This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Prayer should be understood, not as a mere mechanical recitation of formulas, but as a mystical elevation, an absorption of consciousness in the contemplation of a principle both permeating and transcending our world.
Consciousness | Contemplation | Mystical | Prayer | World | Contemplation |
The "morphogenic" relationship of eternity to time is not to be thought of as sequential. Moreover, eternity being by definition outside or beyond temporality, transcendent of all categories, whether of virtue or of reason (being and nonbeing, unity and multiplicity, love and justice, forgiveness and wrath), the term and concept "God" is itself but a metaphor of the unknowing mind, connotative, not only beyond itself, but beyond thought... metaphors are equivalent as alternative signs of the high mystical experience of an absorption of mortal appearance in immortal being; for which another historical figure of speech is the "End of the World."
Appearance | Eternity | Experience | Forgiveness | God | Justice | Love | Mind | Mortal | Mystical | Reason | Relationship | Speech | Thought | Time | Unity | Virtue | Virtue | World | Forgiveness | Thought |
The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice. Where that purpose does not exist, to give definiteness, precision, and an intelligible meaning to thought, it generates nothing better than the mystical metaphysics of the Pythagoreans or the Vedas.
Better | Dreams | Meaning | Metaphysics | Mystical | Nothing | Practice | Precision | Purpose | Purpose | Thinking | Thought | Truths |
The old life was attuned to nature’s rhythm – bound in mystical ties to the sun, moon and stars; to the waving grasses, flowing steams and whispering winds. It is not a question… of the white man “bringing the Indian up to his plan of thought and action.” It is rather a case where the white man had better grasp some of the Indian’s spiritual strength.
Action | Better | Life | Life | Man | Mystical | Nature | Plan | Question | Strength | Thought | Old | Thought |
Those who insist that mystical experience is not specifically different from the ordinary life of grace (as such) are certainly right.
The mystical bond of brotherhood makes all men brothers.
Brotherhood | Men | Mystical |
The multiplicity is only apparent. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads. And not of the Upanishads only. The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view, unless strong prejudices stand in the way. Multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind... Multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind.
Doctrine | Experience | God | Mystical | God |
We are guided by three orders of truth: real truth, mystical truth, rational truth.
Mystical |
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.
Religion is not a method, it is a life, a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its fruits; a communion with good, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows.
There is a great deal more to religion than mystical experiences. Religions try to provide answers to the mysteries of life, but they are also concerned with enhancing the quality of life. The great religions encourage and promote compassion and loving-kindness.
Compassion | Mystical | Religion |
Poetic experience is distinct in nature from mystical experience. Because poetry emanates from the free creativity of the spirit, it is from the very start oriented toward expression, and terminates in a word proffered, it wants to speak; whereas mystical because it emanates from the deepest longing of the spirit bent on knowing, tends of itself toward silence and internal fruition. Poetic experience is busy with the created world and the enigmatic and innumerable relations of existents with one another, not with the Principle of Being.
Creativity | Experience | Longing | Mystical | Nature | Poetry | Silence | Spirit | Wants | World |
I firmly believe that all human beings have access to extraordinary energies and powers. Judging from accounts of mystical experience, heightened creativity, or exceptional performance by athletes and artists, we harbor a greater life than we know.
It is an eternal truth in the political as well as the mystical body, that “where one member suffers, all the members suffer with it."
Within the scientific skeleton of truth, religious meaning attempts to flourish, often by denying the scientific framework itself — rather like sawing off the branch where you cheerily perch. The disgust is mutual because modern science gleefully denies virtually all the basic tenets of religion in general. According to the typical view of modern science, religion is not much more than a holdover from the childhood of humanity, with about as much reality as, say, Santa Claus. Whether the religious claims are more literal (Moses parting the Red Sea) or more mystical (religion invovlves direct spiritual experience) modern science denies them all, simply because there is no credible empirical evidence for any of them.
Childhood | Evidence | Meaning | Mystical | Reality | Religion | Science | Tenets | Parting |