soil and including the beginnings of philosophical speculation in Egypt, Arabia, Iran, India, and China, the elaborate systems of India, Greater India, China, and Japan, and sometimes also the religion-bound thought of all these countries with that of the complex cultures of Asia Minor, extending far into antiquity. Oriental philosophy, though by no means presenting a homogeneous picture, nevertheless shares one characteristic, i.e., the practical outlook on life (ethics linked with metaphysics) and the absence of clear-cut distinctions between pure speculation and religious motivation, and on lower levels between folklore, folk-etymology, practical wisdom, pre-scientiiic speculation, even magic, and flashes of philosophic insight. Bonds with Western, particularly Greek philosophy have no doubt existed even in ancient times. Mutual influences have often been conjectured on the basis of striking similarities, but their scientific establishment is often difficult or even impossible. Comparative philosophy (see especially the work of Masson-Oursel) provides a useful method. Yet a thorough treatment of Oriental Philosophy is possible only when the many languages in which it is deposited have been more thoroughly studied, the psychological and historical elements involved in the various cultures better investigated, and translations of the relevant documents prepared not merely from a philological point of view or out of missionary zeal, but by competent philosophers who also have some linguistic training. Much has been accomplished in this direction in Indian and Chinese Philosophy (q.v.). A great deal remains to be done however before a definitive history of Oriental Philosophy may be written. See also Arabian, and Persian Philosophy. --K.F.L. Origen: (185-254) The principal founder of Christian theology who tried to enrich the ecclesiastic thought of his day by reconciling it with the treasures of Greek philosophy. Cf. Migne PL. --R.B.W. Ormazd: (New Persian) Same as Ahura Mazdah (q.v.), the good principle in Zoroastrianism, and opposed to Ahriman (q.v.). --K.F.L. Orphic Literature: The mystic writings, extant only in fragments, of a Greek religious-philosophical movement of the 6th century B.C., allegedly started by the mythical Orpheus. In their mysteries, in which mythology and rational thinking mingled, the Orphics concerned themselves with cosmogony, theogony, man's original creation and his destiny after death which they sought to influence to the better by pure living and austerity. They taught a symbolism in which, e.g., the relationship of the One to the many was clearly enunciated, and believed in the soul as involved in reincarnation. Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Plato were influenced by them. --K.F.L. Ortega y Gasset, Jose: Born in Madrid, May 9, 1883. At present in Buenos Aires, Argentine. Son of Ortega y Munillo, the famous Spanish journalist. Studied at the College of Jesuits in Miraflores and at the Central University of Madrid. In the latter he presented his Doctor's dissertation, El Milenario, in 1904, thereby obtaining his Ph.D. degree. After studies in Leipzig, Berlin, Marburg, under the special influence of Hermann Cohen, the great exponent of Kant, who taught him the love for the scientific method and awoke in him the interest in educational philosophy, Ortega came to Spain where, after the death of Nicolas Salmeron, he occupied the professorship of metaphysics at the Central University of Madrid. The following may be considered the most important works of Ortega y Gasset:     Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914;   El Espectador, I-VIII, 1916-1935;   El Tema de Nuestro Tiempo, 1921;   España Invertebrada, 1922;   Kant, 1924;   La Deshumanizacion del Arte, 1925;   Espiritu de la Letra, 1927;   La Rebelion de las Masas, 1929;   Goethe desde Adentio, 1934;   Estudios sobre el Amor, 1939;   Ensimismamiento y Alteracion, 1939;   El Libro de las Misiones, 1940;   Ideas y Creencias, 1940;     and others.   Although brought up in the Marburg school of thought, Ortega is not exactly a neo-Kantian. At the basis of his Weltanschauung one finds a denial of the fundamental presuppositions which characterized European Rationalism. It is life and not thought which is primary. Things have a sense and a value which must be affirmed independently. Things, however, are to be conceived as the totality of situations which constitute the circumstances of a man's life. Hence, Ortega's first philosophical principle: "I am myself plus my circumstances". Life as a problem, however, is but one of the poles of his formula. Reason is the other. The two together function, not by dialectical opposition, but by necessary coexistence. Life, according to Ortega, does not consist in being, but rather, in coming to be, and as such it is of the nature of direction, program building, purpose to be achieved, value to be realized. In this sense the future as a time dimension acquires new dignity, and even the present and the past become articulate and meaning-full only in relation to the future. Even History demands a new point of departure and becomes militant with new visions. --J.A.F. Orthodoxy: Beliefs which are declared by a group to be true and normative. Heresy is a departure from and relative to a given orthodoxy. --V.S. Orthos Logos: See Right Reason. Ostensible Object: (Lat. ostendere, to show) The object envisaged by cognitive act irrespective of its actual existence. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ostensive: (Lat. ostendere, to show) Property of a concept or predicate by virtue of which it refers to and is clarified by reference to its instances. --A.C.B. Ostwald, Wilhelm: (1853-1932) German chemist. Winner of the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1909. In Die Uberwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialistmus and in Naturphilosophie, his two best known works in the field of philosophy, he advocates a dynamic theory in opposition to materialism and mechanism. All properties of matter, and the psychic as well, are special forms of energy. --L.E.D. Oupnekhat: Anquetil Duperron's Latin translation of the Persian translation of 50 Upanishads (q.v.), a work praised by Schopenhauer as giving him complete consolation. --K.F.L. Outness: A term employed by Berkeley to express the experience of externality, that is the ideas of space and things placed at a distance. Hume used it in the sense of distance Hamilton understood it as the state of being outside of consciousness in a really existing world of material things. --J.J.R. Overindividual: Term used by H. Münsterberg to translate the German überindividuell. The term is applied to any cognitive or value object which transcends the individual subject. --L.W. P

Transcendentalism: Any doctrine giving emphasis to the transcendent or transcendental (q.v.). Originally, a convenient synonym for the "transcendental philosophy" (q.v.) of Kant and Schelling. By extension, post-Kantian idealism. Any idealistic philosophy positing the immanence of the ideal or spiritual in sensuous experience. The philosophy of the Absolute (q.v.), the doctrine of: a) the immanence of the Absolute in the finite; b) the transcendence of the Absolute above the finite conceived as illusion or "unreality". A name, onginally pejorative, given to and later adopted by an idealistic movement in New England centering around the informal and so-called "Transcendental Club," organized at Boston in 1836. An outgrowth of the romantic movement, its chief influences were Coleridge, Schelling and Orientalism. While it embodied a general attitude rather than a systematically worked out philosophy, in general it opposed Lockean empiricism, materialism, rationalism, Calvinism, Deism, Trinitarianism, and middle-class commercialism. Its metaphysics followed that of Kant and post-Kantian idealism posited the immanancc of the divine in finite existence, and tended towards pantheism (Emerson's "Nature", "Oversoul", "The Transcendentalist"). Its doctrine of knowledge was idealistic and intuitive. Its ethics embraced idealism, individualism, mysticism, reformism and optimism regarding human nature. Theologically it was autosoteric, unitarian, and broadly mystical (Theo. Parker's "The Transient and Permanent in Christianity"). Popularly, a pejorative term for any view that is "enthusiastic", "mystical", extravagant, impractical, ethereal, supernatural, vague, abstruse, lacking in common sense. --W.L. Transcendentals (Scholastic): The transcendentalia are notions which apply to any being whatsoever. They are Being, Thing, Something, One, True, Good. While thing (res) and being (ens) are synonymous, the other four name properties of being which, however, are only virtually distinct from the concept to which they apply. -- R.A.

Transcendent: (L. transcendere to climb over, surpass, go beyond) That which is beyond, in any of several senses. The opposite of the immanent (q.v.). In Scholasticism notions are transcendent which cannot be subsumed under the Aristotelian categories. The definitive list of transcendentia comprises ens, unum, bonum, verum, res, and aliquid. For Kant whatever is beyond possible experience is transcendent, and hence unknowable. Metaphysics and Theology: God (or the Absolute) is said to be transcendent in the following senses:   perfect, i e., beyond limitation or imperfection (Scholasticism);   incomprehensible (negative theology, mysticism);   remote from Nature (Deism);   alienated from natural man (Barthianism). Pluralism posits the essential mutual transcendence of substances or reals. Epistemology: Epistemological dualism (q.v.) holds that the real transcends apprehending consciousness, i.e., is directly inaccessible to it. Thought is said to be "self-transcendent" when held to involve essentially reference beyond itself (s. intentionahty). Ethics. Moral idealism posits the transcendence of the will over Nature (see Freedom). --W.L. Transcendent Reference: The reference of a mental state to something beyond itself. See Reference. -- L.W.

Trends in fewish Mysticism ; Schwab, Vocabulaire de

Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ginzberg, The Legends

Trends in Jewish Mysticism.]

Trikaya: Sanskrit for triple body. That school in Buddhist mysticism which conceives of the Buddha as having three bodies, viz.: The Law-Body (Dharma-kaya) which is the soul of Buddha, the Enjoyment-Body (Sambhogakaya) which is the embodiment of Wisdom, and the Transformation-Body (Nirmana-kaya) which is the embodiment of compassion.

Trividya (Sanskrit) Trividyā [from tri three + vidyā knowledge, science] The three knowledges or sciences; the three fundamental axioms in mysticism: “(a) the impermanency of all existence, or Anityata; (b) suffering and misery of all that lives and is, or Dukha [duhkhata]; and (c) all physical, objective existence as evanescent and unreal as a water-bubble in a dream, or Anatmata” (TG 344).

Trsiel —in Merkabah mysticism, an angel who

Ts’ai: Chinese for power. In Chinese mysticism, Heaven, Earth and Man are referred to as the three powers or forces of Nature.

Tzadkiel: In Jewish mysticism, the angel of benevolence, grace, piety and justice.

Umikol —in Jewish mysticism, one of the

Underhill, Evelyn. Mysticism. New York: Dutton, 1912.

Unio mystica: (Lat.) Mystical union; the merging of the individual consciousness, cognitively or affectively, with a superior, or supreme consciousness. See Mysticism. -- V.J.B.

Vach(Sanskrit) ::: A term which means "speech" or "word"; and by the same procedure of mystical thoughtwhich is seen in ancient Greek mysticism, wherein the Logos is not merely the speech or word of theDivinity, but also the divine reason, so Vach has come to mean really more than merely word or speech.The esoteric Vach is the subjective creative intelligent force which, emanating from the subjectiveuniverse, becomes the manifested or concrete expression of ideation, hence Word or Logos. Mystically,therefore, Vach may be said to be the feminine or vehicular aspect of the Logos, or the power of theLogos when enshrined within its vehicle or sheath of action. Vach in India is often called Sata-rupa, "thehundred-formed." Cosmologically in one sense daiviprakriti may be said to be a manifestation or form ofVach.

Vaij —in Jewish mysticism, one of the angels of

Vitalis Vitalia (Latin) Life of life; Gerald Massey gives it as a translation of the Greek inscription zotiko zotike (“the (feminine) living being in the (masculine) living being”) — the feminine or passive aspect of life inherent in the masculine, active, or manifested form of life (SD 2:586). The correct Latin translation is vitali vitalis (the alive within the living). This highly mystical and profound phrase has both a cosmic and human significance: thus we have mahabuddhi in the universal and buddhi in the human constitution, as being the feminine aspect of the precedaneous atman, and likewise as containing the inherent life of the offspring of such feminine aspect which is the cosmic mahat or the human manas. In iconographical mysticism this can be represented by the cross, whether in the ordinary Latin form, or the more mystical svastika. Here also is an indication of the mystical significance of a Christos crucified.

Voices, The —is gnostic mysticism, the voices

With reference to the approach to the central reality of religion, God, and man's relation to it, types of the Philosophy of Religion may be distinguished, leaving out of account negative (atheism), skeptical and cynical (Xenophanes, Socrates, Voltaire), and agnostic views, although insertions by them are not to be separated from the history of religious consciousness. Fundamentalism, mainly a theological and often a Church phenomenon of a revivalist nature, philosophizes on the basis of unquestioning faith, seeking to buttress it by logical argument, usually taking the form of proofs of the existence of God (see God). Here belong all historic religions, Christianity in its two principal forms, Catholicism with its Scholastic philosophy and Protestantism with its greatly diversified philosophies, the numerous religions of Hinduism, such as Brahmanism, Shivaism and Vishnuism, the religion of Judaism, and Mohammedanism. Mysticism, tolerated by Church and philosophy, is less concerned with proof than with description and personal experience, revealing much of the psychological factors involved in belief and speculation. Indian philosophy is saturated with mysticism since its inception, Sufism is the outstanding form of Arab mysticism, while the greatest mystics in the West are Plotinus, Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Ruysbroek, Thomas a Kempis, and Jacob Bohme. Metaphysics incorporates religious concepts as thought necessities. Few philosophers have been able to avoid the concept of God in their ontology, or any reference to the relation of God to man in their ethics. So, e.g., Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schelling, and especially Hegel who made the investigation of the process of the Absolute the essence of the Philosophy of Religion.

works: Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism and

World Soul: In mysticism and occultism, an intelligent, animating, indwelling principle of the cosmos, its organizing and integrating cause, which permeates and animates everything in nature. According to occult teachings, all sentient life is fused, blended and unified by the World Soul, so that in reality there is no such thing as separateness. Oriental occultists call it alaya; the medieval mystic philosophers referred to it as anima mundi. (See also akasha.)

Y-Kim: A Chinese book on mysticism, believed to originate from the 35th century B.C.

Yuan: Chinese for beginning. In mysticism and occult philosophy, this term has several meanings: (a) the beginning of the material principle or the vital force (ch’i); (b) the originating power of the Heavenly Element (chien) in the system of the Eight Elements (pa kua); (c) One, the beginning of number; (d) the great virtue of Heaven and Earth which expresses itself in production and reproduction. (See also: i yuan.)

Zohar: A Jewish mystical work, the oldest known treatise on Hebrew esoteric teachings, which became the classic text of the Kabalah and the Bible of medieval mysticism and occultism. It is a compendium of Jewish esoteric thought on the nature and attributes of God, the mysteries of the Tetragrammaton (q.v.), the evolution of the cosmos, the nature of man’s soul, magic, astrology, etc.



QUOTES [20 / 20 - 439 / 439]


KEYS (10k)

   3 Sri Aurobindo
   3 Aleister Crowley
   2 Evelyn Underhill
   2 The Mother
   1 "The Cloud of Unknowing
   1 Olivier Clément
   1 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   1 M Alan Kazlev
   1 Israel Regardie
   1 Henri Bergson
   1 G K Chesterton
   1 Bernhard Guenther
   1 Arthur Koestler
   1 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   22 Frederick Lenz
   18 G K Chesterton
   9 Wilhelm Reich
   9 Evelyn Underhill
   7 Elie Wiesel
   6 Gilbert K Chesterton
   5 Ayn Rand
   4 Ursula K Le Guin
   4 Tom Robbins
   4 Timothy J Keller
   4 Thomas Merton
   4 Hazrat Inayat Khan
   4 Fritjof Capra
   4 Eric Maisel
   4 Carl Sagan
   4 Bertrand Russell
   4 Aleister Crowley
   4 Albert Einstein
   3 William Butler Yeats
   3 Vernon Howard

1:Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science ~ Henri Bergson,
2:Science will, in all probability,
be increasingly impregnated
by mysticism. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, My Universe (1924),
3:A revolutionary mysticism which seems to be the present drive of the Time Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Curve of the Rational Age,
4:Mysticism is the art of union with Reality." ~ Evelyn Underhill, (1875 -1941) English Anglo-Catholic author of numerous works on religion and spiritual practice, in particular Christian mysticism, Wikipedia.,
5:Beware that thou conceive not bodily that which is meant ghostly, although it be spoken in bodily words." ~ "The Cloud of Unknowing," anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in Middle English in the latter half of the 14th century, Wikipedia.,
6:The world, for a Christian, is a Trinitarian text, or better it is a woven cloth: the fixed threads of the warp symbolize the Logos, the moving threads of the woof the dynamism of the Pneuma. ~ Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism (214),
7:If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped." ~ Evelyn Underhill, (1875 -1941) English Anglo-Catholic author of numerous works on religion and spiritual practice, in particular Christian mysticism, Wikipedia.,
8:Mysticism-Magic and Yoga-is the means, therefore, to a new universal life, richer, greater and more full of resource than ever before, as free as sunlight, as gracious as the unfolding of a rose. It is for man to take.
   ~ Israel Regardie, The Tree Of Life,
9:There is a single main definition of the object of all magical Ritual. It is the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God. ~ Aleister Crowley,
10:The truth is that Tolstoy, with his immense genius, with his colossal faith, with his vast fearlessness and vast knowledge of life, is deficient in one faculty and one faculty alone. He is not a mystic; and therefore he has a tendency to go mad. Men talk of the extravagances and frenzies that have been produced by mysticism; they are a mere drop in the bucket. In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic. ...The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism - the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem. ~ G K Chesterton, Tolstoy,
11:The Fire is to be quieted and silenced says the Upanishad. Then we come nearer, to the immediate vicinity of the Truth; an inner hearing opens, the direct voice of Truth - the Word - reaches us to lead and guide. Even so, however, we have not come to the end of our journey; the Word of revelation is not the ultimate Light. The Word too is a clothing, though a luminous clothing - hiranmayam pair am. When this last veil dissolves and disappears, when utter silence, absolute calm and quietude reign in the entire consciousness, when no other lights trouble or distract our attention, there appears the Atman in its own body ; we stand face to face with the source of all lights, the self of the Light, the light of the Self. We are that Light and we become that Light.
   ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, The Approach To Mysticism,
12:This last figure, the White Magician, symbolizes the self-transcending element in the scientist's motivational drive and emotional make-up; his humble immersion into the mysteries of nature, his quest for the harmony of the spheres, the origin of life, the equations of a unified field theory. The conquistadorial urge is derived from a sense of power, the participatory urge from a sense of oceanic wonder. 'Men were first led to the study of natural philosophy', wrote Aristotle, 'as indeed they are today, by wonder.' Maxwell's earliest memory was 'lying on the grass, looking at the sun, and wondering'. Einstein struck the same chord when he wrote that whoever is devoid of the capacity to wonder, 'whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes upon life'.

This oceanic feeling of wonder is the common source of religious mysticism, of pure science and art for art's sake; it is their common denominator and emotional bond. ~ Arthur Koestler,
13:The path of seeking truth within and without is not an easy one. It goes literally against everything we've been told and taught by society and governments. The indoctrination of lies, the conditioning and programming is deep and far reaching. It has been going on for millennia. It takes tremendous effort to wake up from the hypnotic slumber, where most people dream to be awake. At this time of transition, as more and more knowledge is coming to the surface, there is the potential to create a new earth. However, this is also the age of deception for there are forces at work that do not want this to happen. They do their best to vector us away from truth and the most effective way to swallow a lie is to sandwich it between some truth with some emotional hooks. As mentioned many times before, lies are mixed with truth, hence discernment is essential. We need to engage our higher emotional center connecting us to divine intuition and also activate our higher intellect, engaging in sincere, open minded critical thinking, fusing the heart and the mind, mysticism and science. ~ Bernhard Guenther,
14:But before entering into the details of I. A. O. as a magical formula it should be remarked that it is essentially the formula of Yoga or meditation; in fact, of elementary mysticism in all its branches. In beginning a meditation practice, there is always a quiet pleasure, a gentle natural growth; one takes a lively interest in the work; it seems easy; one is quite pleased to have started. This stage represents Isis. Sooner or later it is succeeded by depression-the Dark Night of the Soul, an infinite weariness and detestation of the work. The simplest and easiest acts become almost impossible to perform. Such impotence fills the mind with apprehension and despair. The intensity of this loathing can hardly be understood by any person who has not experienced it. This is the period of Apophis.
   It is followed by the arising not of Isis, but of Osiris. The ancient condition is not restored, but a new and superior condition is created, a condition only rendered possible by the process of death. The Alchemists themselves taught this same truth. The first matter of the work was base and primitive, though 'natural.' After passing through various stages the 'black dragon' appeared; but from this arose the pure and perfect gold
   ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, Magick, Part 3, The Formula of I. A. O. [158-159],
15:subtle ::: In Vedanta (Mandukya Upanishad and later teachings - e.g. Advaita - based on it) "subtle" is used to designate the "dream state" of consciousness, and in Advaita this also includes the Prana, Manas, and Vijnana koshas (= the vehicles of vital force, mind, and higher consciousness) re-interpreted from of the Taittiriya Upanishad.

In Tibetan and Tantric Buddhism it refers to an intermediate grade between the "gross" and "very subtle" "minds" and "winds" (vayu = prana).

The Sukshma Sthula or Subtle Body is one of the seven principles of man in Blavatskian Theosophy; it is also called the "astral body" (this has little similarity with the astral body of Out of Body experience, because it cannot move far from the gross physical vehicle, it seems to correspond to what Robert Monroe calls the "second body", and identified with the Double or Ka

In Sant Mat / Radhasoami cosmology - the Anda (Cosmic Egg) / Sahans-dal Kanwal (Crown Chakra) is sometimes called the Subtle; hence Subtle = Astral

The term Subtle Physical is used somewhat generically by Sri Aurobindo (in Letters on Yoga) to refer to a wider reality behind the external physical.

Ken Wilber uses the term Subtle to indicate the yogic and mystic holonic-evolutionary level intermediate between "Psychic" (in his series = Nature Mysticism) and "Causal" (=Realisation"); it includes many psychic and occult experiences and can be considered as pertaining to the Subtle as defined here (although it also includes other realities and experiences that might also be interpreted as "Inner Gross" - e.g. Kundalini as a classic example). ~ M Alan Kazlev, Kheper, planes/subtle,
16:Sweet Mother, Sri Aurobindo is speaking about occult endeavour here and says that those who don't have the capacity must wait till it is given to them. Can't they get it through practice?
   No. That is, if it is latent in someone, it can be developed by practice. But if one doesn't have occult power, he may try for fifty years, he won't get anywhere. Everybody cannot have occult power. It is as though you were asking whether everybody could be a musician, everybody could be a painter, everybody could... Some can, some can't. It is a question of temperament.
   What is the difference between occultism and mysticism?
   They are not at all the same thing.
   Mysticism is a more or less emotive relation with what one senses to be a divine power - that kind of highly emotional, affective, very intense relation with something invisible which is or is taken for the Divine. That is mysticism.
   Occultism is exactly what he has said: it is the knowledge of invisible forces and the power to handle them. It is a science. It is altogether a science. I always compare occultism with chemistry, for it is the same kind of knowledge as the knowledge of chemistry for material things. It is a knowledge of invisible forces, their different vibrations, their interrelations, the combinations which can be made by bringing them together and the power one can exercise over them. It is absolutely scientific; and it ought to be learnt like a science; that is, one cannot practise occultism as something emotional or something vague and imprecise. You must work at it as you would do at chemistry, and learn all the rules or find them if there is nobody to teach you. But it is at some risk to yourself that you can find them. There are combinations here as explosive as certain chemical combinations. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,
17:Thus the eternal paradox and eternal truth of a divine life in an animal body, an immortal aspiration or reality inhabiting a mortal tenement, a single and universal consciousness representing itself in limited minds and divided egos, a transcendent, indefinable, timeless and spaceless Being who alone renders time and space and cosmos possible, and in all these the higher truth realisable by the lower term, justify themselves to the deliberate reason as well as to the persistent instinct or intuition of mankind. Attempts are sometimes made to have done finally with questionings which have so often been declared insoluble by logical thought and to persuade men to limit their mental activities to the practical and immediate problems of their material existence in the universe; but such evasions are never permanent in their effect. Mankind returns from them with a more vehement impulse of inquiry or a more violent hunger for an immediate solution. By that hunger mysticism profits and new religions arise to replace the old that have been destroyed or stripped of significance by a scepticism which itself could not satisfy because, although its business was inquiry, it was unwilling sufficiently to inquire. The attempt to deny or stifle a truth because it is yet obscure in its outward workings and too often represented by obscurantist superstition or a crude faith, is itself a kind of obscurantism. The will to escape from a cosmic necessity because it is arduous, difficult to justify by immediate tangible results, slow in regulating its operations, must turn out eventually to have been no acceptance of the truth of Nature but a revolt against the secret, mightier will of the great Mother. It is better and more rational to accept what she will not allow us as a race to reject and lift it from the sphere of blind instinct, obscure intuition and random aspiration into the light of reason and an instructed and consciously self-guiding will. And if there is any higher light of illumined intuition or self-revealing truth which is now in man either obstructed and inoperative or works with intermittent glancings as if from behind a veil or with occasional displays as of the northern lights in our material skies, then there also we need not fear to aspire. For it is likely that such is the next higher state of consciousness of which Mind is only a form and veil, and through the splendours of that light may lie the path of our progressive self-enlargement into whatever highest state is humanity's ultimate resting-place. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Human Aspiration,
18:root of the falsification and withdrawl of divine love :::
   At every moment they are moved to take egoistic advantage of the psychic and spiritual influences and can be detected using the power, joy or light these bring into us for a lower life-motive. Afterwards too, even when the seeker has opened to the Divine Love transcendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he meets the power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Nature-forces. Always they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their diminishing elements, seek to capture the descending Power for themselves and their interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical instrumentation for desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new heaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it here prisoner as a tremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the old earth and colour with its rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of sentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that falsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there is a fall back to a lower status; or else the realisation remains tied to an insecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an inferior exaltation that is not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim sacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the mind's and the life's falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind's ardours and the blind enthusiasms of the misleading life-force. But all things that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical being it extricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand on the heights, new in spirit and sublime in figure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 166,
19:SECTION 1. Books for Serious Study
   Liber CCXX. (Liber AL vel Legis.) The Book of the Law. This book is the foundation of the New Æon, and thus of the whole of our work.
   The Equinox. The standard Work of Reference in all occult matters. The Encyclopaedia of Initiation.
   Liber ABA (Book 4). A general account in elementary terms of magical and mystical powers. In four parts: (1) Mysticism (2) Magical (Elementary Theory) (3) Magick in Theory and Practice (this book) (4) The Law.
   Liber II. The Message of the Master Therion. Explains the essence of the new Law in a very simple manner.
   Liber DCCCXXXVIII. The Law of Liberty. A further explanation of The Book of the Law in reference to certain ethical problems.
   Collected Works of A. Crowley. These works contain many mystical and magical secrets, both stated clearly in prose, and woven into the Robe of sublimest poesy.
   The Yi King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XVI], Oxford University Press.) The "Classic of Changes"; give the initiated Chinese system of Magick.
   The Tao Teh King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XXXIX].) Gives the initiated Chinese system of Mysticism.
   Tannhäuser, by A. Crowley. An allegorical drama concerning the Progress of the Soul; the Tannhäuser story slightly remodelled.
   The Upanishads. (S. B. E. Series [vols. I & XV.) The Classical Basis of Vedantism, the best-known form of Hindu Mysticism.
   The Bhagavad-gita. A dialogue in which Krishna, the Hindu "Christ", expounds a system of Attainment.
   The Voice of the Silence, by H.P. Blavatsky, with an elaborate commentary by Frater O.M. Frater O.M., 7°=48, is the most learned of all the Brethren of the Order; he has given eighteen years to the study of this masterpiece.
   Raja-Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. An excellent elementary study of Hindu mysticism. His Bhakti-Yoga is also good.
   The Shiva Samhita. An account of various physical means of assisting the discipline of initiation. A famous Hindu treatise on certain physical practices.
   The Hathayoga Pradipika. Similar to the Shiva Samhita.
   The Aphorisms of Patanjali. A valuable collection of precepts pertaining to mystical attainment.
   The Sword of Song. A study of Christian theology and ethics, with a statement and solution of the deepest philosophical problems. Also contains the best account extant of Buddhism, compared with modern science.
   The Book of the Dead. A collection of Egyptian magical rituals.
   Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, by Eliphas Levi. The best general textbook of magical theory and practice for beginners. Written in an easy popular style.
   The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. The best exoteric account of the Great Work, with careful instructions in procedure. This Book influenced and helped the Master Therion more than any other.
   The Goetia. The most intelligible of all the mediæval rituals of Evocation. Contains also the favourite Invocation of the Master Therion.
   Erdmann's History of Philosophy. A compendious account of philosophy from the earliest times. Most valuable as a general education of the mind.
   The Spiritual Guide of [Miguel de] Molinos. A simple manual of Christian Mysticism.
   The Star in the West. (Captain Fuller). An introduction to the study of the Works of Aleister Crowley.
   The Dhammapada. (S. B. E. Series [vol. X], Oxford University Press). The best of the Buddhist classics.
   The Questions of King Milinda. (S. B. E. Series [vols. XXXV & XXXVI].) Technical points of Buddhist dogma, illustrated bydialogues.
   Liber 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica Ad Systemam Sceptico-Mysticæ Viæ Explicandæ, Fundamentum Hieroglyphicam Sanctissimorum Scientiæ Summæ. A complete Dictionary of the Correspondences of all magical elements, reprinted with extensive additions, making it the only standard comprehensive book of reference ever published. It is to the language of Occultism what Webster or Murray is to the English language.
   Varieties of Religious Experience (William James). Valuable as showing the uniformity of mystical attainment.
   Kabbala Denudata, von Rosenroth: also The Kabbalah Unveiled, by S.L. Mathers. The text of the Qabalah, with commentary. A good elementary introduction to the subject.
   Konx Om Pax [by Aleister Crowley]. Four invaluable treatises and a preface on Mysticism and Magick.
   The Pistis Sophia [translated by G.R.S. Mead or Violet McDermot]. An admirable introduction to the study of Gnosticism.
   The Oracles of Zoroaster [Chaldæan Oracles]. An invaluable collection of precepts mystical and magical.
   The Dream of Scipio, by Cicero. Excellent for its Vision and its Philosophy.
   The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, by Fabre d'Olivet. An interesting study of the exoteric doctrines of this Master.
   The Divine Pymander, by Hermes Trismegistus. Invaluable as bearing on the Gnostic Philosophy.
   The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians, reprint of Franz Hartmann. An invaluable compendium.
   Scrutinium Chymicum [Atalanta Fugiens]¸ by Michael Maier. One of the best treatises on alchemy.
   Science and the Infinite, by Sidney Klein. One of the best essays written in recent years.
   Two Essays on the Worship of Priapus [A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus &c. &c. &c.], by Richard Payne Knight [and Thomas Wright]. Invaluable to all students.
   The Golden Bough, by J.G. Frazer. The textbook of Folk Lore. Invaluable to all students.
   The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine. Excellent, though elementary, as a corrective to superstition.
   Rivers of Life, by General Forlong. An invaluable textbook of old systems of initiation.
   Three Dialogues, by Bishop Berkeley. The Classic of Subjective Idealism.
   Essays of David Hume. The Classic of Academic Scepticism.
   First Principles by Herbert Spencer. The Classic of Agnosticism.
   Prolegomena [to any future Metaphysics], by Immanuel Kant. The best introduction to Metaphysics.
   The Canon [by William Stirling]. The best textbook of Applied Qabalah.
   The Fourth Dimension, by [Charles] H. Hinton. The best essay on the subject.
   The Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley. Masterpieces of philosophy, as of prose.
   ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Appendix I: Literature Recommended to Aspirants
20:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.

But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.

Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.

*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.

You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.

In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.

It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.

My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.

All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.

These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.

And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.

And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.

My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.

Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967

~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:The sensual mysticism of entire vertical being. ~ e-e-cummings, @wisdomtrove
2:Mysticism is for all, not just for a few special people. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove
3:In mysticism we deal with dreaming and the fields of perception. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
4:In mysticism, there's more of a sense of adventure, of camaraderie. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
5:Mysticism is the acceptance that everything cannot be logically explained. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
6:Liking money like I like it, is nothing less than mysticism. Money is a glory. ~ salvador-dali, @wisdomtrove
7:Pseudo-mysticism seeks to evade reality; authentic mysticism wants to live it. ~ vernon-howard, @wisdomtrove
8:When science starts to be interpretive, it is more unscientific even than mysticism. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove
9:Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science but man needs both. ~ fritjof-capra, @wisdomtrove
10:I'll tell you what: I believe mysticism is a very serious endeavor. One must be equipped for it. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
11:The journey of consciousness, of mysticism, is to come to know yourself and your own motivations. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove
12:Mysticism is an eclectic mixture of various forms of self-discovery that's primarily experimental. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
13:Mysticism is not this or that particular cup on the table; it is the water poured into all of them. ~ vernon-howard, @wisdomtrove
14:My religion is nature. That’s what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me. ~ oliver-sacks, @wisdomtrove
15:My religion is nature. That’s what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me. ~ oliver-sacks, @wisdomtrove
16:The journey of consciousness, of mysticism, is to come to know yourself and your own motivations. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove
17:When I play sports, when I dance, when I teach mysticism, I cannot explain, even to myself, how I do what I do. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
18:In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
19:The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
20:iPerceptive is centred around the wisdom of history and the empowerment of consciousness through direct experience and mysticism. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove
21:Faith and force ... are corollaries: every period of history dominated by mysticism, was a period of statism, of dictatorship, of tyranny. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
22:Mysticism, poor mysticism! When it is oversimplified and underestimated, it comes down from its original sphere and stands beside religion. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove
23:Any profound view of the world is mysticism. It has, of course, to deal with life and the world, both of which are nonrational entities. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove
24:What I don't like today is, to put it coarsely, the phony Hasidism, the phony mysticism. Many students say, "Teach me mysticism." It's a joke. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
25:Zen is the fastest method I know of, aside from mysticism, of dissolving the fixations people have about spiritual practice and themselves. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
26:You can increase your capacity to absorb the mystical kundalini. I have 3 or 4 students who are on the path of mysticism, they can absorb more of it. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
27:In our culture we are taught to be accessible and open; it signifies a good person. In mysticism it is the opposite, people can scan you and drain you. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
28:If you really want to channel all of your energy towards higher mysticism, you should realize that sex does drain a certain amount of your occult energy. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
29:The school of awareness is the school of mysticism. Mysticism is the experience of eternity, of that which lies beyond the physical phenomenal experience. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
30:Mysticism occurs whenever a human being sees the separation between the natural and the supernatural, between the temporal and the eternal, as overcome. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove
31:Mysticism is the hidden way. It is the most difficult to discuss, because it involves the exploration of perceptual states which are difficult to describe in words. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
32:Mysticism cuts through bullshit, and it takes you right there to the experience. Everything in your life is eventually set up as a pragmatic energy flow into the light. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
33:... mysticism and empiricism go together in opposition to scholasticism... they base themselves on the non-linear world of experience rather than the linear world of letters. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove
34:In my tradition, one must wait until one has learned a lot of Bible and Talmud and the Prophets to handle mysticism. This isn't instant coffee. There is no instant mysticism. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
35:What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
36:In mysticism we reorder those awarenesses. We combine and recombine them endlessly. We assemble them so we can experience aspects of the universe that most people will never know. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
37:In order to pass into other dimensions you need to really understand what is out there. A teacher of mysticism is able to explain how to deal with these other worlds and universes. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
38:I teach Zen, tantric mysticism, jnana yoga, bhakti yoga, Tibetan mysticism, occultism and psychic development. I also teach poetry and literature, film and many other different things. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
39:As a dialectical teacher, I have had many lives where I have taught Zen and Tibetan Buddhism and mysticism. I teach in many different modalites. But the theme that unites them - is love. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
40:Mysticism is the study of power, its use, and its abuse. At every moment you are getting stronger or you are growing weaker. At every moment your attention field is increasing or decreasing. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
41:Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove
42:Philosophy is a slow process of logic and logical discourse: A bringing B bringing C and so forth. In mysticism you can jump from A to Z. But the ultimate objective is the same. It's knowledge. It's truth. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
43:Mystics understand the roots of the Tao but not its branches; scientists understand its branches but not its roots. Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science; but man needs both. ~ fritjof-capra, @wisdomtrove
44:I don't think there is any incompatibility between science and mysticism . . . Immanent religion is the only form of religion in which there is no conflict at all, that I can see, between science and religion. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove
45:Dragons are more dangerous, and a good deal commoner, than bears. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove
46:The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism - the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
47:The parallels to modern physics [with mysticism] appear not only in the Vedas of Hinduism, in the I Ching, or in the Buddhist sutras, but also in the fragments of Heraclitus, in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, or in the teachings of the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan. ~ fritjof-capra, @wisdomtrove
48:If we offer too much silent assent about mysticism and superstition - even when it seems to be doing a little good - we abet a general climate in which scepticism is considered impolite, science tiresome, and rigorous thinking somehow stuffy and inappropriate. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove
49:“The second feature is the sense of perceiving truths not known before. The mysteries of life become lucid, as Professor Leuba says; and often, nay usually, the solution is more or less unutterable in words. But these more intellectual phenomena may be postponed until we treat of mysticism.” ~ william-james, @wisdomtrove
50:The influence of modern physics goes beyond technology. It extends to the realm of thought and culture where it has led to a deep revision in man's conception of the universe and his relation to it. (Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism, 1975) ~ fritjof-capra, @wisdomtrove
51:Mysticism is: a. An advanced state of inner enlightenment. b. Union with Reality. c. A state of genuinely satisfying success. d. Insight into an entirely new world of living. e. An intuitive grasp of Truth, above and beyond intellectual reasoning. f. A personal experience, in which we are happy and healthy human beings. ~ vernon-howard, @wisdomtrove
52:Many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of &
53:The Master persistently warned against the attempt to encompass Reality in a concept or a name. A scholar in mysticism once asked, "When you speak of BEING, sir, is it eternal, transcendent being you speak of, or transient, contingent being?" The Master closed his eyes in thought. Then he opened them, put on his most disarming expression, and said, "Yes!" ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove
54:The fact that modern physics, the manifestation of an extreme specialization of the rational mind, is now making contact with mysticism, the essence of religion and manifestation of an extreme specialization of the intuitive mind, shows very beautifully the unity and complementary nature of the rational and intuitive modes of consciousness; of the yang and the yin. ~ fritjof-capra, @wisdomtrove
55:Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is not asceticism; it has again and again in the past repressed fanatical and cruel exaggerations of asceticism. Catholicism is not mere mysticism; it is even now defending human reason against the mere mysticism of the Pragmatists. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
56:In western civilization, the period ruled by mysticism is known as the &
57:The most unfathomable schools and sages have never attained to the gravity which dwells in the eyes of a baby of three months old. It is the gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common-sense. The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
58:The goal of mysticism is communion with God. In this experience, the mystic no longer exists as a separate individual, but becomes one with the Oneness. This vision can only arise when the mystic realises that the ego-self is only an illusionary veil that masks the true divine Self: and that this Self is God, the being of all beings. God is not something &
59:Fantasy is not antirational, but pararational; not realistic but surrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud's terminology, it employs primary not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes which, as Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove
60:As Eastern thought has begun to interest a significant number of people, and meditation is no longer viewed with ridicule or suspicion, mysticism is being token seriously even within the scientific community An increasing number of scientists are aware that mystical thought provides a consistent and relevant philosophical back ground to the theories of Contemporary science, a conception of the world in which the scientific discoveries of men and women can be in perfect harmony with their SpirItual aims and religious beliefs. ~ fritjof-capra, @wisdomtrove
61:He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights. &
62:Rational thinking which is free from assumptions ends therefore in mysticism. To relate oneself in the spirit of reverence for life to the multiform manifestations of the will-to-live which together constitute the world is ethical mysticism. All profound world-view is mysticism, the essence of which is just this: that out of my unsophisticated and naïve existence in the world there comes, as a result of thought about self and the world, spiritual self-devotion to the mysterious infinite Will which is continuously manifested in the universe. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove
63:Mysticism is a rational enterprise. Religion is not. The mystic has recognized something about the nature of consciousness prior to thought, and this recognition is susceptible to rational discussion. The mystic has reasons for what he believes, and these reasons are empirical. The roiling mystery of the world can be analyzed with concepts (this is science), or it can be experienced free of concepts (this is myticism). Religion is nothing more than bad concepts held in place of good ones for all time. It is the denial-at once full of hope and full of fear-of the vastitude of human ignorance. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:I love mysticism - it's such fun. ~ Jerry Hall,
2:Man without mysticism is a monster. ~ Whittaker Chambers,
3:Poetry is the mysticism of mankind. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
4:Without mysticism man can achieve nothing great. ~ Andre Gide,
5:Mysticism is the art of union with Reality. ~ Evelyn Underhill,
6:we were called to an intelligent mysticism. ~ Timothy J Keller,
7:Rationality is simply mysticism misunderstood. ~ Peter Kingsley,
8:The sensual mysticism of entire vertical being. ~ e e cummings,
9:The business and method of mysticism is love. ~ Evelyn Underhill,
10:Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics. ~ Charles Peguy,
11:Honor is the mysticism of legality ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel,
12:Moralism is always the cheap substitute for mysticism. ~ Richard Rohr,
13:The whole planet reeks of mysticism without revelation. ~ Dan Simmons,
14:I believe in mysticism, with an interior goal, ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky,
15:Mysticism is just tomorrow's science dreamed today. ~ Marshall McLuhan,
16:Mysticism is for all, not just for a few special people. ~ Henri Nouwen,
17:Misfortune draws people to religion and mysticism ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer,
18:Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science ~ Henri Bergson,
19:Mysticism is the passionate longing of the soul for God. ~ Evelyn Underhill,
20:Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science ~ Henri Bergson,
21:…mysticism –perhaps the main aberration of the human mind. ~ Arthur C Clarke,
22:In mysticism we deal with dreaming and the fields of perception. ~ Frederick Lenz,
23:Mysticism,” he likes to say, “is the antidote to fundamentalism. ~ Michael Pollan,
24:In mysticism, there's more of a sense of adventure, of camaraderie. ~ Frederick Lenz,
25:I took the batteries out my mysticism / And put them in my thinking cap ~ Alex Turner,
26:Mysticism is the function of a mind looking for alternatives to reality. ~ Neal Asher,
27:I took the batteries out my mysticism / 
And put them in my thinking cap ~ Alex Turner,
28:I started studying mythology, just on my own. Joseph Campbell, mysticism. ~ Antoine Fuqua,
29:Mysticism is the acceptance that everything cannot be logically explained. ~ Frederick Lenz,
30:Liking money like I like it, is nothing less than mysticism. Money is a glory. ~ Salvador Dali,
31:Mysticism was merely virility in a state of liquidation; sperm that had gone bad. ~ Pitigrilli,
32:Pseudo-mysticism seeks to evade reality; authentic mysticism wants to live it. ~ Vernon Howard,
33:Mysticism is in fact the only criticism people cannot level against my theory. ~ Albert Einstein,
34:Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science but man needs both. ~ Fritjof Capra,
35:I was raised in a heavily Catholic family. Early and consistent encounters with mysticism. ~ Nic Pizzolatto,
36:Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
37:I'll tell you what: I believe mysticism is a very serious endeavor. One must be equipped for it. ~ Elie Wiesel,
38:The extreme point of mysticism, I hold it now in the real and in my body, like a toilet broom. ~ Antonin Artaud,
39:The journey of consciousness, of mysticism, is to come to know yourself and your own motivations. ~ Caroline Myss,
40:Mysticism is an eclectic mixture of various forms of self-discovery that's primarily experimental. ~ Frederick Lenz,
41:Mysticism is colourful and alluring, but if you are after the truth, science is the best path! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
42:Mysticism is not this or that particular cup on the table; it is the water poured into all of them. ~ Vernon Howard,
43:My religion is nature. That’s what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me. ~ Oliver Sacks,
44:Art shows how it loves, philosophy what it loves; mysticism knows only that it loves. ~ Constantin Brunner, Our Christ.,
45:The danger in mysticism is that you push yourself too far into the nagual too soon. This is obsession. ~ Frederick Lenz,
46:Was there a logical answer, something he could accept without slipping on banana skins of mysticism? ~ Richard Matheson,
47:God created hand, head, and heart; the hand for the deed, the head for the world, the heart for mysticism. ~ Abraham Kuyper,
48:The basic urge toward mysticism is never, in the unaltered man, clear enough to be recognized for what it is. ~ Idries Shah,
49:I like to say that I practice militant mysticism. I'm really absolutely sure of some things that I don't quite know. ~ Rob Bell,
50:Sufis aim to refine human consciousness. This is Sufi mysticism: not mystification or magic, but a specific Path. ~ Idries Shah,
51:When I play sports, when I dance, when I teach mysticism, I cannot explain, even to myself, how I do what I do. ~ Frederick Lenz,
52:As long as vitalism and spiritualism are open questions so long will the gateway of science be open to mysticism. ~ Rudolf Virchow,
53:Magick, mysticism, and the mathematics are triplets. ~ Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), chapter 27.[4],
54:Science will, in all probability,
be increasingly impregnated
by mysticism. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, My Universe (1924),
55:Love is a mysticism that wants to be materialized, an impossibility that our dreams always insist must be possible. ~ Fernando Pessoa,
56:I'm a seeker. I'm very much a believer in science. But I do think there are times when science and mysticism intersect. ~ Nicolas Cage,
57:Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. ~ G K Chesterton,
58:The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. ~ G K Chesterton,
59:Being, not Doing, is the first aim of the mystic; and hence should be the first interest of the student of mysticism. ~ Evelyn Underhill,
60:The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand. ~ G K Chesterton,
61:The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The ~ G K Chesterton,
62:Love is a mysticism that wants to be put into practice, an impossibility that according to our dreams should be possible. ~ Fernando Pessoa,
63:In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
64:The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
65:Mysticism keeps mankind sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
66:The first is the art of mind-stilling, of emptying consciousness of every thought and form whatsoever. This is mysticism or Yoga. ~ Paul Brunton,
67:All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice. ~ Karl Marx,
68:A revolutionary mysticism which seems to be the present drive of the Time Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Curve of the Rational Age,
69:You must go to Mahometanism, to Buddhism, to the East, to the Sufis Fakirs, to Pantheism, for the right growth of mysticism. ~ Florence Nightingale,
70:If they want me to have mysticism, okay, I’ve got it.
I’m a mystic, but only in my body,
My soul is simple and doesn’t think. ~ Alberto Caeiro,
71:Faith and force ... are corollaries: every period of history dominated by mysticism, was a period of statism, of dictatorship, of tyranny. ~ Ayn Rand,
72:The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticism, fancies, and falsehoods. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
73:Mysticism and the supernatural are embedded in the show - it's called 'Da Vinci's Demons' for a reason, and it's not just metaphorical. ~ David S Goyer,
74:Wit is the appearance, the external flash, of fantasy. Hence its divinity and the similarity to the wit of mysticism. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel,
75:I liked to hear him talk, skipping from one thought to another with his eclectic mix of innocence, wisdom, mild mysticism and earthiness. ~ Fabian Black,
76:Mysticism is, in essence, little more than a certain intensity and depth of feeling in regard to what is believed about the universe. ~ Bertrand Russell,
77:Mysticism is like pure science; it has no use. Mysticism is just the human longing to know… Occult is not science. Occult is just technology. ~ Sadhguru,
78:People call me a mystic, but [humans] really are chock-full of mysticism; that word covers a large area of facts which we cannot understand. ~ Carl Jung,
79:Science and mysticism are very closely related, distinguishable only by their approaches. They have identical goals … but different methods. ~ Anonymous,
80:Mysticism, poor mysticism! When it is oversimplified and underestimated, it comes down from its original sphere and stands beside religion. ~ Sri Chinmoy,
81:Mysticism conceives something transcending experience; religion seeks glimpses of a better good or a worse evil than experience can give. ~ G K Chesterton,
82:Religion, true religion, that which comes from the heart, offers Faith, and in Faith all things are possible. Such religion is pure Mysticism. ~ Anonymous,
83:Any profound view of the world is mysticism. It has, of course, to deal with life and the world, both of which are nonrational entities. ~ Albert Schweitzer,
84:What I don't like today is, to put it coarsely, the phony Hasidism, the phony mysticism. Many students say, "Teach me mysticism." It's a joke. ~ Elie Wiesel,
85:Zen is the fastest method I know of, aside from mysticism, of dissolving the fixations people have about spiritual practice and themselves. ~ Frederick Lenz,
86:I see science and mysticism as two complementary manifestations of the human mind; as its rational and intuitive faculties.

