100 Quotes About Mysticism

There are many things that are not seen but they are real. The unknown is what makes life interesting. Mystics are people who believe that there is more to the world than meets the eye. They explore different philosophies and religions in order to expand their knowledge Read more

These mysticism quotes are here to help you explore your own spirituality and discover new things about yourself and the world around you.

The eye through which I see God is the same...
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The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love. Meister Eckhart
Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can...
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Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived Baruch Spinoza
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I now turn to a *subjective* consideration that belongs here; yet I can give even less distinctness to it than to the objective consideration just discussed, for I shall be able to express it only by image and simile. Why is our consciousness brighter and more distinct the farther it reaches outwards, so that its greatest clearness lies in sense perception, which already half belongs to things outside us; and, on the other hand, becomes more obscure as we go inwards, and leads, when followed to its innermost recesses, into a darkness in which all knowledge ceases? Because, I say, consciousness presupposes *individuality*; but this belongs to the mere phenomenon, since, as the plurality of the homogeneous, it is conditioned by the forms of the phenomenon, time and space. On the other hand, our inner nature has its root in what is no longer phenomenon but thing-in-itself, to which therefore the forms of the phenomenon do not reach; and in this way, the chief conditions of individuality are wanting, and distinct consciousness ceases therewith. In this root-point of existence the difference of beings ceases, just as that of the radii of a sphere ceases at the centre. As in the sphere the surface is produced by the radii ending and breaking off, so consciousness is possible only where the true inner being runs out into the phenomenon. Through the forms of the phenomenon separate individuality becomes possible, and on this individuality rests consciousness, which is on this account confined to phenomena. Therefore everything distinct and really intelligible in our consciousness always lies only outwards on this surface on the sphere. But as soon as we withdraw entirely from this, consciousness forsakes us―in sleep, in death, and to a certain extent also in magnetic or magic activity; for all these lead through the centre. But just because distinct consciousness, as being conditioned by the surface of the sphere, is not directed towards the centre, it recognizes other individuals certainly as of the same kind, but not as identical, which, however, they are in themselves. Immortality of the individual could be compared to the flying off at a tangent of a point on the surface; but immortality, by virtue of the eternity of the true inner being of the whole phenomenon, is comparable to the return of that point on the radius to the centre, whose mere extension is the surface. The will as thing-in-itself is entire and undivided in every being, just as the centre is an integral part of every radius; whereas the peripheral end of this radius is in the most rapid revolution with the surface that represents time and its content, the other end at the centre where eternity lies, remains in profoundest peace, because the centre is the point whose rising half is no different from the sinking half. Therefore, it is said also in the *Bhagavad-Gita*: *Haud distributum animantibus, et quasi distributum tamen insidens, animantiumque sustentaculum id cognoscendum, edax et rursus genitale* (xiii, 16, trans. Schlegel) [Undivided it dwells in beings, and yet as it were divided; it is to be known as the sustainer, annihilator, and producer of beings]. Here, of course, we fall into mystical and metaphorical language, but it is the only language in which anything can be said about this wholly transcendent theme."―from_ The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Payne. In Two Volumes, Volume II, pp. 325-326 . Arthur Schopenhauer
Don't call anyone a devil, because within you, you can...
