Christian Mysticism Quotes

“When the presence of God emerges from our inmost being into our faculties, whether we walk down the street or drink a cup of soup, divine life is pouring into the world.”
― Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel

“Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.”
― Simone Weil, Love in the Void: Where God Finds Us

“In ancient times, the temple of Delphi proclaimed „Know Thyself“ and the Greek philosophers made it their central theme, because in the knowing of one‘s true Self, we discover not a name or a lineage, but a whole new dimension of what it means to be human. In our very mortality is embedded something of the eternal. Encased within the bones and sinews that are destined to disintegrate is Spirit that comes from beyond and returns home when we are „born into Heaven“ as the Orthodox say, or when we cross that threshold. These ideas cannot be reduced to mere belief systems and dogmas. They have been vividly part of the human experience from the beginning. (p. 8-9)”
― Theodore J. Nottingham, Doorway to Spiritual Awakening: Becoming Partakers of the Divine

“Sacrifice, surrender, negation, are inherently involved in any great onwardmarching life. They go with any choice that can be made of a rich and intense life. It is impossible to find without losing, to get without giving, to live without dying. But sacrifice, surrender, negation, are never for their own sake; they are never ends in themselves. They are involved in life itself.”
― Rufus Matthew Jones, The Inner Life

“It is not strange that a synoptic writer reports the saying: 'No man knoweth the Father but the Son.' The passage as it stands reported in Matthew may be colored by later theology, but there is a nucleus of absolute truth hidden in the saying. There is no other way to know God but this way of inner love-experience.”
― Rufus Matthew Jones, The Inner Life

“Churches don't hold divinity, human hearts do.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Good Scientist: When Science and Service Combine

“The heart governs and reigns”, state the Macarian Homilies: it is the dominant element in our total human structure, the controlling power. It governs and reigns, more specifically, “over the whole bodily organism”: it is in the first place a corporeal organ, located in the chest, which acts as the physical center of the human being; when our heart stops beating, we die. Yet this is not all. The Homilies go on to say that the heart rules also over the “thoughts”, and that “there in the heart is the intellect”. The heart is not only the physical but the psychic and spiritual center. The Greek word
used here for “intellect”, nous, signifies not only the reasoning brain but also, more fundamentally, a higher faculty of intuitive insight and mystical vision. Elsewhere in the Macarian Homilies it is stated that the nous within the heart is like the eye within the body; in other words, through the use of the intellect within the heart we do not merely reach conclusions by means of discursive
argumentation, but the intellect enables us to see the truth in a direct and unmediated manner. The heart in which the intellect dwells is thus the faculty with which we think, both in a rational and a suprarational way. It is both the seat of reasoning intelligence and also, on a higher or deeper level, the place of wisdom and spiritual knowledge (gnosis). (p. 13)”
― James S. Cutsinger, Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East

“Darkness is always trying to overcome the light and what we know from Advent and from the resurrection is that darkness cannot overcome the light. And that is a truth that can carry you into bliss and hope all the days of your life. (p. 50)”
― Theodore J. Nottingham, Doorway to Spiritual Awakening: Becoming Partakers of the Divine

“Love is Not A Christian Thing (The Sonnet)

Love thy neighbor is not a christian thing,
Love stuck in barriers stays love no more.
Shalom, ahava, simcha are not jewish concepts,
Peace, love and joy constitute life's core.
There's no christianity, there's only love,
There's no buddhism, there's only compassion,
There's no naskarism, there's only humanity,
There's no humanism, there's only assimilation.
Faith that raises walls within the mind,
Is faith of the prehistoric savages.
Faith has a place in civilized society,
Only if it helps break assumptions and barriers.
Let us come together across faith and culture.
Let us be companions in each other's adventure.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Giants in Jeans: 100 Sonnets of United Earth

“Friday Azaan and Sunday Choir,
All pray to the same light.
Yet in our divisive stupidity,
We use it as excuse to maintain divide.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World

“Indeed, even if you make God your goal, all the works you perform for his sake will be dead, and you will only spoil those works which are genuinely good. Not only will you spoil your good works, but you will also commit sins, for you will be behaving like a gardener who is supposed to plant a garden but who pulls out all the trees instead and then demands his wages. That is how you will spoil your good works. And so, if you wish to live and wish your works to live too, then you must be dead to all things and be reduced to nothing. It is a property of creatures to make one thing from another, but it is a property of God to make something from nothing. And so if God is to make something of you or in you, then you must first yourself become nothingness. Enter your own inner ground therefore and act from there, and all your works shall be living works. That is why ' the wise man' says that 'the just person lives in eternity' since it is because they are just that such a person acts, and all their works are living works.”
― Meister Eckhart, Selected Writings

“I may be called by different titles in different parts of the world - in the west, a humanitarian scientist or a christian mystic - in the middle-east, a sufi or a pir - in the east, an advaitin or a buddha, but beyond the layers of terminologies, I am just a human living as human.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“Within the heart is an unfathomable depth.
—The Macarian Homilies

*Macarius of Egypt was a Coptic Christian monk and hermit.”
― James S. Cutsinger, Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East