Capra ~ Katherine Ramsland,
87:Full of mysticism—most of it nonsense and all muddled up—but something in him driving him to know more than a natural man is supposed to know. ~ Tony Hillerman,
88:When you consider all saints and prophets as legitimate and no longer differentiate between religions, you have reached the stage of true mysticism. ~ Ostad Elahi,
89:Maybe it wasn't anything remotely to do with religion, mysticism or metaphilosophy after all; maybe it was more banal; maybe it was just...accounting. ~ Iain Banks,
90:'Mysticism' here means, in the literal sense, a change of sensory impressions and organ sensations into something unreal and beyond this world. ~ Wilhelm Reich,
91:Primitive peoples tried to annul death by portraying the human body--we do it by finding substitutes for the human body. Technology instead of mysticism! ~ Max Frisch,
92:There are four principal pathways that lead to enlightement: The yoga of love, the yoga of service, the yoga of knowledge, and the yoga of mysticism. ~ Frederick Lenz,
93:You can increase your capacity to absorb the mystical kundalini. I have 3 or 4 students who are on the path of mysticism, they can absorb more of it. ~ Frederick Lenz,
94:Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary. ~ William Butler Yeats,
95:Psychology as a science has its limitations, and, as the logical consequence of theology is mysticism, so the ultimate consequence of psychology is love. ~ Erich Fromm,
96:Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits of humility or the limits of delight. ~ Milan Kundera,
97:In our culture we are taught to be accessible and open; it signifies a good person. In mysticism it is the opposite, people can scan you and drain you. ~ Frederick Lenz,
98:If you really want to channel all of your energy towards higher mysticism, you should realize that sex does drain a certain amount of your occult energy. ~ Frederick Lenz,
99:The secret of mysticism, therefore, is to feel, think, speak, and act at the same time, for then all that is said, or felt, or done, becomes perfect. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan,
100:The school of awareness is the school of mysticism. Mysticism is the experience of eternity, of that which lies beyond the physical phenomenal experience. ~ Frederick Lenz,
101:Mysticism occurs whenever a human being sees the separation between the natural and the supernatural, between the temporal and the eternal, as overcome. ~ Albert Schweitzer,
102:Atheism is a sort of crippled mysticism, [...] Blind nature has created all that we see, as well as all that we do not see - that's a mystical notion. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer,
103:mysticism is fundamentally irrational and that is its great power and solace. “Proving” mysticism with science is like using a slide-rule to measure wind speed. ~ Gordon White,
104:Suffering predisposes the mind to devoutness; and most young girls, prompted by instinctive tenderness, lean towards mysticism, the obscurer side of religion. ~ Honore de Balzac,
105:I've met a lot of the astronauts, which was such an incredible experience. They're all very macho guys, like fighter pilots, but then there's a mysticism about them. ~ Lily Koppel,
106:The new meaning of soul is creativity and mysticism. These will become the foundation of the new psychological type and with him or her will come the new civilization. ~ Otto Rank,
107:Magic departs from mysticism because it proudly proclaims its unshakeable intention to do noteworthy things in this world, rather than seeking merely to transcend it ~ Gordon White,
108:An undefined “mysticism with nobody there” is not enough. It does not fill the hunger in the human heart for connection with a personal God who knows and loves us. ~ Nancy R Pearcey,
109:Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,
110:Mysticism is the hidden way. It is the most difficult to discuss, because it involves the exploration of perceptual states which are difficult to describe in words. ~ Frederick Lenz,
111:Scott Derrickson breathes humour into a character with a very strong identity in the '60s and '70s, that psychedelia era of Eastern mysticism meeting the West. ~ Benedict Cumberbatch,
112:Mysticism requires the notion of the unknowable, which is revealed to some and withheld from others; this divides men into those who feel guilt and those who cash in on it. ~ Ayn Rand,
113:I confess, that very different from you, I do find sometimes scientific inspiration in mysticism ... but this is counterbalanced by an immediate sense for mathematics. ~ Wolfgang Pauli,
114:...mysticism and empiricism go together in opposition to scholasticism...they base themselves on the non-linear world of experience rather than the linear world of letters. ~ Alan Watts,
115:Mysticism cuts through bullshit, and it takes you right there to the experience. Everything in your life is eventually set up as a pragmatic energy flow into the light. ~ Frederick Lenz,
116:Mysticism is the acquired immunodeficiency of regional ontologies; one catches it through unprotected thought intercourse with the stirred-up concept of the infinite. ~ Peter Sloterdijk,
117:Mysticism is concerned primarily with moving our awareness field from the beginning of the band of perception, the human band, up to the enlightened bands of perception. ~ Frederick Lenz,
118:In mysticism we have to take all the imprinting that has occurred to us and wash it. Then we need to be re-imprinted but in a different way. Without it, we don't survive. ~ Frederick Lenz,
119:All social life is essentially practical. All mysterious which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of the practice. ~ Karl Marx,
120:In my tradition, one must wait until one has learned a lot of Bible and Talmud and the Prophets to handle mysticism. This isn't instant coffee. There is no instant mysticism. ~ Elie Wiesel,
121:Mysticism is the art of union with Reality. The mystic is a person who has attained that union in greater or less degree; or who aims at and believes in such attainment. ~ Evelyn Underhill,
122:What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically. ~ Elie Wiesel,
123:What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It’s close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically. ~ Elie Wiesel,
124:It has become the fashion to talk about Mysticism, even to pose as Mystics, and—need it be said?—those who talk the most on such subjects are those who know the least. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,
125:But the purpose of philosophy is to rationalize mysticism: not by explaining it away, but by the introduction of novel verbal characterizations, rationally coordinated. ~ Alfred North Whitehead,
126:I believe that there is a certain amount of mysticism that all women should have, that you should never tell all your secrets, that you should never tell everybody all about you. ~ Stevie Nicks,
127:I light candles. I meditate. And I don't believe in anything. By default I move simultaneously towards mysticism and atheism. It's not something that's ever going to get fixed. ~ Vanessa Veselka,
128:I searched through rebellion, drugs, diet, mysticism, religion, intellectualism and much more, only to begin to find that truth is basically simple and feels good, clear and right. ~ Chick Corea,
129:In mysticism we reorder those awarenesses. We combine and recombine them endlessly. We assemble them so we can experience aspects of the universe that most people will never know. ~ Frederick Lenz,
130:A time comes when it isn't enough to read about Buddha, we wish to have that happen to ourselves. That's when we move from the exoteric to the esoteric, from religion to mysticism. ~ Frederick Lenz,
131:In order to pass into other dimensions you need to really understand what is out there. A teacher of mysticism is able to explain how to deal with these other worlds and universes. ~ Frederick Lenz,
132:What I believe in touches many aspects of religious and spiritual thought. Mainly I'm influenced and inspired by the eastern yogi's aspect of mysticism, Which is, I think, the future. ~ Dave Davies,
133:Mysticism: to dwell on the unseen, to withdraw ourselves from the things of sense into communion with God - to endeavour to partake of the Divine nature; that is, of Holiness. ~ Florence Nightingale,
134:I was a new devotee of Eastern mysticism and even though I did not join that particular group, I could well have done. They seemed a bit extreme but I regarded myself as not quite ready. ~ Mary Garden,
135:I teach Zen, tantric mysticism, jnana yoga, bhakti yoga, Tibetan mysticism, occultism and psychic development. I also teach poetry and literature, film and many other different things. ~ Frederick Lenz,
136:Think of God and not religion, of ecstasy and not mysticism. The difference between the theoretician of faith and the believer is as great as between the psychiatrist and the psychotic. ~ Emil M Cioran,
137:Think of God and not religion, of ecstasy and not mysticism. The difference between the theoretician of faith and the believer is as great as between the psychiatrist and the psychotic. ~ Emile M Cioran,
138:As a dialectical teacher, I have had many lives where I have taught Zen and Tibetan Buddhism and mysticism. I teach in many different modalites. But the theme that unites them - is love. ~ Frederick Lenz,
139:The exoteric Islam doesn't interest me more than any other religion. But the mysticism interests me. It's like Hinduism.
[Frithjof Schuon: Messenger of the Perennialist Philosophy DVD] ~ Frithjof Schuon,
140:Mysticism is the study of power, its use, and its abuse. At every moment you are getting stronger or you are growing weaker. At every moment your attention field is increasing or decreasing. ~ Frederick Lenz,
141:Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being. ~ Carl Sagan,
142:Mysticism joins and unites; reason divides and separates. People crave belonging more than understanding. Hence the prominent role of mysticism, and the limited role of reason in human affairs. ~ Thomas Szasz,
143:Good and bad, and even the higher good that mysticism finds everywhere, are the reflections of our own emotions on other things, not part of the substance of things as they are in themselves. ~ Bertrand Russell,
144:Any cynicism I possessed has rather had its legs cut out from under it these past few days, but the idea of focusing magical power is beginning to seem a little too New Age mysticism to be real to me. ~ Jonathan Wood,
145:I could never be French, I could never become German - I shall always remain American - the essence which is in me is American mysticism just as Davies declared it when he saw those first landscapes. ~ Marsden Hartley,
146:I don't believe in astrology. It's a lot of crap. I just think that's another thing you should throw out the window. Mysticism. Cheap. It's amazing that people still hang on to that after all these years. ~ Mick Jagger,
147:Philosophy is a slow process of logic and logical discourse: A bringing B bringing C and so forth. In mysticism you can jump from A to Z. But the ultimate objective is the same. It's knowledge. It's truth. ~ Elie Wiesel,
148:Mystics understand the roots of the Tao but not its branches; scientists understand its branches but not its roots. Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science; but man needs both. ~ Fritjof Capra,
149:Worshiping the Devil is no more insane than worshiping God...It is precisely at the moment when positivism is at its high-water mark that mysticism stirs into life and the follies of occultism begin. ~ Joris Karl Huysmans,
150:Both science and mysticism describe a force that connects everything together and gives us the power to influence how matter behaves—and reality itself—simply through the way we perceive the world around us. ~ Gregg Braden,
151:The scientific revolution was, in many ways, a by-product of mysticism and magic. In fact, once the tangled origins of modern science are unravelled, it is doubtful whether a ‘scientific revolution’ occurred. ~ John N Gray,
152:I don't think there is any incompatibility between science and mysticism . . . Immanent religion is the only form of religion in which there is no conflict at all, that I can see, between science and religion. ~ Aldous Huxley,
153:I had been a kind of natural mystic my whole life, growing up there in Tennessee next to the river. Somehow, that was important for my consciousness. I still don't study [mysticism]. I just wait for experiences. ~ Coleman Barks,
154:Suzuki also frequently quotes a sentence of Eckhart’s: “The eye wherein I see God is the same eye wherein God sees me” (Suzuki, Mysticism: East and West, p. 50) as an exact expression of what Zen means by Prajna. ~ Thomas Merton,
155:Mysticism conceives something transcending experience; religion seeks glimpses of a better good or a worse evil than experience can give. Reincarnation need only extend experiences in the sense of repeating them. ~ G K Chesterton,
156:The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. ~ G K Chesterton,
157:Herbert Read thought we would need a mystical theory to connect beauty and function. Well, it took one hundred years, but today we have that theory, one based in biology, neuroscience, and psychology, not mysticism. ~ Donald A Norman,
158:Mysticism is the most scientific form of religion, for it bases itself, as does all science, on experience and experiment—experiment being only a specialised form of experience, devised either to discover or to verify. ~ Annie Besant,
159:The cross. He held one in his hand, gold and shiny in the morning sun. This, too, drove the vampires away.
Why? Was there a logical answer, something he could accept without slipping on banana skins of mysticism? ~ Richard Matheson,
160:I read all of Rider Haggard's books. For me he had the romance of Africa with a little bit of mysticism. I'm delighted to be looked on as his heir and be categorised as an adventure novelist because that's exactly what I am. ~ Wilbur Smith,
161:Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. ~ Richard Dawkins,
162:As an inspiration to the author, I do not think the cat can be over-estimated. He suggests so much grace, power, beauty, motion, mysticism. I do not wonder that many writers love cats; I am only surprised that all do not. ~ Carl Van Vechten,
163:Cant you understand that romanticism is no more an enemy of science than mysticism is? In fact, romanticism and science are good for each other. The scientist keeps the romantic honest and the romantic keeps the scientist human. ~ Tom Robbins,
164:Religious mysticism is intellectual garbage. It’s a vestige of the old superstitious Dark Ages when nobody knew anything...It is one of those delusions that isn’t called insane only because there are so many people involved. ~ Robert M Pirsig,
165:Why is mysticism so important in our time? It is clear that mystics place a great emphasis on experience and that is what the postsecular seeks. Mysticism is the felt, inward experience of spiritual life. ~ David Tacey, The Post-Secular Sacred,
166:The austere empiricism and scholarly imagination of the Warburg style were the very antithesis of the brutal anti-intellectualism and vulgar mysticism threatening to barbarize German culture in the 1920s; this was Weimar at its best. ~ Peter Gay,
167:Dragons are more dangerous, and a good deal commoner, than bears. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,
168:I don't know what to make of the Muslim mystics, especially those who have come to be known as the Sufis. What do they experience in their mystic experiences? Could they have encountered the same God we do in our Christian mysticism? ~ Tony Campolo,
169:Mysticism—Magic and Yoga—is the means, therefore, to a new universal life, richer, greater and more full of resource than ever before, as free as sunlight, as gracious as the unfolding of a rose. It is for man (and woman) to take. ~ Israel Regardie,
170:For what is Mysticism? It is not the attempt to draw near to God, not by rites or ceremonies, but by inward disposition? Is it not merely a hard word for 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within'? Heaven is neither a place nor a time. ~ Florence Nightingale,
171:Spaniards and Americans are not like Europeans, they are not like Orientals, they have something in common, that is they do not need religion or mysticism not to believe in reality as all the world knows it, not even when they see it. ~ Gertrude Stein,
172:[william] Burroughs, incidentally, took up the slogan that we are "Here to go", which contradicts the tendency in Eastern mysticism to advocate staying where you are because there's nowhere to go anyway. I feel conflicted on this one. ~ Quentin S Crisp,
173:What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. ~ Albert Einstein,
174:Love is the essence of all religion, mysticism, and philosophy, and for the one who has learned this, love fulfills the purpose of religion, ethics, and philosophy, and the lover is raised above all diversities of faiths and beliefs. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan,
175:Mysticism-Magic and Yoga-is the means, therefore, to a new universal life, richer, greater and more full of resource than ever before, as free as sunlight, as gracious as the unfolding of a rose. It is for man to take.
   ~ Israel Regardie, The Tree Of Life,
176:One idea I explore in my stand-up show is whether, if you try looking at the universe rationally and avoid coping mechanisms like mysticism or religion, you can still be happy knowing you are going to die after a brief time on this spinning ball. ~ Robin Ince,
177:That is beautiful mysticism, it is a—”
“Please not to call it by any name,” said Dorothea, putting out her hands entreatingly. “You will say it is Persian, or something geographical. It is my life. I have found it out and cannot part with it. ~ George Eliot,
178:On any one street people could pray to a variety of deities, Zeus and Jupiter, Isis and Osiris, the Jewish god Yahweh, the Persian god Mithra, or Serapis, a god the Ptolemies introduced to bind themselves to the Egyptians and their mysticism. ~ Gwendolyn Womack,
179:The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism - the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
180:Whereas I reject mysticism in its negation of scientific criteria for the furtherance of knowledge, I believe that within an expanded science and mathematics there will be found sufficient mystery ultimately to accommodate even the mystery of mind. ~ Roger Penrose,
181:Hasidim in the twentieth century seemed to know little of the mysticism, the ecstasy, the melancholy and the joy of the Baal Shem Tov and his disciples. Instead, it regressed to the heavy-handedness and the rigidity that Hasidism had come to eradicate. ~ Shulem Deen,
182:I'm not trying to sign people up to a creed, I'm much more interested in the people that disagree. These ideas are powerful but this isn't mysticism in the ordinary sense to be protected by mumblings about faith and all that. This is the real thing. ~ Terence McKenna,
183:Capitalism, gaudy and greedy, has been inherent in western aesthetics from ancient Egypt on. It is the mysticism and glamour of things , which take on a personality of their own. As an economic system, it is in the Darwinian line of Sade, not Rousseau. ~ Camille Paglia,
184:We are fighting for the distinction between sacrifice and mysticism, between energy and violence, between strength and cruelty, for that even finer distinction between the true and the false, between the man of the future and the cowardly gods you revere. ~ Albert Camus,
185:That is a beautiful mysticism - it is a - '
'Please not to call it by any name,' said Dorothea, putting out her hands entreatingly. 'You will say it is Persian, or something else geographical. It is my life. I have found it out, and cannot part with it. ~ George Eliot,
186:If we offer too much silent assent about mysticism and superstition - even when it seems to be doing a little good - we abet a general climate in which scepticism is considered impolite, science tiresome, and rigorous thinking somehow stuffy and inappropriate. ~ Carl Sagan,
187:NUREMBERG, September 5 I’m beginning to comprehend, I think, some of the reasons for Hitler’s astounding success. Borrowing a chapter from the Roman church, he is restoring pageantry and colour and mysticism to the drab lives of twentieth-century Germans. ~ William L Shirer,
188:I love my nation, I cannot see you degraded, weakened any more than you are now. Therefore I am bound for your sake and for truth's to cry, "Hold!" and to raise my voice against this degradation of my race. Give up these weakening mysticism and be strong. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
189:My music, it breathes. It's the mysticism of sound. I'm a sound seeker, and I'm enthralled with it, by what it can do to change the molecules and uplift people. They feel something when we play. I can't take authorship for that. I can take that I'm in service. ~ Charles Lloyd,
190:To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with the nonhuman world and yet somehow survives still intact individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock. ~ Edward Abbey,
191:Mystery and mysticism come from the same root. So they are associated with a sense of darkness, with going into a realm where you don't see very clearly, where things are more obscure and will remain obscure. It is also a realm of silence rather than wordy thought. ~ K Armstrong,
192:There is a single main definition of the object of all magical Ritual. It is the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God. ~ Aleister Crowley,
193:Likewise, if we offer too much silent assent about mysticism and superstition - even when it seems to be doing a little good - we abet a general climate in which scepticism is considered impolite, science tiresome, and rigorous thinking somehow stuffy and inappropriate. ~ Carl Sagan,
194:The Christian mystic therefore is one for whom God and Christ are not merely objects of belief, but living facts experimentally known first hand; and mysticism for him becomes, in so far as he responds to its demands, a life based on this conscious communion with God ~ Carl McColman,
195:There is a single main definition of the object of all magical Ritual. It is the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God. ~ Aleister Crowley,
196:We are at home here. Alienation is unnecessary. Contact with reality at a deep level is part of the Christian's life. He enters into reality, rather than escaping from it. The flight from reality is a mark of Eastern and classical mysticism, not of Christianity. ~ Hans Rookmaaker,
197:One of the most important things to do in a church that wants to nurture and administrate prophetic ministry is to dial down the mysticism and the carnal desire to look superspiritual. We need to keep our eyes off people and remain focused on Jesus and His purpose for us. ~ Mike Bickle,
198:Few are trained in monasticism/ascetic practices & R not prepared to engage in traditional forms of mysticism. But we are hungry to seek such experiences & our desperation to connect with forces beyond the self can & does lead us to the doorway of mystical encounters ~ David Tacey,
199:I avoid the mysticism of my culture. My people know there is a true mechanism that runs through us. Stars were people in our continuum. Mountains were stories before they were mountains. Things were created by story. The words were conjurers, and ideas were our mothers. ~ Terese Marie Mailhot,
200:Racial history is therefore natural history and the mysticism of the soul at one and the same time; but the history of the religion of the blood, conversely, is the great world story of the rise and downfall of peoples, their heroes and thinkers, their inventors and artists. ~ Alfred Rosenberg,
201:The religion of the world, in its right proportions, is not divided into fine shades of mysticism or more or less rational forms of mythology. It is divided by the line between the men who are bringing that message and the men who have not yet heard it, or cannot yet believe it. ~ G K Chesterton,
202:Sufism is not a religion or a philosophy, it is neither deism nor atheism, nor is it a moral, nor a special kind of mysticism, being free from the usual religious sectarianism. If ever it could be called a religion, it would only be as a religion of love, harmony, and beauty. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan,
203:Religion is nothing but institutionalized mysticism. The catch is, mysticism does not lend itself to institutionalization. The moment we attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence. Religion, then, is mysticism in which the mystical has been killed. Or, at least diminished. ~ Tom Robbins,
204:Healing does not come through intense affirmation of divinity, or by simply pouring out love and the expression of a vague mysticism.It comes through mastering an exact science of contact, impression, of invocation plus an understanding of the subtle apparatus of the etheric vehicle. ~ Alice Bailey,
205:In the first place, the ideas of people who are not intellectually free are always in a muddle, and it's extremely difficult to talk to them; and, secondly, they usually love no one, and have nothing to do with women, and their mysticism has an unpleasant effect on sensitive people. I ~ Anton Chekhov,
206:Any state

other than what you have experienced seems absurd. You have had certain visions. Before

them, did not mysticism sound ridiculous? What you've been given has released you from

prison, ten times! And won't this empty desert freedom you feel now someday be confining? ~ Rumi,
207:Briefly and generally stated, mystical theology or Christian mysticism seeks to describe an experienced, direct, non-abstract, unmediated, loving knowing of God, a knowing or seeing so direct as to be called union with God.”[97] Such an experience of God came through “contemplation”—observing ~ Daryl Aaron,
208:The Essentials of Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill: “Mystics know that possessions dissipate the energy which they need for other and more real things; that they must give up ownership, the verb ‘to have,’ if they are to attain the freedom which they seek, and the fullness of the verb ‘to be. ~ Ian Morgan Cron,
209:All true religion, all true morality, all true mysticism have but one object, and that is to act on humanity, collective and individual, in such a manner that it shall correspond efficiently with the great law of development, and co-operate consciously therewith to achieve the end of development. ~ A E Waite,
210:She was carrying an armful of Bibles for her class, and such was her view of life that events which produced heartache in others wrought beatific smiles upon her - an enviable result, although, in the opinion of Angel, it was obtained by a curiously unnatural sacrifice of humanity to mysticism. ~ Thomas Hardy,
211:Unless we proceed cautiously, there might well arise a few generations of mystics who conceive of the orgone metaphysically, divorced from non-living nature and who do not comprehend it from the standpoint of natural science. And it seems to me that we have more than enough mysticism as it is. ~ Wilhelm Reich,
212:To hint to unimaginative people of a horror beyond all human conception—a horror of houses and blocks and cities leprous and cancerous with evil dragged from elder worlds—would be merely to invite a padded cell instead of restful rustication, and Malone was a man of sense despite his mysticism. ~ H P Lovecraft,
213:The tendency to believe vague statements designed to appeal to just about anyone is called the Forer effect, and psychologists point to this phenomenon to explain why people fall for pseudoscience like biorhythms, iridology, and phrenology, or mysticism like astrology, numerology, and tarot cards. ~ David McRaney,
214:The romance of militancy dominated our predecessors; now serious ideas ousted this way of thinking. No more mysticism! No more blind faith! Now realism was our mode of thinking. At times of terrible necessity, we can resort to extreme methods, but violence produces opposite results in mass movements. ~ Bhagat Singh,
215:If we offer too much silent assent about mysticism and superstition - even when it seems to be doing a little good - we abet a general climate in which scepticism is considered impolite, science tiresome, and rigorous thinking somehow stuffy and inappropriate. Figuring out a prudent balance takes wisdom. ~ Carl Sagan,
216:The point behind mysticism is not to dazzle the mind with ecstatic wonders or heady feelings, but to foster real and lasting changes, for the purpose of becoming more like Christ, which is to say, more compassionate, more forgiving, more committed to serving others and making the world a better place. ~ Carl McColman,
217:Bog-lights, vapors of mysticism, psychic Gnosticisms, veils and tissues of words, gibbering subjectivisms, gropings and maunderings, ontological fantasies, pan-psychic hallucinations—this is the stuff, the phantasms of hope, that fills your book shelves.

Come. Your glass is empty. Fill and forget. ~ Jack London,
218:Now that the sadhvi woman is here, perhaps we could let her decide.”
No one would argue with that. Even Gauri bowed her head deferentially. I shifted my feet and attempted some measure of mysticism and authority.
“Does your stomach ail you?” whispered Kamala.
My attempt clearly failed. ~ Roshani Chokshi,
219:Beyond these models of reconciliation, a theology of mysticism provides some hope for common ground between Christianity and Islam. Both religions have within their histories examples of ecstatic union with God, which seem at odds with their own spiritual traditions but have much in common with each other. ~ Tony Campolo,
220:A mystic doesn’t say “I believe.” They say “I know.” A true mystic will ironically speak with that self-confidence but at the same time with a kind of humility. So when you see that combination of calm self-confidence, certitude, and humility all at the same time you have the basis for mysticism in general. ~ Richard Rohr,
221:I believe in mysticism, with an interior goal, and you are your own temple and your own priest. I dont believe anymore in religions, because you see today there are religious wars, prejudice, false morals, and the woman is despised. Religion is too old now; its from another century, its not for today. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky,
222:In reality, the apparent 'objectivity' of modern architecture is merely a mysticism in reverse, a congealed sentimentality disguised as objectivity; moreover one has seen often enough just how quickly this attitude is converted, in its protagonists, into the most changeable and arbitrary of subjectivisms. ~ Titus Burckhardt,
223:Many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of 'spirituality' or 'mysticism' to be synonymous with mental illness, conscious fraud, or self-deception. I have argued elsewhere that this is a problem - because millions of people have had experiences for which 'spiritual' and 'mystical' seem the only terms available. ~ Sam Harris,
224:No word in our language - not even "Socialism" - has been employed more loosely than "Mysticism." The history of the word begins in close connexion with the Greek mysteries. A mystic is one who has been, or is being, initiated into some esoteric knowledge of Divine things, about which he must keep his mouth shut. ~ William Ralph Inge,
225:The historic transition from Novice to Proficient to Adept was said to be accomplished virtually overnight by the progression from marijuana to peyote to lysergic acid. Instant mysticism had arrived. Before the court of law, hippies demanded freedom for LSD the way early Christians demanded freedom for the Eucharist. ~ William Everson,
226:Mysticism is: a. An advanced state of inner enlightenment. b. Union with Reality. c. A state of genuinely satisfying success. d. Insight into an entirely new world of living. e. An intuitive grasp of Truth, above and beyond intellectual reasoning. f. A personal experience, in which we are happy and healthy human beings. ~ Vernon Howard,
227:if I think (and I do) that Deepak Chopra talks nonsense when he tells people about quantum mechanical elixirs of youth, I would first have to be an expert in quantum mysticism. But the problem is that quantum mysticism is (I think) quackery, and that therefore there is no such thing as an “expert” on quantum mysticism. ~ Massimo Pigliucci,
228:If we disregard the political component of Islam and accept religious mysticism, we silently admit dependence and slavery. On the contrary, if we ignore the religious component, we cease to be any moral force. Does it matter if an imperialism is called British, German, or Islamic if it means only a naked power over people and things? ~ Alija Izetbegovi,
229:We admire Sufism in the West for its tolerance, mysticism, and poetry, its ecstatic rituals, its music, even. But it’s also, especially in rural parts, a religion that bears more than a casual resemblance to late medieval Catholicism. It encourages the veneration of saint-like figures at special shrines and their celebration at festivities. ~ Dan Eaton,
230:From Pythagoras (whether by way of Socrates or not) Plato derived the Orphic elements in his philosophy: the religious trend, the belief in immortality, the other-worldliness, the priestly tone, and all that is involved in the simile of the cave; also his respect for mathematics, and his intimate intermingling of intellect and mysticism. ~ Bertrand Russell,
231:Mountaineering is a complex and unique way of life, interweaving elements of sport, art and mysticism. Success or failure depends on the ebb and flow of immense inspiration. Detecting a single rule governing this energy is difficult - it arises and vanishes like the urge to dance and remains as mysterious as the phenomenon of life itself. ~ Wojciech Kurtyka,
232:I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. ~ Albert Einstein,
233:I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. ~ Richard Dawkins,
234:Eastern mysticism embraced both the tangible and the intangible, through the yin and yang of duality. The god Shiva was both the creator and the destroyer of worlds; indeed, one aspect of the deity Nishkala Shiva was the Shiva “without parts”—the void. Through their ability to divorce numerals from physical reality, the Indians invented algebra. ~ Chris Anderson,
235:The God of Christianity does not erase our individual identity but actually affirms it, calling us to become ever more fully the unique individuals we were created to be. Contrary to Eastern mysticism, the goal is not to suppress our desires, but to direct our desires to what truly satisfies—to a passionate love relationship with the ultimate Person. ~ Nancy R Pearcey,
236:Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world, and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary. You may argue against it but you should no more treat it with disrespect than a perfectly cultivated writer would treat (say) the Catholic Church or the Church of Luther no matter how much he disliked them. ~ William Butler Yeats,
237:The Master persistently warned against the attempt to encompass Reality in a concept or a name. A scholar in mysticism once asked, "When you speak of BEING, sir, is it eternal, transcendent being you speak of, or transient, contingent being?" The Master closed his eyes in thought. Then he opened them, put on his most disarming expression, and said, "Yes!" ~ Anthony de Mello,
238:The fact that modern physics, the manifestation of an extreme specialization of the rational mind, is now making contact with mysticism, the essence of religion and manifestation of an extreme specialization of the intuitive mind, shows very beautifully the unity and complementary nature of the rational and intuitive modes of consciousness; of the yang and the yin. ~ Fritjof Capra,
239:The Middle Ages were an era of mysticism, ruled by blind faith and blind obedience to the dogma that faith is superior to reason. The Renaissance was specifically the rebirth of reason, the liberation of man's mind, the triumph of rationality over mysticism - a faltering, incomplete, but impassioned triumph that led to the birth of science, of individualism, of freedom. ~ Ayn Rand,
240:Mysticism, according to its historical and psychological definitions, is the direct intuition or experience of God; and a mystic is a person who has, to a greater or less degree, such a direct experience -- one whose religion and life are centered, not merely on an accepted belief or practice, but on that which the person regards as first hand personal knowledge. ~ Evelyn Underhill,
241:[P]rescientific people... could never guess the nature of physical reality beyond the tiny sphere attainable by unaided common sense. Nothing else ever worked, no exercise from myth, revelation, art, trance, or any other conceivable means; and notwithstanding the emotional satisfaction it gives, mysticism, the strongest prescientific probe in the unknown, has yielded zero. ~ E O Wilson,
242:Father Egan continues to write about everything from the injustice of current wars to the past and future of Catholic mysticism.
In the Catholic Reporter, he publishes an article titled "Celibacy, a Vague Old Cross on Priestly Backs", and explains that it started "only in 1139 when the church no longer wanted to be financially responsible for the children of priests. ~ Gloria Steinem,
243:How deluded we sometimes are by the clear notions we get out of books. They make us think that we really understand things of which we have no practical knowledge at all. I remember how learnedly and enthusiastically I could talk for hours about mysticism and the experimental knowledge of God, and all the while I was stoking the fires of the argument with Scotch and soda. ~ Thomas Merton,
244:In western civilization, the period ruled by mysticism is known as the 'Dark Ages' and the 'Middle Ages'. I will assume that you know the nature of that period and the state of human existence in those ages. The Renaissance broke the rules of the mystics. "Renaissance" means the "rebirth". Few people today will care to remind you that it was a rebirth of reason - of man's mind. ~ Ayn Rand,
245:Healthy mysticism praises acts of letting go, of being emptied, of getting in touch with the space inside and expanding this until it merges with the space outside. Space meeting space; empty pouring into empty. Births happen from that encounter with emptiness, nothingness. . . . Let us not fight emptiness and nothingness, but allow it to penetrate us even as we penetrate it. ~ Matthew Fox,
246:Maybe with chastened humility we could ask if cultures who have lived in close harmony with creation for thousands of years can teach us how to become custodians instead of conquistadors, participants instead of plunderers. For in plundering the planet we have pillaged our souls, leaving us with an emptiness that systematic theology alone cannot fill. So mysticism beckons. We ~ Brian Zahnd,
247:The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticism of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from it's indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
248:Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is not asceticism; it has again and again in the past repressed fanatical and cruel exaggerations of asceticism. Catholicism is not mere mysticism; it is even now defending human reason against the mere mysticism of the Pragmatists. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
249:In the dominant Western religious system, the love of God is essentially the same as the belief in God, in God’s existence, God’s justice, God’s love. The love of God is essentially a thought experience. In the Eastern religions and in mysticism, the love of God is an intense feeling experience of oneness, inseparably linked with the expression of this love in every act of living. ~ Erich Fromm,
250:Mysticism is the realisation of God, of the Universal Self. It is attained either as a realisation of God outside the Mystic, or within himself. In the first case, it is usually reached from within a religion, by exceptionally intense love and devotion, accompanied by purity of life, for only "the pure in heart shall see God". ~ Annie Besant in Annie Besant Quotes ISBN-13: 978-1535078498 (2016),
251:Bonaventure’s theology is never about trying to placate a distant or angry God, earn forgiveness, or find some abstract theory of justification. He is all cosmic optimism and hope! Once it lost this kind of mysticism, Christianity became preoccupied with fear, unworthiness, and guilt much more than being included in—and delighting in—an all-pervasive plan that is already in place. ~ Richard Rohr,
252:My education was a huge influence. I trained at the Lee Strasberg Institute at Tisch, which is a huge foundation for young actors. They teach you their methods, and give you the sense that acting is much more tangible than most people think. I think there's a mysticism of what acting is, in the fact that it's this ungraspable, spur-of-the-moment thing that nobody can understand. ~ Roberto Aguire,
253:Through the discovery of Buchner, Biology was relieved of another fragment of mysticism. The splitting up of sugar into CO2 and alcohol is no more the effect of a 'vital principle' than the splitting up of cane sugar by invertase. The history of this problem is instructive, as it warns us against considering problems as beyond our reach because they have not yet found their solution. ~ Jacques Loeb,
254:The mystery of sound is mysticism; the harmony of life is religion. The knowledge of vibrations is metaphysics, the analysis of atoms is science, and their harmonious grouping is art. The rhythm of form is poetry, and the rhythm of sound is music. This shows that music is the art of arts and the science of allsciences; and it contains the fountain of all knowledge within itself. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan,
255:There is little mysticism without an element of transcendence, and conversely, there is no transcendence without a certain degree of egocentrism. It may be that the genesis of these experiences is to be sought in the unique situation of the very young child in relation to adults. The theory of the filial origin of the religious sense seems to us singularly convincing in this connection. ~ Jean Piaget,
256:We become pitiable and ridiculous when we imbibe an unreasoned mysticism in our life without any natural or substantial basis. People like us, who are proud to be revolutionary in every sense, should always be prepared to bear all the difficulties, anxieties, pain and suffering which we invite upon ourselves by the struggles initiated by us and for which we call ourselves revolutionary. ~ Bhagat Singh,
257:Moreover, it is not entirely without significance that true love was, in Platonic philosophy -- but also, as you know, in a whole sector, a whole domain of Christian spirituality and mysticism -- the form par excellence of the true life. Since Platonism, true love and the true life have traditionally belonged together, and to a large extend Christian Platonism will take up this theme. ~ Michel Foucault,
258:Mysticism on this planet evolved only in those places where people learned the technology of being ecstatic by their own nature. This is because only when you are blissful will you be in the highest state of receptivity, and truly willing to explore all aspects of life. Otherwise, you would not dare, because if keeping yourself pleasant is a big challenge, you can’t take on other challenges. ~ Sadhguru,
259:Science has been abused for every conceivable purpose under the sun. Which is all the more reason to deliver the power it grants to as many people as possible, as rapidly as possible, instead of leaving it in the hands of a few. It is not a reason to retreat into fantasy – to declare: knowledge is a cultural artifact, nothing is universally true, only mysticism and obfuscation and ignorance will save us. ~ Greg Egan,
260:The most unfathomable schools and sages have never attained to the gravity which dwells in the eyes of a baby of three months old. It is the gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common-sense. The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
261:There's something nearly mystical about certain words and phrases that float through our lives. It's computer mysticism. Words that are computer generated to be used on products that might be sold anywhere from Japan to Denmark - words devised to be pronounceable in a hundred languages. And when you detach one of these words from the product it was designed to serve, the words acquires a chantlike quality. ~ Don DeLillo,
262:I guess I will say, going back to the Judaism questions, there are mental reflexes or patterns that I think of as Jewish in my own feelings about mysticism and theology.Franz Kafka is someone I very much revere. If I believed in holy texts I'd go to him as a touchstone. Not that I read Kafka all the time at this point. In a way, this is what I most want to talk about and it's the hardest to talk about. ~ Jonathan Raymond,
263:Fantasy is not antirational, but pararational; not realistic but surrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud's terminology, it employs primary not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes which, as Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,
264:Juanita refused to analyze this process, insisted that it was something ineffable, something you couldn't explain with words. A radical, rosary-toting Catholic, she has no problem with that kind of thing. But the bitheads didn't like it. Said it was irrational mysticism. So she quit and took a job with some Nipponese company. They don't have any problem with irrational mysticism as long as it makes money. ~ Neal Stephenson,
265:emblem. The meditator would place his head between his knees and whisper hymns and repeat the name of a magic emblem. Repetition of the magic emblem was used as the object to dwell upon and would chase away distractions and cause the “demons and hostile angels to flight.” A state of ecstasy was reached, which Gershom G. Scholem, a scholar of Jewish mysticism, has described as “an attitude of deep self-oblivion. ~ Herbert Benson,
266:The East is unfamiliar with those confessions, memoirs, and autobiographies so beloved in the West. There is a clear difference in tonality. One's gaze never lingers on the suffering humanity of Christ, but penetrates behind the kenotic veil. To the West's mysticism of the Cross and its veneration of the Sacred Heart corresponds the eastern mysticism of the sealed tomb, from which eternal life eternal wells up. ~ Paul Evdokimov,
267:There's a principle in Jewish mysticism called tikkun olam, it means, literally, world repair. The idea is that God created the world by containing divine light in vessels, some of which shattered and got scattered all over. It's the job of humanity to help God by finding and releasing those shards of light - through good deeds and acts. Every time we do, God becomes more perfect - and we become a little more like God. ~ Jodi Picoult,
268:All one night we sat, with a friend of his, in a big dark roadhouse outside of Philadelphia, arguing and arguing about mysticism, and smoking more and more cigarettes and gradually getting drunk. Eventually, filled with enthusiasm for the purity of heart which begets the vision of God, I went on with them into the city, after the closing of the bars, to a big speak-easy where we completed the work of getting plastered. ~ Thomas Merton,
269:Thanks to you, the leaders of the University branch—Masters Greenleaf and Smith—are safely out of harm’s way. As to the Northern branch—well, my agent currently describes it as an association of young men, young and unmarried, who gather in the woods from time to time to celebrate elaborate rituals that draw equally from local folklore and a youthful taste for mysticism and indiscriminate copulation. We’re watching them closely. ~ Ellen Kushner,
270:The three values which men had held for centuries and which have now collapsed are: mysticism, collectivism, altruism. Mysticism — as a cultural power — died at the time of the Renaissance. Collectivism — as a political ideal — died in World War II. As to altruism — it has never been alive. It is the poison of death in the blood of Western civilization, and men survived it only to the extent to which they neither believed nor practiced it. ~ Ayn Rand,
271:We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I was taught from this was not to begin a sentence with And. I pointed out that most sentences in the Bible began with And, but I was told that English had changed since the time of King James. In that case, I argued, why make us read the Bible? But it was in vain. Robert Graves was very keen on the symbolism and mysticism in the Bible at that time. ~ Stephen Hawking,
272:California was a great place to get over mysticism in the 1960s and 1970s. Such an endless parade of gurus and mystics came through, peddling their wares, that they canceled each other out. They couldn't compete with the drugs, and the drugs canceled each other out as well. Fervent visions, shared to excess, became clanking clichés. All that was left was daily reality, with its endless negotiation, devoid of absolutes, but alive with surprises. ~ Stewart Brand,
273:Mysticism and revolution are two aspects of the same attempt to bring about radical change. Mystics cannot prevent themselves from becoming social critics, since in self-reflection they will discover the roots of a sick society. Similarly, revolutionaries cannot avoid facing their own human condition, since in the midst of their struggle for a new world they will find that they are also fighting their own reactionary fears and false ambitions. ~ Henri J M Nouwen,
274:We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I learned from this exercise was not to begin a sentence with "And." When I pointed out that most sentences in the Bible began with "And," I was told that English had changed since the time of King James. In that case, I argued, why make us read the Bible? But it was in vain. Robert Graves at that time was very keen on the symbolism and mysticism in the Bible. ~ Stephen Hawking,
275:Religion, mysticism and magic all spring from the same basic 'feeling' about the universe: a sudden feeling of meaning, which human beings sometimes 'pick up' accidentally, as your radio might pick up some unknown station. Poets feel that we are cut off from meaning by a thick, lead wall, and that sometimes for no reason we can understand the wall seems to vanish and we are suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of the infinite interestingness of things. ~ Colin Wilson,
276:In mysticism, knowledge cannot be separated from a certain way of life which becomes its living manifestation. To acquire mystical knowledge means to undergo a transformation; one could even say that the knowledge is the transformation. Scientific knowledge, on the other hand, can often stay abstract and theoretical. Thus most of today’s physicists do not seem to realize the philosophical, cultural and spiritual implications of their theories. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold,
277:The strongest wish of a vast number of earnest men and women to-day is for a basis of religious belief which shall rest, not upon tradition or external authority or historical evidence, but upon the ascertainable facts of human experience. The craving for immediacy, which we have seen to be characteristic of all mysticism, now takes the form of a desire to establish the validity of the God-consciousness as a normal part of the healthy inner life. ~ William Ralph Inge,
278:The effects of this change were momentous. Truth was no longer to be ascertained by consulting authority, but by inward meditation. There was a tendency, quickly developed, towards anarchism in politics, and, in religion, towards mysticism, which had always fitted with difficulty into the framework of Catholic orthodoxy. There came to be not one Protestantism, but a multitude of sects; not one philosophy opposed to scholasticism, but as many as there ~ Bertrand Russell,
279:I'm painfully aware that the experts in fields like religion and spirituality sometimes feel that bringing mysticism down so far into ordinary life is an insult to the great mystics and makes it all too light and breezy. I feel just the opposite. I believe that one day we'll understand that we've lost out on religion because we made it too lofty and distant. I see it as a simple quality of everyday life, and in that simplicity lie its beauty and importance. ~ Thomas Moore,
280:Some god or Weltgeist has been making a movie out of us for the past six thousand years, and now we have turned a corner on the movie set of reality and have discovered the boards propping up the two-dimensional monuments of human history. The movement of humanism has reached its limit, and now at that limit it is breaking apart into the opposites of mechanism and mysticism and moving along the circumference of a vast new sphere of posthuman thought. ~ William Irwin Thompson,
281:The problem of knowing man is parallel to the religious problem of knowing God. In conventional Western theology the attempt is made to know God by thought, to make statements about God. It is assumed that I can know God in my thought. In mysticism, which is the consequent outcome of monotheism, the attempt is given up to know God by thought, and it is replaced by the experience of union with God in which there is no more room—and no need—for knowledge about God. ~ Erich Fromm,
282:Unchecked, the dominating influences of money and of barren intellectualism would reduce the life of emotions to freezing point. And, unable to grasp the holier benefits of religion, the mysticism of the heart reacts in the art-intoxication. .... In this cold, irreligious and practical age the warmth of this devotion to art has kept alive many higher aspirations of our soul, which otherwise might readily have died, as they did in the middle of the last century. ~ Abraham Kuyper,
283:It is necessary for us to recognize that there is an intelligent mysticism in the life of faith . . . of living union and communion with the exalted and ever-present Redeemer. . . . He communes with his people and his people commune with him in conscious reciprocal love. . . . The life of true faith cannot be that of cold metallic assent. It must have the passion and warmth of love and communion because communion with God is the crown and apex of true religion. ~ Timothy J Keller,
284:It is necessary for us to recognize that there is an intelligent mysticism in the life of faith . . . of living union and communion with the exalted and ever-present Redeemer. . . . He communes with his people and his people commune with him in conscious reciprocal love. . . . The life of true faith cannot be that of cold metallic assent. It must have the passion and warmth of love and communion because communion with God is the crown and apex of true religion.25 ~ Timothy J Keller,
285:Bog-lights, vapors of mysticism, psychic overtones, soul orgies, wailings among the shadows, weird gnosticisms, veils and tissues of words, gibbering subjectivisms, gropings and maunderings, ontological fantasies ... this is the stuff, the phantasms of hope, that fills your book shelves. Look at them, all the sad wraiths of sad mad men and passionate rebels — your Schopenhauers, your Strindbergs, your Tolstois and Nietzsches. Come. Your glass is empty. Fill and forget. ~ Jack London,
286:We rationalize, we dissimilate, we pretend: we pretend that modern medicine is a rational science, all facts, no nonsense, and just what it seems. But we have only to tap its glossy veneer for it to split wide open, and reveal to us its roots and foundations, its old dark heart of metaphysics, mysticism, magic, and myth. Medicine is the oldest of the arts, and the oldest of the sciences: would one not expect it to spring from the deepest knowledge and feelings we have? ~ Oliver Sacks,
287:Fundamental to our analysis is the assumption that the population, as individuals or groups, behaves “rationally,” that it calculates costs and benefits to the extent that they can be related to different courses of action, and makes choices accordingly.…Consequently, influencing popular behavior requires neither sympathy nor mysticism, but rather a better understanding of what costs and benefits the individual or the group is concerned with, and how they are calculated. ~ Malcolm Gladwell,
288:Himmler was an ambitious, sinister, idealistic creature of devious ways. His ideas on human behaviour had been gleaned from animal breeding lectures at agricultural college years before. The SS had certain affinities to the Jesuit monastic orders, an enforced mysticism which even Hitler found slightly ludicrous: in 1940, witnessing the pagan Yule celebration of the SS Leibstandarte at Christmas, he quietly commented to an adjutant that this would never take the place of ‘Silent Night. ~ David Irving,
289:In the Judaic literature, one also finds portrayals of contemplative or meditative exercises. As in other religious literatures, the end purpose here is union with God. The earliest form of mysticism in Judaism is Merkabolism, which dates back approximately to the first century A.D., the time of the Second Temple. Practices of this sect included various forms of asceticism, including fasting. Merkabolism’s meditative exercises focused on body posture and the dwelling upon hymns and a magic ~ Herbert Benson,
290:The alchemical tradition assumes that every physical art or science is a body of knowledge which exists only because it is ensouled by invisible powers and processes. Physical chemistry, as it is practiced in the modern world, is concerned principally with pharmaceutical or industrial research projects. It is confined within the boundaries of an all-pervading materialism, which binds labor to the advancement of physical objectives. ~ Manly Palmer Hall, in Meditation Symbols in Eastern and Western Mysticism,
291:Our children... have a passionate need for the dimension of transcendence, mysticism, way-outness. We're not offering it to them legitimately. The tendency of the churches to be relevant and more-secular-than-thou does not answer our need for the transcendent. As George Tyrrell wrote about a hundred years ago, "If a [man's] craving for the mysterious, the wonderful, the supernatural, be not fed on true religion, it will feed itself on the garbage of any superstition that is offered to it. ~ Madeleine L Engle,
292:That which the mind in some hidden cove of a Norwegian fjord, or on some lonely island—far out where the mighty sea booms eternally—through centuries had conceived of religious mysticism, and there shaped so as to fit the conditions of life, now sought a natural expression on the open reaches of the prairies.… With these people the feeling of strangeness in this alien land and the utter impossibility of striking new roots here gave to their testimony the tone of deep, rich spiritual experience. ~ O E R lvaag,
293:Kiev, you understand, is a medieval city full of wild superstition and mysticism. It has always been the heart of Russian reaction. The Black Hundreds, may they sink into their graves, have aroused against you the most ignorant and brutal of the masses. They are deathly afraid of Jews and at the same time frighten them to death. This reveals to you something about the human condition. Rich or poor, those of our brethren who can run out of here are running. Some who can’t are already mourning. ~ Bernard Malamud,
294:A number of aspects of mathematics are not much talked about in contemporary histories of mathematics. We have in mind business and commerce, war, number mysticism, astrology, and religion. In some instances, writers, hoping to assert for mathematics a noble parentage and a pure scientific experience, have turned away their eyes. Histories have been eager to put the case for science, but the Handmaiden of the Sciences has lived a far more raffish and interesting life than her historians allow. ~ Eric Temple Bell,
295:Theta clearing is about as practical and simple as repairing a shoe lace. It is nothing to do with hypnotism, voodooism, charalatanism, monkeyism or theosophy. Done, the thetan can do anything a stage magician can do in the way of moving objects around. But this isn't attained by holding one's breath or thinking right thoughts or voting Republican or any other superstitous or mystic practice. So for the reason I brought up, rule out, auditor, any mumbo jumbo or mysticism, spiritualism, or religion. ~ L Ron Hubbard,
296:He had slowed up to avoid the inevitable end of his thought:
"--the frontiers of consciousness." The frontiers that artists must explore were not for her, ever. She was fine-spun, inbred--eventually she might find rest in some quiet mysticism. Exploration was for those with a measure of peasant blood, those with big thighs and thick ankles who could take punishment as they took bread and salt, on every inch of flesh and spirit.
--Not for you, he almost said. It's too tough a game for you. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,
297:That he knew marked him off as belonging to the sentimental branch of humanity. He couldn't help it: Stoic or Epicurean: Caliph in the harem or Dervish desiccating in the sand: one or the other you must be. And his desire was to be a saint of the Anglican variety… as his mother had been, without convent, ritual, vows, or miracles to be performed by your relics! That sainthood, truly, the Foreign Legion might give you… The desire of every English gentleman from Colonel Hutchinson upwards… A mysticism… ~ Ford Madox Ford,
298:Young people need compassion and guidance, not obscure mysticism. Here are some guidelines for young people: Remember that you are always your own person. Do not surrender your mind, heart, or body to any person. Never compromise your dignity for any reason. Maintain your health with sound diet, hygiene, exercise, and clean living. Don’t engage in drugs or drinking. Money is never more important than your body and mind, but you must work and support yourself. Never depend on others for your livelihood. ~ Ming Dao Deng,
299:The contemplation of nature has two correlative aspects. First, it means appreciating the “thusness” or “thisness” of particular things, persons and moments. We are to see each stone, each leaf, each blade of grass, each frog, each human face, for what it truly is, in all the distinctness and intensity of its specific being. As the prophet Zechariah warns us, we are not to “despise the day of small things” (4:10). “True mysticism”, says Olivier Clément, “is to discover the extraordinary in the ordinary. ~ Kallistos Ware,
300:Brief experiences of sublime absorption, as ordinary as being struck by the brilliant blue of a cloudless sky, may contribute to your sense of being religious. The mystical moments multiply and over time you extend the borders of yourself, you are less prone to protecting yourself, and you have more empathy with the people and the world around you. If you define religion as a strong sense of the divine, your daily mysticism contributes to that sense by drawing you out of yourself into nature and then beyond. ~ Thomas Moore,
301:In the world of Ramon Lull, the brilliant civilisation of the Spanish Moslems, with its mysticism, philosophy, art, and science, was close at hand; the Spanish Jews had intensively developed their philosophy, their science and medicine, and their mysticism, or Cabala. To Lull, the Catholic Christian, occurred the generous idea that an Art, based on principles which all three religious traditions held in common, would serve to bind all three together on a common philosophical, scientific, and mystical basis. ~ Frances A Yates,
302:Among the educated young there is therefore a startling and unprecedented interest in the transformation of human consciousness. All over the Western world publishers are selling millions of books dealing with Yoga, Vedanta, Zen Buddhism, and the chemical mysticism of psychedelic drugs, and I have come to believe that the whole “hip” subculture, however misguided in some of its manifestations, is the earnest and responsible effort of young people to correct the self–destroying course of industrial civilization. ~ Alan W Watts,
303:Another important tradition descends from Pythagoras; who is significant because he stands nearest to the Oriental mystics who must be considered in their turn. He taught a sort of mysticism of mathematics, that number is the ultimate reality; but he also seems to have taught the transmigration of souls like the Brahmins; and to have left to his followers certain traditional tricks of vegetarianism and water-drinking very common among the eastern sages, especially those who figure in fashionable drawing-rooms, ~ G K Chesterton,
304:Often, everywhere we look, we seem to find obstacles and facades and smokescreens, so it was really nice to find things in the world that actually spoke to me. And I felt like Eastern thought really spoke to me. Because it isn't trying to cover up the pain in life; it's trying to deal with it and overcome it in an intelligent way. I think the reason I love Eastern thought so much, and mysticism in general - but especially Buddhism - is because it seems to me an attempt to look life squarely in the face, as it is. ~ Jeff Mangum,
305: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. ~ Evelyn Underhill,
306:Mysticism has often been misunderstood as the attempt to escape this simple, phenomenal world to a more pure existence in heaven beyond. This is not mysticism, but Gnosticism. Biblical mysticism is the attempt to exit 'this world' to an alternative reality that pervades the old order. Its goal is to jettison the mind-set that says 'greed is good,' selfishness is normal,' and 'killing is necessary.' Mysticism in biblical terms is not escapism, as so many have caricatured it, but a fight for ethics and social change. ~ Walter Wink,
307:This human need for mysticism – surrender to an unknown truth, union – stands at the helm of all romantic feeling. It is, in essence, the same intimacy known in a mother’s arms; in those who are deprived of the experience, the need freezes and, distorted, it can rent a life. All addiction has as its foundation skewed yearning for the same transcendence. For me, the spell of the material was broken by my brother’s death; after his suicide, all I wanted was the renewal of my connection to the intangible. ~ Antonella Gambotto Burke,
308:In virtually every spiritual tradition, suffering is seen as a doorway to awakening. In the West, this connection can be seen in the biblical story of Job, as well as the dark night of the soul in medieval mysticism. The transformative power of suffering finds perhaps its clearest expression in the Four Noble Truths espoused by the Buddha. Though suffering and trauma are not identical, the Buddha’s insight into the nature of suffering can provide a powerful mirror for examining the effects of trauma in your life. ~ Peter A Levine,
309:He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights. 'White to play and mate in two moves.' Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of calm power. White always mates. ~ George Orwell,
310:Dead towns are the Cathedrals of Silence. They, too, have their gargoyles, singular figures, exaggerated, dubious, set in high profile. They stand out from the mass of grey, which takes all it has in the way of character, its twitchings of stagnant life from them. Some have been distorted by solitude, others grimace with a directionless fervour; here there are masks of cherished lust, there faces ceaselessly sculpted and furrowed by mysticism. Human gargoyles, the only figures of interest in this monotonous population. ~ Georges Rodenbach,
311:As Eastern thought has begun to interest a significant number of people, and meditation is no longer viewed with ridicule or suspicion, mysticism is being taken seriously even within the scientific community. An increasing number of scientists are aware that mystical thought provides a consistent and relevant philosophical background to the theories of Contemporary science, a conception of the world in which the scientific discoveries of men and women can be in perfect harmony with their spiritual aims and religious beliefs. ~ Fritjof Capra,
312:Man, in this view, is incapable of looking around him and acknowledging without wincing or worse, without falling down in despair, that he doesn't know anything about ultimate reality. In this view, man is simply too small for such acknowledgments. He fears that he might stop hoping or caring if he learned that the universe was perhaps indifferent to him. Could he feel gratitude for his existence or awe in the face of a starry sky if he suspected that he was neither designed nor loved? He thinks not. Therefore he opts for mysticism. ~ Eric Maisel,
313:I see myself––an angel!––and I die;
the window may be art or mysticism, yet
I long for rebirth in the former sky
where Beauty blooms, my dream being my coronet!

But, alas, our low World is suzerain!
even in this retreat it can be too
loathsome––till the foul vomit of the Inane
drives me to stop my nose before the blue.

