Quotes by Mystics - Page 2

It is He who is revealed in every face, sought in every sign, gazed upon by every eye, worshipped in every object of worship, and pursued in the unseen and the visible. Not a single one of His creatures can fail to find Him in its primordial and original nature.al-Futûhât al-Makkiyya
Ibn Arabi
Make peace with yourself, and both heaven and earth will make peace with you.
Isaac of Nineveh
The peacock's plumage is its enemy: O many the king who hath been slain by his magnificence!
Maulana Jalaluddin Mohammad Balkhi
For, when the friendship is purely spiritual, the love of God grows with it; and the more the soul remembers it, the more it remembers the love of God, and the greater the desire it has for God; so that, as the one grows, the other grows also. For the spirit of God has this property, that it increases good by adding to it more good, inasmuch as there is likeness and conformity between them. But, when this love arises from the vice of sensuality aforementioned, it produces the contrary effects; for the more the one grows, the more the other decreases, and the remembrance of it likewise. If that sensual love grows, it will at once be observed that the soul's love of God is becoming colder, and that it is forgetting Him as it remembers that love; there comes to it, too, a certain remorse of conscience. And, on the other hand, if the love of God grows in the soul, that other love becomes cold and is forgotten; for, as the two are contrary to one another, not only does the one not aid the other, but the one which predominates quenches and confounds the other, and becomes strengthened in itself, as the philosophers say. Wherefore Our Saviour said in the Gospel: 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.' That is to say, the love which is born of sensuality ends in sensuality, and that which is of the spirit ends in the spirit of God and causes it to grow. This is the difference that exists between these two kinds of love, whereby we may know them.
San Juan de la Cruz
Sometimes, too, when their spiritual masters, such as confessors and superiors, do not approve of their spirit and behavior (for they are anxious that all they do shall be esteemed and praised), they consider that they do not understand them, or that, because they do not approve of this and comply with that, their confessors are themselves not spiritual. And so they immediately desire and contrive to find some one else who will fit in with their tastes; for as a rule they desire to speak of spiritual matters with those who they think will praise and esteem what they do, and they flee, as they would from death, from those who disabuse them in order to lead them into a safe road—sometimes they even harbour ill-will against them. Presuming thus, they are wont to resolve much and accomplish very little. Sometimes they are anxious that others shall realize how spiritual and devout they are, to which end they occasionally give outward evidence thereof in movements, sighs and other ceremonies; and at times they are apt to fall into certain ecstasies, in public rather than in secret, wherein the devil aids them, and they are pleased that this should be noticed, and are often eager that it should be noticed more.
San Juan de la Cruz
Some of these beginners, too, make little of their faults, and at other times become over-sad when they see themselves fall into them, thinking themselves to have been saints already; and thus they become angry and impatient with themselves, which is another imperfection. Often they beseech God, with great yearnings, that He will take from them their imperfections and faults, but they do this that they may find themselves at peace, and may not be troubled by them, rather than for God's sake; not realizing that, if He should take their imperfections from them, they would probably become prouder and more presumptuous still. They dislike praising others and love to be praised themselves; sometimes they seek out such praise. Herein they are like the foolish virgins, who, when their lamps could not be lit, sought oil from others.