“You will find that there is a mighty power, a non-exclusive, eternal dimension that actually can change your psychology, your joy of life; it can lift you up, give you a sense of self beyond anything you imagined to empower you to become that child of the universe, a child of God to whom miracles of goodness can come. Take the time to seek; take the time to rediscover the depths of these teachings and everything will change. (p. 20)”
― Theodore J. Nottingham, Doorway to Spiritual Awakening: Becoming Partakers of the Divine

“Salvation is healing [sozo], fullness of life, and life in abundance. And we learn in this ancient teaching at the dawn of time that this is the kind of Uncreated One and mystery at the heart of the universe who made us. And then we hear a teaching, „Now wait for the Lord. My soul waits.“ Now it‘s not like waiting at a bus stop. It‘s an intentional attentive waiting. It‘s patience. It‘s certainty that God will come to help us. Who dares to wait patiently in the midst of distress? That is the way that we are given. That is the spiritual instruction. Wait for the Lord knowingly, expecting that you will have help. If you don‘t wait, if you run off and give up and say, „Okay, time‘s up. I tried that; I‘m going to do something else“ – that‘s what we call outer darkness, you‘re on your own. Wait for the Lord. (p. 44)”
― Theodore J. Nottingham, Doorway to Spiritual Awakening: Becoming Partakers of the Divine

“The word Church (Ecclesia) means: The assembly of those who are called out. In other words, each individual who is called out of a godless world gathers with companions on the Way and becomes part of the Body of Christ together – incarnations of Divine Goodness. (p. 45)”
― Theodore J. Nottingham, Doorway to Spiritual Awakening: Becoming Partakers of the Divine

“Let us come into this holy place cleansed, purified. That's how we honor God. That's how we prove our belief in the arrival of the divine in the midst of our lives. God will help the one who seeks to make those efforts. Finally he says, „Put on (or clothe) yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ. Don't think of that as some other unapproachable metaphor. It means think like Him. Live like Him. Not as a vagrant, but as a compassionate person, a forgiving person. Even if you're the only one in the crowd. Don't let the poison of negativity get contagious on you. Recognize it for what it is. Put on Christ, nothing less. Each one of us is called to that. Because in putting on that understanding of life, you find your true Self, your true destiny, your true joy. (p. 52)”
― Theodore J. Nottingham, Doorway to Spiritual Awakening: Becoming Partakers of the Divine

“That „road less traveled by“ is a modern parallel to the ancient mystical metaphor „the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it“ (Matthew 7:14) This less traveled, more difficult „road“ is the living out of a spiritual life rather than a mere survival in our short passage through time […] The less traveled road, or the mystic way as others might call it, is therefore a process of sublimation carrying the relationship of the self with the universe to higher levels than our ordinary states of awareness. But this is no selfish journey. For as the mystic grows nearer the source of true life and participates in the creative energies of the Divine, he or she is capable of greater unselfish activity to the point of unconditional Love […] This is the journey of the one who chooses „the road less traveled“ and there are many who have witnessed to the fact that this harder road, this narrow way, is an inner journey leading to the infinite depths of our True Self, crossing the threshold into becoming a conscious Child of God, a Child of the Universe. (p. 205 -215)”
― Theodore J. Nottingham, Doorway to Spiritual Awakening: Becoming Partakers of the Divine

“It is one thing to have faith based on a body of doctrine, but it is quite another to build our faith on the experience of God’s presence in our lives. It is a matter of seeing reality as it actually is, not as others want us to see it. William James said, ‘The range of mystical experience is very wide.”
― William O Paulsell, Longing for God: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism

“Marking a cross on yourself ain't divinity, crossing out the self for others is real divinity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervish Advaitam: Gospel of Sacred Feminines and Holy Fathers

“It is love thy neighbor, not worship thy bishop, or serve thy vatican.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Either Reformist or Terrorist: If You Are Terror I Am Your Grandfather

“There is no God, only heart nonsectarian. In that heart, You, I, the Father, the Son, all are one.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Bulldozer on Duty

“Becoming christian and converting to christianity are two different things. Converting to christianity means having the paperwork that says you are christian. Becoming christian means becoming christ-like in every aspect of life, no matter the paperwork.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Divane Dynamite: Only truth in the cosmos is love

“Spirit of Christmas doesn't grow on a fir tree, Christmas blooms wherever the heart is hatefree.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sin Dios Sí Hay Divinidad: The Pastor Who Never Was

“The changing of work, which is duty, into play, is effected as a consequence of the presence of the “zone of perpetual silence”, where one draws from a sort of secret and intimate respiration, whose sweetness and freshness accomplishes the anointing of work and transforms it into play. [...] For silence is the sign of real contact with the spiritual world and this contact, in turn, always engenders the influx of forces. This is the foundation of all mysticism, all gnosis, all magic and all practical esotericism in general. All practical esotericism is founded on the following rule: it is necessary to be one in oneself (concentration without effort) and one with the spiritual world (to have a zone of silence in the soul) in order for a revelatory or actual spiritual experience to be able to take place.”
― Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism