Savitri, Book |, Canto IV Sri Aurobindo On Mysticism mundane sacred and It is impossible to define a word like Mysticism: the term itself proposes there’s an ‘outside’ of finite language and thought.
By some the mystical experience is considered to be an ultimate goal of the religious life; by others to be a encouraging ‘grace’ along the way; and yet a third group believe such a religious experience is the very foundation of all religions, even the origin of ‘primitive religion’ (Durkheim’s ‘sacred’ set against the ‘profane’). and training. Underhill identified stages of purgation (of bodily desires), purification (of the will), and illumination (of the mind), prior to unification. Some have been aided by objects of meditation (mandala), such as a candle or a lotus flower, the Tibetan sand mandala and the wheel of Buddhist meditations; others by sounds and words (mantra) like ‘Om’ ("Aaum") or the Jesus Prayer; and yet others by bodily movement such as dance or breathing exercises. Techniques may involve calm prayer or wordless contemplation, retreat and reclusion, fasting, celibacy, Yoga, music, or hallucinogenic drugs (the Do ordinary experiences of Mundane Wn Pennie, RC Zachner) Shamanism has long practised psychic transformations. Yet lives relate to those experiences that errcinic experience things without are called ‘mystical’? apparent training, either regularly or unexpectedly, such as experiences of parapsychology, out-of-body experiences or A wealth of experiences is described as religious or mystical. They range from voices and visions to ecstasy, erotic rapture (Ibn al’ Arabi and Bernard of Clairvaux) or bliss and ravishment (John Donne); from finitude, humility and creatureliness (Margery Kempe) to a sense of enlarged awareness or awe before the majestic grandeur of nature; from a serene sense of still small voice (or ‘the silence beneath the silence’) or a reassurance that ‘all will be well’ (Julian of Norwich) to a "peak-experience" (Abraham Maslow) such as joy and fire (Pascal), anguish and terror (Rilke), or just a profound nothing (nada, nihil, Mu) which can be without God (Zen), or involve leaving "God" behind (Eckhart) Some mystical writings speak of a sense of harmony, a connectedness with all that is (the Chandogya Upanisad’s ‘tat tvam asi’-’that thou art’), a ‘union with Reality’ (Evelyn Underhill), an identity with the divine (al-Hallaj’s ‘Ana al-haqq’-'1 am the Truth’, a heresy that cost him his life) or union with God (Teresa of Avila).
Many more reveal ‘the intolerable wrestle with words and meanings’ (T.S.
Eliot), as when speaking of a way that is Nameless (Taoism), an intuitive perception of knowledge or love that can only be described to be ‘really’ real (Plato), exceeding language (Cloud of Unknowing), a knowledge without words (Zen), or by the many paradoxical expressions such as the "nameless Nothing" (Eckhart), the "Divine Dark" (Dionysius the Areopagite), the "fathomless Nothingness" (Tauler).
It is often thought that the mystical path involves discipline near-death experiences.
Interpretations have ranged from the magical to the metaphysical, some have compared the experiences, while others have looked for a common essence to them (Rudolf Otto). As a foretaste of something beyond death, experiences are considered in terms of religious systems: as a taste of eternal life; the deliverance of the soul or ‘atma’ from its transmigrations; (Brahmanism and Vedantism); or absorbtion into a unity (Plato, Brahma).
Distinctions have been made, as between introvert and extrovert; theistic and monistic mysticism (R.C. Zaehner) experienced within (immanent) or beyond (transcendent); as "unifying" or "egotranscending"; between the solitary "flight of the alone to the Alone, (Plotinus);or the social (like that of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjéld) and the moral (such as the environmental awareness of pantheistic nature mysticism).
In many religious traditions the reception of mysticisms has always been mixed. In Judaism, for example, the mystical and neo-platonic Kabbalah was celebrated by Israel ben Eliezer (the "Baal Shem Tov"-"master of the good Name"), the founder of Hassidism, a tradition that interested the 20th century philosopher Martin Buber. Yet it was objected to by others, like the rabbinical mitnaggedim movement of Lithuania, led by Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, the ‘Gaon [excellency] of Vilna’, and the late 20th century philosopher of ethics, Emmanuel Levinas, who described mysticism as ‘a form of violence’, judging it to delegate to secondary place our ethical life.
