This indifferentism has been tersely put on record by Thomas Traherne, the seventeenth-century English mystical clergyman and poet. The result of his inner experiences was that he understood, "All things were well in their proper places. Whereupon you will not believe, how I was withdrawn from all endeavours of altering and mending outward things. They lay so well, methought, they could not be mended; but I must be mended to enjoy them." Traherne merely expressed what every mystic must feel when the beauty of the Inner Reality is revealed to him and the task of withdrawing himself from earthly enchainments and disturbances to its unhindered enjoyment is confronting him. Such a mood is inevitable, necessary, and natural. It is quite right at this stage of his quest. Only when he has succeeded in the task of withdrawal and has perfected himself in the work of contemplation, is the mood likely to change and his whole development complete itself by ascending to the philosophical level. There, he will feel the urge to give out what he has gained and there he will comprehend that, although the world is in God's hands, there is something in man which has been made in God's image and that therefore he may participate in God's work.
-- Notebooks Category 16: The Sensitives > Chapter 2 : Phases of Mystical Development > # 127
