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Mysticism – Usual Description Page 1 of 13 20.0 Mysticism – Usual Description Page 1 of 13 20.0: Mysticism – Usual Description Professor F. G. Young, an eminent twentieth century researcher in biochemistry, was reported by Mervyn Stockwood in his book ‘Religion and the Scientists’ as stating that he had: 1 …no great faith in definitions, since a dictionary defines words in terms of each other and is therefore necessarily a vicious circle. It is clearly the concept rather than the definition that is important. And to compound the difficulty further, Morton Kelsey suggested that: 2 One of the problems with understanding mysticism is simply the fact that this is too big a field for one word to cover. "Mysticism" conveys all kinds of meanings to various people, and too often a term that carries too much meaning ends up meaning little or nothing at all. Nevertheless, in this chapter, I will try to give both a word based definition and sufficient a description for you to be able to appreciate what, from my spiritual perspective, I believe mysticism to be. In very broad terms it is: 3 …a constellation of distinctive practices, discourses, texts, institutions, traditions, and experiences aimed at human transformation, variously defined in different traditions But to be more specific, and in a spiritual context, it is as defined in the Chambers Dictionary as: 4 The practice of gaining direct communication with God through prayer and meditation. …and for a person engaged in such practice, it defines a mystic as: Someone whose life is devoted to meditation or prayer in an attempt to achieve direct communication with and knowledge of God, regarded as the ultimate reality. Moving from the dictionary definitions to a more descriptive one, Lumsden Barkway provided a few words from Evelyn Underhill’s book 'Practical Mysticism': 5 Mysticism is the art of union with Reality. The mystic is a person who has attained that union in greater or lesser degree; or who aims at and believes in such attainment. …and the Austrian-born American sociologist Peter Berger offered: 6 Mysticism, broadly speaking, is any religious practice or doctrine that asserts the ultimate unity of man and the divine. This fundamental quality of mysticism has been classically formulated in Hinduism by the formula 'tat tvam asi' - 'thou art that', that is, the depths of the human soul are identical with the divine depths of the DAJ 07/11/2019 20:17:02 20.0 Mysticism – Usual Description Page 2 of 13 universe. From the pen of W. H. Dyson comes the simple statement that: 7 To enjoy God without intermediary, the first-hand experience of God, is the essential truth of ... Mysticism. Just a word of warning. Many people consider mysticism and asceticism as synonyms. This is certainly not the case as was revealed by a monk of the Eastern Orthodox Church: 8 The masters of the spiritual life and, following them, recent Roman writers have had the merit of giving precision to this terminology. They give to the words 'ascetical' and 'mystical' a very strict technical meaning. The 'ascetical life' is a life in which 'acquired' virtues, i.e. virtues resulting from a personal effort, only accompanied by that general grace which God grants to every good will, prevail. The 'mystical life' is a life in which the gifts of the Holy Spirit are predominant over human efforts, and in which 'infused' virtues are predominant over the 'acquired' ones; the soul has become more passive than active. Let us use a classical comparison. Between the ascetic life, that is, the life in which human action predominates, and the mystical life, that is the life which God's action predominates, there is the same difference as between rowing a boat and sailing it; the oar is the ascetic effort, the sail is the mystical passivity which is unfurled to catch the divine wind. This lovely metaphor whilst it distinguishes these two terms, does set them within the one context; three is a very close relationship between them in which they are so intertwined as to be part of the same whole. This was explained in the same book ‘Orthodox Spirituality’ which highlighted that we must be careful: 9 ...not to raise a wall of separation between mystical and ascetic life. The prevalence of the gifts does not exclude the practice of acquired virtues, any more than the prevalence of acquired virtues excludes the gifts. One of these two elements, of course, predominates over the other. But the spiritual life is generally a synthesis of the 'ascetical' and the 'mystical'. Because of this, I have used the term ‘mystical’ to encompass both concepts. So returning to mysticism, as I use the term, most descriptions of it indicate that the one and only focus of the mystic is God. From ‘An Anthology of the Love of God’ Lumsden Barkey