O Self familiar with these bitter things,
can the glass outraged by that monster be
shattered? can I flee with my featherless wings––
and risk falling through all eternity? ~ St phane Mallarm,
314:As a mode of perception that often becomes a style of life, paranoia weaves around the vulnerable self or group an air-tight metaphysic and world view. Paranoia is an antireligious mysticism based on the feeling or perception that the world in general, and others in particular, are against me or us. Reality is perceived as hostile. By contrast, the religious mystic experiences the ground of being as basically friendly to the deepest needs of the self. That which is unknown, strange, or beyond our comprehension is with and for rather than against us. ~ Sam Keen,
315:Rational thinking which is free from assumptions ends therefore in mysticism. To relate oneself in the spirit of reverence for life to the multiform manifestations of the will-to-live which together constitute the world is ethical mysticism. All profound world-view is mysticism, the essence of which is just this: that out of my unsophisticated and naïve existence in the world there comes, as a result of thought about self and the world, spiritual self-devotion to the mysterious infinite Will which is continuously manifested in the universe. ~ Albert Schweitzer,
316:Mathematics, natural science, laws, arts, even morality, etc. do not completely fill the soul; there is always a space left over reserved for pure and speculative reason, the emptiness of which prompts us to seek in vagaries, buffooneries, and mysticism for what seems to be employment and entertainment, but what actually is mere pastime undertaken in order to deaden the troublesome voice of reason, which, in accordance with its nature, requires something that can satisfy it and does not merely subserve other ends or the interests of our inclinations. ~ Immanuel Kant,
317:The Barbarian Way was, in some sense, trying to create a volatile fuel to get people to step out and act. It's pretty hard to get a whole group of people moving together as individuals who are stepping into a more mystical, faith-oriented, dynamic kind of experience with Christ. So, I think Barbarian Way was my attempt to say, "Look, underneath what looks like invention, innovation and creativity is really a core mysticism that hears from God, and what is fueling this is something really ancient." That's what was really the core of The Barbarian Way. ~ Erwin McManus,
318:One phrase of Murray’s resonated particularly, that we were called to an intelligent mysticism. That means an encounter with God that involves not only the affections of the heart but also the convictions of the mind. We are not called to choose between a Christian life based on truth and doctrine or a life filled with spiritual power and experience. They go together. I was not being called to leave behind my theology and launch out to look for “something more,” for experience. Rather, I was meant to ask the Holy Spirit to help me experience my theology. ~ Timothy J Keller,
319:The UFO phenomenon and saga, the first contacts with aliens from extraordinarily advanced civilizations beyond our solar system, and extraterrestrials’ messages, all started with an occult-metaphysical-mysticism-psychical movement created by Maria Orsic, a medium and founder of the Vrilerinnen ( The Vril Society), and based upon messages she claimed she received from extraterrestrials from Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri), which contained technical data and precise instructions on how to build a super “Out of this World” flying machine (UFO). ~ Jean Maximillien De La Croix de Lafayette,
320:I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world. Or the fear of heretics...What's happening is that each year our old flat earth of conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the experiences we have and this is creating wide-spread feelings of topsy-turviness. As a result we're getting more and more people in irrational areas of thought...occultism, mysticism, drug changes and the like...because they feel an inadequacy in classical reason to handle what they know are real experiences. ~ Robert M Pirsig,
321:Christians were tempted to reject time altogether and replace it with mysticism and “spiritual” pursuits, to live as Christians out of time and thereby escape its frustrations; to insist that time has no real meaning from the point of view of the Kingdom which is “beyond time.” And they finally succeeded. They left time meaningless indeed, although full of Christian “symbols.” And today they themselves do not know what to do with these symbols. For it is impossible to “put Christ back into Christmas” if He has not redeemed—that is, made meaningful—time itself. ~ Alexander Schmemann,
322:I see You, Every time I look into Buddha’s eyes. I give myself to You. Every time I alter one of Your 1,000s names. Honestly & fully I love You. Through Christ and Maria, Shiva and Shakti, Krishna and Radha, With every day that passes and every breath I take. I enter gratitude for receiving Your Love. Obeying Your Laws of Truthfulness and Ahimsa, Weaving Prana With hearts and souls of Gaia. Through mysticism, shamanism, sufism, and ecstatic meditations. I yearn to touch You, to feel You, to be You. Within this amazing Journey of Awareness of Your Consciousness. ~ Nata a Nuit Pantovi,
323:She was practically an invalid ever after I could remember her, but used what strength she had in lavish care upon me and my sister, who was three years younger. There was a touch of mysticism and poetry in her nature which made her love to gaze at the purple sunsets and watch the evening stars. Whatever was grand and beautiful in form and color attracted her. It seemed as though the rich green tints of the foliage and the blossoms of the flowers came for her in the springtime, and in the autumn it was for her that the mountain sides were struck with crimson and with gold. ~ Calvin Coolidge,
324:Ever since I was in Amherst College I have remembered how Garman told his class in philosophy that if they would go along with events and have the courage and industry to hold to the main stream, without being washed ashore by the immaterial cross currents, they would someday be men of power. He meant that we should try to guide ourselves by general principles and not get lost in particulars. That may sound like mysticism, but it is only the mysticism that envelopes every great truth. One of the greatest mysteries in the world is the success that lies in conscientious work. ~ Calvin Coolidge,
325:Consider the idea of a God who is essentially sadness and longing, yearning to reveal himself, to know himself through a being who knows him, thereby depending on that being who is still himself - yet who in this sense creates Him. Here we have a vision which has never been professed outside of a few errant knights of mysticism. To profess this essential bipolarity of the divine essence is not to confuse creator and created, creature and creation. It is to experience the irrevocable solidarity between the Fravarti and its Soul, in the battle they undertake for each other`s sake. ~ Henry Corbin,
326:To be sane, he held, was either to be sedated by melancholy or activated by hysteria, two responses which were 'always and equally warranted for those of sound insight'. All others were irrational, merely symptoms of imaginations left idle, of memories out of work. And above these mundane responses, the only elevation allowable, the only valid transcendence, was a sardonic one: a bliss that annihilated the universe with jeers of dark joy, a mindful ecstasy. Anything else in the way of 'mysticism' was a sign of deviation or distraction, and a heresy to the obvious. (“The Medusa”) ~ Thomas Ligotti,
327:A Super-Integral Spirituality has all the features of an Integral Spirituality, plus, among other things, an inherent conjunction of each stage with a given state, giving all of its stages a transpersonal or spiritual flavor (at least the possibility of either gross nature mysticism, subtle deity mysticism, causal formless mysticism, or nondual Unity mysticism). These mystical states are, of course, available to virtually all the lower 1st- and 2nd-tier stages, although there are likely some significant differences in 3rd tier, given its inherent conjunction of structures and states. ~ Ken Wilber,
328:Everything contains the spark of intelligence." From the smallest atom to the largest planetary system, each part of the world contains a form of consciousness or spark of intelligence. In the physical realm, consciousness exhibits as awareness, personality, energetic vibrations, or other characteristics that are in keeping with the particular physical form. Science and mysticism both suggest that consciousness is multidimensional, that it folds and unfolds into physical reality from unseen realms, and its expression in the physical world is only a part of its greater reality. This ~ Joyce Higginbotham,
329:Mysticism is a rational enterprise. Religion is not. The mystic has recognized something about the nature of consciousness prior to thought, and this recognition is susceptible to rational discussion. The mystic has reasons for what he believes, and these reasons are empirical. The roiling mystery of the world can be analyzed with concepts (this is science), or it can be experienced free of concepts (this is myticism). Religion is nothing more than bad concepts held in place of good ones for all time. It is the denial-at once full of hope and full of fear-of the vastitude of human ignorance. ~ Sam Harris,
330:Science Fiction had made itself a part of the general debate of our times. It has added to the literature of the world ; through its madness and freewheeling ingenuity , it has helped form the new pop music, through its raising of semi religious questions, it has become part of the underworld where drugs, mysticism, God-kicks, and sometimes even murder meet ; and lastly , it has become one of the most popular entertainment in its own rights, a wacky sort of fiction that grabs and engulfs anything new or old for its subject matter, turning it into a shining and often insubstantial wonder. ~ Brian W Aldiss,
331:It’s all a trick,’ he observed. ‘All a rotten trick men play on themselves. They get together and they create this beautiful thing and then they stand back and say, “See, we have souls and insight and holiness and joy. We put it all in this building so we don’t have to bother with it in our everyday lives. We can live as stupidly and brutally as we wish, and stamp down any inclination to spirituality or mysticism that we see in our neighbours or ourselves. Having set it in stone, we don’t have to bother with it any more.” It’s a trick men play on themselves. Just one more way we cheat ourselves. ~ Robin Hobb,
332:The central feature of the practice of meditation and hard work known as Zen is that, as Matthiessen says, it “has no patience with mysticism, far less the occult.” Nor does it have any time with moralism, the prescriptions or distortions we would impose on the world, obscuring it from our view. It asks, it insists rather, that we take this moment for what it is, undistracted, and not cloud it with needless worries of what might have been or fantasies of what might come to be. It is, essentially, a training in the real…”the Universe itself is the scripture of Zen." Pico Iyer from introduction. ~ Peter Matthiessen,
333:I am tired of this city. I am tired of its pagan pretensions and false histories. Hyperion is a poet’s world devoid of poetry. Keats itself is a mixture of tawdry, false classicism and mindless, boomtown energy. There are three Zen Gnostic assemblies and four High Muslim mosques in the town, but the real houses of worship are the countless saloons and brothels, the huge marketplaces handling the fiberplastic shipments from the south, and the Shrike Cult temples where lost souls hide their suicidal hopelessness behind a shield of shallow mysticism. The whole planet reeks of mysticism without revelation. ~ Dan Simmons,
334:All the terms used in the science books, 'law,' 'necessity,' 'order,' 'tendency,' and so on, are really unintellectual .... The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, 'charm,' 'spell,' 'enchantment.' They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched. I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical. We may have some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language about things is simply rational and agnostic. ~ G K Chesterton,
335:You make the mistake of considering Christianity as something that developed over the course of a few years, from the death of Jesus to the time the gospels were written. But Christianity wasn't new. Only the name was new. Christianity was merely a stage in the meeting, cross-fertilization, metamorphosis of Western logic and Eastern mysticism. Look how the religion itself changed over the centuries, reinterpreting itself to meet changing times. Christianity is just a new name for a conglomeration of old myths and philosophies. All the gospels do is retell the sun myth and garble some of the ideas from the Greeks and Romans. ~ Michael Moorcock,
336:I MADE my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.
On google, I found this about Yeats:

Yeats was fascinated by the occult and mysticism. He joined the Golden Dawn, a secret society which practiced ritual magic, in 1890, progressing to its Inner Order in 1893, and remained an active member for most of his life. He also joined paranormal research organisation The Ghost Club in 191.
~ William Butler Yeats, A Coat
,
337:It was the discovery of the quantum universe that changed everything, and that universe was so small and so dynamic that it could not be observed directly. Trying to explain their insights, scientists looked at the language of mysticism. At the subatomic level, the parallels between quantum reality and mysticism were striking. For example, the behavior of light: in some contexts it acted like a wave, in others like a particle. Could it be both? Physicists had no concept for grasping this, so they dispensed with Western logic and embraced paradox. (This is important, too, for the notion of vampires being both living and dead.) ~ Katherine Ramsland,
338:It is certainly clear that despite being a man of religion, Rasputin was also a shrewd opportunist, nor did he ever make any attempt to hide his physical appetites. On arriving in the capital, he did the rounds of the salons of a fin-de-siècle St Petersburg noted for its decadence, pandering to rich society ladies who dabbled in the then-fashionable cults of faith healing, table turning and eastern mysticism, and built a following among them. He was, for his detractors, an easy personality to caricature in his loose peasant blouse and long boots, with his heavy frame, his long oily black hair and beard, and his coarse bulging lips. ~ Helen Rappaport,
339:What I see in nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of ‘humility.’ This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. . . . My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. . . . I want to know how God created this world. I want to know his thoughts, the rest are details. ~ Albert Einstein, as quoted by Timothy Ferris, in his article “The Other Einstein”, Awake! magazine, (22 January 1992),
340:The Contract had an air of esoteric mysticism when it covered topics related to the universe’s deepest secrets, yet it was gratuitously specific regarding the wrath of Thotash and the penalty for default. Huge swaths of the unholy text were dedicated to the terrors and woes that would fall upon those who failed to meet the Terms, including pestilences of the skin, debilitating afflictions of vital organs, nameless horrors from forgotten dimensions, and the “rain of teeth,” though whose teeth was uncertain. Article VIII, section 3, subsection B was particularly unsettling, assuming one had sufficient familiarity with anatomy to grasp it fully ~ J Zachary Pike,
341:I have sometimes thought that all philosophical disputes could be reduced to an argument between the partisans of “prickles” and the partisans of “goo.” The prickly people are tough-minded, rigorous, and precise, and like to stress differences and divisions between things. They prefer particles to waves, and discontinuity to continuity. The gooey people are tender-minded romanticists who love wide generalizations and grand syntheses. They stress the underlying unities, and are inclined to pantheism and mysticism. Waves suit them much better than particles as the ultimate constituents of matter, and discontinuities jar their teeth like a compressed-air drill. ~ Alan W Watts,
342:We admire Sufism in the West for its tolerance, mysticism, and poetry, its ecstatic rituals, its music, even. But it’s also, especially in rural parts, a religion that bears more than a casual resemblance to late medieval Catholicism. It encourages the veneration of saint-like figures at special shrines and their celebration at festivities. It’s something the fundamentalist mullahs abhor. Just as the Protestants smashed icons, prohibited carnivals, and defaced cathedrals, the Wahhabists insist on a reformed style of Islam, purged of all that. Remember all the TV footage from 1996. When the Taliban took over in Afghanistan, their first task was stamping that stuff out. ~ Dan Eaton,
343:In a free society, we do not imprison those who violate profound cultural taboos or burn them at the stake. But they must be identified as dangerous radicals, not fit to be counted among the priesthood. The reaction is appropriate. To raise the dread question is to open the possibility that the institutions responsible “for the indoctrination of the young” and the other propaganda institutions may be infected by the most dangerous of plagues: insight and understanding. Awareness of the facts might threaten the social order, protected by a carefully spun web of pluralist mysticism, faith in the benevolence of our pure-hearted leadership, and general superstitious belief. An ~ Noam Chomsky,
344:We talked a little set theory, and then I asked him my last question: “What causes the illusion of the passage of time?”
Gödel spoke not directly to this question, but to the question of what my question meant — that is, why anyone would even believe that there is a perceived passage of time at all.
He went on to relate the getting rid of belief in the passage of time to the struggle to experience the One Mind of mysticism. Finally he said this: “The illusion of the passage of time arises from confusing the given with the real. Passage of time arises because we think of occupying different realities. In fact, we occupy only different givens. There is only one reality. ~ Rudy Rucker,
345:The failure of the fight with the father-dragon, the overwhelming force of spirit, leads to patriarchal castration, inflation, loss of the body in the ecstasy of ascension, and so to a world-negating mysticism. This phenomenon is particularly evident in Gnosticism and Gnostic Christianity. The infiltration of Iranian and Manichaean influences strengthens the martial component in the hero, but because he is still a Gnostic at heart, he remains hostile to the world, the body, materiality, and woman. Although there are certain elements in Gnosis that strive for a synthesis of oppo-sites, these always fly apart in the end; the heavenly side of man triumphs and the earthly is sacrificed. ~ Erich Neumann,
346:Paganism is one of the first religions that deliberately incorporates new perspectives from science, metaphysics, and mysticism into its spirituality and consciously breaks from the traditional Newtonian view of the world. (These concepts are explored further in chapter 5.) Pagans tend to see all parts of the universe-from the smallest atom to the largest planetary system-as sacred and having some form of consciousness or spark of intelligence. Most Pagans believe that this living universe is able to communicate to
all parts of itself on one or more levels, and that these parts can choose to cooperate together for specific ends. Pagans call this cooperation magick.
Paganism ~ Joyce Higginbotham,
347:Miracles in mysticism don't occupy such an important place. It's metaphor, for the peasants, for the crowds, to impress people. What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically. You plunge into it. Philosophy is a slow process of logic and logical discourse: A bringing B bringing C and so forth. In mysticism you can jump from A to Z. But the ultimate objective is the same. It's knowledge. It's truth. ~ Elie Wiesel, in a 1978 interview with John S. Friedman, published in The Paris Review 26 (Spring 1984); and in Elie Wiesel : Conversations (2002) edited by Robert Franciosi, p. 87.,
348:and by a militant rejection of all later accretions, which included medieval fiqh, mysticism and Falsafah, which most Muslims now regarded as normative. Because the Ottoman sultans did not conform to his vision of true Islam, Abd al-Wahhab declared that they were apostates and worthy of death. Instead, he tried to create an enclave of pure faith, based on his view of the first ummah of the seventh century. His aggressive techniques would be used by some fundamentalists in the twentieth century, a period of even greater change and unrest. Wahhabism is the form of Islam that is still practised today in Saudi Arabia, a puritan religion based on a strictly literal interpretation of scripture and early Islamic tradition. ~ Karen Armstrong,
349:1. Symbology — The employment of various external aids to preserve and develop the religious faculty of man. 2. History — The philosophy of each religion as illustrated in the lives of divine or human teachers acknowledged by each religion. This includes mythology; for what is mythology to one race, or period, is or was history to other races or periods. Even in cases of human teachers, much of their history is taken as mythology by successive generations. 3. Philosophy — The rationale of the whole scope of each religion. 4. Mysticism — The assertion of something superior to sense-knowledge and reason which particular persons, or all persons under certain circumstances, possess; runs through the other divisions also. All ~ Swami Vivekananda,
350:The truth is that Tolstoy, with his immense genius, with his colossal faith, with his vast fearlessness and vast knowledge of life, is deficient in one faculty and one faculty alone. He is not a mystic; and therefore he has a tendency to go mad. Men talk of the extravagances and frenzies that have been produced by mysticism; they are a mere drop in the bucket. In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic. ...The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism - the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem. ~ G K Chesterton, Tolstoy,
351:The fire-eater? The swordsman? The gentleman who nearly drowns each night… do you believe they’d be welcomed into the circles you belong to?” He shook his head. “Society scorned them, turned them into freak shows and curiosities, and now they are only interested in cheering because of the glamour of those velvet curtains. The allure of magic and mysticism. Should they encounter those same performers on the street, they would not be so kind or accepting. It is a sad truth that we do not live in a world where differences are accepted. And until such a time, Miss Wadsworth, I will provide a home to the misfits and unwanteds, even if it means losing bits of my soul to that hungry, unsatisfied beast Mr. Barnum has called show business. ~ Kerri Maniscalco,
352:Amanda Feilding, who was born in 1943, is an eccentric as only the English aristocracy can breed them. (She’s descended from the house of Habsburg and two of Charles II’s illegitimate children.) A student of comparative religion and mysticism, Feilding has had a long-standing interest in altered states of consciousness and, specifically, the role of blood flow to the brain, which in Homo sapiens, she believes, has been compromised ever since our species began standing upright. LSD, Feilding believes, enhances cognitive function and facilitates higher states of consciousness by increasing cerebral circulation. A second way to achieve a similar result is by means of the ancient practice of trepanation. This deserves a brief digression. ~ Michael Pollan,
353:When we have rejected the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture, we allow Christians to depend on things other than the Bible as their guide to matters of life and faith. In particular, people begin to depend upon mysticism, upon ways of supposedly knowing God apart from the Bible. They look inward for intrinsic wisdom rather than outward to the Bible for its extrinsic wisdom. They forsake biblical reason in favor of feelings, voices, visions, or other subjective means of supposedly knowing God. This is a deadly error, for spiritual discernment must be founded upon God's objective revelation of himself in Scripture. We can only judge between what is wrong and what is right when we know what God says to be true. We can know this only from Scripture. ~ Tim Challies,
354:/Farsi The sun can only be seen by the light of the sun. The more a man or woman knows, the greater the bewilderment, the closer to the sun the more dazzled, until a point is reached where one no longer is. A mystic knows without knowledge, without intuition or information, without contemplation or description or revelation. Mystics are not themselves. They do not exist in selves. They move as they are moved, talk as words come, see with sight that enters their eyes. I met a woman once and asked her where love had led her. "Fool, there's no destination to arrive at. Loved one and lover and love are infinite." [1841.jpg] -- from The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia, with Lectures by Inayat Khan, Translated by Coleman Barks

~ Farid ud-Din Attar, Mysticism
,
355:It is as if Protestantism by clinging to the Scripture wished to preserve the last faint echoes of God’s Word in a world that has fallen silent, a world where only things speak dumbly, a world delivered over to the silence and ruthlessness of the Absolute, - and in his fear of God the Protestant has realized that it is his own goal before which he cowers. For in excluding all other values, in casting himself in the last resort on an autonomous religious experience, he has assumed a final abstraction of a logical rigour that urges him unambiguously to strip all sensory trappings from his faith, to empty it of all content but the naked Absolute, retaining nothing but the pure form, the pure, empty and neutral form of a 'religion in itself', a 'mysticism in itself'. ~ Hermann Broch,
356:I had another reason for seeking Him, for trying to espy His face, a professional one. God and literature are conflated in my mind. Why this is, I’m not sure. Perhaps because great books seem heavensent. Perhaps because I know that each nove is a puny but very valiant attempt at godlike behavior. Perhaps because there is no difference between the finest poetry and most transcendent mysticism. Perhaps because writers like Thomas Merton, who are able to enter the realm of the spirit and come away with fine, lucid prose. Perhaps because of more secular writers, like John Steinbeck, whose every passage, it seems to me, peals with religiousity and faith. It once occured to me that literature — all art really — is either talking to people about God, or talking to God about people. ~ Paul Quarrington,
357:We'll learn more about how the brain operates, how matter works, and what fills up empty space. But even if we evolve into a smarter, wiser species in possession of a truckload of new scientific knowledge, we will still have
no access to ultimate answers. When a smart person finally admits that some mysteries can't be solved, she can relax and rejoice. When you honor what you know to be true, that nobody knows the ultimate answers, that there
is a difference between what is not yet known and what can't be known, that guesses don't really count, and that easy answers like sitting on a mat or walking in nature may soothe you but answer nothing, then you can leave
mysticism behind. Then you are ready for the answer: that you are obliged to take charge of the project of your life. ~ Eric Maisel,
358:Therefore it is to a practical mysticism that the practical man is here invited: to a training of his latent faculties, a bracing and brightening of his languid consciousness, an emancipation from the fetters of appearance, a turning of his attention to new levels of the world. Thus he may become aware of the universe which the spiritual artist is always trying to disclose to the race. This amount of mystical perception—this “ordinary contemplation,” as the specialists call it—is possible to all men: without it, they are not wholly conscious, nor wholly alive. It is a natural human activity, no more involving the great powers and sublime experiences of the mystical saints and philosophers than the ordinary enjoyment of music involves the special creative powers of the great musician. ~ Evelyn Underhill,
359:The Fire is to be quieted and silenced says the Upanishad. Then we come nearer, to the immediate vicinity of the Truth; an inner hearing opens, the direct voice of Truth - the Word - reaches us to lead and guide. Even so, however, we have not come to the end of our journey; the Word of revelation is not the ultimate Light. The Word too is a clothing, though a luminous clothing - hiranmayam pair am. When this last veil dissolves and disappears, when utter silence, absolute calm and quietude reign in the entire consciousness, when no other lights trouble or distract our attention, there appears the Atman in its own body ; we stand face to face with the source of all lights, the self of the Light, the light of the Self. We are that Light and we become that Light.
   ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, The Approach To Mysticism,
360:Few of us are not in some way infirm, or even diseased; and our very infirmities help us unexpectedly. In the psychopathic temperament we have the emotionality which is the sine qua non of moral perception; we have the intensity and tendency to emphasis which are the essence of practical moral vigor; and we have the love of metaphysics and mysticism which carry one's interests beyond the surface of the sensible world. What, then, is more natural than that this temperament should introduce one to regions of religious truth, to corners of the universe, which your robust Philistine type of nervous system, forever offering its biceps to be felt, thumping its breast, and thanking Heaven that it hasn't a single morbid fiber in its composition, would be sure to hide forever from its self-satisfied possessors? ~ William James,
361:No... it never takes your breath away, telling you things you already know, laying everything out flat, as though the terms and the time, and the nature and the movement of everything were secrets of the same magnitude. They write for people who read with the surface of their minds, people with reading habits that make the smallest demands of them, people brought up reading for facts, who know what's going to come next and want to know what's coming next, and get angry at surprises. Clarity's essential, and detail, no fake mysticism, the facts are bad enough. But we're embarrassed for people who tell too much, and tell it without surprise. How does he know what happened, unless it's one unshaven man alone in a boat, changing I to he, and how often do you get a man alone in a boat, in all this... all this... ~ William Gaddis,
362:Himmler left the Catholic Church in 1936, and as the war later raged he sometimes reflected on Islam’s supposed advantages in motivating soldiers. “Mohammed knew that most people are terribly cowardly and stupid,” he told Kersten in 1942. “That is why he promised every warrior who fights courageously and falls in battle two [ sic ] beautiful women. . . . You may call this primitive and laugh about it . . . but it is based on deeper wisdom. A religion must speak a man’s language.” These reflections have a crackpot quality, as did much of the rest of Himmler’s thinking about the spiritual world, which included an interest in mysticism and the occult. It is, of course, no reflection on the Islamic faith that Himmler read its sacred text so shallowly or that he subscribed to the hoary cliché about Islam’s supposed martial character. ~ Anonymous,
363:Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. ~ G K Chesterton,
364:The results of that charismatic takeover have been devastating. In recent history, no other movement has done more to damage the cause of the gospel, to distort the truth, and to smother the articulation of sound doctrine. Charismatic theology has turned the evangelical church into a cesspool of error and a breeding ground for false teachers. It has warped genuine worship through unbridled emotionalism, polluted prayer with private gibberish, contaminated true spirituality with unbiblical mysticism, and corrupted faith by turning it into a creative force for speaking worldly desires into existence. By elevating the authority of experience over the authority of Scripture, the Charismatic Movement has destroyed the church’s immune system—uncritically granting free access to every imaginable form of heretical teaching and practice. ~ John F MacArthur Jr,
365:Love and marriage are about work and compromise. They're about seeing someone for what he is, being dissapointed , and deciding to stick around anyway. They're about commitment and comfort, not some kind of sudden, hysterical recognition'. 'That's not what I want. Disspointment and comfort is not what I want'. 'Why not? Because you expect it to be magical and mystical? Because you don't want to work?' 'Why can't it be magical? Why can't it be mystical?' 'Because if you count on magic and mysticism, then as soon as shit happens, as soon as life interferes, as soon as your stepson treats you badly, or your husband's ex-wife has a fit about something, or your baby dies, as soon as life happens, the magic will disappear and you'll be left with nothing. You can't count on magic. Trust me, I know. Sweetheart, little girl, you can't count on magic'. ~ Ayelet Waldman,
366:Modern life seems to recede further and further away from nature, and closely connected with this fact we seem to be losing the feeling of reverence towards nature. It is probably inevitable when science and machinery, capitalism and materialism go hand in hand so far in a most remarkably successful manner. Mysticism, which is the life of religion in whatever sense we understand it, has come to be relegated altogether in the background. Without a certain amount of mysticism there is no appreciation for the feeling of reverence, and, along with it, for the spiritual significance of humility. Science and scientific technique have done a great deal for humanity; but as far as our spiritual welfare is concerned we have not made any advances over that attained by our forefathers. In fact we are suffering at present the worst kind of unrest all over the world. ~ D T Suzuki,
367:This too to remember. If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes. If he mystifies to avoid a straight statement, which is very different from breaking so-called rules of syntax or grammar to make an effect which can be obtained in no other way, the writer takes a longer time to be known as a fake and other writers who are afflicted by the same necessity will praise him in their own defense. True mysticism should not be confused with incompetence in writing which seeks to mystify where there is no mystery but is really only the necessity to fake to cover lack of knowledge or the inability to state clearly. Mysticism implies a mystery and there are many mysteries; but incompetence is not one of them; nor is overwritten journalism made literature by the injection of a false epic quality. Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
368:This too to remember. If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes. If he mystifies to avoid a straight statement, which is very different from breaking so-called rules of syntax or grammar to make an efffect which can be obtained in no other way, the writer takes a longer time to be known as a fake and other writers who are afflicted by the same necessity will praise him in their own defense. True mysticism should not be confused with incompetence in writing which seeks to mystify where there is no mystery but is really only the necessity to fake to cover lack of knowledge or the inability to state clearly. Mysticism implies a mystery and there are many mysteries; but incompetence is not one of them; nor is overwritten journalism made literature by the injection of a false epic qulaity. Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
369:In the lifetime of the Catalan philosopher and mystic, Ramon Lull (1232–c. 1316), the Iberian peninsula was the home of three great religious and philosophical traditions. Dominant was Christianity and the Catholic Church, but a large part of the country was still under the rule of the Moslem Arabs; and it was in Spain that the Jews of the Middle Ages had their strongest centre. In the world of Ramon Lull, the brilliant civilisation of the Spanish Moslems, with its mysticism, philosophy, art, and science, was close at hand; the Spanish Jews had intensively developed their philosophy, their science and medicine, and their mysticism, or Cabala. To Lull, the Catholic Christian, occurred the generous idea that an Art, based on principles which all three religious traditions held in common, would serve to bind all three together on a common philosophical, scientific, and mystical basis. ~ Frances A Yates,
370:Psychedelic experiences are notoriously hard to render in words; to try is necessarily to do violence to what has been seen and felt, which is in some fundamental way pre- or post-linguistic or, as students of mysticism say, ineffable. Emotions arrive in all their newborn nakedness, unprotected from the harsh light of scrutiny and, especially, the pitiless glare of irony. Platitudes that wouldn't seem out of place on a Hallmark card flow with the force of revealed truth.

Love is everything.
Okay, but what else did you learn?
No - you must not have heard me; it's everything!

Is a platitude so deeply felt still just a platitude? No, I decided. A platitude is precisely what is left of a truth after it has been drained of all emotion. To resaturate that dried husk with feeling is to see it again for what it is: the loveliest and most deeply rooted of truths, hidden in plain sight. ~ Michael Pollan,
371:The progress of the sciences toward theories of fundamental unity, cosmic symmetry (as in the unified field theory)—how do such theories differ, in the end, from that unity which Plato called “unspeakable” and “indiscribable,” the holistic knowledge shared by so many peoples of the earth, Christians included, before the advent of the industrial revolution made new barbarians of the peoples of the West? In the United States, before spiritualist foolishness at the end of the last century confused mysticism with “the occult” and tarnished both, William James wrote a master work of metaphysics; Emerson spoke of “the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal One . . .”; Melville referred to “that profound silence, that only voice of God”; Walt Whitman celebrated the most ancient secret, that no God could be found “more divine than yourself. ~ Peter Matthiessen,
372:With the advent of medieval Scholasticism, … we find a clear distinction between theologia and philosophia. Theology became conscious of its autonomy qua supreme science, which philosophy was emptied of its spiritual exercises, which, from now on, were relegated to Christian mysticism and ethics. Reduced to the rank of a “handmaid of theology,” philosophy’s role was henceforth to furnish theology with conceptual—and hence purely theoretical—material. When, in the modern age, philosophy regained its autonomy, it still retained many features inherited from this medieval conception. In particular, it maintained its purely theoretical character, which even evolved in the direction of a more and more thorough systemization. Not until Nietzsche, Bergson, and existentialism does philosophy consciously return to being a concrete attitude, a way of life and of seeing the world. ~ Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. Michael Chase (1995), p. 107.,
373:Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is not asceticism; it has again and again in the past repressed fanatical and cruel exaggerations of asceticism. Catholicism is not mere mysticism; it is even now defending human reason against the mere mysticism of the Pragmatists. Thus, when the world went Puritan in the seventeenth century, the Church was charged with pushing charity to the point of sophistry, with making everything easy with the laxity of the confessional. Now that the world is not going Puritan but Pagan, it is the Church that is everywhere protesting against a Pagan laxity in dress or manners. It is doing what the Puritans wanted done when it is really wanted. In all probability, all that is best in Protestantism will only survive in Catholicism; and in that sense all Catholics will still be Puritans when all Puritans are Pagans. ~ G K Chesterton,
374:A: Absorbed in our discussion of immortality, we had let night fall without lighting the lamp, and we couldn't see each other's faces. With an offhandedness or gentleness more convincing than passion would have been, Macedonio Fernandez' voice said once more that the soul is immortal. He assured me that the death of the body is altogether insignificant, and that dying has to be the most unimportant thing that can happen to a man. I was playing with Macedonio's pocketknife, opening and closing it. A nearby accordion was infinitely dispatching La Comparsita, that dismaying trifle that so many people like because it's been misrepresented to them as being old... I suggested to Macedonio that we kill ourselves, so we might have our discussion without all that racket.
Z: (mockingly) But I suspect that at the last moment you reconsidered.
A: (now deep in mysticism) Quite frankly, I don't remember whether we committed suicide that night or not. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,
375:Two moral forces shaped how we think and live in this shining twentieth century: the Virgin, and the Dynamo. The Dynamo represents the desire to know; the Virgin represents the freedom not to know.

What's the Virgin made of? Things that we think are silly, mostly. The peculiar logic of dreams, or the inexplicable stirring we feel when we look on someone that's beautiful not in a way that we all agree is beautiful, but the unique way in which a single person is. The Virgin is faith and mysticism; miracle and instinct; art and randomness.

On the other hand, you have the Dynamo: the unstoppable engine. It finds the logic behind a seeming miracle and explains that miracle away; it finds the order in randomness to which we're blind; it takes the caliper to a young woman's head and quantifies her beauty in terms of pleasing mathematical ratios; it accounts for the secret stirring you felt by discoursing at length on the nervous systems of animals. ~ Dexter Palmer,
376:Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess players do... Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine... He was damned by John Calvin... Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion... The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits... The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason... Materialists and madmen never have doubts... Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have the mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. ~ G K Chesterton,
377:The Ordo Templi Orientis and The Golden Dawn were associated with secret Russian, British and German societies, and especially with Elena Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society, established in New York City in 1875, Rudolph Steiner, the Brüder Des Lichts, and Rudolf von Sebottendorff, founder of Thule Gesellschaft which attracted Adolf Hitler, Himmler, Karl Haushofer, Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, Rosenberg, Halford John Mackinder, Hans Frank. These secret associations and alliances linked together German and English occultists in a formidable bond. The blend of esoterism, occult and so-called British-German mysticism deeply influenced Hitler; an alarming movement which was in sharp contrast with Maria Orsic’s metaphysical and occultic movement. Many argued that this strong link between British and German occultists, led Adolf Hitler to believe that England will not take a stand against him. Hitler thought that those occultists had a considerable influence in England. ~ Jean Maximillien De La Croix de Lafayette,
378:I consider myself a spiritual atheist. I don't believe in a god but I believe in us - human beings. And I believe there is more goodwill than ill will in the world. If you look at all the religions in the world, they have broadly two components: there are that religion's philosophies and rules for life (which you can agree with or disagree with - applying one's common sense), and then on top of them there is a mysticism. A mystical god that you can never see or meet. If you remove the mysticism, then there are just the philosophies and rules for life that you can agree with or disagree with. I encourage you to remove the mysticism and just apply common sense to the ideas. And there is a rule in every major religion, called the Golden Rule. Essentially: treat other people the way you'd like to be treated yourself. If we all did this, the whole world would work instantaneously. Praying, meditation - fine. But just follow the Golden Rule and the whole world works. Making the world work could be that simple. ~ Eddie Izzard,
379:The choices aren't between a false but soothing mysticism and an acceptance of an indifferent universe. Rather, the choice is between an easy mysticism and genuine mystery. This is a very different choice! It is one that a smart person can embrace and applaud—and even grow excited about. He never again has to bang his head against the brick wall of mystery. He can just let it be mysterious. The mystic has made a poor choice, one that a smart person with a mystical bent will never really feel completely comfortable embracing. The mystic, instead of acknowledging that she has absolutely no clue as to what created the universe or how the universe operates, prefers to act like she understands—and, more than that, that the answer is simple and straightforward. If she has a scientific bent, she turns metaphors from physics into proofs of the existence of gods or of a cosmic consciousness. If she has no scientific bent, she simply opts for whatever occult system or language she is born into or that speaks to her. ~ Eric Maisel,
380:But it is the event horizon around a black hole where the Tull-Toks claim the greatest books are to be found. When a Tull-Tok is tired of browsing through the endless universal library, she drifts toward a black hole. As she accelerates toward the point of no return, the streaming gamma rays and x-rays unveil more and more of the ultimate mystery for which all the other books are but glosses. The book reveals itself to be ever more complex, more nuanced, and just as she is about to be overwhelmed by the immensity of the book she is reading, she realizes with a start that time has slowed down to standstill, and she will have eternity to read it as she falls forever towards a center that she will never reach.

Finally, a book has triumphed over time.

Of course, no Tull-Tok has ever returned from such a journey, and many dismiss their discussion of reading black holes as pure myth. Indeed, many consider the Tull-Toks to be nothing more than illiterate frauds who rely on mysticism to disguise their ignorance. ~ Ken Liu,
381:At the age of twenty, I obtained my first copy of The Eye in the Triangle at an Occult Bookstore in Los Angeles called The Psychic Eye and, naturally, I read it with the greatest enthusiasm and interest, and I excitedly extracted the essentials from its pages. It subsequently left a deep impression upon my mind, and it has continued to influence my life in ways invaluable to my growth as both a man and a magician. Since that first reading, I have read the book a few more times, including recently, and every time it has illumined my understanding of Crowley, his magick and his mysticism in some manner or another useful to my life and magical progress. I have read most published and unpublished works by Israel Regardie, but this book is the one he wrote that moved me the most, finding the greatest meaning and place in the sanctuary of my soul. I feel that The Eye in the Triangle is essential reading material for anyone who is seriously interested in learning about the life, magick and mysticism of Aleister Crowley. ~ David Cherubim,
382:I contemplated her, seeing her young bland face looking at me, now removed as if behind a gauze curtain. She quietly invited me to suffer. There was a great space now, a great silent hall in which this suffering could take place. There was no urgency now, nothing to plan, nothing to achieve. What shall I do with it, I asked her, what shall I do now with my love for you which you so terribly revived by reappearing in my life? Why did you come back, if you could not content me? What can I do now with the great useless machine of my love which has no wholesome work to do? I can do nothing for you any more, my darling. I wondered if I would be fated to live with this love, making of it a shrine which could not now be desecrated. Perhaps when I was living alone and being everyone's uncle like a celibate priest I would keep this fruitless love as my secret chapel. Could I then learn to love uselessly and unpossessively and would this prove to be the monastic mysticism which I had hoped to attain when I came away to the sea? ~ Iris Murdoch,
383:Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. "He that will lose his life, the same shall save it," is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. ~ G K Chesterton,
384:Let it be stated clearly that mysticism is an a-rational type of experience, and in some degree common to all men.

It is an intuitive, self-evident, self-recognized knowledge which comes fitfully to man. It should not be confounded with the instinctive and immediate knowledge possessed by animals and used by them in their adaptations to environment.

The average man seldom pays enough attention to his slight mystical experiences to profit or learn from them. Yet his need for them is evidenced by his incessant seeking for the thrills, sensations, uplifts, and so on, which he organizes for himself in so many ways--the religious way being only one of them. In fact, the failure of religion--in the West, at any rate--to teach true mysticism, and its overlaying of the deeply mystic nature of its teachings with a pseudo-rationalism and an unsound historicity may be the root cause for driving people to seek for things greater than they feel their individual selves to be in the many sensation-giving activities in the world today. ~ Paul Brunton,
385:This last figure, the White Magician, symbolizes the self-transcending element in the scientist's motivational drive and emotional make-up; his humble immersion into the mysteries of nature, his quest for the harmony of the spheres, the origin of life, the equations of a unified field theory. The conquistadorial urge is derived from a sense of power, the participatory urge from a sense of oceanic wonder. 'Men were first led to the study of natural philosophy', wrote Aristotle, 'as indeed they are today, by wonder.' Maxwell's earliest memory was 'lying on the grass, looking at the sun, and wondering'. Einstein struck the same chord when he wrote that whoever is devoid of the capacity to wonder, 'whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes upon life'.

This oceanic feeling of wonder is the common source of religious mysticism, of pure science and art for art's sake; it is their common denominator and emotional bond. ~ Arthur Koestler,
386:This last figure, the White Magician, symbolizes the self-transcending element in the scientist's motivational drive and emotional make-up; his humble immersion into the mysteries of nature, his quest for the harmony of the spheres, the origin of life, the equations of a unified field theory. The conquistadorial urge is derived from a sense of power, the participatory urge from a sense of oceanic wonder. 'Men were first led to the study of natural philosophy', wrote Aristotle, 'as indeed they are today, by wonder.' Maxwell's earliest memory was 'lying on the grass, looking at the sun, and wondering'. Einstein struck the same chord when he wrote that whoever is devoid of the capacity to wonder, 'whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes upon life'.

This oceanic feeling of wonder is the common source of religious mysticism, of pure science and art for art's sake; it is their common denominator and emotional bond. ~ Arthur Koestler,
387:The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility. Detached intellectualism is (in the exact sense of a popular phrase) all moonshine; for it is light without heat, and it is secondary light, reflected from a dead world. But the Greeks were right when they made Apollo the god both of imagination and of sanity; for he was both the patron of poetry and the patron of healing. Of necessary dogmas and a special creed I shall speak later. But that transcendentalism by which all men live has primarily much the position of the sun in the sky. We are conscious of it as of a kind of splendid confusion; it is something both shining and shapeless, at once a blaze and a blur. But the circle of the moon is as clear and unmistakable, as recurrent and inevitable, as the circle of Euclid on a blackboard. For the moon is utterly reasonable; and the moon is the mother of lunatics and has given to them all her name. ~ G K Chesterton,
388:There are many other escapes from the empirical, external self, which might seem to be, but are not, contemplation. For instance, the experience of being seized and taken out of oneself by collective enthusiasm, in a totalitarian parade: the self-righteous upsurge of party loyalty that blots out conscience and absolves every criminal tendency in the name of Class, Nation, Party, Race or Sect. The danger and the attraction of these false mystiques of Nation and of Class is precisely that they seduce and pretend to satisfy those who are no longer aware of any deep or genuine spiritual need. The false mysticism of the Mass Society captivates men who are so alienated from themselves and from God that they are no longer capable of genuine spiritual experience. Yet it is precisely these ersatz forms of enthusiasm that are “opium” for the people, deadening their awareness of their deepest and most personal needs, alienating them from their true selves, putting conscience and personality to sleep and turning free, reasonable men into passive instruments of the power politician. ~ Thomas Merton,
389:The path of seeking truth within and without is not an easy one. It goes literally against everything we've been told and taught by society and governments. The indoctrination of lies, the conditioning and programming is deep and far reaching. It has been going on for millennia. It takes tremendous effort to wake up from the hypnotic slumber, where most people dream to be awake. At this time of transition, as more and more knowledge is coming to the surface, there is the potential to create a new earth. However, this is also the age of deception for there are forces at work that do not want this to happen. They do their best to vector us away from truth and the most effective way to swallow a lie is to sandwich it between some truth with some emotional hooks. As mentioned many times before, lies are mixed with truth, hence discernment is essential. We need to engage our higher emotional center connecting us to divine intuition and also activate our higher intellect, engaging in sincere, open minded critical thinking, fusing the heart and the mind, mysticism and science. ~ Bernhard Guenther,
390:What earth is this so in want of you they rise up on high to seek you in heaven? Look at them staring at you right before their eyes, unseeing, unseeing, blind. . . . I was patient, but can the heart be patient of its heart? My spirit and yours blend together whether we are near one another or far away. I am you, you, my being, end of my desire, The most intimate of secret thoughts enveloped and fixed along the horizon in folds of light. How? The "how" is known along the outside, while the interior of beyond to and for the heart of being. Creatures perish in the darkened blind of quest, knowing intimations. Guessing and dreaming they pursue the real, faces turned toward the sky whispering secrets to the heavens. While the lord remains among them in every turn of time abiding in their every condition every instant. Never without him, they, not for the blink of an eye -- if only they knew! nor he for a moment without them. [1520.jpg] -- from Early Islamic Mysticism: Sufi, Quran, Miraj, Poetic and Theological Writings (Classics of Western Spirituality), by Michael A. Sells

~ Mansur al-Hallaj, If They Only Knew
,
391:Since it might appear unusual that a bio-psychiatrist should work as an expert in the realm of non-living nature, I believe it will be helpful to give the following summary:
My present work began in the realm of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, with natural scientific investigations of the energy at work in human emotions.
This led to the discovery of the bio-energy in the living organism, termed organismic orgone energy; and further to the discovery of the same type of a basically physical orgone energy in the atmosphere.
Orgonomy is not psychiatry, but the science of biophysics of the emotions, thus also including psychiatry, and physics in the realm of basic cosmic orgone energy.
It is not mysticism, but natural scientific, experimental investigation, also of mystical emotions and experiences.
Orgone energy is energy before matter (not after matter, as is atomic energy). It is studied by means of Geiger-Müller Counters and other physical instruments.
It follows entirely new, hitherto unknown functional laws of nature, and not the well known mechanical laws of electricity, heat, or mechanics. ~ Wilhelm Reich,
392:...on a number of occasions this book has made reference to magic, and each time you've shaken your head, muttering such criticisms as "What does he mean by 'magic' anyhow? It's embarrassing to find a grown man talking about magic in such a manner. How can anybody take him seriously?" Or, as slightly more gracious readers have objected, "Doesn't the author realize that one can't write about magic? One can create it but not discuss it. It's much too gossamer for that. Magic can be neither described nor defined. Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to slice roast beef."

To which the author now replies, Sorry, freeloaders, you're clever but you're not quite correct. Magic isn't the fuzzy, fragile, abstract and ephemeral quality you think it is. In fact, magic is distinguished from mysticism by its very concreteness and practicality. Whereas mysticism is manifest only in spiritual essence, in the transcendental state, magic demands a steady naturalistic base. Mysticism reveals the ethereal in the tangible. Magic makes something permanent out of the transitory, coaxes drama from the colloquial. ~ Tom Robbins,
393:What is fantasy? On one level, of course, it is a game: a pure pretense with no ulterior motive whatever. It is one child saying to another child, “Let’s be dragons,” and then they’re dragons for an hour or two. It is escapism of the most admirable kind—the game played for the game’s sake.
On another level, it is still a game, but a game played for very high stakes. Seen thus, as art, not spontaneous play, its affinity is not with daydream, but with dream. It is a different approach to reality, an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence. It is not antirational but pararational; not realistic, but surrealistic, superrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud’s terminology, it employs primary, not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes, which, Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Dragons are more dangerous, and a good deal commoner, than bears. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. And their guides, the writers of fantasy, should take their responsibilities seriously. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,
394:It is nothing new, these vital lies men tell themselves, muttering and mumbling them like charms and incantations against the powers of Night. The voodoos and medicine men and the devil-devil doctors were the fathers of metaphysics. Night and the Noseless One were ogres that beset the way of light and life. And the metaphysicians would win by if they had to tell lies to do it. They were vexed by the brazen law of the Ecclesiast that men die like the beasts of the field and their end is the same. Their creeds were their schemes, their religions their nostrums, their philosophies their devices, by which they half-believed they would outwit the Noseless One and the Night. "Bog-lights, vapours of mysticism, psychic overtones, soul orgies, wailings among the shadows, weird gnosticisms, veils and tissues of words, gibbering subjectivisms, gropings and maunderings, ontological fantasies, pan-psychic hallucinations—this is the stuff, the phantasms of hope, that fills your bookshelves. Look at them, all the sad wraiths of sad mad men and passionate rebels—your Schopenhauers, your Strindbergs, your Tolstois and Nietzsches. "Come. Your glass is empty. Fill and forget. ~ Jack London,
395:The language of mysticism and spiritual experience cuts a wide swath through the world’s religious traditions, and it presents an alternative theology, that of connection and intimacy. In Christian tradition, Jesus speaks this language when he claims, “The Father and I are one” (John 10: 30), and when he breathes on his followers and fills them with God’s Spirit (20: 22); it appears in the testimony of the apostle Paul, who converts during a mystical encounter with Christ on a road; and it fills the effusive poetry of John the Evangelist, whose vision of God is nothing short of one in which the whole of creation is absorbed into love. When the Bible is read from the perspective of divine nearness, it becomes clear that most prophets, poets, and preachers are particularly worried about religious institutions and practices that perpetuate the gap between God and humanity, making the divine unapproachable or cordoned off behind cadres of priestly mediators, whose interest is in exercising their own power as brokers of salvation. The biblical narrative is that of a God who comes close, compelled by a burning desire to make heaven on earth and occupy human hearts. ~ Diana Butler Bass,
396:But before entering into the details of I. A. O. as a magical formula it should be remarked that it is essentially the formula of Yoga or meditation; in fact, of elementary mysticism in all its branches. In beginning a meditation practice, there is always a quiet pleasure, a gentle natural growth; one takes a lively interest in the work; it seems easy; one is quite pleased to have started. This stage represents Isis. Sooner or later it is succeeded by depression-the Dark Night of the Soul, an infinite weariness and detestation of the work. The simplest and easiest acts become almost impossible to perform. Such impotence fills the mind with apprehension and despair. The intensity of this loathing can hardly be understood by any person who has not experienced it. This is the period of Apophis.
   It is followed by the arising not of Isis, but of Osiris. The ancient condition is not restored, but a new and superior condition is created, a condition only rendered possible by the process of death. The Alchemists themselves taught this same truth. The first matter of the work was base and primitive, though 'natural.' After passing through various stages the 'black dragon' appeared; but from this arose the pure and perfect gold
   ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, Magick, Part 3, The Formula of I. A. O. [158-159],
397:A smart person, one who perhaps had her mind filled with religious ideas as a child but who recognizes that genuine mysteries exist with respect to the origins of the universe, can experience real pain if she opts for an easy mysticism. By the same token, if she refuses to opt for that easy mysticism and announces that she doesn't know ultimate answers and can't know ultimate answers, then she falls prey to the coldness and sadness that come with suspecting that the universe is taking no interest in her. Pain is waiting for her in either case, whether she tries to maintain a mysticism that she can see right through or if she sheds that easy mysticism but then doesn't know how to handle the resultant meaninglessness. As it happens, natural psychology provides a complete, satisfying, and uplifting response to this conundrum, one based on the idea of living the paradigm shift from seeking meaning to making meaning. If, however, she happens not to land on this good idea, she can spend a lifetime mired simultaneously in both unhappy camps, drawn to one mystical or spiritual enthusiasm after another—one year a Catholic, then a Buddhist, then a pagan, then a Taoist, then something with no name but with New Age trappings, and so on—while at the same time paralyzed by the thought that the universe has no meaning. ~ Eric Maisel,
398:PREFACE Cosmology is the study of the universe as a whole, including its birth and perhaps its ultimate fate. Not surprisingly, it has undergone many transformations in its slow, painful evolution, an evolution often overshadowed by religious dogma and superstition. The first revolution in cosmology was ushered in by the introduction of the telescope in the 1600s. With the aid of the telescope, Galileo Galilei, building on the work of the great astronomers Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes Kepler, was able to open up the splendor of the heavens for the first time to serious scientific investigation. The advancement of this first stage of cosmology culminated in the work of Isaac Newton, who finally laid down the fundamental laws governing the motion of the celestial bodies. Instead of magic and mysticism, the laws of heavenly bodies were now seen to be subject to forces that were computable and reproducible. A second revolution in cosmology was initiated by the introduction of the great telescopes of the twentieth century, such as the one at Mount Wilson with its huge 100-inch reflecting mirror. In the 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble used this giant telescope to overturn centuries of dogma, which stated that the universe was static and eternal, by demonstrating that the galaxies in the heavens are moving away ~ Michio Kaku,
399:The [character-]armored, mechanistically rigid person thinks mechanistically, produces mechanistic tools, and forms a mechanistic conception of nature.

The armored person who feels his orgonotic body excitations in spite of his biological rigidity, but does not understand them, is mystic man. He is interested not in "material" but in "spiritual" things. He forms a mystical, supernatural idea about nature.

Both the mechanist and the mystic stand inside the limits and conceptual laws of a civilization which is ruled by a contradictory and murderous mixture of machines and gods. This civilization forms the mechanistic-mystical structures of men, and the mechanistic-mystical character structures keep reproducing a the mechanistic-mystical civilization. Both mechanists and mystics find themselves inside the framework of human structure in a civilization conditioned by mechanistics and mysticism. They cannot grasp the basic problems of this civilization because their thinking and philosophy correspond exactly to the condition they project and continue to reproduce. In order to realize the power of mysticism, one has only to think of the murderous conflict between Hindus and Muslims at the time India was divided. To comprehend what mechanistic civilization means, think of the "age of the atom bomb. ~ Wilhelm Reich,
400:The fascist dictator declares that the masses of people are biologically inferior and crave authority, that basically, they are slaves by nature. Hence, a totalitarian authoritarian regime is the only possible form of government for such people. It is significant that all dictators who today plunge the world into misery stem from the suppressed masses of people. They are intimately familiar with this sickness on the part of masses of people. What they lack is an insight into natural processes and development, the will to truth and research, so that they are never moved by a desire to want to change these facts.

On the other hand, the formal democratic leaders made the mistake of assuming that the masses of people were automatically capable of freedom and thereby precluded every possibility of establishing freedom and self-responsibility in masses of people as long as they were in power. They were engulfed in the catastrophe and will never reappear.

Our answer is scientific and rational. It is based on the fact that masses of people are indeed incapable of freedom, but it does not—as racial mysticism does—look upon this incapacity as absolute, innate, and eternal. It regards this incapacity as the result of former social conditions of life and, therefore, as changeable. ~ Wilhelm Reich,
401:There had been an uprising by the Bondelswaartz in 1922, and general turmoil in the country. His radio experiments interrupted, he sought refuge, along with a few score other whites, in the villa of a local landowner named Foppl. The place was a stronghold, cut off on all sides by deep ravines. After a few months of siege and debauchery, “haunted by a profound disgust for everything European,” Mondaugen went out alone into the bush, ended up living with the Ovatjimba, the aardvark people, who are the poorest of the Hereros. They accepted him with no questions. He thought of himself, there and here, as a radio transmitter of some kind, and believed that whatever he was broadcasting at the time was at least no threat to them. In his electro-mysticism, the triode was as basic as the cross in Christianity. Think of the ego, the self that suffers a personal history bound to time, as the grid. The deeper and true Self is the flow between cathode and plate. The constant, pure flow. Signals - sense data, feeling, memories relocating - are put onto the grid, and modulate the flow. We live lives that are waveforms constantly changing with time, now positive, now negative. Only at moments of great serenity is it possible to find the pure, the informationless state of signal zero.

“In the name of the cathode, the anode, and the holy grid. ~ Thomas Pynchon,
402:Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus, he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus, he believes that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. ~ G K Chesterton,
403:How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Ephesians 4, 14). Having a clear Faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching', looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires. However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an 'Adult' means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth. ~ Benedict XVI,
404:Sentences like the following are found in many mystical and reactionary writings though not as clearly formulated as by Hutten:

''Kulturbolschewismus is nothing new. It is based on a striving which humanity has had since its earliest days: the longing for happiness. It is the eternal nostalgia for paradise on earth . . . The religion of faith is replaced by the religion of pleasure.''

We, on the other hand, ask: Why not happiness on earth? Why should not pleasure be the content of life? If one were to put this question to a general vote, no reactionary ideology could stand up.

The reactionary also recognizes, though in a mystical manner, the connection between mysticism and compulsive marriage and family:

''Because of this responsibility (for the possible consequences of pleasure), society has created the institution of marriage which, as a lifelong union, provides the protective frame for the sexual relationship.''

Right after this, we find the whole register of "cultural values" which, in the framework of reactionary ideology, fit together like the parts of a machine:

''Marriage as a tie, the family as a duty, the fatherland as value of its own, morality as authority, religion as obligation from eternity.''

