Mysticism: The treasure hidden in the centers of our souls
“A totally unmystical world would be a world totally blind and insane."
Aldous Huxley
“Man has a feeling that he is truly represented in something
which exceeds himself.”
Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet
Mysticism pervades the celestial plane and the infinite. Mysticism has ineffable components, so it may be easier to state what mysticism is not, beginning with Christian sources.
Ft. Thomas Keating, a contemplative Cistercian priest and monk, separates mystical phenomena from mysticism in this manner.
“Mysticism is not mystical phenomena……bodily ecstasy, external and internal visions, external words, words spoken in the imagination, and words impressed upon one’s spirit when any of these are the work of God’s special grace in the soul. Mysticism is not psychic phenomena, or parapsychological phenomena: precognition, knowledge of events at a distance, control over bodily process, control of heartbeat or breathing, out-of-body experiences, levitation, or other extraordinary sensory or psychic phenomena. Mysticism is not charismatic gifts, such as tongues, prophecy, healing, administration, or the word of wisdom and inspired teachings.”
Mysticism is not mystical phenomena, psychic phenomena, parapsychological phenomena or charismatic gifts. In positive terms, Keating says “Contemplation and mysticism mean the same thing.”[i] A mystic is a contemplative, individualist type.
The dictionary definition of mysticism:
1) (a). Immediate consciousness of the transcendent or ultimate reality or God. (b). The experience of such communion as described by mystics. 2) A belief in the existence of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible by subjective experience,[ii] 3) The spiritual experience as a transformation of the human consciousness.[iii]
Other experts have their own definitions of mystical experiences, several of which are mentioned here. R.C. Zaehner, author of "Mysticism, Sacred and Profane", (1961),[iv] distinguishes three kinds of mysticism. Natural mysticism is when the soul unites with the natural world. Second, monistic mysticism is when the soul unites with an impersonal absolute. (The dictionary definition of monistic is: The view in metaphysics that reality is a unified whole and that all existing things can be ascribed to or described by a single concept or system.[v]) Zaehner’s third type of mystical experience is theistic mysticism, where the soul unites with a living, personal God.
Irish Jesuit William Johnson in "The Cloud of Unknowing", says “mystic contemplation is the union with God”.[vi] Keating says we reach “divine union” in the quietness of mediation.
William James, author of "The Varieties of Religious Experience", identifies four characteristics of mystical states of consciousness. The first characteristic is ineffability, in which the mystic is incapable of expressing the experience. The second characteristic is a noetic quality, which relates to the intellect, or states of knowledge the experience imparts. The third characteristic is that the experience is transient or temporal and dissipates rapidly. And lastly, the mystical state of consciousness is passive. One may have the feeling that all desires are suspended and ones will is surrendered to the Divine. James believes that the first two characteristics, ineffability and a noetic quality, are more universal that the last two, transient and passive.[vii]
The value of mystical realization
Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity—a total embrace of the entire Kosmos—a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?
— Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, pg. 42–3.
W.T. Stace
- Extrovertive – mystical consciousness of the unity of nature overlaid onto one's sense perception of the world.
- the self unites with external objects.
- Zaehner calls this natural mysticism, where the soul “unites with the natural world.”
- Introvertive – any experience that includes sense-perceptual, somatosensory, or introspective content. An experience of nothingness or emptiness.
- Internal unity occurs within the person. It is generally associated with a loss of self, individuality, and of the ego, and results in pure awareness.
Stace’s nine characteristics of mystical experiences:
1. Unity, internal and external
2. Transcendence of time and space
3. Deeply felt positive mood
4. Sense of sacredness
5. Objectivity and reality
6. Paradoxical
7. Ineffability
8. Transiency
9. Persisting positive changes in attitude and behavior. [viii]
This typology is useful in evaluating reported mystical states of consciousness. It is important to note that although these phenomena are considered universal, independent of religion, culture, contemporary or primitive, the interpretation as well as the descriptions of the mystical experience may vary widely.
Stace’s Nine Typologies of Mystical Experiences
Unity
The first of Stace’s characteristic is unity, of both internal and external types. Unity has been described as “….all is One.” Internal unity occurs within the person. It is generally associated with a loss of self, individuality, and of the ego, and results in pure awareness.
The Vendantist Brahman is infinite awareness. In Raja Yoga meditation, the self and the object of attention disappear into perfect union. The self drops out. In external unity, the self unites with external objects. Zaehner calls this natural mysticism, where the soul “unites with the natural world.” God is not known as Himself, but indirectly through his creatures and His creation. An unsurpassable, cosmic unity or cosmic dimension is felt. Aldous Huxley calls this “obscure knowledge: All is in all—that All is actually each.….perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe.”[ix] The state of union where the soul unites with an impersonal absolute Zaehner calls monistic mysticism. Satori is frequently described as “at-one-ment.”
