Archives: Third Party Stories

Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) was an English poet, novelist, and writer on mysticism.  Educated at King’s College for Women, London, Underhill was Upton Lecturer on the Philosophy of Religion at Manchester College, University of Oxford.  She was the first woman to address the clergy of the Church of England. Underhill wrote a number of books on mysticism, including Mysticism, The Mystic Way, Practical Mysticism, and The Essentials of Mysticism.

The following excerpt from The Letters of Evelyn Underhill describes her mystical experience:

“The first thing I found out was exalted and indescribable beauty in the most squalid places.  I still remember walking down the Notting Hill main road and observing the landscape [which was extremely sordid] with joy and astonishment.  Even the movement of traffic had something universal and sublime about it.  Of course, that does not last – but the after-flavour of it does, and now and then one catches it again.  When one does catch it, it is so real that to look upon it as wrong would be an unthinkable absurdity.  At the same time, one sees the world at those moments so completely as “energized by the invisible” that there is no temptation to rest in mere enjoyment of the visible.”

In another passage, from Mysticism, Underhill connects mystical consciousness to perfect love:

“A harmony is thus set up between the mystic and Life in all its forms.  Undistracted by appearance, he sees, feels, and knows it in one piercing act of loving comprehension….The heart outstrips the clumsy senses, and sees – perhaps for an instant, perhaps for long periods of bliss – an undistorted and more veritable world.  All things are perceived in the light of charity, and hence under the aspect of beauty: for beauty is simply Reality seen with the eyes of love….For such a reverent and joyous sight the meanest accidents of life are radiant.  The London streets are paths of loveliness; the very omnibuses look like coloured archangels, their laps filled full of little trustful souls.”

Photo Credit:  Evelyn Underhill from www.pbs.org.

Jane Morris-Goodall, Ph.D. (1934 – ) is a British primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and UN Messenger of Peace. Educated at Cambridge University, Goodall is considered to be the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees. Goodall is most well known for her 55 year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. Goodall has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. She has served on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project since its founding in 1996 and is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute for chimpanzee research and the Roots & Shoots global youth program.

Goodall’s mystical experience occurred in the forest of Gombe soon after she had returned from an intense six-week trip to America that involved “fund-raising dinners, conferences, meetings, and lobbying for various chimpanzee issues”:

“Lost in awe at the beauty around me, I must have slipped into a state of heightened awareness. It is hard – impossible really – to put into words the moment of truth that suddenly came upon me then. Even the mystics are unable to describe their brief flashes of spiritual ecstasy. It seemed to me, as I struggled afterward to recall the experience, the self was utterly absent: I and the chimpanzees, the earth and trees and air, seemed to merge, to become one with the spirit power of life itself. The air was filled with a feathered symphony, the evensong of birds. I heard new frequencies in their music and also in singing insects’ voices – notes so high and sweet I was amazed. Never had I been so intensely aware of the shape, the color of the individual leaves, the varied patterns of the veins that made each one unique. Scents were clear as well, easily identifiable: fermenting, overripe fruit; waterlogged earth; cold, wet bark; the damp odor of chimpanzee hair, and yes, my own too. And the aromatic scent of young, crushed leaves was almost overpowering….

That afternoon, it had been as though an unseen hand had drawn back a curtain and, for the briefest moment, I had seen through such a window. In a flash of “outsight” I had known timelessness and quiet ecstasy, sensed a truth of which mainstream science is merely a small fraction. And I knew that the revelation would be with me for the rest of my life, imperfectly remembered yet always within. A source of strength on which I could draw when life seemed harsh or cruel or desperate.”

Quoted from Jane Goodall’s Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey.

Edgar Mitchell, Sc.D., Ph.D. (1930 – 2016) was an American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, NASA astronaut, and consciousness research pioneer. Educated at Carnegie Mellon, The Naval Postgraduate School, and M.I.T., Mitchell was the Lunar Module Pilot for the Apollo 14 Moon Mission. He was the sixth person to walk on the moon. Among the many awards Mitchell received are the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal.

Mitchell described his mystical experience, which occurred on his way back to earth after nine hours of working on the moon’s surface, as follows:

“I had completed my major task for going to the moon and was on my way home and was observing the heavens and the earth from this distance, observing the passing of the heavens. As we were rotated, I saw the earth, the sun, the moon, and a 360 degree panorama of the heavens.

The magnificence of all of this was this trigger in my visioning. In the ancient Sanskrit, it’s called Samadhi. It means that you see things with your senses the way they are – you experience them viscerally and internally as a unity and a oneness accompanied by ecstasy.

