Mysticism Defined by William James 1902 in "The varieties of religious experience"

America's great psychologist, William James provided a description of the mystical experience in his famous collection of lectures published in 1902 as The Varieties of Religious Experience. In Lectures 16 and 17 he stated: "...propose to you four marks which, when an experience has them, may justify us in calling it mystical...: 1. Ineffability - The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words.

2. Noetic Quality - Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discurssive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for aftertime. 3. Transiency - Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. 4. Passivity - Although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power.

 D. H. Lawrence

I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. There is not any part of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surfaces of the water.

Mooji

 

“The emptiness I speak about is not the emptiness the mind imagines. It is not blank. Your body can continue expressing in a natural way. Intelligence is there. Emotions can come. Everything can play, but inside there is total serenity and peace. No planning, no strategising, no personal identity is there. Just the space of pure being. It is what we are, but we dream and believe we are not.”

Werner Von Braun

 

“Everything science has taught me strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. I believe in an immortal soul. Science has proved that nothing disintegrates into nothingness. Life and soul, therefore, cannot disintegrate into nothingness, and so are immortal.”

Mikhail Naimy, The Book of Mirdad

 

Love is the law of God. You live that you may learn to love. You love that you may learn to live. No other lesson is required of humanity. And what is it to love but for the lover to absorb forever the Beloved so that the twain be one?

Nancy Neithercut

There may arise a profound shift in perspective where it is realized beyond a doubt always that there are there are no separate things Nor separate moments Nor any separate person apart from this seamless stream All there is is in uninterrupted indivisible symphony of perception and the simultaneous inseparable recognition of it

LAO TZU

 

Mechtild of Magdeburg (1210-1282)

 Effortlessly,

Love flows from God to man, Like a bird Who rivers the air Without moving her wings. Thus we move in His world One in body and soul, Though outwardly separate in form. As the Source strikes the note, Humanity sings - The Holy Spirit is our harpist, And all the strings Which are touched in Love Must sound

Ramana Maharshi

“That inner Self, as the primeval Spirit, Eternal, ever effulgent, full and infinite Bliss, Single, indivisible, whole and living, Shines in everyone as the witnessing awareness. That self in its splendour, shining in the cavity of the heart This self is neither born nor dies, Neither grows nor decays, Nor does it suffer any change. When a pot is broken, the space within it is not, And similarly, when the body dies the Self in it remains eternal.”

Kabir

Go deeper Past thoughts into silence. Past silence into stillness. Past stillness into the heart. Let love consume all that is left of you.