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Don't call anyone a devil, because within you, you can experience hell and the devil, and the devil is nothing, but you! Michael Bassey Johnson
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These are the three stages of enlightenment, the three glimpses of satori. 1. The first stage enlightenment: A Glimpse of the WholeThe first stage of enlightenment is short glimpse from faraway of the whole. It is a short glimpse of being. The first stage of enlightenment is when, for the first time, for a single moment the mind is not functioning. The ordinary ego is still present at the first stage of enlightenment, but you experience for a short while that there is something beyond the ego. There is a gap, a silence and emptiness, where there is not thought between you and existence. You and existence meet and merge for a moment. And for the first time the seed, the thirst and longing, for enlightenment, the meeting between you and existence, will grow in your heart. 2. The second stage of enlightenment: Silence, Relaxation, Togetherness, Inner BeingThe second stage of enlightenment is a new order, a harmony, from within, which comes from the inner being. It is the quality of freedom. The inner chaos has disappeared and a new silence, relaxation and togetherness has arisen. Your own wisdom from within has arisen. A subtle ego is still present in the second stage of enlightenment. The Hindus has three names for the ego:1. Ahamkar, which is the ordinary ego.2. Asmita, which is the quality of Am-ness, of no ego. It is a very silent ego, not aggreessive, but it is still a subtle ego.3. Atma, the third word is Atma, when the Am-ness is also lost. This is what Buddha callas no-self, pure being. In the second stage of enlightenment you become capable of being in the inner being, in the gap, in the meditative quality within, in the silence and emptiness. For hours, for days, you can remain in the gap, in utter aloneness, in God. Still you need effort to remain in the gap, and if you drop the effort, the gap will disappear. Love, meditation and prayer becomes the way to increase the effort in the search for God. Then the second stage becomes a more conscious effort. Now you know the way, you now the direction. 3. The third stage of enlightenment: Ocean, Wholeness, No-self, Pure being At the third stage of enlightenment, at the third step of Satori, our individual river flowing silently, suddenly reaches to the Ocean and becomes one with the Ocean.At the third Satori, the ego is lost, and there is Atma, pure being. You are, but without any boundaries. The river has become the Ocean, the Whole.It has become a vast emptiness, just like the pure sky. The third stage of enlightenment happens when you have become capable of finding the inner being, the meditative quality within, the gap, the inner silence and emptiness, so that it becomes a natural quality. You can find the gap whenever you want. This is what tantra callas Mahamudra, the great orgasm, what Buddha calls Nirvana, what Lao Tzu calls Tao and what Jesus calls the kingdom of God.You have found the door to God. You have come home. Swami Dhyan Giten
Every word, every image used for God is a distortion...
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Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description. Anthony De Mello
Worshiping the Devil is no more insane than worshiping God...It...
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Worshiping the Devil is no more insane than worshiping God...It is precisely at the moment when positivism is at its high-water mark that mysticism stirs into life and the follies of occultism begin. JorisKarl Huysmans
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Things don’t have significance: they only have existence. Things are the only hidden meaning of things. Alberto Caeiro
God is as real as a station wagon.
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God is as real as a station wagon. Peggy Payne
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Mystical experiences do not necessarily supply new ideas to the mind, rather, they transform what one believes into what one knows, converting abstract concepts, such as divine love, into vivid, personal, realities. R.M. Jones
Keep in mind my friend, if an answer is not...
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Keep in mind my friend, if an answer is not rational, then it is not an answer, but a delusion. Abhijit Naskar
People are a soul-ego-spacesuit.
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People are a soul-ego-spacesuit. Stefan Emunds
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If I say your voice is an amber waterfall in which I yearn to burn each day, if you eat my mouth like a mystical rose with powers of healing and damnation, If I confess that your body is the only civilization I long to experience… would it mean that we are close to knowing something about love? Aberjhani
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It was almost a mystical experience. I do not know how else to put it. My mind outran time as he neared, and it was as though I had an eternity to ponder the approach of this man who was my brother. His garments were filthy, his face blackened, the stump of his right arm raised, gesturing anywhere. The great beast that he rode was striped, black and red, with a wild red mane and tail. But it really was a horse, and its eyes rolled and there was foam at its mouth and its breathing was painful to hear. I saw then that he wore his blade slung across his back, for its haft protruded high above his right shoulder. Still slowing, eyes fixed upon me, he departed the road, bearing slightly toward my left, jerked the reins once and released them, keeping control of the horse with his knees. His left hand went up in a salute-like movement that passed above his head and seized the hilt of his weapon. It came free without a sound, describing a beautiful arc above him and coming to rest in a lethal position out from his left shoulder and slanting back, like a single wing of dull steel with a minuscule line of edge that gleamed like a filament of mirror. The picture he presented was burned into my mind with a kind of magnificence, a certain splendor that was strangely moving. The blade was a long, scythe like affair that I had seen him use before. Only then we had stood as allies against a mutual foe I had begun to believe unbeatable. Benedict had proved otherwise that night. Now that I saw it raised against me I was overwhelmed with a sense of my own mortality, which I had never experienced before in this fashion. It was as though a layer had been stripped from the world and I had a sudden, full understanding of death itself. . Roger Zelazny