It would be impossible better to describe the rigidity of human plasma! ~ Wilhelm Reich,
405:We are often told, that in the critical periods of history it is the national soul which counts: that "where there is no vision, the people perish." No nation is truly defeated which retains its spiritual self-possession. No nation is truly victorious which does not emerge with soul unstained. If this be so, it becomes a part of true patriotism to keep the spiritual life, both of the individual citizen and of the social group, active and vigorous; its vision of realities unsullied by the entangled interests and passions of the time. This is a task in which all may do their part. The spiritual life is not a special career, involving abstraction from the world of things. It is a part of every man's life; and until he has realised it he is not a complete human being, has not entered into possession of all his powers. It is therefore the function of a practical mysticism to increase, not diminish, the total efficiency, the wisdom and steadfastness, of those who try to practise it. It will help them to enter, more completely than ever before, into the life of the group to which they belong. It will teach them to see the world in a truer proportion, discerning eternal beauty beyond and beneath apparent ruthlessness. It will educate them in a charity free from all taint of sentimentalism; it will confer on them an unconquerable hope; and assure them that still, even in the hour of greatest desolation, "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things. ~ Evelyn Underhill,
406:Sometimes, we expect life to work a certain way and when it doesn’t we blame others or see it as a sign, rather than face the pain of the choices we should or shouldn’t have made. Real healing won’t begin until we stop saying, “God prevented this or that.” Often in our attempt to protect ourselves from pain, we leave things to fate and don’t take chances. Or, we don’t work hard enough to keep the blessings we are given. Maybe, we didn't recognize a blessing, until it was too late. Often, it is the lies we tell ourselves that keeps us stuck in a delusion of not being responsible for our lives. We leave it all up to God. The truth is we are not leaves blowing toward our destiny without any control. To believe this is to take away our freedom of choice and that of others. The final stage of grief is acceptance. This can’t be reached through always believing God willed the outcomes in our lives, despite our inaction or actions. To think so is to take the easy escape from our accountability. Sometimes, God has nothing to do with it. Sometimes, we just screwed up and guarded our heart from accepting it, by putting our outcome on God as the reason it turned out the way it did. Faith is a beautiful thing, but without work we can give into a mysticism of destiny that really doesn't teach us lessons or consequences for our actions. Life then becomes a distorted delusion of no accountability with God always to blame for battles we walked away from, won or loss. ~ Shannon L Alder,
407:Thus we arrive at the problem of the relation of religion to the negation of sexual desire. Sexual debility results in a lowering of self-confidence. In one case it is compensated by the brutalization of sexuality, to maintain sexual repression, in the other by rigid character traits. The compulsion to control one's sexuality, to maintain sexual repression, leads to the development of pathologic, emotionally tinged notions of honor and duty, bravery and self-control. But the pathology and emotionality of these psychic attitudes are strongly at variance with the reality of one's personal behavior. The man who attains genital satisfaction, is honorable, responsible, brave, and controlled, without making much of a fuss about it. These attitudes are an organic part of his personality. The man whose genitals are weakened, whose sexual structure is full of contradictions, must continually remind himself to control his sexuality, to preserve his sexual dignity, to be brave in the face of temptation, etc. The struggle to resist the temptation to masturbate is a struggle that is experienced by every adolescent and every child, without exception. All the elements of the reactionary man's structure are developed in this struggle. It is in the lower middle classes that this structure is reinforced most strongly and embedded most deeply. Every form of mysticism derives it's most active energy and, in part, also it's content from this compulsory suppression of sexuality. ~ Wilhelm Reich,
408:Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. 'He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,' is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if we will risk it on the precipice.

He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. ~ G K Chesterton,
409:And the child, Francie Nolan, was of all the Rommelys and all the Nolans. She had the violent weaknesses and passion for beauty of the shanty Nolans. She was a mosaic of her grandmother Rommely’s mysticism, her tale-telling, her great belief in everything and her compassion for the weak ones. She had a lot of her grandfather Rommely’s cruel will. She had some of her Aunt Evy’s talent for mimicking, some of Ruthie Nolan’s possessiveness. She had Aunt Sissy’s love for life and her love for children. She had Johnny’s sentimentality without his good looks. She had all of Katie’s soft ways and only half of the invisible steel of Katie. She was made up of all of these good and these bad things. She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie’s secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk. She was all of these things and of something more that did not come from the Rommelys nor the Nolans, the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only—the something different from anyone else in the two families. It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life—the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike. ~ Betty Smith,
410:And the child, Francie Nolan, was of all the Rommelys and all the Nolans. She had the violent weaknesses and passion for beauty of the shanty Nolans. She was a mosaic of her grandmother Rommely's mysticism, her tale-telling, her great belief in everything and her compassion for the weak ones. She had a lot of her grandfather Rommely's cruel will. She had some of her Aunt Evy's talent for mimicking, some of Ruthie Nolan's possessiveness. She had Aunt Sissy's love for life and her love for children. She had Johnny's sentimentality without his good looks. She had all of Katie's soft ways and only half of the invisible steel of Katie. She was made up of all these good and these bad things.
She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Kitie's secret, desparing weeping. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk.
She was all of these things and of something more that did not come from the Rommelys nor the Nolans, the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only- the something different from anyone else in the two families. It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life- the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike. ~ Betty Smith,
411:Charles is difficult to pigeonhole politically. Tony Blair wrote that he considered him a “curious mixture of the traditional and the radical (at one level he was quite New Labour, at another definitely not) and of the princely and insecure.” He is certainly conservative in his old-fashioned dress and manners, his advocacy of traditional education in the arts and humanities, his reverence for classical architecture and the seventeenth-century Book of Common Prayer. But his forays into mysticism and his jeremiads against scientific progress, industrial development, and globalization give him an eccentric air. “One of the main purposes of the monarchy is to unite the country and not divide it,” said Kenneth Rose. When the Queen took the throne at age twenty-five, she was a blank slate, which gave her a great advantage in maintaining the neutrality necessary to preserve that unity. It was a gentler time, and she could develop her leadership style quietly. But it has also taken vigilance and discipline for her to keep her views private over so many decades. Charles has the disadvantage of a substantial public record of strong and sometimes contentious opinions, not to mention the private correspondence with government ministers protected by exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act that could come back to haunt him if any of it is made public. One letter that did leak was written in 1997 to a group of friends after a visit to Hong Kong and described the country’s leaders as “appalling old waxworks. ~ Sally Bedell Smith,
412:Imagine a young Isaac Newton time-travelling from 1670s England to teach Harvard undergrads in 2017. After the time-jump, Newton still has an obsessive, paranoid personality, with Asperger’s syndrome, a bad stutter, unstable moods, and episodes of psychotic mania and depression. But now he’s subject to Harvard’s speech codes that prohibit any “disrespect for the dignity of others”; any violations will get him in trouble with Harvard’s Inquisition (the ‘Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion’). Newton also wants to publish Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, to explain the laws of motion governing the universe. But his literary agent explains that he can’t get a decent book deal until Newton builds his ‘author platform’ to include at least 20k Twitter followers – without provoking any backlash for airing his eccentric views on ancient Greek alchemy, Biblical cryptography, fiat currency, Jewish mysticism, or how to predict the exact date of the Apocalypse.

Newton wouldn’t last long as a ‘public intellectual’ in modern American culture. Sooner or later, he would say ‘offensive’ things that get reported to Harvard and that get picked up by mainstream media as moral-outrage clickbait. His eccentric, ornery awkwardness would lead to swift expulsion from academia, social media, and publishing. Result? On the upside, he’d drive some traffic through Huffpost, Buzzfeed, and Jezebel, and people would have a fresh controversy to virtue-signal about on Facebook. On the downside, we wouldn’t have Newton’s Laws of Motion. ~ Geoffrey Miller,
413:The mystics have always stressed the religious aspect of Islam, the rationalists the other one. All the same, both of them have always had difficulties with Islam, simply because it cannot be put into any of their classifications. Take wudu as an example. A mystic will define it as a religious ablution with symbolic meaning. A rationalist will look upon it as a matter of hygiene only. They are both right, but only partly. The defectiveness of the mystic explanation lies in the fact that it lets the hygienic side of wudu become a mere form. Following the same logic in other questions, this approach will reduce Islam to pure religion, by eliminating all physical, intellectual, and social components from it. The rationalists take quite the opposite way. By neglecting the religious side, they degrade Islam to a political movement only, creating a new type of nationalism from it, a so called Islamic nationalism, deprived of ethical-religious substance, empty and equal to all other nationalisms in this regard. To be a Muslim in this case, does not represent an appeal or a duty, a moral or a religious obligation, or any attitude to the universal truth. It means only belonging to a group different from the other one. Islam has never been only a nation. Rather, Islam is a call to a nation, " to enjoin the right and to forbid the wrong" Quran- that is, to perform a moral mission. If we disregard the political component of Islam and accept religious mysticism , we silently admit dependence and slavery. On the contrary, if we ignore the religious component , we cease to be any moral force. ~ Alija Izetbegovi,
414:subtle ::: In Vedanta (Mandukya Upanishad and later teachings - e.g. Advaita - based on it) "subtle" is used to designate the "dream state" of consciousness, and in Advaita this also includes the Prana, Manas, and Vijnana koshas (= the vehicles of vital force, mind, and higher consciousness) re-interpreted from of the Taittiriya Upanishad.

In Tibetan and Tantric Buddhism it refers to an intermediate grade between the "gross" and "very subtle" "minds" and "winds" (vayu = prana).

The Sukshma Sthula or Subtle Body is one of the seven principles of man in Blavatskian Theosophy; it is also called the "astral body" (this has little similarity with the astral body of Out of Body experience, because it cannot move far from the gross physical vehicle, it seems to correspond to what Robert Monroe calls the "second body", and identified with the Double or Ka

In Sant Mat / Radhasoami cosmology - the Anda (Cosmic Egg) / Sahans-dal Kanwal (Crown Chakra) is sometimes called the Subtle; hence Subtle = Astral

The term Subtle Physical is used somewhat generically by Sri Aurobindo (in Letters on Yoga) to refer to a wider reality behind the external physical.

Ken Wilber uses the term Subtle to indicate the yogic and mystic holonic-evolutionary level intermediate between "Psychic" (in his series = Nature Mysticism) and "Causal" (=Realisation"); it includes many psychic and occult experiences and can be considered as pertaining to the Subtle as defined here (although it also includes other realities and experiences that might also be interpreted as "Inner Gross" - e.g. Kundalini as a classic example). ~ M Alan Kazlev, Kheper, planes/subtle,
415:Now the final dogmatic veil has been eternally torn away, the final mystical spirit is being extinguished. And here stand today's people, defenseless-face to face with the indescribable gloom, on the dividing line of light and darkness, and now no one can protect his heart any longer from the terrifying cold drifting up out of the abyss. Wherever we might go, wherever we might hide behind the barrier of scientific criticism, we feel with all our being the nearness of a mystery, the nearness of the ocean.

There are no limits! We are free and lonely... No enslaved mysticism of a previous age can be compared with this terror. Never before have people felt in their hearts such a need to believe, and in their minds comprehended their inability to believe. In this diseased and irresolvable dissonance, in this tragic contradiction, as well as in the unheard-of intellectual freedom, in the courage of negation, is contained the most characteristic feature of the mystical need of the nineteenth century.

Our time must define in two contrasting features this time of the most extreme materialism and at the same time of the most passionate idealistic outbursts of the spirit. We are witnessing a mighty and all-important struggle between two views of life, between two diametrically opposed worldviews. The final demands of religious feeling are experiencing a confrontation with the final conclusions of the experimental sciences.

The intellectual struggle which filled the nineteenth century could not but be reflected in contemporary literature.

("On The Reasons For The Decline And On The New Tendencies In Contemporary Literature") ~ Dmitry Merezhkovsky,
416:Sweet Mother, Sri Aurobindo is speaking about occult endeavour here and says that those who don't have the capacity must wait till it is given to them. Can't they get it through practice?
   No. That is, if it is latent in someone, it can be developed by practice. But if one doesn't have occult power, he may try for fifty years, he won't get anywhere. Everybody cannot have occult power. It is as though you were asking whether everybody could be a musician, everybody could be a painter, everybody could... Some can, some can't. It is a question of temperament.
   What is the difference between occultism and mysticism?
   They are not at all the same thing.
   Mysticism is a more or less emotive relation with what one senses to be a divine power - that kind of highly emotional, affective, very intense relation with something invisible which is or is taken for the Divine. That is mysticism.
   Occultism is exactly what he has said: it is the knowledge of invisible forces and the power to handle them. It is a science. It is altogether a science. I always compare occultism with chemistry, for it is the same kind of knowledge as the knowledge of chemistry for material things. It is a knowledge of invisible forces, their different vibrations, their interrelations, the combinations which can be made by bringing them together and the power one can exercise over them. It is absolutely scientific; and it ought to be learnt like a science; that is, one cannot practise occultism as something emotional or something vague and imprecise. You must work at it as you would do at chemistry, and learn all the rules or find them if there is nobody to teach you. But it is at some risk to yourself that you can find them. There are combinations here as explosive as certain chemical combinations. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,
417:My vocation in life is to wonder about at the nature of the universe. This leads me into philosophy, psychology, religion, and mysticism, not only as subjects to be discussed but also as things to be experienced, and thus I make an at least tacit claim to be a philosopher and a mystic. Some people, therefore, expect me to be their guru or messiah or exemplar, and are extremely disconcerted when they discover my “wayward spirit” or element of irreducible rascality, and say to their friends, “How could he possibly be a genuine mystic and be so addicted to nicotine and alcohol?” Or have occasional shudders of anxiety? Or be sexually interested in women? Or lack enthusiasm for physical exercise? Or have any need for money? Such people have in mind an idealized vision of the mystic as a person wholly free from fear and attachment, who sees within and without, and on all sides, only the translucent forms of a single divine energy which is everlasting love and delight, as which and from which he effortlessly radiates peace, charity, and joy. What an enviable situation! We, too, would like to be one of those, but as we start to meditate and look into ourselves we find mostly a quaking and palpitating mess of anxiety which lusts and loathes, needs love and attention, and lives in terror of death putting an end to its misery. So we despise that mess, and look for ways of controlling it and putting “how the true mystic feels” in its place, not realizing that this ambition is simply one of the lusts of the quaking mess, and that this, in turn, is a natural form of the universe like rain and frost, slugs and snails, flies and disease. When the “true mystic” sees flies and disease as translucent forms of the divine, that does not abolish them. I—making no hard-and-fast distinction between inner and outer experience—see my quaking mess as a form of the divine, and that doesn’t abolish it either. But at least I can live with it. ~ Alan W Watts,
418:In some cases, the reaction to Cantor’s theory broke along national lines. French mathematicians, on the whole, were wary of its metaphysical aura. Henri Poincaré (who rivaled Germany’s Hilbert as the greatest mathematician of the era) observed that higher infinities “have a whiff of form without matter, which is repugnant to the French spirit.” Russian mathematicians, by contrast, enthusiastically embraced the newly revealed hierarchy of infinities. Why the contrary French and Russian reactions? Some observers have chalked it up to French rationalism versus Russian mysticism. That is the explanation proffered, for example, by Loren Graham, an American historian of science retired from MIT, and Jean-Michel Kantor, a mathematician at the Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu in Paris, in their book Naming Infinity (2009). And it was the Russian mystics who better served the cause of mathematical progress—so argue Graham and Kantor. The intellectual milieu of the French mathematicians, they observe, was dominated by Descartes, for whom clarity and distinctness were warrants of truth, and by Auguste Comte, who insisted that science be purged of metaphysical speculation. Cantor’s vision of a never-ending hierarchy of infinities seemed to offend against both. The Russians, by contrast, warmed to the spiritual nimbus of Cantor’s theory. In fact, the founding figures of the most influential school of twentieth-century Russian mathematics were adepts of a heretical religious sect called the Name Worshippers. Members of the sect believed that by repetitively chanting God’s name, they could achieve fusion with the divine. Name Worshipping, traceable to fourth-century Christian hermits in the deserts of Palestine, was revived in the modern era by a Russian monk called Ilarion. In 1907, Ilarion published On the Mountains of the Caucasus, a book that described the ecstatic experiences he induced in himself while chanting the names of Christ and God over and over again until his breathing and heartbeat were in tune with the words. ~ Jim Holt,
419:The differences between religions are reflected very clearly in the different forms of sacred art: compared with Gothic art, above all in its “flamboyant” style, Islamic art is contemplative rather than volitive: it is “intellectual” and not “dramatic”, and it opposes the cold beauty of geometrical design to the mystical heroism of cathedrals. Islam is the perspective of “omnipresence” (“God is everywhere”), which coincides with that of “simultaneity” (“Truth has always been”); it aims at avoiding any “particularization” or “condensation”, any “unique fact” in time and space, although as a religion it necessarily includes an aspect of “unique fact”, without which it would be ineffective or even absurd. In other words Islam aims at what is “everywhere center”, and this is why, symbolically speaking, it replaces the cross with the cube or the woven fabric: it “decentralizes” and “universalizes” to the greatest possible extent, in the realm of art as in that of doctrine; it is opposed to any individualist mode and hence to any “personalist” mysticism.

To express ourselves in geometrical terms, we could say that a point which seeks to be unique, and which thus becomes an absolute center, appears to Islam—in art as in theology—as a usurpation of the divine absoluteness and therefore as an “association” (shirk); there is only one single center, God, whence the prohibition against “centralizing” images, especially statues; even the Prophet, the human center of the tradition, has no right to a “Christic uniqueness” and is “decentralized” by the series of other Prophets; the same is true of Islam—or the Koran—which is similarly integrated in a universal “fabric” and a cosmic “rhythm”, having been preceded by other religions—or other “Books”—which it merely restores. The Kaaba, center of the Muslim world, becomes space as soon as one is inside the building: the ritual direction of prayer is then projected toward the four cardinal points.

If Christianity is like a central fire, Islam on the contrary resembles a blanket of snow, at once unifying and leveling and having its center everywhere. ~ Frithjof Schuon,
420:It's ironic that Juanita has come into this place in a low-tech, black-and-white
avatar. She was the one who figured out a way to make avatars show something
close to real emotion. That is a fact Hiro has never forgotten, because she did
most of her work when they were together, and whenever an avatar looks surprised
or angry or passionate in the Metaverse, he sees an echo of himself or Juanita -
- the Adam and Eve of the Metaverse. Makes it hard to forget.
Shortly after Juanita and Da5id got divorced, The Black Sun really took off.
And once they got done counting their money, marketing the spinoffs, soaking up
the adulation of others in the hacker community, they all came to the
realization that what made this place a success was not the collision-avoidance
algorithms or the bouncer daemons or any of that other stuff. It was Juanita's
faces. Just ask the businessmen in the Nipponese Quadrant. They come here to
talk turkey with suits from around the world, and they consider it just as good
as a face-to-face. They more or less ignore what is being said -- a lot gets
lost in translation, after all. They pay attention to the facial expressions
and body language of the people they are talking to. And that's how they know
what's going on inside a person's head-by condensing fact from the vapor of
nuance.
Juanita refused to analyze this process, insisted that it was something
ineffable, something you couldn't explain with words. A radical, rosary-toting
Catholic, she has no problem with that kind of thing. But the bitheads didn't
like it. Said it was irrational mysticism. So she quit and took a job with
some Nipponese company. They don't have any problem with irrational mysticism
as long as it makes money.
But Juanita never comes to The Black Sun anymore. Partly, she's pissed at Da5id
and the other hackers who never appreciated her work. But she has also decided
that the whole thing is bogus. That no matter how good it is, the Metaverse is
distorting the way people talk to each other, and she wants no such distortion
in her relationships. ~ Neal Stephenson,
421:and only much later, when Mascha wanted a child, did I realize that love is a deadly poison, a vice, a vice that one wants to see shared, & that if one of the two involved is smitten, the other is often no more than a passive participant, or vixxtim, or possessed. And Moravagine was possessed.

Love is masochistic. These cries & complaints, these sweet alarms. this anguished state of lovers, this suspense, this latent pain that is just below the surface, almost unexpressed, these thousand & one anxieties over the loved one's absence, this feeling of time rushing by, this touchiness, these fits of temper, these long daydreams, this childish fickleness of behavior, this moral torture where vanity & self-esteem, or perhaps honor, upbringing & modesty are at stake, these highs & lows in the nervous tone, these leaps of imagination, this fetishism, this cruel precision of senses, whipping & probing, the collapse, the prostration, the abdication, the self-abasement, the perpetual loss & recovery of one's personality, these stammered words & phrases, these pet-names, this intimacy, these hesitations in physical contact, these epileptic tremors, these successive & even more frequent relapses, this more & more turbulent & stormy passion with its ravages progressing to the point of complete inhibition & annihilation of the soul, the debility of the senses, the exhaustion of the marrow, the erasure of the brain & even the desiccation of the heart, this yearning for ruin, for destruction, for mutilation, this need of effusiveness, of adoration, of mysticism, this insatiability which expresses itself in hyper-irritability of the of mucus membranes, in errant taste, in vasomotor or peripheral disorders, & which conjures up jealousy & vengeance, crimes, prevarications & treacheries, this idolatry, this incurable melancholy, this apathy, this profound moral misery, this definitive & harrowing doubt, this despair--are not all these stigmata the very symptoms of love in which we can first diagnose, then trace with a sure hand, the clinical curve of masochism? ~ Blaise Cendrars,
422:Politics is the science of domination, and persons in the process of enlargement and illumination are notoriously difficult to control. Therefore, to protect its vested interests, politics usurped religion a very long time ago. Kings bought off priests with land and adornments. Together, they drained the shady ponds and replaced them with fish tanks. The walls of the tanks were constructed of ignorance and superstition, held together with fear. They called the tanks “synagogues” or “churches” or “mosques.” After the tanks were in place, nobody talked much about soul anymore. Instead, they talked about spirit. Soul is hot and heavy. Spirit is cool, abstract, detached. Soul is connected to the earth and its waters. Spirit is connected to the sky and its gases. Out of the gases springs fire. Firepower. It has been observed that the logical extension of all politics is war. Once religion became political, the exercise of it, too, could be said to lead sooner or later to war. “War is hell.” Thus, religious belief propels us straight to hell. History unwaveringly supports this view. (Each modern religion has boasted that it and it alone is on speaking terms with the Deity, and its adherents have been quite willing to die—or kill—to support its presumptuous claims.) Not every silty bayou could be drained, of course. The soulfish that bubbled and snapped in the few remaining ponds were tagged “mystics.” They were regarded as mavericks, exotic and inferior. If they splashed too high, they were thought to be threatening and in need of extermination. The fearful flounders in the tanks, now psychologically dependent upon addictive spirit flakes, had forgotten that once upon a time they, too, had been mystical. Religion is nothing but institutionalized mysticism. The catch is, mysticism does not lend itself to institutionalization. The moment we attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence. Religion, then, is mysticism in which the mystical has been killed. Or, at least diminished. Those who witness the dropping of the fourth veil might see clearly what Spike Cohen and Roland Abu Hadee dimly suspected: that not only is religion divisive and oppressive, it is also a denial of all that is divine in people; it is a suffocation of the soul. ~ Tom Robbins,
423:a new teaching appointment required that I become familiar with mysticism in Christianity and other religions. That’s when I realized that these were mystical experiences. Especially important was William James’s classic book The Varieties of Religious Experience, published more than a century ago, still in print, and named by a panel of experts in 1999 as the second most important nonfiction book published in English in the twentieth century. The book combines the elements that made up James himself: a psychologist fascinated by the varieties of human consciousness, and a philosopher pondering what all of this might mean.1 Part of his book is about mystical experiences. Based on James’s study of accounts of such experiences, he concluded that their two primary features are “illumination” and “union.” Illumination has a twofold meaning. The experiences often involve light, luminosity, radiance. Moreover, they involve “enlightenment,” a new way of seeing. “Union” (or “communion”) refers to the experience of connectedness and the disappearance or softening of the distinction between self and world. In addition, James names four other common features: Ineffability. The experiences are difficult, even impossible, to express in words. Yet those who have such experiences often try, usually preceded by, “It’s really hard to describe, but it was like . . .” Transiency. They are usually brief; they come and then go. Passivity. One cannot make them happen through active effort. They come upon one—one receives them. Noetic quality. They include a vivid sense of knowing (and not just intense feelings of joy, wonder, amazement)—a nonverbal, nonlinguistic way of knowing marked by a strong sense of seeing more clearly and certainly than one ever has. What is known is “the way things are” when all of our language falls away and we see “what is” without the domestication created by our words and categories. This way of knowing might be called direct cognition, a way of knowing not mediated through language. Reading James and other writers on mysticism was amazing. In colloquial language, I was blown away. I found my experiences described with great precision. Suddenly, I had a way of naming and understanding them. Moreover, they were linked to the experiences of many people. They are a mode of human consciousness. They happen. And ~ Marcus J Borg,
424:At this stage of the game, I don’t have the time for patience and tolerance. Ten years ago, even five years ago, I would have listened to people ask their questions, explained to them, mollified them. No more. That time is past. Now, as Norman Mailer said in Naked and the Dead, ‘I hate everything which is not in myself.’ If it doesn’t have a direct bearing on what I’m advocating, if it doesn’t augment or stimulate my life and thinking, I don’t want to hear it. It has to add something to my life. There’s no more time for explaining and being ecumenical anymore. No more time. That’s a characteristic I share with the new generation of Satanists, which might best be termed, and has labeled itself in many ways, an ‘Apocalypse culture.’ Not that they believe in the biblical Apocalypse—the ultimate war between good and evil. Quite the contrary. But that there is an urgency, a need to get on with things and stop wailing and if it ends tomorrow, at least we’ll know we’ve lived today. It’s a ‘fiddle while Rome burns’ philosophy. It’s the Satanic philosophy. If the generation born in the 50’s grew up in the shadow of The Bomb and had to assimilate the possibility of imminent self destruction of the entire planet at any time, those born in the 60’s have had to reconcile the inevitability of our own destruction, not through the bomb but through mindless, uncontrolled overpopulation. And somehow resolve in themselves, looking at what history has taught us, that no amount of yelling, protesting, placard waving, marching, wailing—or even more constructive avenues like running for government office or trying to write books to wake people up—is going to do a damn bit of good. The majority of humans have an inborn death wish—they want to destroy themselves and everything beautiful. To finally realize that we’re living in a world after the zenith of creativity, and that we can see so clearly the mechanics of our own destruction, is a terrible realization. Most people can’t face it. They’d rather retreat to the comfort of New Age mysticism. That’s all right. All we want, those few of us who have the strength to realize what’s going on, is the freedom to create and entertain and share with each other, to preserve and cherish what we can while we can, and to build our own little citadels away from the insensitivity of the rest of the world. ~ Anton Szandor LaVey,
425:Finally, in terms of overall spiritual intelligence—which we have been briefly tracking—on the other side of the leading edge of evolution we have 3 or 4 higher, at this point mostly potential, levels of development, including levels of spiritual intelligence. Individually, their basic strcture-rungs are referred to as para-mind, meta-mind, overmind, and supermind; collectively, they are called 3rd tier. What all 3rd-tier structures have in common is some degree of direct transpersonal identity and experience. Further, each 3rd-tier structure of consciousness is integrated, in some fashion, with a particular state of consciousness (often, para-mental with the gross, meta-mental with subtle, overmind with causal/Witnessing, and supermind with nondual, although this varies with each individual’s actual history). Previously, in 1sst and 2nd tier, structures and states were relatively independent. One could have a state center of gravity at gross and yet structurally evolve all the way to Integral without fully objectifying the gross stage (i.e., fully making it an object, fully transcending it). But beginning with the 3rd-tier para-mind, whenever you experience that structure, you also implicitly or intuitively understand or experience the gross realm as objectified, which means that state is intimately connected to the structure at this level, which gives rise, or can give rise, to expanded states such as nature mysticism (this can be experienced at earlier levels but not inherently, and is interpreted according to the Views of those lower levels; but at this level becomes an inherent potential). Likewise, because of the conjunction with the gross state, this level often carries variations of the realization that the physical world is not merely physical, but is rather psychophysical in its true nature. This can also evoke flashes of higher state presences, such as Witnessing states or even nondual. And so on with the subtle state and meta-mind; causal/Witnessing and overmind; and nondual Suchness and supermind. Those states are all “minimally” connected to those structures, in the sesne that, for example, a person at meta-mind might have already and previously moved his or her state center of gravity to subtle, but if not, the person cannot proceed beyond the meta-mind without doing so at this point. And likewise with causal/Witnessing and overmind; and nondual Suchness and supermind. ~ Ken Wilber,
426:How ... how fragile situations are. But not tenuous. Delicate, but not flimsy, not indulgent. Delicate, that's why they keep breaking, they must break and you must get the pieces together and show it before it breaks again, or put them aside for a moment when something else breaks and turn to that, and all this keeps going on. That's why most writing now, if you read it they go on one two three four and tell you what happened like newspaper accounts, no adjectives, no long sentences, no tricks they pretend, and they finally believe that they really believe that the way they saw it is the way it is ... it never takes your breath away, telling you things you already know, laying everything out flat, as though the terms and the time, and the nature and the movement of everything were secrets of the same magnitude. They write for people who read with the surface of their minds, people with reading habits that make the smallest demands on them, people brought up reading for facts, who know what's going to come next and want to know what's coming next, and get angry at surprises. Clarity's essential, and detail, no fake mysticism, the facts are bad enough. But we're embarrassed for people who tell too much, and tell it without surprise. How does he know what happened? unless it's one unshaven man alone in a boat, changing I to he, and how often do you get a man alone in a boat, in all this ... all this ... Listen, there are so many delicate fixtures, moving toward you, you'll see. Like a man going into a dark room, holding his hands down guarding his parts for fear of a table corner, and ... Why, all this around us is for people who can keep their balance only in the light, where they move as though nothing were fragile, nothing tempered by possibility, and all of a sudden bang! something breaks. Then you have to stop and put the pieces together again. But you never can put them back together quite the same way. You stop when you can and expose things, and leave them within reach, and others come on by themselves, and they break, and even then you may put the pieces aside just out of reach until you can bring them back and show them, put together slightly different, maybe a little more enduring, until you've broken it and picked up the pieces enough times, and you have the whole thing in all its dimensions. But the discipline, the detail, it's just ... sometimes the accumulation is too much to bear. ~ William Gaddis,
427:Augustine relates in his Confessions how it was decisive for his own path when he learned that the famous philosopher Marius Victorinus had become a Christian. Victorinus had long refused to join the Church because he took the view that he already possessed in his philosophy all the essentials of Christianity, with whose intellectual premises he was in complete agreement.10 Since from his philosophical thinking, he said, he could already regard the central Christian ideas as his own, he no longer needed to institutionalize his convictions by belonging to a Church. Like many educated people both then and now, he saw the Church as Platonism for the people, something of which he as a full-blown Platonist had no need. The decisive factor seemed to him to be the idea alone; only those who could not grasp it themselves, as the philosopher could, in its original form needed to be brought into contact with it through the medium of ecclesiastical organization. That Marius Victorinus nevertheless one day joined the Church and turned from Platonist into Christian was an expression of his perception of the fundamental error implicit in this view. The great Platonist had come to understand that a Church is something more and something other than an external institutionalization and organization of ideas. He had understood that Christianity is not a system of knowledge but a way. The believers’ “We” is not a secondary addition for small minds; in a certain sense it is the matter itself—the community with one’s fellowmen is a reality that lies on a different plane from that of the mere “idea”. If Platonism provides an idea of the truth, Christian belief offers truth as a way, and only by becoming a way has it become man’s truth. Truth as mere perception, as mere idea, remains bereft of force; it only becomes man’s truth as a way that makes a claim upon him, that he can and must tread. Thus belief embraces, as essential parts of itself, the profession of faith, the word, and the unity it effects; it embraces entry into the community’s worship of God and, so, finally the fellowship we call Church. Christian belief is not an idea but life; it is, not mind existing for itself, but incarnation, mind in the body of history and its “We”. It is, not the mysticism of the self-identification of the mind with God, but obedience and service: going beyond oneself, freeing the self precisely through being taken into service by something not made or thought out by oneself, the liberation of being taken into service for the whole. ~ Benedict XVI,
428:Thus the eternal paradox and eternal truth of a divine life in an animal body, an immortal aspiration or reality inhabiting a mortal tenement, a single and universal consciousness representing itself in limited minds and divided egos, a transcendent, indefinable, timeless and spaceless Being who alone renders time and space and cosmos possible, and in all these the higher truth realisable by the lower term, justify themselves to the deliberate reason as well as to the persistent instinct or intuition of mankind. Attempts are sometimes made to have done finally with questionings which have so often been declared insoluble by logical thought and to persuade men to limit their mental activities to the practical and immediate problems of their material existence in the universe; but such evasions are never permanent in their effect. Mankind returns from them with a more vehement impulse of inquiry or a more violent hunger for an immediate solution. By that hunger mysticism profits and new religions arise to replace the old that have been destroyed or stripped of significance by a scepticism which itself could not satisfy because, although its business was inquiry, it was unwilling sufficiently to inquire. The attempt to deny or stifle a truth because it is yet obscure in its outward workings and too often represented by obscurantist superstition or a crude faith, is itself a kind of obscurantism. The will to escape from a cosmic necessity because it is arduous, difficult to justify by immediate tangible results, slow in regulating its operations, must turn out eventually to have been no acceptance of the truth of Nature but a revolt against the secret, mightier will of the great Mother. It is better and more rational to accept what she will not allow us as a race to reject and lift it from the sphere of blind instinct, obscure intuition and random aspiration into the light of reason and an instructed and consciously self-guiding will. And if there is any higher light of illumined intuition or self-revealing truth which is now in man either obstructed and inoperative or works with intermittent glancings as if from behind a veil or with occasional displays as of the northern lights in our material skies, then there also we need not fear to aspire. For it is likely that such is the next higher state of consciousness of which Mind is only a form and veil, and through the splendours of that light may lie the path of our progressive self-enlargement into whatever highest state is humanity's ultimate resting-place. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Human Aspiration,
429:We have seen that imagining an act engages the same motor and sensory programs that are involved in doing it. We have long viewed our imaginative life with a kind of sacred awe: as noble, pure, immaterial, and ethereal, cut off from our material brain. Now we cannot be so sure about where to draw the line between them. Everything your “immaterial” mind imagines leaves material traces. Each thought alters the physical state of your brain synapses at a microscopic level. Each time you imagine moving your fingers across the keys to play the piano, you alter the tendrils in your living brain. These experiments are not only delightful and intriguing, they also overturn the centuries of confusion that have grown out of the work of the French philosopher René Descartes, who argued that mind and brain are made of different substances and are governed by different laws. The brain, he claimed, was a physical, material thing, existing in space and obeying the laws of physics. The mind (or the soul, as Descartes called it) was immaterial, a thinking thing that did not take up space or obey physical laws. Thoughts, he argued, were governed by the rules of reasoning, judgment, and desires, not by the physical laws of cause and effect. Human beings consisted of this duality, this marriage of immaterial mind and material brain. But Descartes—whose mind/body division has dominated science for four hundred years—could never credibly explain how the immaterial mind could influence the material brain. As a result, people began to doubt that an immaterial thought, or mere imagining, might change the structure of the material brain. Descartes’s view seemed to open an unbridgeable gap between mind and brain. His noble attempt to rescue the brain from the mysticism that surrounded it in his time, by making it mechanical, failed. Instead the brain came to be seen as an inert, inanimate machine that could be moved to action only by the immaterial, ghostlike soul Descartes placed within it, which came to be called “the ghost in the machine.” By depicting a mechanistic brain, Descartes drained the life out of it and slowed the acceptance of brain plasticity more than any other thinker. Any plasticity—any ability to change that we had—existed in the mind, with its changing thoughts, not in the brain. But now we can see that our “immaterial” thoughts too have a physical signature, and we cannot be so sure that thought won’t someday be explained in physical terms. While we have yet to understand exactly how thoughts actually change brain structure, it is now clear that they do, and the firm line that Descartes drew between mind and brain is increasingly a dotted line. ~ Norman Doidge,
430:He was the leader of the Prophet David’s army,’ said the Sheikh. ‘David had him killed so that he could marry Nebi Uri’s beautiful wife. Two angels, Mikhail and Jibrael, appeared and asked David why he needed an extra wife when he already had ninety-nine others. You know this story?’ ‘Yes. I think we Christians know Nebi Uri as Uriah the Hittite.’ It was an unlikely tangle of tales: a medieval Muslim saint buried in a much older Byzantine tomb tower had somehow been confused with the Biblical and Koranic Uriah; perhaps the saint’s name was Uriah, and over the passage of time his identity had been merged with that of his scriptural namesake. More intriguing still was the fact that in this city, long famed for the shrines of its Christian saints, the Muslim Sufi tradition had directly carried on from where Theodoret’s Christian holy men had left off. Just as the Muslim form of prayer, with its bowings and prostrations, appears to derive from the older Syriac Christian tradition that I had seen performed at Mar Gabriel, and just as the architecture of the earliest minarets unmistakably derives from the square late-antique Syrian church towers, so the roots of Islamic mysticism and Sufism lie with the Byzantine holy men and desert fathers who preceded them across the Near East. Today the West often views Islam as a civilisation very different from and indeed innately hostile to Christianity. Only when you travel in Christianity’s Eastern homelands do you realise how closely the two religions are really linked. For the former grew directly out of the latter and still, to this day, embodies many aspects and practices of the early Christian world now lost in Christianity’s modern Western incarnation. When the early Byzantines were first confronted by the Prophet’s armies, they assumed that Islam was merely a heretical form of Christianity, and in many ways they were not so far wrong: Islam accepts much of the Old and New Testaments, and venerates both Jesus and the ancient Jewish prophets. Certainly if John Moschos were to come back today it is likely that he would find much more that was familiar in the practices of a modern Muslim Sufi than he would with those of, say, a contemporary American Evangelical. Yet this simple truth has been lost by our tendency to think of Christianity as a Western religion rather than the Oriental faith it actually is. Moreover the modern demonisation of Islam in the West, and the recent growth of Muslim fundamentalism (itself in many ways a reaction to the West’s repeated humiliation of the Muslim world), have led to an atmosphere where few are aware of, or indeed wish to be aware of, the profound kinship of Christianity and Islam. ~ William Dalrymple,
431:root of the falsification and withdrawl of divine love :::
   At every moment they are moved to take egoistic advantage of the psychic and spiritual influences and can be detected using the power, joy or light these bring into us for a lower life-motive. Afterwards too, even when the seeker has opened to the Divine Love transcendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he meets the power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Nature-forces. Always they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their diminishing elements, seek to capture the descending Power for themselves and their interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical instrumentation for desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new heaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it here prisoner as a tremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the old earth and colour with its rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of sentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that falsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there is a fall back to a lower status; or else the realisation remains tied to an insecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an inferior exaltation that is not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim sacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the mind's and the life's falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind's ardours and the blind enthusiasms of the misleading life-force. But all things that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical being it extricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand on the heights, new in spirit and sublime in figure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 166,
432:And the son bursting into his father's house, killing him, and at the same time not killing him, this is not even a novel, not a poem, it is a sphinx posing riddles, which it, of course, will not solve itself. If he killed him, he killed him; how can it be that he killed him and yet did not kill him--who can understand that? Then it is announced to us that our tribune is the tribune of truth and sensible ideas, and so from this tribune of 'sensible ideas' an axiom resounds, accompanied by an oath, that to call the murder of a father parricide is simply a prejudice! But if parricide is a prejudice, and if every child ought to ask his father, 'Father, why should I love you?'--what will become of us, what will become of the foundations of society, where will the family end up? Parricide--don't you see, it's just the 'brimstone' of some Moscow merchant's wife? The most precious, the most sacred precepts concerning the purpose and future of the Russian courts are presented perversely and frivolously, only to achieve a certain end, to achieve the acquittal of that which cannot be acquitted. 'Oh, overwhelm him with mercy,' the defense attorney exclaims, and that is just what the criminal wants, and tomorrow everyone will see how overwhelmed he is! And is the defense attorney not being too modest in asking only for the defendant's acquittal? Why does he not ask that a fund be established in the parricide's name, in order to immortalize his deed for posterity and the younger generation? The Gospel and religion are corrected: it's all mysticism, he says, and ours is the only true Christianity, tested by the analysis of reason and sensible ideas. And so a false image of Christ is held up to us! With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you,' the defense attorney exclaims, and concludes then and there that Christ commanded us to measure with the same measure as it is measured to us--and that from the tribune of truth and sensible ideas! We glance into the Gospel only on the eve of our speeches, in order to make a brilliant display of our familiarity with what is, after all, a rather original work, which may prove useful and serve for a certain effect, in good measure, all in good measure! Yet Christ tells us precisely not to do so, to beware of doing so, because that is what the wicked world does, whereas we must forgive and turn our cheek, and not measure with the same measure as our offenders measure to us. This is what our God taught us, and not that it is a prejudice to forbid children to kill their own fathers. And let us not, from the rostrum of truth and sensible ideas, correct the Gospel of our God, whom the defense attorney deems worthy of being called merely 'the crucified lover of mankind,' in opposition to the whole of Orthodox Russia, which calls out to him: 'For thou art our God...! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
433:done to show that this is not so (which is not to say that there are no points of difference between Thomistic and Aristotelian metaphysics). The dominant form of neo-Platonism in medieval Christian thought was Augustinianism. It is little wonder that the Platonic tradition should have seemed agreeable to the early Church Fathers, for it is not difficult to map Christian beliefs and practices into central elements of neo-Platonism. Most fundamentally, just as the Christian distinguishes between the physical cosmos and the eternal kingdom of God, so Plato and his followers distinguish between the material world and the timeless and unchanging realm of immaterial forms. Similarly, Christians commonly distinguish between body and soul and look forward to life after death in which the blessed will enjoy forever the sight of God; while Platonists contrast the mortal frame and the immortal mind that will ascend to eternal vision of the forms. Supreme among these forms is that of the One whose principal aspects are those of truth, beauty and goodness; a trinity-in-unity ready-made to assist Christians struggling with the idea that God is three persons in one divinity. The lesser Platonic forms, including those corresponding to natures experienced in the empirical world, became the ideas out of which God created the world. Even Christian mysticism found its rational warrant in the idea that the most noble experiences consist in inexpressible encounters with transcendental realities. Aristotle came into his own as a philosopher through his rejection of the fundamental tenets of Platonism and through his provision of a more naturalistic and less dualistic worldview. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the enthusiasm for Aristotelianism shown by Aquinas and by his teachers Peter of Ireland and Albert the Great was viewed with suspicion by the Augustinian masters of the thirteenth century. Even so, it is a serious mistake, still perpetrated today, to represent Aristotle as if he were some sort of scientific materialist. In one of the classics of analytical philosophy, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, Peter Strawson explains his subtitle by distinguishing between two types of philosophy, writing that ‘descriptive metaphysics is content to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world, [while] revisionary metaphysics is concerned to produce a better structure’.7 He goes on to point out that few if any actual metaphysicians have been wholly of one or other sort, but that broadly speaking Leibniz and Berkeley are revisionary while Aristotle and Kant are descriptive. In these terms Aquinas’s thought and thomist metaphysics are fundamentally ‘descriptive’, notwithstanding that they are at odds with the materialism and scientism which some contemporary philosophers proclaim as enlightened common sense. The words of G.K. Chesterton quoted at the outset of this chapter ~ John Haldane,
434:Does an arbitrary human convention, a mere custom, decree that man must guide his actions by a set of principles—or is there a fact of reality that demands it? Is ethics the province of whims: of personal emotions, social edicts and mystic revelations—or is it the province of reason? Is ethics a subjective luxury—or an objective necessity? In the sorry record of the history of mankind’s ethics—with a few rare, and unsuccessful, exceptions—moralists have regarded ethics as the province of whims, that is: of the irrational. Some of them did so explicitly, by intention—others implicitly, by default. A “whim” is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause. No philosopher has given a rational, objectively demonstrable, scientific answer to the question of why man needs a code of values. So long as that question remained unanswered, no rational, scientific, objective code of ethics could be discovered or defined. The greatest of all philosophers, Aristotle, did not regard ethics as an exact science; he based his ethical system on observations of what the noble and wise men of his time chose to do, leaving unanswered the questions of: why they chose to do it and why he evaluated them as noble and wise. Most philosophers took the existence of ethics for granted, as the given, as a historical fact, and were not concerned with discovering its metaphysical cause or objective validation. Many of them attempted to break the traditional monopoly of mysticism in the field of ethics and, allegedly, to define a rational, scientific, nonreligious morality. But their attempts consisted of trying to justify them on social grounds, merely substituting society for God. The avowed mystics held the arbitrary, unaccountable “will of God” as the standard of the good and as the validation of their ethics. The neomystics replaced it with “the good of society,” thus collapsing into the circularity of a definition such as “the standard of the good is that which is good for society.” This meant, in logic—and, today, in worldwide practice—that “society” stands above any principles of ethics, since it is the source, standard and criterion of ethics, since “the good” is whatever it wills, whatever it happens to assert as its own welfare and pleasure. This meant that “society” may do anything it pleases, since “the good” is whatever it chooses to do because it chooses to do it. And—since there is no such entity as “society,” since society is only a number of individual men—this meant that some men (the majority or any gang that claims to be its spokesman) are ethically entitled to pursue any whims (or any atrocities) they desire to pursue, while other men are ethically obliged to spend their lives in the service of that gang’s desires. This could hardly be called rational, yet most philosophers have now decided to declare that reason has failed, that ethics is outside the power of reason, that no rational ethics can ever be defined, and that in the field of ethics—in the choice of his values, of his actions, of his pursuits, of his life’s goals—man must be guided by something other than reason. By what? Faith—instinct—intuition—revelation—feeling—taste—urge—wish—whim Today, as in the past, most philosophers agree that the ultimate standard of ethics is whim (they call it “arbitrary postulate” or “subjective choice” or “emotional commitment”)—and the battle is only over the question or whose whim: one’s own or society’s or the dictator’s or God’s. Whatever else they may disagree about, today’s moralists agree that ethics is a subjective issue and that the three things barred from its field are: reason—mind—reality. If you wonder why the world is now collapsing to a lower and ever lower rung of hell, this is the reason. If you want to save civilization, it is this premise of modern ethics—and of all ethical ~ Anonymous,
435:Finally, we arrive at the question of the so-called nonpolitical man. Hitler not only established his power from the very beginning with masses of people who were until then essentially nonpolitical; he also accomplished his last step to victory in March of 1933 in a "legal" manner, by mobilizing no less than five million nonvoters, that is to say, nonpolitical people. The Left parties had made every effort to win over the indifferent masses, without posing the question as to what it means "to be indifferent or nonpolitical."