indicated that Evelyn Underhill understood that: 10 The life of co-operation with Him must begin with a full and practical acceptance of the truth that God alone matters... From an Eastern perspective, the 7 th century incumbent of the title Shankara Acharya looked at the endpoint of the mystic which he identified as: 11 For him who has discerned the true being of the Eternal, the ancient circle of birth and death has ceased. DAJ 07/11/2019 20:17:02 20.0 Mysticism – Usual Description Page 3 of 13 For all who have spent many of their years focussed on spiritual development comes, according to the founder of the "Omega Order", a mixed teaching and contemplative community, Peter Spink, an observation from Frederick Happold which may strike a deep chord: 12 As I draw to the end of a long and active life I have come to regard a capacity for intersection [between man and God] as perhaps the most essential quality of mind and spirit needed by twentieth century man. This spiritual realisation is vital for our progress and therefore we must try to develop our own personal relationship with our Creator. This is often referred to as building a ‘union with God’ as discussed by Margaret Smith in her book ‘Studies in Early Mysticism in the Near and Middle East’: 13 Therefore the human soul yearns for that blissful state again [union with God] , and this earthly life should be spent in the quest for that blessed life. St. Augustine urges men to follow the quest and to tread the Mystic Way... She also stressed this by reference to St Bernard, who was the primary builder of the reforming Cistercian monastic order: 14 ...for to occupy oneself with God, says St. Bernard, is not idleness, but the occupation of occupations. This has been the backbone for the lives of mystics down the ages. Thomas Merton, worldly monk and a mystic, described this as a three stage process: 15 The mystical doctrine of Ruysbroeck is founded on the theory of 'unity of spirit' - first man's natural unity [as God lies within us] , secondly his supernatural union with God [awakening - support and awareness of spirit] by love and the virtues and thirdly his perfect union with God 'above all graces and gifts'. Another way of viewing the stages towards union was offered by Bonaventure in the 13 th century. This Italian mystic informed us that Jesus the Nazarene: 16 …has taught the knowledge of truth according to the three ways of approaching theology: the symbolic, the proper, and the mystical, so that through symbolic theology we may rightly use sensible things, through proper theology, we may rightly use intelligible things, and through mystical theology, we may be rapt to ecstatic transports. So it seems that this is what we ought to aim for too. But what does following the mystical path really entail? To help me to answer this question, I will enlist the help of one book in particular which has become a classic reference book on mysticism. That is called, not surprisingly, ‘Mysticism’ published in 1911 and written by Evelyn Underhill. The book is somewhat academic and, having read it three times myself, I would advise anyone who is hoping to follow the mystic way to also read it. Early in the book she explains the: 17 …three traditional stages of the Mystic Way: Purgation, Illumination, Union. DAJ 07/11/2019 20:17:02 20.0 Mysticism – Usual Description Page 4 of 13 Subsequently, she develops this further in the second part of the book: 18 Here, then, is the classification under which we shall study the phases of the mystical life. (1) The awakening of the Self to consciousness of Divine Reality... (2) The Self, aware for the first time of Divine Beauty... (3) When by Purgation the Self has become detached from the 'things of sense,'... (4) …final and complete purification of the Self, which is called by some ... Dark Night of the Soul... (5) Union: the true goal of the mystic quest. Margaret Smith used the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, an anonymous theologian and philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century, to confirm Evelyn Underhill’s own analysis: 19 Dionysius marks out clearly, in 'The Heavenly Hierarchy' and 'The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy', the three stages of the Mystic Way, through Purgation and Illumination to Perfection, the Unitive Life. And she too further explains this later in the same book: 20 ...the Mystic Way, which must be trodden by all who seek to attain to that blessed communion with the Divine... The first stage is known as the Purgative Life, the stage of purification... ...the next stage, known as the Illuminative Life ... Purifying the inner self, bringing all the faculties of thought, feeling and will, into conformity with that which he now knows to be the Divine Will ..
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