Mystic Way

Excerpt from The Mystic Way: A Psychological Study in Christian Origins The examination of Christian origins from the psycho logical point of view suggests that Christianity began as a mystical movement of the purest kind; that its Founder and those who succeeded Him possessed the characteristic ally mystical consciousness, and passed through the normal stages of mystical growth. Hence its nature is best understood by comparison with those lesser mystical movements in which life has again and again asserted her unconquerable instinct for transcendence; and the heroic personalities through whom the Christian vision of reality was first expressed, are most likely to yield up the secret of their more abundant life when studied by the help of those psychological principles which have been deduced from the general investigation of the mystical type. The great Christians of the primitive time, the great mystics in whom their spirit has lived on, exhibit, one and all, an organic growth, pass through a series of profound psychic changes and readjustments, by which they move from the condition of that which we like to call the normal man to that state of spiritual maturity, of an actually heightened correspondence with Reality, an actually enhanced power of dealing with circumstance, which they sometimes call the Unitive Life. This sequence of psychological states is the Mystic Way, which gives its title to my book. Its existence is not a pious opinion, but a fact, which is attested by countless mystics of every period and creed, and is now acknow ledged by most students of religious psychology; yet its primary importance for the understanding of our earliest Christian documents has been generally overlooked. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.