San Juan de la Cruz
As for the vice of lust - aside from what it means for spiritual persons to fall into this vice, since my intent is to treat of the imperfections that have to be purged by means of the dark night - spiritual persons have numerous imperfections, many of which can be called spiritual lust, not because the lust is spiritual but because it proceeds from spiritual things. It happens frequently that in a person's spiritual exercises themselves, without the person being able to avoid it, impure movements will be experienced in the sensory part of the soul, and even sometimes when the spirit is deep in prayer or when receiving the sacraments of Penance or the Eucharist. These impure feelings arise from any of three causes outside one's control. First, they often proceed from the pleasure human nature finds in spiritual exercises. Since both the spiritual and the sensory part of the soul receive gratification from that refreshment, each part experiences delight according to its own nature and properties. The spirit, the superior part of the soul, experiences renewal and satisfaction in God; and the sense, the lower part, feels sensory gratification and delight because it is ignorant of how to get anything else, and hence takes whatever is nearest, which is the impure sensory satisfaction. It may happen that while a soul is with God in deep spiritual prayer, it will conversely passively experience sensual rebellions, movements, and acts in the senses, not without its own great displeasure. This frequently happens at the time of Communion. Since the soul receives joy and gladness in this act of love - for the Lord grants the grace and gives himself for this reason - the sensory part also takes its share, as we said, according to its mode. Since, after all, these two parts form one individual, each one usually shares according to its mode in what the other receives. As the Philosopher says: Whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the receiver. Because in the initial stages of the spiritual life, and even more advanced ones, the sensory part of the soul is imperfect, God's spirit is frequently received in this sensory part with this same imperfection. Once the sensory part is reformed through the purgation of the dark night, it no longer has these infirmities. Then the spiritual part of the soul, rather than the sensory part, receives God's Spirit, and the soul thus receives everything according to the mode of the Spirit.
San Juan de la Cruz
Now everything that you do is written in red or black in Angel Gabriel's book. Not for everyone is this record kept, but only for those who have taken a position of responsibility. There is a Law of Sins, and if you do not fulfil all your obligations, you will pay.
G.I. Gurdjieff
For a lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us everyday
Evelyn Underhill
We can only learn and advance with contradictions. The faithful inside should meet the doubtful. The doubtful should meet the faithful. Human slowly advances and becomes mature when he accepts his contradictions.
Shams-i Tabrizi
Everything is music for the born musician.
Romain Rolland
The Holy Spirit does not speak to a soul that is distracted and garrulous. He speaks by His quiet inspirations to a soul that is recollected, to a soul that knows how to keep silence.
Maria Faustina Kowalska
Man has no individual i. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small "i"s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, "i". And each time his i is different. just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion.
G.I. Gurdjieff
Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.
G.I. Gurdjieff
You must take these poems as mirrors; for you know that the mirror has no form of itself, but rather reflects the face of anyone who looks in it. Just so a poem has no one particular meaning of itself , but presents to each reader his state of the moment and the completeness of his case
Ayn al-Qazat Hamadani Persian Mystic
No matter how much individuals do through their own efforts, they cannot actively purify themselves enough to be disposed in the least degree for the divine union of the perfection of love. God must take over and purge them in that fire that is dark for them, as we will explain.
San Juan de la Cruz
In the most intimate, hidden and innermost ground of the soul, God is always essentially, actively, and substantially present. Here the soul possesses everything by grace which God possesses by nature.
John Tauler
If the angels were capable of envy, they would envy us for two things: one is the receiving of Holy Communion, and the other is suffering.
Maria Faustina Kowalska
Some day, we will know the value of suffering, but then we will no longer be able to suffer.
Maria Faustina Kowalska
Truth wears a crown of thorns
Maria Faustina Kowalska
Suffering is the greatest treasure on earth; it purifies the soul. In suffering, we learn who our true friend is.
Maria Faustina Kowalska
Let's not go into the past.
Ramakrishna
Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself — only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.
G.I. Gurdjieff
Common aim is stronger than blood.
G.I. Gurdjieff
From looking at your neighbor and realizing his true significance, and that he will die, pity and compassion will arise in you for him and finally you will love him.
G.I. Gurdjieff
If thou wilt be well with GOD, and have grace to rule thy life, and come to the joy of love: this name JESUS, fasten it so fast in thy heart that it come never out of thy thought. And when thou speakest to Him, and through custom sayst, JESUS, it shall be in thine ear, joy; in thy mouth, honey; and in thine heart, melody: for men shall think joy to hear that name be named, sweetness to speak it, mirth and song to think it. If thou thinkest (on) JESUS continually, and holdest it firmly, it purges thy sin, and kindles thine heart; it clarifies thy soul, it removes anger and does away slowness. It wounds in love and fulfils charity. It chases the devil, and puts out dread. It opens heaven, and makes a contemplative man. Have JESUS in mind, for that puts all vices and phantoms out from the lover.
