Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/449

Rh God. Corresponding to this difference of the conception, Mohammedan mysticism has a very serene character, Christian mysticism a gloomy and melancholy character, while that of the Hindus, standing above both, in this respect also holds the mean.

Quietism, i.e., surrender of all volition, asceticism, i.e., intentional mortification of one s own will, and mysticism, i.e., consciousness of the identity of one s own nature with that of all things or with the kernel of the world, stand in the closest connection; so that whoever professes one of them is gradually led to accept the others, even against his intention. Nothing can be more surprising than the agreement with each other of the writers who present these doctrines, notwithstanding the greatest difference of their age, country, and religion, accompanied by the firm certainty and inward confidence with which they set forth the permanence of their inner experience. They do not constitute a sect, which adheres to, defends, and propagates a favourite dogma once laid hold of; indeed the Indian, Christian, and Mohammedan mystics, quietists, and ascetics are different in every respect, except the inner significance and spirit of their teaching. A very striking example of this is afforded by the comparison of the Torrens of Madame de Guion with the teaching of the Vedas, especially with the passage in the Oupnekhat, vol. i. p. 63, which contains the content of that French work in the briefest form, but accurately and even with the same images, and yet could not possibly have been known to Madame de Guion in 1680. In the "Deutschen Theologie" (the only unmutilated edition, Stuttgart, 1851) it is said in chapters 2 and 3 that both the fall of the devil and that of Adam consisted in the fact that the one as the other ascribed to himself the I and me, the mine and to me, and on p. 89 it is said: "In true love there remains neither I nor me, mine, to me, thou, thine, and the like." Now, corresponding to this, it is said in the "Kural," from the Tamilian by Graul, p. 8: "The passion of the