Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Mysticism in English Literature by Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
page 8 of 156 (05%)
is not alone; all through the ages we have the testimony of men and
women to whom this vision has been granted, and the record of what they
have seen is amazingly similar, considering the disparity of personality
and circumstances. And further, the world is not peopled with totally
blind men. The mystics would never hold the audience they do hold, were
it not that the vast majority of people have in themselves what William
James has called a "mystical germ" which makes response to their
message.

James's description of his own position in this matter, and his feeling
for a "Beyond," is one to which numberless "unmystical" people would
subscribe. He compares it to a tune that is always singing in the back
of his mind, but which he can never identify nor whistle nor get rid of.
"It is," he says, "very vague, and impossible to describe or put into
words.... Especially at times of moral crisis it comes to me, as the
sense of an unknown something backing me up. It is most indefinite, to
be sure, and rather faint. And yet I know that if it should cease there
would be a great hush, a great void in my life."[1]

This sensation, which many people experience vaguely and intermittently,
and especially at times of emotional exaltation, would seem to be the
first glimmerings of that secret power which, with the mystics, is so
finely developed and sustained that it becomes their definite faculty of
vision. We have as yet no recognised name for this faculty, and it has
been variously called "transcendental feeling," "imagination," "mystic
reason," "cosmic consciousness," "divine sagacity," "ecstasy," or
"vision," all these meaning the same thing. But although it lacks a
common name, we have ample testimony to its existence, the testimony of
the greatest teachers, philosophers, and poets of the world, who
describe to us in strangely similar language--
DigitalOcean Referral Badge