Transcendence of Time and Space
Stace’s second characteristic is the feeling of transcendence of time and space—one experiences eternity and infinity. All schools of Hinduism agree that the Vedas have a transcendent quality. The Rig-Vedas speak of eternity: “We have drank Soma and become immortal.” Professor Daniel Ingalls, Harvard University, says “The Soma experience was always an extraordinary event, exciting, immediate, transcending the logic of space and time.”[x] This mystical feeling is mirrored in the Upanishads.
I know this Self….. To be immortal and infinite.
In Raga Yoga, time disappears into eternity during the seventh step of meditation, and samadhi is described as “without limits.”
“A day, whether six or seven ago, or more that six thousand years ago,
is just as near to the present as yesterday. Why?
is just as near to the present as yesterday. Why?
Because all time is contained in the present Now-moment.”
-Meister Eckhart
Deeply Felt Positive Mood
Stace’s third characteristic is a deeply felt positive mood, a feeling of joy, blessedness, peace or love. Joy, blessedness and peace are the most universal elements of mysticism. In the Vedic tradition, the primary goal of yoga is to bring about samadhi, a state of bliss. Samadhi is unsurpassed only by ananda, the infinite state of bliss which is Brahman. The Taittiriya Upanishad makes the point clear that Brahman is infinite bliss. The bliss of “the fourth”, Turiya, is superior to dreamless sleep (prajna). Buddhist inherited this mystical state of bliss from the Vedas calling it nirvana. Zen Buddhist teach satori is infinite bliss.
Sense of sacredness
Stace’s fourth characteristic is a sense of sacredness, profaned, awe and wonder. A sense of the divine. Thomas Merton believes that “sense of the presence of God” is supernatural intuition, but is not necessarily mystical.[xii] One attribute of the jivamukta, the liberated soul, is the sense that everything is sacred.[xiii]
Johannes Tauler (c. 1300 – 1361) German mystic theologian, emphasized the "blessed contemplation" of God.
In the most intimate, hidden and innermost ground of the soul, God is always essentially, actively, and substantially present. Here the soul possesses everything by grace which God possesses by nature.
Objectivity and Reality
Stace divides this category into two components: 1) insightful knowledge or illumination, which is felt intuitively, and is obtained by direct experience. Insightful knowledge can be divided into two types: (a) insights into being and existence, Huxley’s “obscure knowledge” and (b) insights into one’s personal, finite self, and 2) the authoritative nature of the experience. All schools of Hinduism agree that the Vedas are authoritative. James describes this insightful knowledge as the “noetic quality” of mystical experiences.
This knowledge is certain and real. One comes to know and see what is real. This subjective knowledge is credible and no objective proof is needed, even if science was capable of providing proof. “Ordinary knowledge,” says Michael Nagler, “is either subjective or objective. But according to mysticism—and to modern physics—we cannot know anything objectively; it does not really exist objectively”.[xiv] The same can be said of quantum mechanics, which has been labeled philosophy and not science by some for that reason.
The spiritual experience of mysticism is the transformation of human consciousness.[xv] Intuitive illumination brings about knowledge of an ultimate reality, or a superconsciouness. Vivekananda discusses a level of awareness beyond ordinary reality in Raja Yoga: “The mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond reason, a superconscious state, and that when the mind gets to that higher state, then this knowledge beyond reasoning comes.”[xvi] The Vedantist Brahman is infinite being.
Theravada Buddhist teach that the bodhisattva may reach the final stage of enlightenment, nirvana or bodhi, the state of total insight into the nature of reality. Zen Buddhist describe satori as an ineffable sense of reality. The ultimate reality according to Ch’an Buddhism is sunyata, or the Buddha-nature.
Madhyamika Buddhism, as taught by Nagarjuna, says everything in the phenomenal world is unreal. This is the doctrine of Emptiness, the ultimate reality.[xvii]
One example of the paradoxical nature of mystical experiences is in internal unity, where empty unity exists simultaneously with full and complete unity. Madhyamika schools teach that “Emptiness” is the ultimate reality, but it is unreal itself. The “I” exists and “I” does not exist at the same time. Vivekananda says in mystical experiences “There is no feeling of I, and yet the mind works, desireless, free from restlessness, objectless, bodiless. It is “beyond reason”. [xviii]
There can be a fusion of opposites, typical of Zen thinking. D.T. Suzuki says that Zen confounds the conventional ways of thinking, which is dualistic, with no fusion of opposites. “Zen upsets this scheme of thought, and substitutes a new one in which there exists no logic, no dualistic arrangement of ideas.”[xix] Zen’s mystical component is in the cultivation of prajna, the supreme intuition.
