Mysticism

• Connection
  • Physical Unit
  • Connection
  • Toxic Socialization
  • Disconnection
  • Healing
  • Authentic Spirituality
  • The Work
  • The System
• Connection Framework
  • Awakening
    • Water Glass Metaphor
  • Accountability
  • Atonement
  • Alignment
    • Alignment Rule Set
    • Steering Emotions
    • Creation Template
  • Activation
  • Ascension
• Connection Practice
• Connection Appliance
  • TOSAS
• Connection Supplement
• Connection Manual
• Connection Event
  • Connection Type
  • Connection Challenge
• Connection Outcome
• Connection Pathology
  • Double N Mysticism
  • Flooding
  • Egoic Bloating
  • Egoic Explosion
  • Egoic Deflation
  • Egoic Collapse

Mysticism is a confused popular and scientific term used to refer variously to Connection, Connection Experience, Connection Practice, Connection Outcomes, and so on. On the LP we understand mysticism to be another word for Authentic Spirituality.

Notes

Definitions

Rufus Jones "Mysticism is a word which cannot properly be used without careful definition. To many readers it carries no clear and concrete meaning; to others it has an ominous significance and a forbidding sound, as though the safe and beaten track, which the defenders of the faith have builded, were being left for will-o'-the-wisps and wandering lights. I shall use the word mysticism to express the type of religion which puts the emphasis on immediate awareness of relation with God, on direct and J intimate consciousness of the Divine Presence. It is religion in its most acute, intense, and living stage."

Eveylyn Underhill: "Mysticism is the art of union with Reality. The mystic is a person who has attained that union in greater or less degree; or who aims at and believes in such attainment (Underhill 2002: emphasis added)."

Troelsch's conception of mysticism refers directly, explicitly, and obviously, to Connection. "What Troeltsch has in mind is an orientation of spiritual life in the history of Christianity which aims primarily at a "personal living piety and at an Interior life' which has a direct experience of salvation." . Salvation here may be understood as the experience of unity and oneness that one often experiences during a Connection Experience.

Zaehner defines mysticism by the Connection Outcome of Ascension. Mysticism is "the realization of a union or a unity with or in [or of] something that is enormously, if not infinitely, greater than the empirical self"

Carl Keller also defines mysticism by a single, albeit important, Connection Outcome. He notes, "In the context of Christian Theology, the words 'mystical', 'mystic' have a precise meaning: they designate the highest state of Christian gnosis or religious knowledge, conceptualized as 'union' with God and the perfection of man. [sic]."

Gender is important to an understanding of mysticism. Bruneau notes, "using gender as a category of inquiry leads to the realization, for example, that female mysticism has always been characterized by the participation and somatization of the body." . Bruneau also points to the relevance of social class, though he doesn't delve.

Carmody and Carmody define mysticism as "direct experience of ultimate reality." "Ultimate reality can connote God, the Tao, Nirvana, the sacred, etc.

Theories

Carmody and Carmody distinguish between essentialist' theories and empiricist theories. Essentialist theories stress the sameness of connection experiences across cultures. Humans are the same, and the "ultimate reality" which we connect to is the same. OTOH, empiricist theories point to the influence of culture, psychology, ideas on the mystical experience. Emphasize language, concepts, historical periods, etc.

Footnotes

References