Mysticism

Mysticism (from the Greek μυστικός, mystikos, an initiate of a mystery religion) is the pursuit of communion with, identification with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate Reality, Divinity, spiritual Truth, or God through direct experience or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences of awareness. Mysticism may be monistic, dualistic, nondualistic, or ontologically pluralistic. Differing religious, social and psychological traditions have described this fundamental mystical experience in many different ways. The words "mystical" and "mysticism", though commonly used by mystics to affirm extraordinary insights beyond all expression, and thus impossible to communicate to others, have also sometimes been used in a presumptive sense which insists that others must believe and accept what aspects of the experiences can be communicated, or in an entirely pejorative sense, strongly related to rejection of such authoritarian claims.

Quotes

• From each a mystic silence Love demands.
  • Attar, "Intoxicated by the Wine of Love", as translated by Margaret Smith from the Jawhar Al-Dhat in Readings from the Mystics of Islām (1950) by Margaret Smith, p. 85
  • Variant translation, in Essential Sufism, by James Fadiman and Robert Frager: "From each, Love demands a mystic silence."

• Mysticism consists, according to a beautiful definition I find in Plotinus], in seeing with closed eyes [...] in seeing with the eyes of the soul, while the eyes of the body are closed. The essential phenomenon of mysticism is what is called ecstasy, a state in which, with all communication with the external world interrupted, the soul has the sense of communicating with an internal object, which is the infinite being, God. (La psicologia del misticismo, pp. 58-59)
  • Émile Boutroux, La natura e lo spirito, translation by G. Papini, Carabba Editore, Lanciano, 1920

• Mystics understand the roots of the Tao but not its branches; scientists understand its branches but not its roots. Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science; but man needs both.
  • Fritjof Capra, in The Tao of Physics : An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism (1975), Epilogue, p. 306

• A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both.
  • G. K. Chesterton, William Blake (1920)

See also

• Age of Aquarius
• The Ageless Wisdom Teachings
• The Reappearance of the Christ, by Alice A Bailey
• Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
• Blessings
• Maitreya (Theosophy)
• The Masters and the Path (book by C.W. Leadbeater)
• Masters of Wisdom
• Meditation
• Occultism
• Helena Roerich
• Theosophical Society
• Blessed Itala Mela

External links

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of

God and Religious Toleration/What is God

Wikipedia has an article about:

Mysticism

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Mysticism

• "Mysticism" at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• "Mysticism" at Encyclopedia of Religion and Society
• "Self-transcendence enhanced by removal of portions of the parietal-occipital cortex" Article from the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion
• Jewish Mysticism at The Jewish History Resource Center, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem