mysticism was and is as common as prayer and as
popular as science. It was taught in manuals and parodied by charlatans.
When mysticism is the staple crop of a religion and not a rare wild
flower, the percentage of imperfect specimens is bound to be high. The
Buddha, Sankara and a host of less well-known teachers were as strenuous
and influential as Francis of Assisi or Ignatius Loyola. Neither in
Europe nor in Asia has mysticism contributed much directly to political
and social reform. That is not its sphere, but within the religious
sphere, in preaching, teaching and organization, the mystic is intensely
practical and the number of successes (as of failures) is greater in
Asia than in Europe. Even in theory Indian mysticism does not repudiate
energy. No one enjoyed more than the Buddha himself what Ruysbroeck
calls "the mysterious peace dwelling in activity," for before he began
his mission he had attained nirvana and such of his disciples as were
arhats were in the same case. Later Buddhism recognizes a special form
of nirvana called apratishthita: those who attain it see that there is
no real difference between mundane existence and nirvana and therefore
devote themselves to a life of beneficent activity.

The period of transition and trial known to European mystics as the Dark
Night of the Soul, is not mentioned in Indian manuals as an episode of
the spiritual life, for such an interruption would hardly harmonize with
their curriculum of regular progress towards enlightenment. But mystic
poetry testifies that in Asia as in Europe this feeling of desertion and
loneliness is a frequent experience in the struggles and adventures of
the soul. It is apparently not necessary, just as the incidental joys
and triumphs of the soul--strains of heavenly music, aerial flights, and
visions of the universal scheme--are also not essential. The essential
features of the mystic way, as well as its usual incidents, are common
to Asia and Europe, and in both continents are expressed in two forms.
One view contrasts the surface life and a deeper life: when the
intellect ceases to plague and puzzle, something else arises from the
depth and makes its unity with some greater Force to be felt as a
reality. This idea finds ample expression in the many Brahmanic systems
which regarded the centre and core of the human being as an _atman_ or
_purusha_, happy when in the undisturbed peace of its own nature but
distracted by the senses and inte