Richard Rolle
Jesus loves hidden souls. A hidden flower is the most fragrant. I must strive to make the interior of my soul a resting place for the Heart of Jesus.
Maria Faustina Kowalska
Islands of memory begin to rise above the river of his life. At first they are little uncharted islands, rocks just peeping above the surface of the waters. Round about them and behind in the twilight of the dawn stretches the great untroubled sheet of water; then new islands, touched to gold by the sun.
Romain Rolland
Silence will illuminate you in God... and deliver you from phantoms of ignorance. Silence will unite you to God.... In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then from our very silence is born something that draws us into deeper silence. May God give you an experience of this 'something' that is born of silence
Isaac of Nenevah
One would say You had not left me for a single instant. "Did you doubt it?
Gabrielle Bossis
As the genuine religious impulse becomes dominant, adoration more and more takes charge. 'I come to seek God because I need Him', may be an adequate formula for prayer. 'I come to adore His splendour, and fling myself and all that I have at His feet', is the only possible formula for worship.
Evelyn Underhill
With respect also to spiritual sloth, beginners are apt to be irked by the things that are most spiritual, from which they flee because these things are incompatible with sensible pleasure. For, as they are so much accustomed to sweetness in spiritual things, they are wearied by things in which they find no sweetness. If once they failed to find in prayer the satisfaction which their taste required (and after all it is well that God should take it from them to prove them), they would prefer not to return to it: sometimes they leave it; at other times they continue it unwillingly. And thus because of this sloth they abandon the way of perfection (which is the way of the negation of their will and pleasure for God's sake) for the pleasure and sweetness of their own will, which they aim at satisfying in this way rather than the will of God.And many of these would have God will that which they themselves will, and are fretful at having to will that which He wills, and find it repugnant to accommodate their will to that of God. Hence it happens to them that oftentimes they think that that wherein they find not their own will and pleasure is not the will of God; and that, on the other hand, when they themselves find satisfaction, God is satisfied. Thus they measure God by themselves and not themselves by God, acting quite contrarily to that which He Himself taught in the Gospel, saying: That he who should lose his will for His sake, the same should gain it; and he who should desire to gain it, the same should lose it.
San Juan de la Cruz
The second cause whence these rebellions sometimes proceed is the devil, who, in order to disquiet and disturb the soul, at times when it is at prayer or is striving to pray, contrives to stir up these motions of impurity in its nature; and if the soul gives heed to any of these, they cause it great harm. For through fear of these not only do persons become lax in prayer—which is the aim of the devil when he begins to strive with them—but some give up prayer altogether, because they think that these things attack them more during that exercise than apart from it, which is true, since the devil attacks them then more than at other times, so that they may give up spiritual exercises.
San Juan de la Cruz
Wish' is the most powerful thing in the world. Higher than God.
G.I. Gurdjieff
While I don't equate the dark night with depression, I do think our depressive moods could be imagined spiritually rather than only psychologically.
San Juan de la Cruz
A single word can brighten the faceof one who knows the value of words.Ripened in silence, a single wordacquires a great energy for work.War is cut short by a word,and a word heals the wounds,and there’s a word that changespoison into butterand honey.Let a word mature inside yourself.Withhold the unripened thought.Come and understand the kind of wordthat reduces money and riches to dust.Know when to speak a wordand when not to speak at all.A single word turns the universe of hellinto eight paradises.Follow the Way. Don’t be fooledby what you already know. Be watchful.Reflect before you speak.A foolish mouth can brand your soul.Yunus, say one last thingabout the power of words –Only the word “I”divides me from God.
Yunus Emre
They can be like the sun, words.They can do for the heart what light can for a field.
San Juan de la Cruz
I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.
G.I. Gurdjieff
If you will but aspireYou will attain to all that you desire.Before an atom of such need the SunSeems dim and mirky by comparison.It is life's strength, the wings by which we flyBeyond the further reaches of the sky.
Farid ud-Din Attar
You are in prison. If you wish to get out of prison, the first thing you must do is realize that you are in prison. If you think you are free, you can't escape.
G.I. Gurdjieff
Reason, you'll always be half-blind.
