The inner vision: some notes on mysticism

...another; mystical things never grow old or die; this is their privilege and their essence. "There is no truth," writes Maeterlinck, "which did not, one morning, come down upon this world, lovely in strength and youth, and covered with the fresh and wondrous dew which lies on things yet unspoken; today you may pass through all the hospitals of the human soul, where all thoughts come day by day to die, and you will not find there a single mystic thought. Like Swedenborg's angels, they progress continually toward the spring of their youth, so that the oldest angels appear the youngest; and whether they come from India, or Greece, or the North, they have neither country nor date, and wherever we see them, they are as calm and real as God himself."

What is the value of mysticism? It is that it gives serenity to the spirit and makes us familiar with mystery. If uncertainty remains, we are less helpless in the face of the future; we are less terrified of what may be, because we are in touch with the soul of things. We learn to love life because we can use it to better advantage, and we have ceased to fear death since we know that only the husk dies—the kernel will never cease to live.

Those who practice contemplation tell us of the remarkable sense of the will being suspended, which is characteristic of this altered state of consciousness. This, I venture to assert, is by no means identical with psychic mediumship or with the phenomena of secondary or alternate personality, and fortunately, it is not necessary in this assembly to set about proving that assertion. More important is the profound influence that mystical states exercise on those who are seriously concerned with them. The fact that it is impossible to transfer this knowledge merely shows that these are states of feeling rather than of intellect; however, they are also states of feeling from which we emerge strengthened and motivated toward further effort. Happy are those who have moved beyond the time limit that is so disconcerting to beginners, and who can maintain that continuous association with the inner self—where the One remains while the many changes pass—and who are always learning the meaning of spiritual things. The spiritual life is its own justification. When a man comes out of Samadhi A state of intense concentration achieved through meditation, say the Hindus, he remains enlightened: a sage, a prophet, a saint—his whole character and life changed and illumined. The four stages of Dhyana Meditation or profound contemplation for the Buddhists are: first, the exclusion of desire through concentration of the mind; second, the exclusion of the intellectual faculties, leaving only the satisfied sense of unity; third, the sense of unity associated with indifference to results, true memory, and consciousness of the self; and fourth, the perfection of the third. Beyond these are the stages where the mediator says there exists nothing, and stops; the further...