Quote from A History of God

A History of God: The 4,000 year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

by Karen Armstrong

Ballantine Books, New York, New York, 1993            483 pages

The God of the mystics is not easy to apprehend. . . Mystics often insist that human beings must deliberately create this sense of God for themselves, with the same degree of care and attention that others devote to artistic creation . . . Even if we are incapable of the higher states of consciousness achieved by a mystic, we can learn that God does not exist in any simplistic sense, for example, or that the very word 'God' is only a symbol of a reality that ineffably transcends it. . . if these notions are not felt upon the pulse and personally appropriated, they are likely to seem meaningless abstractions.

Mysticism was often seen as an esoteric discipline . . . because these truths could only be perceived by the intuitive part of the mind after special training. They mean something different when they are approached by this particular route, which is not accessible to the logical, rationalist faculty. (p. 397)

-- quote submitted by Mona B.

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