What is Mysticism?
"Given the multitude of potential meanings intended when the word, 'mysticism' is used, I felt it especially important that I should clarify what I mean by 'mysticism.' When I use the word, 'mysticism,' I am using it in the formal sense as intended by philosophers, such as William Terrance Stace. When it comes to defining 'mysticism,' Stace is among the most frequently quoted scholars." -- Nonjohn
Here are some
elucidating quotations from Stace’s introductory chapter in The Teachings
of the Mystics (New York: The New American Library, 1960):
"By
the word 'mystic' I shall always mean a person who himself has had
mystical experience. Often the word is used in a much wider and looser way.
Anyone who is sympathetic to mysticism is apt to be labeled a mystic. But I
shall use the word always in a stricter sense. However sympathetic toward
mysticism a man may be, however deeply interested, involved, enthusiastic, or
learned in the subject, he will not be called a mystic unless he has, or has
had, mystical experience.” (p.9)
"The
word 'mysticism' is popularly used in a variety of loose and inaccurate
ways. Sometimes anything is called 'mystical' which is misty, foggy,
vague, or sloppy. It is absurd that 'mysticism' should be associated
with what is 'misty' because of the similar sound of the words. And
there is nothing misty, foggy, vague, or sloppy about mysticism.
A
second absurd association is to suppose that mysticism is sort of
mystery-mongering. There is, of course, an etymological connection between
"mysticism" and "mystery." But mysticism is not any sort of
hocus-pocus such as we commonly associate with claims to be the elucidation of
sensational mysteries. Mysticism is not the same as what is commonly called the
"occult"...Nor does it include what are commonly called
parapsychological phenomena such as telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance,
precognition. These are not mystical phenomena. It is perhaps true that mystics
may sometimes claim to possess such special powers, but even when they do so
they are well aware that such powers are not part of, and are to be clearly
distinguished from, their mystical experience." (pp.10-11)
Finally,
it is most important to realize that visions and voices are not mystical
phenomena, though here again it seems to be the case that the sort of persons
who are mystics may often be the sort of persons who see visions and hear
voices...And there are, one must add, good reasons for this. What mystics say is
that a genuine mystical experience is nonsensuous. It is formless, shapeless,
colorless, odorless, soundless. But a vision is a piece of visual imagery having
color and shape. A voice is an auditory image. Visions and voices are sensuous
experiences.” (pp. 10-12)
"The
most important, the central characteristic in which all fully developed mystical
experiences agree, and which in the last analysis is definitive of them and
serves to mark them off from other kinds of experiences, is that they involve
the apprehension of an ultimate nonsensuous unity in all things, a oneness or a
One to which neither the senses nor the reason can penetrate. In other words, it
entirely transcends our sensory-intellectual consciousness.
It
should be carefully noted that only fully developed mystical experiences are
necessarily apprehensive of the One. Many experiences have been recorded which
lack this central feature but yet possess other mystical characteristics. These
are borderline cases, which may be said to shade off from the central core of
cases. They have to the central core the relation which some philosophers like
to call "family resemblance.” (pp.14-15)
"One
may be called extrovertive mystical experience, the other introvertive mystical
experience. Both are apprehensions of the One, but they reach it in different
ways. The extrovertive way looks outward and through the physical senses into
the external world and finds the One there. The introvertive way turns inward,
introspectively, and finds the One at the bottom of the self, at the bottom of
human personality. The latter far outweighs the former in importance both in the
history of mysticism and in the history of human thought generally. The
introvertive way is the major strand in the history of mysticism, the
extrovertive way a minor strand.
The
extrovertive mystic with his physical senses continues to perceive the same
world of trees and hills and tables and chairs as the rest of us. But he sees
these objects transfigured in such manner that the Unity shines through them.
Because it includes ordinary sense perceptions, it only partially realizes the
description...(that is, an experience of complete unity)...It is suggested that
the extrovertive type of experience is a kind of halfway house to the
introvertive. For the introvertive experience is wholly nonsensuous and
nonintellectual. But the extrovertive experience is sensory-intellectual in so
far as it still perceives physical objects but is nonsensuous and
nonintellectual in so far as it perceives them as "all one."
Introvertive
mysticism..."Now it happens to be the case that this total suppression of
the whole empirical content of consciousness is precisely what the introvertive
mystic claims to achieve. And he claims that what happens is not that all
consciousness disappears but that only the ordinary sensory-intellectual
consciousness disappears and is replaced by an entirely new kind of
consciousness, the mystical consciousness." (pp. 15-18)
"Of the introvertive mystical consciousness the Mandukya (Upanishad) says that it is "beyond the senses, beyond the understanding, beyond all expression...It is the pure unitary consciousness, wherein awareness of the world and of multiplicity is completely obliterated. It is ineffable peace. It is the Supreme Good. It is One without a second. It is the Self."....."Not only in Christianity and Hinduism but everywhere else we find that the essence of this experience is that it is an undifferentiated unity, though each culture and each religion interprets this undifferentiated unity in terms of its own creeds and dogmas." (p.20-21)