All matter in our universe is created in star systems, and so the matter in my body, the matter in the spacecraft, the matter in my partners’ bodies, was the product of stars. We are stardust, and we’re all one in that sense.”

According to the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which Mitchell founded, “That moment, for Mitchell, was an epiphany, and it sowed the seeds of his next mission, which he described as follows:

‘To broaden the knowledge of the nature and potentials of mind and consciousness and to apply that knowledge to the enhancement of human well-being and the quality of life on the planet.’

To that end, he founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences [IONS] in 1973. Noetic, from the Greek word noetikos, means “inner/intuitive knowing.”

As a physical scientist, Mitchell had grown accustomed to directing his attention to the objective world “out there.” But the experience that came to him while hurtling through space led him to a startling hypothesis: Perhaps reality is more complex, subtle, and inexorably mysterious than conventional science had led him to believe. Perhaps a deep understanding of consciousness (inner space) could lead to a new and expanded view of reality in which objective and subjective, outer and inner, are understood as equal aspects of the miracle and mystery of being. In his words:

‘I realized that the story of ourselves as told by science – our cosmology, our religion – was incomplete and likely flawed. I recognized that the Newtonian idea of separate, independent, discreet things in the universe wasn’t a fully accurate description. What was needed was a new story of who we are and what we are capable of becoming.’” For nearly 40 years, the Institute of Noetic Sciences has worked toward that end.

Quoted from “In Memoriam: Edgar Mitchell, ScD, PhD”, a video prepared by the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

Jarena Lee (1783 – ?) was a nineteenth century African-American woman who eloquently described her mystical experience  in her autobiography, Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee.  Lee was the first African American woman to have an autobiography published in the United States.

Moreover, Lee was the first woman authorized to preach by Rev. Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was the first African-American denomination organized and incorporated in the United States.  Eventually, after the untimely death of her husband, Pastor Joseph Lee, Jarena Lee became a traveling minister.  In one year alone, she travelled 2,375 miles, giving 178 sermons.

Jarena Lee had the following salvation/mystical experience, which occurred during a sermon given by Rev. Richard Allen, as “her soul was gloriously converted to God, under preaching, at the very outset” of the reverend’s sermon:

“The text was barely pronounced, which was ‘I perceive thy heart is not right in the sight of God,’ when there appeared to my view, in the centre of the heart, one sin; and this was malice against one particular individual who had strove deeply to injure me, which I resented.  At this discovery, I said Lord I forgive every creature.  That instant, it appeared to me as if a garment, which had entirely enveloped my whole person, even to my fingers’ ends, split at the crown of my head, and was stripped away from me, passing like a shadow from my sight – when the glory of God seemed to cover me in its stead.

That moment, though hundreds were present, I did leap to my feet and declare that God, for Christ’s sake, had pardoned the sins of my soul.  Great was the ecstasy of my mind, for I felt that not only the sin of malice had been pardoned, but all other sins were swept away together.  That day was the first when my heart had believed, and my tongue had made confession into salvation – the first words uttered, a part of that song, which shall fill eternity with its sound, was glory to God.  For a few moments, I had power to exhort sinners, and to tell of the wonders of the goodness of Him who had clothed me with His salvation.”

Quoted from Jarena Lee’s Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee.

Photo Credit: Jarena Lee from www.usgennet.org.

Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745 – 1812) was a mystic, a communal activist, a philosopher, a halachic authority, a composer, an Orthodox Rabbi, and the founder of Chabad, then based in Liadi, Imperial Russia  (Chabad is an intellectual-mystical school of thought and a branch of Hasidic Judaism).  Rabbi Zalman was also the great-great-grandson of the mystic and philosopher Rabbi Judah Loew, the “Maharal of Prague”.

Rabbi Schneur Zalman displayed extraordinary talent even as a child. By eight years of age, he wrote an all- inclusive commentary on the Chumash (one of the five books of the Torah) based on the works of earlier Jewish philosophers.  Until the age of 12, he studied under Rabbi Issachar Ber, in Lubavitch, at which point Zalman had distinguished himself as a Talmudist and was sent home by his teacher to continue his studies unaided.  At his Bar Mitzvah celebration, Zalman delivered a discourse about the complex laws of Kiddush Hachodesh (blessing of the new month), after which the people of his town gave him the title “Rav”.

As the founder of Chabad, Rabbi Zalman was a spiritual guide who created a practical path that helps people to approach divinity.  Rabbi Zalman was the author of many works, and is best known for Shulchan Aruch HaRav, Siddur Torah Or, and Tanya, which expounds on such profound themes as the Oneness of God.

