سنڌي ورچوئل لائبرري

Before brining this thesis to a close, it will perhaps be useful to recapitulate its main points. I began with a discussion of the meaning of Mysticism, and showed that fat from being, as is commonly supposed, something misty or mysterious, it is the most scientific form of approach to the ultimate reality of existence. The mystic claims to be able to see God and divine things with a faculty higher than the senses and the intellect. His method is contemplative. There are three main roads by which he claims to reach spiritual apprehension, viz. intellectual inquiry, disinterested action, and selfless love. The true mystic is neither an idle visionary nor an antinomian, but having realised his oneness with the universe, bases his morals and his conduct on the surest foundation.

Mystical experience is not an isolated phenomenon. It is as or as humanity, and is not confined to any particular nations or periods. It constitutes the central and ever-abiding principle of all true-religion. The fundamental tents of Mysticism are that God is the eternal substratum of all things. He pervades them through and through, and yet transcends them all. The universe and man are an emanation from Him, and thus are not really distinct from Him. Religious systems are matters of secondary importance. The human soul, having had a prenatal existence, does not perish but survives bodily death, and will continue its progress until it is fully awakened from the dream of life, and realises its oneness with God.

In the Fast as in the West, some of the greatest peost have shown deep sympathy with, and clear appreciation of Mysticism. The closing years of the eighteenth century and the opening years of the nineteenth were flowering period of Mysticism in England I have selected Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge, as typifying each in his own way, three different aspects of mystical poetry. Blake gained his glimpse of Reality by giving free rein to his wonderful ‘Imagination’, Wordsworth through contemplation of external nature, Coleridge through plumbing the recesses of his own self.

Of these three, Blake occupies the foremost rank. He was a born mystic, and combined in himself in an eminent degree, all the varieties of mystical experience. The dominant feature of his spiritual vision was an all-embracing love, whose light illumined all his utterances. This light burnt steadily, and was at no time withdrawn from him. In this respect, he resembles the Hebrew prophets of old.

Wordsworth is pre-eminently the poet of Nature. to him Nature is the divine presence, ever ready to afford him or any of her devotees who approach her in the right spirit, glimpses of Reality. But his mystical experiences, far from being progressive, are not even continuous. On the contrary, they become more and more fitful, and in his later year appear to have deserted him.

Coleridge began his approach to Reality in the company of Wordsworth through external nature. but he eventually discovered that a full revelation of the truth could be achieved only by probing the depths of his inmost self. He is pre-eminently logical and philosophical, and strives to reduce his spiritual perceptions to the terms of the intellect. He thus combines a spirit of mystic contemplation with a penetrating intellectual perception of divine things. In his case we see that the intellect, far from being an obstacle to mystical contemplation, can function as its handmaid.

Shelley was no mystic. There is no evidence of his having attained to illumination, nor any record in his life which points to trance or ecstasy. He had in him, however, the potentialities of true mysticism, to which his philosophy of life is in the main akin. Love is the predominant note of his life and character.