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At heart, God is an ineffable and unfathomable mystery…

• The language of God is Mystery. Kedar Joshi
• The mind of God is a mystery and none can understand it. Rae Carson
• We worship a mysterious not an anthropomorphic God. Frances M. Young
• I believe in God, but I’m not too clear on the other details. Bill Veeck
• A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Edmund Burke
• God shrouds himself in mystery so He can be found by true seekers. Karen Wheaton
• A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God. Reinhold Niebuhr
• God is the mysterious veil under which we hide our ignorance of the cause. Leo Errera
• God writes spiritual Mysteries on our heart, where they wait silently for discovery. Rumi
• You believe God is not there, but He is, Hidden in the secret of the divine mystery. Rumi
• God works this unspeakable mystery of entire sanctification in your life and mine. Oswald Chambers
• We betray our modern arrogance and forget the place of mystery in God’s dealing with us. Os Guinness
• Whether you want to call it God or the mystery of the cosmos doesn’t matter to me. Jeanette Winterson
• There is no religion without mysteries. God Himself is the great secret of Nature. François-René de Chateaubriand
• God must be very great to have created a world that leaves a mystery as to whether he created it. Richard Wurmbrand
• The search for God’s presence was much of a mystery as God himself, and what was God if not a mystery? Nicholas Sparks
• All the gods are the same unknowable mystery, just as each face of a jewel strikes light in a different direction. Kate Constable
• Here God is not approached as an object that we must love, but as a mystery present in the very act of love itself. Peter Rollins
• God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Richard P. Feynman
• God to me is a mystery, but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing. Allan Sandage
• It is easier to gaze into the sun, than into the face of the mystery of God. Such is its beauty and its radiance. Hildegard of Bingen
• Whenever God is discussed, we are not talking about a thing in itself, but a representation of a far deeper mystery. Rabbi David Cooper
• The secret of the mystery is: God is always greater. No matter how great we think Him to be, His love is always greater. Brennan Manning
• Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity. Jean Cocteau
• God is the mysterium tremendum, that appears and overthrows, but he is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I. Martin Buber
• What the word God means is the mystery really. It’s the mystery that we face as humans the mystery of existence, of suffering and of death. Ram Dass
• The more I try to unravel the mysteries of the world in which we live, the more I come to the conception of a single overruling power – God. Henry B. Eyring
• Can you see God? You haven’t seen him? I’ve never seen the wind. I see the effects of the wind, but I’ve never seen the wind. There’s a mystery to it.  Billy Graham
• What kind of god is it that some human brain can shatter the illusions that have been built up around such a deity? God’s a mystery. I’ll never be able to tell you what God is. John Shelby Spong
• I believe God is a name we give to the mystery of the world that is beyond our capacity to understand. I believe that the energy of the universe is ordered by forces I cannot comprehend. Robert Jensen
• The Godhead is never an object of its own knowledge. Just as a knife doesn’t cut itself, fire doesn’t burn itself, light doesn’t illuminate itself. It’s always an endless mystery to itself. Alan Watts
• It’s a mystery. That’s the first thing that interests me about the idea of God. If there is one, it’s mysterious and powerful and awesome to even consider the concept, and you have to take it seriously. Stephen King
• Whoever believes in a God at all, believes in an infinite mystery; and if the existence of God is such an infinite mystery, we can very well expect and afford to have many of His ways mysterious to us. Ichabod Spencer
• Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so amazingly know their path, though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it themselves. Fyodor Dostoevsky
• God is a mystery. But a comprehensible mystery. I have nothing but awe when I observe the laws of nature. There are not laws without a lawgiver, but how does this lawgiver look? Certainly not like a man magnified. Albert Einstein
• It is the nature of God to reside in mystery–ineluctable, inexhaustible mystery. And we do not need to understand the cabala of mathematical physics to apprehend the mysterium tremendum.  We need only look out the window.  Chet Raymo
• Father of mercy and God of all consolation, graciously look upon me and impart to me the blessing which flows from this holy Sacrament. Overshadow me with Your loving kindness, and let this divine Mystery bear fruit in me. Saint Blaise
• Awareness of an all-pervading mysterious energy articulated in the infinite variety of natural phenomena seems to be the primordial experience of human consciousness, awakening to an awesome universe filled with mysterious power. Thomas Berry
• In my more lucid moments I know that God is right here, right now; that God is the luminous mystery at the heart of creation and that God is here in the joys and sorrows of the world. And I try to see God in everything and treat all life with reverence. Sy Safransky
• I use a lot of different words for God – infinite intelligence, primordial, perfection or universal creativity. All of these, to me, are God. And ‘God’ is a word, I think, that some people feel uncomfortable with, so they can use another word, you know? It’s the great mystery. Alex Grey
• Pantheism is a misleading word. It suggests that a personal god is supposed to inhabit the world, but that is not the idea at all.  The idea is trans-theological.  It is of an indefinable, inconceivable mystery, thought of as a power, that is the source and end and supporting ground of all life and being.  Joseph Campbell
• The Infinite alone exists and is Real; the finite is passing and false. The Original Whim in the Beyond caused the apparent descent of the Infinite into the realm of the seeming finite. This is the Divine Mystery and Divine Game in which Infinite Consciousness for ever plays on all levels of finite consciousness. Meher Baba
• I can’t define God, so to be open to the mystical and mystery of God is a natural part of myself. So people criticize me for not being what they are, and I say, it’s working for me and has worked for me and continues to work for me, in a way that fills me with a sense of peace and contentment about what God means to me. Oprah Winfrey
• We are all born with a belief in God. It may not have a name or face. We may not even see it as God. But it is there. It is the sense that comes over us as we stare into the starlit sky, or watch the last fiery rays of an evening sunset. It is the morning shiver as we wake on a beautiful day and smell a richness in the air that we know and love from somewhere we can’t quite recall. It is the mystery behind the beginning of time and beyond the limits of space. It is a sense of otherness that brings alive something deep in our hearts. Kent Nerburn
• Approaching God as mystery is like the experience of being in love. When we fall in love with someone we want to be totally intimate with that person, to know them from the inside out, to be connected as deeply and fully as we can be. We also realize, however, that no matter how much the other person shares of himself or herself with us and we with him or her, no matter how much time we spend together and how many experiences we share, there will remain a part of each of us that is mysterious, and other, to one another. This enduring mystery, however, attracts us even more and we yearn for full union, a way to be one. These dynamics that characterize the knowledge of lovers are even more the case in knowing God. The more we know, the more intimately present we are with God and God with us, the more we realize that there is a vast mystery we have not even touched. And then we find ourselves wanting to know even more of God, to draw ever closer.  Flora A. Keshgegian

