A List of some Mystic Books

[Alexander]

I had intended to make this thread several times, but kept forgetting.

I have had the good fortune in this life of having read many, many books written by Noble Individuals. Many of these books, also, are not popularly known. It is for this reason that it has become apparent to me that I should share my reading list with you all.

When I have time I will try to update this post and add a web link for each text.

A list of some books worth exploring:

1. Cosmic Consciousness by R. M. Bucke

2. The Philokalia

3. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

4. The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John Climacus

5. The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross

6. Fragments of an Unknown Teaching by P. D. Ouspensky
7. The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution by P. D. Ouspensky

8. Eternal Life: A Study of its Implications and Applications by Friedrich von Hügel

9. Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill

10. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

[Alexander]

An extraordinary quote to add for a topic on reading:

In the course of one of our talks I asked G.:

"Is it useful to study what is called 'occult' or 'mystical' literature?"

"Yes," said G. "A great deal can be found by reading. For instance, take yourself: you might already know a great deal if you knew how to read. I mean that, if you understood everything you have read in your life, you would already know what you are looking for now. If you understood everything you have written in your own book, what is it called?... I should come and bow down to you and beg you to teach me. But you do not understand either what you read or what you write. You do not even understand what the word 'understand' means. Yet understanding is essential, and reading can be useful only if you understand what you read.

And another, on how Whitman read:

Though he would sometimes not touch a book for a week, he generally spent a part (though not a large part) of each day in reading. Perhaps he would read on an average a couple of hours a day. He seldom read any book deliberately through, and there was no more (apparent) system about his reading than in anything else that he did; that is to say, there was no system about it at all. If he sat in the library an hour, he would have half a dozen to a dozen volumes about him, on the table, on chairs and on the floor. He seemed to read a few pages here and a few pages there, and pass from place to place, from volume to volume, doubtless pursuing some clue or thread of his own. Sometimes (though very seldom) he would get sufficiently interested in a volume to read it all. I think he read almost, if not quite the whole, of Renouf's "Egypt," and Bruschbey's "Egypt," but these cases were exceptional. In his way of reading he dipped into histories, essays, metaphysical, religious and scientific treatises, novels and poetry - though I think he read less poetry than anything else. He read no language but English, yet I believe he knew a great deal more French, German and Spanish than he would own to. But if you took his own word for it, he knew very little of any subject.

[Jhanananda]

Thank-you, Alexander, for starting this thread.  Often people seek out more reading material on mysticism, so I believe this thread would serve us all very well, if we all contributed our reading lists.  I have posted on my key reading list many times, and my reading list is much larger; however, following are key writers, or volumes:
Pali Canon

Patanjali's Yoga Sutra

Kabir

Rumi

St Francis

Teresa of Avila

John of the Cross

[Intuition]

Thank-you, Alexander, for starting this thread.  Often people seek out more reading material on mysticism, so I believe this thread would serve us all very well, if we all contributed our reading lists.  I have posted on my key reading list many times, and my reading list is much larger; however, following are key writers, or volumes:
Pali Canon

Patanjali's Yoga Sutra

Kabir

Rumi

St Francis

Teresa of Avila

John of the Cross

Jhananda, do you have any specific translations that you recommend?

[Alexander]

I have been dipping more into Platonic philosophy, as I am now convinced the first philosophers Socrates and Plato were both mystics (or strongly mystically bent). So, as I look at this thread again I would add to the list the Platonic dialogues - the Republic, Symposium, Apology, Phaedo and other works.

[josh]

Patanjali, Teresa, John of the Cross, and Jeffrey's choice suttas he grouped and called the Phala Nikaya, are the only mystics I have read at this point.

Teresa (Interior Castle) I found very warm and human. She looked into the depth of the soul to find meaning in life. I liked how she went through the various mental states but retained her sense of self in relation to something beyond her.

John of the Cross was a very good look at embracing the emptiness or void as a part of who you are (until he realized he could crawl out the window after being trapped in a closet after many months).

Patanjali's work are very short, many translations, and useful as something to contemplate upon. It is more like little revelations.

The Buddhist suttas I found to be very observational looks at the mind, attempting to break down the interior mind into an environment you could traverse like our outside physical environment. I found for me it lacked any meaning on answering life's questions.

I would like to get into the classical minds of antiquity. Any specific works anyone?

[Jhanananda]

Jhananda, do you have any specific translations that you recommend?

I have found all translations of Indic literature suffer from copious translation errors.  Thus I translated key suttas for our purposes here, and grouped them into an artificial Nikaya, which I call the "Phala nikaya."

I also recommend reading the complete dialogs of Plato, as well as the writing of the Desert Fathers, which are Orthodox Christian mystics from the second century, so they are free of the subversive effects of Constantine.