Quotessence
Home / Topics / Mysticism Quotes

Mysticism Quotes

Browse 992 quotes about Mysticism.

Related topics

SpiritualityGaining PowerLosing PowerLosingPeopleIfsWorldEnergyPersonal PowerKnowsMagicThinkingMindWayHumansMenMysticPersonsSelfAwarenessLevelsStatesSoulSpiritualBelieveBodyDifferentNeedsBuddhismConsciousnessMeanFeelingsFeelsGainsGivingRealityCertainDoeReasonSpiritUniverseArtDealsFieldsHas BeensIndividualLittlesMayMysticalState Of MindMysteryShouldTeacherWantWholeAttentionDevelopmentEnlightenedEnoughFirstsFormHuman BeingsIdeasLightLosesMagicianPlanesRealReligiousSeemsStudyTeachTryingUseWellsDrainsEasternEyeKindLife IsMomentsMovingNaturalPastPowerfulProcessStillsTodayUnderstandingBookCommonDesireEarthEndsFactsForceI BelieveLawLiteraturePracticemore

Mysticism Quotes

“If [John] Piper's beliefs on authority clash with the doctrine of the Reformers as I argue, one would expect that Piper would have much less conflict with Roman Catholicism than the Reformers did. This is indeed the case. In fact, Piper's mystic hedonism is leading evangelicals on a fast trot back to Rome, where mystics have long nestled under its skirts.”

MysticismPhilosophy Of ReligionRoman CatholicismEvangelicalsThe ReformationChristian HedonismJohn Piper
Book:The Hedonism and Homosexuality of John Piper and Sam Allberry: The Truth of Scripture
Create image

“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.”

NatureWonderMysticismSupernaturalOak TreeCowper
Book:Far Away and Long Ago: A History of My Early Life
Create image

“When I was 15 years old, I came in contact with my first ashram, my first spiritual commune, in the form of Ljusbacken ("The Hill of Light") in Delsbo in beautiful Halsingland in the north of Sweden. Ljusbacken consisted of an international gathering of yogis, meditators, therapists, healers and seekers of truth. It was on Ljusbacken that I for the first time came in contact with my path in life: meditation. It was also on Ljusbacken that I meet people for the first time in my 15 year old life, where I on a deep wordless level felt that I meet people, who were on the same path as me. It was the first time that I meet people, who could put words on and confirm my own inner thirst after something that I could only occasionally sense vaguely, like some sort of inner guiding presence, or like a beacon in the distant far out on the open and misty ocean. For the first time in my life, I meet brothers, sisters and friends on the inner path. It was also on Ljusbacken that I meet the mystery called love for the first time in my 15 year old life. With my 15 year old eyes, I watched with wide eyed fascination and fear filled excitement the incomprehensible mystery, which is called woman. My own thirst after truth, together with my inner guiding light, resulted in an early spiritual awakening when I was 15 years old. It led me back to the inner path, which I have already followed for many lives. It led me back to a life lived with vision, with dedication and meaning, and not only a life governed by the endless desires of the ego, a mere vegetating without substance between life and death. It led me to explore the inner journey again, to discover the inner being, the meditative quality within, and to come in intimate contact with the endless and boundless ocean of consciousness, like the drop surrenders to the sea. At the source, the drop and ocean are one.”

LoveLifeTruthJoySpiritualityGrowthRelationshipsHealingConsciousnessPsychologyMeditationIntuitionTherapyMysticismSwedenOne With LifeYogisAshramDelsboDevadasLjusbacken
Author:Swami Dhyan Giten
Create image

“Why two (or whole groups) of people can come up with the same story or idea at the same time, even when across the world from each-other: "A field is a region of influence, where a force will influence objects at a distance with nothing in between. We and our universe live in a Quantum sea of light. Scientists have found that the real currency of the universe is an exchange of energy. Life radiates light, even when grown in the dark. Creation takes place amidst a background sea of energy, which metaphysics might call the Force, and scientists call the "Field." (Officially the Zero Point Field) There is no empty space, even the darkest empty space is actually a cauldron of energies. Matter is simply concentrations of this energy (particles are just little knots of energy.) All life is energy (light) interacting. The universe is self-regenreating and eternal, constantly refreshing itself and in touch with every other part of itself instantaneously. Everything in it is giving, exchanging and interacting with energy, coming in and out of existence at every level. The self has a field of influence on the world and visa versa based on this energy. Biology has more and more been determined a quantum process, and consciousness as well, functions at the quantum level (connected to a universe of energy that underlies and connects everything). Scientist Walter Schempp's showed that long and short term memory is stored not in our brain but in this "Field" of energy or light that pervades and creates the universe and world we live in. A number of scientists since him would go on to argue that the brain is simply the retrieval and read-out mechanism of the ultimate storage medium - the Field. Associates from Japan would hypothesize that what we think of as memory is simply a coherent emission of signals from the "Field," and that longer memories are a structured grouping of this wave information. If this were true, it would explain why one tiny association often triggers a riot of sights, sounds and smells. It would also explain why, with long-term memory in particular, recall is instantaneous and doesn't require any scanning mechanism to sift through years and years of memory. If they are correct, our brain is not a storage medium but a receiving mechanism in every sense, and memory is simply a distant cousin of perception. Some scientists went as far as to suggest that all of our higher cognitive processes result from an interaction with the Field. This kind of constant interaction might account for intuition or creativity - and how ideas come to us in bursts of insight, sometimes in fragments but often as a miraculous whole. An intuitive leap might simply be a sudden coalescence of coherence in the Field. The fact that the human body was exchanging information with a mutable field of quantum fluctuation suggested something profound about the world. It hinted at human capabilities for knowledge and communication far deeper and more extended than we presently understand. It also blurred the boundary lines of our individuality - our very sense of separateness. If living things boil down to charged particles interacting with a Field and sending out and receiving quantum information, where did we end and the rest of the world began? Where was consciousness-encased inside our bodies or out there in the Field? Indeed, there was no more 'out there' if we and the rest of the world were so intrinsically interconnected. In ignoring the effect of the "Field" modern physicists set mankind back, by eliminating the possibility of interconnectedness and obscuring a scientific explanation for many kinds of miracles. In re-normalizing their equations (to leave this part out) what they'd been doing was a little like subtracting God.”

GodScienceMysticismTaoQuantum PhysicsEnergy HealingFieldEnergy Of The UniverseQiQi Gong
Book:The Field
Create image

“This isle of Albion never ceased to amaze him. At night, Jesus would lay awake watching the stars before the gentle lull of the lapping waves sent him to sleep. But naturally, he was not so foolish as to camp where he could be washed out to sea by the tides and always made sure there was a safe way to scale the cliffs if the need arose. Once, he had been startled into wakefulness by an unfamiliar sound but soon realised it was the eerie calling of passing whales communicating with each other as they sang of their joy for life. And as their song resonated deep within his soul, Jesus felt the greatness and generosity of their spirit. Their relevance and connection to the mysteries of the universe.”

JesusJesus ChristMysticismNature QuotesWhalesBiblical FictionJesus Of NazarethJesus NovelsHistorical Fiction About Jesus
Book:Imagining Jesus
Create image

“We in the West regard the universe as a creation of God; like an invention or a product. After he created the universe, God set himself to oversee it and manage it. We see God as our boss. He created the universe, he is present in it, he manages every part of it, but he is still separate from it. It's like he installed video cameras all over the universe, so he can see everything that happens, and he can cause this or that to happen, but he is not a part of what happens. The Eastern view is very different. To the Hindu, for example, God didn't create the universe, but God became the universe. Then he forgot that he became the universe. Why would God do this? Basically, for entertainment. You create a universe, and that in itself is very exciting. But then what? Should you sit back and watch this universe of yours having all the fun? No, you should have all the fun yourself. To accomplish this, God transformed into the whole universe. God is the Universe, and everything in it. But the universe doesn't know that because that would ruin the suspense. The universe is God's great drama, and God is the stage, the actors, and the audience all at once. The title of this epic drama is "The Great Unknown Outcome." Throw in potent elements like passion, love, hate, good, evil, free will; and who knows what will happen? No one knows, and that is what keeps the universe interesting. But everyone will have a good time. And there is never really any danger, because everyone is really God, and God is really just playing around.”