If an industrialist and large estate owner champions a rightist party, this is easily understood in terms of his immediate economic interests. In his case a leftist orientation would be at variance with his social situation and would, for that reason, point to irrational motives. If an industrial worker has a leftist orientation, this too is by all mean rationally consistent—it derives from his economic and social position in industry. If, however, a worker, an employee, or an official has a rightist orientation, this must be ascribed to a lack of political clarity, i.e., he is ignorant of his social position. The more a man who belongs to the broad working masses is nonpolitical, the more susceptible he is to the ideology of political reaction. To be nonpolitical is not, as one might suppose, evidence of a passive psychic condition, but of a highly active attitude, a defense against the awareness of social responsibility. The analysis of this defense against consciousness of one's social responsibility yields clear insights into a number of dark questions concerning the behavior of the broad nonpolitical strata. In the case of the average intellectual "who wants nothing to do with politics," it can easily be shown that immediate economic interests and fears related to his social position, which is dependent upon public opinion, lie at the basis of his noninvolvement. These fears cause him to make the most grotesque sacrifices with respect to his knowledge and convictions. Those people who are engaged in the production process in one way or another and are nonetheless socially irresponsible can be divided into two major groups. In the case of the one group the concept of politics is unconsciously associated with the idea of violence and physical danger, i.e., with an intense fear, which prevents them from facing life realistically. In the case of the other group, which undoubtedly constitutes the majority, social irresponsibility is based on personal conflicts and anxieties, of which the sexual anxiety is the predominant one. […] Until now the revolutionary movement has misunderstood this situation. It attempted to awaken the "nonpolitical" man by making him conscious solely of his unfulfilled economic interests. Experience teaches that the majority of these "nonpolitical" people can hardly be made to listen to anything about their socio-economic situation, whereas they are very accessible to the mystical claptrap of a National Socialist, despite the fact that the latter makes very little mention of economic interests. [This] is explained by the fact that severe sexual conflicts (in the broadest sense of the word), whether conscious or unconscious, inhibit rational thinking and the development of social responsibility. They make a person afraid and force him into a shell. If, now, such a self-encapsulated person meets a propagandist who works with faith and mysticism, meets, in other words, a fascist who works with sexual, libidinous methods, he turns his complete attention to him. This is not because the fascist program makes a greater impression on him than the liberal program, but because in his devotion to the führer and the führer's ideology, he experiences a momentary release from his unrelenting inner tension. Unconsciously, he is able to give his conflicts a different form and in this way to "solve" them. ~ Wilhelm Reich,
436:author class:Sri Aurobindo
A Vision of Science
I dreamed that in myself the world I saw,
Wherein three Angels strove for mastery. Law
Was one, clear vision and denial cold,
Yet in her limits strong, presumptuous, bold;
The second with enthusiasm bright,
Flame in her heart but round her brows the night,
Faded as this advanced. She could not bear
That searching gaze, nor the strong chilling air
These thoughts created, nourishing our parts
Of mind, but petrifying human hearts.
Science was one, the other gave her name,
Religion. But a third behind them came,
Veiled, vague, remote, and had as yet no right
Upon the world, but lived in her own light.
Wide were the victories of the Angel proud
Who conquered now and in her praise were loud
The nations. Few even yet to the other clove, -
And some were souls of night and some were souls of love.
But this was confident and throned. Her heralds ranged
Claiming that night was dead and all things changed;
For all things opened, all seemed clear, seemed bright -
Save the vast ranges that they left in night.
However, the light they shed upon the earth
Was great indeed, a firm and mighty birth.
A century's progress lived before my eyes.
Delivered from amazement and surprise,
Man's spirit measuring his worlds around
The laws of sight divined and laws of sound.
Light was not hidden from her searching gaze,
Nor matter could deny its myriad maze
To the cold enquiry; for the far came near,
The small loomed large, the intricate grew clear.
Measuring and probing the strong Angel strode,
Dissolving and combining, till she trod
Firmly among the stars, could weigh their forms,
Foretold the earthquakes, analysed the storms.
Doubt seemed to end and wonder's reign was closed.
The stony pages of the earth disclosed
Their unremembered secrets. Horses of steam
Were bitted and the lightnings made a team
To draw our chariots. Heaven was scaled at last
And the loud seas subdued. Distance resigned
Its strong obstructions to the mastering mind.
So moved that spirit trampling; then it laid
Its hand at last upon itself, how this was made
Wondering, and sought to class and sought to trace
Mind by its forms, the wearer by the dress.
Then the other arose and met that spirit robust,
Who laboured; she now grew a shade who must
Fade wholly away, yet to her fellow cried,
"I pass, for thou hast laboured well and wide.
Thou thinkest term and end for thee are not;
But though thy pride is great, thou hast forgot
The Sphinx that waits for man beside the way.
All questions thou mayst answer, but one day
Her question shall await thee. That reply,
As all we must; for they who cannot, die.
She slays them and their mangled bodies lie
Upon the highways of eternity.
Therefore, if thou wouldst live, know first this thing,
Who thou art in this dungeon labouring."
And Science confidently, "Nothing am I but earth,
Tissue and nerve and from the seed a birth,
A mould, a plasm, a gas, a little that is much.
In these grey cells that quiver to each touch
The secret lies of man; they are the thing called I.
Matter insists and matter makes reply.
Shakespeare was this; this force in Jesus yearned
And conquered by the cross; this only learned
The secret of the suns that blaze afar;
This was Napoleon's giant mind of war."
I heard and marvelled in myself to see
The infinite deny infinity.
Yet the weird paradox seemed justified;
Even mysticism shrank out-mystified.
But the third Angel came and touched my eyes;
I saw the mornings of the future rise,
I heard the voices of an age unborn
That comes behind us and our pallid morn,
And from the heart of an approaching light
One said to man, "Know thyself infinite,
Who shalt do mightier miracles than these,
Infinite, moving mid infinities."
Then from our hills the ancient answer pealed,
"For Thou, O Splendour, art myself concealed,
And the grey cell contains me not, the star
I outmeasure and am older than the elements are.
Whether on earth or far beyond the sun,
I, stumbling, clouded, am the Eternal One."
~ Sri Aurobindo, - A Vision of Science
,
437:SECTION 1. Books for Serious Study
   Liber CCXX. (Liber AL vel Legis.) The Book of the Law. This book is the foundation of the New Æon, and thus of the whole of our work.
   The Equinox. The standard Work of Reference in all occult matters. The Encyclopaedia of Initiation.
   Liber ABA (Book 4). A general account in elementary terms of magical and mystical powers. In four parts: (1) Mysticism (2) Magical (Elementary Theory) (3) Magick in Theory and Practice (this book) (4) The Law.
   Liber II. The Message of the Master Therion. Explains the essence of the new Law in a very simple manner.
   Liber DCCCXXXVIII. The Law of Liberty. A further explanation of The Book of the Law in reference to certain ethical problems.
   Collected Works of A. Crowley. These works contain many mystical and magical secrets, both stated clearly in prose, and woven into the Robe of sublimest poesy.
   The Yi King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XVI], Oxford University Press.) The "Classic of Changes"; give the initiated Chinese system of Magick.
   The Tao Teh King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XXXIX].) Gives the initiated Chinese system of Mysticism.
   Tannhäuser, by A. Crowley. An allegorical drama concerning the Progress of the Soul; the Tannhäuser story slightly remodelled.
   The Upanishads. (S. B. E. Series [vols. I & XV.) The Classical Basis of Vedantism, the best-known form of Hindu Mysticism.
   The Bhagavad-gita. A dialogue in which Krishna, the Hindu "Christ", expounds a system of Attainment.
   The Voice of the Silence, by H.P. Blavatsky, with an elaborate commentary by Frater O.M. Frater O.M., 7°=48, is the most learned of all the Brethren of the Order; he has given eighteen years to the study of this masterpiece.
   Raja-Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. An excellent elementary study of Hindu mysticism. His Bhakti-Yoga is also good.
   The Shiva Samhita. An account of various physical means of assisting the discipline of initiation. A famous Hindu treatise on certain physical practices.
   The Hathayoga Pradipika. Similar to the Shiva Samhita.
   The Aphorisms of Patanjali. A valuable collection of precepts pertaining to mystical attainment.
   The Sword of Song. A study of Christian theology and ethics, with a statement and solution of the deepest philosophical problems. Also contains the best account extant of Buddhism, compared with modern science.
   The Book of the Dead. A collection of Egyptian magical rituals.
   Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, by Eliphas Levi. The best general textbook of magical theory and practice for beginners. Written in an easy popular style.
   The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. The best exoteric account of the Great Work, with careful instructions in procedure. This Book influenced and helped the Master Therion more than any other.
   The Goetia. The most intelligible of all the mediæval rituals of Evocation. Contains also the favourite Invocation of the Master Therion.
   Erdmann's History of Philosophy. A compendious account of philosophy from the earliest times. Most valuable as a general education of the mind.
   The Spiritual Guide of [Miguel de] Molinos. A simple manual of Christian Mysticism.
   The Star in the West. (Captain Fuller). An introduction to the study of the Works of Aleister Crowley.
   The Dhammapada. (S. B. E. Series [vol. X], Oxford University Press). The best of the Buddhist classics.
   The Questions of King Milinda. (S. B. E. Series [vols. XXXV & XXXVI].) Technical points of Buddhist dogma, illustrated bydialogues.
   Liber 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica Ad Systemam Sceptico-Mysticæ Viæ Explicandæ, Fundamentum Hieroglyphicam Sanctissimorum Scientiæ Summæ. A complete Dictionary of the Correspondences of all magical elements, reprinted with extensive additions, making it the only standard comprehensive book of reference ever published. It is to the language of Occultism what Webster or Murray is to the English language.
   Varieties of Religious Experience (William James). Valuable as showing the uniformity of mystical attainment.
   Kabbala Denudata, von Rosenroth: also The Kabbalah Unveiled, by S.L. Mathers. The text of the Qabalah, with commentary. A good elementary introduction to the subject.
   Konx Om Pax [by Aleister Crowley]. Four invaluable treatises and a preface on Mysticism and Magick.
   The Pistis Sophia [translated by G.R.S. Mead or Violet McDermot]. An admirable introduction to the study of Gnosticism.
   The Oracles of Zoroaster [Chaldæan Oracles]. An invaluable collection of precepts mystical and magical.
   The Dream of Scipio, by Cicero. Excellent for its Vision and its Philosophy.
   The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, by Fabre d'Olivet. An interesting study of the exoteric doctrines of this Master.
   The Divine Pymander, by Hermes Trismegistus. Invaluable as bearing on the Gnostic Philosophy.
   The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians, reprint of Franz Hartmann. An invaluable compendium.
   Scrutinium Chymicum [Atalanta Fugiens]¸ by Michael Maier. One of the best treatises on alchemy.
   Science and the Infinite, by Sidney Klein. One of the best essays written in recent years.
   Two Essays on the Worship of Priapus [A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus &c. &c. &c.], by Richard Payne Knight [and Thomas Wright]. Invaluable to all students.
   The Golden Bough, by J.G. Frazer. The textbook of Folk Lore. Invaluable to all students.
   The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine. Excellent, though elementary, as a corrective to superstition.
   Rivers of Life, by General Forlong. An invaluable textbook of old systems of initiation.
   Three Dialogues, by Bishop Berkeley. The Classic of Subjective Idealism.
   Essays of David Hume. The Classic of Academic Scepticism.
   First Principles by Herbert Spencer. The Classic of Agnosticism.
   Prolegomena [to any future Metaphysics], by Immanuel Kant. The best introduction to Metaphysics.
   The Canon [by William Stirling]. The best textbook of Applied Qabalah.
   The Fourth Dimension, by [Charles] H. Hinton. The best essay on the subject.
   The Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley. Masterpieces of philosophy, as of prose.
   ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Appendix I: Literature Recommended to Aspirants #reading list,
438:Phi Beta Kappa Poem
Harvard, 1914
SIR, friends, and scholars, we are here to serve
A high occasion. Our New England wears
All her unrivalled beauty as of old;
And June, with scent of bayberry and rose
And song of orioles— as she only comes
By Massachusetts Bay —is here once more,
Companioning our fête of fellowship.
The open trails, South, West, and North, lead back
From populous cities or from lonely plains,
Ranch, pulpit, office, factory, desk, or mill,
To this fair tribunal of ambitious youth,
The shadowy town beside the placid Charles,
Where Harvard waits us through the passing years,
Conserving and administering still
Her savor for the gladdening of the race.
Yearly, of all the sons she has sent forth,
And men her admiration would adopt,
She summons whom she will back to her side
As if to ask, 'How fares my cause of truth
In the great world beyond these studious walls?'
Here, from their store of life experience,
They must make answer as grace is given them,
And their plain creed, in verity, declare.
Among the many, there is sometimes called
One who, like Arnold's scholar gypsy poor,
Is but a seeker on the dusky way,
'Still waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.'
He must bethink him first of other days,
And that old scholar of the seraphic smile,
As we recall him in this very place
With all the sweetest culture of his age,
His gentle courtesy and friendliness,
A chivalry of soul now strangely rare,
And that ironic wit which made him, too,
The unflinching critic and most dreaded foe
Of all things mean, unlovely, and untrue.
What Mr. Norton said, with that slow smile,
Has put the fear of God in many a heart,
130
Even while his hand encouraged eager youth.
From such enheartening who would not dare speak—
Seeing no truth can be too small to serve,
And no word worthless that is born of love?
Within the noisy workshop of the world,
Where still the strife is upward out of gloom,
Men doubt the value of high teaching —cry,
'What use is learning? Man must have his will!
The élan of life alone is paramount!
Away with old traditions! We are free!'
So folly mocks at truth in Freedom's name.
Pale Anarchy leads on, with furious shriek,
Her envious horde of reckless malcontents
And mad destroyers of the Commonwealth,
While Privilege with indifference grows corrupt,
Till the Republic stands in jeopardy
From following false idols and ideals,
Though sane men cry for honesty once more,
Order and duty and self-sacrifice.
Our world and all it holds of good for us
Our fathers and unselfish mothers made,
With noble passion and enduring toil,
Strenuous, frugal, reverent, and elate,
Caring above all else to guard and save
The ampler life of the intelligence
And the fine honor of a scrupulous code —
Ideals of manhood touched with the divine.
For this they founded these great schools we serve,
Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, Yale,
Amherst and Williams, trusting to our hands
The heritage of all they held most high,
Possessions of the spirit and the mind,
Investments in the provinces of joy.
Vast provinces are these! And fortunate they
Who at their will may go adventuring there,
Exploring all the boundaries of Truth,
Learning the roads that run through Beauty's realm,
Sighting the pinnacles where Good meets God,
Encompassed by the eternal unknown sea!
Even for a little to o'erlook those lands,
The kingdoms of Religion, Science, Art,
Is to be made forever happier
131
With blameless memories that shall bring content
And inspiration for all after days.
And fortunate they whom destiny allows
To rest within those provinces and serve
The dominion of ideals all their lives.
For whoso will, putting dull greed aside,
And holding fond allegiance to the best,
May dwell there and find fortitude and joy.
In the free fellowship of kindred minds,
One band of scholar gypsies I have known,
Whose purpose all unworldly was to find
An answer to the riddle of the Earth —
A key that should unlock the book of life
And secrets of its sorceries reveal.
This, they discovered, had long since been found
And laid aside forgotten and unused.
Our dark young poet who from Dartmouth came
Was told the secret by his gypsy bride,
Who had it from a master over seas,
And he it was first hinted to the band
The magic of that universal lore,
Before the great Mysteriarch summoned him.
It was the doctrine of the threefold life,
The beginning of the end of all their doubt.
In that Victorian age it has become
So much the fashion now to half despise,
Within the shadow of Cathedral walls
They had been schooled, and heard the mellow chimes
For Lenten litanies and daily prayers,
With a mild, eloquent, beloved voice
Exhorting to all virtue and that peace
Surpassing understanding —casting there
That 'last enchantment of the Middle Age,'
The spell of Oxford and her ritual.
So duteous youth was trained, until there grew
Restive outreaching in men's thought to find
Some certitude beyond the dusk of faith.
They cried on mysticism to be gone,
Mazed in the shadowy princedom of the soul.
Then as old creeds fell round them into dust,
They reached through science to belief in law,
Made reason paramount in man, and guessed
132
At reigning mind within the universe.
Piecing the fragments of a fair design
With reverent patience and courageous skill,
They saw the world from chaos step by step,
Under far-seeing guidance and restraint,
Emerge to order and to symmetry,
As logical and sure as music's own.
With Spencer, Darwin, Tyndall, and the rest,
Our band saw roads of knowledge open wide
Through the uncharted province of the truth,
As on they fared through that unfolding world.
Yet there they found no rest-house for the heart,
No wells sufficient for the spirit's thirst,
No shade nor glory for the senses starved. . . .
Turning— they fled by moonlit trails to seek
The magic principality of Art,
Where loveliness, not learning, rules supreme.
They stood intoxicated with delight before
The poised unanxious splendor of the Greek;
They mused upon the Gothic minsters gray,
Where mystic spirit took on mighty form,
Until their prayers to lovely churches turned —
(Like a remembrance of the Middle Age
They rose where Ralph or Bertram dreamed in stone);
Entranced they trod a painters' paradise,
Where color wasted by the Scituate shore
Between the changing marshes and the sea;
They heard the golden voice of poesie
Lulling the senses with its last caress
In Tennysonion accents pure and fine;
And all their laurels were for Beauty's brow,
Though toiling Reason went ungarlanded.
Then poisonous weeds of artifice sprang up,
Defiling Nature at her sacred source;
And there the questing World-soul could not stay,
Onward must journey with the changing time,
To come to this uncouth rebellious age,
Where not an ancient creed nor courtesy
Is underided, and each demagogue
Cries some new nostrum for the cure of ills.
To-day the unreasoning iconoclast
Would scoff at science and abolish art,
133
To let untutored impulse rule the world.
Let learning perish, and the race returns
To that first anarchy from which we came,
When spirit moved upon the deep and laid
The primal chaos under cosmic law.
And even now, in all our wilful might,
The satiated being cannot bide,
But to that austere country turns again,
The little province of the saints of God,
Where lofty peaks rise upward to the stars
From the gray twilight of Gethsemane,
And spirit dares to climb with wounded feet
Where justice, peace, and loving kindness are.
What says the lore of human power we hold
Through all these striving and tumultuous days?
'Why not accept each several bloom of good,
Without discarding good already gained,
As one might weed a garden overgrown —
Save the new shoots, yet not destroy the old?
Only the fool would root up his whole patch
Of fragrant flowers, to plant the newer seed.'
Ah, softly, brothers! Have we not the key,
Whose first fine luminous use Plotinus gave,
Teaching that ecstasy must lead the man?
Three things, we see, men in this life require,
(As they are needed in the universe):
First of all spirit, energy, or love,
The soul and mainspring of created things;
Next wisdom, knowledge, culture, discipline,
To guide impetuous spirit to its goal;
And lastly strength, the sound apt instrument,
Adjusted and controlled to lawful needs.
The next world-teacher must be one whose word
Shall reaffirm the primacy of soul,
Hold scholarship in her high guiding place,
And recognize the body's equal right
To culture such as it has never known,
In power and beauty serving soul and mind.
Inheritors of this divine ideal,
With courage to be fine as well as strong,
Shall know what common manhood may become,
Regain the gladness of the sons of morn,
134
The radiance of immortality.
Out of heroic wanderings of the past,
And all the wayward gropings of our time,
Unswerved by doubt, unconquered by despair,
The messengers of such a hope must go;
As one who hears far off before the dawn,
On some lone trail among the darkling hills,
The hermit thrushes in the paling dusk,
And at the omen lifts his eyes to see
Above him, with its silent shafts of light,
The sunrise kindling all the peaks with fire.
~ Bliss William Carman,
439:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.

But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.

Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.

*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.

You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.

In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.

It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.

My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.

All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.

These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.

And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.

And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.

My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.

Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967

~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],

IN CHAPTERS [150/158]



   49 Integral Yoga
   28 Occultism
   19 Christianity
   15 Psychology
   13 Science
   9 Philosophy
   4 Poetry
   4 Hinduism
   3 Integral Theory
   2 Sufism
   2 Fiction
   1 Thelema
   1 Mythology
   1 Mysticism
   1 Alchemy


   31 Sri Aurobindo
   18 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
   18 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   14 Carl Jung
   14 Aleister Crowley
   11 The Mother
   6 Satprem
   5 Aldous Huxley
   5 A B Purani
   4 Vyasa
   3 Plato
   2 Nirodbaran
   2 Ken Wilber
   2 H P Lovecraft
   2 George Van Vrekhem
   2 Al-Ghazali


   11 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
   9 Liber ABA
   8 Let Me Explain
   6 Mysterium Coniunctionis
   5 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   5 The Perennial Philosophy
   5 The Life Divine
   5 The Future of Man
   5 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
   5 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   5 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
   4 Vishnu Purana
   4 The Secret Doctrine
   4 Magick Without Tears
   3 Vedic and Philological Studies
   3 The Phenomenon of Man
   3 The Human Cycle
   3 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
   2 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
   2 The Practice of Psycho therapy
   2 The Alchemy of Happiness
   2 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
   2 Sex Ecology Spirituality
   2 Preparing for the Miraculous
   2 Lovecraft - Poems
   2 Letters On Poetry And Art
   2 Hymn of the Universe
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01


00.00 - Publishers Note, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Approach to Mysticism
   Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Publishers Note
  --
   We have pleasure in presenting the Second Volume of the Collected Works of Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta. The six books in this volume were originally published separately. The Essays are mainly concerned with Mysticism and Poetry.
   We are happy to note that the Government of India have given to our Centre of Education a grant to meet the cost of publication of this volume.
  --
   The Approach to Mysticism

00.01 - The Approach to Mysticism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
  object:00.01 - The Approach to Mysticism
  author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
  --
   Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta The Approach to Mysticism
   The Approach to Mysticism
   Mysticism is not only a science but also, and in a greater degree, an art. To approach it merely as a science, as the modern mind attempts to do, is to move towards futility, if not to land in positive disaster. Sufficient stress is not laid on this aspect of the matter, although the very crux of the situation lies here. The mystic domain has to be apprehended not merely by the true mind and understanding but by the right temperament and character. Mysticism is not merely an object of knowledge, a problem for inquiry and solution, it is an end, an ideal that has to be achieved, a life that has to be lived. The mystics themselves have declared long ago with no uncertain or faltering voice: this cannot be attained by intelligence or much learning, it can be seized only by a purified and clear temperament.
   The warning seems to have fallen, in the modern age, on unheeding ears. For the modern mind, being pre-eminently and uncompromisingly scientific, can entertain no doubt as to the perfect competency of science and the scientific method to seize and unveil any secret of Nature. If, it is argued, Mysticism is a secret, if there is at all a truth and reality in it, then it is and must be amenable to the rules and regulations of science; for science is the revealer of Nature's secrecies.
   But what is not recognised in this view of things is that there are secrecies and secrecies. The material secrecies of Nature are of one category, the mystic secrecies are of another. The two are not only disparate but incommensurable. Any man with a mind and understanding of average culture can see and handle the 'scientific' forces, but not the mystic forces.
   A scientist once thought that he had clinched the issue and cut the Gordian knot when he declared triumphantly with reference to spirit sances: "Very significant is the fact that spirits appear only in closed chambers, in half obscurity, to somnolent minds; they are nowhere in the open air, in broad daylight to the wide awake and vigilant intellect!" Well, if the fact is as it is stated, what does it prove? Night alone reveals the stars, during the day they vanish, but that is no proof that stars are not existent. Rather the true scientific spirit should seek to know why (or how) it is so, if it is so, and such a fact would exactly serve as a pointer, a significant starting ground. The attitude of the jesting Pilate is not helpful even to scientific inquiry. This matter of the Spirits we have taken only as an illustration and it must not be understood that this is a domain of high Mysticism; rather the contrary. The spiritualists' approach to Mysticism is not the right one and is fraught with not only errors but dangers. For the spiritualists approach their subject with the entire scientific apparatus the only difference being that the scientist does not believe while the spiritualist believes.
   Mystic realities cannot be reached by the scientific consciousness, because they are far more subtle than the subtlest object that science can contemplate. The neutrons and positrons are for science today the finest and profoundest object-forces; they belong, it is said, almost to a borderl and where physics ends. Nor for that reason is a mystic reality something like a mathematical abstraction, -n for example. The mystic reality is subtler than the subtlest of physical things and yet, paradoxical to say, more concrete than the most concrete thing that the senses apprehend.

00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Integral Yoga
  My child, yes, everything is there: Mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
  All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.

00.02 - Mystic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Approach to Mysticism Upanishadic Symbolism
   Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Mystic Symbolism
  --
   The Approach to Mysticism Upanishadic Symbolism

0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
    but {Aleph} is also a number of Samadhi and Mysticism, and
    the doctrine is therefore that Magick, in that highest
  --
     Mysticism.
     Step 1, the illumination of Ain as Ain Soph Aour;

01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   I would like to make a distinction between mystic poetry and spiritual poetry. To equate Mysticism and spirituality is not always happy or even correct. Thus, when Tagore sings:
   Who comes along singing and steering his boat?
  --
   it is Mysticism, Mysticism inexcelsis. Even A.E.'s
   I turn
  --
   It is not merely by addressing the beloved as your goddess that you can attain this Mysticism; the Elizabethan did that in merry abundance,ad nauseam.A finer temper, a more delicate touch, a more subtle sensitiveness and a kind of artistic wizardry are necessary to tune the body into a rhythm of the spirit. The other line of Mysticism is common enough, viz., to express the spirit in terms and rhythms of the flesh. Tagore did that liberally, the Vaishnava poets did nothing but that, the Song of Solomon is an exquisite example of that procedure. There is here, however, a difference in degrees which is an interesting feature worth noting. Thus in Tagore the reference to the spirit is evident, that is the major or central chord; the earthly and the sensuous are meant as the name and form, as the body to render concrete, living and vibrant, near and intimate what otherwise would perhaps be vague and abstract, afar, aloof. But this mundane or human appearance has a value in so far as it is a support, a pointer or symbol of the spiritual import. And the Mysticism lies precisely in the play of the two, a hide-and-seek between them. On the other hand, as I said, the greater portion of Vaishnava poetry, like a precious and beautiful casket, no doubt, hides the spiritual import: not the pure significance but the sign and symbol are luxuriously elaborated, they are placed in the foreground in all magnificence: as if it was their very purpose to conceal the real meaning. When the Vaishnava poet says,
   O love, what more shall I, shall Radha speak,
  --
   one can explain that it is the Christ calling the Church or God appealing to the human soul or one can simply find in it nothing more than a man pining for his woman. Anyhow I would not call it spiritual poetry or even mystic poetry. For in itself it does not carry any double or oblique meaning, there is no suggestion that it is applicable to other fields or domains of consciousness: it is, as it were, monovalent. An allegory is never Mysticism. There is more Mysticism in Wordsworth, even in Shelley and Keats, than in Spenser, for example, who stands in this respect on the same ground as Bunyan in his The Pilgrim's Progress. Take Wordsworth as a Nature-worshipper,
   Breaking the silence of the seas
  --
   I do not know if this is not Mysticism, what else is. Neither is religious poetry true Mysticism (or true spirituality). I find more Mysticism in
   Come, let us run

01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The ultimate truth is that God is the sole doer and the best we can do is to let him do freely without let or hindrance. "He that through Grace may see Jhesu, how that He doth all and himself doth right nought but suffereth Jhesu work in him what him liketh, he is meek." And yet one does not arrive at that condition from the beginning or all at once. "The work is not of the hour nor of a day, but of many days and years." And for a long time one has to take up one's burden and work, co-operate with the Divine working. In the process there is this double movement necessary for the full achievement. "Neither Grace only without full working of a soul that in it is nor working done without grace bringeth a soul to reforming but that one joined to that other." Mysticism is not all eccentricity and irrationality: on the contrary, sanity seems to be the very character of the higher Mysticism. And it is this sanity, and even a happy sense of humour accompanying it, that makes the genuine mystic teacher say: "It is no mastery to me for to say it, but for to do it there is mastery." Amen.
   Ascendimus ascensiones in corde et cantamus canticum graduum." Confessions of St. Augustine XIII. 9.

0 1966-05-18, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There is an Italian here, whom I saw the other day with his wife (his wife is nice; he has long hair and a mystic air mystic is a way of speaking: Mysticism for a theater stage). I didnt find them very interesting, but they intend to stay here for three or four months. And today, he has written me a letter in French. And in that letter there are many things; first he says he had an experience here and those people are terrible, mon petit, as soon as they have the slightest experience, theyre scared! So naturally, everything stops. But thats beside the point. Then, in that connection, he says he took that drug and he describes the effect (Mother shows Satprem a passage of the letter):
   The second time, with a normal dose of LSD (lysergic acid), as I rose in that luminous situation, I had terrible visions, the walls of my room came alive with thousands of malignant and desperate faces that persecuted me till night.

0 1967-05-24, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I know it is the Russian explanation of the recent trend to spirituality and Mysticism that it is a phenomenon of capitalist society in its decadence. But to read an economic cause, conscious or unconscious, into all phenomena of mans history is part of the Bolshevik gospel born of the fallacy of Karl Marx. Mans nature is not so simple and one-chorded as all thatit has many lines and each line produces a need of his life. The spiritual or mystic line is one of them and man tries to satisfy it in various ways, by superstitions of all kinds, by ignorant religionism, by spiritism, demonism and what not, in his more enlightened parts by spiritual philosophy, the higher occultism and the rest, at his highest by the union with the All, the Eternal or the Divine. The tendency towards the search of spirituality began in Europe with a recoil from the nineteenth centurys scientific materialism, a dissatisfaction with the pretended all-sufficiency of the reason and the intellect and a feeling out for something deeper. That was a pre-war [of 1914] phenomenon, and began when there was no menace of Communism and the capitalistic world was at its height of insolent success and triumph, and it came rather as a revolt against the materialistic bourgeois life and its ideals, not as an attempt to serve or sanctify it. It has been at once served and opposed by the post-war disillusionmentopposed because the post-war world has fallen back either on cynicism and the life of the senses or on movements like Fascism and Communism; served because with the deeper minds the dissatisfaction with the ideals of the past or the present, with all mental or vital or material solutions of the problem of life has increased and only the spiritual path is left. It is true that the European mind having little light on these things dallies with vital will-o-the-wisps like spiritism or theosophy or falls back upon the old religionism; but the deeper minds of which I speak either pass by them or pass through them in search of a greater Light. I have had contact with many and the above tendencies are very clear. They come from all countries and it was only a minority who hailed from England or America. Russia is differentunlike the others it has lingered in mediaeval religionism and not passed through any period of revoltso when the revolt came it was naturally anti-religious and atheistic. It is only when this phase is exhausted that Russian Mysticism can revive and take not a narrow religious but the spiritual direction. It is true that Mysticism revers, turned upside down, has made Bolshevism and its endeavour a creed rather than a political theme and a search for the paradisal secret millennium on earth rather than the building of a purely social structure. But for the most part Russia is trying to do on the communistic basis all that nineteenth-century idealism hoped to get atand failedin the midst of or against an industrial competitive environment. Whether it will really succeed any better is for the future to decide for at present it only keeps what it has got by a tension and violent control which is not over.
   Sri Aurobindo

0 1968-05-22, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   With this latest adventure [the attack on Mother], this body has learned trust. It was very much steeped in pessimism because of its material antecedents. Certain antecedents, that is, father and mother, had been chosen for their great practicality and a very concrete material honesty, but no Mysticism, nothing of the sortdeliberately. But then, it gave a kind of not exactly pessimism, but a very sharp vision of how things go wrong. The body had that, and its faith had to struggle against a habit of expecting difficulty, obstacles, resistance; although it had complete faith in the final Victory, it couldnt overcome the habit of expecting difficulties on the path. This latest adventure has given it a good push forward: its trust is much more smiling. And the general vision is as I told you. And constantly, all the time, even at the time of the worst difficulties, all the time there is it wells up from the cells, like a golden hymn: an incantation, you know, a call, an incantation to the supreme Power. And with such faith! A marvelous faith.
   (silence)

0 1972-03-29a, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I think I am correctly interpreting the feeling of my young Indian friends when I say that they see the heroes of your novels as raw mystics, to use Claudels description of Rimbaud. This may seem a surprising attri bute, considering your heroes atheism, but that is because we have too often confused Mysticism or spirituality with religion, as Sri Aurobindo stresses. One need not believe in a personal, extracosmic God to be a mystic. (That is certainly why religion has from time to time taken upon itself to bum alive all the non-regular mystics.) Here we touch upon a huge confusion rooted in religions. Through their monks, sannyasins and ascetics, religions have shown us a purely contemplative, austere and lifeless side of Mysticismindeed those mystics, like the religions they practice, live in a negation of life; they go through this vale of tears with their eyes exclusively fixed on the Beyond. But true Mysticism is not so limited as that, it seeks to transform life, to reveal the Absolute hidden in it; it seeks to establish the kingdom of God in man, as Sri Aurobindo wrote, and not the kingdom of a Pope, clergy or sacerdotal class. If the modem world lives in conflict and anguish, if it is torn between being and doing, it is because religion has driven away God from this world, severed him from his creation and flung him back to some distant heaven or empty nirvana, thus denying any possibility of human perfection on this earth and digging an unbridgeable gulf between being and doing, between mystics sunk in their dreams and this world abandoned to the forces of evil, to Satan and all those who consent to get their hands dirty.
   That contradiction is powerfully expressed in your books, it is striking to my Indian students. And they are surprised, for the urge to do something at all coststo do anything at all, as long as we do something, as one often hears in Europewithout this action being based on a being which it expresses and of which it is but the material translation, appears to them a strange attitude. Neither the despair, the silence or the revolt, nor the absurd pointlessness that sometimes surrounds the death of many of your heroes escape them. They feel that your heroes flee from themselves rather than express themselves. This torment between being and doing can be found in each one of them. They have apparently renounced to be something in order to do something, as one character stresses in Hope, but are they not desperately seeking to be through their actions, a being that they will capture only as time is abolished, in death? The same obsession seems to run through each of them: from Perken, who wants to leave his scar on the map, to outlive himself through twenty tribes, who fights against time as one fights against cancer, to Tchen, who shuts himself in the world of terrorism: an eternal world where time does not exist, and to Katow, who whispers to himself, O prisons, where time stops. In that respect, these characters clearly symbolize the impotence of a religion that has not been able to give the earth its meaning and plenitude.

02.08 - Jules Supervielle, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   His poetry is very characteristic and adds almost a new vein to the spirit and manner of French poetry. He has bypassed the rational and emotional tradition of his adopted country, brought in a mystic way of vision characteristic of the East. This Mysticism is not however the normal spiritual way but a kind of oblique sight into what is hidden behind the appearance. By the oblique way I mean the sideway to enter into the secret of things, a passage opening through the side. The mystic vision has different ways of approachone may look at the thing straight, face to face, being level with it with a penetrating gaze, piercing a direct entry into the secrets behind. This frontal gaze is also the normal human way of knowing and understanding, the scientific way. It becomes mystic when it penetrates sufficiently behind and strikes a secret source of another light and sight, that is, the inner sight of the soul. The normal vision which I said is the scientist's vision, stops short at a certain distance and so does not possess the key to the secret knowledge. But an aspiring vision can stretch itself, drill into the surface obstacle confronting it, and make its contact with the hidden ray behind. There is also another mystic way, not a gaze inward but a gaze upward. The human intelligence and the higher brain consciousness seeks a greater and intenser light, a vaster knowledge and leaps upward as it were. There develops a penetrating gaze towards heights up and above, to such a vision the mystery of the spirit slowly reveals itself. That is Vedantic Mysticism. There is a look downward also below the life-formation and one enters into contact with forces and beings and creatures of another type, a portion of which is named Hell or Hades in Europe, and in India Ptl and rastal. But here we are speaking of another way, not a frontal or straight movement, but as I said, splitting the side and entering into it, something like opening the shell of a mother of pearl and finding the pearl inside. There is a descriptive mystic: the suprasensuous experience is presented in images and feeling forms. That is the romantic way. There is an explanatory Mysticism: the suprasensuous is set in intellectual or mental terms, making it somewhat clear to the normal understanding. That is I suppose classical Mysticism. All these are more or less direct ways, straight approaches to the mystic reality. But the oblique is differentit is a seeking of the mind and an apprehension of the senses that are allusive, indirect, that move through contraries and negations, that point to a different direction in order just to suggest the objective aimed at. The Vedantic (and the Scientific too) is the straight, direct, rectilinear gaze the Vedantin says, May I look at the Sun with a transfixed gaze'; whether he looks upward or inward or downward. But the modem mystic is of a different mould. He has not that clear absolute vision, he has the apprehension of an aspiring consciousness. His is not religious poetry for that matter, but it is an aspiration and a yearning to perceive and seize truth and reality that eludes the senses, but seems to be still there. We shall understand better by taking a poem of his as example. Thus:
   Alter Ego

02.09 - Two Mystic Poems in Modern French, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The relation between the Higher and the Lower, between the other world and this, the interaction between the two is all that Mysticism means. The relation is spoken of sometimes as that of enmity and sometimes as that of friendliness. Ordinarily the two are incompatibles, enemies, as is quite natural. At times however, when the individual is ripe for the turnover, the two collaborate. The lower consciousness aspires for the higher and the higher comes down and enters into the lower to purify and change it.
   Various figures and images depict the nature and relation of the two. The lower is darkness and the night, the higher is light and the day. Sometimes it is the opposite: the lower is the day (ordinary common light), the higher is dark night (because unknown and unfamiliar or because of the very dazzle of its light). The lower is imaged at times as a woodland, a shelter for wild growths and roving animals. The higher is the hunter, with his hounds chasing the creatures of the lower domain. Also the higher is the serene infinite sky, the lower the raging sea below. Otherwise, again, the higher is the vast sea, tranquil or quietly rippling above and the lower is the solid material universe. The higher is the delightful sun, the lower is the muddy slimy earth of the bed of stones and rocks. The consummation, the dnouement is the interlocking between the two and a final coalescence in which the higher penetrates into the lower and the lower is sublimated into the higher and the two form one integral undivided reality.

02.11 - Hymn to Darkness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Two Mystic Poems in Modern Bengali Mysticism in Bengali Poetry
   Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Seer PoetsHymn to Darkness
  --
   Two Mystic Poems in Modern Bengali Mysticism in Bengali Poetry

02.12 - Mysticism in Bengali Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
  object:02.12 - Mysticism in Bengali Poetry
  author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
  --
   Mysticism in Bengali Poetry
   Bengali poetry was born some time towards the end of an era of decline in the Indian consciousness, almost towards the close of what is called the Buddhist period, but it was born with a veritable crown on its head. For it was sheer mystic poetry, mystic in substance, mystic in manner and expression. The poets were themselves mystics, that is to say spiritual seekers, sadhaks they were called Siddhas or Siddhacharyas. They told of their spiritual, rather occult experiences in an occult or oblique manner, the very manner of the ancient Vedic Rishis, in figures and symbols and similes. It was a form of beauty, not merely of truthof abstract metaphysical truth that rose all on a sudden, as it were, out of an enveloping darkness. It shone for a time and then faded slowly, perhaps spread itself out in the common consciousness of the people and continued to exist as a backwash in popular songs and fables and proverbs. But it was there and came up again a few centuries later and the crest is seen once more in a more elevated, polished and dignified form with a content of mental illumination. I am referring to Chandidasa, who was also a sadhak poet and is usually known as the father of Bengali poetry, being the creator of modern Bengali poetry. He flourished somewhere in the fourteenth century. That wave too subsided and retired into the background, leaving in interregnum again of a century or more till it showed itself once more in another volume of mystic poetry in the hands of a new type of spiritual practitioners. They were the Yogis and Fakirs, and although of a popular type, yet possessing nuggets of gold in their utterances, and they formed a large family. This almost synchronised with the establishment and consolidation of the Western Power, with its intellectual and rational enlightenment, in India. The cultivation and superimposition of this Western or secular light forced the native vein of Mysticism underground; it was necessary and useful, for it added an element which was missing before; a new synthesis came up in a crest with Tagore. It was a neo- Mysticism, intellectual, philosophical, broad-based, self-conscious. Recently however we have been going on the downward slope, and many, if not the majority among us, have been pointing at Mysticism and shouting: "Out, damned spot!" But perhaps we have struck the rock-bottom and are wheeling round.
   For in the present epoch we are rising on a new crest and everywhere, in all literatures, signs are not lacking of a supremely significant spiritual poetry being born among us.
  --
   This is Mysticism in excelsis and beautiful Mysticism.
   We dive down the centuries and when we come up we find Chandidasa thus greeting us:
  --
   Now, coming at last to the modern age, in Tagore we have the full-fledged intellectual Mysticism. Here is the modem seer and prophet:
   Within the finite, O Infinite, thou playest thy notes,
  --
   The significance of the human personality, the role of the finite in the play of the infinite and universal, the sanctity of the material form as an expression and objectification of the transcendent, the body as a function of Consciousness-Force Delight are some of the very cardinal and supreme experiences in Bengali Mysticism from its origin down to the present day.
   A Mysticism that evokes the soul's delights and experiences in a language that has so transformed itself as to become the soul's native utterance is the new endeavour of the poet's Muse.
   ***

02.13 - Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Mysticism in Bengali Poetry Appendix
   Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Seer PoetsRabindranath and Sri Aurobindo
  --
   Mysticism in Bengali Poetry Appendix

03.11 - The Language Problem and India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The stamp of mental clarity and neat psychological or introspective analysis in the French language has been its asset and a characteristic capacity from the time of Descartesthrough Malebranche and Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists right down to Bergson. The English are not by nature metaphysicians, in spite of the Metaphysicals: but greatness has been thrust upon them. The strain of Celtic Mysticism and contact with Indian spiritual lore have given the language a higher tension, a deeper and longer breath, a greater expressive capacity in that direction.
   But French seems to have made ample amends for this deficiency (in the matter of variety of experiences especially in the supra-rational religions) by developing a quality which is peculiar to its turn of psychological curiosity and secular understandinga refined sensibility, a subtle sensitiveness, an alert and vibrant perception that puts it in contact with the inner (even though not so much the higher) almost the hidden and occult movements of life. That is how Mysticismla mystiquecomes by a back door as it were into the French language.
   It seems natural for the English language to dwell on such heights of spiritual or metaphysical experience as A.E. gives us:

04.02 - Human Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   We characterise the change as a special degree or order of self-consciousness. Self-consciousness, we have seen, is the sine qua non of humanity. It is the faculty or power by and with which man appears on earth and maintains himself as such, as a distinct species. Thanks to this faculty man has become the tool-making animal, the artisanhomo faber. But on emerging from the original mythopoeic to the scientific status man has become doubly self-conscious. Self-consciousness means to be aware of oneself as standing separate from and against the environment and the world and acting upon it as a free agent, exercising one's deliberate will. Now the first degree of self-consciousness displayed itself in a creative activity by which consciousness remained no longer a suffering organon, but became a growing and directing, a reacting and new-creating agent. Man gained the power to shape the order of Nature according to the order of his inner will and consciousness. This creative activity, the activity of the artisan, developed along two lines: first, artisanship with regard to one's own self, one's inner nature and character, and secondly, with regard to the external nature, the not-self. The former gave rise to Mysticism and Yoga and was especially cultivated in India, while the second has led us to Science, man's physical mastery, which is the especial field of European culture.
   Now the second degree of self-consciousness to which we referred is the scientific consciousness par excellence. It can be described also as the spirit and power of experimentation, or more precisely, of scientific experimentation: it involves generically the process with which we are familiar in the domain of industry and is termed synthetic, that is to say, it means the skill and capacity to create the conditions under which a given phenomenon can be repeated at will. Hence it means a perfect knowledge of the process of thingswhich again is a dual knowledge: (1) the knowledge of the steps gradually leading to the result and (2) the knowledge that has the power to resolve the result into its antecedent conditions. Thus the knowledge of the mechanism, the detailed working of things, is scientific knowledge, and therefore scientific knowledge can be truly said to be mechanistic knowledge, in the best sense of the term. Now the knowledge of the ends and the knowledge of the means (to use a phrase of Aldous Huxley) and the conscious control over either have given humanity a new degree of self-consciousness.

04.03 - The Eternal East and West, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The East is no longer the traditional East of the poet who viewed it as eternally static and meditative, drowned in an "eyeless muse" away and aloof from earth and world. Even if it had and has still in its essential nature a nostalgia for the transcendence, yet it seeks today more and more for a hold upon the physical realities: it seems to remember again what the Upanishadic Rishi sought the Rishi being asked whether he came for the mundane wealth of a thousand heads of cattle, with golden rings round their horns, or for the knowledge of the Transcendent Reality, replied that he had come for both. And the hidebound materialist West, the positivist scientific West, finds this day many fissures and loopholes in the solid Laplacian scheme; as it dives down and enters into the secrecies of even the most material things, curious mysteries surge up and its eyes demand another look and another vision than those to which the mere senses have accustomed them. Physical Scientists bending towards or being compelled to bend towards metaphysics and even Mysticism are no longer an anomaly in the scientific world.
   The Spirit is not the static transcendent absolute entity only. It is dynamic Force, creative conscious Energy. The spiritual is not mere silence and status it is expression and movement also. Any silence and any status are not the silence and the status of the Spirit the silence and status of death, for example; so too any expression and movement are not of the Spirit either but this does not mean that the Spirit cannot have its own expression and movement. God too likewise is not a mere supracosmic beinga somewhat aggrandised human beingtreating and dominating man and the world as something foreign and essentially antagonistic to his nature. God himself has made himself all creatures and all worlds. He is That and He is This fundamentally and integrally. Again, at the other end, Matter is not mere dead mechanical matter. It is vibrant energy, but energy that conceals within it life and consciousness. Besides, the whirl and motion of energies is not all, something inherently static looms large behind: you call it ether, field, space or substratumit is being, one would like to say, infused with a secret consciousness and will.

05.12 - The Revealer and the Revelation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Mysticism in Religion, by Dean Inge, p. 155. 341
   ***

07.21 - On Occultism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Why are Dreams Forgotten? Mysticism and Occultism
   Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part SevenOn Occultism
  --
   Why are Dreams Forgotten? Mysticism and Occultism

07.22 - Mysticism and Occultism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
  object:07.22 - Mysticism and Occultism
  author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
  --
   Mysticism and Occultism
   Mysticism is more or less an emotional relation with what one feels to be a Divine Powerit is a relation very intimate, emotive and intense with something invisible which one takes for the Divine.
   Occultism is the knowledge of invisible forces and the power to handle them. It is a science, altogether a science. I always compare occultism with chemistry or physics; for occult knowledge is very much like scientific knowledge, only science deals with material objects and forces, while occultism deals with invisible entities and energies, their potentials of combination and association. And as by your chemical or physical knowledge you control material phenomena, in the same way by the occult knowledge you control subtle phenomena, make them active and effective. The procedure also is quite scientific. It is to be learnt exactly as you do a science. It is not a matter of feeling or emotion: it is nothing vague or uncertain. You must work as in a laboratory. You have to learn the laws of action and reaction and apply them. Only there are not many people to teach you. Also it is not without danger. There are in this field combinations as explosive as any chemical combination.

1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  I do not think I am boasting unfairly when I say that my personal researches have been of the greatest value and importance to the study of the subject of Magick and Mysticism in general, especially my integration of the various thought-systems of the world, notably the identification of the system of the Yi King with that of the Qabalah. But I do assure you that the whole of my life's work, were it multiplied a thousand fold, would not be worth one ti the of the value of a single verse of The Book of the Law.
  I think you should have a copy of The Equinox of the Gods and make The Book of the Law your constant study. Such value as my own work may possess for you should amount to no more than an aid to the interpretation of this book.

1.00 - Introduction to Alchemy of Happiness, #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
  "Ghazzali," says Tholuck, "if ever any man have deserved the name, was truly a divine, and he may justly he placed on a level with Origen, so remarkable was he for learning and ingenuity, and gifted with such a rare faculty for the skillful and worthy exposition of doctrine. All that is good, noble and sublime, which his great soul had compassed, he bestowed upon Mohammedanism; and he adorned the doctrines of the Koran with so much piety and learning, that, in the form given them by him, they seem in my opinion worthy the assent of Christians. Whatsoever was most excellent in the philosophy of Aristotle or in the Soofi Mysticism, he discreetly adapted to the Mohammedan theology. From every school, he sought the [8] means of shedding light and honor upon religion; while his sincere piety and lofty conscientiousness imparted to all his writings a sacred majesty. He was the first of Mohammedan divines." (Bibliotheca Sacra, vi, 233).
  Sale, in the preliminary discourse to his translation of the Koran, shows that he had discovered the peculiar traits of Ghazzali's mind; for wherever he gives an explanation of the Mussulman creed, peculiarly consonant to universal reason and opposed to superstition, it will be found that he quotes from him.1
  --
  In form, the book contains a treatise on practical piety, but as is the case with a large proportion of Mohammedan works, the author, whatever may be his subject, finds a place for observations reaching far wide of his apparent aim, so our author is led to make many observations which develop his notions in anatomy, physiology, natural philosophy and natural religion. The partisans of all sorts of opinions will be interested in finding that a Mohammedan author writing so long since in the centre of Asia, had occasion to approve or condemn so many truths, speculations or fancies which are now current among us with the reputation of novelty. Many of the same paradoxes and problems that startle or fascinate in the nineteenth century are here discussed. He came in contact, among his contemporaries, with persons who made the same general objections to natural and revealed religion, as understood by Mohammedans, as are in our days made to Christianity, or who perverted and abused the religion which they professed for their own ends, in the same manner as Christianity is abused among us. And he engaged with earnestness now truthfully, and now erroneously, in refuting these men. His usual stand-point in discussion is equally removed from the most extravagant Mysticism, and literal and formal orthodoxy. He attempts a dignified blending of reason [10] and faith, requiring of his fellow men unfeigned piety in the temper and tone of an evangelical Christian. He reminds his readers, in these discourses, that they are not Mussulmans if they are satisfied with merely a nominal faith, and treats with scorn those who are spiritualists only in language and dress.
  It is too narrow a view to adopt, in regard to a man of the sublime character of Ghazzali, that he obtained his ideas from any one school of thinkers, or that being in fellowship with the Soofies, that he was merely a Soofi. He was living in the centre of Aryan peoples and religions. He may have had his doctrine of the future life shaped by Zoroaster, and have been influenced by the missionaries of the Buddhists.

1.00 - Preliminary Remarks, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  If both parts are thoroughly studied and understood, the pupil will have obtained a real grasp of all the fundamentals and essentials of both Magick and Mysticism.
  I wrote this book down from Frater Perdurabo's dictation at the Villa Caldarazzo, Posilippo, Naples, where I was studying under him, a villa actually prophesied to us long before we reached Naples by that Brother of the A.'.A.'. who appeared to me in Zurich. Any point which was obscure to me was cleared up in some new discourse (the discourses have consequently been re-arranged). Before printing, the whole work was read by several persons of rather less than average intelligence, and any point not quite clear even to them has been elucidated.
  --
  In the Bhagavadgita a vision of this class is naturally attri buted to the apparition of Vishnu, who was the local god of the period. Anna Kingsford, who had dabbled in Hebrew Mysticism, and was a feminist, got an almost identical vision; but called the divine figure which she saw alternately Adonai and Maria.
  Now this woman, though handicapped by a brain that was a mass of putrid pulp, and a complete lack of social status, education, and moral character, did more in the religious world than any other person had done for generations. She, and she alone, made Theosophy possible, and without Theosophy the world-wide interest in similar matters could never have been aroused. This interest is to the Law of Thelema what the preaching of John the Baptist was to Christianity.

1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  the Kabbalah, wrote in Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism:
  Adam Kadmon is a first configuration of the divine light
  --
  non-materialism as animism, Mysticism, hallucination and
  simply mental aberration shows one thing, it is that none of

1.01 - An Accomplished Westerner, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  Europe was at the peak of its glory; the game seemed to be played in the West. This is how it appeared to Dr. Krishnadhan Ghose, Sri Aurobindo's father, who had studied medicine in England, and had returned to India completely anglicized. He did not want his three sons, of whom Sri Aurobindo was the youngest, to be in the least contaminated by the "steamy and retrograde" Mysticism in which his country seemed to be running to ruin. He did not even want them to know anything of the traditions and languages of India. Sri Aurobindo was therefore provided not only with an English first name, Akroyd,
  but also with an English governess, Miss Pagett, and then sent off at the age of five to an Irish convent school in Darjeeling among the sons of British administrators. Two years later, the three Ghose boys would leave for England. Sri Aurobindo was seven. Not until the age of twenty would he learn his mother tongue, Bengali. He would never see his father again, who died just before his return to India, and barely his mother, who was ill and did not recognize him on his return. Hence, this is a child who grew up outside every influence of family, country, and tradition a free spirit. The first lesson Sri Aurobindo gives us is perhaps, precisely, a lesson of freedom.

1.01 - Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The preoccupation of the Mystics was with self-knowledge and a profounder world-knowledge; they found out that in man there was a deeper self and inner being behind the surface of the outward physical man, which it was his highest business to discover and know. "Know thyself" was their great precept, just as in India to know the Self, the Atman became the great spiritual need, the highest thing for the human being. They found also a Truth, a Reality behind the outward aspects of the universe and to discover, follow, realise this Truth was their great aspiration. They discovered secrets and powers of Nature which were not those of the physical world but which could bring occult mastery over the physical world and physical things and to systematise this occult knowledge and power was also one of their strong preoccupations. But all this could only be safely done by a difficult and careful training, discipline, purification of the nature; it could not be done by the ordinary man. If men entered into these things without a severe test and training it would be dangerous to themselves and others; this knowledge, these powers could be misused, misinterpreted, turned from truth to falsehood, from good to evil. A strict secrecy was therefore maintained, the knowledge handed down behind a veil from master to disciple. A veil of symbols was created behind which these mysteries could shelter, formulas of speech also which could be understood by the initiated but were either not known by others or were taken by them in an outward sense which carefully covered their true meaning and secret. This was the substance of Mysticism everywhere.
  It has been the tradition in India from the earliest times that the Rishis, the poet-seers of the Veda, were men of this type, men with a great spiritual and occult knowledge not shared by ordinary human beings, men who handed down this knowledge and their powers by a secret initiation to their descendants and chosen disciples. It is a gratuitous assumption to suppose that this tradition was wholly unfounded, a superstition that arose suddenly or slowly formed in a void, with nothing whatever to support it; some foundation there must have been however small or however swelled by legend and the accretions of centuries. But if it is true, then inevitably the poet-seers must have expressed something of their secret knowledge, their mystic lore in their writings and such an element must be present, however well-concealed by an occult language or behind a technique of symbols, and if it is there it must be to some extent discoverable.

1.01 - Fundamental Considerations, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
  In summary, it should be said that our description does not deal with a new image of the world, nor with a new Weltanschauung, nor with a new conception of the world. A new Image would be no more than the creation of a myth, since all imagery has a predominantly mythical nature. A new Weltanschauung wouldbe nothing else than a new Mysticism and irrationality, as mythical characteristics are inherent in all contemplation to the extent that it is merely visionary; and a new conception of the world would be nothing else than yet another standard rationalistic construction of the present, for conceptualization has an essentially rational and abstract nature.
  Our concern is with a new reality - a reality functioning and effectual integrally, in which intensity and action, the effective and the effect co-exist; one where origin, by virtue of presentiation, blossoms forth anew; and one in which the present is all-encompassing and entire. Integral reality is the worlds transparency, a perceiving of the world as truth: a mutual perceiving and imparting of truth of the world and of man and of all that transluces both.

1.01 - Historical Survey, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  It is often assumed to-day that Judaism and Mysticism stand at opposite poles of thought, and that therefore
  Jewish Mysticism is a glaring contradiction in terms.
  The erroneous assumption here arises from the antithesis of law and faith as set Up by St. Paul's proselytising men- tality (and in a lesser degree by the rationalist efforts of
  Maimonides to square everything with formal Aristotelean principles), falsely stamping Judaism as a religion of un- relieved legalism. Mysticism is the irreconcilable enemy of purely religious legalism.
  The confusion is also due to the efforts of those theo- logians in mediaeval times who, being desirous of saving their benighted Hebrew brethren from the pangs of eternal torture and damnation in the nether regions, muddled and tampered not only with the original texts but with extreme sectarian interpretations in order to show that the authors of the Qabalistic books were desirous that their Jewish posterity should become apostates to Christianity.
  --
  The great Jewish historian, Graetz, too, holds the unhistoric view that Jewish Mysticism is a morbid and late growth, foreign to the religious genius of Israel, and that it has its origin in the speculations of one Isaac the Blind in Spain somewhere between the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Graetz regards the Qabalah, the Zohar in particular, as a " false doctrine which, although new, styled itself a genuine teaching of Israel " ( History of the Jews,
  Vol. Ill, p. 565).

1.01 - How is Knowledge Of The Higher Worlds Attained?, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
   revive the memory of experiences beyond the border of life and death. Everyone can attain this knowledge; in each one of us lies the faculty of recognizing and contemplating for ourselves what genuine Mysticism, Spiritual Science, Anthroposophy, and Gnosis teach. Only the right means must be chosen. Only a being with ears and eyes can apprehend sounds and colors; nor can the eye perceive if the light which makes things visible is wanting. Spiritual Science gives the means of developing the spiritual ears and eyes, and of kindling the spiritual light; and this method of spiritual training: (1) Preparation; this develops the spiritual senses. (2) Enlightenment; this kindles the spiritual light. (3) Initiation; this establishes intercourse with the higher spiritual beings.

1.01 - Maitreya inquires of his teacher (Parashara), #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  [1]: An address of this kind, to one or other Hindu divinity, usually introduces Sanscrit compositions, especially those considered sacred. The first term of this mantra or brief prayer, Om or Omkāra, is well known as a combination of letters invested by Hindu Mysticism with peculiar sanctity. In the Vedas it is said to comprehend all the gods; and in the Purāṇas it is directed to be prefixed to all such formulæ as that of the text. Thus in the Uttara Khaṇḍa of the Pādma Purāṇa: 'The syllable Om, the mysterious name, or Brahma, is the leader of all prayers: let it therefore, O lovely-faced, (Śiva addresses Durgā,) be employed in the beginning of all prayers:' According to the same authority, one of the mystical imports of the term is the collective enunciation of Viṣṇu expressed by A, of Srī his bride intimated by U, and of their joint worshipper designated by M. A whole chapter of the Vāyu Purāṇa is devoted to this term. A text of the Vedas is there cited: 'Om, the monosyllable Brahma;' the latter meaning either the Supreme Being or the Vedas collectively, of which this monosyllable is the type. It is also said to typify the three spheres of the world, the three holy fires, the three steps of Viṣṇu, &c.-Frequent meditation upon it, and repetition of it, ensure release from worldly existence. See also Manu, II. 76. Vāsudeva, a name of Viṣṇu or Kṛṣṇa, is, according to its grammatical etymology, a patronymic derivative implying son of Vasudeva. The Vaiṣṇava Purāṇas, however, devise other explanations: see the next chapter, and again, b. VI. c. 5.
  [2]: In this stanza occurs a series of the appellations of Viṣṇu: 1. Puṇḍarīkākṣa, having eyes like a lotus, or heart-pervading; or Puṇḍarīka is explained supreme glory, and Akṣa imperishable: the first is the most usual etymon. 2. Vīswabhāvana, the creator of the universe, or the cause of the existence of all things. 3. Hṛṣīkeśa, lord of the senses. 4. Mahā puruṣa, great or supreme spirit; puruṣa meaning that which abides or is quiescent in body (puri sété), 5. Pūrvaja, produced or appearing before creation; the Orphic πρωτογόνος. In the fifth book, c. 18, Viṣṇu is described by five appellations, which are considered analogous to these; or, 1. Bhūtātmā, one with created things, or Puṇḍarīkākṣa; 2. Pradhānātmā, one with crude nature, or Viśvabhāvana; 3. Indriyātmā, one with the senses, or Hṛṣikeśa; 4. Paramātmā, supreme spirit, or Mahāpuruṣa; and Ātmā, soul; living soul, animating nature and existing before it, or Pūrvaja.

