Mysticism:

The word mysticism comes from the Greek root muo meaning 'to close' probably the lips or eyes; the original sense was perhaps ‘one vowed to keep silence’, or 'one initiated into mysteries'. The word mysticism has had many connotations through western history, but here I will primarily give a few examples of how mysticism has been perceived by scholars the last 100 years. One of the first to give mysticism a comprehensive treatment was Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) in her many books on the subject. During Underhill’s time mysticism was primarily viewed from an essentialist perspective, meaning that mysticism and the mystical experience of union with the divine was regarded as the same all over the world and in all times. The reason mysticisms might differ is merely because they express the mystical experience in their own characteristic cultural dress.

Underhill used a comparative strategy to examine the similarities of various mystical texts from around the world and from there deduced five fundamental stages towards the mystical experience which she maintained to be common to all mystics and therefore an essential feature of mysticism itself. The five stages are as follows:

1. Awakening
2. Purification
3. Illumination
4. The Dark Night of the Soul
5. Unio Mystica or the mystical union

W. T. Stace has later in his work elaborated the idea of mystical union and mysticism into two main types; one which describes the mystical experience as a total union with God, the absolute, or the source of all being and another type which describes the mystical experience as a total annihilation, emptiness, extinction, destruction of the ego, or simply the experience of non-being also called mors mystica. Mystics have often been leaning towards praxis of emptying consciousness in order to be free of all conceptual structures so a total experience can be obtained contrary to the academic tradition which seek to define, classify and categorize the world.

The essentialist outlook on mysticism was later challenged by a context based approach as found in Steven Katz's work. Katz maintained that all mystical experiences are determined by the conceptual framework and context in which they are experienced. A Christian mystic will have Christian mystical experiences and a Jewish mystic will have Jewish mystical experiences expressed in Jewish mystical and theological concepts.

The essentialist approach and the contextualist approach can from a certain perspective argue ad infinitum and so they nearly have done, but new approaches have emerged. Among others we find the work of Michael Sells who in his ‘Mystical Languages of Unsaying’ (1994) takes on a linguistic approach.

Sells argues that mystics use a special kind of discourse to express themselves. They use language in a different way and on a different semantic level than ordinary uses of language, with its own peculiar logic and paradoxes.

The mystical discourse most often begins with an aporia – or an unsolvable dilemma – stating that the transcendent is beyond concepts, yet they seek to express the transcendent in concepts.

There are generally three solutions to this aporia according to Sells.

a. Silence – one can simply express the inexpressible by an act of silence.
b. One can differentiate concepts. X (cap.) as it is in itself and x as it is in the world. This creates a division of the world into stages and levels in order to rhetorically demonstrate the distinctness of the experience of the transcendent.
c. The aporia can be accepted as unsolvable and thereby also deny the division- solution (b). But X can be demonstrated by a mystical discourse or use of language where language is used as a tool.

This characteristic form of discourse has often been called negative theology which implies that the absolute can have no attributes. In this sort of discourse the linguistic ‘regressus ad infinitum’ becomes the semantic force or dynamo for the apofatic discourse.

Apofatic means ‘not to say’ or ‘non saying’ and is dependent upon kataphasis which means ‘to say’ in order ‘not to say’. The apofatic discourse is central to Sells theory of mysticism.

Mystic discourse uses this procedure of saying and thereafter un-saying it again in order to create an intense state of suspension of meaning, in order to open up for the all inclusive meaning or total experience. When this total ‘meaning event’ occurs in the consciousness of the reader the goal has been reached.

By analysing the way mystics express themselves one is able to avoid the problems of whether the mystical experience is real, whether it is universal etc. One can comparatively study mystic discourses instead.

There are of course many other approaches to mysticism such as sociological studying the reasons as to why mysticism emerges in certain contexts and historical periods and psychological approaches which study mysticism with a focus on pathology and others with an interest in transpersonal psychology and abnormal aspects of the psyche.

Philosophically mysticism has often been perceived as a certain kind of epistemology where the subject seeks to become identical to the object. In this relation Antoine Faivre, in his Access to Western Esotericism (p. 12), argues that a chareteristic distinction between the mystic and the esotericist generally is that the esotericist is more interested in the intermediarie levels of cosmos between the highest and the lowest and their correspondences, whereas the mystic generally attempts to avoid to much contact with intermediarie levels in order to obtain the absolute experience or union which is the primary goal.

The primary source of mysticism is, for the academian, the texts which describe the mystical experiences, ecstatic adventures, visions and practical meditation instructions from all cultures.

Tim Rudbøg, Aug. 2006