Sof 57 January 2003 William Ralph Inge once commented, "Institutionalism and mysticism have been uneasy bedfellows." Mysticism has had a subversive revolutionary side, opposing dogmatism and bringing about social change. The Franciscan movement questioned the Church’s attitude to wealth. The Society of Friends’ "inner light" was egalitarian, group-orientated and found practical social expression. Some women mystics throughout history have opposed their misogynistic religious environments (such as African American women, or Sojourner Truth and Rebecca Cox Jackson who took up preaching).
Indeed it has even been said that ‘A mystic who is not of supreme service to the society is not a mystic at all’ (R.D.
Ranade, Mysticism in Maharashtra).
It therefore seems impossible to reduce the vast variety of mystical experience to a single answer to the question ‘what is mysticism?’ or to reduce mysticism to a representational discourse about "God" or the like. Even to interpret mysticism after modernity (after the manner of Nietzsche, Foucault and Derrida, that is ) as just a peculiar way of using language within power relationships, a deconstructive writing that is a radical discourse at war with orthodoxy, (Cupitt, Caputo) is far too reductionist. Why would a vision of the Virgin at Lourdes confirm a new Catholic dogma, if mysticism is only subversive? Or why would members of the Society of Friends, which has no power structure, continue to have intuitions and share ‘ministries of the word’? Besides, where everything is a text, ineffability is merely the obscurity that a heterodox squid may cower in. Such a political analysis of the relation of orthodoxy and power with heterodoxy and subversion may be helpful considered alongside many others, but is unlikely that a single rational explanation can explain such diversity of experiences, cultures, faiths, and personal psychologies.
Mysticism seems to points to an exceptional or extreme experience; ‘sacred’ in so far as it is separate from ordinary life.
But in spite of the diversity and impossibility of pinning ‘mysticism’ down to any one experience or definition, can we not still recognise it from our own more ordinary lives with more ordinary experiences? Do ordinary experiences of mundane lives relate to those experiences that are called ‘mystical’?
For my own part, I remember once yearning for the verification of Moses’ burning bush or the flashing of Paul’s Damascus light, but have never experienced such things. Now, if 1 were to do so, I would doubt them, or my sanity, and would soon consider whether I wasn’t under too much stress.
Charismatic religious ‘enthusiasm’ seems now less a ‘possession by a God’ and more the possession of fanaticism or at least an emotive escapism.
But, in a far more ordinary way I have, like most people, known precious times. There have been moments of serenity, absorbed in the concentration of Beethoven's introverted quartets, for example. And times of tremendous joy: at a performance of Mahler’s second symphony, or when at my desk studying. On Snowdonia’s hills there is a sense of awe, and holding my newly born nephews, a moment of wonder.
During years of daily prayer, before a monastery tabernacle, there were brief moments of peace, when my doubt over its contents and the religious life didn’t matter. And as well as such happiness and calm, tears seem to me to be religious experiences too: the tears of sadness during Gérecki’s Third Symphony; tears of hope, when the Berlin Wall came down and when a student protestor stopped tanks in Tiananmen square; tears at injustice, reading Primo Levi and international news; and tears in loneliness and depression [a ‘dark night’ indeed, where words fail].
We all gather such an accumulation of moments, unique to ourselves. Mine are just ordinary experiences of an ordinary life, without the close bereavement or personal suffering that others have experienced, without the courageous deeds or great humanitarian compassion to which one might aspire; with neither the dying rage nor the serene wisdom of old age. Yet even such ordinary moments establish who we are and orientate our lives.
They seem to me to be a long way from the organized worship of the churches, and further still from the dogmatic answers of religions but, in this far more ordinary way, those personal experiences have seemed like a faint echo of others’ less ordinary experiences; the mystical experiences with which religious faiths have at times engaged, or have at times failed to engage, but which the been preserved by those organised religions’ continued existences. And so, to allude to J.S. Spong’s fine words, perhaps those writings and mystics’ experiences of the religious traditions, that find a faint resonance in my own, could still help me to live more fully, love more generously, and be all that I can be.
If so, then that living would perhaps make them ‘religious’ experiences. And perhaps theology itself reflects intelligibly on the ordinary for a trace of the unintelligible and the extraordinary in theistic and non-theistic paths.
The relationship between the ordinary, the extraordinary, and the institutional may be worth considering in order to discover what in religious faith is a human creation, and what evades such an explanation.
Readers may be interested in a recent book edited by Janet K. Ruffing, Mysticism and Social Transformation, (with foreword by Robert J.