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..You see I believe in that stuff to: yoga and mystical powers. I once knew a man who could kill himself on command. Can you believe that? . Why do you laugh? . Believe it! By will of his own mind, he could make his heart stop beating for good' My neighbor poised and looked seriously at me, searching in my eyes. '..You laugh! ' he repeated once more… 'You laugh, but he was a master at it! He could commit suicide at his own will! ' Indeed, hearty laughter streamed through my nose. 'Could he do it perpetually?' I asked. 'Perpetually..?' My neighbor rubbed his waxy chin. 'I mean, is he still able to do it?' 'I’m not sure I understand.' 'Well? Then is he dead…?! ' My neighbor's puzzled face slowly began to transform into a look of realization. 'But sir, ' he said, 'Of course he’s dead! I mean to say.. this man could kill himself on command, you see. And you don’t come back from the dead! ' The two of us found ourselves crossing to the door so I could let my visitor out. I slapped him with friendliness on the shoulder. 'No, you don’t come back from the dead, ' I agreed. . Roman Payne
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Unless you are here: this garden refuses to exist. Pink dragonflies fall from the airand become scorpions scratching blood out of rocks. The rainbows that dangle upon this mist: shatter. Like the smile of a child separatedfrom his mother’s milk for the very first time.--from poem Blood and Blossoms Aberjhani
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A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter. Alan W. Watts
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Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable. G.k. Chesterton
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Faith is the door to the full inner life of the Church, a life which includes not only access to an authoritative teaching but above all to a deep personal experience which is at once unique and yet shared by the whole Body of Christ, in the Spirit of Christ. Thomas Merton
Close your eyes. Meditate on your love. This is God.
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Close your eyes. Meditate on your love. This is God. Kamand Kojouri
Writing poems is simply an excuse to remember You.
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Writing poems is simply an excuse to remember You. Kamand Kojouri
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It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale. So many things have been shown so to me on these banks, so much light has illumined me by reflection here where the water comes down, that I can hardly believe that this grace never flags, that the pouring from ever-renewable sources is endless, impartial, and free. Annie Dillard
The light of our souls is never extinguished, it can...
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The light of our souls is never extinguished, it can never be, as the eternal one abides within each and every heart forever Mimi Novic
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He loved the darkness and the mystery of the Catholic service--the tall priest strutting like a carrion crow and pronouncing magic in a dead language, the immediate magic of the Eucharist bringing the dead back to life so that the faithful could devour Him and become of Him, the smell of incense and the mystical chanting. Dan Simmons
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Religion is nothing but institutionalized mysticism. The catch is, mysticism does not lend itself to institutionalization. The moment we attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence. Religion, then, is mysticism in which the mystical has been killed. Or, at least diminished. Tom Robbins
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The fundamentalists of every faith remain blind to the truth that the “sigh within the prayer is the same in the heart of the Christian, the Muslim, and the Jew.” I have seen this unity with my eyes, heard it with my ears, felt it with all my being. David James Duncan
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The mystic must be steadily told, – All that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as with it. Let us have a little algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric, –universal signs, instead of these village symbols, –and we shall both be gainers. The history of hierarchies seems to show that all religious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid, and was at last nothing but an excess of the organ of language. Ralph Waldo Emerson
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When you don’t have explanation for a certain phenomenon, as a real human, you should suspend judgement, instead of concocting supernatural explanations out of ignorance and primordial fanaticism. Abhijit Naskar
It is better to be foolish than a dilettante.
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It is better to be foolish than a dilettante. Abhijit Naskar
What one person calls miracle, I call nature.
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What one person calls miracle, I call nature. Abhijit Naskar
No knowledge comes from the outside world or an imaginary...
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No knowledge comes from the outside world or an imaginary supernatural paradise. Abhijit Naskar
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Imagine the ancient society of India, and in fact all over the world, a few thousands years ago. In those days, rational thinking was quite scarce. Ignorance was the default mode of thinking. Only a handful of individuals were capable of higher intellectual thinking. Abhijit Naskar
Come out, O lions, and shake off the ancient mysticism...
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Come out, O lions, and shake off the ancient mysticism and prejudices. Abhijit Naskar
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Relationships are used by the darkness to keep people revolving around the ego’s demands. For a moment, people see the light of the divine in each other. They run to it and then quickly forget the light they once saw as their fears reclaim their consciousness. Thus begins the ongoing battle to protect one’s own ‘rights’, in case they be forgotten or betrayed. The tally of what is owed is counted, the guilt of perceived wrong doings is cast upon the other, one’s freedom must be paid as the price for ‘love’, and it is only in short periods of peace when all of this is forgotten. Those moments are the precious windows of the Soul. Donna Goddard
Life is too short Be with someone who takes your...
