The interior life from the standpoint of the mystics. An address delivered before the London spiritualist alliance ... December 16th, 1890

order. A life led close to the heart of Nature can be made holy by such a perspective. There is no doubt about the comforts of such an existence, for then the individual is in harmony with his surroundings. This initial achievement will be possible for many who may be blocked from higher accomplishments. On the other hand, even the most perfect environment Nature can offer is stripped of the softening, refining, and glorifying influences usually attributed to it if the individual's heart and intelligence lack the tools to connect with that environment. No one was more intimately and passionately aware of this truth than Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), an English poet and philosopher. Coleridge. Indeed, he expressed it in one of the most profound passages of spiritual insight found in all of English poetry. From Nature, he tells us, we can only receive what we give:—

“And in our life alone does Nature live.”

Unless we possess those indefinable qualities of appreciation, perception, and discernment that make up the poetic temperament, there is no message from the heart of the external world to the heart of man. Without that electric and magnetic contact between the center outside us and the center within us, local proximity to nature is worthless. Therefore, a life of contemplation within the natural order brings its own reward.

In the supernatural order, as understood by orthodox religions, there is a vast literature concerning the cultivation of the interior state and the spiritual pleasures that can be harvested from it. In the supernatural order, as we have seen, the goal is God. At least, that is the supreme, ultimate, and perfect end. For the Quietists A 17th-century movement within Christianity that emphasized intellectual stillness and the interior passivity of the soul before God., the life of contemplation consists entirely of the soul surrendering without reserve to God, so that it may be filled with His own peace. We are told that this state calms all

passions, restrains the imagination, steadies the mind, and controls all wavering. It lasts through both "times of tribulation and times of wealth," in temptation and trial, just as much as when the world shines brightly on us. Martyrs, confessors, and saints have tasted this rest and "considered themselves happy because they endured." A countless host of God’s faithful servants have drunk deeply of it amid the daily burden of a weary life—whether that life was dull, commonplace, painful, or desolate. To every one of their disciples, the Quietists promise that everything God has been to the highest-ranking saints, He is ready to be to them, if only they will seek no rest except in Him.

However, the hidden life of Christian theology is only the threshold of the true interior existence that is the subject of Mysticism. The devotional literature we have mentioned so far can, at most, promise man that joy and peace in well-being which results from being in harmony with a certain supernatural standard called "the will of God." We must look to the Mystics for more. They possess a science that claims to grasp the Divine essence—the ultimate reality of all things. They claim to enjoy, while still in this life and this body, the bliss of an immediate communion with the Highest—a "clear clarity of thought in universal consciousness." This is an ecstatic immersion of the human spiritual substance into the pure substance of Deity. In this state, all peace, all truth, and all light are seen, known, and enjoyed to an infinite degree because of a shared experience with an infinite form of existence.

The secret processes that make up the science of the Mystics develop the interior life through a series of successive stages: from the New Birth or Regeneration to the manifestation of the Divine Virgin, Psyche The Greek word for "soul."; the vision of Diana Unveiled; and the manifestation of what is called the "dual flower," which is the intertwined blossoming of Pneuma The Greek word for "spirit." and Psyche. This leads to the interior translation, which is the