Ineffability
James’ first characteristic of mystical experiences is ineffability. Mystical experiences are beyond words, incapable of being expressed, indescribable or unutterable.[xx] One thinks of the Hindu prayer of Shankara, which begins with
“Oh Thou, before whom all words recoil”
Sunyata, the Buddha-nature, is inexpressible. Zen Buddhist say satori is ineffably, an experience only the experienced can speak about. When something defies description, it is often described as what it is not like. Apophatism, to know by not knowing, is common in the Upanishads. Thomas Merton says ineffability makes the job of the mystical theologian difficult, in that he must say “what cannot really be said.”[xxi]
Transiency
The duration of the mystical experience is temporal, James’ third characteristic of mystical experiences. Even after reaching satori, life must go on.
drawing water and carrying wood.
-Layman P’ang
Persisting Positive Changes in Attitude and Behavior
The mystical experience must have lasting effects resulting in changes in attitude, positive changes in thinking towards self, others, life and the mystical experience itself.
Huston Smith says the test for authenticity is “If following a mystical experience you do not have an increased compassion for others, ‘Love your neighbor,’ then the experience is not authentic.
‘So by their fruits you will know them’. MT 7:20
The tree that is beside the running water is fresher
and gives more fruit. –St. Teresa
Dr. Smith says in "Forgotten Truth": “The goal is not religious experience, but a religious life.” In a more folksy way,
“The goal is altered traits, not altered states.”[xxii]
Patanjalis yoga (Vendatists) reason that when a man exits in samadhi, the final state of absorption into and union with the divine, its value and purity of it is judged by its fruits which must be good for life.[xxiii] In a similar manner, Zen Buddhist say after satri, experience must be joined with discipline.[xxiv]
Note that if an individual makes positive changes in their behavior because they are following a doctrine, it does not qualify as mystical. The source of the teachings by the risis stemmed from their personal mystical experiences. Mystic experiences cannot be taught, they must be experienced as the Gnostics know so well.
Theistic Mysticism is Not Universal
Theistic Mysticism is not one of Stace’s criteria, because a personal god is not universal to the mystical experience, rather it is an interpretation of the experience. Interpretation is dependent on the individual’s set, which is filtered and influenced by cultural, historical, and religious influences or predispositions.
Theistic Mysticism is defined as when the soul unites with a living, personal God. Theistic mysticism, according to Thomas Keating are the mystical graces, “the inflowing of God’s presence into our faculties or the radiance of His presence when it spontaneously overtakes us”. Keating’s five levels of mystical grace are: Infused recollection, Quiet, Union, Full Union, and Transforming Union.[xxv]
Theistic mysticism suffuses the Vedic tradition and is absent in Buddhism. In the practice of Yoga, the goal is for the individual to become in union with the divine. Patanjalis’s Yoga sutras, teaches that dharana (perfect concentration) and dhayana (concentrated meditation), leads to samadhi, the final state of absorption into and union with the divine.[xxvi] This is the theistic mysticism of the Vendatists.
Differing religious traditions have described fundamental mystical experiences in different ways:
- Self-nullification (making oneself bittel, known as abnegation of the ego) and focus upon and absorption within Ein Sof Ohr: God's Infinite Light
- Hassidic schools of Judaism
- Complete non-identification with the world
- Kaivalya in some schools of Hinduism, including Sankhya
- Yoga; Dharana, Dhyana, Samadhi
- Jhana in Buddhism
- Liberation from the cycles of Karma
- Moksha in Jainism, Sikhism and Hinduism,
- Nirvana in Buddhism.
- Ability to see and recognize the pattern that nothing is ultimately dependent nor independent, but that everything is only compositionary and inter-reactional including the conception of the existence or non-existence of the identity of self. Identities and labels are only practical conceptions.
- Theravada Buddhism.
- Deep intrinsic connection to ultimate reality
- Satori in Mahayana Buddhism
- Te in Taoism
- Mahamudra and Dzogchen—meditation, the process of union with the nondual nature.
- Tibetan Buddhism
- The Love of God
- Christianity
- St Teresa: It is love alone that gives worth to all things.
- St Catherine of Siena:
- Baha'i Faith
- Islam
- Sikhism
- Union with God
- Henosis in Neoplatonism
- Brahma-Prapti or Brahma-Nirvana in Hinduism
- fana in Sufism
- Often expressed itself in the metaphors of intoxication and of the love between bride and bridegroom.
- mukti in Sikhism
- Aldous Huxley's “obscure knowledge”:
“All is in all—that All is actually each
.….perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe.”
.….perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe.”
- Innate Knowledge
- Sahaja and Svabhava in Hinduism
- Irfan and Sufism in Islam
- Experience of one's true blissful nature
- Samadhi Svarupa-Avirbhava in Hinduism and Buddhism
- Samadhi: The meditator perceives or experiences the object of his meditation and himself as one.
