“In all things is shown the Face of faces, veiled and in a riddle.  Howbeit unveiled it is not seen, until, above all faces, a man enter into a certain secret and mystic silence, where there is no knowing or concept of a face.  This mist, cloud, darkness or ignorance, into which he that seeketh thy face entereth, when he goeth beyond all knowledge and concept, is the state below which Thy Face cannot be found, except veiled; but that very darkness revealeth Thy Face to be there beyond all veils.  Hence I observe how needful it is for me to enter into the darkness and to admit the coincidence of opposites, beyond all grasp of reason, and there to seek the Truth, where Impossibility meeteth us.”         From The Visions of God, Nicholas of Cusa

“The simple, absolute and immutable mysteries of divine Truth are hidden in the super-luminous darkness of that silence which revealeth in secret.  For this darkness, though of deepest obscurity, is yet radiantly clear; and though beyond touch and sight, it more than fills our unseeing minds with spendours of transcendent beauty…And we behold that darkness beyond being, concealed under all natural light.”  On the Mystical Theology, Dionysius The Areopagite

“There is a mode of knowing that is above intelligence, a divine madness.”  Proclus

“When the inward and the outward are illumined, and all is clear, you are one with the light of sun and moon.  When developed to its ultimate state, this is a round luminosity which nothing can deceive, the subtle body of a unified spirit, pervading the whole universe.  Then you have the same function as the sun and moon.”  Awakening to the Tao, Liu I-Ming

“It is the special vocation of the mystical consciousness to mediate between two orders, going out in loving adoration towards God and coming home to tell the secrets of Eternity to other men; so the artistic self-expression of this consciousness has also a double character.”  Evelyn Underhill, from Introduction to Songs of Kabir.

“I am not concerned with finding a conceptual ‘pigeonhole’ for ecstasy.  It is the unclassifiable aspect of ecstasy that interest me…The ecstatic individual may be explained in terms of psychology, physiology, pathology; what is important to us is that which remains beyond explanation: the individual’s experience.  We pay no heed here to those notions which are bent on establishing ‘order’ even in the darkest corners; we are listening to a human being speak of the soul and of the soul’s ineffable mystery.”  Martin Buber, from Ecstatic Confessions, the Heart of Mysticism.

“Mystical experience is the direct, unmediated experience of what Bede Griffiths beautifully describes as ‘the presence of an almost unfathomable mystery…which seems to be drawing me to itself.’  This mystery is beyond name and beyond form; no name or form, no dogma, philosophy, or set of rituals can ever express it fully.  It always transcends anything that can be said of it and remains always unstained by any of our human attempts to limit or exploit it.”  Andrew Harvey, from The Essential Mystics, the Soul’s Journey into Truth.

“As soon as we really have something to say, we are forced to be silent.  Yet often the mystic is torn between silence and a burning desire to communicate the content of his silence.”  Fritz Mauthner