"The word mystic," to quote Walter Pater, "has been derived from a Greek word which signifies to shut, as if one shut one's lips, brooding on what cannot be uttered; but the Platonists themselves derive it rather from the act of shutting the eyes, that one may see the more, inwardly." Of such is the counsel of St. Luis de Granada, "Imitate the sportsman who hoods the falcon that it be made subservient to his rule;" and of another Spanish mystic, Pedro de Alcantara: "In meditation, let the person rouse himself from things temporal, and let him collect himself within himself ....Here let him hearken to the voice of God...as though there were no other in the world save God and himself." St. Teresa found happiness only in "shutting herself up within herself." Vocal prayer could not satisfy her, and she adopted mental prayer. The four stages of her experience--which she named "recollectedness," "quietude" (listening rather than speaking), "union" (blissful sleep with the faculties of the mind still), "ecstasy or rapture"--are but progressive steps in the sealing of the senses. The yoga of the Brahmins, which is the same as the "union" of the Cabalists, is made to depend upon the same conditions,--passivity, perseverance, solitude. The novice must arrest his breathing, and may meditate on mystic symbols alone, by way of reaching the formless, ineffable Buddha. But it is useless to heap up evidence; the inference is sufficiently clear. The body is first brought into a state either of nervous instability or irritability by ascetic practices, or of nervous insensibility by the persistent withdrawal of all outer disturbance; and the mind is fixed upon a single object,--the one God, the God eternal, absolute, indivisible. Recalling our former scheme for the conditions of the sense of personality, we shall see that we have here the two poles of consciousness. Then, as the tension is sharpened, what happens? Under the artificial conditions of weakened nerves, of blank surroundings, the self-background drops. The feeling of transition disappears with the absence of related terms; and the remaining, the positive pole of consciousness, is an undifferentiated Unity, with which the person must feel himself one. The feeling of personality is gone with that on which it rests, and its loss is joined with an overwhelming sense of union with the One, the Absolute, God!