Mystical Experience and Union with the Divine

Mystical Experience and Union with the Divine

William James, who popularized the use of the term "Religious Experience" in his The Varieties of Religious Experience, influenced the understanding of Mysticism as a distinctive experience which supplies knowledge of the transcendental. He considered the "personal religion" to be "more fundamental than either theology or ecclesiasticism", and states:

In Mystic States we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed.

In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop and think, and which bring it about that the mystical classics have, as been said, neither birthday not native land.

According to McClenon, Mysticism is The doctrine that special mental states or events allow an understanding of ultimate truths. Although it is difficult to differentiate which forms of experience allow such understandings, mental episodes supporting belief in "other kinds of reality" are often labeled mystical Mysticism tends to refer to experiences supporting belief in a cosmic unity rather than the advocation of a particular religious ideology.

According to Blakemore and Jennett, Mysticism is frequently defined as an experience of direct communion with God, or union with the Absolute, but definitions of mysticism (a relatively modern term) are often imprecise and usually rely on the presuppositions of the modern study of mysticism namely, that mystical experiences involve a set of intense and usually individual and private psychological states.

Furthermore, Mysticism is a phenomenon said to be found in all major religious traditions, new ways of knowing and loving based on states of awareness in which God becomes present in our inner acts. Related to this idea of "presence" instead of "experience" is the transformation that occurs through mystical activity:

This is why the only test that Christianity has known for determining the authenticity of a mystic and her or his message has been that of personal transformation, both on the mystic's part and especially on the part of those whom the mystic has affected.

Belzen and Geels also note that mysticism is a way of life and a 'direct consciousness of the presence of God' [or] 'the ground of being' or similar expressions.

In the Hellenistic world, 'Mystical' referred to "secret" religious rituals The use of the word lacked any direct references to the transcendental.  A "Mystikos" was an initiate of a mystery religion.

In early Christianity the term "Mystikos" referred to three dimensions, which soon became intertwined, namely the biblical, the liturgical and the spiritual or contemplative. The biblical dimension refers to "hidden" or allegorical interpretations of Scriptures. The liturgical dimension refers to the liturgical mystery of the Eucharist, the presence Christ at the Eucharist. The third dimension is the contemplative or experiential knowledge of God.

This threefold meaning of "Mystical" continued in the Middle Ages. Under the influence of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite the mystical theology came to denote the investigation of the allegorical truth of the Bible. Pseudo-Dionysius' Apophatic theology, or "negative theology", exerted a great influence on medieval monastic religiosity, although it was mostly a male religiosity, since woman were not allowed to study. It was influenced by Neo-Platonism, and very influential in Eastern Orthodox Christian theology. In western Christianity it was a counter-current to the prevailing Cataphatic theology or "positive theology". It is best known nowadays in the western world from Meister Eckhart and John of the Cross.

The link between mysticism and the vision of the Divine was introduced by the early Church Fathers, who used the term as an adjective, as in mystical theology and mystical contemplation.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth century mysticism came to be used as a substantive. This shift was linked to a new discourse, in which science and religion were separated.

Luther dismissed the allegorical interpretation of the bible, and condemned Mystical theology, which he saw as more Platonic than Christian. "The mystical", as the search for the hidden meaning of texts, became secularised, and also associated with literature, as opposed to science and prose.

Science was also distantiated form religion. By the middle of the 17th century, 'the mystical' is increasingly applied exclusively to the religious realm, separating religion and 'natural philosophy' as two distinct approaches to the discovery of the hidden meaning of God's universe. The traditional hagiographies and writings of the saints became designated as 'mystical', shifting from the virtues and miracles to extraordinary experiences and states of mind, thereby creating a newly coined "mystical tradition". A new understanding developed of the Divine as residing within human, a core essence beyond the varieties of religious expressions.

In the 19th century the meaning of mysticism was considerably narrowed:

The competition between the perspectives of theology and science resulted in a compromise in which most varieties of what had traditionally been called mysticism were dismissed as merely psychological phenomena and only one variety, which aimed at union with the Absolute, the Infinite, or God, and thereby the perception of its essential unity or oneness, was claimed to be genuinely mystical. The historical evidence, however, does not support such a narrow conception of mysticism.

Under the influence of Perennialism, which was popularised in both the west and the east by Unitarianism, Transcendentalists and Theosophy, mysticism has acquired a broader meaning, in which all sorts of esotericism and religious traditions and practices are joined together.

The term Mysticism has been extended to comparable phenomena in non-Christian religions, where it influenced Hindu and Buddhist responses to colonialism, resulting in Neo-Vedanta and Buddhist modernism.

In the contemporary usage "mysticism" has become an umbrella term for all sorts of non-rational world views. William Harmless even states that mysticism has become "a catch-all for religious weirdness". Within the academic study of religion the apparent "unambiguous commonality" has become "opaque and controversial". The term "mysticism" is being used in different ways in different traditions. Some call to attention the conflation of mysticism and linked terms, such as spirituality and esotericism, and point at the differences between various traditions.