1.01 - On knowledge of the soul, and how knowledge of the soul is the key to the knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
  There is still one farther observation that deserves to be made. If a person by the payment of a thousand pieces of gold, could become master of alchemy, yet the condition of the man who is absolutely master of ten thousand pieces of gold would be better and preferable. And this illustrates the position of the soofees. If a person follow their method and attain to the knowledge of some things, he still does not equal in excellence, the doctors of the law. Just as we see, that books on alchemy, and students of alchemy are very numerous, while those who are successful are the least of few, so the path of Mysticism is sought for by all men, and longed for by all classes of society, yet those who [34] attain to the end are exceedingly rare. Perhaps, as in the case of alchemy, it only exists now in name and form. The greater part of the notions and fancies of most of the mystics, which they esteem as revelations and mysteries, are nothing but vain triflings and pure self complacency; just as that while visions are a reality, still mere confused dreams are very abundant. The mystic, however, who by spiritual revelation has learned all that a doctor of the law has been able to learn after many years of study, and who has no remaining doubts in matters of internal or external knowledge, is certainly more excellent than the doctor of the law who is learned only in external knowledge, and this should not be denied. And it follows that the way of the mystics must be acknowledged to be a true one, and that you must not destroy the belief of those weak minded and vain persons who follow them; for, the reason why they cast reproaches upon knowledge and calumniate the doctors of law is that they have no acquirements or knowledge themselves.
  O, inquirer after divine mysteries! do you ask how it is known that the happiness of man consists in the knowledge of God, and that his enjoyment consists in the love of God ? We observe in reply, that every man's happiness is found in the place where he obtains enjoyment and tranquility. Thus sensual enjoyment is found in eating and drinking and the like. The enjoyment of anger is derived from taking revenge and from violence. The enjoyment of the eye consists in the view of correct images and agreeable objects. The enjoyment of the ear is secured in listening to harmonious voices. In the same way the enjoyment of the heart depends upon its being employed in that for which it was created, in learning to know every thing in its reality and truth. Hence, every man glories in what he knows, even if the thing is but of little importance. He [35] who knows how to play chess, boasts over him who does not know: and if he is looking on while a game of chess is played, it is of no use to tell him not to speak, for as soon as he sees an improper move, he has not patience to restrain himself from showing his skill, and glorying in his knowledge, by pointing it out....

1.01 - the Call to Adventure, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, A Study in the Nature and Development of
  Man's Spiritual Consciousness (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1911), Part II,

1.01 - The Cycle of Society, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If we look at the beginnings of Indian society, the far-off Vedic age which we no longer understand, for we have lost that mentality, we see that everything is symbolic. The religious institution of sacrifice governs the whole society and all its hours and moments, and the ritual of the sacrifice is at every turn and in every detail, as even a cursory study of the Brahmanas and Upanishads ought to show us, mystically symbolic. The theory that there was nothing in the sacrifice except a propitiation of Nature-gods for the gaining of worldly prosperity and of Paradise, is a misunderstanding by a later humanity which had already become profoundly affected by an intellectual and practical bent of mind, practical even in its religion and even in its own Mysticism and symbolism, and therefore could no longer enter into the ancient spirit. Not only the actual religious worship but also the social institutions of the time were penetrated through and through with the symbolic spirit. Take the hymn of the Rig Veda which is supposed to be a marriage hymn for the union of a human couple and was certainly used as such in the later Vedic ages. Yet the whole sense of the hymn turns about the successive marriages of Sury, daughter of the Sun, with different gods and the human marriage is quite a subordinate matter overshadowed and governed entirely by the divine and mystic figure and is spoken of in the terms of that figure. Mark, however, that the divine marriage here is not, as it would be in later ancient poetry, a decorative image or poetical ornamentation used to set off and embellish the human union; on the contrary, the human is an inferior figure and image of the divine. The distinction marks off the entire contrast between that more ancient mentality and our modern regard upon things. This symbolism influenced for a long time Indian ideas of marriage and is even now conventionally remembered though no longer understood or effective.
  We may note also in passing that the Indian ideal of the relation between man and woman has always been governed by the symbolism of the relation between the Purusha and Prakriti (in the Veda Nri and Gna), the male and female divine Principles in the universe. Even, there is to some degree a practical correlation between the position of the female sex and this idea. In the earlier Vedic times when the female principle stood on a sort of equality with the male in the symbolic cult, though with a certain predominance for the latter, woman was as much the mate as the adjunct of man; in later times when the Prakriti has become subject in idea to the Purusha, the woman also depends entirely on the man, exists only for him and has hardly even a separate spiritual existence. In the Tantrik Shakta religion which puts the female principle highest, there is an attempt which could not get itself translated into social practice,even as this Tantrik cult could never entirely shake off the subjugation of the Vedantic idea,to elevate woman and make her an object of profound respect and even of worship.

1.01 - The Human Aspiration, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  5:Thus the eternal paradox and eternal truth of a divine life in an animal body, an immortal aspiration or reality inhabiting a mortal tenement, a single and universal consciousness representing itself in limited minds and divided egos, a transcendent, indefinable, timeless and spaceless Being who alone renders time and space and cosmos possible, and in all these the higher truth realisable by the lower term, justify themselves to the deliberate reason as well as to the persistent instinct or intuition of mankind. Attempts are sometimes made to have done finally with questionings which have so often been declared insoluble by logical thought and to persuade men to limit their mental activities to the practical and immediate problems of their material existence in the universe; but such evasions are never permanent in their effect. Mankind returns from them with a more vehement impulse of inquiry or a more violent hunger for an immediate solution. By that hunger Mysticism profits and new religions arise to replace the old that have been destroyed or stripped of significance by a scepticism which itself could not satisfy because, although its business was inquiry, it was unwilling sufficiently to inquire. The attempt to deny or stifle a truth because it is yet obscure in its outward workings and too often represented by obscurantist superstition or a crude faith, is itself a kind of obscurantism. The will to escape from a cosmic necessity because it is arduous, difficult to justify by immediate tangible results, slow in regulating its operations, must turn out eventually to have been no acceptance of the truth of Nature but a revolt against the secret, mightier will of the great Mother It is better and more rational to accept what she will not allow us as a race to reject and lift it from the sphere of blind instinct, obscure intuition and random aspiration into the light of reason and an instructed and consciously self-guiding will. And if there is any higher light of illumined intuition or self-revealing truth which is now in man either obstructed and inoperative or works with intermittent glancings as if from behind a veil or with occasional displays as of the northern lights in our material skies, then there also we need not fear to aspire. For it is likely that such is the next higher state of consciousness of which Mind is only a form and veil, and through the splendours of that light may lie the path of our progressive self-enlargement into whatever highest state is humanity's ultimate resting-place.

10.23 - Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   which possesses furthermore the magic of an indefinable Mysticism so rare in the French language. The mystic element gives a special grace and flavour, a transcendent significance serving as an enveloping aura to the whole body of these Prayers and Meditations.
   One cannot, for example, but be bewitched by the mystic grandeur of this image :

1.02 - In the Beginning, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
  This is why certain systems of theology, in order to escape from the contradictory postulate of unity as a cause, have sought in a less unproductive dualism the explanation of the beginning of things. And although they have by a misdirected Mysticism, falsified the term and distorted the idea, it is in them that we recover the tendencies most in harmony with the very data on which the belief in a divine Creator is founded.
  Let us take, for example, the Bereshit.
  --
  Thus the rigid cult of the male Principle, formulated in the adoration of a masculine and celibate God, has given birth to an exaggerated dogma of spirituality which translates its contempt for nature and for life into an ascetic Mysticism.
  In the social order this tendency of thought has had for its corollary the institution of an autocratic regime and the despotic domination of man over woman and of the Sovereign over the State. For so great is the influence of religious and philosophical ideas on the life of a people and the practical forms in which it is embodied that on the rectitude of its notions about God depends its respect or its contempt for the rights of the masses and the rights of women. And, on the other hand, it is on this respect or contempt that by a projection of life into the domain of thought, depends the formulation of its notions about the origin of things and its concept of the Godhead.

1.02 - Karmayoga, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Vedanta and Yoga to life. To many who take their knowledge of Hinduism secondh and this may seem a doubtful definition. It is ordinarily supposed by "practical" minds that Vedanta as a guide to life and Yoga as a method of spiritual communion are dangerous things which lead men away from action to abstraction. We leave aside those who regard all such beliefs as Mysticism, self-delusion or imposture; but even those who reverence and believe in the high things of Hinduism have the impression that one must remove oneself from a full human activity in order to live the spiritual life. Yet the spiritual life finds its most potent expression in the man who lives the ordinary life of men in the strength of the Yoga and under the law of the Vedanta. It is by such a union of the inner life and the outer that mankind will eventually be lifted up and become mighty and divine. It is a delusion to suppose that Vedanta contains no inspiration to life, no rule of conduct, and is purely metaphysical and quietistic. On the contrary, the highest morality of which humanity is capable finds its one perfect basis and justification in the teachings of the Upanishads and the Gita. The characteristic doctrines of the Gita are nothing if they are not a law of life, a dharma, and even the most transcendental aspirations of the
  Vedanta presuppose a preparation in life, for it is only through life that one can reach to immortality. The opposite opinion is due to certain tendencies which have bulked large in the history and temperament of our race. The ultimate goal of our religion is emancipation from the bondage of material Nature and freedom from individual rebirth, and certain souls, among the highest we have known, have been drawn by the attraction of the final hush and purity to dissociate themselves from life and bodily action in order more swiftly and easily to reach the goal. Standing like

1.02 - The Concept of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  idea just as much or just as little Mysticism as in the theory of
  instincts. Although this reproach of Mysticism has frequently
  been levelled at my concept, I must emphasize yet again that
  --
  of Mysticism and shows affinities with certain passages in the
  Leiden papyri and the Corpus Hermeticum. In Dieterich's text

1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Like St. Augustine, Eckhart was to some extent the victim of his own literary talents. Le style cest Ihomme. No doubt. But the converse is also partly true. Lhomme cest le style. Because we have a gift for writing in a certain way, we find ourselves, in some sort, becoming our way of writing. We mould ourselves in the likeness of our particular brand of eloquence. Eckhart was one of the inventors of German prose, and he was tempted by his new-found mastery of forceful expression to commit himself to extreme positionsto be doctrinally the image of his powerful and over-emphatic sentences. A statement like the foregoing would lead one to believe that he despised what the Vedantists call the lower knowledge of Brahman, not as the Absolute Ground of all things, but as the personal God. In reality he, like the Vedantists, accepts the lower knowledge as genuine knowledge and regards devotion to the personal God as the best preparation for the unitive knowledge of the Godhead. Another point to remember is that the attri buteless Godhead of Vedanta, of Mahayana Buddhism, of Christian and Sufi Mysticism is the Ground of all the qualities possessed by the personal God and the Incarnation. God is not good, I am good, says Eckhart in his violent and excessive way. What he really meant was, I am just humanly good; God is supereminently good; the Godhead is, and his isness (istigkeit, in Eckharts German) contains goodness, love, wisdom and all the rest in their essence and principle. In consequence, the Godhead is never, for the exponent of the Perennial Philosophy, the mere Absolute of academic metaphysics, but something more purely perfect, more reverently to be adored than even the personal God or his human incarnationa Being towards whom it is possible to feel the most intense devotion and in relation to whom it is necessary (if one is to come to that unitive knowledge which is mans final end) to practise a discipline more arduous and unremitting than any imposed by ecclesiastical authority.
  There is a distinction and differentiation, according to our reason, between God and the Godhead, between action and rest. The fruitful nature of the Persons ever worketh in a living differentiation. But the simple Being of God, according to the nature thereof, is an eternal Rest of God and of all created things.

1.02 - The Pit, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  Athena. This necessity was emphasized in the most surprising way by the result of the Michelson-Morley experiments, when Physics itself calmly and frankly offered a contradiction in terms. It was not the metaphysicians this time who were picking holes in a vacuum. It was the mathematicians and the physicists who found the ground completely cut away from under their feet. It was not enough to replace the geometry of Euclid by those of Riemann and Lobatchevsky and the mechanics of Newton by those of Einstein, so long as any of the axioms of the old thought and the definitions of its terms survived. They deliberately abandoned positivism and materialism for an indeterminate Mysticism, creating a new mathematical philosophy and a new logic, wherein infinite-or rather transfinite-ideas might be made commensurable with those of ordinary thought in the forlorn hope that all might live happily ever after. In short, to use a Qabalistic nomenclature, they found it incumbent upon themselves to adopt for inclusion of terms of Ruach (intellect) concepts which are proper only to Neschamah (the organ and faculty of direct spiritual apperception and intuition). This same process took place in Philosophy years earlier. Had the dialectic of Hegel been only. half understood, the major portion of philosophical speculation from the Schoolmen to
  Kant's perception of the Antinomies of Reason would have been thrown overboard.

1.02 - The Two Negations 1 - The Materialist Denial, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  2: Nor is this, even, enough to guard us against a recoil from life in the body unless, with the Upanishads, perceiving behind their appearances the identity in essence of these two extreme terms of existence, we are able to say in the very language of those ancient writings, "Matter also is Brahman", and to give its full value to the vigorous figure by which the physical universe is described as the external body of the Divine Being. Nor, - so far divided apparently are these two extreme terms, - is that identification convincing to the rational intellect if we refuse to recognise a series of ascending terms (Life, Mind, Supermind and the grades that link Mind to Supermind) between Spirit and Matter. Otherwise the two must appear as irreconcilable opponents bound together in an unhappy wedlock and their divorce the one reasonable solution. To identify them, to represent each in the terms of the other, becomes an artificial creation of Thought opposed to the logic of facts and possible only by an irrational Mysticism.
  3:If we assert only pure Spirit and a mechanical unintelligent substance or energy, calling one God or Soul and the other Nature, the inevitable end will be that we shall either deny God or else turn from Nature. For both Thought and Life, a choice then becomes imperative. Thought comes to deny the one as an illusion of the imagination or the other as an illusion of the senses; Life comes to fix on the immaterial and flee from itself in a disgust or a self-forgetting ecstasy, or else to deny its own immortality and take its orientation away from God and towards the animal. Purusha and Prakriti, the passively luminous Soul of the Sankhyas and their mechanically active Energy, have nothing in common, not even their opposite modes of inertia; their antinomies can only be resolved by the cessation of the inertly driven Activity into the immutable Repose upon which it has been casting in vain the sterile procession of its images. Shankara's wordless, inactive Self and his Maya of many names and forms are equally disparate and irreconcilable entities; their rigid antagonism can terminate only by the dissolution of the multitudinous illusion into the sole Truth of an eternal Silence.

1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  St. Bernards doctrine of the carnal love of Christ has been admirably summed up by Professor tienne Gilson in his book, The Mystical Theology of St Bernard. Knowledge of self already expanded into social carnal love of the neighbour, so like oneself in misery, is now a second time expanded into a carnal love of Christ, the model of compassion, since for our salvation He has become the Man of Sorrows. Here then is the place occupied in Cistercian Mysticism by the meditation on the visible Humanity of Christ. It is but a beginning, but an absolutely necessary beginning Charity, of course, is essentially spiritual, and a love of this kind can be no more than its first moment. It is too much bound up with the senses, unless we know how to make use of it with prudence, and to lean on it only as something to be surpassed. In expressing himself thus, Bernard merely codified the teachings of his own experience; for we have it from him that he was much given to the practice of this sensitive love at the outset of his conversion; later on he was to consider it an advance to have passed beyond it; not, that is to say, to have forgotten it, but to have added another, which outweighs it as the rational and spiritual outweigh the carnal. Nevertheless, this beginning is already a summit.
  This sensitive affection for Christ was always presented by St. Bernard as love of a relatively inferior order. It is so precisely on account of its sensitive character, for charity is of a purely spiritual essence. In right the soul should be able to enter directly into union, in virtue of its spiritual powers, with a God Who is pure spirit. The Incarnation, moreover, should be regarded as one of the consequences of mans transgression, so that love for the Person of Christ is, as a matter of fact, bound up with the history of a fall which need not, and should not, have happened. St. Bernard furthermore, and in several places, notes-that this affection cannot stand safely alone, but needs to be supported by what he calls science. He had examples before him of the deviations into which even the most ardent devotion can fall, when it is not allied with, and ruled by, a sane theology.
  Can the many fantastic and mutually incompatible theories of expiation and atonement, which have been grafted onto the Christian doctrine of divine incarnation, be regarded as indispensable elements in a sane theology? I find it difficult to imagine how anyone who has looked into a history of these notions, as expounded, for example, by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by Athanasius and Augustine, by Anselm and Luther, by Calvin and Grotius, can plausibly answer this question in the affirmative. In the present context, it will be enough to call attention to one of the bitterest of all the bitter ironies of history. For the Christ of the Gospels, lawyers seemed further from the Kingdom of Heaven, more hopelessly impervious to Reality, than almost any other class of human beings except the rich. But Christian theology, especially that of the Western churches, was the product of minds imbued with Jewish and Roman legalism. In all too many instances the immediate insights of the Avatar and the theocentric saint were rationalized into a system, not by philosophers, but by speculative barristers and metaphysical jurists. Why should what Abbot John Chapman calls the problem of reconciling (not merely uniting) Mysticism and Christianity be so extremely difficult? Simply because so much Roman and Protestant thinking was done by those very lawyers whom Christ regarded as being peculiarly incapable of understanding the true Nature of Things. The Abbot (Chapman is apparently referring to Abbot Marmion) says St John of the Cross is like a sponge full of Christianity. You can squeeze it all out, and the full mystical theory (in other words, the pure Perennial Philosophy) remains. Consequently for fifteen years or so I hated St John of the Cross and called him a Buddhist. I loved St Teresa and read her over and over again. She is first a Christian, only secondarily a mystic. Then I found I had wasted fifteen years, so far as prayer was concerned.
  Now see the meaning of these two sayings of Christs. The one, No man cometh unto the Father but by me, that is through my life. The other saying, No man cometh unto me except the Father draw him; that is, he does not take my life upon him and follow after me, except he is moved and drawn of my Father, that is, of the Simple and Perfect Good, of which St. Paul saith, When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.

1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  asceticism or by Mysticism, create night and silence within our-
  selves; then, at the opposite extreme of appearance, we shall pene-

1.04 - A Leader, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  These few words had been spoken with sombre determination, while the face of this obscure hero was marked with such noble Mysticism that I would not have been astonished to see the martyrs crown of thorns encircling his brow.
  But as you were telling us in the beginning, I replied, since you have yourselves been forced to recognise that this open struggle, this struggle of desperate men, although certainly not without an intrepid greatness, is at the same time vain and foolish in its recklessness, you should renounce it for a time, fade into the shadows, prepare yourselves in silence, gather your strength, form yourselves into groups, become more and more united, so as to conquer on the auspicious day, helped by the organising intelligence, the all-powerful lever which, unlike violence, can never be defeated.

1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  These phrases about the unmoving first mover remind one of Aristotle. But between Aristotle and the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy within the great religious traditions there is this vast difference: Aristotle is primarily concerned with cosmology, the Perennial Philosophers are primarily concerned with liberation and enlightenment: Aristotle is content to know about the unmoving mover, from the outside and theoretically; the aim of the Perennial Philosophers is to become directly aware of it, to know it unitively, so that they and others may actually become the unmoving One. This unitive knowledge can be knowledge in the heights, or knowledge in the fulness, or knowledge simultaneously in the heights and the fulness. Spiritual knowledge exclusively in the heights of the soul was rejected by Mahayana Buddhism as inadequate. The similar rejection of quietism within the Christian tradition will be touched upon in the section, Contemplation and Action. Meanwhile it is interesting to find that the problem which aroused such acrimonious debate throughout seventeenth-century Europe had arisen for the Buddhists at a considerably earlier epoch. But whereas in Catholic Europe the outcome of the battle over Molinos, Mme. Guyon and Fnelon was to all intents and purposes the extinction of Mysticism for the best part of two centuries, in Asia the two parties were tolerant enough to agree to differ. Hinayana spirituality continued to explore the heights within, while the Mahayanist masters held up the ideal not of the Arhat, but of the Bodhisattva, and pointed the way to spiritual knowledge in its fulness as well as in its heights. What follows is a poetical account, by a Zen saint of the eighteenth century, of the state of those who have realized the Zen ideal.
  Abiding with the non-particular which is in particulars,

1.04 - Narayana appearance, in the beginning of the Kalpa, as the Varaha (boar), #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  ga, Vāyu, and Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇas, citing the same, have a somewhat different reading; or, 'Āpa (is the same as) Nārā, or bodies (Tanava); such, we have heard (from the Vedas), is the meaning of Apa. He who sleeps in them, is thence called Nārāyaṇa.' The ordinary sense of Tanu is either 'minute' or 'body,' nor does it occur amongst the synonymes of water in the Nirukta of the Vedas. It may perhaps be intended to say, that Nārā or Apa has the meaning of 'bodily forms,' in which spirit is enshrined, and of which the waters, with Viṣṇu resting upon them, are a type; for there is much Mysticism in the Purāṇas in which the passage thus occurs. Even in them, however, it is introduced in the usual manner, by describing the world as water alone, and Viṣṇu reposing upon the deep: ### Vāyu P. The Bhāgavata has evidently attempted to explain the ancient text: 'When the embodied god in the beginning divided the mundane egg, and issued forth, then, requiring an abiding-place, he created the waters: the pure created the pure. In them, his own created, he abode for a thousand years, and thence received the name of Nārāyaṇa: the waters being the product of the embodied deity:' i. e. they were the product of Nara or Viṣṇu, as the first male or Virāt, and were therefore termed Nāra: and from there being his Ayana or Sthāna, his 'abiding place,' comes his epithet of Nārāyaṇa.
  [3]: The Varāha form was chosen, says the Vāyu P., because it is an animal delighting to sport in water, but it is described in many Purāṇas, as it is in the Viṣṇu, as a type of the ritual of the Vedas, as we shall have further occasion to remark. The elevation of the earth from beneath the ocean in this form, was, therefore, probably at first an allegorical representation of the extrication of the world from a deluge of iniquity by the rites of religion. Geologists may perhaps suspect, in the original and unmystified tradition, an allusion to a geological fact, or the existence of lacustrine mammalia in the early periods of the earth.

1.04 - SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  moment by these two concepts or rival Mysticisms; and in conse-
  quence its vital power of adoration is disastrously weakened.

1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  These are negative and a priori considerations, but they are supported by more positive indications. The other Aryan religions which are most akin in conception to the Vedic and seem originally to have used the same names for their deities, present themselves to us even at their earliest vaguely historic stage as moralised religions. Their gods had not only distinct moral attri butes, but represented moral & subjective functions. Apollo is not only the god of the sun or of pestilencein Homer indeed Haelios (Saurya) & not Apollo is the Sun God but the divine master of prophecy and poetry; Athene has lost any naturalistic significance she may ever have had and is a pure moral force, the goddess of strong intelligence, force guided by brain; Ares is the lord of battles, not a storm wind; Artemis, if she is the Moon, is also goddess of the free hunting life and of virginity; Aphrodite is only the goddess of Love & Beauty There is therefore a strong moral element in the cult & there are clear subjective notions attached to the divine personalities. But this is not all. There was not only a moral element in the Greek religion as known & practised by the layman, there was also a mystic element and an esoteric belief & practice practised by the initiated. The mysteries of Eleusis, the Thracian rites connected with the name of Orpheus, the Phrygian worship of Cybele, even the Bacchic rites rested on a mystic symbolism which gave a deep internal meaning to the exterior circumstances of creed & cult. Nor was this a modern excrescence; for its origins were lost to the Greeks in a legendary antiquity. Indeed, if we took the trouble to understand alien & primitive mentalities instead of judging & interpreting them by our own standards, I think we should find an element of Mysticism even in savage rites & beliefs. The question at any rate may fairly be put, Were the Vedic Rishis, thinkers of a race which has shown itself otherwise the greatest & earliest mystics & moralisers in historical times, the most obstinately spiritual, theosophic & metaphysical of nations, so far behind the Orphic & Homeric Greeks as to be wholly Pagan & naturalistic in their creed, or was their religion too moralised & subjective, were their ceremonies too supported by an esoteric symbolism?
  The immediate or at any rate the earliest known successors of the Rishis, the compilers of the Brahmanas, the writers of theUpanishads give a clear & definite answer to this question.The Upanishads everywhere rest their highly spiritual & deeply mystic doctrines on the Veda.We read in the Isha Upanishad of Surya as the Sun God, but it is the Sun of spiritual illumination, of Agni as the Fire, but it is the inner fire that burns up all sin & crookedness. In the Kena Indra, Agni & Vayu seek to know the supreme Brahman and their greatness is estimated by the nearness with which they touched him,nedistham pasparsha. Uma the daughter of Himavan, the Woman, who reveals the truth to them is clearly enough no natural phenomenon. In the Brihadaranyaka, the most profound, subtle & mystical of human scriptures, the gods & Titans are the masters, respectively, of good and of evil. In the Upanishads generally the word devah is used as almost synonymous with the forces & functions of sense, mind & intellect. The element of symbolism is equally clear. To the terms of the Vedic ritual, to their very syllables a profound significance is everywhere attached; several incidents related in the Upanishads show the deep sense then & before entertained that the sacrifices had a spiritual meaning which must be known if they were to be conducted with full profit or even with perfect safety. The Brahmanas everywhere are at pains to bring out a minute symbolism in the least circumstances of the ritual, in the clarified butter, the sacred grass, the dish, the ladle. Moreover, we see even in the earliest Upanishads already developed the firm outlines and minute details of an extraordinary psychology, physics, cosmology which demand an ancient development and centuries of Yogic practice and mystic speculation to account for their perfect form & clearness. This psychology, this physics, this cosmology persist almost unchanged through the whole history of Hinduism. We meet them in the Puranas; they are the foundation of the Tantra; they are still obscurely practised in various systems of Yoga. And throughout, they have rested on a declared Vedic foundation. The Pranava, the Gayatri, the three Vyahritis, the five sheaths, the five (or seven) psychological strata, (bhumi, kshiti of the Vedas), the worlds that await us, the gods who help & the demons who hinder go back to Vedic origins.All this may be a later mystic misconception of the hymns & their ritual, but the other hypothesis of direct & genuine derivation is also possible. If there was no common origin, if Greek & Indian separated during the naturalistic period of the common religion supposed to be recorded in the Vedas it is surprising that even the little we know of Greek rites & mysteries should show us ideas coincident with those of Indian Tantra & Yoga.

1.04 - The Paths, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
   readers to The Problems of Mysticism , by Dr. Silberer, in which book will be found valuable material. At the same time I am not to be understood as endorsing the entirety of
  Silberer's conclusions. As I have indicated. Problems of
  --
  Vav is its pronunciation, and means a " Nail ". It is used as a symbol of the phallus. This usage is confirmed by the Zodiacal sign of The Bull, which, as already pointed out, is a glyph of the universal reproductive force. The phallus, in the Mysticism of the Qabalah, is a creative symbol of a creative reality, the magical will. As an aid to the comprehension of this idea I quote from Jung's Psych- ology of the Unconscious for a definition :
  " The phallus is a being which moves without limbs, which sees without eyes, which knows the future ; and as symbolic representative of the universal creative power existent everywhere immortality is vindicated in it. . . .

1.05 - Adam Kadmon, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
   are unfamiliar with the general conceptions held in mystic- ism as very strange indeed. But the idea of an inner man using a mind and body as instruments for the obtaining of experience and thus self-consciousness is inherent in every mystical system that has seen the light of the Sun. The classifications of the nature of man used by the various schools of Mysticism are tabulated on the opposite chart, using the ten Sephiros as the basis for comparison.
  In their analysis of man, the Qabalists found that hand in hand with the physical body man had an automatic- or habit-forming or desire-consciousness, which gave him im- petus and volition in certain directions. It took care of the functions of his organism to which conscious attention was seldom directed, such as the circulation of the blood, the beating of the heart, and the involuntary motions of the diaphragm resulting in the inspiration and expiration of breath. They also noted the faculty of reason and criticism, the power whereby a man proceeds from premisses to con- clusion. And above and beyond this w r as the Spiritual entity who used this body, who used this desire and rational consciousness.
  --
  The Ruach is the false or empirical ego. It is that part of us which names itself " I ", and it is just that principle which is not " I ". Its moods change with the passing of the years. More, its contents are never the same from one minute to another. The destruction of the glamorous bondage which the Ruach exerts over us, thus permitting the light of the Nescharnah and the higher principles to shine through to illumine our minds and our daily lives, is one of the all-important tasks of Mysticism. In fact, the abnegation of this false ego ( bitol hoyesh) is the essential accomplishment of all spiritual development.
  Some Qabalists postulate a Sephirah named Daath, or

1.05 - Prayer, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  about Mysticism by R. H. Benson had made a lasting impres-
  sion on him. (Cf. Le Milieu Divin, Eng. trans, p. 124.)

1.05 - The Activation of Human Energy, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  are beginning to attach to the phenomenon of Mysticism. In
  any event, of all the theories which we may evolve concern-

1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  world as fate. This statement carries with it the apparent stamp of Mysticism. How could the world play
  out a psychological condition (or the refusal to recognize a psychological condition)? Well, the purpose of

1.05 - THE NEW SPIRIT, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  But what is the effect, for Christian faith and Mysticism, of this
  redefinition of the Spirit? It is simply to confer absolute reality and

1.05 - Vishnu as Brahma creates the world, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  [14]: These reiterated, and not always very congruous accounts of the creation are explained by the Purāṇas as referring to different Kalpas, or renovations of the world, and therefore involving no incompatibility. A better reason for their appearance is the probability that they have been borrowed from different original authorities. The account that follows is evidently modified by the Yogi Saivas, by its general Mysticism, and by the expressions with which it begins: 'Collecting his mind into itself,' according to the comment, is the performance of the Yoga (Yūyuje). The term Ambhānsi, lit. 'waters,' for the four orders of beings, gods, demons, men, and Pitris, is also a peculiar, and probably mystic term. The commentator says it occurs in the Vedas as a synonyme of gods. The Vāyu Purāṇa derives it from 'to shine,' p. 40 because the different orders of beings shine or flourish severally by moonlight, night, day, and twilight: &c.
  [15]: This account is given in several other Purāṇas: in the Kūrma with more simplicity; in the Padma, Li
  --
  ga, Kūrma, Padma, and Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇas. The Bhāgavata offers some important varieties: "From his eastern and other mouths he created the Rich, Yajush, Sāma, and Atharvan vedas; the Śastra, or 'the unuttered incantation;' Ijyā, 'oblation;' Stuti and Stoma, 'prayers' and 'hymns;' and Prāyaścitta, 'expiation' or 'sacred philosophy' (Brāhma): also the Vedas of medicine, arms, music, and mechanics; and the Itihāsas and Purāṇas, which are a fifth Veda: also the portions of the Vedas called Sorasi, Uktha, Purīṣi, 'Agniṣṭut, Āptoryāmā, Atirātra, Vājapeya, Gosava; the four parts of virtue, purity, liberality, piety, and truth; the orders of life, and their institutes and different religious rites and professions; and the sciences of logic, ethics, and polity. The mystic words and monosyllable proceeded from his heart; the metre Ushnih from the hairs of his body; Gayatrī from his skin; Tṛṣṭubh from his flesh; Anuṣṭubh from his tendons; Jagati from his bones; Pankti from his marrow; Vrihati from his breath. The consonants were his life; the vowels his body; the sibilants his senses; the semivowels his vigour." This Mysticism, although perhaps expanded and amplified by the Paurāṇics, appears to originate with the Vedas: as in the text, 'The metre was of the tendons.' The different portions of the Vedas specified in the text are yet, for the most part, uninvestigated.

1.06 - Being Human and the Copernican Principle, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  uality. Thinking that they are putting down the Mysticism,
  superstitions and hallucinations of religion and spiritual
  --
   God forbid! Mysticism? The late Stephen Jay Gould,
  a Harvard biologist and science writer of world-fame, was

1.06 - LIFE AND THE PLANETS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  response to Mysticism of the human race increases with planetiza-
  tion, the awareness of Omega becomes so widespread as to warm
  --
  tach to the phenomenon of Mysticism. In any event, of all the the-
  ories which we may evolve concerning the end of the Earth, it is

1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is here that the emergence of the secret psychic being in us as the leader of the sacrifice is of the utmost importance; for this inmost being alone can bring with it the full power of the spirit in the act, the soul in the symbol. It alone can assure, even while the spiritual consciousness is incomplete, the perennial freshness and sincerity and beauty of the symbol and prevent it from becoming a dead form or a corrupted and corrupting magic; it alone can preserve for the act its power with its significance. All the other members of our being, mind, life-force, physical or body consciousness, are too much under the control of the Ignorance to be a sure instrumentation and much less can they be a guide or the source of an unerring impulse. Always the greater part of the motive and action of these powers clings to the old law, the deceiving tablets, the cherished inferior movements of Nature and they meet with reluctance, alarm or revolt or obstructing inertia the voices and the forces that call and impel us to exceed and transform ourselves into a greater being and a wider Nature. In their major part the response is either a resistance or a qualified or temporising acquiescence; for even if they follow the call, they yet tend - when not consciously, then by automatic habit - to bring into the spiritual action their own natural disabilities and errors. At every moment they are moved to take egoistic advantage of the psychic and spiritual influences and can be detected using the power, joy or light these bring into us for a lower life-motive. Afterwards too, even when the seeker has opened to the Divine Love transcendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he meets the power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Natureforces. Always they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their diminishing elements, seek to capture the descending Power for themselves and their interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical instrumentation for desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new heaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it here prisoner as a tremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the old earth and colour with its rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of sentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that falsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there is a fall back to a lower status; or else the realisation remains tied to an insecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an inferior exaltation that is not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic Mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim sacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the mind's and the life's falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind's ardours and the blind enthusiasms of the misleading life-force. But all things that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical being it extricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand on the heights, new in spirit and sublime in figure.
  And yet even the leading of the inmost psychic being is not found sufficient until it has succeeded in raising itself out of this mass of inferior Nature to the highest spiritual levels and the divine spark and flame descended here have rejoined themselves to their original fiery Ether. For there is there no longer a spiritual consciousness still imperfect and half lost to itself in the thick sheaths of human mind, life and body, but the full spiritual consciousness in its purity, freedom and intense wideness. There, as it is the eternal Knower that becomes the Knower in us and mover and user of all knowledge, so it is the eternal All-Blissful who is the Adored attracting to himself the eternal divine portion of his being and joy that has gone out into the play of the universe, the infinite Lover pouring himself out in the multiplicity of his own manifested selves in a happy Oneness.

1.06 - The Objective and Subjective Views of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Similarly, the subjective search for the self may, like the objective, lean preponderantly to identification with the conscious physical life, because the body is or seems to be the frame and determinant here of the mental and vital movements and capacities. Or it may identify itself with the vital being, the life-soul in us and its emotions, desires, impulses, seekings for power and growth and egoistic fulfilment. Or it may rise to a conception of man as a mental and moral being, exalt to the first place his inner growth, power and perfection, individual and collective, and set it before us as the true aim of our existence. A sort of subjective materialism, pragmatic and outward-going, is a possible standpoint; but in this the subjective tendency cannot long linger. For its natural impulse is to go always inward and it only begins to feel itself and have satisfaction of itself when it gets to the full conscious life within and feels all its power, joy and forceful potentiality pressing for fulfilment. Man at this stage regards himself as a profound, vital Will-to-be which uses body as its instrument and to which the powers of mind are servants and ministers. This is the cast of that vitalism which in various striking forms has played recently so great a part and still exercises a considerable influence on human thought. Beyond it we get to a subjective idealism now beginning to emerge and become prominent, which seeks the fulfilment of man in the satisfaction of his inmost religious, aesthetic, intuitive, his highest intellectual and ethical, his deepest sympathetic and emotional nature and, regarding this as the fullness of our being and the whole object of our being, tries to subject to it the physical and vital existence. These come to be considered rather as a possible symbol and instrument of the subjective life flowing out into forms than as having any value in themselves. A certain tendency to Mysticism, occultism and the search for a self independent of the life and the body accompanies this new movementnew to modern life after the reign of individualism and objective intellectualism and emphasises its real trend and character.
  But here also it is possible for subjectivism to go beyond and to discover the true Self as something greater even than mind. Mind, life and body then become merely an instrumentation for the increasing expression of this Self in the world,instruments not equal in their hierarchy, but equal in their necessity to the whole, so that their complete perfection and harmony and unity as elements of our self-expression become essential to the true aim of our living. And yet that aim would not be to perfect life, body and mind in themselves, but to develop them so as to make a fit basis and fit instruments for the revelation in our inner and outer life of the luminous Self, the secret Godhead who is one and yet various in all of us, in every being and existence, thing and creature. The ideal of human existence personal and social would be its progressive transformation into a conscious outflowering of the joy, power, love, light, beauty of the transcendent and universal Spirit.

1.07 - Savitri, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  "...yes, everything is there: Mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature....
  "These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighbourhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him; He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme....

1.07 - The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
  --- LANGUAGE AND Mysticism
  0:The Divine is in his essence infinite and his manifestation too is multitudinously infinite. If that is so, it is not likely that our true integral perfection in being and in nature can come by one kind of realisation alone; it must combine many different strands of divine experience. It cannot be reached by the exclusive pursuit of a single line of identity till that is raised to its absolute; it must harmonise many aspects of the Infinite. An integral consciousness with a multiform dynamic experience is essential for the complete transformation of our nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, p. 114
  --
  LANGUAGE AND Mysticism
  In this regard, another common objection is that mystical or contemplative experiences, because they cannot be put into plain language, or into any language for that matter, are therefore not epistemologically grounded, are not "real knowledge." But this simply bypasses the problem of what linguistically situated knowledge means in the first place. Saussure, as I mentioned earlier, maintained that all linguistic signs have two components, the signifier and the signified, often represented as S/S. The signifier is the written or spoken symbol or sound, the material component of the sign (such as the physical ink forms written on this page, or the physical air vibrations as you speak). The signified is what comes to your mind when you see or hear the signifier.
  --
  All of which relates to Mysticism in this way: the word dog has a shared meaning to you and to me because that sign exists in a shared linguistic structure and a shared cultural background of social and interpretive practices. But what if you had never seen a real dog? What then?
  I could of course describe one to you, but the word will be meaningless unless there are some points of shared experience that will allow you to "call up" in your mind the same signified that I mean with the signifier "dog." (Substitute the word Buddha-nature for dog and you can see the importance of this line of thought for mystical experience, which we will explore in a minute.) The hermeneuticists are quite right in that regard: the same linguistic structures that you and I share are not enough, in themselves, to give you the proper signified. You and I have to share a common lived experience in order to assume identical signification.
  --
  Thus, if we are going to level that charge at Mysticism, then we must level it at dogginess and sunsetness and every other experience that happens to come our way. (This is really the cheapest of the cheap shots fired at Mysticism.)
  Conversely, words do just fine as signifiers for experience, whether mundane or spiritual, if we both, you and I, have had similar experiences in a context of shared background practices. Zen masters talk about Emptiness all the time! And they know exactly what they mean by the words, and the words are perfectly adequate to convey what they mean, if you have had the experience (for what they mean can only be disclosed in the shared praxis of zazen, or meditation practice).
  --
  VALIDITY CLAIMS OF Mysticism:
  If I want to know whether it is raining or not, I go to the window and look out, and sure enough, rain. But perhaps I am mistaken, or perhaps my eyesight is poor. Would you check? You go to the window and yes, rain.
  --
  I have elsewhere given preliminary descriptions of the deep structures (and pathologies) of each of these four major stages.22 Instead of repeating myself, I have for this presentation simply chosen four individuals who are especially representative of these stages, and will let them speak for us. They are (respectively) Ralph Waldo Emerson, Saint Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, and Sri Ramana Maharshi. Each also represents the type of Mysticism typical at each stage: nature Mysticism, deity Mysticism, formless Mysticism, and nondual Mysticism (each of which we will discuss).
  And each represents a form of tomorrow, a shape of our destiny yet to come. Each rode time's arrow ahead of us, as geniuses always do, and thus, even though looming out of our past, they call to us from our future.

1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  " The entire body of teachings of religio-philosophic movements have as their avowed or hidden purpose, the expansion of consciousness. This also is the aim of Mysticism of every age and of every faith, the aim of occultism and of the Oriental Yoga."
  The methods of the Qabalah particularly - since it alone of all others appears to possess the one basis pre-eminently suitable for synthesis - enlarge our vision of the universe by means of an experience variously called religious, mystical, or supra-rational. And by this is meant an experience, nay, an immediate intuition, a spontaneous insight into the meaning, the nature, and the value of the Universe, giving a beatific vision of how all things belong together, a clue to the nature of Ultimate Reality. We deal here with an essential fact in mystical knowledge ; the superseding of the ordinary activities of the rational consciousness in a direct intuition wherein the Neschamah gazes directly upon ideas. And experience, whether secular or mystical, must always be the ultima thule, beyond which one dare not go, nor which one dare negate. In setting up the Mystical
  --
  In connection with theurgical practice and ceremonial generally, having little concern for goetic obscurations, there is a remark or two in Mr. Waite's Studies in Mysticism which are not a little profound, and are worthy of quotation in this place.
  " Those who are acquainted with the spiritual processes followed by the old mystics will know that these processes are delineated ... in the ceremonies of the great initia- tions, and though notwithstanding they offer . . . only the substitutes of things that are incommunicable on the dramatic side of the mystery . . . there is a condition induced in the candidate by which, if he is otherwise pre- pared, he may enter the sphere of a real experience."
  --
  " I do not believe that Mysticism is a mere mental aberration.
  " I am inclined to believe that the human consciousness is a developing thing, and that the mystical consciousness represents a higher stage than we have reached."
  --
  Having acquainted himself with all technical methods of magick and meditation, and become expert in the handling of all these weapons, he must harmonize them (since his grade is in Tipharas - Harmony) and use them as his experience and instinct dictate to perform the central operation of all Mysticism and Magick - the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian
  Angel ; the discovery of his True Will, and the ascertaining of the heavenly orb which he as a Star must follow. This is the essential work of every man ; none other ranks with it either for personal progress, or the ability to help one's fellow-man, or to solve the problems of existence. This crisis, and one other yet to be described, is a necessary feature in his mystical career, one which is an absolute essential to his Quest.

1.08 - Attendants, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  Dr. Satyendra is an unassuming and nice person, did his part of the job in a quiet and steady way. He was cleaning, for a time, the windows and furniture in Sri Aurobindo's room. Ready to serve but never pushing and not over eager, he kept a closeness and happy relation with all. He used to express very often that he was more of a retiring nature and more intent on personal realisation through Bhakti. Karmayoga did not suit his temperament very well. Whatever might be his particular bent, we saw that he did his own work like a karmayogi, in a genuine spirit of service to the Master whom he always addressed as Sir. His talks with Sri Aurobindo showed his sense of humour, his insight into philosophy, politics and Mysticism. Sri Aurobindo seemed to like his company, his quiet devotion, in spite of his constantly grumbling against the integral Yoga and the Supermind. While cleaning the Master's nails as he lay in bed, he would start his old unvarying tale about the necessity of the personal touch, his close contact with his former guru. Sri Aurobindo would listen quietly to his nostalgic monologue. There must be some expression of love, was his constant burden, to which Sri Aurobindo once replied that unity of consciousness is the root and love is its fine flower. A shrewd observer of human and divine nature, it was he who made the pertinent remark that in this Yoga only two persons have achieved complete surrender: the Mother to Sri Aurobindo and Sri Aurobindo to the Mother! As an example he related this story: Sri Aurobindo was lying in bed one day, and the ceiling-fan was revolving at full speed. Satyendra felt that he wanted something, so he approached the Master and asked, "Are you looking for something, Sir?" "Oh, no.... Is Nirod there?" "No, Sir. But can I do anything?" he asked. "I was wondering if the speed of the fan could be reduced," he replied. "I can do it, Sir." "Oh, can you?" he asked. Sri Aurobindo enquired about me because I was given charge of the fan by the Mother, and he would not violate the rule. As for the reduction of the speed, that too was in deference to the wishes of the Mother, for once on entering Sri Aurobindo's room, she saw the fan turning at full speed and remarked, "Oh, what a storm!" To give another instance: when we wanted to move the table-fan a bit nearer him, he said, "No, Mother has kept it there." This is how we learnt submission and obedience not only in big matters, but even in small trivialities.
  The Mother told Satyendra recently on his birthday that Sri Aurobindo had come to her on the eve of his interview with her and said that he had taken good care of Sri Aurobindo's body. What a touching recognition from Sri Aurobindo! Even after leaving the body, the Guru remembers a kind act, some help rendered to him by his disciple! What a Divine Magnanimity! We know also that all those who had served him during his accident period have had their reward in some form or other, in the material and spiritual life.

1.08 - Origin of Rudra: his becoming eight Rudras, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  [1]: The creation of Rudra has been already adverted to, and that seems to be the primitive form of the legend. We have here another account, grounded apparently upon Śaiva or Yogi Mysticism.
  [2]: The appearance of Rudra as a Kumāra, 'a boy,' is described as of repeated occurrence in the Li

1.08 - The Depths of the Divine, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
  With the Over-Soul, the World Soul, it is not that individuality disappears, but that-once again-it is negated and preserved in a deeper and wider ground, a ground that conspicuously includes all of nature and its glories. This cosmic consciousness is sometimes referred to as "nature Mysticism," but that is a somewhat misleading term. For this psychic-level Mysticism embraces not just nature but also culture, and calling it "nature Mysticism" confuses it with a merely biocentric regression, an ecocentric indissociation, and this is not at all what Emerson has in mind (as we will see).
  But since the Over-Soul is an experienced identity with all manifestation, it is an identity that most definitely and exuberantly embraces nature; and, to that degree, it begins to undercut the subject/object dualism.10 Emerson explains:
  --
  What distinguishes this profound "nature Mysticism" from a simple nature indissociation or ecocentric immersion or biospheric regression (which would be egocentric and anthropocentric, as we have seen) is the realization that nature is not Spirit but an expression of Spirit, radiant and glorious and perfect in its own way, but an expression nonetheless. Emerson says nature is not spirit but a symbol of spirit. Emerson is not regressing to fulcrum-2
  (biocentric immersion and nondifferentiation)! Emerson is very clear on this distinction between nature regression, on the one hand, and a Mysticism that also embraces nature, on the other-and this distinction rather upsets his environmentalist fans, who seem to want to equate a finite and temporal nature with an infinite and eternal Spirit:
  Beauty in nature is not ultimate. It is the herald of inward and eternal beauty, and is not alone a solid and satisfactory good. . . .
  --
  Spirit or alien to Spirit-that is a common belief in the mythic structure (Campbell called it "mythic dissociation"), but it finds no place in genuine psychic Mysticism. All of nature, every nook and cranny, is in Spirit, bathed by Spirit, awash in Spirit; there is no point in nature that is not totally permeated and enveloped by Spirit.
  These distinctions are crucial, because they allow us to distinguish carefully and clearly between three quite different worldviews on the relation between nature and spirit:
  --
  The third is psychic Mysticism: nature is a perfect expression of spirit (or as Spinoza put it, nature is a subset of spirit);16 "otherworldly" and "this-worldly" are united and conjoined.
  With reference to the third: One of the major and defining characteristics of psychic-level Mysticism is that it is a conscious identity with physiosphere and biosphere and noosphere-it does not simply privilege the biosphere; it is no mere geocentric/egocentric indissociation and regression. Even though this Mysticism often takes its glorious exultation in the wonders of nature, nonetheless, as Emerson constantly emphasizes, this is "the Self of nation and of nature"-that is, the mystical union of matter, life, and culture, not merely a biospheric immersion. Were it only the Self of nature and not also of nation (culture and morality), then it would be a perfectly regressive, dualistic, and amoralist stance, glorifying merely an egocentric joy in finding oneself vitally reflected in the biosphere (and the rain whispers in its ear, I am here for you).
  Rather, it is the union of the human moral endeavor with the display of nature as given that so distinguishes "nation-nature" Mysticism from the narcissistic "nature worship" of mere sentimentalism (the technical points of this argument are given in note 16). This is most definitely not an ecological self; it is an Eco-Noetic Self, "The Self of nation and of nature," the Over-Soul that is the World Soul.17
  Indeed, if nature means the biosphere, and Nature (or Spirit) means the All, means the physiosphere and the biosphere and the noosphere and their Ground, then Emerson's point is very simple: the worshipers of nature are the destroyers of Nature.
  Emerson, then, is singing songs to Nature, not nature. And that is why he maintains that nature immersion and nature worship prevent the realization of Nature, or the Spirit within and beyond, which transcends all, embraces all. And this is what he means by "nature-nation" Mysticism: the biosphere and the noosphere united in the theosphere, or the Over-Soul that is simultaneously the World Soul.
  And so he arrives at the very true conclusion: nature worshipers are the destroyers of Nature, the destroyers of
  --
  That Spirit does not build up nature around us, but puts forth nature through us: there is the profound difference between nature/nation Mysticism and mere biocentric immersion; there is the telling difference between the EcoNoetic Self and the merely ecological self; there is the difference between transcendence and regression.
  Here, then, is a summary of the widely accepted interpretation of Emerson's view: (1) nature is not Spirit but a symbol of Spirit (or a manifestation of Spirit); (2) sensory awareness in itself does not reveal Spirit but obscures it; (3) an ascending or transcendental current is required to disclose Spirit; (4) Spirit is understood only as nature is transcended (i.e., Spirit is immanent in nature, but fully discloses itself only in a transcendence of nature-in short,
  --
  In concluding this brief survey of the psychic level and the cosmic consciousness of nature-nation Mysticism, there are two points I would like to emphasize. The first is that, as I think is now obvious, this new going within has resulted in a new going beyond: a new and higher interior identity (Over-Soul) accompanied by a new and wider embrace of others (World Soul)-a single Soul embracing the physiosphere, biosphere, and noosphere in one loving caress.19
  Once again we go within and fall without to find this time . . . an actual cosmic consciousness. But this movement itself is in no way any different from all the previous stages that we have examined, all of which were "selfdevelopment through self-transcendence," a new going within to a deeper and wider beyond.
  --
  Nature-nation Mysticism gives way to Deity Mysticism, and the God within announces itself in terms undreamt of in gross manifestation, with a Light that blinds the sun and a Song that thunders nature and culture into stunned and awestruck silence.
  Nature lovers here scream "Foul!," as if beyond the glories of nature there should be no other glory, as if the visible and tangible scene exhausted the wonders of the Kosmos, as if in all the worlds and possible worlds through all eternity, their beloved nature alone should be allowed to shine.

