The Mystic Friendship

Burritt M. Hiatt

 

A mystic experiences an element in meeting a fellow mystic that is beyond other friendships. It is the union of two people looking in the same direction, but not at each other. Their connection surrounds them instead of being a tie between them. The recognition between them is one of response to the same object.

This unpossessive basis of friendship widens the range of a mystic’s friends. He may feel close to a man widely separated from him in race or condition or class. He lives “not merely by desire, but by admiration.”

Not only is the mystic’s range of friendships widened but the possibility of intensity is also increased. Having felt this added element in his own being, he knows its unexplored possibilities in his fellow mystic. He knows that his discoveries in his fellows are limited only by the depth of his own appreciations. Only when he sees God as his own self, can he see God as the self of another.