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…a mystery that transcends all thought…

• God is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all human categories of thought, even the categories of being and non-being. Those too are categories of thought. I mean it’s as simple as that. So it depends on how much you want to think about it, and whether it’s doing you any good. And whether it is putting you in touch with the mystery that’s the ground of your own being. If it isn’t, well, it’s a lie. So half the people in the world are religious people who think that their metaphors are facts. Those are what we call theists. The other half are people who know that the metaphors are not facts. And so, they’re lies. Those are the atheists.” Joseph Campbell

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…a mystery that ultimately cannot be known, understood and described by the mind

• Another traditional theological affirmation is that God, the divine, is mystery. I prefer this way of thinking about God to the language of transcendence and immanence. To speak of God as mystery avoids the opposition that the terms transcendence and immanence tend to set up. To say that God is mystery is to acknowledge that God is in some sense unknowable or that we cannot fully know God. Yet, at the same time, the term communicates our desire for God, to know and be known. Mystery draws us in. What is unknown is alluring, even if somewhat unsettling. God as mystery attracts. Such a view of God also reminds us of our limitations, our inability to fully comprehend. Flora A. Keshgegian
• Approaching God as mystery is like the experience of being in love. When we fall in love with someone we want to be totally intimate with that person, to know them from the inside out, to be connected as deeply and fully as we can be. We also realize, however, that no matter how much the other person shares of himself or herself with us and we with him or her, no matter how much time we spend together and how many experiences we share, there will remain a part of each of us that is mysterious, and other, to one another. This enduring mystery, however, attracts us even more and we yearn for full union, a way to be one. These dynamics that characterize the knowledge of lovers are even more the case in knowing God. The more we know, the more intimately present we are with God and God with us, the more we realize that there is a vast mystery we have not even touched. And then we find ourselves wanting to know even more of God, to draw ever closer. Flora A. Keshgegian
• God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed. Saint Augustine
• A mystery is what God knows and man cannot, and must instead believe. Jill Lepore
• You can’t analyze God. He is too awesome, too big, too mysterious. C. S. Lewis
• Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description. Anthony de Mello
• If you understood him, it would not be God. Augustine of Hippo
• It is easy to understand God as long as you don’t try to explain him. Joseph Joubert
• Man with all his shrewdness is as stupid about understanding by himself the mysteries of God, as an ass is incapable of understanding musical harmony. John Calvin
• Mystery such as is given of God is beyond the power of human penetration, yet not in opposition to it. Madame de Stael
• The infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable; not concealed, but incomprehensible; it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure unsearchable sea. John Ruskin
• The proud intellectual seeks knowledge about God, but he never knows God, because he cannot accept the mysteries that he is unable to fully comprehend. Mother Angelica

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God moves and works in mysterious ways

• God’s decisions are always mysterious, but they are always in our favour. Paulo Coelho
• Life’s great moments evolve from simples acts of cooperation with God’s mysterious promptings. Bill Hybels
• The lord works in mysterious ways. Indeed. And a shorter way to say that is: God is a sneak. Demetri Martin
• God works in mysterious ways but at least he works, he’s never on welfare in a mysterious way. Stephen Colbert
• Truly, God works in mysterious ways. The wheels of His mercy and justice move quietly, but they do move. Billy Graham
• There is therefore a tremendous mystery in the fact that God may be united with man and the man with God. Michael Servetus
• God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm. William Cowper
• The works of God are great mysteries and may truly always be hidden from us, however it is not wrong to lead your own personal enquiry through your prayers to the Lord. Lady Jane Grey
• One thing is that life’s great moments evolve from simple acts of cooperation with God’s mysterious promptings-nudges that always lean toward finding what’s been lost and freeing what’s been enslaved . Bill Hybels
• Hope is practiced through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God’s mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness. Pope Benedict XVI
• Here lies the tremendous mystery – that God should be all-powerful, yet refuse to coerce. He summons us to cooperation. We are honored in being given the opportunity to participate in his good deeds. Remember how He asked for help in performing his miracles: Fill the water pots, stretch out your hand, distribute the loaves. Elisabeth Elliot
• It’s often said that God works in mysterious ways. You have to really think about what He’s trying to do. You can’t be lazy and believe in God; He doesn’t make it that easy. It takes spirit and faith and passion to really believe. Like most things worthwhile in life, you get back what you put into it. Only with faith, you get back a lot more. David Baldacci
• God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, ie., everybody, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time. Terry Pratchett
• God works in mysterious ways. Things may look good outwardly, but there may be evil contained inside. Let no one be deluded by pride that he himself has conceived good ideas or done good deeds. If everything were as it seemed, the Prophet would not have cried out with such illuminated and illuminating perspicacity, Show me things as they are! You make things appear beautiful when in reality they are ugly; You make things appear ugly when in reality they are beautiful. Show us therefore each thing as it is lest we fall into a snare and be ever errant. Rumi

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It was mystery that engendered religion…

