United States or Liechtenstein ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Decline of Greek Philosophy: it becomes Retrospective, and in Philo the Jew and Apollonius of Tyana leans on Inspiration, Mysticism, Miracles. NEO-PLATONISM founded by Ammonius Saccas, followed by Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblicus, Proclus. The Alexandrian Trinity. Ecstasy. Alliance with Magic, Necromancy. The Emperor Justinian closes the philosophical Schools. Summary of Greek Philosophy.
The mystics of India are sometimes contrasted with their fellows in Europe as being more passive and more self-centred: they are supposed to desire self-annihilation and to have no thought for others. But I doubt if the contrast is just. If Indian mysticism sometimes appears at a disadvantage, I think it is because it is popular and in danger of being stereotyped and sometimes vulgarized.
The truly real world, for Plato, is the world of ideas; for whatever we may attempt to say about things in the world of sense, we can only succeed in saying that they participate in such and such ideas, which, therefore, constitute all their character. Hence it is easy to pass on into a mysticism.
Splendid, wasn’t it?” “Splendid!” “And about mysticism, too!” “Oh, drop mysticism, do!” cried some one else; “think of Ippolit and his fate from this day forth. His wife will scratch his eyes out to-morrow for Mitya’s sake.” “Is she here?” “What an idea! If she’d been here she’d have scratched them out in court. She is at home with toothache. He he he!” “He he he!”
He had admired their manly sense, their 'freedom from every sort of mysticism, their 'sympathy with all that is good and honourable. He came to know him almost by heart, and in particular the essays upon Clive and Warren Hastings gave him a feeling about India like that which other boys have derived about the sea from Marryat's novels.
On all four of these questions, while fully developed mysticism seems to me mistaken, I yet believe that, by sufficient restraint, there is an element of wisdom to be learned from the mystical way of feeling, which does not seem to be attainable in any other manner. If this is the truth, mysticism is to be commended as an attitude towards life, not as a creed about the world.
And his subsequent language shows that there was a confraternity existing among the initiates like that of the masonic institution; for he says, with his peculiar mysticism, "If you meet an initiate, besiege him with your prayers that he conceal from you no new mysteries that he may know; and rest not until you have obtained them.
Thus, while, in a way, he represented and, as it were, gave voice to the Rome of Augustus, he did so in a transcendental manner; the Rome which he represents, whether as city or empire, being less a fact than an idea, and already strongly tinged with that mysticism which we regard as essentially mediaeval, and which culminated later without any violent breach of continuity in the conception of a spiritual Rome which was a kingdom of God on earth, and of which the Empire and the Papacy were only two imperfect and mutually complementary phases; quella Roma onde Cristo e Romano, as it was expressed by Dante with his characteristic width and precision.
We will take the Christian theology for granted as we took the classical Greek philosophy, and will finish with a brief glance at the Pagan reaction of the fourth century, when the old religion, already full of allegory, mysticism, asceticism, and Oriental influences, raised itself for a last indignant stand against the all-prevailing deniers of the gods.
These terms will therefore show us in what quarter we must seek the strongest impulses to mysticism. The concepts, if not the actual terms, are to be found in Islam: they were undoubtedly transmitted by Christianity and undergo the wide extension which results in the dervish and fakir developments.
Word Of The Day