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Life is too short Be with someone who takes your breath away Mimi Novic
A sex worker deserves a billion times more respect, than...
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A sex worker deserves a billion times more respect, than the mystical fraudsters of the society, such as astrologers, psychics and tarot card readers. Abhijit Naskar
No Lord Almighty created the humans out of personal will....
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No Lord Almighty created the humans out of personal will. Creationism is simply a myth created by the weak and ignorant humans out of a psychological need to have a sense of eternal security. Abhijit Naskar
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Changing the spelling of one's name to ensure success, performing rituals for good luck, wearing colored gem stones for success in business — all these fall into the same category of psychological reinforcement. Hence, emerged the blood-sucking professions of astrology, palmistry, vastushastra, numerology etc. The very existence of these fraudulent professions is predicated on the fear and anxiety of vulnerable masses. Thus, a person’s superstitious beliefs become the tool of exploitation in the hands of ruthless fraudsters. . Abhijit Naskar
It is all about the trade of ignorance. And India...
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It is all about the trade of ignorance. And India is such a bronze-age nation that is filled with these trades (astrology, palm reading, vastushashtra and others). Abhijit Naskar
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Common people tend to term any kind of bizarre phenomenon as “paranormal” or “supernatural”. They often exaggerate it as the work of the Gods. Behind this belief is nothing but primitive ignorance. Social progress means that people must (a necessity, not a luxury) align their beliefs and behavior to new knowledge and understanding of nature. Abhijit Naskar
Mysticism and supernaturalism are the descendants of ignorance and fear.
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Mysticism and supernaturalism are the descendants of ignorance and fear. Abhijit Naskar
Every single phenomenon in the world, has a physical explanation...
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Every single phenomenon in the world, has a physical explanation underneath it. Finding the explanation depends on how far you are willing to go. Abhijit Naskar
The mystical non-sense of afterlife indeed gives solace to the...
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The mystical non-sense of afterlife indeed gives solace to the mind in times of weakness, but why should the mind let its weakness be the fuel for primitiveness in the first place! Abhijit Naskar
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All these stories of Janamsakhi were like an artistic instrument that was yielded more to spread Nanak’s spiritual sovereignty as a mystical prophet than as an effective teacher in flesh and blood. In the midst of ignorance and mystical craving, they provided a simple method to guide people, or rather allure them to a newly formed religious path by sermonizing through stories of mystical non-sense. Abhijit Naskar
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We scientists perceive it as the Truth that will give us absolute understanding of the universe — which is impossible at the moment for a young species like us. On the other hand, the mystics perceive the Ultimate Truth, to be the attainment of Absolute Divinity, which all the religious giants experienced. But this attainment, is nowhere near the actual Ultimate Truth — it is only a subjective experience of the mind, evoked by specific internal and external stimuli. Abhijit Naskar
The human mind has a primordial affinity towards ideas of...
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The human mind has a primordial affinity towards ideas of miracles and mysticism, especially, in times of weakness. Abhijit Naskar
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By nature, that mind is easily fooled by supernatural mysticism. It is extremely gullible. And no matter how much we the civilized human beings advance in the fields of modern sciences, there is always a part of us, that tries to allure us with magical nonsense, because that nonsense has been with us since the birth of humanity. Abhijit Naskar
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Now you know that the fascinating phenomenon of love has nothing to do with the supernatural entity known as Cupid, but everything to do with neurochemistry. Likewise, divinity is a cerebral creation, not a supernatural one. And it has been long since thinking humanity has learnt that love is a majestic creation of the brain, yet that knowledge hasn’t made love be deemed any less glorious. Then why should it threaten the religious believer to learn that divinity as well is a natural creation of the brain!. Abhijit Naskar
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It has been long since thinking humanity has learnt that love is a majestic creation of the brain, yet that knowledge hasn’t made love be deemed any less glorious. Then why should it threaten the religious believer to learn that divinity as well is a natural creation of the brain! Abhijit Naskar
Psychics, astrology, tarot cards - all these mystical non-sense are...
