Religions and mystics

Introduction

We should consider that in all religious environments where there are truly sincere and thoughtful souls, cases of mysticism may be found. Therefore mysticism is not a privilege reserved for one race, one language, one nation; it is a human phenomenon of a spiritual order, not bound by physical limitations.

Louis Massignon; Essai sur les origines du lexique technique de la mystique musulmane, Paris, Vrin, 1968

Mystical experience in religion is no doubt not an easy phenomenon to grasp. Far from being the product of intellectual abstraction, it is a pathway, often personal, the expression of which, when it is not simply hidden, uses and abuses the symbols and hyperboles belonging to a certain poetic language which brings with it significant problems of hermeneutics. While it takes its name from the same root as the mysteries of ancient religions which were accessed by esoteric[1] initiation, mysticism may be thought of more as a joyful and exultant experience of encountering an absolute: the creator, transcendent God of the monotheistic religions, a single supreme being, or perhaps rediscovering for oneself the undifferentiated absolute. This is the way that Louis Massignon[2] speaks of mystical experiences which are expressed in all religions, and in spite of the fundamental divergence between the immanent religions of the Asian Sub-continent, East Asia, Oceana, Africa and America on the one hand, and on the other, the transcendent religions, in particular, the three principal monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, mystical experiences in their development, their practices, even the words to describe them, intersect in the most fascinating way.

Yet the fundamental difference between the immanent religions where everything begins with the self and the transcendent religions where the creative principle is a supreme being outside mankind and the world would seem to be a barrier; because the former (for example Hinduism, Buddhism) give the initiative to man, while the latter (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) deprive him of it. Thus, in the first case, mystical union is the product of human endeavour, while, in the second case, it is only the result of divine grace; human efforts are insufficient to cross the infinite distance which separates man from God. However, looking at it more closely, this is too simplistic. To begin with, the Christian religious mystics do not see it as case closed. Thus specialists in Christian mysticism emphasise the presumed influence of the Christian reading of Plotinus[3]' Enneads , itself perhaps betraying a certain kind of eastern thinking. And to add to this, they argue that there exists, for one part, a kind of auto-transcendence in the immanent conception of the absolute and, for another, that the transcendent God is immanent through his impulse as creator and the grace which He offers the believer.

So a branch of Christian mysticism, particularly via Meister Eckhart[4] , through the Flemish mystics, highlights the immanence of a transcendent God, making a synthesis of mystical union and self-realisation of identity, a tendency which can equally be discerned in Hasidism. While Catholicism later gave greater emphasis to John of the Cross and his general law of mystical union subjecting human experience to divine grace, the influence of Meister Eckhart continued to be felt, in particular in the Protestant mysticism of Boehme as is shown in Part 1, Chapter 5. From John of the Cross[5] comes the principle of emptying the soul of all feeling and meaning until it is laid bare in the dark night in preparation for union with God. However, in contrast to Eckhart, for whom it is man himself who finds himself, in this dark night, according to John of the Cross, once a man's soul is laid bare, it is God Himself who decides whether or not to enter the human soul with his infinite love. While the emptying through yoga or that of Eckhart involves a plenitude which remains for all time within a person and which he has found for himself; for John of the Cross, this emptying is the last stage in awaiting God.

Taking account of the links which exist between religious mysticisms, I will try to draw a picture to compare the relationship of religions to mysticism in four ways: the conception of the relationship to the absolute, the methods for attaining it, the spiritual stages leading to it, and the place of mystical forms of religion from the point of view of the religious authorities.

  1. Esotericism

    Esotericism (L'ésotérisme) is the term coined by Jacques Matter in his Histoire critique du gnosticisme et de son influence from the Greek esôterikós ("belonging to an inner circle"). It usually describes the hidden part of religious teaching, accessible only to initiates. It is therefore often a synonym for gnosticism, and esotericism can equally be described in general as the discipline applied to exploring all the mysteries of nature, here related to occultism.

  2. Louis Massignon

    Louis Massignon (1883-1962): a French islamicist who held the chair of Muslim sociology at the Sorbonne between 1926 and 1954. He was a great specialist in Muslim mysticism and mysticism itself, and was notably the author of Passion de Husayn Ibn Mansour Hallaj (1975).

  3. Plotinus

    Plotinus (205-270) was a philosopher writing in Greek in late antiquity whose works were assembled by his disciple Porphyry of Tyre under the title of the Enneads. Reprising Plato, Plotinus' thought, although it was not Christian, fascinated the Church Fathers, including Augustine of Hippo. For Plotinus the world was composed of three hypostases: the soul, the intellect, and one which man must gather in order to leave the world enlightened and attain ecstatic union, characterised as an out of body experience. If Plotinus' mysticism is a result of thought relating to an immanent absolute, the description of the return of the soul in itself is found in Christian mystical experience.

  4. Meister Eckhart

    Eckhart von Hoheim called Meister Eckhart (c 1260 – c. 1328) was trained by the Dominicans and then at the universities of Cologne and the Sorbonne. His work, infused by mysticism, was denounced by the Inquisition and Meister Eckhart was condemned by the Papacy doubtlessly post mortem in 1329. Nevertheless he was the originator of the influential school of the Rhineland mystics.

  5. John of the Cross

    John of the Cross (1542-1591) was a Spanish Catholic priest. At the request of Teresa of Avila, reformer of the Carmelite order of nuns, he took on the role for the men. He then had a mystical experience which he describes in his voluminous works. Controversial in his lifetime, John of the Cross was beatified in 1675 and canonised in 1726. Two centuries later, the Papacy even named him Doctor of the Church, a mark of the influence he still exercised through his general law of mystical union in Catholicism.

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