By E.G. Parrinder
This wide-ranging booklet goals to supply clues to the varied types and expressions of mysticism, via contemplating a few of the significant non secular traditions of either East and West. It explores vital components: monistic mysticism (seeking self-identity or union with the All) and theistic mysticism (seeking communion, yet no longer id, with God). the hunt for the magical via medicines, intercourse and visions can be mentioned, as is the connection of the professional to the normal seeker.
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Sample text
Far from not showing a trace of actual experience, one of his longest poems, The Prelude, is subtitled 'Growth of a Poet's Mind; an Autobiographical Poem', and here it is experience, through nature, of communion with the divine being. I felt the sentiment of Being spread O'er all that moves and all that seemeth still . . Communing in this sort through earth and heaven With every form of creature, as it looked Towards the Uncreated with a countenance Of Adoration, with an eye of love. (2,401-2,4 11-14) Wordsworth speaks plainly of 'Nature and her overflowing soul', but he affirms that his experience is 'with God and Nature communing', and in his affirmation of the adoration and love that all creatures have for the Uncreated he comes very close to that more personal mysticism which so often arises like a lotus from the pool of pantheism.
Nature mysticism has been attacked in the assumption that identification with nature is the same as union with God, though many writers do not make such an identification. There are different forms of mysticism and among these nature mysticism should find a place. But attack has been directed at the high priests of English nature poetry, Wordsworth and Blake, no doubt with the aim of suggesting that if these can be shown to be unmystical then lesser writers can be ruled out entirely. Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey is a favourite source of quotation, and some of the most moving lines have often been claimed as mystical: And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.
The Prophet loved solitude and he would pray in seclusion on Mount Hira and then return to give alms to the poor. On the way to the mountain the very stones and trees saluted him as the apostle of God and then the Qur'an was revealed, 'and it was peace till the break of day'. Many times in later life Muhammad rose in the night or went aside during the day to the quiet of nature where he believed God spoke to him. And may not much be said of the natural environment of Galilee, not for its separation from the world but as the setting for mystical experience?