“Objections to religious mysticism lose their force if they can equally be turned against natural mysticism.”

LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug? (2006)

In a 1978 interview with John S. Friedman, published in The Paris Review 26 (Spring 1984); and in Elie Wiesel : Conversations (2002) edited by Robert Franciosi, p. 87
Context: Miracles in mysticism don't occupy such an important place. It's metaphor, for the peasants, for the crowds, to impress people. What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically. You plunge into it. Philosophy is a slow process of logic and logical discourse: A bringing B bringing C and so forth. In mysticism you can jump from A to Z. But the ultimate objective is the same. It's knowledge. It's truth.

2010s, 2013, Interview in La Repubblica

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 117

Draft of a German reply to a letter sent to him in 1954 or 1955<!-- (also not known if this reply was sent) -->, p. 39
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)
Context: I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of "humility." This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Religion

Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
Context: The clock runs down. I lift the weight by exerting the proper amount of energy, and in this action the law of conservation of energy is strictly obeyed. But now I have the choice of either letting the weight fall free in a fraction of a second, or, constrained by the wheelwork, in twenty-four hours. I can do which I like, and whichever way I decide, no more energy is developed in the fall of the weight. I strike a match; I can use it to light a cigarette or to set fire to a house. I write a telegram; it may be simply to say I shall be late for dinner, or it may produce fluctuations on the stock exchange that will ruin thousands. In these cases the actual force required in striking the match or in writing the telegram is governed by the law or conservation of energy; but the vastly more momentous part, which determines the words I use or the material I ignite, is beyond such a law. It is probable that no expenditure of energy need be used in the determination of direction one way more than another. Intelligence and free will here come into play, and these mystic forces are outside the law of conservation of energy as understood by physicists.

Source: Indian Thought And Its Development (1936), Ch. XVI : Looking Backward and Forward, p. 256
Context: We await the Indian thinker who will expound to us the mysticism of spiritual union with infinite Being as it is in itself, not as it is set down in the ancient texts or according to the meaning read into them by their interpreters.
It belongs to the nature of mysticism that it is timeless and appeals to no other authority than that of the truth which it carries within it.
The pathway from imperfect to perfect recognised truth leads through the valley of reality.

Orgonotic Pulsation in International Journal of Sex-Economy and Orgone-Research, Vol. 3, No. 1, (March, 1944); Reich throughout his writings seems to use the word "mysticism" in a sense strongly related to claims of "mystical authority over others" and on the impositions made by such faith, rather than in its more common use as a word denoting a respect for "mystical insight apart from others" without necessarily any claim to authority over them.