rtion, and this is that unity underlies diversity. This, their
starting-point and their goal, is the basic fact of mysticism, which, in
its widest sense, may be described as an attitude of mind founded upon
an intuitive or experienced conviction of unity, of oneness, of
alikeness in all things. From this source springs all mystical thought,
and the mystic, of whatever age or country, would say in the words of
Krishna--

There is true knowledge. Learn thou it is this:
To see one changeless Life in all the Lives,
And in the Separate, One Inseparable.
_The Bhagavad-Gita_, Book 18.

This fundamental belief in unity leads naturally to the further belief
that all things about us are but forms or manifestations of the one
divine life, and that these phenomena are fleeting and impermanent,
although the spirit which informs them is immortal and endures. In other
words, it leads to the belief that "the Ideal is the only Real."

Further, if unity lies at the root of things, man must have some share
of the nature of God, for he is a spark of the Divine. Consequently, man
is capable of knowing God through this godlike part of his own nature,
that is, through his soul or spirit. For the mystic believes that as the
intellect is given us to apprehend material things, so the spirit is
given us to apprehend spiritual things, and that to disregard the spirit
in spiritual matters, and to trust to reason is as foolish as if a
carpenter, about to begin a piece of work, were deliberately to reject
his keenest and sharpest tool. The methods of mental and spiritual
knowledge are entirely different. For we know a thing mentally by
looking at it from outside, by comparing it with other things, by
analysing and defining it, whereas we can know a thing spiritually only
by becoming it. We must _be_ the thing itself, and not merely talk about
it or look at it. We must be in love if we are to know what love is; we
must be musicians if we are to know what music is; we must be godlike if
we are to know what God is. For, in Porphyry's words: "Like is known
only by like, and the condition of all knowledge is that the subject
should become like to the object." So that to the mystic, whether he be
philosopher, poet, artist, or priest, the aim of life is to become like
God, and thus to attain to union with the Divine. Hence, for him, life
is a continual advance, a ceaseless aspiration; and reality or truth is
to the seeker after it a vista