An alternative approach and one that I use to compliment and counterbalance my exploration of Eastern Yogic religion is Mysticism, in particular, the Christian and Sufi mystical wings of their respective doctrinal religions, which I have found enormously helpful in offering an alternative context and ‘intellectual system’ for understanding the direct experience of the Numinous and alternative pathways for achieving the much sought after unity with It, or ‘Self Realisation’. In whatever tradition, the way of the mystic is, in fact the only authentic way ever to know the Numinous, by direct experience of It.
So what is mysticism? What is a mystic? That helpful portal into many modern quests for explanation – Wikipedia – offers:
“Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute, but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning. It may also refer to the attainment of insight in ultimate or hidden truths, and to human transformation supported by various practices and experiences.”
Dictionary.com says of being a mystic:
“a person who claims to attain, or believes in the possibility of attaining, insight into mysteries transcending ordinary human knowledge, as by direct communication with the divine or immediate intuition in a state of spiritual ecstasy; a person initiated into religious mysteries.”
Author of the early definitive work on Mysticism, Evelyn Underhill says:
“Mysticism, according to its historical and psychological definitions, is the direct intuition or experience of God; and a mystic is a person who has, to a greater or less degree, such a direct experience — one whose religion and life are centered, not merely on an accepted belief or practice, but on that which the person regards as first hand personal knowledge.”[emphasis added]
Or, more simply and pragmatically:
“ that peculiar type of personality which is able to set up direct relations with the Absolute (1).”
Whilst from the Upanishads we have already learned:
“The Self is not known through study of the scriptures, nor through subtlety of the intellect, nor through much learning; but by him who longs for him is he known.’ Verily unto him does the Self reveal his true being.”[emphasis added] (2)
Which itself suggests that direct knowledge (gnosis) rather than intellectual knowledge is the only real way to experience the Numinous.
However, if the truest way, it also is one which holds the most perils for the innumerable seekers who have wandered off the true pathway, lured by will-o’-the-wisp lights that promised them enlightenment, or occult knowledge, only to lose them completely, another subject beyond the scope of this present work.
Mysticism is an enormous subject and one I can only hope to touch upon here. The book I use is the large and authoritative early work by Evelyn Underhill, dated 1930 (1911): ‘Mysticism. The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness’ which, whilst treating almost exclusively with the experience of the Christian mystics from the Middle Ages onwards, nevertheless does usefully reference eastern religious systems, especially in terms of how unification with the Divine is understood. The book is now readily and inexpensively available on Amazon Kindle, and readers are directed there.
Shamanism is probably the oldest manifestation of the mystical order of experience and, as with Christian and Sufi mysticism, has attracted a considerable literature of its own, a certain amount of which I am familiar with given my own extensive studies of the subject as it relates to pre European Andean traditions. In my study report, also referred to earlier, I discussed briefly the modern biomedical interpretations of mystical experiences which again I will direct the reader to, given the report is fully downloadable from www.andeanmedicine.net/about
Mysticism is, then, a set of experiences of an intuitive or visionary nature, giving direct apprehension of a different order of transcendent reality, which is then amenable to interpretation according to the different containing religious system it is experienced within.
(1) Evelyn Underhill. (1911) 1930. Mysticism. The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness. Part 2. The Mystic Way. Chapter 1: 129
(2) 108 Upanishads. Commentary on the Katha Upanishad–by Swami Nirmalananda Giri: 88/908 I’m
(3) Elizabeth Currie. Indigenous Concepts of Health and Healing in Andean Populations. The Relevance of Traditional MEDICINE in a Changing World. Report to the EC Horizon 2020. October 2019. Section Three, Chapter 5: The Tale of Juana Icha. A Trial by Three Models. The Psychological Impact of Evangelisation. Pp 232-251
Featured image is the sculpture in marble by Gian Lorenzo Bernini depicting the famous Ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Ávila. Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome. Image downloaded from: https://painting-planet.com/the-ecstasy-of-st-teresa-by-lorenzo-bernini/