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The whole cathedral scene I would even include the caterwaulings of Amfortas is sincere, impressive, and filled with a reasonable degree of mysticism. Between this point and the end of the act there is scarcely a fine passage. Every phrase is insincere, not because Wagner wished to be insincere, but because he tried to express dramatically a state of mind which is essentially undramatic.
Subtler and rarer, again, than the raptures of mysticism and of beauty worship is the ecstasy of intellectual production; yet the "clean, clear joy of creation," as Kipling names it, is not less to be grouped with those precious experiences in which the self is sloughed away, and the soul at one with its content.
But we may assume that already in the Persian period the Osiris cult had begun to acquire a tinge of mysticism, which, though it did not affect the mechanical reproduction of the native texts, appealed to the Oriental mind as well as to certain elements in Greek religion.
And one cannot help feeling, while reading the magnificent oration on Supra-sensual Love, which Castiglione, in his admirable book "The Courtier," puts into the mouth of the profligate Bembo, how near mysticism may lie not merely to dilettantism or to Pharisaism, but to sensuality itself.
The practical man may justly observe at this point that the world of single vision is the only world he knows: that it appears to him to be real, solid, and self-consistent: and that until the existence at least, the probability of other planes of reality is made clear to him, all talk of uniting with them is mere moonshine, which confirms his opinion of mysticism as a game fit only for idle women and inferior poets.
The standing ministry in Mansoul was endowed also; but I cannot imagine what the court of teinds would make of the instrument of endowment. As it has been handed down to us, that old ecclesiastical instrument reads more like a lesson in the parish minister's class for the study of Mysticism than a writing for a learned lord to adjudicate upon.
But there was a great deal of talk going on near me, among a knot of people who might be considered as representing the mysticism, or rather the mystic sensuality, of this singular age. The nature of the exhibition that was about to take place had probably given the turn to their conversation.
His very expression, God or Nature, had a fascinating mysticism about it. The chapter in the book which is devoted to the Natural History of passions, surprised and enriched one by its simple, but profound, explanation of the conditions of the human soul.
"The Chimney-Sweeper," "Holy Thursday," "The Lamb," "The Sun-flower," "The Tiger," etc., have an exquisite simplicity arising from directness and intensity of feeling sometimes tender, sometimes sublime always individual. Latterly he lost himself in clouds of mysticism.
I put the words away from me with a gesture. "That means nothing to me," I said. "I know nothing of the temple of Siva. I wish to know nothing, for mysticism repels me. But I do know that she gave her word; I do know that she loved him." "Earthly love fades and passes," said the yogi, solemnly. "She has given her heart to the Master," and he made his gesture of reverence.
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