• A religion made up solely of heightened religious experiences would not be a religion at all. …The major religious traditions address the mysteries (with or without entheogens), but they have other business to do: widen understanding, give meaning, provide solace, promote loving-kindness, and connect human being to human being. Huston Smith
• A religion without mystery must be a religion without God. Jeremy Taylor
• Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged. Rumi
• For it is with the mysteries of our religion, as with wholesome pills for the sick, which swallowed whole, have the virtue to cure; but chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect. Thomas Hobbes
• God has graced every tradition with insight into the divine mystery, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated-each has a gift to bring to the world. Bede Griffiths
• It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion. Albert Einstein
• Religion exalts mystery as an unknowable secret that must be sealed in glass like the corpse of an enchanted princess and fearfully worshipped from afar. Initiation, on the other hand, requires direct participation and demands each of us to smash the casket and press mad lips to mystery, wooing her as a lover who will offer up her treasurers in a succession of sweet surrenders. This she will do, but only in exact ratio to our evolving ability and worthiness to receive them. Lon Milo DuQuette
• The mystery of the universe, and the meaning of God’s world, are shrouded in hopeless obscurity, until we learn to feel that all laws suppose a lawgiver, and that all working involves a Divine energy.  Alexander MacLaren
• The mystery religions were instituted in order to protect the marvels of the commonplace from those who would devalue them. Peter Redgrove
• The whole [of religion] is a riddle, an ænigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the onlyresult of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. David Hume
• THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science. Ambrose Bierce
• There is much more mystery in the shadow of a man walking on a sunny day, than in all religions of the world. Giorgio de Chirico
• Under any religion, the preestablished impersonal code transcends the right of the individual to explore, experience, and marvel at the mysteries of his own life and death. Gerry Spence
• ‘Tis the temper of the hot and superstitious part of mankind in matters of religion ever to be fond of mysteries, and for that reason to like best what they understand least. Isaac Newton
• Religions are not proved, are not demonstrated, are not established, are not overthrown by logic! They are of all the mysteries of nature and the human mind, the most mysterious and most inexplicable; they are of instinct and not of reason. Alphonse de Lamartine
• After all the great religions have been preached and expounded, man is still confronted with the Great Mystery. Luther Standing Bear
• Tis faith alone that vividly and certainly comprehends the deep mysteries of our religion. Michel de Montaigne
• Religion and philosophy have their value, but in the end all we can do is open to mystery and live a path with heart. Jack Kornfield
• If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church. Charles Simic
• Fabricating answers to unanswerable questions is the domain of religion. A deity model is not the default alternative to a scientific mystery. Graham Kendall
• I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don’t. It’s the great mystery. Steve Jobs
• The real truth about a lot of life’s mysteries can be explained by science but people don’t want to get in bed with science because it’s cold. They prefer religion, myth, drama. David Duchovny
• All religions lead to the same God, and all deserve the same respect. Anyone who chooses a religion is also choosing a collective way for worshipping and sharing the mysteries. Paulo Coelho

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…and myth

• A myth… is a metaphor for a mystery beyond human comprehension. It is a comparison that helps us understand, by analogy, some aspect of our mysterious selves. A myth, in this way of thinking, is not an untruth but a way of reaching a profound truth. Christopher Vogler
• Without an understanding of myth or religion, without an understanding of the relationship between destruction and creation, death and rebirth, the individual suffers the mysteries of life as meaningless mayhem alone. Marion Woodman

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All true religions are only pointers to the mystery that is God

• A religious belief is not a statement about Reality, but a hint, a clue about something that is a mystery, beyond the grasp of human thought. In short, a religious belief is only a finger pointing to the moon. Some religious people never get beyond the study of the finger. Anthony de Mello
• All religions are metaphors pointing to the same Mystery. Anthony Lambert
• Every religion, every mythology is true in this sense: It is true as metaphorical of the human and cosmic mystery. Joseph Campbell
• Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery. Ram Dass
• If I choose to call It Allah or Jehovah or Yahweh or Vishnu or Lord Krishna, what does it matter? Are these not all references to the mystery that we call God?     Morris T. Johnstone
• In the Orient the ultimate divine mystery is sought beyond all human categories of thought and feeling, beyond names and forms, and absolutely beyond any such concept as of a merciful or wrathful personality, chooser of one people over another, comforter of folk who pray, and destroyer of those who do not. Such anthropomorphic attributions of human sentiments and thoughts to a mystery beyond thought is-from the point of view of Indian thought-a style of religion for children. Joseph Campbell
• True religion is not about possessing the truth. No religion does that. It is rather an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. Idolatry is religion pretending that it has all the answers. John Shelby Spong
• Religion points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage. Frederick Buechner
• A religious belief is not a statement about Reality, but a hint, a clue about something that is a mystery, beyond the grasp of human thought. In short, a religious belief is only a finger pointing to the moon. Some religious people never get beyond the study of the finger. Others are engaged in sucking it. Others yet use the finger to gouge their eyes out. These are the bigots whom religion has made blind. Rare indeed is the religionist who is sufficiently detached from the finger to see what it is indicating – these are those who, having gone beyond belief, are taken for blasphemers. Anthony de Mello
• Atheism and agnosticism signify the rejection of certain images and concepts of God or of truth, which are historically conditioned and therefore inadequate. Atheism is a challenge to religion to purifiy its images and concepts and come nearer to the truth of divine mystery. Bede Griffiths
• If you try and penetrate with your limited means the secrets of nature, you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious.’ Albert Einstein

