Now, Mysticism is a body of spiritual methods and processes, based, like the Masonic body of ethical methods and processes, on these same doctrines.

Every man who believes in God and immortality is the raw material of a mystic; every man who believes that there is a discoverable way to God is on the path of conscious mysticism.

As this path has been pursued in all ages and nations by persons of widely divergent creeds, it is clear that however much mysticism has been identified with special spheres of religious thought and activity, it is independent of all.
But while Masonry would appear to regard the evolution of our physical, intellectual, and moral nature as the best preparation for that larger existence which is included in its central doctrine, and would thus work inward from without, mysticism deems that the evolution of the spiritual man and the production of a human spirit at one with the divine, constitute the missing condition requisite for the reconstruction of humanity, and would thus work outward from within.

Neither Mason nor Mystic, however, can ignore either method.

The one supplements the other; and seeing that the processes of mysticism are distinct from what is still a subject of derision under the name of transcendental phenomena, as they are wholly philosophical and interior, not to be appreciated by the senses, a secret experience within the depths and heights of our spiritual being, an institution which believes in God and immortality, and by the fact of immortality in the subsistence of an intimate relation between the spirit and God, will not look suspiciously on mysticism when it comes to understand it better.
I have spoken of Masonic symbolism, and the method of instruction in Masonry is identical with that of mysticism; both systems are "veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbolism." The significance of this correspondence would not be measurably weakened were there no similarity in the typology, no trace of mystic influence in Masonic rite and legend.