In his commentary on the Siddur, Rabbi Schneur Zalman stated that in mystical union, the existence of souls is “annihilated and they are comprised in the aspect of Nought in the source wherefrom they were extractred in the beginning…exactly as in the parable of the extinction of the wick in the fire that lies just beside it.”  According to Moshe Idel and Bernard McGinn, the authors of Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: An Ecumenical Dialogue, “God as the consuming fire is the major metaphor in this parable….the soul is here conceived as consumed by the divine flame that is apparently envisioned as surrounding it, just as the fire surrounds the wick.  In accordance with the parable, the wick nourishes the flame while it is at the same time consumed by it.”

Rabbi Schneur Zalman wrote the following of the state of mystical consciousness, a description which presumably described his experience:

“When man cleaves [i.e., adheres] to God, it is very delightful for Him [God], and very savorous for Him, so much so that He will swallow it into his heart, etc., as the corporeal throat swallows.  And this is the true cleaving, as he [man] becomes one substance with God in whom he was swallowed, without being separate [from God] to be considered a distinct entity at all.  That is the meaning [of the verse] ‘and you shall cleave to Him’ – (to cleave), literally.”

Quoted from Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: An Ecumenical Dialogue by Moshe Idel and Bernard McGinn.

Photo Credit: Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi from www.shturem.org.

Crashing Thunder (late 19th century – mid 20th century) was an American Indian who was a member of the Winnebago tribe. His life story – elicited, translated, and published by ethnologist Paul Radin as Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of an American Indian (1926) – reveals the day-to-day lives and the fundamental beliefs of the Winnebago.

Crashing Thunder was born in Wisconsin in a traditional Native American tribal setting. At the beginning of his autobiography, Crashing Thunder recounts that “An uncle of my mother named White Cloud spoke to her before I was born and told her, ‘You are about to give birth to a child who will not be an ordinary individual.’ As soon as I was being born, indeed as I was being washed – as my neck was being washed – I laughed out loudly.”

Crashing Thunder eventually moved from his birth town and became involved in the young, developing Native American Church. The church merged Christianity and traditional Native American religions and used Peyote in its rituals. (Peyote is a small, spineless cactus that is known for its psychoactive properties when ingested and used in certain areas as a supplement to various transcendence practices.)

In Mysticism in World Religion, author Sidney Spencer recounts that “On one occasion, Crashing Thunder tells, he became aware, as he prayed to Earthmaker [i.e., the divine creator of the world]…sitting among his fellow tribesman, of the presence of Earthmaker and of his own soul in its unity with him and with the souls of his fellows.”

In his autobiography, Crashing Thunder explained that:

“I prayed to God.  I bowed my head and closed my eyes and began to speak.  I said many things that I ordinarily never have spoken about.  As I prayed, I was aware of something above me and there He was, He to whom I was speaking, God.  That which we call soul, that which is God.  This is what I felt and saw.  At least this is what I learned.  I instantly became spirit; I was their [i.e., the fellow tribesmen’s] spirit or soul.  Whatever they thought of, I immediately knew.  I did not have to speak to them and get an answer to know what their thoughts were.  Then I thought of a certain place far away, and immediately, I was there.  I was my thought.

I looked about and watched the people around me and then when I opened my eyes I was myself in body again.  From now on thus it shall be, I felt….All those who heed God must be thus.”

Quoted from Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of an American Indian (edited by Paul Radin).

Photo Credit: Crashing Thunder from publishing.cdlib.org.

Howard Thurman (November 18, 1899 – April 10, 1981) was an influential African American philosopher, theologian, educator, author, and civil rights leader.  Thurman, along with Mordecai Johnson and Vernon Johns, is widely regarded as one of the three greatest African-American preachers of the early 20th-century.

Thurman was Dean of Chapel at Howard University and Boston University for over two decades.  In 1944, he helped establish the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, the first racially integrated, intercultural church in the United States.

Thurman wrote 21 books, including Meditations of the Heart; Deep River: Reflections on the Religious Insight of Certain of the Negro Spirituals; and Mysticism and the Experience of Love.

Howard Thurman wrote that “mysticism is defined as the response of the individual to a personal encounter with God within his own spirit.”  He described his mystical experience, which he remembers from his earliest childhood (and which some might classify as nature mysticism), as follows:

“The ocean and the night together surrounded my little life with a reassurance that could not be affronted by the behavior of human beings.  The ocean at night gave me a sense of timelessness, of existing beyond the reach of the ebb and flow of circumstances.  Death would be a minor thing, I felt, in the sweep of that natural embrace.”