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All metaphors for God are only pointers to the mystery that is God

• Metaphor is the only possible language available to religion because it alone is honest about Mystery. Richard Rohr
• Metaphors for God always misses the mark, but to miss the mark is very fitting given God’s incomprehensible Mystery. Sallie McFague
• Metaphors for God are simply pointers to an ineffable Mystery. Anthony Lambert
• Because God is, first and last, mystery, whatever language we use to speak about God, whatever images we might conjure up, whatever assertions we state to be true, even absolutely true, are forms of metaphor. They are an approximation, a comparison, an analogy. Flora A. Keshgegian

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Science discovers secrets but only ultimately deepens the mystery

• If God is the mystery of the universe, these mysteries, we’re tackling these mysteries one by one. If you’re going to stay religious at the end of the conversation, God has to mean more to you than just where science has yet to tread. Neil deGrasse Tyson
• People think of science as rolling back the mystery of God. I look at science as slowly creeping toward the mystery of God. Allan Hamilton
• Science and religion have to go hand in hand with the mystery, because there’s a certain point beyond which you say, There are no answers. Ray Bradbury
• Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness. Aldous Huxley
• Science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries. Freeman Dyson
• Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man’s struggle for good and evil seems inadequate. Richard P. Feynman
• The difference between science and religion is that the former wishes to get rid of mysteries whereas the latter worships them. Sidney Hook
• The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery. Anais Nin
• I’m interested in the hope we invest in science, and the disappointment we can feel when science flattens, or ‘explains,’ the larger mysteries of religion. Ben Marcus

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We greatly diminish God by trying to squeeze out mystery

• During the Enlightenment era our instincts were to squeeze mystery out of our religion. In our desire to make our religion more comprehensible in a precise universe, we shoehorned God into a few static images, sowing the seeds of our eventual suffocation. Those seeds have now germinated and we’re strangling under a doctrinal system about God that has become too constricting. Doug Hammack
• Americans have perfected the art of reducing complicated truths into formulas and products. We’re desperate for instant, visible, measurable ways of knowing God, instead of trusting that it’s complicated and a mystery. Mike Yaconelli

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Mystery contains great power…

• Mystery has great power. In the many years I have worked with people with cancer, I have seen Mystery comfort people when nothing else can comfort them and offer hope when nothing else offers hope. I have seen Mystery heal fear that is otherwise unhealable. For years I have watched people in their confrontation with the unknown recover awe, wonder, joy, and aliveness. They have remembered that life is holy, and they have reminded me as well. In losing our sense of Mystery, we have become a nation of burned-out people. People who wonder do not burn out. Rachel Naomi Remen

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…and beauty

• The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. Albert Einstein
• The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Albert Einstein

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As humans, we need mystery

• God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom. Johann von Goethe

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Mystery awakens wonder and deep contemplation

• Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand. Neil Armstrong
• As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins. Albert Schweitzer
• I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief. Gerry Spence

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Mystery awakens and reveals the soul

• The joy of all mysteries is the certainty which comes from their contemplation, that there are many doors yet for the soul to open on her upward and inward way. Arthur Christopher Benson
• It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed. Thomas Moore