1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Moreover, even their moralised gods were only the superficial & exterior aspect of the Greek religion. Its deeper life fed itself on the mystic rites of Orpheus, Bacchus, the Eleusinian mysteries which were deeply symbolic and remind us in some of their ideas & circumstances of certain aspects of Indian Yoga. The Mysticism & symbolism were not an entirely modern development. Orpheus, Bacchus & Demeter are the centre of an antique and prehistoric, even preliterary mind-movement. The element may have been native to Greek religious sentiment; it may have been imported from the East through the Aryan races or cultures of Asia Minor; but it may also have been common to the ancient systems of Greece & India. An original community or a general diffusion is at least possible. The double aspect of exoteric practice and esoteric symbolism may have already been a fundamental characteristic of the Vedic religion. Is it entirely without significance that to the Vedic mind men were essentially manu, thinkers, the original father of the race was the first Thinker, and the Vedic poets in the idea of their contemporaries not merely priests or sacred singers or wise bards but much more characteristically manishis & rishis, thinkers & sages?We can conceive with difficulty such ideas as belonging to that undeveloped psychological condition of the semi-savage to which sacrifices of propitiation & Nature-Gods helpful only for material life, safety & comfort were all-sufficient. Certainly, also, the earliest Indian writings subsequent to Vedic times bear out these indications. To the writers of the Brahmanas the sacrificial ritual enshrined an elaborate symbolism. The seers of the Upanishad worshipped Surya & Agni as great spiritual & moral forces and believed the Vedic hymns to be effective only because they contained a deep knowledge & a potent spirituality. They may have been in errormay have been misled by a later tradition or themselves have read mystic refinements into a naturalistic text. But also & equally, they may have had access to an unbroken line of knowledge or they may have been in direct touch or in closer touch than the moderns with the mentality of the Vedic singers.
  The decision of these questions will determine our whole view of Vedic religions and decide the claim of the Veda to be a living Scripture of Hinduism. It is of primary importance to know what in their nature and functions were the gods of the Veda. I have therefore made this fundamental question form the sole subject matter of the present volume. I make no attempt here to present a complete or even a sufficient justification of the conclusions which I have been led to. Nor do I present my readers with a complete enquiry into the nature & functions of the Vedic pantheon. Such a justification, such an enquiry can only be effected by a careful philological analysis & rendering of the Vedic hymns and an exhaustive study of the origins of the Sanscrit language. That is a labour of very serious proportions & burdened with numerous difficulties which I have begun and hope one day to complete myself or to leave to others ready for completion. But in the present volume I can only attempt to establish a prima facie [case] for a reconsideration of the whole question. I offer the suggestion that the Vedic creed & thought were not a simple, but a complex, not a barbarous but a subtle & advanced, not a naturalistic but a mystic & Vedantic system.
  --
  What then is maho arnas? Is it the great sea of general being, substance of general existence out of which the substance of thought & speech are formed? It is possible; but such an interpretation is not entirely in consonance with the context of this passage. The suggestion I shall advance will therefore be different. Mahas, as a neuter adjective, means great,maho arnas, the great water; but mahas may be equally a noun and then maho arnas will mean Mahas the sea. In some passages again, mahas is genitive singular or accusative plural of a noun mah; maho arnas may well be the flowing stream or flood of Mah, as in the expression vasvo arnavam, the sea of substance, in a later Sukta.We are therefore likely to remain in doubt unless we can find an actual symbolic use of either word Mah or Mahas in a psychological sense which would justify us in supposing this Maho Arnas to be a sea of substance of knowledge rather than vaguely the sea of general substance of being. For this is the significance which alone entirely suits the actual phraseology of the last Rik of the Sukta. We find our clue in the Taittiriya Upanishad. It is said there that there are three recognised vyahritis of the Veda, Bhur, Bhuvar, Swah, but the Rishi Mahachamasya affirmed a fourth. The name of this doubtful fourth vyahriti is Mahas. Now the mystic vyahritis of the Veda are the shabdas or sacred words expressing objectively the three worlds, subjectively mentalised material being, mentalised vital being & pure mental being, the three manifest states of our phenomenal consciousness. Mahas, therefore, must express a fourth state of being, which is so much superior to the other three or so much beyond the ordinary attainment of our actual human consciousness that it is hardly considered in Vedic thought a vyahriti, whatever one or two thinkers may have held to the contrary. What do we know of this Mahas from Vedantic or later sources? Bhuh, Bhuvah, Swar of the Veda rest substantially upon the Annam, Prana, Manas, matter, life & mind of the Upanishads. But the Upanishads speak of a fourth state of being immediately aboveManas, preceding it therefore & containing it, Vijnanam, ideal knowledge, and a fifth immediately above Vijnanam, Ananda or Bliss. Physically, these five are the pancha kshitayah, five earths or dwelling-places, of the Rig Veda and they are the pancha koshas, five sheaths or bodies of the Upanishads. But in our later Yogic systems we recognise seven earths, seven standing grounds of the soul on which it experiences phenomenal existence. The Purana gives us their names [the names of the two beyond the five already mentioned], Tapas and Satya, Energy&Truth. They are the outward expressions of the two psychological principles, Self-Awareness &Self-Being (Chit&Sat) which with Ananda, Self-Bliss, are the triune appearance in the soul of the supreme Existence which the Vedanta calls Brahman. Sat, Chit & Ananda constitute to Vedantic thought the parardha or spiritual higher half [of] our existence; in less imaginative language, we are in our supreme existence self-existence, self-awareness & self-delight. Annam, Prana & Manas constitute to Vedantic thought the aparardha or lower half; again, in more abstract speech, we are in our lower phenomenal existence mind, life & matter. Vijnana is the link; standing in ideal knowledge we are aware, looking upward, of our spiritual existence, looking downward, we pour it out into the three vyahritis, Bhur, Bhuvah & Swar, mental, vital & material existence, the phenomenal symbols of our self-expression. Objectively vijnana becomes mahat, the great, wide or extended state of phenomenal being,called also brihat, likewise signifying vast or great,into which says the Gita, the Self or Lord casts his seed as into a womb in order to engender all these objects & creatures. The Self, standing in vijnanam or mahat, is called the Mahan Atma, the great Self; so that, if we apply the significance [of] these terms to the Vedic words mah, mahas, mahi, mahn, then, even accepting mahas as an adjective and maho arnas in the sense of the great Ocean, it may very well be the ocean of the ideal or pure ideative state of existence in true knowledge which is intended, the great ocean slumbering in our humanity and awakened by the divine inspiration of Saraswati. But have we at all the right to read these high, strange & subtle ideas of a later Mysticism into the primitive accents of the Veda? Let us at least support for a while that hypothesis. We may very well ask, if not from the Vedic forefa thers, whence did the Aryan thinkers get these striking images, this rich & concrete expression of the most abstract ideas and persist in them even after the Indian mind had rarefied & lifted its capacity to the height of the most difficult severities & abstractions known to any metaphysical thinking? Our hypothesis of a Vedic origin remains not only a possible suggestion but the one hypothesis in lawful possession of the field, unless a foreign source or a later mixed ideation can be proved. At present this later ideation may be assumed, it has not been & cannot be proved. The agelong tradition of India assigns the Veda as the source & substance of our theosophies; Brahmana, Aranyaka, Upanishad & Purana as only the interpretation & later expression; the burden of disproof rests on those who negative the tradition.
  Vjebhir vjinvat and maho arnas are therefore fixed in their significance. The word vashtu in the tenth Rik offers a difficulty. It is equivalent to vahatu, says the Brahmana; to kmayatu, says Sayana; but, deferring to the opinion of the Brahmana, he adds that it means really kmayitw vahatu. Undoubtedly the root va means in classical Sanscrit to desire; but from the evidence of the classical Sanscrit we have it established that in more ancient times its ordinary meaning must have been to subdue or control; for although the verb has lost this sense in the later language, almost all its derivatives bear that meaning & the sense of wish, will or desire only persists in a few of them, va, wish and possibly va, a woman. It is this sense which agrees best with the context of the tenth rik and is concealed in the vahatu of the Brahmanas. There is no other difficulty of interpretation in the passage.

1.08 - The Historical Significance of the Fish, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  tianity gave an equally unequivocal answer. Jewish Mysticism,
  on the other hand, went its own way, and its speculations hover

1.10 - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In what light did these ancient thinkers understand the Vedic gods? As material Nature Powers called only to give worldly wealth to their worshippers? Certainly, the Vedic gods are in the Vedanta also accredited with material functions. In the Kena Upanishad Agnis power & glory is to burn, Vayus to seize & bear away. But these are not their only functions. In the same Upanishad, in the same apologue, told as a Vedantic parable, Indra, Agni & Vayu, especially Indra, are declared to be the greatest of the gods because they came nearest into contact with the Brahman. Indra, although unable to recognise the Brahman directly, learned of his identity from Uma daughter of the snowy mountains. Certainly, the sense of the parable is not that Dawn told the Sky who Brahman was or that material Sky, Fire & Wind are best able to come into contact with the Supreme Existence. It is clear & it is recognised by all the commentators, that in the Upanishads the gods are masters not only of material functions in the outer physical world but also of mental, vital and physical functions in the intelligent living creature. This will be directly evident from the passage describing the creation of the gods by the One & Supreme Being in the Aitareya Upanishad & the subsequent movement by which they enter in the body of man and take up the control of his activities. In the same Upanishad it is even hinted that Indra is in his secret being the Eternal Lord himself, for Idandra is his secret name; nor should we forget that this piece of Mysticism is founded on the hymns of the Veda itself which speak of the secret names of the gods. Shankaracharya recognised this truth so perfectly that he uses the gods and the senses as equivalent terms in his great commentary. Finally in the Isha Upanishad,itself a part of the White Yajur Veda and a work, as I have shown elsewhere, full of the most lofty & deep Vedantic truth, in which the eternal problems of human existence are briefly proposed and masterfully solved,we find Surya and Agni prayed to & invoked with as much solemnity & reverence as in the Rigveda and indeed in language borrowed from the Rigveda, not as the material Sun and material Fire, but as the master of divine God-revealing knowledge & the master of divine purifying force of knowledge, and not to drive away the terrors of night from a trembling savage nor to burn the offered cake & the dripping ghee in a barbarian ritual, but to reveal the ultimate truth to the eyes of the Seer and to raise the immortal part in us that lives before & after the body is ashes to the supreme felicity of the perfected & sinless soul. Even subsequently we have seen that the Gita speaks of the Vedas as having the supreme for their subject of knowledge, and if later thinkers put it aside as karmakanda, yet they too, though drawing chiefly on the Upanishads, appealed occasionally to the texts of the hymns as authorities for the Brahmavidya. This could not have been if they were merely a ritual hymnology. We see therefore that the real Hindu tradition contains nothing excluding the interpretation which I put upon the Rigveda. On one side the current notion, caused by the immense overgrowth of ritualism in the millennium previous to the Christian era and the violence of the subsequent revolt against it, has been fixed in our minds by Buddhistic ideas as a result of the most formidable & damaging attack which the ancient Vedic religion had ever to endure. On the other side, the Vedantic sense of Veda is supported by the highest authorities we have, the Gita & the Upanishads, & evidenced even by the tradition that seems to deny or at least belittle it. True orthodoxy therefore demands not that we should regard the Veda as a ritualist hymn book, but that we should seek in it for the substance or at least the foundation of that sublime Brahmavidya which is formally placed before us in the Upanishads, regarding it as the revelation of the deepest truth of the world & man revealed to illuminated Seers by the Eternal Ruler of the Universe.
  Modern thought & scholarship stands on a different foundation. It proceeds by inference, imagination and conjecture to novel theories of old subjects and regards itself as rational, not traditional. It professes to rebuild lost worlds out of their disjected fragments. By reason, then, and without regard to ancient authority the modern account of the Veda should be judged. The European scholars suppose that the Mysticism of the Upanishads was neither founded upon nor, in the main, developed from the substance of the Vedas, but came into being as part of a great movement away from the naturalistic materialism of the early half-savage hymns. Unable to accept a barbarous mummery of ritual and incantation as the highest truth & highest good, yet compelled by religious tradition to regard the ancient hymns as sacred, the early thinkers, it is thought, began to seek an escape from this impasse by reading mystic & esoteric meanings into the simple text of the sacrificial bards; so by speculations sometimes entirely sublime, sometimes grievously silly & childish, they developed Vedanta. This theory, simple, trenchant and attractive, supported to the European mind by parallels from the history of Western religions, is neither so convincing nor, on a broad survey of the facts, so conclusive as it at first appears. It is certainly inconsistent with what the old Vedantic thinkers themselves knew and thought about the tradition of the Veda. From the Brahmanas as well as from the Upanishads it is evident that the Veda came down to the men of those days in a double aspect, as the heart of a great body of effective ritual, but also as the repository of a deep and sacred knowledge, Veda and not merely worship. This idea of a philosophic or theosophic purport in the hymns was not created by the early Hindu mystics, it was inherited by them. Their attitude to the ritual even when it was performed mechanically without the possession of this knowledge was far from hostile; but as ritual, they held it to be inferior in force and value, avaram karma, a lower kind of works and not the highest good; only when performed with possession of the knowledge could it lead to its ultimate results, to Vedanta. By that, says the Chhandogya Upanishad, both perform karma, both he who knows this so and he who knows not. Yet the Ignorance and the Knowledge are different things and only what one does with the knowledge,with faith, with the Upanishad,that has the greater potency. And in the closing section of its second chapter, a passage which sounds merely like ritualistic jargon when one has not the secret of Vedic symbolism but when that secret has once been revealed to us becomes full of meaning and interest, the Upanishad starts by saying The Brahmavadins say, The morning offering to the Vasus, the afternoon offering to the Rudras and the evening offering to the Adityas and all the gods,where then is the world of the Yajamana? (that is to say, what is the spiritual efficacy beyond this material life of the three different sacrifices & why, to what purpose, is the first offered to the Vasus, the second to the Rudras, the third to the Adityas?) He who knows this not, how should he perform (effectively) ,therefore knowing let him perform. There was at any rate the tradition that these things, the sacrifice, the god of the sacrifice, the world or future state of the sacrificer had a deep significance and were not mere ritual arranged superstitiously for material ends. But this deeper significance, this inner Vedic knowledge was difficult and esoteric, not known easily in its profundity and subtlety even by the majority of the Brahmavadins themselves; hence the searching, the mutual questionings, the record of famous discussions that occupy so much space in the Upanishadsdiscussions which, we shall see, are not intellectual debates but comparisons of illuminated knowledge & spiritual experience.
  If this traditionlet us call it mystic or esoteric for want of a less abused wordwas already formed at the time of the Brahmanas and Upanishads, when and how did it originally arise? Two possibilities present themselves. The tradition may have grown up gradually in the period between the Vedic hymns and the exegetical writings or else the esoteric sense may have already existed in the Veda itself and descended in a stream of tradition to the later mystics, developing, modifying itself, substituting new terms for oldas is the way of traditions. The former is, practically, the European theory.We are told that this spiritual revolution, this movement away from ritual Nature-worship to Brahmavada, begun in the seed in the later Vedic hymns, is found in a more developed state in the Upanishads & culminated in Buddha. In these writings and in the Brahmanas some record can be found of the speculations by which the development was managed. If it prove to be so, if these ancient writings are really the result of progressive intellectual speculation departing from crude & imperfect beginnings of philosophic thought, the European theory justifies itself to the reason and can no longer easily be disputed. But is this the true character of the Upanishads? It seems to me that in most of their dealings with our religions and our philosophical literature European scholars have erred by imposing their own familiar ideas and the limits of their own mentality on the history of an alien mentality and an alien development. Nowhere has this error been more evident than in the failure to realise the true nature of the Upanishads. In India we have never developed, but only affirmed thought by philosophical speculation, because we have never attached to the mere intellectual idea the amazingly exaggerated value which Europe has attached to it, but regarded it only as a test of the logical value to be attached to particular intellectual statements of truth. That is not truth to us which is merely well & justly thought out & can be justified by ratiocinative argument; only that is truth which has been lived & seen in the inner experience. We meditate not to get ideas, but in order to experience, to realise. When we speak of the Jnani, the knower, we do not mean a competent and logical thinker full of wise or of brilliant ideas, but a soul which has seen and lived & spoken in himself with the living truth. Ratiocination is freely used by the later philosophers, but only for the justification against opponents of the ideas already formed by their own meditation or the meditation of others, Rishis, gurus, ancient Vedantins; it is not itself a sufficient means towards the discovery of truth, but at best a help. The ideas of our great thinkers are not mere intellectual statements or even happy or great intuitions; they are based upon spiritual experiences formalised by the intellect into a philosophy. Shankaras passionate advocacy of the idea of Maya as an explanation of life was not merely the ardour of a great metaphysician enamoured of a beautiful idea or a perfect theory of life, but the passion of a man with a deep & vast spiritual experience which he believed to be the sole means of human salvation. Therefore philosophy in India, instead of tending as in Europe to ignore or combat religion, has always been itself deeply religious. In Europe Buddha and Shankara would have become the heads of metaphysical schools & ranked with Kant or Hegel or Nietzsche1 as strong intellectual influences; in India they became, inevitably, the founders of great religious sects, immense moral & spiritual forces;inevitably because Europe has made thought its highest & noblest aim, while India seeks not after thought but soul-vision and inner experience and even in the realm of ideas believes that they can & ought to be seen & lived inwardly rather than merely thought and allowed indirectly to influence outward action. This has been the mentality of our race for ages.Was the mentality of our Vedic forefa thers entirely different from our own? Was it, as Western scholars seem to insist, a European mentality, the mentality of incursive Western savages, (it is Sergis estimate of the Aryans), changed afterwards by the contact with the cultured & reflective Dravidians into something new and strange, rationality changing to Mysticism, materialism to a metaphysical spirituality? If so, the change had already been effected when the Upanishads were written. We speak of the discussions in the Upanishads; but in all truth the twelve Upanishads contain not a single genuine discussion. Only once in that not inconsiderable mass of literature, is there something of the nature of logical argument brought to the support of a philosophical truth. The nature of debate or logical reasoning is absent from the mentality of the Upanishadic thinkers. The grand question they always asked each other was not What hast thou thought out in this matter? or What are thy reasonings & conclusions? but What dost thou know? What hast thou seen in thyself? The Vedantic like the Vedic Rishi is a drashta & srota, not a manota, a kavi, not a manishi. There is question, there is answer; but solely for the comparison of inner knowledge & experience; never for ratiocinative argument, for disputation, for the battles of the logician. Always, knowledge, spiritual vision, experience are what is demanded; and often a questioner is turned back because he is not yet prepared in soul to realise the knowledge of the master. For all knowledge is within us and needs only to be awakened by the fit touch which opens the eyes of the soul or by the powerful revealing word.We find throughout the Vedic era always the same method, always the same theory of knowledge; they persist indeed in India to the present day and later habits of metaphysical debate unknown to the Vedic Brahmavadins have never been able to dethrone them from their primaeval supremacy. Let a man present never so finely reasoned a system of metaphysical philosophy, few will turn to hear, none leave his labour to receive, but let a man say as in the old Vedantic times I have experienced, my soul has seen, & hundreds in India will yet leave all to share in this new light of the eternal Truth.
  concrete visualisation & passion for his ideas & experiences which mark off the religious from the merely philosophical mind.

1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  A second, even more important observation commands our attention. To return to the rocket analogy: the rocket can break through the earth's atmosphere at any point, taking off either from New York or from the equator, and still reach the sun. There is no need to climb Mt. Everest to set up the launching pad! Similarly, the yogi can realize cosmic consciousness in any point, or at any level, of his being in his mind, in his heart, and even in his body because the cosmic Spirit is everywhere, in every point of the universe. The experience can begin anywhere, at any level, by concentrating on a rock or a sparrow, an idea, a prayer, a feeling, or what people scornfully call an idol. Cosmic consciousness is not the highest point of human consciousness; we do not go above the individual to reach it, but outside. It is hardly necessary to ascend in consciousness, or to become Plotinus, in order to attain the universal Spirit. On the contrary, the less mental one is, the easier it is to experience it; a shepherd beneath the stars or a fisherman of Galilee has a better chance at it than all the philosophers of the world put together. What, then, is the use of all this development of consciousness if folk-like Mysticism works better? We must admit that either we are all on the wrong track, or else those mystical escapades do not represent the whole meaning of evolution. On the other hand, if we accept that the proper evolutionary course is that of the peak figures of earthly consciousness Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven, Alexander the Great, Dante we are still forced to acknowledge that none of these great men has been able to transform life. Thus, the summits of the mind or the heart do not give us, any more than the cosmic summits, the key to the riddle and the power to change the world: another principle of consciousness is required. But it must be another principle without any break in continuity with the others, because if the line is broken or if the individual is lost, we fall back into cosmic or mystical dispersion, thereby losing our link with the earth. To be conscious of Oneness and of the Transcendent is certainly an indispensable basis for any realization (without which we might as well try to build a house without foundations), but it must be done in ways that respect evolutionary continuity; it must be an evolution, not a revolution. In other words, we must get out without getting out. Instead of a rocket that ends up crashing on the sun, we need a rocket that harpoons the Sun of the supreme consciousness and is able to bring it down to all points of our earthly consciousness: The ultimate knowledge is that which perceives and accepts God in the universe as well as beyond the universe and the integral Yoga is that which, having found the Transcendent, can return upon the universe and possess it, retaining the power freely to descend as well as ascend the great stair of existence.171 This double movement of ascent and descent of the individual consciousness is the basic principle of the supramental discovery. But in the process Sri Aurobindo was to touch an unknown spring which would change everything.
  

1.13 - THE HUMAN REBOUND OF EVOLUTION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  valry of Mysticisms and creeds, each striving to conquer the earth,
  represents nothing but a prolonged groping of the human soul in

1.17 - Astral Journey Example, How to do it, How to Verify your Experience, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  The unusual word "unassuaged" is very interesting. People generally suppose that "will" is the slave of purpose, that you cannot will a thing properly unless you are aiming at a definite goal. But this is not the case. Thinking of the goal actually serves to distract the mind. In these few words is included the whole method without all the bombastic piety of the servile doctrine of Mysticism about the surrender of the Will. Nor is this idea of surrender actually correct; the will must be identified with the Divine Will, so-called. One wants to become like a mighty flowing river, which is not consciously aiming at the sea, and is certainly not yielding to any external influence. It is acting in conformity with the law of its own nature, with the Tao. One can describe it, if necessary, as "passive love"; but it is love (in effect) raised to its highest potential. We come back to the same thing: when passion is purged of any "lust of result" it is irresistible; it has become "Law." I can never understand why it is that mystics fail to see that their smarmy doctrine of surrender actually insists upon the duality which they have set out to abolish!
  I certainly have no intention of "holding you down" to "a narrow path of work" or any path. All I can do is to help you to understand clearly the laws of your own nature, so that you may go ahead without extraneous influence. It does not follow that a plan that I have found successful in my own case will be any use to you. That is another cardinal mistake of most teachers. One must have become a Master of the Temple to annihilate one's ego. Most teachers, consciously or unconsciously, try to get others to follow in their steps. I might as well dress you up in my castoff clothing! (In the steps of the Master. At the feet of the Master. Steward!)

1.18 - Asceticism, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
  Somebody doing hard physical work would, indeed, be very foolish to deprive the body of substances absolutely necessary for its preservation, jus t because he is privately interested in yoga or Mysticism. Such extremes would doubtlessly end up with serious and dangerous injuries to the health.
  Vegetarianism is not implicitly important for the mental progress or the intellectual development, unless it is supposed to be a remedy to clean the body from slag. A temporary abstinence from meat or animal food is indicated only for very specific magic operations as a sort of preparation, and even then only for a certain period. All this is to be considered with respect to sexual life.

1.19 - The Curve of the Rational Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This is indeed already the spirit, the social reasonor rather the social gospelof the totalitarianism whose swelling tide threatens to engulf all Europe and more than Europe. Totalitarianism of some kind seems indeed to be the natural, almost inevitable destiny, at any rate the extreme and fullest outcome of Socialism or, more generally, of the collectivist idea and impulse. For the essence of Socialism, its justifying ideal, is the governance and strict organisation of the total life of the society as a whole and in detail by its own conscious reason and will for the best good and common interest of all, eliminating exploitation by individual or class, removing internal competition, haphazard confusion and waste, enforcing and perfecting coordination, assuring the best functioning and a sufficient life for all. If a democratic polity and machinery best assure such a working, as was thought at first, it is this that will be chosen and the result will be Social Democracy. That ideal still holds sway in northern Europe and it may there yet have a chance of proving that a successful collectivist rationalisation of society is quite possible. But if a non-democratic polity and machinery are found to serve the purpose better, then there is nothing inherently sacrosanct for the collectivist mind in the democratic ideal; it can be thrown on the rubbish-heap where so many other exploded sanctities have gone. Russian communism so discarded with contempt democratic liberty and attempted for a time to substitute for the democratic machine a new sovietic structure, but it has preserved the ideal of a proletarian equality for all in a classless society. Still its spirit is a rigorous totalitarianism on the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariate, which amounts in fact to the dictatorship of the Communist party in the name or on behalf of the proletariate. Non-proletarian totalitarianism goes farther and discards democratic equality no less than democratic liberty; it preserves classes for a time only, it may be,but as a means of social functioning, not as a scale of superiority or a hierarchic order. Rationalisation is no longer the turn; its place is taken by a revolutionary Mysticism which seems to be the present drive of the Time Spirit.
  This is a symptom that can have a considerable significance. In Russia the Marxist system of Socialism has been turned almost into a gospel. Originally a rationalistic system worked out by a logical thinker and discoverer and systematiser of ideas, it has been transformed by the peculiar turn of the Russian mind into something like a social religion, a collectivist mystique, an inviolable body of doctrines with all denial or departure treated as a punishable heresy, a social cult enforced by the intolerant piety and enthusiasm of a converted people. In Fascist countries the swing away from Rationalism is marked and open; a surface vital subjectivism has taken its place and it is in the name of the national soul and its self-expression and manifestation that the leaders and prophets teach and violently enforce their totalitarian mystique. The essential features are the same in Russia and in Fascist countries, so that to the eye of the outsider their deadly quarrel seems to be a blood-feud of kinsmen fighting for the inheritance of their slaughtered parentsDemocracy and the Age of Reason. There is the seizure of the life of the community by a dominant individual leader, Fhrer, Dux, dictator, head of a small active minority, the Nazi, Fascist or Communist party, and supported by a militarised partisan force; there is a rapid crystallisation of the social, economic, political life of the people into a new rigid organisation effectively controlled at every point; there is the compulsory casting of thought, education, expression, action, into a set iron mould, a fixed system of ideas and life-motives, with a fierce and ruthless, often a sanguinary repression of all that denies and differs; there is a total unprecedented compression of the whole communal existence so as to compel a maximum efficiency and a complete unanimity of mind, speech, feeling, life.
  If this trend becomes universal, it is the end of the Age of Reason, the suicide or the executionby decapitation or lethal pressure, peine forte et dure,of the rational and intellectual expansion of the human mental being. Reason cannot do its work, act or rule if the mind of man is denied freedom to think or freedom to realise its thought by action in life. But neither can a subjective age be the outcome; for the growth of subjectivism also cannot proceed without plasticity, without movement of self-search, without room to move, expand, develop, change. The result is likely to be rather the creation of a tenebrous No Mans Land where obscure Mysticisms, materialistic, vitalistic or mixed, clash and battle for the mastery of human life. But this consummation is not certain; chaos and confusion still reign and all hangs in the balance. Totalitarian Mysticism may not be able to carry out its menace of occupying the globe, may not even endure. Spaces of the earth may be left where a rational idealism can still survive. The terrible compression now exercised on the national mind and life may lead to an explosion from within or, on the other hand, having fulfilled its immediate aim may relax and give way in calmer times to a greater plasticity which will restore to the human mind or soul a more natural line of progress, a freer field for their self-expanding impulse.
  In that case the curve of the Age of Reason, now threatened with an abrupt cessation, may prolong and complete itself; the subjective turn of the human mind and life, avoiding a premature plunge into any general external action before it has found itself, may have time and freedom to evolve, to seek out its own truth, its own lines and so become ready to take up the spiral of the human social evolution where the curve of the Age of Reason naturally ends by its own normal evolution and make ready the ways of a deeper spirit.

1.2.1.04 - Mystic Poetry, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Mystic poetry has a perfectly concrete meaning, much more than intellectual poetry which is much more abstract. The nature of the intellect is abstraction; spirituality and Mysticism deal with the concrete by their very nature.
  8 December 1936

1.2.1.11 - Mystic Poetry and Spiritual Poetry, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I do not remember the context of the passage you quote from The Future Poetry,1 but I suppose I meant to contrast the veiled utterance of what is usually called mystic poetry with the luminous and assured clarity of the fully expressed spiritual experience. I did not mean to contrast it with the mental clarity which is aimed at usually by poetry in which the intelligence or thinking mind is consulted at each step. The concreteness of intellectual imaged description is one thing and spiritual concreteness is another. Two birds, companions, seated on one tree, but one eats the fruit, the other eats not but watches his fellow that has an illumining spiritual clarity and concreteness to one who has had the experience, but mentally and intellectually it might mean anything or nothing. Poetry uttered with the spiritual clarity may be compared to sunlight poetry uttered with the mystic veil to moonlight. But it was not my intention to deny beauty, power or value to the moonlight. Note that I have distinguished between two kinds of Mysticism, one in which the realisation or experience is vague, though inspiringly vague, the other in which the experience is revelatory and intimate, but the utterance it finds is veiled by the image, not thoroughly revealed by it. I do not know to which Tagores recent poetry belongs, I have not read it. The latter kind of poetry (where there is the intimate experience) can be of great power and value witness Blake. Revelation is greater than inspiration it brings the direct knowledge and seeing, inspiration gives the expression, but the two are not always equal. There is even an inspiration without revelation, when one gets the word but the thing remains behind the veil; the transcribing consciousness expresses something with power, like a medium, of which it has not itself the direct sight or the living possession. It is better to get the sight of the thing itself than merely express it by an inspiration which comes from behind the veil, but this kind of poetry too has often a great light and power in it. The highest inspiration brings the intrinsic word, the spiritual mantra; but even where the inspiration is less than that, has a certain vagueness or fluidity of outline, you cannot say of such mystic poetry that it has no inspiration, not the inspired word at all. Where there is no inspiration, there can be no poetry.
  10 June 1936

1.25 - SPIRITUAL EXERCISES, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  In the Orient the systematization of mental prayer was carried out at some unknown but certainly very early date. Both in India and China spiritual exercises (accompanied or preceded by more or less elaborate physical exercises, especially breathing exercises) are known to have been used several centuries before the birth of Christ. In the West, the monks of the Thebaid spent a good part of each day in meditatioq as a means to contemplation or the unitive knowledge of God; and at all periods of Christian history, more or less methodical mental prayer has been largely used to supplement the vocal praying of public and private worship. But the systematization of mental prayer into elaborate spiritual exercises was not undertaken, it would seem, until near the end of the Middle Ages, when reformers within the Church popularized this new form of spirituality in an effort to revivify a decaying monasticism and to reinforce the religious life of a laity that had been bewildered by the Great Schism and profoundly shocked by the corruption of the clergy. Among these early systematizers the most effective and influential were the canons of Windesheim, who were in close touch with the Brethren of the Common Life. During the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries spiritual exercises became, one might almost say, positively fashionable. The early Jesuits had shown what extraordinary transformations of character, what intensities of will and devotion, could be achieved by men systematically trained on the intellectual and imaginative exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, and as the prestige of the Jesuits stood very high, at this time, in Catholic Europe, the prestige of spiritual exercises also stood high. Throughout the first century of the Counter-Reformation numerous systems of mental prayer (many of them, unlike the Ignatian exercises, specifically mystical) were composed, published and eagerly bought. After the Quietist controversy Mysticism fell into disrepute and, along with Mysticism, many of the once popular systems, which their authors had designed to assist the soul on the path towards contemplation. For more detailed information on this interesting and important subject the reader should consult Pourrats Christian Spirituality, Bede Frosts The Art of Mental Prayer, Edward Leens Progress through Mental Prayer and Aelfrida Tillyards Spiritual Exercises. Here it is only possible to give a few characteristic specimens from the various religious traditions.
  Know that when you learn to lose yourself, you will reach the Beloved. There is no other secret to be learnt, and more than this is not known to me.

1.51 - How to Recognise Masters, Angels, etc., and how they Work, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  She was very unsatisfactory as a clairvoyant; she resented these precautions. She was a quick-tempered and impulsive woman, always eager to act with reckless enthusiasm. My cold scepticism no doubt prevented her from doing her best. Ab-ul-Diz himself constantly demanded that I should show "faith," and warned me that I was wrecking my chances by my attitude. I prevailed upon him, however, to give adequate proof of his existence, and his claim to speak with authority. The main purport of his message was to instruct me to write a book on my system of Mysticism and Magick, to be called Book 4, and told me that by means of this book, I should prevail against public neglect. I saw no objection to writing such a book; on quite rational grounds, it was a proper course of action. I therefore agreed to do so. But Ab-ul-Diz was determined to dictate the conditions in which the book should be written; and this was a difficult matter. He wanted us to travel to an appropriate place. On this point I was not wholly satisfied with the result of my cross-examination. I know now that I was much to blame throughout. I was not honest either with him, myself, or Virakam. I allowed material considerations to influence me, and I clung oh triple fool! to my sentimental obligations towards Laylah.[107]
  We finally decided to do what he asked, though part of my objection was founded on his refusal to give us absolutely definite instruction. However, we crossed the Passes in a sleigh to Chiavenna, whence we took the train to Milan. In this city we had a final conversation with Ab-ul-Diz. I had exhausted his patience, as he mine, and he told us that he would not visit us any more. He gave us his final instructions. We were to go to Rome, though he refused to name the exact spot. We were to take a villa and there write Book 4. I asked him how we might recognize the right Villa. I forget what answer he gave through her, but for the first time he flashed a message directly into my own consciousness. "You will recognize it beyond the possibility of doubt or error," he told me. With this a picture came into my mind of a hillside on which were a house and garden marked by two tall Persian Nuts.

1.83 - Epistola Ultima, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  BOOK 4, PART I A concise and clear treatise on Yoga and Mysticism. Book 4 parts I and II reprinted in one volume by Weiser; they may also be found in the "Blue Brick" edition of Magick (Weiser, 1994, 1997)
  BOOK 4, PART II An introductory treatise on the practice of Magick.
  --
  KONX OM PAX Four invaluable treatises and a preface on Mysticism and Magick. Reprinted Chicago: Teitan Press, 1990.
  LIBER ARARITA This book describes in magical language a very secret process of initiation. In Equinox III (9) (The Holy Books of Thelema).

1913 06 15p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Even he who might have attained a perfect contemplation in silence and solitude would have arrived at it only by withdrawing from his body, by disregarding it; and so the substance of which the body is constituted would remain as impure, as imperfect as before, since he would have left it to itself; and by a misguided Mysticism, through the lure of supraphysical splendours, the egoistic desire to unite with Thee for his own personal satisfaction, he would have turned his back upon the very reason of his earthly existence, he would have refused like a coward to accomplish his mission the redemption and purification of Matter. To know that a part of our being is perfectly pure, to commune with this purity, to be identified with it, can be useful only if this knowledge is later used to hasten the transfiguration of the earth, to accomplish Thy sublime work.
   ***

1929-07-28 - Art and Yoga - Art and life - Music, dance - World of Harmony, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Today Russian dances are famous, but they are expressions of the vital world and there is even something terribly vital in them. Like all that comes to us from that world, they may be very attractive or very repulsive, but always they stand for themselves and not for the expression of the higher life. The very Mysticism of the Russians is of a vital order. As technicians of the dance they are marvellous; but technique is only an instrument. If your instrument is good, so much the better, but so long as it is not surrendered to the Divine, however fine it may be, it is empty of the highest and cannot serve a divine purpose. The difficulty is that most of those who become artists believe that they stand on their own legs and have no need to turn to the Divine. It is a great pity; for in the divine manifestation skill is as useful an element as anything else. Skill is one part of the divine fabric, only it must know how to subordinate itself to greater things.
  There is a domain far above the mind which we could call the world of Harmony and, if you can reach there, you will find the root of all harmony that has been manifested in whatever form upon earth. For instance, there is a certain line of music, consisting of a few supreme notes, that was behind the productions of two artists who came one after anotherone a concerto of Bach, another a concerto of Beethoven. The two are not alike on paper and differ to the outward ear, but in their essence they are the same. One and the same vibration of consciousness, one wave of significant harmony touched both these artists. Beethoven caught a larger part, but in him it was more mixed with the inventions and interpolations of his mind; Bach received less, but what he seized of it was purer. The vibration was that of the victorious emergence of consciousness, consciousness tearing itself out of the womb of unconsciousness in a triumphant uprising and birth.

1954-06-30 - Occultism - Religion and vital beings - Mothers knowledge of what happens in the Ashram - Asking questions to Mother - Drawing on Mother, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  What is the difference between occultism and Mysticism?
  They are not at all the same thing.
   Mysticism is a more or less emotive relation with what one sees to be a divine power that kind of highly emotional, affective, very intense relation with something invisible which is or is taken for the Divine. That is Mysticism.
  Occultism is exactly what he has said: it is the knowledge of invisible forces and the power to handle them. It is a science. It is altogether a science. I always compare occultism with chemistry, for it is the same kind of knowledge as the knowledge of chemistry for material things. It is a knowledge of invisible forces, their different vibrations, their interrelations, the combinations which can be made by bringing them together and the power one can exercise over them. It is absolutely scientific; and it ought to be learnt like a science; that is, one cannot practise occultism as something emotional or something vague and imprecise. You must work at it as you would do at chemistry, and learn all the rules or find them if there is nobody to teach you. But it is at some risk to yourself that you can find them. There are combinations here as explosive as certain chemical combinations.

1956-08-15 - Protection, purification, fear - Atmosphere at the Ashram on Darshan days - Darshan messages - Significance of 15-08 - State of surrender - Divine Grace always all-powerful - Assumption of Virgin Mary - SA message of 1947-08-15, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    It is here that the emergence of the secret psychic being in us as the leader of the sacrifice is of the utmost importance; for this inmost being alone can bring with it the full power of the spirit in the act, the soul in the symbol. It alone can assure, even while the spiritual consciousness is incomplete, the perennial freshness and sincerity and beauty of the symbol and prevent it from being a dead form or a corrupted and corrupting magic; it alone can preserve for the act its power with its significance. All the other members of our being, mind, life-force, physical or body consciousness are too much under the control of the Ignorance to be a sure instrumentation and much less can they be a guide or the source of an unerring impulse. Always the greater part of the motive and action of these powers clings to the old law, the deceiving tablets, the cherished inferior movements of Nature and they meet with reluctance, alarm or revolt or obstructing inertia the voices and the forces that call and impel us to exceed and transform ourselves into a greater being and a wider Nature. In their major part the response is either a resistance or a qualified or temporising acquiescence; for even if they follow the call, they yet tendwhen not consciously, then by automatic habitto bring into the spiritual action their own natural disabilities and errors. At every moment they are moved to take egoistic advantage of the psychic and spiritual influences and can be detected using the power, joy or light these bring into us for a lower life-motive. Afterwards too, even when the seeker has opened to the Divine Love transcendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he meets the power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Nature-forces. Always they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their diminishing elements, seek to capture the descending Power for themselves and their interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical instrumentation for desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new heaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it here prisoner as a tremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the old earth and colour with its rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of sentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that falsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there is a fall back to a lower status; or else the realisation remains tied to an insecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an inferior exaltation that is not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that the Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic Mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim sacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the minds and the lifes falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the minds ardours and the blind enthusiasm of the misleading life-force. But all things that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical being it extricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand on the heights, new in spirit and sublime in figure.
    Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, pp. 155-57

1958-09-10 - Magic, occultism, physical science, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    In modern times, as physical Science enlarged its discoveries and released the secret material forces of Nature into an action governed by human knowledge for human use, occultism receded and was finally set aside on the ground that the physical alone is real and Mind and Life are only departmental activities of Matter. On this basis, believing material Energy to be the key of all things, Science has attempted to move towards a control of mind and life processes by a knowledge of the material instrumentation and process of our normal and abnormal mind and life functionings and activities; the spiritual is ignored as only one form of mentality. It may be observed in passing that if this endeavour succeeded, it might not be without danger for the existence of the human race, even as now are certain other scientific discoveries misused or clumsily used by a humanity mentally and morally unready for the handling of powers so great and perilous; for it would be an artificial control applied without any knowledge of the secret forces which underlie and sustain our existence. Occultism in the West could be thus easily pushed aside because it never reached its majority, never acquired ripeness and a philosophic or sound systematic foundation. It indulged too freely in the romance of the supernatural or made the mistake of concentrating its major effort on the discovery of formulas and effective modes for using supernormal powers. It deviated into magic white and black or into a romantic or thaumaturgic paraphernalia of occult Mysticism and the exaggeration of what was after all a limited and scanty knowledge. These tendencies and this insecurity of mental foundation made it difficult to defend and easy to discredit, a target facile and vulnerable. In Egypt and the East this line of knowledge arrived at a greater and more comprehensive endeavour: this ampler maturity can be seen still intact in the remarkable system of the Tantras; it was not only a many-sided science of the supernormal but supplied the basis of all the occult elements of religion and even developed a great and powerful system of spiritual discipline and self-realisation. For the highest occultism is that which discovers the secret movements and dynamic supernormal possibilities of Mind and Life and Spirit and uses them in their native force or by an applied process for the greater effectivity of our mental, vital and spiritual being.
    Occultism is associated in popular idea with magic and magical formulas and a supposed mechanism of the supernatural. But this is only one side, nor is it altogether a superstition as is vainly imagined by those who have not looked deeply or at all at this covert side of secret Nature-Force or experimented with its possibilities. Formulas and their application, a mechanisation of latent forces, can be astonishingly effective in the occult use of mind-power and life-power just as it is in physical Science, but this is only a subordinate method and a limited direction. For mind and life forces are plastic, subtle and variable in their action and have not the material rigidity; they need a subtle and plastic intuition in the knowledge of them, in the interpretation of their action and process and in their application,even in the interpretation and action of their established formulas. An overstress on mechanisation and rigid formulation is likely to result in sterilisation or a formalised limitation of knowledge and, on the pragmatic side, to much error, ignorant convention, misuse and failure. Now that we are outgrowing the superstition of the sole truth of Matter, a swing backward towards the old occultism and to new formulations, as well as to a scientific investigation of the still hidden secrets and powers of Mind and a close study of psychic and abnormal or supernormal psychological phenomena, is possible and, in parts, already visible. But if it is to fulfil itself, the true foundation, the true aim and direction, the necessary restrictions and precautions of this line of inquiry have to be rediscovered; its most important aim must be the discovery of the hidden truths and powers of the mind-force and the life-power and the greater forces of the concealed spirit. Occult science is, essentially, the science of the subliminal, the subliminal in ourselves and the subliminal in world-nature, and of all that is in connection with the subliminal, including the subconscient and the superconscient, and the use of it as part of self-knowledge and world-knowledge and for the right dynamisation of that knowledge.

1f.lovecraft - Medusas Coil, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   because he thought her strange beauty, or some phase of the Mysticism
   which had gone into her one-time magical cult, might help to reawaken

1f.lovecraft - The Horror at Red Hook, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   sense despite his Mysticism. He had the Celts far vision of weird and
   hidden things, but the logicians quick eye for the outwardly

1.fua - Mysticism, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
  object:1.fua - Mysticism
  author class:Farid ud-Din Attar

1.mah - If They Only Knew, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
   English version by Michael A. Sells Original Language Arabic What earth is this so in want of you they rise up on high to seek you in heaven? Look at them staring at you right before their eyes, unseeing, unseeing, blind. . . . I was patient, but can the heart be patient of its heart? My spirit and yours blend together whether we are near one another or far away. I am you, you, my being, end of my desire, The most intimate of secret thoughts enveloped and fixed along the horizon in folds of light. How? The "how" is known along the outside, while the interior of beyond to and for the heart of being. Creatures perish in the darkened blind of quest, knowing intimations. Guessing and dreaming they pursue the real, faces turned toward the sky whispering secrets to the heavens. While the lord remains among them in every turn of time abiding in their every condition every instant. Never without him, they, not for the blink of an eye -- if only they knew! nor he for a moment without them. [1520.jpg] -- from Early Islamic Mysticism: Sufi, Quran, Miraj, Poetic and Theological Writings (Classics of Western Spirituality), by Michael A. Sells <
1.wby - A Coat, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
  Yeats was fascinated by the occult and Mysticism. He joined the Golden Dawn, a secret society which practiced ritual magic, in 1890, progressing to its Inner Order in 1893, and remained an active member for most of his life. He also joined paranormal research organisation The Ghost Club in 191.

2.00 - BIBLIOGRAPHY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  . The Flowering of Mysticism (New York, 1939).
  JORGENSEN, JOHANNES. Saint Catherine of Sienna (London, 1938).
  --
  . Mysticism East and West (London, 1932).
  PATANJALI. Yoga Aphorisms. Translated with a commentary by Swami Vivekananda (New York, 1899).
  --
  . Consult Inges Christian Mysticism, Rufus Joness Studies in Mystical Religion and Pourrats Christian Spirituality.
  TENNANT, F. R. Philosophical Theology (Cambridge, 1923).
  --
  UNDERHILL, EVELYN. Mysticism (London, 1924).
  . The Mystics of the Church (London, 1925).

2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   Disciple: But that control is not perfect. Another question is whether the scientists would come to believe or accept that the whole truth cannot be attained by mind, or would they turn sceptics like the positivists? Could they come to believe in the possibility of higher knowledge by Mysticism?
   Sri Aurobindo: Never mind what they accept or don't accept, but the control which science gives is a real control. The knowledge science gives, as I said, is not only useful but is even necessary. The main concern of the scientist is with physical phenomena, he observes them, he studies the conditions, makes experiments and then deduces the laws.

2.03 - The Christian Phenomenon and Faith in the Incarnation, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  of Mysticism, has even penetrated them so deeply that we find
  ourselves falling under a spell simply by uttering the names
  --
  true human Mysticism, born in the West, looks for if it is to
  be able to develop itself fully. For the western mystic the
  --
  The time has undoubtedly come when a new Mysticism,
  at once fully human and Christian, must finally appear, at

2.03 - The Eternal and the Individual, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The cosmic being can only know and possess the transcendent unity by ceasing to be cosmic; the individual can only know and possess the cosmic or the transcendental unity by ceasing from all individuality and individualisation. Or if unity is the one eternal fact, then cosmos and individual are non-existent; they are illusions imposed on itself by the Eternal. That may well involve a contradiction or an unreconciled paradox; but I am willing to admit a contradiction in the Eternal which I am not compelled to think out, rather than a contradiction here of my primary conceptions which I am compelled to think out logically and to practical ends. I am on this supposition able either to take the world as practically real and think and act in it or to reject it as an unreality and cease to think and act; I am not compelled to reconcile contradictions, not called on to be conscious of and conscious in something beyond myself and world and yet deal from that basis, as God does, with a world of contradictions. The attempt to be as God while I am still an individual or to be three things at a time seems to me to involve a logical confusion and a practical impossibility." Such might well be the attitude of the normal reason, and it is clear, lucid, positive in its distinctions; it involves no extraordinary gymnastics of the reason trying to exceed itself and losing itself in shadows and half-lights or any kind of Mysticism, or at least there is only one original and comparatively simple Mysticism free from all other difficult complexities. Therefore it is the reasoning which is the most satisfactory to the simply rational mind. Yet is there here a triple error, the error of making an unbridgeable gulf between the Absolute and the relative, the error of making too simple and rigid and extending too far the law of contradictions and the error of conceiving in terms of Time the genesis of things which have their origin and first habitat in the Eternal.
  We mean by the Absolute something greater than ourselves, greater than the cosmos which we live in, the supreme reality of that transcendent Being which we call God, something without which all that we see or are conscious of as existing, could not have been, could not for a moment remain in existence. Indian thought calls it Brahman, European thought the Absolute because it is a self-existent which is absolved of all bondage to relativities. For all relatives can only exist by something which is the truth of them all and the source and continent of their powers and properties and yet exceeds them all; it is something of which not only each relativity itself, but also any sum we can make of all relatives that we know, can only be - in all that we know of them - a partial, inferior or practical expression.

2.05 - The Religion of Tomorrow, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  But what is the effect, for Christian faith and Mysticism,
  of this redefinition of Spirit? It is simply to confer reality
  --
  universal dimensions of Christ-Omega and its definition of Mysticism
  from the more inclusive angle of Super-charity.

2.13 - On Psychology, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   Disciple: Christian Mysticism derives its idea of rejoicing in suffering from intense Bhakti. Everything is seen to come from the beloved and welcomed.
   Sri Aurobindo: What does not come from God? Even evil and sin come from God. Why not accept them? If God drives you towards your neighbour's wife why not accept it? They sin and evil have their place in the universe to fulfil and in evolution also. But that is not the law of the human soul; the soul is not here for suffering. The Gita speaks of the Asuric Tapas and says that people who invite suffering torture the elements in the body and torture "Me", Krishna, who am seated in the body.

2.15 - Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  An inner range of spiritual experience is one very great domain of human consciousness; it has to be entered into up to its deepest depths and its vastest reaches. The supraphysical is as real as the physical; to know it is part of a complete knowledge. The knowledge of the supraphysical has been associated with Mysticism and occultism, and occultism has been banned as a superstition and a fantastic error. But the occult is a part of existence; a true occultism means no more than a research into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface. It attempts the discovery of the secret laws of mind and mental energy, the secret laws of life and life-energy, the secret laws of the subtle-physical and its energies, - all that Nature has not put into visible operation on the surface; it pursues also the application of these hidden truths and powers of Nature so as to extend the mastery of the human spirit beyond the ordinary operations of mind, the ordinary operations of life, the ordinary operations of our physical existence.
  In the spiritual domain, which is occult to the surface mind in so far as it passes beyond normal and enters into supernormal experience, there is possible not only the discovery of the self and spirit, but the discovery of the uplifting, informing and guiding light of spiritual consciousness and the power of the spirit, the spiritual way of knowledge, the spiritual way of action. To know these things and to bring their truths and forces into the life of humanity is a necessary part of its evolution. Science itself is in its own way an occultism; for it brings to light the formulas which Nature has hidden and it uses its knowledge to set free operations of her energies which she has not included in her ordinary operations and to organise and place at the service of man her occult powers and processes, a vast system of physical magic, - for there is and can be no other magic than the utilisation of secret truths of being, secret powers and processes of Nature. It may even be found that a supraphysical knowledge is necessary for the completion of physical knowledge, because the processes of physical Nature have behind them a supraphysical factor, a power and action mental, vital or spiritual which is not tangible to any outer means of knowledge.

2.19 - Feb-May 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   Sri Aurobindo: Well, that often happens. In one's vital and physical nature there remains a stamp of one's ancestral religion and it comes out some times. The Christians usually turn towards Catholicism. A Frenchman, I forgot his name, tried all sorts of things, Mysticism, Tibetan occultism, etc., and came into touch with our Pavitra who told him that these things wont go with Yoga. He abandoned all connections and turned to Catholicism. He wrote a book afterwards, stealing passages from Pavitra's letters and using them in support of Catholicism. It was that that disgusted Pavitra.
   My grandfather started by being a Brahmo and ended by writing a book on Hinduism and proclaiming it as the best religion in the world.

2.19 - The Planes of Our Existence, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  3:The ancient knowledge in all countries was full of the search after the hidden truths of our being and it created that large field of practice and inquiry which goes in Europe by the name of occultism, -- we do not use any corresponding word in the East, because these things do not seem to us so remote, mysterious and abnormal as to the occidental mentality; they are nearer to us arid the veil between our normal material life and this larger life is much thinner. In India,428a Egypt, Chaldea, China, Greece, the Celtic countries they have formed part of various Yogic systems and disciplines which had once a great hold everywhere, but to the modern mind have seemed mere superstition and Mysticism, although the facts and experiences on which they are founded are quite as real in their own field and as much governed by intelligible laws of their own as the facts and experiences of the material world. It is not our intention here to plunge into this vast and difficult field of psychical knowledge.428b But it becomes necessary now to deal with certain broad facts and principles which form its framework, for without them our Yoga of knowledge cannot be complete. We find that in the various systems the facts dealt with are always the same, but there are considerable differences of theoretic and practical arrangement, as is natural and inevitable in dealing with a subject so large and difficult. Certain things are here omitted, there made all-important, here understressed, there over-emphasised; certain fields of experience which are in one system held to be merely subordinate provinces, are in others treated as separate kingdoms. But I shall follow here consistently the Vedic and Vedantic arrangement of which we find the great lines in the Upanishads, first because it seems to me at once the simplest and most philosophical and more especially because it was from the beginning envisaged from the point of view of the utility of these various planes to the supreme object of our liberation. It takes as its basis the three principles of our ordinary being, mind, life and matter, the triune spiritual principle of Sachchidananda and the link principle of vijnana, supermind, the free or spiritual intelligence, and thus arranges all the large possible poises of our being in a tier of seven planes, -- sometimes regarded as five only, because, only the lower five are wholly accessible to us, -- through which the developing being can rise to its perfection.
  4:But first we must understand what we mean by planes of consciousness, planes of existence. We mean a general-settled poise or world of relations between Purusha and prakriti, between the Soul and Nature. For anything that we can call world is and can be nothing else than the working out of a general relation which an universal existence has created or established between itself, or let us say its eternal fact or potentiality and the powers of its becoming. That existence in its relations with and its experience of the becoming is what we call soul or Purusha, individual soul in the individual, universal soul in the cosmos; the principle and the powers of the becoming are what we call Nature or prakriti. But since being, conscious-force and delight of being are always the three constituent terms of existence, the nature of a world is really determined by the way in which prakriti is set to deal with these three primary things and the forms which it is allowed to give to them. For existence itself is and must always be the stuff of its own becoming; it must be shaped into the substance with which Force has to deal. Force again must be the power which works out that substance and works with it to whatever ends; Force is that which we ordinarily call Nature. Again the end, the object with which the worlds are created must be worked out by the consciousness inherent in all existence and all force and all their workings, and the object must be the possession of itself and of its delight of existence in the world. To that all the circumstances and aims of any world-existence must reduce themselves; it is existence developing its terms of being, its power of being, its conscious delight of being; if these are involved, their evolution; if they are veiled, their self-revelation.

2.20 - Nov-Dec 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   Sri Aurobindo: No, perhaps romantic. There can also be a mixture of Mysticism combined with romance. When one deals with Mysticism one has to be very careful, because there are many truths and also many imaginations.
   Disciple: The Rosicrucians also believe in the reality of mystic experiences.

