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all personal secular enjoyment of power is forbidden as a deification of the creaturely. However the
rulership of a rational legal order within society is god's will.
Inner-worldly ascetic is a rationalist, not only in the sense that he rationally systematizes his own
conduct of life, but also in his rejection of everything that is ethically irrational, whether esthetic, or
personal emotional reactions within the world and its orders. The distinctive goal always remains the
"conscious," methodical mastering of one's own conduct of life. This type of "inner-worldly asceticism"
included, above all, ascetic Protestantism, which held the fulfillment of the duty and task assigned by the
god within the world as the sole means of demonstration of religious qualification, though its several
branches demonstrated this tenet with varying degrees of consistency.
(H.2) Mysticism
(H.2.a) Mystical Illumination
But the distinctive goods of salvation may not be an active quality of action, that is, an awareness of
having fulfilled the divine will; it may instead be a subjective state of a distinctive kind, the most notable
form of which is "mystical illumination." This too is achievable only to a few who have particular
religious qualifications, and only through a specific kind of systematic activity, namely,
"contemplation." To achieve the goal of mystic illumination, contemplation always requires the being
free from all everyday interests. According to the experience of the Quakers, God can speak within one's
soul only when the creaturely element in person is altogether silent. All contemplative mysticism from
Lao Tzu and the Buddha up to Tauler (1300-1361) is in accord with this experience, if not with these
very words.
(H.2.b) Flight from the World
The consequence of mystic experience may be the absolute withdrawal from the world. Such a
contemplative flight from the world, characteristic of ancient Buddhism and to some degree
characteristic of all Asiatic and Near Eastern forms of salvation, seems to resemble the ascetic
worldview; but it is necessary to make a very clear distinction between the two.
In the sense employed here, "world-rejecting asceticism" is primarily oriented to activity within the
world. Only activity within the world helps the ascetic to attain a quality of god's grace for which s/he
strives. The ascetic attains renewed assurances of one's state of grace from the consciousness that the
power to act flows out of the possession of the central religious salvation, and that through the actions
one serves god. The ascetic is conscious of oneself as a warrior of god, regardless of who the enemy is
and what the means of doing battle are. For the ascetic, the withdrawal from the world is not a
psychological escape, but as a repeated victory over ever new temptations which s/he has to combat
actively, time and again. The world-rejecting ascetic sustains at least the negative inner relationship with
the "world," against which s/he is designated to struggle. It is therefore more appropriate in his case to
speak of a "rejection of the world" than of a "flight from the world." Flight is much more characteristic
of the contemplative mystic.
(H.2.c) Mystical Union
In contrast to asceticism, contemplation is primarily the quest for "rest" in god and in him alone. It
entails inaction of everything that in any way reminds of the "world," and of course the absolute
minimization of all outer and inner activity; and in its most consistent form it entails the cessation of
thought. By these paths the mystic achieves a subjective state which may be regarded as the possession
of the divine, or mystical union (unio mystica). This is a distinctive habituation of emotion, which
appears to be mediated by "knowledge." To be sure, the mystical union may be grounded more upon the
extraordinary content of this knowledge or more upon the emotional coloration of the possession of this
knowledge; objectively, the latter is decisive.
Then, the more the mystical knowledge becomes such an emotional character, the more it becomes
incommunicable; even though mystical union emerges as knowledge, it gives the mystic directly such
emotional character. For mystical knowledge is not new knowledge of any facts or doctrines, but rather
the perception of an overall meaning in the world. This usage of "knowledge" is intended wherever the
term occurs in the numerous formulations of mystics; it denotes a practical knowledge. The center-point
of such knowledge is basically a "possession," from which there may be derived a new practical
orientation to the world, and under certain circumstances even new and communicable "recognition."
However, recognition constitutes knowledge of values and non-values within the world. We are not
interested here in the contents of these knowledge, but only in this negative effect upon action which is a
nature of all contemplation, in contrast to asceticism in our sense of the term.
(H.2.d) Concentration upon Truth
Pending a more thorough discussion, we may strongly emphasize here that the distinction between
world-rejecting asceticism and world-fleeing contemplation is of course fluid. For world-fleeing
contemplation is originally associated with a considerable degree of systematically rationalized conduct
of life. Only this, indeed, leads to concentration upon the goal of salvation. Yet, rationalized conduct of
life is only an means for the goal of contemplation and is of an essentially negative type, consisting in
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