Jeff Russell

Those comments on the void seemed to make something click - now thinking about it as that feeling just before starting something new and unfamiliar and out of ones comfort zone seems to relate better.

A note on supernatural - in German it is übernatural, literally above or over the natural, and I have found that the 'standard' English translation of supernatural often doesn't get across the right nuances, probably because of the connotations that it has picked up through the materialism that runs through modern culture. There are times when I think hypernatural would be better in some contexts.

Regarding divination, Gregory Shaw's books on Iamblichus suggest that Iamblichus had a similar idea of divination, ie that it is a communion with the ineffable by which we are able to see through the eyes of the divine.

The different silences are interesting. What I am noticing is that the 'practice' of mysticism is itself a form of tacit knowledge. It has been described to me somewhere recently that it is like learning to dance by just making the movements and practising them until at some point it stops becoming mechanical and just flows. I am a field hockey player and learning the game is similar, looking back it is hard to believe how 'unnatural' the movements and technique were when I was just starting out, yet now in games I sometimes surprise myself with 'instinctive' responses to situations. (I have actually thought of writing about the mysticism of high level sport - in many ways it has a lot in common with mystical practice, including the use of visualisation and ritual.)

For me the value of books like these is that they reinforce the fact that you cannot apply Taylorism to mystical experience.