Source:
W. R. Inge, Light, life and love - Selections from the German
Mystics of the Middle Ages, 1904
Page 24
10.
SPECIMENS OF MODERN MYSTICISM
I conclude this introductory essay with a few
extracts from recent American books on the psychology of religion. It is
interesting to find some of the strangest experiences of the cloister reproduced
under the very different conditions of modern American life. The quotations will
serve to show how far Tauler and the "Theologia Germanica" are from
being out of date.
"The thing which impressed me most"
(says a correspondent of Professor William James)[xxxiii]
"was learning the fact that we must be in absolutely constant relation or
mental touch with that essence of life which permeates all and which we call
God. This is almost unrecognisable unless we live into it ourselves actually--that
is, by a constant turning to the very innermost, deepest consciousness of our
real selves or of God in us, for illumination from within, just as we turn to
the sun for light, warmth, and invigoration without. When you do this
consciously, realising that to turn inward to the light within you is to live in
the presence of God or of your Divine self, you soon discover the unreality of
the objects to which you have hitherto been turning and which have engrossed you
without."
The next quotation comes from a small book by
one of the "New Thought" or "Mind Cure" school in America.
The enormous sale of the volume testifies to the popularity of the teaching
which it contains.[xxxiv]
"Intuition is an inner spiritual sense
through which man is opened to the direct revelation and knowledge of God, the
secret of nature and life, and through which he is brought into conscious unity
and fellowship with God, and made to realise his own deific nature and supremacy
of being as the son of God. Spiritual supremacy and illumination thus realised
through the development and perfection of intuition under divine inspiration
gives the perfect inner vision and direct insight into the character,
properties, and purpose of all things to which the attention and interest are
directed. It is, we repeat, a spiritual sense opening inwardly, as the physical
senses open outwardly; and because it has the capacity to perceive, grasp, and
know the truth at first hand, independent of all external sources of
information, we call it intuition. All inspired teaching and spiritual
revelations are based upon the recognition of this spiritual faculty of the soul
and its power to receive and appropriate them. Conscious unity of man in spirit
and purpose with the Father, born out of his supreme desire and trust, opens his
soul through this inner sense to immediate aspiration and enlightenment from the
divine omniscience, and the co-operative energy of the divine omnipotence, under
which he becomes a seer and a master. On this higher plane of realised spiritual
life in the flesh the mind acts with unfettered freedom and unbiassed vision,
grasping truth at first hand, independent of all external sources of
information. Approaching all beings and things from the divine side, they are
seen in the light of the divine omniscience.[xxxv]
God's purpose in them, and so the truth concerning them, as it rests in the mind
of God, are thus revealed by direct illumination from the divine mind, to which
the soul is opened inwardly through this spiritual sense we call
intuition."