ReligionSpiritualityMysticismPhilosophy Of ReligionPandeismEastern Religion
Book:Philosophy For The Serious Heretic: The Limitations of Belief and the Derivation of Natural Moral Principles
Create image

“This book was written in the conviction that what Jesus named as ‘the coming of the Son of Man’ was never meant to be a prophecy of future spectacle or predetermined judgment, but a functional reality all humans will wrestle with and a call to conscious participation in divine reality—through ego death, inner transformation, and the reconciliation of all things.”

PhilosophyConsciousnessAwakeningMysticismNihilismAtonementEschatologySecond ComingSon Of Man
Book:The Son of Man & Its Mystical Awakening: Reclaiming Eschatology & Atonement During a Convergence of Globalization, Nihilism, Science, & Spirituality
Create image

“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.”

Love QuotesMysticismIndian AuthorsMysticism Sufi WisdomPersian PoetryFarsiAmirkhusro
Book:The Writings of Amir Khusrau: 700 Years After the Prophet: A 13th-14th Century Legend of Indian-Sub-Continent
Create image

“Khusrau darya prem ka, ulti wa ki dhaar, Jo utra so doob gaya, jo dooba so paar. English Translation. Oh Khusrau, the river of love Runs in strange directions. One who jumps into it drowns, And one who drowns, gets across.”

Love QuotesIndianMysticismSufiIndian AuthorsMysticism Sufi WisdomHindi PoetryAmirkhusro
Book:The Writings of Amir Khusrau: 700 Years After the Prophet: A 13th-14th Century Legend of Indian-Sub-Continent
Create image

“Enlightenment is not an experience at all, because the experiencer is lost. The "I", the ego is lost. Enlightenment is more like an experiencing. It is a process. It begins, but it never ends. You enter it, but you can never possess it. It is a deep merging and melting with Existence. It is a oneness. It is like a drop dropping into the Ocean.”

LifeGodLightSpiritualityFreedomPrayerExistenceMeditationAwarenessDivineOceanEnlightenmentMysticismOneness With God
Author:Swami Dhyan Giten
Create image

“Why does it disturb us that the map be included in the map and the thousand and one nights in the book of the Thousand and One Nights? Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote be a reader of the Quixote and Hamlet a spectator of Hamlet? I believe I have found the reason: these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictitious. In 1833, Carlyle observed that the history of the universe is an infinite sacred book that all men write and read and try to understand, and in which they are also written.”

ConsciousnessMysticismRecursionPhilisophy
Book:Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings
Create image

“Sometimes, down in the subway, a train Maxine's riding on will slowly be overtaken by a local or an express on the other track, and in the darkness of the tunnel, as the windows of the other train move slowly past, the lighted panels appear one by one, like a series of fortune-telling cards being deal and slid in front of her. The Scholar, The Unhoused, The Warrior Thief, The Haunted Woman... After a while Maxine has come to understand that the faces framed in these panels are precisely those out of all the city millions she must in the hour be paying most attention to, in particular those whose eyes actually meet her own - they are the day's messengers from whatever the Beyond has for a Third World, where the days are assembled one by one under non-union conditions. Each messenger carrying the props required for their character, shopping bags, books, musical instruments, arrived here out of darkness, bound again into darkness, with only a minute to deliver the intelligence Maxine needs. At some point naturally she begins to wonder if she might not be performing the same role for some face looking back out another window at her.”

MysticismNycSubways
Author:Thomas Pynchon
Create image

“Mystics seem to have no shame about contradicting themselves left and right. They blithely proclaim that the cure for pain is in the pain itself and that the cry of longing is the sigh of merging. That's because the path of the mystic reconciles contradictory propositions (such as harrowing sorrow and radical amazement) and blesses us with an extended capacity to sit with ambiguity, to treasure vulnerability, to celebrate paradox as the highest truth.”

