Starbuck Writes In Psychology Of Religion Poem by Genova Maaa my mother

„When higher centres have become exhausted under the great strain of a developed illuminated life, with its accompanying periods of intense lucidity, of deep contemplation, pehaps of visionary and auditory phenomena, the swing-back into the negative state occurs almost of necessity.
This is the psychological explanation of those strange and painful episodes in the life of great saints.

It occurs after a long life passed in close contact with the transcendental order, of full and growing consciousness of the ‚presence of God‘ the whole inner experience is suddenly swept away and only a blind reliance of the past convictions saves them from unbelief.

The great contemplatives, those destined to attain the full stature of the mystic, emerge from this period of destitution, as from a new purification.
It is for them the gateway to a higher state. This great negation is the sorting-house of spiritual life.
Here the ‚nature mystics‘, the mystic poets, and all those who were content with the illuminated vision of reality stand on a lower level. Those who go on are the great and strong spirits, who do not seek to ‚know‘, but are driven to ‚be‘ „. (Starbuck, Psychology of Religion, P.24) .