14. _Pfleiderer_. "Mysticism is the immediate feeling of the unity of
the self with God; it is nothing, therefore, but the fundamental
feeling of religion, the religious life at its very heart and centre.
But what makes the mystical a special tendency inside religion, is the
endeavour to fix the immediateness of the life in God as such, as
abstracted from all intervening helps and channels whatever, and find
a permanent abode in the abstract inwardness of the life of pious
feeling. In this God-intoxication, in which self and the world are
alike forgotten, the subject knows himself to be in possession of the
highest and fullest truth; but this truth is only possessed in the
quite undeveloped, simple, and bare form of monotonous feeling; what
truth the subject possesses is not filled up by any determination in
which the simple unity might unfold itself, and it lacks therefore the
clearness of knowledge, which is only attained when thought harmonises
differences with unity."
15. _Professor A. Seth_. "Mysticism is a phase of thought, or rather,
perhaps, of feeling, which from its very nature is hardly susceptible
of exact definition. It appears in connexion with the endeavour of the
human mind to grasp the Divine essence or the ultimate reality of
things, and to enjoy the blessedness of actual communion with the
highest. The first is the philosophic side of Mysticism; the second,
its religious side. The thought that is most intensely present with
the mystic is that of a supreme, all-pervading, and indwelling Power,
in whom all things are one. Hence the speculative utterances of
Mysticism are always more or less pantheistic in character. On the
practical side, Mysticism maintains the possibility of direct
intercourse with this Being of beings. God ceases to be an object, and
becomes an experience."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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