Mysticism

What is Mysticism?

Mysticism is the strand of contemplative practice that aims at direct, unmediated experience of ultimate reality, however that reality is named. It appears in Christianity§, Sufism§, Hinduism§, Buddhism§ and Daoism, and in the secular contemplative streams that emerged in the twentieth century. The vocabularies differ. The territory described is recognisably one.

Mysticism vs adjacent concepts

Mysticism is often confused with three neighbours. *Magic and occultism share some vocabulary with it, but the aim differs. They seek mastery of hidden forces. Mysticism seeks recognition of what one already is. Theology is the disciplined articulation of doctrine. Mysticism is the contemplative encounter that doctrine tries to describe from outside. Religious experience in the broad sense covers any moment of awe, conversion or numinous feeling. Mysticism is narrower. It points specifically to the unmediated* knowing of ultimate reality, with a discipline, a literature, and a community of practitioners around it.

What unites the mystical traditions

Across the contemplative literatures of Christianity§, Islam, Hinduism§, Buddhism§ and Daoism the same arc keeps reappearing. It also runs through the secular contemplative traditions that emerged in the twentieth century. A method of stilling. A recognition that what one is, fundamentally, is not what one had taken oneself to be. A transformation of life that follows from the recognition. The vocabularies are local: unio mystica, fanāʾ, kenshō, samādhi. The structure of the report is consistent enough that scholars from William James onwards have argued for a perennial mysticism running underneath the cultural overlays.

Whether the perennialist reading is finally correct remains contested among scholars. What is not contested is that mystics across traditions, when given the chance to compare notes, have generally recognised one another. Thomas Merton's correspondence with Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama is the canonical twentieth-century example. The Sufi-Hindu encounters that produced figures like Kabir are an older one.

Apophatic and kataphatic

The mystical traditions sort, roughly, into two approaches. The *apophatic way, via negativa, proceeds by unsaying. God is not this. God is not that. The Sanskrit equivalent is neti neti, not this, not this, used by Advaita Vedāntins to point past every attribute toward what cannot be named. Meister Eckhart's Godhead beyond God, Pseudo-Dionysius's darkness above light*, and the non-dual§ recognition that the self is not any of its objects all live in this register.

The *kataphatic way, via positiva, proceeds by saying, by image, by devotion. The Marian devotion of the Catholic tradition, the bhakti* current of Hindu spirituality, and the ecstatic poetry of Sufism§ all sit here. The two approaches are complementary rather than rival. Most mature traditions cultivate both, knowing that excessive negation flattens into dryness and excessive affirmation thickens into idolatry.

Where mysticism shows up in the index

On the non-dual§ side: Rupert Spira↗, Spira's *Being Aware of Being Aware*↗, Adyashanti's Do Nothing↗, Nisargadatta's *I Am That*↗, and Francis Lucille↗. On the Buddhist side: Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield's *Power of Awareness*↗ and Br. Troi Duc Niem from Plum Village↗ work in the same vein with different vocabulary. On the Christian side, Jonathan Pageau↗ speaks from the symbolic and iconographic tradition that fed the contemplative current. The Sufi side of the index is, for now, a gap. See Sufism§ for the acknowledgement.

What it isn't

Mysticism is not necessarily theistic. The Buddhist mystic and the secular contemplative are mystics on this account. It is not anti-rational. The great mystics have generally been first-rate intellects who used reason to clear the ground for what reason cannot itself reach. And it is not a substitute for ethics. Every serious mystical tradition treats ethical conduct as a prerequisite for the inner work, not a replacement for it.