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Psychics, astrology, tarot cards - all these mystical non-sense are signs of a weak mind. Whenever such garbage starts grabbing hold of you, seek the help of a physician or therapist. Abhijit Naskar
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On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze. A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that? Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody, " I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind. In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday. Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us. It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special, " as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral. All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being. . Mary Rose OReilley
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When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw “the tree with the lights in it.” It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker creek and thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing that like being for the first time see, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells un-flamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only very rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam. Annie Dillard
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Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and light…unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who?), there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous…we don’t know what’s going on here. If these tremendous events are random combinations of matter run amok, the yield of millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what is it in us, hammered out of those same typewriters, that they ignite? We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise. . Annie Dillard
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I was only beginning to enter into the infinite subtlety of Gregorian chant. It was - and remains - the only public prayer I have ever been able to engage in without feeling like a phony and a jackass. But then, one day in 1965 or so, it was simply abolished. With a stroke of his pen, Pope John XXIII - who had such good ideas about other things - declared that liturgy would henceforth be in the vernacular language of the people. That was, effectively, the end of Latin chant. Then all those monks and nuns who had devoted hours and hours a day began to sicken and fall into depressions, but nobody noticed for a long time. Maybe, as I can well believe, the music toned up their systems in some mysterious way. Or perhaps chant really was a language that God understood. Faced with numerous liturgical scholas shrieking away in the new vernacular hymns, Divinity may have covered its ears and withdrawn, leaving the monks to pine. We parish musicians, illiterate in anything written after the 13th century, stumbled around trying to score liturgies for guitar and bongo drums, trying to make sense of texts like "Eat his body! Drink his blood! " It wasn't because the music got so bad that I quit going to Mass, but it certainly was the beginning of my doubts about papal infallibility. . Mary Rose OReilley
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There is a bench in the back of my garden shaded by Virginia creeper, climbing roses, and a white pine where I sit early in the morning and watch the action. Light blue bells of a dwarf campanula drift over the rock garden just before my eyes. Behind it, a three-foot stand of aconite is flowering now, each dark blue cowl-like corolla bowed for worship or intrigue: thus its common name, monkshood. Next to the aconite, black madonna lilies with their seductive Easter scent are just coming into bloom. At the back of the garden, a hollow log, used in its glory days for a base to split kindling, now spills white cascade petunias and lobelia. I can't get enough of watching the bees and trying to imagine how they experience the abundance of, say, a blue campanula blosssom, the dizzy light pulsing, every fiber of being immersed in the flower..Last night, after a day in the garden, I asked Robin to explain (again) photosynthesis to me. I can't take in this business of _eating light_ and turning it into stem and thorn and flower.. I would not call this meditation, sitting in the back garden. Maybe I would call it eating light. Mystical traditions recognize two kinds of practice: _apophatic mysticism_, which is the dark surrender of Zen, the Via Negativa of John of the Cross, and _kataphatic mysticism_, less well defined: an openhearted surrender to the beauty of creation. Maybe Francis of Assissi was, on the whole, a kataphatic mystic, as was Thérèse of Lisieux in her exuberant momemnts: but the fact is, kataphatic mysticism has low status in religious circles. Francis and Thérèse were made, really made, any mother superior will let you know, in the dark nights of their lives: no more of this throwing off your clothes and singing songs and babbling about the shelter of God's arms. When I was twelve and had my first menstrual period, my grandmother took me aside and said, 'Now your childhood is over. You will never really be happy again.' That is pretty much how some spiritual directors treat the transition from kataphatic to apophatic mysticism. But, I'm sorry, I'm going to sit here every day the sun shines and eat this light. Hung in the bell of desire. . Mary Rose OReilley
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Held tight as it seems to you in the finite, committed to the perpetual rhythmic changes, the unceasing flux of "natural" life– compelled to pass on from state to state, to grow, to age, to die– there is yet, as you discovered in the first exercise of recollection, something in you which endures through and therefore transcends this world of change. This inhabitant, this mobile spirit, can spread and merge in the general consciousness, and gather itself again to one intense point of personality. It has too an innate knowledge of– an instinct for– another, greater rhythm, another order of Reality, as yet outside its conscious field; or as we say, a capacity for the Infinite. This capacity, this unfulfilled craving, which the cunning mind of the practical man suppresses and disguises as best it can, is the source of all your unrest. More, it is the true origin of all your best loves and enthusiasms, the inspiring cause of your heroisms and achievements; which are but oblique and tentative efforts to still that strange hunger for some final object of devotion, some completing and elucidating vision, some total self-donation, some great and perfect Act within which your little activity can be merged. Evelyn Underhill
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As I stumbled into confusion about what was real and what was not, the strangest thing happened: The world disintegrated. Reality collapsed, or my perception of it. It ripped apart like a dry skin under pressure, giving way to something I can only describe as ineffable dimensions, depths upon depths. Stefan Emunds
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True contemplation can only thrive when defended from two opposite exaggerations: quietism on the one hand, and spiritual fuss upon the other. Neither from passivity nor from anxiety has it anything to gain. Evelyn Underhill
To see the beautiful and mystical in the other worlds,...