TruthVulnerabilityContradictionMysticismParadoxAmbiguityReconciliation Of Opposites
Book:Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics
Create image

“Boehme makes such leaps, such contradictions, such confusions of thought. It is as though he wishes to vault directly into heaven upon the strength of his logic, but his logic is deeply impaired." She reached across the table for a book and flung it open. "In this chapter here, for instance, he is trying to find keys to God's secrets hidden inside the plants of the Bible- but what are we to make of it, when his information is simply incorrect? He spends a full chapter interpreting 'the lilies of the field' as mentioned in the book of Matthew, dissecting every letter of the word 'lilies,' looking for revelation within the syllables... but Ambrose, 'the lilies of the field' itself is a mistranslation. It would not have 'been' lilies that Christ discussed in his Sermon on the Mount. There are only two varieties of lily native to Palestine, and both are exceedingly rare. They would not have flowered in such abundance as to have ever filled a meadow. They would not have been familiar enough to the common man. Christ, tailoring his lesson to the widest possible audience, would more likely have referred to a ubiquitous flower, in order that his listeners would comprehend his metaphor. For that reason, it is exceedingly probable that Christ was talking about the anemones of the field- probably 'Anemone coronaria'- though we cannot be certain...”

MysticismNew TestamentPlantsTheoriesAlma WhittakerJacob BoehmeLilies Of The FieldAnemone CoronariaBook Of Matthew
Book:The Signature of All Things
Create image

“The ancient sages of Kashmir Shaivism did not look for the truth only in logic and intellectual speculation. They relied much more on their experiences during deep yogic states to guide them in understanding and clarifying age-old philosophical dilemmas. They discovered the Absolute within themselves and found that they were one with it. They studied the Self that lay beyond the mind and the ego, and found that It was divine, creative energy. God was not some distant ruler or some inert entity. These sages realized and recognized that He was within everything, was the vitality of life itself, and was always the one transcendent Reality as well. In this way Kashmir Shaivites taught the principle of theistic absolutism. For centuries Indian philosophers have been debating whether this world is real or an illusion. In the process of watching the unfolding of their own creative energy during meditation, the sages of Kashmir found the source of all creation, and witnessed how everything in this universe evolves from this one absolute Reality into manifestation which is also real. Because all creation exists within the Absolute, they established the principle of spiritual realism. — B. N. Pandit, Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism (3rd ed., 2008), p. x”

GodYogaMysticismNondualityKashmir ShaivismIndian PhilosophySpiritual RealismParadvaita
Book:Specific Principles of Kashmir Saivism [Hardcover] [Apr 01, 1998] Paṇḍita, BalajinnaÌ"tha
Create image

“The most 'authoritative' accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels existed by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, 'like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John.”

HistoryMysticismGospelsHistoricity Of The BibleHeretical GospelsIrenaeus Of LyonChurch FatherIrenaeusRomer
Book:Atheist Responses to Religious Arguments
Create image

“I used unexpectedly to experience a consciousness of the presence of God, or such a kind that I could not possibly doubt that He was within me or that I was wholly engulfed in Him. This was in no sense a vision: I believe it is called mystical theology. The soul is suspended in such a way that it seems to be completely outside itself. The will loves; the memory, I think, is almost lost; while the understanding, I believe, thought it is not lost, does not reason—I mean that it does not work, but is amazed at the extent of all it can understand; for God wills it to realize that it understands nothing of what His Majesty represents to it.”

PrayerMysticismMystical TheologyChapter Xxiii
Book:The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself
Create image

“When I was nineteen years old, I discovered a collection of books in the Harvard library written by Jacob Boehme. Do you know of him?" Naturally she knew of him. She had her own copies of these works in the White Acre library. She had read Boehme, though she never admired him. Jacob Boehme was a sixteenth-century cobbler from Germany who had mystical visions about plants. Many people considered him an early botanist. Alma's mother, on the other hand, had considered him a cesspool of residual medieval superstition. So there was considerable conflict of opinion surrounding Jacob Boehme. The old cobbler had believed in something he called "the signature of all things"- namely, that God had hidden clues for humanity's betterment inside the design of every flower, leaf, fruit, and tree on earth. All the natural world was a divine code, Boehme claimed, containing proof of our Creator's love. That is why so many medicinal plants resembled the diseases they were meant to cure, or the organs they were able to treat. Basil, with its liver-shaped leaves, is the obvious ministration for ailments of the liver. The celandine herb, which produces a yellow sap, can be used to treat the yellow discoloration brought on by jaundice. Walnuts, shaped like brains, are helpful for headaches. Coltsfoot, which grows near cold streams, can cure the coughs and chills brought on by immersion in ice water. 'Polygonum,' with its spattering of blood-red markings on the leaves, cures bleeding wounds of the flesh.”

