Dean Inge Quotes

In mystical traditions, it is one's own readiness that makes experiences exoteric or esoteric. The secret isn't that you're not being told. The secret is that you're not able to hear.

I became a student of the history of religion. I am fascinated by how religions often center on mystical experience, and in the Old Testament tradition you find flames, the burning bush.

Mysticism, poor mysticism! When it is underestimated and oversimplified, it comes down from its original sphere and stands beside religion.

I'm a storyteller, and I have really good material to work with: I've been studying magic and the occult since about 1983.

Thinking about quantum physics is like unraveling your brain and putting it back together again upside down. Much like studying Kabbalah.

Many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of 'spirituality' or 'mysticism' to be synonymous with mental illness, conscious fraud, or self-deception. I have argued elsewhere that this is a problem - because millions of people have had experiences for which 'spiritual' and 'mystical' seem the only terms available.

It is possible to spend one's entire lifetime without ever experiencing the mystical realms or even without being aware of their existence.

The true Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language and offers no other signs.

I'll tell you what: I believe mysticism is a very serious endeavor. One must be equipped for it.

In my tradition, one must wait until one has learned a lot of Bible and Talmud and the Prophets to handle mysticism. This isn't instant coffee. There is no instant mysticism.

The Egyptian was the reverse of a theorist or mere thinker. He wanted to perceive with his senses how the soul took its way from the dead body into higher realms - he wanted to have this constructed before him.

I would like to do a role that has something to do with mysticism or even a supernatural one.

I really am a mystic. I don't know where I got it from.

To work magic is to weave the unseen forces into form; to soar beyond sight; to explore the uncharted dream realm of the hidden reality.

The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.

I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magick of numbers.

There is in the darkness a unity, if you will, that cannot be achieved in any other environment, a blending of self with what the self perceives, and exquisite mystical experience.

Mysticism is just tomorrow's science dreamed today.

The language of [Catholic] mysticism - its repeated attempts to lay consciousness itself bare and speak all the intensely opposing yet interconnected parts of it that cannot be spoken.

Look at this life - all mystery and magic.

Alchemy is really the secret tradition of the redemption of spirit from matter.

Astrology, the noblest of sciences.

Religion is nothing but institutionalized mysticism. The catch is, mysticism does not lend itself to institutionalization. The moment we attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence. Religion, then, is mysticism in which the mystical has been killed. Or, at least diminished.

Disbelieve nothing wonderful concerning the gods, nor concerning divine dogmas.

Beyond these models of reconciliation, a theology of mysticism provides some hope for common ground between Christianity and Islam. Both religions have within their histories examples of ecstatic union with God, which seem at odds with their own spiritual traditions but have much in common with each other.