#mysticism

I have become so accustomed to think “scientifically” that I am afraid even to imagine that there may be something else beyond the outer covering of life. I feel like a man condemned to death, whose companions have been hanged and who has already become reconciled to the thought that the same fate awaits him. ↗

— P.D. Ouspensky

#death

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

#mystical #mysticism #religion #religion

I was a new devotee of Eastern mysticism and even though I did not join that particular group, I could well have done. They seemed a bit extreme but I regarded myself as not quite ready. ↗

— Mary Garden

#could #did #done #eastern #even

Sex is the mysticism of materialism and the only possible religion in a materialistic society. ↗

— Malcolm Muggeridge

#materialistic #mysticism #only #possible #religion

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

#intimacy #mysticism #experience

Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits of humility or the limits of delight. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#exaggeration #fear #go #humility #limits

Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism. ↗

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

#character #divinity #external #flash #imagination

Liking money like I like it, is nothing less than mysticism. Money is a glory. ↗

— Salvador Dali

#glory #i #less #like #liking

Therefore it is to a practical mysticism that the practical man is here invited: to a training of his latent faculties, a bracing and brightening of his languid consciousness, an emancipation from the fetters of appearance, a turning of his attention to new levels of the world. Thus he may become aware of the universe which the spiritual artist is always trying to disclose to the race. This amount of mystical perception—this “ordinary contemplation,” as the specialists call it—is possible to all men: without it, they are not wholly conscious, nor wholly alive. It is a natural human activity, no more involving the great powers and sublime experiences of the mystical saints and philosophers than the ordinary enjoyment of music involves the special creative powers of the great musician. ↗

— Evelyn Underhill

#spirituality #experience

The test of mountain-top experiences, of mysticism, of visions of God and of solitariness is when you are “in the soup” of actual circumstances. ↗

— Oswald Chambers

#mysticism #experience