He then described the experience of watching ocean storms:

“Again, the boundaries of self did not hold me.  Unafraid, I was held by the storms’ embrace.  The experience of these storms gave me a certain overriding immunity against much of the pain with which I would have to deal in the years ahead when the ocean was only a memory.  The sense held:  I felt rooted in life, in nature, in existence.”

In a later experience, Thurman described the touch of The Divine he felt.  In 1910, when Halley’s Comet passed across the sky and terrified him (along with millions of others), Howard’s mother reassured him by saying, “Nothing will happen to us, Howard.  God will take care of us.”  Thurman wrote of the experience:

“In that moment, something was touched and kindled in me, a quiet reassurance that has never quite deserted me.  As I look back on it, what I sensed then was the fact that what stirred in me was one with what created and controlled the comet.  It was this inarticulate awareness that silenced my fear and stilled my panic.  Here at once is the primary ground and basis of man’s experience of prayer.  I am calling it, for the purpose of this discussion, the ‘givenness of God’ as expressed in the hunger of the heart.”

Quoted from “What’s Love Got to Do with It? The Mysticism of Howard Thurman”, a paper prepared for Prairie Group by Rev. Wayne B. Arnason (November 2010).

Photo Credit: Howard Thurman from amistaducc.org.

Mahmud Shabistari (1288 – 1340) is one of the most celebrated Sufi poets of the 14th century.  He lived in Persia during the region’s Mongol invasions, a divisive and brutal period.

Shabistari’s most well-known work is a mystic text called “The Secret Rose Garden”, written in rhyming couplet. The work describes self-realization (mystical consciousness) and was written in response to seventeen queries concerning Sufi metaphysics posed to “the Sufi literati of Tabriz”” by Rukh Al Din Amir Husayn Harawi, a great figure of the time. Among Shabistari’s other works are The Book of Felicity and The Truth of Certainty about the Knowledge of the Lord of the Worlds.

Mahmud Shabistari advised that one should “Listen with faith to the call: ‘In all truth, I am God.’” He described his mystical awareness as follows:

“He who knows Reality, to whom Unicity [(oneness)] is revealed
Sees at first gaze the Light of Being;
He perceives by illumination that pure light;
He sees God first in everything he sees.
Abstraction is the condition of authentic thought
For then the lighting of divine succor [(relief)] illumines us.”

Quoted by Andrew Harvey from The Essential Mystics: The Soul’s Journey into Truth.

Image Credit:  Mahmud Shabistari from www.poetry-chaikhana.com.

Saint Angela of Foligno (1248 –1309) was a Christian mystic who wrote extensively about her mystical revelations.  She is well known not only for her spiritual writings, but also for founding a religious community devoted to her vision of caring for those in need.  Pope Francis declared Angela of Foligno a saint in October, 2013.

Angela of Foligno was married (presumably early in life) and had children.  At around forty years of age, she reportedly had a vision of Saint Francis and recognized the emptiness of her life.  From that time on, she led a life devoted to higher perfection.  Within a few years of the vision, her mother, husband, and children all passed away.

Saint Angela of Foligno wrote the following of her mystical consciousness:

“The eyes of my soul were opened, and I beheld the plenitude of God, wherein I did comprehend the whole world, both here and beyond the sea, and the abyss and ocean and all things.  In all these things I beheld naught save the divine power, in a manner assuredly indescribable; so that through excess of marveling the soul cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘This whole world is full of God!’  Wherefore I now comprehended how small a thing is the whole world, that is to say both here and beyond the seas, the abyss, the ocean, and all things; and that the Power of God exceeds and fills all.

Quoted by Andrew Harvey from The Essential Mystics: The Soul’s Journey into Truth.

Image Credit:  Saint Angela of Foligno from www.piercedhearts.org.

Hadewijch (also known as Hadewijch of Antwerp) was a 13th-century poet and mystic.  She is believed to have lived in in the Duchy of Brabant, a state of the Holy Roman Empire.

No details of Hadewijch’s life are known beyond the limited indications from her writings.  Her letters suggest that she functioned as the head of a beguine house (a Christian women’s house in which the women were not bound by permanent vows, in contrast to women who entered convents).  Hadewijch’s extant writings include “Poems in Stanzas” and “Poems in Couplets”, as well as her “list of the perfect ones”.

The following poem describes her mystical consciousness:

“All things
are too small
to hold me,
I am so vast

In the Infinite
I reach
for the Uncreated

I have
touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide

Everything else
Is too narrow

You know this well,
you who are also there”

Quoted by Andrew Harvey from The Essential Mystics: The Soul’s Journey into Truth.

Image Credit:  Hadewijch from www.monasteria.org.