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To see the beautiful and mystical in the other worlds, one first must see the beauty of one's soul Mimi Novic
Happiness cannot be owned. It is in living in the...
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Happiness cannot be owned. It is in living in the spiritual experience of living every breath, that lets us taste a moment of it. Mimi Novic
Every soul has the essence of the Divine truth and...
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Every soul has the essence of the Divine truth and love within them Mimi Novic
The universe is a gigantic amusement park in which we...
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The universe is a gigantic amusement park in which we can have a ride or two. Stefan Emunds
Spirituality is the realization of the totality of our being.
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Spirituality is the realization of the totality of our being. Stefan Emunds
Spirituality wants to know and experience higher states of mind...
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Spirituality wants to know and experience higher states of mind and being. It wants to wrestle with angels and look the Creator in the eye. Stefan Emunds
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The soul is imbued with a yearning that is carried, like a torch, from incarnation to incarnation. It burns with a curiosity about life and it’s true identity. Souls live, strive, and evolve, driven to seeking the truth about the world and themselves. Stefan Emunds
There’s a way to live like a god.
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There’s a way to live like a god. Stefan Emunds
Spirituality is 80% attitude and 20% knowledge.
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Spirituality is 80% attitude and 20% knowledge. Stefan Emunds
The idea that I could work wonders as the Lord...
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The idea that I could work wonders as the Lord flutters through my mind like a glamorous butterfly. I hasten to catch it, but it escapes into the depths of my mind. Stefan Emunds
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There is the inner life, which is the world of final reality, the world of memory, emotion, imagination, intelligence, and natural common sense, and which goes on all the time like the heartbeat. There is also the thinking process by which we break into that inner life and capture answers and evidence to support the answers out of it. That process of raid, or persuasion, or ambush, or dogged hunting, or surrender, is the kind of thinking we have to learn and if we do not somehow learn it, then our minds lie in us like the fish in the pond of a man who cannot fish. Ted Hughes
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On my journey from the fantastical to the practical, spirituality has gone from being a mystical experience to something very ordinary and a daily experience. Many don’t want this, instead they prefer spiritual grandeur, and I believe that is what keeps enlightenment at bay. We want big revelations of complexity that validates our perceptions of the divine. What a let down it was to Moses when God spoke through a burning bush! But that is exactly the simplicity of it all. Our spiritual life is our ordinary life and it is very grounded in every day experience. For me, it is the daily practice of kindness, mindfulness, happiness, and peace. Alaric Hutchinson
Spiritual growth is the gradual, I would say, transition from...
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Spiritual growth is the gradual, I would say, transition from a God of tradition to a God of experience. Neville Goddard
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In modern neurotheology we examine the physical bases to spiritual, religious and mystical experiences and beliefs, that implicitly appear to reduce this rich phenomenology to only neuronal functions. So, the thing is, there was no divine intervention necessary in the evolution of spirituality and religiosity. “Human Brain is the true God of all beliefs”. Abhijit Naskar
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Farsi Couplet:Mun tu shudam tu mun shudi, mun tun shudam tu jaan shudi Taakas na guyad baad azeen, mun deegaram tu deegari English Translation:I have become you, and you me, I am the body, you soul; So that no one can say hereafter, That you are someone, and me someone else. Amir Khusrau
I will speak of love until you go mad and...