2.24 - The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In modern times, as physical Science enlarged its discoveries and released the secret material forces of Nature into an action governed by human knowledge for human use, occultism receded and was finally set aside on the ground that the physical alone is real and mind and life are only departmental activities of Matter. On this basis, believing material Energy to be the key of all things, Science has attempted to move towards a control of mind and life processes by a knowledge of the material instrumentation and process of our normal and abnormal mind and life functionings and activities; the spiritual is ignored as only one form of mentality. It may be observed in passing that if this endeavour succeeded, it might not be without danger for the existence of the human race, even as now are certain other scientific discoveries misused or clumsily used by a humanity mentally and morally unready for the handling of powers so great and perilous; for it would be an artificial control applied without any knowledge of the secret forces which underlie and sustain our existence. Occultism in the West could be thus easily pushed aside because it never reached its majority, never acquired ripeness and a philosophic or sound systematic foundation. It indulged too freely in the romance of the supernatural or made the mistake of concentrating its major effort on the discovery of formulas and effective modes for using supernormal powers. It deviated into magic white and black or into a romantic or thaumaturgic paraphernalia of occult Mysticism and the exaggeration of what was after all a limited and scanty knowledge. These tendencies and this insecurity of mental foundation made it difficult to defend and easy to discredit, a target facile and vulnerable. In Egypt and the East this line of knowledge arrived at a greater and more comprehensive endeavour: this ampler maturity can be seen still intact in the remarkable system of the Tantras; it was not only a many-sided science of the supernormal but supplied the basis of all the occult elements of religion and even developed a great and powerful system of spiritual discipline and self-realisation. For the highest occultism is that which discovers the secret movements and dynamic supernormal possibilities of mind and life and spirit and uses them in their native force or by an applied process for the greater effectivity of our mental, vital and spiritual being.
  Occultism is associated in popular idea with magic and magical formulae and a supposed mechanism of the supernatural.
  --
  But none of these three lines of approach can by themselves entirely fulfil the greater and ulterior intention of Nature; they cannot create in mental man the spiritual being, unless and until they open the door to spiritual experience. It is only by an inner realisation of what these approaches are seeking after, by an overwhelming experience or by many experiences building up an inner change, by a transmutation of the consciousness, by a liberation of the spirit from its present veil of mind, life and body that there can emerge the spiritual being. That is the final line of the soul's progress towards which the others are pointing and, when it is ready to disengage itself from the preliminary approaches, then the real work has begun and the turning-point of the change is no longer distant. Till then all that the human mental being has reached is a familiarity with the idea of things beyond him, with the possibility of an other-worldly movement, with the ideal of some ethical perfection; he may have made too some contact with greater Powers or Realities which help his mind or heart or life. A change there may be, but not the transmutation of the mental into the spiritual being. Religion and its thought and ethics and occult Mysticism in ancient times produced the priest and the mage, the man of piety, the just man, the man of wisdom, many high points of mental manhood; but it is only after spiritual experience through the heart and mind began that we see arise the saint, the prophet, the Rishi, the Yogi, the seer, the spiritual sage and the mystic, and it is the religions in which these types of spiritual manhood came into being that have endured, covered the globe and given mankind all its spiritual aspiration and culture.
  When spirituality disengages itself in the consciousness and puts on its distinctive character, it is only at first a small kernel, a growing tendency, an exceptional light of experience amidst the great mass of normal unenlightened human mind, vitality, physicality which forms the outer self and engrosses our natural preoccupation. There are tentative beginnings and a slow evolution and hesitating emergence. An earlier first preliminary form of it creates a certain kind of religiosity which is not the pure spiritual temperament, but is of the nature of mind or life seeking or finding in itself a spiritual support or factor; in this stage man is mostly preoccupied with the utilisation of such contacts as he can get or construct with what is beyond him to help or serve his mental ideas or moral ideals or his vital and physical interests; the true turn to some spiritual change has not come. The first true formations take the shape of a spiritualisation of our natural activities, a permeating influence on them or a direction: there is a preparatory influence or influx in some part or tendency of the mind or life, - a spiritualised turn of thought with uplifting illuminations, or a spiritualised turn of the emotional or the aesthetic being, a spiritualised ethical formation in the character, a spiritualised urge in some life-action or other dynamic vital movement of the nature. An awareness comes perhaps of an inner light, of a guidance or a communion, of a greater Control than the mind and will to which something in us obeys; but all is not yet recast in the mould of that experience. But when these intuitions and illuminations grow in insistence and canalise themselves, make a strong inner formation and claim to govern the whole life and take over the nature, then there begins the spiritual formation of the being; there emerges the saint, the devotee, the spiritual sage, the seer, the prophet, the servant of God, the soldier of the spirit. All these take their stand on one part of the natural being lifted up by a spiritual light, power or ecstasy. The sage and seer live in the spiritual mind, their thought or their vision is governed and moulded by an inner or a greater divine light of knowledge; the devotee lives in the spiritual aspiration of the heart, its self-offering and its seeking; the saint is moved by the awakened psychic being in the inner heart grown powerful to govern the emotional and vital being; the others stand in the vital kinetic nature driven by a higher spiritual energy and turned by it towards an inspired action, a God-given work or mission, the service of some divine Power, idea or ideal. The last or highest emergence is the liberated man who has realised the Self and Spirit within him, entered into the cosmic consciousness, passed into union with the Eternal and, so far as he still accepts life and action, acts by the light and energy of the Power within him working through his human instruments of Nature. The largest formulation of this spiritual change and achievement is a total liberation of soul, mind, heart and action, a casting of them all into the sense of the cosmic Self and the Divine Reality.10 The spiritual evolution of the individual has then found its way and thrown up its range of Himalayan eminences and its peaks of highest nature. Beyond this height and largeness there opens only the supramental ascent or the incommunicable Transcendence.
  This then has been up till now the course of Nature's evolution of the spiritual man in the human mental being, and it may be questioned what is the exact sum of this achievement and its actual significance. In the recent reaction towards the life of the mind in Matter, this great direction and this rare change have been stigmatised as no true evolution of consciousness but rather a sublimated crudity of ignorance deviating from the true human evolution, which should be solely an evolution of life-power, the practical physical mind, the reason governing thought and conduct and the discovering and organising intelligence. In this epoch religion was pushed aside as an out-of-date superstition and spiritual realisation and experience discredited as a shadowy Mysticism; the mystic in this view is the man who turns aside into the unreal, into occult regions of a self-constructed land of chimeras and loses his way there. This judgment proceeds from a view of things which is itself bound to pass into discredit, because it depends ultimately on the false perception of the material as alone real and the outward life as alone of importance.
  But apart from this extreme materialistic view of things, it can be and is still held by the intellect and the physical mind eager for human life-fulfilment, - and that is the prevalent mentality, the dominant modern trend, - that the spiritual tendency in humanity has come to very little; it has not solved the problem of life nor any of the problems with which humanity is at grips.

2.25 - List of Topics in Each Talk, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   | 14-15-39 | Yogic action on world, Swami Dayananda of Bengal, Avatarhood; Rosicrucians, Mysticism, ego and self; Buddhi and Mukti; Kant; disinterested action; Reason and Truth |
   | 15-12-39 | Reason, spiritual experience; the Absolute, knowledge by identity; Siddhis |

2.25 - The Higher and the Lower Knowledge, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Nevertheless, Yoga does not either in its path or in its attainment exclude and throw away the forms of the lower knowledge, except when it takes the shape of an extreme asceticism or a Mysticism altogether intolerant of this other divine mystery of the world-existence. It separates itself from them by the intensity, largeness and height of its objective and the specialisation of its methods to suit its aim; but it not only starts from them, but for a certain part of the way carries them with it and uses them as auxiliaries. Thus it is evident how largely ethical thought and practice, -- not so much external as internal conduct, -- enter into the preparatory method of Yoga, into its aim at purity. Again the whole method of Yoga is psychological; it might almost be termed the consummate practice of a perfect psychological knowledge. The data of philosophy are the supports from which it begins in the realisation of God through the principles of his being; only it carries the intelligent understanding which is all philosophy gives, into an intensity which carries it beyond thought into vision and beyond understanding into realisation and possession; what philosophy leaves abstract and remote, it brings into a living nearness and spiritual concreteness. The aesthetic and emotional mind and aesthetic forms are used by Yoga as a support for concentration even in the Yoga of Knowledge and are, sublimated, the whole means of the Yoga of love and delight, as life and action, sublimated, are the whole means of the Yoga of works. Contemplation of God in Nature, contemplation and service of God in man and in the life of man and of the world in its past, present and future, are equally elements of which the Yoga of Knowledge can make use to complete the realisation of God in all things. Only, all is directed to the one aim, directed towards God, filled with the idea of the divine, infinite, universal existence so that the outward-going, sensuous, pragmatical preoccupation of the lower knowledge with phenomena and forms is replaced by the one divine preoccupation. After attainment the same character remains. The Yogin continues to know and see God in the finite and be a channel of God-consciousness and God-action in the world; therefore the knowledge of the world and the enlarging and uplifting of all that appertains to life comes within his scope. Only, in all he sees God, sees the supreme reality, and his motive of work is to help mankind towards the knowledge of God and the possession of the supreme reality. He sees God through the data of science. God through the conclusions of philosophy. God through the forms of Beauty and the forms of Good, God in all the activities of life. God in the past of the world and its effects, in the present and its tendencies, in the future and its great progression. Into any or all of these he can bring his illumined vision and his liberated power of the spirit. The lower knowledge has been the step from which he has risen to the higher; the higher illumines for him the lower and makes it part of itself, even if only its lower fringe and most external radiation.
  author class:Sri Aurobindo

3.00 - Hymn To Pan, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  Turk in order to study Mohammedan methods of Mysticism and
  Magick.

3.00 - Introduction, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  as H. P. Blavatsky some years earlier. Theosophy, Spiritualism, Occultism, Mysticism, all involved undesirable connotations.
  I therefore chose the name

3.01 - Natural Morality, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  Morality and Mysticism
  i. Natural Morality
  --
  Morality and Mysticism
  was up to now a jurist, or a tight-rope walker. He becomes

3.01 - The Principles of Ritual, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  the Holy Guardian Angel;1 or in the language of Mysticism,
  Union with God.2

3.02 - King and Queen, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  and sponsa, the Mysticism of the Song of Songs, etc.). Thus the incest
  taboo, says Layard, leads in full circle out of the biological sphere into

3.02 - Mysticism, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  object:3.02 - Mysticism
  author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
  --
  2. Mysticism
  It is upon this Physics that Pere Teilhard simultaneously
  builds up, secondly, a Mysticism:
  The whole of Evolution being reduced to a process of
  --
  I. THE ORIGIN OF Mysticism! THE COSMIC SENSE
  I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused
  --
  At the psychological root of all Mysticism there lies, if I
  am not mistaken, the more or less vague attraction or need
  --
  In this context I mean by Mysticism the need, the science
  and the art of attaining the Universal and the Spiritual at
  --
  Morality and Mysticism
  entiation that is active in and around us. This is the pan-
  --
  sity to formulate as soon as possible a Mysticism of the Wesf.
  For centuries, Hindu Mysticism of fusion and Christian
   Mysticism of the juridical' type have been the object of
  --
  The time has undoubtedly come when a new Mysticism,
  118
  Morality and Mysticism
  at once fully human and Christian, must finally appear at the
  --
  Morality and Mysticism
  more than one of a number of branches in this divergent
  --
  Morality and Mysticism
  the scientific quest for truth, and the organized attempt to
  --
  Morality and Mysticism
  immediately or without our co-operation. We are justified in

3.02 - The Formulae of the Elemental Weapons, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  magick with Mysticism.
  Let us describe the magical method of identification. The

3.02 - The Psychology of Rebirth, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  in Islamic Mysticism, namely Khidr, "the Verdant One." He ap-
  pears in the Eighteenth Sura of the Koran, entitled "The Cave." x
  --
  an important part in Islamic Mysticism.
  24 Just as the Dioscuri come to the aid of those who are in danger at sea.

3.03 - The Consummation of Mysticism, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  object:3.03 - The Consummation of Mysticism
  author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
  --
  3. The Consummation of Mysticism
  The Milieu Divin and The Mass on the World
  --
  Morality and Mysticism
  wastefulness of the world. In the external spheres of the
  --
  Morality and Mysticism
  though it were the wraith of a universal soul seeking to be
  --
  Morality and Mysticism
  the light of your countenance shine upon us in its universal-
  --
  Morality and Mysticism
  And when you have thus relieved your being of its burden
  --
  Morality and Mysticism
  closely, we shall see that we have simply taken another path
  --
  Morality and Mysticism
  the joys by which my life has been warmed. Lord Jesus, I

3.04 - LUNA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [158] From all this it would seem that the moon-plant is a kind of mandrake and has nothing to do with the botanical Lunaria (honesty). In the herbal of Tabernaemontanus, in which all the magico-medicinal properties of plants are carefully listed, there is no mention of the alchemical Lunatica or Lunaria. On the other hand it is evident that the Lunatica is closely connected with the tree of the sea in Arabian alchemy207 and hence with the arbor philosophica,208 which in turn has parallels with the Cabalistic tree of the Sefiroth209 and with the tree of Christian Mysticism210 and Hindu philosophy.211
  [159] Rulands remark that the sponge has understanding (see n. 205) and Khunraths that the essence of the Lunaria is the sweetness of the sages point to the general idea that the moon has some secret connection with the human mind.212 The alchemists have a great deal to say about this, and this is the more interesting as we know that the moon is a favourite symbol for certain aspects of the unconsciousthough only, of course, in a man. In a woman the moon corresponds to consciousness and the sun to the unconscious. This is due to the contrasexual archetype in the unconscious: anima in a man, animus in a woman.

3.05 - The Formula of I.A.O., #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  meditation; in fact, of elementary Mysticism in all its branches.
  In beginning a meditation practice, there is always1 a quiet

3.07 - The Ascent of the Soul, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  medieval alchemy had connections with the Mysticism of the age, or rather
  was itself a form of Mysticism, allows us to adduce as a parallel to the
  nigredo the writings of St. John of the Cross concerning the dark night.

3.1.05 - A Vision of Science, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Even Mysticism shrank out-mystified.
  But the third Angel came and touched my eyes;

3.15 - Of the Invocation, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  2. There is the general metaphysical antithesis that Magick is the Art of the Willto-Live, Mysticism of the Will-to-Die; butTruth comes bubbling to my brim; Life
  and Death are one to Him! [Crowley, The Scorpion, Equinox I (6).]

3.2.05 - Our Ideal, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Indian thought into Europe first through the veil of German metaphysics, more latterly by its subtle influence in reawakening the Celtic, Scandinavian and Slavonic idealism, Mysticism, religionism, and the direct and open penetration of Buddhism,
  Theosophy, Vedantism, Bahaism and other Oriental influences in both Europe and America.

3.2.10 - Christianity and Theosophy, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Love of God and union in separateness through that love and a transformation of the nature by realising certain mental, ethical, emotional, perhaps even physical possibilities (for the Vaishnavas speak of a new cinmaya body) is the principle of Vaishnava Yoga. So there is nothing here that was not already present in that line of Asiatic Mysticism which looks to a Personal Deity and insists on the eternal pre-existence and survival of the individual being. A spiritual raising of the nature to its highest possibilities is a part of the Tantric disciplineso that too is not absent from Indian Yoga. The writer seems like most European writers to know only Illusionism and Buddhism and to accept them as the whole wisdom of Asia (sagesse asiatique); but even there he misinterprets their idea and their experience. Adwaita even in its extreme form does not aim at the extinction of existence, the adoption of nothingness, the end of the being and destruction of the essence. Only a certain kind of Nihilistic Buddhism aims at that and even so that Nothingness, Sunya, is described on another side of it as the Permanent. What these disciplines aim at is a passing from Time to Eternity, a putting off of the finite and putting on of the Infinite, a casting off of the bonds of ego and its results, desire, suffering, a falsified existence, in order to live in the true Self. These descriptions of the Christian writer betray an entire ignorance of the realisation which he decries, its infinity, freedom, surpassing peace, the ecstasy of the Brahmananda. It is an extinction of the limited individual personality but a liberation into cosmic and then into transcendental consciousnessan extinction of thought and life but a liberation into an unlimited consciousness and knowledge and being. The personality is extinguished but in something greater than itself, not in something less nor in mere Nant. If it be said that that negates earthly life, so does the Christian ideal, for the Christian ideal aims at the attainment of a celestial existence beyond the earth existence (beyond this single earth life, for reincarnation is not admitted), which is only a vale of sorrows and a passing ordeal. It insists on the preservation of the spiritual personality, but so do Vaishnavism and Shaivism and other Asiatic ideals. The writers ignorance of the many-sidedness of Asiatic wisdom deprives his depreciation of it of all value.
  The phrases which struck you as resembling superficially at least our ideal of transformation are of a general character and could be adopted without hesitation by almost any spiritual discipline, even Illusionism would be willing to include it as a stage or experience on the way. All depends on the content you put into the words, what actual change in the consciousness and life they are intended to cover. If the transformation be from sin to sainthood by the union of the soul with God in an intellectual light full of lovewhich is the most definite description of it in these extracts,then it is not at all identical, but rather very far from what I mean by transformation. For the transformation I aim at is not from sin to sainthood but from the lower nature of the Ignorance to the Divine Nature of Light, Peace, Truth, Divine Power and Bliss beyond the Ignorance. It journeys towards a supreme self-existent good and leaves behind it the limited struggling human conception of sin and virtue; it is not an intellectual light that is the sun of its aspiration but a spiritual supra-intellectual supramental light; it is not sainthood that is its culmination but divine consciousnessor if you like, soul-hood, spirit-hood, conscious self-hood, divine-hood. There is therefore between these two kinds or two degrees of transformation an immense difference.

3.21 - Of Black Magic, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  So far as Mysticism is concerned, the technique is extremely
  simple, and has been very simply described in Part I of this Book 4.
  --
  The technique of Magick is just as important as that of Mysticism,
  but here we have a very much more difficult problem, because the
  --
  brain in the case of Mysticism. The essence of the technique of
  Magick is the development of the body of Light which must be
  --
  towards Magick than towards Mysticism, he is much less competent
  in Magick.2 A trace of this can be seen even in His method of

3.6.01 - Heraclitus, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  On one or two difficult points I am inclined to differ with the conclusions he adopts. He rejects positively Pfleiderer's view of Heraclitus as a mystic, which is certainly exaggerated and, as stated, a misconception; but it seems to me that there is behind that misconception a certain truth. Heraclitus' abuse of the mysteries of his time is not very conclusive in this respect; for what he reviles is those aspects of obscure magic, physical ecstasy, sensual excitement which the Mysteries had put on in some at least of their final developments as the process of degeneration increased which made a century later even the Eleusinian a butt for the dangerous mockeries of Alcibiades and his companions. His complaint is that the secret rites which the populace held in ignorant and superstitious reverence "unholily mysticise what are held among men as mysteries." He rebels against the darkness of the Dionysian ecstasy in the approach to the secrets of Nature; but there is a luminous Apollonian as well as an obscure and sometimes dangerous Dionysian Mysticism, a Dakshina as well as a Vama Marga of the mystic Tantra. And though no partaker in or supporter of any kind of rites or mummery, Heraclitus still strikes one as at least an intellectual child of the Mystics and of Mysticism, although perhaps a rebel son in the house of his mother. He has something of the mystic style, something of the intuitive Apollonian inlook into the secrets of existence.
  Certainly, as Mr. Ranade says, mere aphorism is not Mysticism; aphorism and epigram are often enough, perhaps usually a condensed or a pregnant effort of the intellect. But Heraclitus' style, as Mr. Ranade himself describes it, is not only aphoristic and epigrammatic but cryptic, and this cryptic character is not merely the self-willed obscurity of an intellectual thinker affecting an excessive condensation of his thought or a too closely-packed burden of suggestiveness. It is enigmatic in the style of the mystics, enigmatic in the manner of their thought which sought to express the riddle of existence in the very language of the riddle. What for instance is the "ever-living Fire" in which he finds the primary and imperishable substance of the universe and identifies it in succession with Zeus and with eternity? or what should we understand by "the thunderbolt which steers all things"? To interpret this fire as merely a material force of heat and flame or simply a metaphor for being which is eternal becoming is, it seems to me, to miss the character of Heraclitus' utterances. It includes both these ideas and everything that connects them. But then we get back at once to the Vedic language and turn of thought; we are reminded of the Vedic Fire which is hymned as the upbuilder of the worlds, the secret Immortal in men and things, the periphery of the gods, Agni who "becomes" all around the other immortals, himself becomes and contains all the gods; we are reminded of the Vedic thunderbolt, that electric Fire, of the Sun who is the true Light, the Eye, the wonderful weapon of the divine pathfinders Mitra and Varuna. It is the same cryptic form of language, the same brief and abundant method of thought even; though the conceptions are not identical, there is a clear kinship.
  The mystical language has always this disadvantage that it readily becomes obscure, meaningless or even misleading to those who have not the secret and to posterity a riddle. Mr. Ranade tells us that it is impossible to make out what Heraclitus meant when he said, "The gods are mortals, men immortals." But is it quite impossible if we do not cut off this thinker from the earlier thought of the mystics? The Vedic Rishi also invokes the Dawn, "O goddess and human"; the gods in the Veda are constantly addressed as "men", the same words are traditionally applied to indicate men and immortals. The immanence of the immortal principle in man, the descent of the gods into the workings of mortality was almost the fundamental idea of the mystics. Heraclitus, likewise, seems to recognise the inextricable unity of the eternal and the transitory, that which is for ever and yet seems to exist only in this strife and change which is a continual dying. The gods manifest themselves as things that continually change and perish; man is in principle an eternal being. Heraclitus does not really deal in barren antitheses; his method is a statement of antinomies and an adumbrating of their reconciliation in the very terms of opposition. Thus when he says that the name of the bow (biós) is life (bíos), but its work is death, obviously he intends no mere barren play upon words; he speaks of that principle of war, father of all and king of all, which makes cosmic existence an apparent process of life, but an actual process of death. The Upanishads seized hold of the same truth when they declared life to be the dominion of King Death, described it as the opposite of immortality and even related that all life and existence here were first created by Death for his food.
  --
  But there is one great gap and defect whether in his knowledge of things or his knowledge of the self of man. We see in how many directions the deep divining eye of Heraclitus anticipated the largest and profoundest generalisations of Science and Philosophy and how even his more superficial thoughts indicate later powerful tendencies of the occidental mind, how too some of his ideas influenced such profound and fruitful thinkers as Plato, the Stoics, the Neo-platonists. But in his defect also he is a forerunner; it illustrates the great deficiency of later European thought, such of it at least as has not been profoundly influenced by Asiatic religions or Asiatic Mysticism. I have tried to show how often his thought touches and is almost identical with the Vedic and Vedantic. But his knowledge of the truth of things stopped with the vision of the universal reason and the universal force; he seems to have summed up the principle of things in these two first terms, the aspect of consciousness, the aspect of power, a supreme intelligence and a supreme energy. The eye of Indian thought saw a third aspect of the Self and of Brahman; besides the universal consciousness active in divine knowledge, besides the universal force active in divine will, it saw the universal delight active in divine love and joy. European thought, following the line of Heraclitus' thinking, has fixed itself on reason and on force and made them the principles towards whose perfection our being has to aspire. Force is the first aspect of the world, war, the clash of energies; the second aspect, reason, emerges out of the appearance of force in which it is at first hidden and reveals itself as a certain justice, a certain harmony, a certain determining intelligence and reason in things; the third aspect is a deeper secret behind these two, universal delight, love, beauty which taking up the other two can establish something higher than justice, better than harmony, truer than reason,-unity and bliss, the ecstasy of our fulfilled existence. Of this last secret power Western thought has only seen two lower aspects, pleasure and aesthetic beauty; it has missed the spiritual beauty and the spiritual delight. For that reason Europe has never been able to develop a powerful religion of its own; it has been obliged to turn to Asia. Science takes possession of the measures and utilities of Force; rational philosophy pursues reason to its last subtleties; but inspired philosophy and religion can seize hold of the highest secret, uttamaṁ rahasyam.
  Heraclitus might have seen it if he had carried his vision a little farther. Force by itself can only produce a balance of forces, the strife that is justice; in that strife there takes place a constant exchange and, once this need of exchange is seen, there arises the possibility of modifying and replacing war by reason as the determinant principle of the exchange. This is the second effort of man, of which Heraclitus did not clearly see the possibility. From exchange we can rise to the highest possible idea of interchange, a mutual dependency of self-giving as the hidden secret of life; from that can grow the power of Love replacing strife and exceeding the cold balance of reason. There is the gate of the divine ecstasy. Heraclitus could not see it, and yet his one saying about the kingdom of the child touches, almost reaches the heart of the secret. For this kingdom is evidently spiritual, it is the crown, the mastery to which the perfected man arrives; and the perfect man is a divine child! He is the soul which awakens to the divine play, accepts it without fear or reserve, gives itself up in a spiritual purity to the Divine, allows the careful and troubled force of man to be freed from care and grief and become the joyous play of the divine Will, his relative and stumbling reason to be replaced by that divine knowledge which to the Greek, the rational man, is foolishness, and the laborious pleasure-seeking of the bound mentality to lose itself in the spontaneity of the divine Ananda; "for of such is the kingdom of heaven." The Paramhansa, the liberated man, is in his soul bālavat, even as if a child.

4.01 - Conclusion - My intellectual position, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  builds up, secondly, a Mysticism:
  The whole of Evolution being reduced to a process of
  --
  apologetics and Mysticism) suggest and readily lend them-
  selves to forming an outline of a Metaphysics of Union,

4.01 - Sweetness in Prayer, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
  2.: As these mansions are nearer the King's dwelling they are very beautiful, and so subtle are the things seen and heard in them, that, as those tell us who have tried to do so, the mind There are two kinds of contemplation: acquired or natural, and infused or supernatural. In their widest sense, including many remarkable phenomena of Natural religion, and, of course, the most wonderful manifestations recorded in the Old Testament, they form the system called Mysticism and are the proper object of Mystical theology. Natural or acquired contemplation is based upon an idealistic turn of mind which enables the soul to gaze upon the Godhead (simple gaze, as St. Teresa calls it) without approaching Him by the laborious process of reasoning, and in so doing embraces Him with its affective powers; like a person who, devoid of technical skill, takes in and is enamoured by, the beauty of a painting. Infused contemplation is the highest act of the Gifts of the Holy Ghost of Knowledge and Wisdom. It is often impossible, nor is it always essential, to determine where acquired contemplation ends and infused contemplation begins. But it should be borne in mind that both the one and the other are operations and not merely a passive state or mere fruition. Even the highest form of contemplation, the Beatific Vision, is a supernatural act of the soul, an operation of unending duration. A ship moved by a gentle breeze is rightly said to be actually sailing though the rowers are at rest. cannot give a lucid idea of them to those inexperienced in the matter. People who have enjoyed these favours, especially if it was to any great extent, will easily comprehend me.
  3.: Apparently a person must have dwelt for a long time in the former mansions before entering these; although in ordinary cases the soul must have been in the last one spoken of, yet, as you must often have heard, there is no fixed rule, for God gives when, how, and to whom He wills5-the goods are His own, and His choice wrongs no one.6' The poisonous reptiles rarely come into these rooms, and, if they enter, do more good than harm. I think it is far better for them to get in and make war on the soul in this state of prayer; were it not tempted, the devil might sometimes deceive it about divine consolations, thus injuring it far more. Besides, the soul would benefit less, because all occasions of gaining merit would be withdrawn, were it left continually absorbed in God. I am not confident that this absorption is genuine when it always remains in the same state, nor does it appear to me possible for the Holy Ghost to dwell constantly within us, to the same extent, during our earthly exile.

4.01 - The Presence of God in the World, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  of the attar of Oriental Mysticism, the endless
  refining of wisdom by the Greeks: all these were

4.02 - BEYOND THE COLLECTIVE - THE HYPER-PERSONAL, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  false political or religious Mysticisms. By the latter man is destroyed ; by
  the former he is fulfilled by ' becoming lost in the greater than himself'.

4.03 - Prayer to the Ever-greater Christ, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  6. The Mysticism of Science (1939)
  7. The Activation of Energy 1 (L 9 Activation de L'Ener-
  --
  For Part 3 (Morality and Mysticism) :
  H.E., pp. 145-55

4.03 - The Special Phenomenology of the Child Archetype, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  Catholic Mysticism. 32
  293 We can no longer be dealing, then, with the continued ex-
  --
  significance of the rite. While, in Church Mysticism, the pri-
  mordial image of the hieros gamos was sublimated on a lofty

4.03 - THE ULTIMATE EARTH, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  powers, in the conjunction of reason and Mysticism, the human
  spirit is destined, by the very nature of its development, to find

4.07 - THE RELATION OF THE KING-SYMBOL TO CONSCIOUSNESS, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [509] This is of considerable importance as regards a psychological interpretation of the filius regius. In any such view the place of matter, with its magical fascination, is taken by the unconscious, which was projected into it. For our modern consciousness the dogmatic image of Christ changed, under the influence of evangelical Protestantism, into the personal Jesus, who in liberal rationalism, which abhorred all Mysticism, gradually faded into a mere ethical prototype. The disappearance of the feminine element, namely the cult of the Mother of God, in Protestantism was all that was needed for the spirituality of the dogmatic image to detach itself from the earthly man and gradually sink into the unconscious. When such great and significant images fall into oblivion they do not disappear from the human sphere, nor do they lose their psychic power. Anyone in the Middle Ages who was familiar with the Mysticism of alchemy remained in contact with the living dogma, even if he was a Protestant. This is probably the reason why alchemy reached its heyday at the end of the sixteenth and in the seventeenth century: for the Protestant it was the only way of still being Catholic. In the opus alchymicum he still had a completely valid transformation rite and a concrete mystery. But alchemy did not flourish only in Protestant countries; in Catholic France it was still widely practised during the eighteenth century, as numerous manuscripts and published works testify, such as those of Dom Pernety (17161800?), Lenglet du Fresnoy (16741752?), and the great compilation of Manget, published 1702. This is not surprising, as in France at that time the modern anti-Christian schism was brewing which was to culminate in the Revolution that relatively harmless prelude to the horrors of today. The decline of alchemy during the Enlightenment meant for many Europeans a descent of all dogmatic imageswhich till then had been directly present in the ostensible secrets of chemical matterto the underworld.
  [510] Just as the decay of the conscious dominant is followed by an irruption of chaos in the individual,391 so also in the case of the masses (Peasant Wars, Anabaptists, French Revolution, etc.), and the furious conflict of elements in the individual psyche is reflected in the unleashing of primeval blood-thirstiness and lust for murder on a collective scale. This is the sickness so vividly described in the Cantilena. The loss of the eternal images is in truth no light matter for the man of discernment. But since there are infinitely many more men of no discernment, nobody, apparently, notices that the truth expressed by the dogma has vanished in a cloud of fog, and nobody seems to miss anything. The discerning person knows and feels that his psyche is disquieted by the loss of something that was the life-blood of his ancestors. The undiscerning

4.08 - THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM OF THE KINGS RENEWAL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [514] Medical psychology has recognized today that it is a therapeutic necessity, indeed, the first requisite of any thorough psychological method, for consciousness to confront its shadow.396 In the end this must lead to some kind of union, even though the union consists at first in an open conflict, and often remains so for a long time. It is a struggle that cannot be abolished by rational means.397 When it is wilfully repressed it continues in the unconscious and merely expresses itself indirectly and all the more dangerously, so no advantage is gained. The struggle goes on until the opponents run out of breath. What the outcome will be can never be seen in advance. The only certain thing is that both parties will be changed; but what the product of the union will be it is impossible to imagine. The empirical material shows that it usually takes the form of a subjective experience which, according to the unanimous testimony of history, is always of a religious order. If, therefore, the conflict is consciously endured and the analyst follows its course without prejudice, he will unfailingly observe compensations from the unconscious which aim at producing a unity. He will come across numerous symbols similar to those found in alchemyoften, indeed, the very same. He will also discover that not a few of these spontaneous formations have a numinous quality in harmony with the Mysticism of the historical testimonies. It may happen, besides, that a patient, who till then had shut his eyes to religious questions, will develop an unexpected interest in these matters. He may, for instance, find himself getting converted from modern paganism to Christianity or from one creed to another, or even getting involved in fundamental theological questions which are incomprehensible to a layman. It is unnecessary for me to point out here that not every analysis leads to a conscious realization of the conflict, just as not every surgical operation is as drastic as a resection of the stomach. There is a minor surgery, too, and in the same way there is a minor psycho therapy whose operations are harmless and require no such elucidation as I am concerned with here. The patients I have in mind are a small minority with certain spiritual demands to be satisfied, and only these patients undergo a development which presents the doctor with the kind of problem we are about to discuss.
  [515] Experience shows that the union of antagonistic elements is an irrational occurrence which can fairly be described as mystical, provided that one means by this an occurrence that cannot be reduced to anything else or regarded as in some way unau thentic. The decisive criterion here is not rationalistic opinions or regard for accepted theories, but simply and solely the value for the patient of the solution he has found and experienced. In this respect the doctor, whose primary concern is the preservation of life, is in an advantageous position, since he is by training an empiricist and has always had to employ medicines whose healing power he knew even though he did not understand how it worked. Equally, he finds all too often that the scientifically explained and attested healing power of his medicines does not work in practice.
  --
  [531] Koepgen thinks along the same lines, as his dedication and motto show. It is easy to see what happens when the logical conclusion is drawn from the fourteenth chapter of John: the opus Christi is transferred to the individual. He then becomes the bearer of the mystery, and this development was unconsciously prefigured and anticipated in alchemy, which showed clear signs of becoming a religion of the Holy Ghost and of the Sapientia Dei. Koepgens standpoint is that of creative Mysticism, which has always been critical of the Church. Though this is not obviously so in Koepgen, his attitude betrays itself indirectly in the living content of his book, which consistently presses for a deepening and broadening of the dogmatic ideas. Because he remained fully conscious of his conclusions, he does not stray so very far outside the Church, whereas the alchemists, because of their unconsciousness and naive lack of reflection, and unhampered by intellectual responsibility, went very much further in their symbolism. But the point of departure for both is the procreative, revelatory working of the Holy Ghost, who is a wind that bloweth where it listeth, and who advances beyond his own workings to greater works than these. The creative mystic was ever a cross for the Church, but it is to him that we owe what is best in humanity.415

4.1.01 - The Intellect and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Argument number one. Mysticism and mystics have always risen in times of decadence, of the ebb of life and their loud quacking is a symptom of the decadence. This argument is absolutely untrue. In the East the great spiritual movements have arisen in the full flood of a people's life and culture or on a rising tide and they have themselves given a powerful impulse of expansion and richness to its thought and art and life; in
  Greece the mystics and the mysteries were there at the prehistoric beginning and in the middle (Pythagoras was one of the greatest of mystics) and not only in the ebb and decline; the mystic cults flourished in Rome too when its culture was at high tide; many great spiritual personalities of Italy, France, Spain sprang up
  --
  I know it is the Russian explanation of the recent trend to spirituality and Mysticism that it is a phenomenon of capitalist society in its decadence. But to read an economic cause, conscious or unconscious, into all phenomena of man's history is part of the
  The Intellect and Yoga
  --
  They come from all countries and it was only a minority who hailed from England or America. Russia is different - unlike the others it had lingered in mediaeval religionism and not passed through any period of revolt - so when the revolt came it was naturally anti-religious and atheistic. It is only when this phase is exhausted that Russian Mysticism can revive and take not a narrow religious but the spiritual direction. It is true that Mysticism a revers, turned upside down, has made Bolshevism
  330

5.01 - ADAM AS THE ARCANE SUBSTANCE, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [550] Here again Adam is the transformative substance, the old Adam who is to renew himself. The arrows recall the telum passionis of Mercurius and the shafts of Luna, which the alchemists, via the Mysticism of Hugh of St. Victor13 and others, referred to that well-known passage in the Song of Songs: Thou hast wounded my heart, as we have seen earlier.14 The speaker in the manuscript must be feminine, as immediately before there is a reference to the cohabitation of man and woman.
  [551] Both texts point to a hierosgamos which presupposes a kind of consanguineous relationship between sponsus and sponsa. The relationship between Adam and Eve is as close as it is difficult to define. According to an old tradition Adam was androgynous before the creation of Eve.15 Eve therefore was more himself than if she had been his sister. Adams highly unbiblical marriage is emphasized as a hierosgamos by the fact that God himself was present at the ceremony as best man (paranymphus).16 Traces of cabalistic tradition are frequently noticeable in the alchemical treatises from the sixteenth century on. Both our texts are fairly late and so fall well within this tradition.

5.01 - EPILOGUE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  untenable myths, or steeped in a pessimistic and passive Mysticism,
  they can adjust themselves neither to the precise immensities, nor

5.04 - THE POLARITY OF ADAM, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [592] It is evident that the speaker is the feminine personification of the prima materia in the nigredo state. Psychologically this dark figure is the unconscious anima. In this condition she corresponds to the nefesh of the Cabalists.193 She is desire; for as Knorr von Rosenroth trenchantly remarks: The mother is nothing but the inclination of the father for the lower.193a The blackness comes from Eves sin. Sulamith (the Shulamite)194 and Eve (Hawa, earth) are contaminated into a single figure, who contains in herself the first Adam, like the mother her child, and at the same time awaits the second Adam, i.e., Adam before the Fall, the perfect Original Man, as her lover and bridegroom. She hopes to be freed by him from her blackness. Here again we encounter the Mysticism of the Song of Songs as in the Aurora consurgens I. Jewish gnosis (Cabala) combines with Christian Mysticism: sponsus and sponsa are called on the one hand Tifereth and Malchuth and on the other Christ and the Church.195 The Mysticism of the Song of Songs196 appeared in Jewish-Gnostic circles during the third and fourth centuries, as is proved by the fragments of a treatise called Shiur Koma (The Measure of the Body). It concerns a Mysticism only superficially Judaicized by references to the description of the Beloved in the Song of Songs.197 The figure of Tifereth belongs to the Sefiroth system, which is conceived to be a tree. Tifereth occupies the middle position. Adam Kadmon is either the whole tree or is thought of as the mediator between the supreme authority, En Soph, and the Sefiroth.198 The black Shulamite in our text corresponds to Malchuth as a widow, who awaits union with Tifereth and hence the restoration of the original wholeness. Accordingly, Adam Kadmon here takes the place of Tifereth. He is mentioned in Philo and in the midrashic tradition. From the latter source comes the distinction between the heavenly and earthly Adam in I Cor. 15 : 47: The first man was of the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven, heavenly (DV), and verse 45: The first man, Adam, became a living soul; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit (DV). Thus the original hylicpsychic man is contrasted with the later pneumatic man.
  [593] The Tractatus de Revolutionibus Animarum, of Knorr von Rosenroth, Part I, ch. 1, 10, contains a passage which is of importance for the psychological interpretation of Adam:

5.08 - ADAM AS TOTALITY, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
   (= Mercurius) in a French manuscript (18th cent.),286 bearing the name Jezoth le Juste, who is assigned the significant number 4 4 in the form of sixteen points (Pl. 3).287 This refers to the four cherubim in the vision of Ezekiel, each of which had four faces (Ezek. 1: 10, 10: 14). In unorthodox fashion he is dressed like a woman, as is often the case with the hermaphroditic Mercurius in alchemical illustrations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Models for this figure are the visions of St. John the Divine (Rev. 1 and 4) and of Daniel (7 : 9ff.). Jezoth (= Yesod) is the ninth and middle Sefira in the lowest triad of the Cabalistic tree, and was interpreted as the creative and procreative power in the universe. Alchemically he corresponds to the spiritus vegetativus, Mercurius.288 Just as Mercurius has a phallic aspect in alchemy, being related to Hermes Kyllenios,289 so in the Zohar has Yesod; indeed the Zaddik or Just One, as Yesod is also called, is the organ of generation.290 He is the spout of the waters (effusorium aquarum),291 or the tube (fistula) and waterpipe (canalis),292 and the spring of bubbling water (scaturigo).293 Such comparisons mislead the modern mind into one-sided interpretations, for instance that Yesod is simply the penis, or, conversely, that the obviously sexual language has no basis in real sexuality. But in Mysticism one must remember that no symbolic object has only one meaning; it is always several things at once. Sexuality does not exclude spirituality nor spirituality sexuality, for in God all opposites are abolished. One has only to think of the unio mystica of Simeon ben Yochai in Zohar III, which Scholem (see n. 290) barely mentions.
  [635] Yesod has many meanings, which in the manuscript are related to Mercurius. In alchemy Mercurius is the ligament of the soul, uniting spirit and body. His dual nature enables him to play the role of mediator; he is bodily and spiritual and is himself the union of these two principles. Correspondingly, in Yesod is accomplished the mystery of the unitio294 of the upper, Tifereth, and the lower, Malchuth. He is also called the covenant of peace.295 Similar designations are bread, chief of the Faces296 (i.e., of the upper and lower), the apex which touches earth and heaven,297 propinquus (the Near One), since he is nearer to the Glory (Shekinah), i.e., Malchuth, than to Tifereth,298 and the Strong One of Israel.299 Yesod unites the emanation of the right, masculine side (Nezach, life-force) with the left, feminine side (Hod, beauty).300 He is called firm, reliable, constant301 because he leads the emanation of Tifereth down into Malchuth.302

5 - The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  Christian Mysticism and Indian philosophy, where he will find
  the clearest elaboration of the antinomies of the unconscious.

6.0 - Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  numbers is a bit of unconscious number Mysticism that is not
  always easy to unravel. So far as I can see, there are two stages
  --
  had a strong feeling for Christian Mysticism, which played a
  great role in her life. It was important for her to experience the
  --
  Silberer, Herbert. Problems of Mysticism and Its Symbolism. New
  York, 1917.

7 - Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
  XXIII. Mysticism and Occultism 92
  XXIV. Meditation and Some Questions 96

APPENDIX I - Curriculum of A. A., #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
     Liber ABA (Book 4). ::: A general account in elementary terms of magical and mystical powers. In four parts: (1) Mysticism (2) Magical (Elementary Theory) (3) Magick in Theory and Practice (this book) (4) The Law.
      Liber II. ::: The Message of the Master Therion. Explains the essence of the new Law in a very simple manner.
  --
      The Tao Teh King. (S.B.E. Series.) ::: gives the initiated Chinese system of Mysticism.
      Tannhauser, by A. Crowley. ::: An allegorical drama concerning the Progress of the soul; the Tannhauser story slightly remodelled.
      The Upanishads. (S.B.E. Series.) ::: The Classical Basis of Vedantism, the best-known form of Hindu Mysticism.
      The Bhagavad-Gita. ::: A dialogue in which Krishna, the Hindu "Christ", expounds a system of Attainment.
  --
   Raja-Yoga by Swami Vivekananda ::: An excellent elementary study of Hindu Mysticism. His Bhakti-Yoga is also good.
      The Shiva Sanhita. ::: A famous Hindu treatise on certain physical practices.
  --
      The Spiritual Guide of Molinos. ::: A simple manual of Christian Mysticism.
      The Star of the West. (Captain Fuller.) ::: An introduction to the study of the Works of Aleister Crowley.
  --
      Konx om Pax. ::: Four invaluable treatises and a preface on Mysticism and Magick.
      The Pistis Sophia. ::: An admirable introduction to the study of Gnosticism.
  --
      Zanoni, by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. ::: Valuable for its facts and suggestions about Mysticism.
      A Strange Story , by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. ::: Valuable for its facts and suggestions about Magick.
  --
      En Route, by J. K. Huysmans. ::: An account of the follies of Christian Mysticism.
      Sidonia the Sorceress, by Wilhelm Meinhold.
  --
    1. ::: Mysticism - published.
    2. ::: Magick (Elementary Theory) [] - published.

Blazing P3 - Explore the Stages of Postconventional Consciousness, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
  Deikman, A. J. (1982) The observing self: Mysticism and psycho therapy. Boston: Beacon.
  Descartes, R. (1637/1954). The geometry of Rene Descartes. (D. E. Smith, M. L. Latham,
  --
  Underhill, E. (1955). Mysticism. New York: New American Library.
  Vaughan, F. (1985). Discovering transpersonal identity. Journal of Humanistic Psychology
  --
  Vaughan, F. (1989a). Characteristics of Mysticism. ReVision 12(2): 23.
  Vaughan, F. (1989b). True and false mystical experiences: Some distinguishing

BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  as a contrast to the two last named -- suspected at least of Mysticism -- Diderot and most of the writers
  of the Encyclopaedia. Following these come Kant, the founder of modern philosophy; the poet
  --
  assigned to Taurus, even in Christian Mysticism, is too well known to need repetition. The famous
  http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd2-3-09.htm (8 von 20) [06.05.2003 03:38:06]

BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  artificially elaborated, full of allusions and reticences, of pretensions (?) to Mysticism and theosophic
  insight, and the manner of its expression is such as reminds one more frequently of the phraseology in
  --
  forcibly of this Mysticism of the circle, when he beheld a whirl-wind from which came out "one wheel
  upon the earth" whose work "was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel" (ch. i. vv. 4-16). . . .
  --
  from whom they borrowed most of their Kabalistic Mysticism, adapted, most ingeniously, the Cosmic
  and anthropological symbols of the "hea then" nations to their peculiar secret records. If Christian
  --
  the Spirit of allegory and Mysticism in the fragments translated and quoted by him, in the above
  named work, from Pistis Sophia -- other Orientalists have done far worse. Having neither his
  --
  the pious "Buddhists in disguise"; as that of orthodox Buddhism is Northern Mysticism, as represented
  by the disciples of the philosophies of Aryasanga (the Yogacharya School) and Mahayana, who are

BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  Masonry, and heterodox Mysticism generally.
  The days of Constantine were the last turning-point in history, the period of the Supreme struggle that
  --
  * There is no nation in the world in which the feeling of devotion or of religious Mysticism is more
  developed and prominent than in the Hindu people. See what Max Muller says of this idiosyncracy

BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  of all the abandonment of the actual materialistic lines. It necessitates a kind of religious Mysticism
  and even the study of old magic, which our Academicians will never take up. The necessity is easily

ENNEAD 06.05 - The One and Identical Being is Everywhere Present In Its Entirety.345, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  Summarizing, he formed a bridge between the pagan world, with its Greco-Roman civilization, and the modern world, in three departments: Christianity, philosophy, and Mysticism. So long as the traditional Platonico-Stoical feud persisted there was no hope of progress; because it kept apart two elements that were to fuse into the Christian philosophy. Numenius was the last Platonist, as Posidonius was the last Stoic combatant. However, if reports are to be trusted, Ammonius was an eclecticist, who prided himself on combining Plato with Aristotle. If Plotinos was indeed his disciple, it was the theory eclecticism that he took from his reputed teacher. Practically he was to accomplish it by his dependence on the Numenian Amelius, the Stoic Porphyry, and the negative Eustochius. It will be seen therefore that his chief importance was not in spite of his weakness, but most because of it. By repeatedly "boxing the compass" he thoroughly assimilated the best of the conflicting schools, and became of interest to a sufficiency of different groups (Christian, philosophical and mystical) to insure preservation, study and quotation. His habit of omitting credit to any but ancient thinkers left his own work, to the uninformedwho constituted all but a minimal numberas a body of original thought. Thus he remains to us the last light of Greece, speaking a language with which we are familiar, and leaving us quotations that are imperishable.
  1329

Liber 111 - The Book of Wisdom - LIBER ALEPH VEL CXI, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
   Magick (the one) and Mysticism (the other) unto the End. From each of
   these Eight Works is derived a separate Mode of practical Use, each

Liber 46 - The Key of the Mysteries, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
   Moreover, the faith of the hierarchical church transforms Mysticism
   into realism by the efficacy of her sacraments. No more signs, no more
  --
   you are led on the one hand toward the most exalted Mysticism, and on
   the other to the most concentrated obstinacy combined with the greatest

Liber 71 - The Voice of the Silence - The Two Paths - The Seven Portals, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
   familiar with at least the elements of Mysticism. True, you are
   supposed to be ignorant of the dangers of the lower iddhi; but there

Liber, #Liber Null, #Peter J Carroll, #Occultism
    1. ::: Mysticism - published.
    2. ::: Magick (Elementary Theory) [] - published.

r1914 04 08, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   astral .. astral(referring to a tendency to consider favourably the bases of European & Theosophical Mysticism)
   5) Exulting (effective aishwarya)

WORDNET



--- Overview of noun mysticism

The noun mysticism has 2 senses (no senses from tagged texts)
                  
1. mysticism, religious mysticism ::: (a religion based on mystical communion with an ultimate reality)
2. mysticism ::: (obscure or irrational thought)


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun mysticism

2 senses of mysticism                        

Sense 1
mysticism, religious mysticism
   => religion, faith, religious belief
     => belief
       => content, cognitive content, mental object
         => cognition, knowledge, noesis
           => psychological feature
             => abstraction, abstract entity
               => entity
     => theological virtue, supernatural virtue
       => cardinal virtue
         => virtue
           => good, goodness
             => morality
               => quality
                 => attribute
                   => abstraction, abstract entity
                     => entity

Sense 2
mysticism
   => thinking, thought, thought process, cerebration, intellection, mentation
     => higher cognitive process
       => process, cognitive process, mental process, operation, cognitive operation
         => cognition, knowledge, noesis
           => psychological feature
             => abstraction, abstract entity
               => entity


--- Hyponyms of noun mysticism

1 of 2 senses of mysticism                      

Sense 1
mysticism, religious mysticism
   => quietism
   => Sufism


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun mysticism

2 senses of mysticism                        

Sense 1
mysticism, religious mysticism
   => religion, faith, religious belief

Sense 2
mysticism
   => thinking, thought, thought process, cerebration, intellection, mentation




--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun mysticism

2 senses of mysticism                        

Sense 1
mysticism, religious mysticism
  -> religion, faith, religious belief
   => apophatism
   => cataphatism
   => doctrine of analogy, analogy
   => cult, cultus, religious cult
   => cult
   => ecclesiasticism
   => mysticism, religious mysticism
   => nature worship
   => revealed religion
   => theism
   => paganism, pagan religion, heathenism
   => Christianity, Christian religion
   => Hinduism, Hindooism
   => Brahmanism, Brahminism
   => Jainism
   => Sikhism
   => Buddhism
   => Taoism, Hsuan Chiao
   => Shinto, Shintoism
   => Manichaeism, Manichaeanism
   => Mithraism, Mithraicism
   => Zoroastrianism, Mazdaism
   => Bahaism
   => shamanism, Asian shamanism
   => shamanism
   => Wicca

Sense 2
mysticism
  -> thinking, thought, thought process, cerebration, intellection, mentation
   => free association
   => construction, mental synthesis
   => reasoning, logical thinking, abstract thought
   => line of thought
   => train of thought, thread
   => mysticism
   => ideation
   => consideration
   => excogitation
   => explanation
   => planning, preparation, provision
   => problem solving
   => convergent thinking
   => divergent thinking, out-of-the-box thinking




--- Grep of noun mysticism
mysticism
religious mysticism



IN WEBGEN [10000/277]

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http://malankazlev.com/kheper/praxis/mysticism/index.html -- 0
http://malankazlev.com/kheper/praxis/mysticism/monistic_mysticism.htm -- 0
http://malankazlev.com/kheper/praxis/mysticism/mysticism.htm -- 0
Kheper - ChristianMysticism -- 26
Kheper - ChristianMysticism -- 26
Kheper - Hesych-centres -- 20
http://malankazlev.com/kheper/topics/christianmysticism/index.html -- 0
Kheper - JacobBoehme -- 39
Kheper - mystic_Christianity -- 34
Kheper - PseudoDionysius -- 36
Kheper - St_Francis -- 25
Kheper - St_Teresa -- 20
Kheper - themes -- 21
Kheper - JewishMysticism -- 26
Kheper - Buddhism-unitive_state -- 20
http://malankazlev.com/kheper/topics/mysticism/esoteric.html -- 0
Kheper - formless_in_comparative_religion -- 68
Kheper - mysticism index -- 18
Kheper - Manzur -- 17
Kheper - monistic_mysticism -- 41
Kheper - Monotheistic-unitive_state -- 29
Kheper - mysticism -- 64
http://malankazlev.com/kheper/topics/mysticism/SelfandGodtheSame.htm -- 0
Kheper - Taoism-unitive_state -- 19
Kheper - The_Savior_and_the_Godhead -- 46
Kheper - transcendent_in_comparative_religion -- 73
Kheper - Truth -- 34
Kheper - unitive_state -- 31
Kheper - Upanishads-unitive_state -- 21
Kheper - what_is_mysticism -- 40
auromere - difference-between-genius-and-mysticism
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Integral World - The Politics of Mysticism, David Lane
Integral World - Mysticism's Version of Intelligent Design?, David Lane
Integral World - The Pragmatics of Mysticism, Jeff Meyerhoff
Integral World - Bald Ambition, Chapter 4: Mysticism, Jeff Meyerhoff
Integral World - True Mysticism and the Real Postrational Worldview, Barclay Powers
American Mysticism: The Hidden History of Positive Thinking
The Goddess Returns: Deity Mysticism for the 21st Century
Nature Mysticism: The Re-Enchantment of the World
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selforum - cosmology mysticism evolution of
selforum - mctaggart atheistic mysticism nussbaum
selforum - one associates mysticism rather than
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2012/09/mysticism_28.html
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2012/09/mysticism.html
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2012/09/quantum-mysticism.html
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https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-writing-on-science-and-mysticism-by.html
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2014/10/merkabah-mysticism.html
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2014/10/phenomenology-and-mysticism-verticality.html
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2015/05/exploring-jewish-mysticism-through-art.html
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2015/06/categorylanguage-and-mysticism.html
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2015/07/mysticism-and-study-of-esotericism.html
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2015/12/on-mysticism.html
dedroidify.blogspot - synchromysticism-cosmic-keys-archaic
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dedroidify.blogspot - naruto-synchromysticism
dedroidify.blogspot - 2008-in-review-part-1-synchromysticism_07
dedroidify.blogspot - alan-watts-mysticism-and-morals
https://esotericotherworlds.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-scientific-basis-of-mysticism.html
https://esotericotherworlds.blogspot.com/2014/05/observing-self-mysticism-and.html
https://esotericotherworlds.blogspot.com/2020/03/high-causal-mysticismsome-interesting.html
Dharmapedia - Mysticism
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https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mathematics_and_mysticism
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The Golden Child(1986) - Eddie Murphy plays a social worker with a specialty of finding lost children. He is told he is the 'Chosen one' who will find and protect the Golden Child, a Buddhist mystic who was kidnapped by an evil sorcerer. Murphy disbelieves the mysticism but finds more and more evidence of demon worship as h...
The Vault Of Horror(1973) - Five men trapped in the basement vault of an office building share visions with each other of their demise. Stories revolve around vampires, bodily dismemberment, east Indian mysticism, an insurance scam, and an artist who kills by painting his victims' deaths.
Juliet of the Spirits (1965) ::: 7.6/10 -- Giulietta degli spiriti (original title) -- Juliet of the Spirits Poster -- Visions, memories, and mysticism all help a 40-something woman to find the strength to leave her cheating husband. Director: Federico Fellini Writers:
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https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Mysticism:_The_Unfathomable_Voyage
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Pool_of_Mysticism
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Mysticism
https://peace.fandom.com/wiki/Apophatic_Mysticism
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Abyss_Mysticism
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mysticism
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Christian mysticism
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