What do mystics experience? Is their experience different from the spiritual experiences of other people? How do mystics describe the experiences they’ve had?
The following is a text version of this posting.
What do mystics experience? How is their spiritual experience different from others? While there’s no one path to mysticism, descriptions of the mystical experience are similar across the great wisdom traditions of the world. Mysticism itself is the experience of union or communion with the Divine or something the person understands as ultimate in life. Mysticism is described as an experience of union with God in various religions that hold a belief in a deity. Or it could be the experience of union with nature or creative energy in pagan or indigenous religions. The focus of mysticism is not on the belief but on the experience of union.
For simplicity’s sake, as I talk about mysticism I’m going to use God as a point of reference, but I want to be clear that the belief in a deity is not required for mysticism.
Mystics typically nurture the spiritual dimension of their lives with contemplative practices, like meditation. Mystics understand that contemplative practice is what they do to open themselves, open their hearts or the core of who they are, to the presence of the Divine. The contemplative practice is sometimes referred to as plowing the field and making the soil ready for the seed to be planted and a sprout to shoot up.
In her book, The Interior Castle, 16th Century Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila explains that God offers the favor or grace of the Divine Presence. She refers to this as the prayer of union. What’s it like? Essentially, Teresa explains that you’ll know it when you experience it. For those who haven’t experienced it, no description will seem real. While she explains that the experience of union is fleeting, it’s also life-changing. The experience may last a few minutes at a time or, she thinks it’s very rare for the experience to last more than half an hour. But from that experience, a person begins to live with greater contentment and a sense of connection with all of life.
I think one of the clearest descriptions of the experience of mystical union is found in the writing of Meister Eckhart, a 14th-century mystic.
“God and I, we are one. I accept God into me in knowing; I go into God in loving. There are some who say that blessedness consists not in knowing but in willing. They are wrong; for if it consisted only in the will, it would not be one. Working and becoming are one. If a carpenter doesn’t work, nothing becomes of the house. If the axe isn’t doing anything, nothing is becoming anything. In this working God and I are one; God is working and I am becoming. The fire changes anything into itself that is put into it and this takes on fire’s own nature. The wood does not change fire into itself, the fire changes the wood into itself. So we are changed into God, that we shall know God as God is.” Meister Eckhart, The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, 1981, 188-189.
Among my favorite mystic writers is Hafiz, the Persian Sufi poet from the 14th Century. His understanding of Allah is his Beloved. The encounters Hafiz has with his Beloved transform his perceptions of everything around him, like seeing the stars dance in the sky, animals speaking of love, and all of nature imbued with the presence of his Beloved. Because of the deep union he experiences with his Beloved, Hafiz understands that the energy of the cosmos is love itself. He often describes this love in terms of lovers kissing, of people singing in a tavern, and of a bold sensuality that pulsates. From Hafiz and many other mystics, we understand that mysticism doesn’t take us out of the world and makes us distant from life around us. Instead, the mystical experience of union with the Divine leads us to a profound awakening of the pulsating energy that is life itself. So it is that out of the silence of contemplative practice, a radical awakening occurs for the mystic.
Teresa of Avila is correct: the experience is a gift. We can’t conjure it up using particular practices or prayers. But when our spiritual practice opens us, in time the seed is planted and something new is born inside of us that is an encounter with the Source of Life itself.