Marguerite Porete
Act in such a way that all those who come in contact with you will go away joyful. Sow happiness about you because you have received much from God; give, then, generously to others. They should take leave of you with their hearts filled with joy, even if they have no more than touched the hem of your garment.
Maria Faustina Kowalska
The only type of sexual relations possible are those with someone who is as advanced and capable as oneself.
G.I. Gurdjieff
Some of us believe that God is almighty, and can do everything; and that he is all wise, and may do everything; but that he is all love, and will do everything— there we draw back.
Julian of Norwich
If you are working inwardly, Nature will help you. For the man who is working, Nature is sister of charity; she brings him what he needs for his work. If you need money for your work, even if you do nothing to get it, the money will come to you from all sides.
G.I. Gurdjieff
I will tell you one thing that will make you rich for life. There are two struggles: an Inner-world struggle and an Outer-world struggle...you must make an intentional contact between these two worlds; then you can crystallize data for the Third World, the World of the Soul.
G.I. Gurdjieff
Music is the soul of language.
Max Heindel
With thorns in the inner world there will always be roses in the outer world, in law-able compensation.
G.I. Gurdjieff
Only super-efforts count.
G.I. Gurdjieff
When I was a child, I saw God,I saw angels;I watched the mysteries of higher and lower worlds. I thought all men saw the same. At last I realized that they did not see.....
Shams Of Tabriz
Three deep cravings of the self, three great expressions of man's restlessness, which only mystic truth can fully satisfy. The first is the craving which makes him a pilgrim and a wanderer. It is the longing to go out from his normal world in search of a lost home, a 'better country'; an Eldorado, a Sarras, a Heavenly Syon. The next is the craving of heart for heart, of the Soul for its perfect mate, which makes him a lover. The third is the craving for inward purity and perfection, which makes him an ascetic, and in the last resort a saint.
Evelyn Underhill
One man may read the Bhagavata by the light of a lamp, and another may commit a forgery by that very light; but the lamp is unaffected. The sun sheds its light on the wicked as well as on the virtuous.
Ramakrishna
God has revealed to me that only the Paramatman, whom the Vedas describe as the Pure Soul, is as immutable as Mount Sumeru, unattached, and beyond pain and pleasure. There is much confusion in this world of His maya. One can by no means say that 'this' will come after 'that' or 'this' will produce 'that'.
Ramakrishna
Where there is no love, put love -- and you will find love.
San Juan de la Cruz
As long as I live, so long do I learn.
Ramakrishna
You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say that there are no stars in the heavens during the day? Because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God.
Ramakrishna
Songs of the SoulOn a dark night,Inflamed by love-longing -O exquisite risk! -Undetected I slipped away.My house, at last, grown still.Secure in the darkness,I climbed the secret ladder in disguise -O exquisite risk! -Concealed by the darkness.My house, at last, grown still.That sweet night: a secret.Nobody saw me;I did not see a thing.No other light, no other guideThan the one burning in my heart.This light led the wayMore clearly than the risen sunTo where he was waiting for me- The one I knew so intimately -In a place where no one could find us.O night, that guided me!O night, sweeter than sunrise!O night, that joined lover with Beloved!Lover transformed in Beloved!Upon my blossoming breast,Which I cultivated just for him,He drifted into sleep,And while I caressed him,A cedar breeze touched the air.Wind blew down from the tower,Parting the locks of his hair.With his gentle handHe wounded my neckAnd all my senses were suspended.I lost myself. Forgot myself.I lay my face against the Beloved's face.Everything fell away and I left myself behind,Abandoning my caresAmong the lilies, forgotten.
San Juan de la Cruz
There is another reason also why the soul has traveled safely in this obscurity; it has suffered: for the way of suffering is safer, and also more profitable, than that of rejoicing and of action. In suffering God gives strength, but in action and in joy the soul does but show its own weakness and imperfections. And in suffering, the soul practices and acquires virtue, and becomes pure, wiser, and more cautious.
San Juan de la Cruz
May I love Him whom to love is to live indeed.
William of Saint-Thierry
the night of thought is the light of perception.
Evelyn Underhill