- Theosis or Divinization, union with God and a participation of the Divine Nature.
- Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy
- Seeing the Light, or "that of God," in everyone.
- Hinduism, Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)
- Sikhism
- Protestant mystics explicitly recognize—what is implied in Catholic teaching—that the divine Light or Spark is a universal principle, as in St. Augustine's account of the Divine Light of Being.
- Being born again or otherwise rejuvenated or built up by divine power.
- Contact with an exterior spiritual entity through revelation (including religious visions) brought by prayer, religious ritual and/or subordination.
In summary, some parting thoughts on mysticism:
1. The pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight.
2. Centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or awareness.
3. May be dualistic, maintaining a distinction between the self and the divine, or the Witness and everything that is witnessed.
4. May be nondualistic, when the Witness itself dissolves into everything that is witnessed. The pure nondual realization of One Taste.
5. The mystical faculty of perceiving transcendental reality.
6. The treasure hidden in the centers of our souls.
7. The unique experience of mystical purgation, illumination, and union.
William Everett Bailey M.S., 2011 © all rights reserved.
[i] Keating, Thomas, Open Mind, Open Heart, The Continuum Publishing Co. New York, 1999.
[ii]The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
[iii] Oxtoby, W.G. Ed., World Religions—Eastern Traditions, Oxford university Press, 1966, pg. 336.
[iv] Quoted in: Smith, Huston, Cleansing the Doors of Perception—The religious significance of entheogenic plants and chemicals, Tarcher-Putnam, 2000, pp. 23.
[v] The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
[vi] Johnson, William. The Mysticism of the Cloud of Unknowing. Fordham University Press, New York, 2000, pg. 27.
[vii] James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience, A study in human nature, A Mentor Book, 1958, pgs. 319-320.
[viii] Quoted in: Pahnke, Walter N., “Drugs and Mysticism”, The International Journal of Parapsychology, Vol VIII, No 2, Spring 1996, pp. 295-313.
[ix] Huxley, Aldous. The Doors of Perception. Perennial Library, 1990. pg. 26.
[x] Quote from: Smith, Huston, Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The religious significance of entheogenic plants and chemicals, J. P. Tarcher/Putnam, New York, 2000, pg. 47.
[xi] The Upanishads, a translation by Eknath Easwaran, Nilgiri Press, 1987.
[xii] Merton, Thomas, “Foreword,” in William, Johnson, The Mysticism of the Cloud of Unknowing. Fordham University Press, New York, 2000, pg. XII.
[xiii] Oxtoby, W.G. Editor: World Religions—Eastern Traditions, Oxford university Press, 1966, pg. 57.
[xiv] Nagler, Michael N., “Reading the Upanishads,” in The Upanishads, a translation by Eknath Easwaran, Nilgiri Press, 1987, pg. 281.
[xv] Oxtoby, W.G. Editor: World Religions—Eastern Traditions, Oxford university Press, 1966, pg. 336.
[xvi] Quoted in: William, James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures 16–17, “Mysticism,” A Mentor Book, 1958, pg. 335.
[xvii] Oxtoby, W.G. Ed., World Religions—Eastern Traditions, Oxford university Press, 1966. Pg 272.
[xviii] Vivekananda, in Raja Yoga, quoted from: James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures 16–17, “Mysticism,” A Mentor Book, 1958, pg. 335.
[xix] Suzuki, D.T. “Essays in Zen Buddhism (I)”, London, 1927, quoted in: William Johnson, The Mysticism of the Cloud of Unknowing. Fordham University Press, New York, 2000, pg. 20.
[xx] The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
[xxi] Merton, Thomas, “Foreword,” in William, Johnson, The Mysticism of the Cloud of Unknowing. Fordham University Press, New York, 2000, pg. XII.
[xxii] Smith, Huston, Forgotten Truth, The Common Vision of the World’s Religions. Harper, 1992, pg. 155.
[xxiii] Quoted in: James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures 16–17, “Mysticism,” A Mentor Book, 1958, pg. 335.
[xxiv] Smith, Huston, Cleansing the Doors of Perception—The religious significance of entheogenic plants and chemicals, Tarcher-Putnam, 2000, pp. 23.
[xxv] Keating, Thomas, Open Mind, Open Heart, The Continuum Publishing CO. New York., 1999, pg.10.
[xxvi] Oxtoby, W.G. Editor: World Religions—Eastern Traditions, Oxford university Press, 1966, pg. 60.
Underhill, Evelyn, Mysticism, CreateSpace, 2011.
Suggested Reading:
Underhill, Evelyn, Mysticism, CreateSpace, 2011.
Suggested Reading:
