ABSTRACT
The mystic has more and more the impression of being that which he knows, and of knowing that which he is. Temporally rising, in fact, to levels of freedom, he knows himself real, and therefore knows Reality. The object of the mystic’s contemplation is always some aspect of the Infinite Life: of “God, the one Reality.” Hence, the enhancement of vitality which artists or other unselfconscious observers may receive from their communion with scattered manifestations of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, is in his case infinitely increased. Contemplation is not, like meditation, one simple state, governed by one set of psychic conditions. It is a name for a large group of states, partly governed— like all other forms of mystical activity— by the temperament of the subject, and accompanied by feeling-states which vary from the extreme of quietude or “peace in life naughted” to the rapturous and active love in which “thought into song is turned.”
