The essentials of mysticism, and other essays

The essays collected in this volume have been written during the past eight years. They deal with various aspects of the subject of mysticism: the first half-dozen with its gene...

First we notice how gentle, gradual and natural is the process of sublimation that Dionysius demands of us. According to him, the mystic life is a life centred on reality: the l...

It is an interesting question whether this consummation of the mystic way need involve that suppression of the surface-consciousness which is called ecstasy. The majority of mys...

The instinct of many mystics for a certain measure of solitude is no contradiction of this. The hermits and the anchorites, even such rare and extreme types as St. Anthony of Eg...

After all, both these views of the Christian scheme have emerged and diverged from the same source. St. Paul, the greatest of all Christian mystics—soaked, too, in the idea of g...

The objective of the Christian life, we say, is union with God: that paradoxical victory-in-surrender of love which translates us from finite to infinite levels. Most of us in t...

Whereas the original prophetic significance of these phrases is now meaningless for us, their suggestive quality—their appeal to the mystic consciousness—retains its full force....

“Unless thou lead me, Lord, I cannot dance; Would’st thou have me leap and spring, Thou thyself, dear Lord, must sing, So shall I spring into thy love, From thy love to understa...

It seems hard to conceive anything beyond this. But there is something. To behold things as they are is not the end: beyond this is that Wisdom which comes not with observation,...

Where the office of thought ends, there the office of will and feeling begins: “Where intellect must stay without,” says Ruysbroeck, “these may enter in.” Desire and intention a...

Since the doctrine of Ammonius is unknown to us, we have no means of gauging the extent to which Plotinus depends on him: but probably we shall not be far wrong if we attribute...

Yet in spite of the majesty and purity of his vision, the devil’s advocate is not without material for an attack upon Plotinus. The charge brought by St. Augustine against “the...

The character of the translator, as disclosed for us in his prologue, is itself interesting. Clearly he was a contemplative; and the “high ghostly feelings” of which he treats a...

The author’s own instructions are really reducible to one point: the complete and loving surrender of the individual will to the Primal Will—detachment, or, as he calls it, the...

So much for the scanty outer history. Of greater interest is our knowledge of her inner life; the real life of mystics and contemplatives. The history of this inner life assures...

We see this emotional character clearly in one of Angela’s most celebrated experiences; the one of all others which seems to have set the seal on her career as a religious teach...

The bodily vision, as she expressly affirms, she did not ask for; and here she agrees with all true mystics, who invariably distrust these quasi-physical experiences. Yet it was...

Those who regard this saintly type as a hot-house plant, raised under conditions which appear to defend it from the temptations and distractions of ordinary existence, can have...

Thérèse Martin had lived for nine years within the walls of a small, strictly enclosed convent in a provincial town. This building and its dreary little chapel formed the settin...

Such an attitude to Eternity was a marked characteristic of Lucie-Christine’s mysticism. Often, it produced in her the complete mono-ideism of ecstasy; and she describes the onc...

“Car le surnaturel est lui-même charnel Et l’arbre de la grâce est raciné profond Et plonge dans le sol et cherche jusqu’au fond, Et l’arbre de la race est lui-même éternel.