‘One can only say that those who experience it [the aesthetic emotion] feel it to have a peculiar quality of “reality” which makes it a matter of infinite importance in their lives. Any attempt I might make to explain this would probably land me in the depths of mysticism. On the edge of that gulf I stop’.
Among people who reject the mystical state, the only yardstick for measuring the will-to-decreate is sadomasochism
Simone Weil, Waiting for God, 171-172
Virginia Woolf
Lucie Brock-Broido from A Hunger
Addressing God, he writes, ‘And where was I when I was seeking for you? You were there, in front of me; but I had gone away even from myself. I could not even find myself, much less find you’
The mystic thinks of his existence under the pure undifferentiated conception of Being, and sinks himself therein
Now it is because you approached the All and did not remain in a part of it, and you did not even say of yourself `I am just so much,’ but by rejecting the `so much’ you have become all. You will increase yourself then by rejecting all else, and the All will be present to you in your rejection.
So arises out of this almost nihilistic abyss the noble thing that is called Praise; which no one will ever understand while he identifies it with nature-worship or pantheistic optimism. When we say that a poet praises the whole of creation, we commonly mean only that he praises the whole cosmos. But this sort of poet [the mystic] does really praise creation, in the sense of the act of creation. He praises the passage or transition from nonentity to entity. The mystic who passes through the moment when there is nothing but God does in some sense behold the beginningless beginnings in which there was really nothing else. He not only appreciates everything but the nothing of which everything was made. In a fashion he endures and answers even the earthquake irony of the Book of Job; in some sense he is there when the foundations of the world are laid, with the morning stars singing together and the sons of God shouting for joy
Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: An Ecumenical Dialogue, edited by Moshe Idel, Bernard McGinn
The one who adheres to God becomes one spirit (unus spiritus) with him
Everyone who perceives must have some relationship to the light, by which he is made able to perceive, and everything which is perceived has a relationship with God, Who is Light, that is, all which perceives and all which is perceived.
Little Bristling Soul 