mysticism

Religious belief or spiritual experience based on direct, intuitive communion with the divine or apprehension of truths beyond the understanding. It does not always involve an orthodox deity, though it is found in all the main religions – for example, Kabbalism in Judaism, Sufism in Islam, and the bhakti movement in Hinduism.

The mystical experience is often rooted in asceticism and can involve visions, trances, and ecstasies; many religious traditions prescribe meditative and contemplative techniques for achieving mystical experience. Official churches fluctuate between acceptance of mysticism as a form of special grace, and suspicion of it as a dangerous deviation, verging on the heretical.

From the 1960s an interest in Zen Buddhism, Tantric Buddhism, Taoism, and other mystical Asian religions became widespread.

In the 12th and 13th centuries there was an unusual growth of mysticism throughout Christian Europe and such names emerged as Meister Eckhard and St Francis of Assisi; in the 14th century Julian of Norwich and Thomas à Kempis. But since that era, except for individuals such as Paracelsus, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Jakob Boehme, mysticism has not flourished in the West. In the East, mysticism is the root of Taoism and Buddhism.

A mystic is someone who awakens to a new consciousness of reality which transcends (although it includes) the normal world of the senses. The goal of mysticism is the intimation of a changeless element underlying all changing, timebound phenomena. When it is realized, perhaps as a passing flash of unusual joy or clarity, the mystic is made aware of the world in a new way, as though all barriers of subject–object no longer existed.