Re-opening the discussion on mysticism … What is it, exactly?

Dear friends,

Last night Milly and I got involved in a conversation stemming from the conversations in our commentaries and on the forum in recent days about mysticism. Also fueling that discussion is the fact that in the course of hunting to a copy of Thomas A Kempis little classic the other night I also came across a copy of William Johnson's translation of one of the great classics of Mysticism, "The Cloud of Unknowing" and I have commenced reading it. The question Amanda and I ended up asking ourselves is the simple one of "exactly what is this thing we call 'mysticism'?" In oru discussionsI think we bandy the word about a fair bit and I suspect we are often talking about slightly different things or even, the one person using the term — and I include myself in this — might use it with a number of different meanings.

One of Ian's earliest commentataries for Catholica was entitled "Are we called to be mystics?" [See www.catholica.com.au/ianstake/005_it_120806.php] and that in fact derived from an on-going discussion that had been bubbling away in the earlier discussion communities that had coalesced into Catholica.

With the greatest of respect to you, Ian, I suspect part of the problem we all might have with this matter revolves around confusion as to what each of us means when we use the terms "mystic", "mystical" or "mysticism" both when we are speaking of it in a generally positive way and also when it is being used in a pejorative or semi-pejorative way trying to impute that a person who is attracted to mysticism somehow doesn't have their two feet firmly planted on the ground, or they engage in "wooly" or irrational thinking.

Personally I do see "mysticism" as "part of the mix" in this complex journey we undertake called "life" in our search for the ultimate meaning. I find it ironic in the particular context of the book I'm presently reading, that the unknown 14th century sage who wrote "The Cloud of Unknowing" is essentially arguing that the pathway to the Divine is "beyond words" but he seems to have required a heck of a lot of words to explain that! Go figure that little paradox LOL.

In the discussion with Amanda last night we basically came to the conclusion that there seem to be three or four senses in which we use the term mysticism. We'll both write more in due course as we're still both thinking about this — the woman has been 'burning the midnight oil' for the past four nights and produced four new songs for various events that are coming up in the next few months. I've got a fairly busy program today but I'll try and get back later to summarise the conclusions we came to but in the meantime I thought I'd shoot this off in the hope of stirring up thoughts others in the community might have on this subject.

In the meantime, Ian, I do not think we are necessarily called to be "mystics" in the sense that we are called to cloister ourselves away in cells and engage in some kind of ecstatic rapture in contemplation of the Divine as the essential, the preferred, or the ultimate pathway to paradise. I do think though that those who travel the mystical pathway have much to teach us and very often they seem to arrive at conclusions that gel very comfortably with conclusions that scholars, historians and scientists might arrive at via more rational enquiry. In our own personal prayerlife and vocational pursuits I suspect there is a bit of the "mystic" in all of us and a good example of this is the way in which we all tend to rely on "hunches" or some kind of "native intuition" even as historians or scientists as we develop our theories and proofs that help us better explain why life and Life is as it is.

I'd value reading your thoughts on how you define mysticism, Ian, and I'd welcome the thoughts of anybody else who would like to open up on the subject. I've based this email on a post I put on our forum as a discussion starter and if you click the headline graphic below it will take you to Ian's original commentary written in August last year. <see the discussion starter in our forum>

Best wishes for a great day wherever you happen to be ... in life, and in our world,

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher