The hallmark of a mystic is the savagely stubborn refusal to accept the fact
that consciousness, like any other existent, possesses identity, that it is a
faculty of a specific nature, functioning through specific means. While the
advance of civilization has been eliminating one area of magic after another,
the last stand of the believers in the miraculous consists of their frantic
attempts to regard identity as the disqualifying element of consciousness.
The implicit, but unadmitted premise of the neo-mystics of modern philosophy,
is the notion that only an ineffable consciousness can acquire a valid
knowledge of reality, that “true” knowledge has to be causeless, i.e., acquired
without any means of cognition.