Mystics and mysticism: a summation - #3

If we cannot follow them in the experience to which their mysticism led them, and cannot fully understand what they seek to tell us, we must remember that these inner experiences, these visions of Divine truth, are of their very nature indescribable and incommunicable. If but few can share in that mystic experience, it is perhaps because few are prepared to pay the price which the mystics have paid and to follow in their steps along the Mystic Way, for they have told us plainly that the Way is long and hard, and those would attain must be ready to die completely to Self in order to live unto God. Yet we may learn from them and gain something for ourselves from their revelations, for our own guidance and encouragement, if we should seek to share, in however small a measure, in that which they enjoyed in its fullness; they have at any rate shewn us the way, and whither it leads for those who will tread it unfalteringly till the end is achieved.

Are the mystics right then? I think we can but answer Yes, if Mysticism means the transcending of the temporal and the material for the sake of communion, even of union, with the Abiding and the Real; if it means dying to the old life of the natural man, with all its limitations and desires, in order to attain to the freedom of a new supernatural Life which is everlasting; if, in short, it means a real experience, here and now, of what we call Eternity.

From the Epilogue

An introduction to the history of mysticism
By Margaret Smith
Gordon Press, New York
1976
Reprint of the 1930 edition published by the

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London.