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Embrace the mystery that is God

• The mystery of God hugs you in its all-encompassing arms. Hildegard of Bingen
• The mystery of God touches us – or does not – in the smallest details: giving a strawberry, with love; receiving a touch, with love; sharing the snapdragon red of an autumn sunset, with love. Marion Woodman
• When you embrace the mystery and open yourself to it, a new life is created, resistant to the old problems. Bernie Siegel
• The mystery of God’s providence is a most sublime consideration. Man can be very confident that God exercises the most accurate providence over him and his affairs. Nothing comes to pass without our heavenly Father. No evil comes to pass without his permissive providence, and no good without his ordaining providence to his own ends. Ezekiel Hopkins
• Trust God where you cannot see Him. Do not try to penetrate the cloud He brings over you; rather look to the bow that is on it. The mystery is God’s; the promise is yours. John Ross Macduff
• We live in an age of technology and science that demands proof, and yet we desire mystery. But when God gives us mystery, we seek to destroy it by gross indifference or childish reasoning. Mother Angelica
• We must open our eyes to admire God who hides and at the same time reveals himself in things and introduces us into the realms of mystery… we must be pure and simple like children, capable of admiring, being astonished, of marveling, and being enchanted by the divine gestures of love and closeness we witness. Pope John Paul II
• We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born. Albert Einstein
• When a person enters into the experience of God who is ultimately Mystery, the most impeccably traditional doctrines waver, the most precise formulations fade to nothingness, and the most profound symbols dissolve. Robert Egan
• Why not fill the holes with honest admission that we don’t know and don’t understand so much of what we experience. Most such gaps we will never be able to fill. Thomas B. Sheridan

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Appreciate the mystery that is God

• An appreciation of mystery was central to our experience of God. Doug  Hammack
• It is amazing where God will take you when you are willing to follow. Life is full of surprises when we choose mystery over security. Erwin McManus
• It is completely incomprehensible to us how God can reveal himself and to some extent make himself known in created beings: eternity in time, immensity in space, infinity in finite, immutability in change, being in becoming, the all, as it were, in that which is nothing. This mystery cannot be comprehended; it can only be gratefully acknowledged. Herman Bavinck
• Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Rumi
• It does not matter whether you have religion or are an agnostic believe in nothing, You can only appreciate (without knowing or understanding) the mysteries of life. Jack Kornfield
• I have been influenced in my thinking by the writing of Einstein who has made remarks to the effect that when he contemplated the world he sensed an underlying Force much greater than any human force. I feel very much the same. There is a sense of awe, a sense of reverence, and a sense of great mystery. Walter Kohn

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Contemplate the mystery that is God

• Leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness. It is the silence of contemplation such as occurs when we let our minds rest on a rosebud, a child at play, a Divine mystery, or a waterfall. Fulton J. Sheen

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Become comfortable with the mystery that is God

• As our apophatic tradition leads us beyond images, we become more comfortable in the presence of divine mystery, not needing to frame a God who is “like this,” or who will “do that.” Instead, our contemplative practice awakens and feeds our ceaseless yearning for the Ultimate, for the Deep from which we come. Apophatic spirituality invites us feel comfortable being one with divine Presence through inner quiet that does not try to direct or maneuver God. Doug Hammack
• I found it better for my soul to be humble before the mysteries o’ God’s dealings, and not be making a clatter about what I could never understand. George Eliot
• I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God — I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least. Walt Whitman
• I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it. Harry Emerson Fosdick

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Surrender to the mystery that is God

• The experience of conscious communion with God makes way for a no-experience in which the only thing the person can do is yield to the unknown Mystery. In that yielding, a new self is born. Rebecca A. Meier-Rao
• The first holy truth in God 101 is that men and women of true faith have always had to accept the mystery of God’s identity and love and ways. Anne Lamott
• One enters the kingdom not through truths or teachings but moment-to-moment surrendering to the Mystery. John Kehoe
• I surrender myself to everything. I love, I feel pain, I struggle. The world seems to me wider than the mind, my heart a dark and almighty mystery. Nikos Kazantzakis
• Willfulness must give way to willingness and surrender. Mastery must yield to mystery. Gerald May
• Surrender means cultivating a comfortable attitude toward not knowing, being nurtured by the mystery of moments that are dependably surprising, ever fresh. Stephen Nachmanovitch

