Mysticism

When we talk about mystics, reference is often made to people such as Saint John of the Cross, Saint Therese of Lisieux, and also the recently canonised Saint John Paul II.  But what is mystics?  What is mysticism? 

According to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, mysticism refers to "the experience of mystical union or direct communion with ultimate reality reported by the mystics", or "the belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth, ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience as intuition or insights."

The online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy considered "mysticism" as "a constellation of distinctive practices, discourses, texts, institutions, traditions, and experiences aiming at human transformation, variously defined in different traditions."  As such, the study of mysticism covers the classification of mystical experiences, their nature in different religions and mystical traditions, and how they are modified by language and culture, as well as whether there is evidence for the truth of contents of the mystical experiences.

Mystical experience is therefore further defined in a wider sense as "a purportedly super sense-perceptual or sub sense-perceptual experience granting acquaintance of realities or states of affairs that are of a kind not accessible by way of sense perception, somatosensory modalities, or standard introspection."  However, more commonly, it refers to a subset of the above focusing on a "unitive" experience which involves a "de-emphasis, blurring, or eradication of multiplicity."

Examples of unitive experience are the "oneness of all nature", "union with God" of Christianity, Atman if Brahman (the the self/soul is identical with the eternal, absolute being) in Hinduism, and that in Buddhism.  Such unitive experience is in contrast with a dualistic experience of God when the subject and God remain strictly distinct.  On example quoted by the website for the latter is the Jewish tree of life kabbalistic experience.

Mystical experience is considered not equivalent to but a subset of "religious experience".  The latter refers to any experience having content or significance appropriate to a religious context, such as religious visions and auditions, non-mystical Zen experiences, various religious feelings, as well as the "feeling of absolute dependence".

Reference:

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mysticism/)