MysticismSymbolismBook TitleMedicinal HerbsJacob BoehmeMedicinal Plants
Book:The Signature of All Things
Create image

“Şimdi, sevgiyle tokuşturulan kadehlerin tınlamasını, dost bildiğimiz insanlarla yaptığımız sohbetleri, altun paraların şıngırtısını, bir güzelin şuh kahkahasını,  mal yüklü ticaret gemilerinin yelkenlerini şişiren rüzgârın uğultusunu, ilim öğrenmek için okuduğumuz kitapların sayfa hışırtılarını ve hatta, ölümsüzlüğün sırrı olan ab-ı hayatın şırıltısını unutalım ve burnumuza üflenen nefesi, vakti gelince aldığımız gibi, tertemiz bir nağme olarak sessizce teslim etmeye hazır olalım.”

MysticismSufismTasavvuf
Book:Suskunlar
Create image

“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.”

DeathTimeMysticismSatori
Book:The Guns of Avalon
Create image

“A Super-Integral Spirituality has all the features of an Integral Spirituality, plus, among other things, an inherent conjunction of each stage with a given state, giving all of its stages a transpersonal or spiritual flavor (at least the possibility of either gross nature mysticism, subtle deity mysticism, causal formless mysticism, or nondual Unity mysticism). These mystical states are, of course, available to virtually all the lower 1st- and 2nd-tier stages, although there are likely some significant differences in 3rd tier, given its inherent conjunction of structures and states.”

MysticismIntegral SpiritualityIntegral ConsciousnessThird TierSuper Integral Spirituality
Book:The Fourth Turning: Imagining the Evolution of an Integral Buddhism
Create image

“Friedrich Nietzsche said “God is dead”. Call Jesus the only son of god and god dies, call Muhammad the last messenger of god and god dies. No god ain’t fucking dead yet. God doesn’t die until the last man walks on earth, god doesn’t die untill some primitive life swims on a puddle. And one day, even if life completely disappears from existence, god will find some other way. God knows how to beget sons and daughters. God knows how to animate his messages.”

SpiritualityLife QuotesExistenceChristianityWisdom QuotesIslamGod QuotesMysticismBuddhahoodSarojaryal Quotes
Author:Saroj Aryal
Create image

“The most critical of these new religious developments for twentieth-century religious liberalism were a renewed and transformed emphasis on mystical practice and experience, the healing ministry known as mind cure, and the rise of modern psychology. These three interrelated spiritual innovations spread as significant components of popular religion in large part through the mass print media. Rather than religious movements dependent on revivalism or church life, these were first and foremost discourses, creatures of the printed word. Initially explored only by an avant-garde of liberal intellectuals late in the nineteenth century, the new books and ideas emerging at the margins of liberal Protestantism eventually reached a nation-wide middle-class audience. The mass media unleashed by nineteenth-century evangelicalism enabled the alternative spiritualities of the twentieth century to flourish, especially with the rise of religious middlebrow culture in the decades after World War I.”

ChristianityPsychologyMysticismSpiritual ExperienceBook CultureMiddlebrow CultureLiberal Protestantism
Book:The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century
Create image

“(...) all the major theistic traditions insist at some point that our language about God consists mostly in conceptual restrictions and fruitful negations. 'Cataphatic' (or affirmative) theology must always be chastened and corrected by 'apophatic' (or negative) theology. We cannot speak of God in his own nature directly, but only at best analogously, and even then only in such a way that the conceptual content of our analogies consists largely in our knowledge of all the things that God is not. This is the via negativa of Christianity, the lahoot salbi (negative theology) of Islam, Hinduism’s 'neti, neti' ('not this, not this'). (...) And for the contemplatives of various traditions, the negation of all those limited concepts that delude us that God is just another being among beings, within our intellectual grasp, is an indispensable discipline of the mind and will. It prepares the mind for a knowledge of God that comes not from categories of analytic reason, but from—as Maximus says—the intimate embrace of union, in which God shares himself immediately as a gift to the created soul.”

PhilosophyGodTheologyMysticismVia NegativaNegative Theology
Book:The Experience of God : Being, Consciousness, Bliss
Create image