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Love is the closest we can come to truly knowing the mystery that is God

• If you love all things, you will also attain the divine mystery that is in all things. For then your ability to perceive the truth will grow every day, and your mind will open itself to an all-embracing love. Fyodor Dostoevsky
• It’s an incredible mystery of God’s love that the more you know how deeply you are loved, the more you will see how deeply your sisters and your brothers in the human family are loved. Henri Nouwen
• Love all God’s creation, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all; and when once thou perceive this, thou wilt thenceforward grow every day to a fuller understanding of it: until thou come at last to love the whole world with a love that will then be all-embracing and universal. Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Our response, our attitude, depends on our realisation of God’s attitude toward us. If I experience love or have experienced it, this is the means whereby I can explore the mystery of God’s love. Basil Hume
• Love’s nationality is separate from all other religions, The lover’s religion and nationality is the Beloved (God). The lover’s cause is separate from all other causes. Love is the astrolabe of God’s mysteries. Rumi
• We never know through what Divine mysteries of compensation the great Father of the universe may be carrying out His sublime plan; but those three words, God is love ought to contain, to every doubting soul, the solution of all things. Dinah Maria Murlock Craik
• What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression into silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery. George Eliot

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Mysticism is a way to penetrate the mystery that is God

• Mysticism is a rational enterprise. Religion is not. The mystic has recognized something about the nature of consciousness prior to thought, and this recognition is susceptible to rational discussion. The mystic has reasons for what he believes, and these reasons are empirical. The roiling mystery of the world can be analyzed with concepts (this is science), or it can be experienced free of concepts (this is myticism). Religion is nothing more than bad concepts held in place of good ones for all time. It is the denial-at once full of hope and full of fear-of the vastitude of human ignorance. Sam Harris

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The reality of God is not a concept but a direct experience …

• The true basis of religion is not belief, but intuitive experience. Intuition is the soul’s power of knowing God. To know what religion is really all about, one must know God. Paramahansa Yogananda
• You cannot define God. You cannot understand it.  You can only dissolve it in.  You can only experience it.  You can never know it.  Whatever knowledge you say you have of God is just cultural nonsense.  Experience does not mean you can grasp it.  You can only experience it by dissolving it it.  There is no other way.  Sadhguru
• God is an unutterable sigh, planted in the depths of the soul. Jean Paul Richter
• People substitute tradition for the living experience of the love of God. Francis Howgill
• I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences. William James
• God is not something that you have to believe in, but something that can be experienced directly. Anthony Lambert
• Absolute truth is a state of consciousness that brings about an indisputable knowing beyond the mind. Anthony Lambert

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… an experience of the heart …

• Do not dissect the love of God, but feel it. Emmet Fox  
• It is the heart which experiences God, not the reason. Blaise Pascal
• There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart. Blaise Pascal
• What do you think of God,” the teacher asked. After a pause, the young pupil replied, “He’s not a think, he’s a feel.”   Paul Frost    
• There are many paths to enlightenment. Be sure to take one with a heart. Lao Tzu
• Although the intellect is easily fooled, the heart recognizes the truth. Where the intellect is limited, the heart is unlimited; where the intellect is intrigued by the temporary, the heart is only concerned with the permanent. David R. Hawkins
• Earthly things must be known to be loved; Divine things must be loved to be known. Blaise Pascal
• Love is our highest word and the synonym for God. Ralph Waldo Emerson

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… that leads to a sense of indisputable knowing beyond the mind

