Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/43

 32 K. PEARSON : must be concentrated on one object, the mystical contem- plation of the supersensuous deity, the ' nothing of noth- ing,' of which the soul, if it seeks for true union cannot and must not form any idea (Ib., 13-15). Not by an intellectual development, but by sheer passivity, by waiting for the transcendental action of God can the soul attain the higher knowledge, pass through the eternal birth. This intellectual nihilism, this ignorance, is not a fault, but the highest perfection ; it is the only step the mind can take towards its union with God (Ib., 16). The soul must so far as in it lies, separate itself from the phenomenal world, renounce all sensuous action, even cease to think under the old forms. Then, when all the powers of the soul are withdrawn from their works and conceptions (von alien irn werken und bilden), when all creature-emotions are discarded, God will speak his word, the Son will be born in the soul (Ib., 6-9). This renunciation of all sensational existence (alle dzewendikeit der crcatureri) is an absolutely necessary prelude to the re-birth (ewiye gebtirt, Ib., 14). Memory, understanding, will, sensation, must be thrown aside ; the soul must free itself from here and from now, from matter and from manifoldness (lipliclikeit uncle manic- valtikeit). Poor in spirit and having nothing, willing nothing and knowing nothing, even renouncing all outward religious works and observances, the soul awaits the coming of God (II., 24-25, 143, 296, 309, 280). Then arrives the instant when, as by a transcendental process the higher knowledge is conveyed to the soul, it attains its freedom by union with God. Henceforth God takes the place of the active reason, and is the source whence the passive reason draws its conceptions. The soul is no longer bound by matter and time ; it has transcended these limits and grasped the reality beyond. Everywhere the soul sees God, as one who has long gazed on the sun sees it in whatever direction he turns his glance (Ib., 19, 28-29). Such is the beatitude which follows the re-birth (Swige // A^/-/). "Holy and all holy are they, who are thus placed in the eternal now beyond time and place and form and matter, unmoved by body and by pain and by riches and by poverty" (Ib., 7.")). Strange is this emotional Nirvana of the German mystic, though it is a religious phenomenon not unknown to the psychologist (or often fitter study for the physiologist). This emotional Nirvana, or seclusion (dbgeschiedenheit, Ib., 486-7) as Eckehart calls it, is pronounced to have exactly the same results as the intellectual beatitude of Gautama and Spinoza. The soul has returned to the state