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I will speak of love until you go mad and join me in my mad worship of love. Kamand Kojouri
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It has taken me quite a few years to realize the fact that most of the thoughts in my head are not necessary. Bert McCoy
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Although we cannot attain Jesus in his fullness unless at the same time we also take into account his unique relationship with God which has a special nature of its own, this does not of itself mean that Jesus' unique way of life is the only way to God. For even Jesus not only reveals God but also conceals him, since he appeared among us in non-godlike, creaturely humanity. As man he is a historical, contingent being who in no way can represent the full riches of God.. unless one denies the reality of his real humanity (and that runs counter to the consensus of the church). So the gospel itself forbids us to speak of a Christian religious imperialism and exclusivism. Edward Schillebeeckx
Beauty is itself so unattainable that it escapes altogether; and...
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Beauty is itself so unattainable that it escapes altogether; and the true artist, like the true Mystic, can never rest Aleister Crowley
A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth...
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A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both. G.k. Chesterton
The night of thought is the light of perception.
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The night of thought is the light of perception. Evelyn Underhill
I must strive to see only God in my friends,...
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I must strive to see only God in my friends, and God in my cats. Florence Nightingale
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But those who manage to genuinely place their hopes totally in God will never be disappointed. God will be with them continuously. They will then be able to bear witness to the miraculous way Providence works in their lives, yet without recognizing it. All of us have such experiences if we pay attention. Kyriacos C. Markides
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When Nureyev appeared in San Francisco not long ago there were quite a few ballet fans who flew all the way from New York to see him. The mystics would point out how fruitless it is to go to see important people when our first priority is to see ourselves. We think we know Tom, Dick and Harry, but we really know everyone, including ourselves, only on the surface level. If we could see our real Self coming down the street, we would wonder who this beautiful, radiant, magnificent creature could be. We would not be able to take our eyes off him. Eknath Easwaran
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Three deep cravings of the self, three great expressions of man's restlessness, which only mystic truth can fully satisfy. The first is the craving which makes him a pilgrim and a wanderer. It is the longing to go out from his normal world in search of a lost home, a 'better country'; an Eldorado, a Sarras, a Heavenly Syon. The next is the craving of heart for heart, of the Soul for its perfect mate, which makes him a lover. The third is the craving for inward purity and perfection, which makes him an ascetic, and in the last resort a saint. Evelyn Underhill
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Rationality attracts conscientious humans, whereas mysticism attracts fools. Abhijit Naskar
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Tolkien did admit that, 'As a guide, I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving.' In other words ~ he wrote about what interested him ~ and despite his protestation of including anything allegorical into his tale, Catholic history and mystic prophecy obviously received its fair share of attention ... E.a. Bucchianeri
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Now is the time that we make conscientious efforts towards becoming a real wise species, free from all sorts of bigotry, mysticism and sectarianism. Abhijit Naskar
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When the religious Cowper confesses in the opening lines of his address to the famous Yardley oak, that the sense of awe and reverence it inspired in him would have made him bow himself down and worship it but for the happy fact that his mind was illumined with the knowledge of the truth, he is but saying what many feel without in most cases recognizing the emotion for what it is–the sense of the supernatural in nature. William Henry Hudson
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There is a god in man, and in nature. He, who sits in the dark, is the bringer of light. This beauty, the sign of an open eye. Gorgoroth
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Your purpose, and its specific expressions, expands and accelerates as it becomes more similar to Nature’s purpose. The tools you need to apply it you collect along the path in discovering what that is. Time is there to provide you with the “opportunities” to find more creative responses to things like frustration, confusion and self-righteousness. As you gently, oh so gently and delicately, adjust to the requirements that exist in your actual circumstance, you are given the tools needed to surpass them. . Darrell Calkins
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Things do not descend upon anything that is not ready to receive them. Sadhguru
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This creation is so perfect that you can forget the Creator — you can just discard him, dump him — and still it goes on. So a true compliment to the Creator is when you forget about him. (Laughs) That is a real compliment to the wonderful piece of creation he has made; it is so perfect within itself that it does not need to draw from anything outside. Sadhguru
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Now the need for seeking something outside will completely disappear. Once you are blissful by your own nature, your life becomes an expression of your blissfulness, not a pursuit of happiness. Sadhguru