• One can spend endless lifetimes studying all the spiritual and philosophical teachings of the world and merely end up confused and discouraged. Seek to ‘know’, not to ‘know about’. ‘Know’ implies subjective experience; ‘know about’ means to accumulate facts. In the end, all facts disappear, and there are none to be known. David R. Hawkins
• Spiritual realizations arise spontaneously and not as a consequence of thought processes. They arise in awareness as though coming out of intuition. It is a nonlinear process through which one suddenly becomes aware that they just ‘know’. David R. Hawkins
• In the famous Gifford lectures, James described the experience of consciousness itself as rare, unique, indescribable, and “beyond mind”—a thought-free state of Knowingness that’s complete, all-inclusive, with neither need nor want, and beyond the limitation of experiencing the merely individualized, personal self. David R. Hawkins
• All the teachings the sages have expounded are no more than commentaries on the sudden cry… Ah, This! Zen Master Daie

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Each of us is a divine mystery

• Each of us is a moving center, a space of divine mystery. Gabrielle Roth
• Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. Albert Einstein
• Let man only approach his own self with a deep respect, even reverence for all that the creative soul, the God-mystery within us, puts forth. H. Lawrence
• We are the miracle of miracles, the great inscrutable mystery of God. Thomas Carlyle

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Life is a divine mystery

• A cosmic celebration can be localized within you when you realize that life is not a problem to be solved but a magnificent mystery to be lived. Michael Bernard Beckwith
• Every mystery solved brings us to the threshold of a greater one. Rachel Carson
• I believe there is something of the divine mystery in everything that exists. We can see it sparkle in a sunflower or a poppy. We sense more of the unfathomable mystery in a butterfly that flutters from a twig–or in a goldfish swimming in a bowl. But we are closest to God in our own soul. Only there can we become one with the greatest mystery of life. In truth, at very rare moments we can experience that we ourselves are that divine mystery. Jostein Gaarder
• Life is a mystery – mystery of beauty, bliss and divinity. Meditation is the art of unfolding that mystery. Amit Ray
• Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing. Henry Miller
• Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind. Anthony de Mello
• Nature is a part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery man ceases to be man. Henry Beston
• The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our nothingness. Andre Malraux
• The greatest mystery of existence is that we are here to contemplate the mystery of existence. Anthony Lambert
• The real mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, it is a reality to be experienced. J. Van der Leeuw
• Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing. Henry Miller

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The world and universe are a divine mystery

• We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. Albert Einstein
• We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery. Henry David Thoreau
• One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility. Albert Einstein
• The first mystery is simply that there is a mystery, a mystery that can never be explained or understood, only encountered from time to time. Nothing is obvious. Everything conceals something else. Lawrence Kushner
• The world is incomprehensible. We won’t ever understand it; we won’t ever unravel its secrets. Thus we must treat the world as it is: a sheer mystery. Carlos Castaneda
• Whether one sees the world as God’s creation or as a secular mystery that science is on the way to figuring out, there is no denying the beauty and majesty of everything from mountain ranges, deserts, and rain forests to the exquisite details in the design of an ordinary mosquito. Robert C. Solomon
• The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. David Hume

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Some take issue with the explanation of God as mystery…

• Mystery is made a convenient Cover for absurdity. John Adams
• God works in mysterious, inefficient, and breathtakingly cruel ways. Penn Jillette
• When someone like myself points out the rather obvious and compelling evidence that God is cruel and unjust, because he visits suffering on innocent people of a scope and scale that would embarrass the most ambitious psychopath, we’re told that? God is mysterious. Sam Harris
• The whole idea of god is absurd. If anything, ‘2001’ shows that what some people call ‘god’ is simply an acceptable term for their ignorance. What they don’t understand, they call ‘god’. Stanley Kubrick
• To imagine that God moves in mysterious ways is to put up a smokescreen of mystery behind which fantasy may survive in spite of all the facts. Barbara Smoker

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…saying that we only creating a “God of the gaps”

• The God of the gaps who filled in the holes in our knowledge, who provided explanations for what could not be explained and who took up the slack in our responsibility for the world, was destined to become obsolete, especially as human knowledge expanded and science provided more of the answers for what had once been perceived as God’s will.” Flora A. Keshgegian
• To some people, knowledge and science are everything. To me, God is everything I don’t know. Kevin Sessums
• God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Richard P. Feynman