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Author Topic: MYSTICS AND MYSTICISM  (Read 3018 times)

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Offline JR

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MYSTICS AND MYSTICISM
« on: February 24, 2007, 12:31:02 AM »
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  • What is mysticism? It is an attitude of mind. It means a direct, immediate, first hand, intuitive apprehension of God. It implies a silent enjoyment of God It is ineffable mystical experience incapable of expression.

    This type of ineffable experience is closely linked with its character. There are three faculties involved in this experience-(1) Intellect, (2) Feeling, (3) and Will. These three faculties to-gethe enable us to have full experience of God but there is one special organ to view it. To see God face to face needs a deter¬minative prolonged and continued exercise or effort of the will.

    It is an exercise of an intensive cultivation of the emotions too. The three faculties of Intelligence, Will and Feeling are all necessary in the case of mystical endeavour and they should be backed by intuition.
    The mystics of all ages and climes form an eternal divine society. There is no racial, no communal, no national prejudices among them. Time and space have nothing to do with the eternal and infinite character of their mystical experience.

    Dnyaneshwar was one of the greatest mystics the world has ever seen. He can be fitly compared with Dante, whose vision, philosophic imagination, and poetic melody are just a counterpart of Dnyaneshwar. He can most appropriately be compared with the brilliant St. John of the Cross, whose fulness and variety of mystical experience and whose manner of presenting it stand al¬most unsurpassed in the literature of western mysticism. Besides, he can be compared with the mystical luminaries of the west as Plotinus, Augustine, Eckhart and Baron Von Hugel-

    Maharashtra had given birth to three female mystics, namely Muktabai, Janabai and Kanhopatra. These female mystics are more subjective in their temperament rather than activistic. Sexual symbolism in religion is less prominent with them.

    Tukaram is yet a different type of mystic. He possesses per. sonaiistic element whose joys and fears, griefs and tears, wailings and railings, as well as whose final consummation are exactly like those of his Indian compeer. It is a fruitful consummation towards the "Grace Abounding". It is a mystical ecstatic consciousness of the God's Vision.

    Yet one more outstanding mystic of Maharashtra is Ramdas. He is of an activistic type. He had a political colouring to his religious teaching and founded an Order of disciples. His teaching can be summed up: "One should spend one's entire life in strenuous work, and yet again in steady contemplation in a moment. It is a combination of the active and spiritual life. The most inward man must live his life in two ways — namely in work and rest, in each, he must be whole and undivided, and is per¬petually called by God to renew both his rest and work. He is living and willing instrument of God, with which God works whatsoever He wills and howsoever He wills. He is thus strong and courageous in suffering all that God allows to befall him and is ready alike for contemplation and action."

    And what is action? It is a Yoga - Yoga is skill in action. "Perform action', 0 Dhananjaya, dwelling in union with the Divine, renouncing attachments and balanced evenly in success and failure: equilibrium is called Yoga " (Bhagawadgita) All yogis are mys¬tics but all mystics are not yogis. Yoga is quite different.
    Dnyaneshwar tells us that "when the tree of unreality has been cut down, one is able to see one's self, one's own form. The vision of the individual self is as a spring which may exist in its own fulness even when it does not come up into a well.

    When water dries up, the image in it goes back to its prototype; when fuel is burnt, fire returns into itself, in a similar way, is the vision of the Self by the Self. This is the Ultimate Being which exists in itself, after reaching which, there is no return".

    In the same way Upanishads tell us that when a man rea¬ches the acme of his spiritual realisation, "he sees his Self, his own form, suffused in a halo of dazzling light."

    Such too was Shri Sai Baba of Shirdi. We do get a glimpse from his utterances and incomprehensible behaviour at times. Sai Baba was the greatest and ideal sage of the early twentieth cen¬tury. He was without inward difference and without difference from the rest of Being. He was beyond everything. He always dwelt in eternal tranquillity. His method of teaching and prea¬ching was absolutely his own. It was some times direct and at other times indirect; yet he never preached but exhibited by action of his ownself. It was and is still a wonderful life. Baba al¬ways bathed in Divine Light. He was a great Yogi. He was a great mystic too.

    Such are the mystics and their mysticism.
    Prof,  Vaman H.  Pandit
    13, Khatipura Road, Indore City (M. P.)
    सबका मालिक एक - Sabka Malik Ek

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