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Questioner: One question comes to my mind: if everybody looked inward, what would happen? Sadhguru: You would have a sensible world. (Laughs) Is that a danger? Sadhguru
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So, as you do the practice, if you are connected with your consciousness, then the mind is just free. It is so free that everything that you have smelled, tasted, touched, heard and seen is all there. You don’t have to try to remember anything; it is all simply there. You can just pull it back. Memory is not about remembering, memory is just about your ability to bring back the data, isn’t it? . Sadhguru
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Intuition is not a different dimension of perception, as people usually try to make out. Intuition is just a quicker way of arriving at the same answer. Intuition is just a way of making use of the data and jumping the steps. Sadhguru
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Whatever is in your hands, you keep that in perfect condition; then what is beyond you will anyway happen. But people are always trying to work at what is beyond them, not taking care of what is in their hands. Sadhguru
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You may have read or heard about the so-called positive thinkers of the West. They sayjust the opposite -- they don't know what they are saying. They say, "When you breatheout, throw out all your misery and negativity; and when you breathe in, breathe in joy, positivity, happiness, cheerfulness." Atisha's method is just the opposite: when you breathe in, breathe in all the misery andsuffering of all the beings of the world -- past, present and future. And when you breatheout, breathe out all the joy that you have, all the blissfulness that you have, all thebenediction that you have. Breathe out, pour yourself into existence. This is the methodof compassion: drink in all the suffering and pour out all the blessings. And you will be surprised if you do it. The moment you take all the sufferings of theworld inside you, they are no longer sufferings. The heart immediately transforms theenergy. The heart is a transforming force: drink in misery, and it is transformed intoblissfulness.. then pour it out. Once you have learned that your heart can do this magic, this miracle, you would like todo it again and again. Try it. It is one of the most practical methods -- simple, and itbrings immediate results. Do it today, and see. That is one of the approaches of Buddha and all his disciples. Atisha is one of hisdisciples, in the same tradition, in the same line. Buddha says again and again to hisdisciples, "IHI PASSIKO: come and see! " They are very scientific people. Buddhism isthe most scientific religion on the earth; hence, Buddhism is gaining more and moreground in the world every day. As the world becomes more intelligent, Buddha willbecome more and more important. It is bound to be so. As more and more people come toknow about science, Buddha will have great appeal, because he will convince thescientific mind -- because he says, "Whatsoever I am saying can be practiced." And Idon't say to you, "Believe it, " I say, "Experiment with it, experience it, and only then ifyou feel it yourself, trust it. Otherwise there is no need to believe. Osho
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Much popular self-help literature normalizes sexism. Rather than linking habits of being, usually considered innate, to learned behavior that helps maintain and support male domination, they act as those these difference are not value laden or political but are rather inherent and mystical. In these books male inability and/or refusal to honestly express feelings is often talked about as a positive masculine virtue women should learn to accept rather than a learned habit of behavior that creates emotional isolation and alienation.. Self-help books that are anti-gender equality often present women's overinvestment in nurturance as a 'natural, ' inherent quality rather than a learned approach to caregiving. Much fancy footwork takes place to make it seem that New Age mystical evocations of yin and yang, masculine and feminine androgyny, and so on, are not just the same old sexist stereotypes wrapped in more alluring and seductive packaging. Bell Hooks
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Sometimes, we expect life to work a certain way and when it doesn’t we blame others or see it as a sign, rather than face the pain of the choices we should or shouldn’t have made. Real healing won’t begin until we stop saying, “God prevented this or that.” Often in our attempt to protect ourselves from pain, we leave things to fate and don’t take chances. Or, we don’t work hard enough to keep the blessings we are given. Maybe, we didn't recognize a blessing, until it was too late. Often, it is the lies we tell ourselves that keeps us stuck in a delusion of not being responsible for our lives. We leave it all up to God. The truth is we are not leaves blowing toward our destiny without any control. To believe this is to take away our freedom of choice and that of others. The final stage of grief is acceptance. This can’t be reached through always believing God willed the outcomes in our lives, despite our inaction or actions. To think so is to take the easy escape from our accountability. Sometimes, God has nothing to do with it. Sometimes, we just screwed up and guarded our heart from accepting it, by putting our outcome on God as the reason it turned out the way it did. Faith is a beautiful thing, but without work we can give into a mysticism of destiny that really doesn't teach us lessons or consequences for our actions. Life then becomes a distorted delusion of no accountability with God always to blame for battles we walked away from, won or loss. Shannon L. Alder
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The gentle pulsing and flickering of stars and nebulae made a kind of music, a sweet easy mesh of whispered tones and sighing harmonies that held him in its force like the earth [holding] the moon. Aberjhani