The Religious Consciousness; A Psychological Study

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ... THE ECSTASY Ijt the preceding chapter we studied the two preliminary stages of the more extreme form of mysticism^-- the "purgative" and the "jlluminative" or " meditativBK^ stages as they are called by the systematizers -- and at last we have reached theJthixd or " unitive " stage, the goal of all the mystic's painful preparation. This third stage is both a kind of experience and a kind of life. In this latter sense it is described thus by Ribet: "Finally, love becomes dominant and is unified with the divine good will. The soul cares less about avoiding hell and gaining heaven and more about pleasing her well-beloved. Her desire is to free herself from all that is not God, and even to quit the world and life in order to enjoy the presence of God fully and indissolubly." 1 While the third stage of the mystic progress is for many a mystic, and especially for the greatest, a life rather than particular experience, it involves for all mystics a special type of experience which because of its striking character is regarded as the mystic state par excellence and which distinguishes it more, perhaps, than anything else from the life of the ordinary moral and religious but non-mystical individual. This experience is commonly known as the ecstasy^ and I shall regularly use this term to designate it.2 It usually makes its first appearance at the beginning of the " mystic life" and re- ^ appears from time to time, being perhaps both partial cause and partial result of that new way of living. This, however, | is not the universal rule; some attain to the mystic life with no such extreme experience, and many taste the experience but are | unable to fill their lives with the mystic spirit and let it domi 1 " La Mystique Divine," Vol. I, p. 16. 2 The...