e whole pantheistic and
optimistic, or at least the opposite of pessimistic. It is
anti-naturalistic, and harmonizes best with twice-bornness and
so-called other-worldly states mind.

My next task is to inquire whether we can invoke it as authoritative.
Does it furnish any WARRANT FOR THE TRUTH of the twice-bornness and
supernaturality and pantheism which it favors?

I must give my answer to this question as concisely as I can. In brief
my answer is this--and I will divide it into three parts:--

(1) Mystical states, when well developed, usually are, and have the
right to be, absolutely authoritative over the individuals to whom they
come.

(2) No authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for
those who stand outside of them to accept their revelations
uncritically.

(3) They break down the authority of the non-mystical or rationalistic
consciousness, based upon the understanding and the senses alone. They
show it to be only one kind of consciousness.

They open out the possibility of other orders of truth, in which, so
far as anything in us vitally responds to them, we may freely continue
to have faith.

I will take up these points one by one.

1.

As a matter of psychological fact, mystical states of a well-pronounced
and emphatic sort ARE usually authoritative over those who have
them.[281] They have been "there," and know. It is vain for
rationalism to grumble about this. If the mystical truth that comes to
a man proves to be a force that he can live by, what mandate have we of
the majority to order him to live in another way? We can throw him
into a prison or a madhouse, but we cannot change his mind--we commonly
attach it only the more stubbornly to its beliefs.[282] It mocks our
utmost efforts, as a matter of fact, and in point of logic it
absolutely escapes our jurisdiction. Our own more "rational" beliefs
are based on evidence exactly similar in nature to that which mystics
quote for theirs. Our senses, namely, have assured us of certain
states of fact; but mystical experiences are as direct perceptions of
fact for those who have them as any sensations ever were for us. The
records show that even though the five senses be in abeyance in them,
they are absolutely sensational in their epistemological quality, if I
may be pardoned the barbarous expression--that is, they are face to
face presentations of what seems immediately to exist. [281] I abstract
from weaker states, and fro