Mysticism (from the Greek mystikos, "an initiate") is the pursuit of achieving communion or identity with, or conscious awareness of, ultimate reality, the divine, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, or insight; and the belief that such experience is one''s destiny, purpose, or an important source of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. Traditions may include a belief in the literal existence of dimensional realities beyond empirical perception, or a belief that a true human perception of the world transcends logical reasoning or intellectual comprehension. A person delving in these areas may be called a Mystic. Mystical has often been the description afforded to writers such as William Blake. Author and mystic, Evelyn Underhill outlines the universal mystic way, the actual process by which the mystic arrives at union with the absolute. She identifies five stages of this process. First is the awakening, the stage in which one begins to have some consciousness of absolute or divine reality. The second stage is one of purgation which is characterized by an awareness of one''s own imperfections and finiteness. The response in this stage is one of self-discipline and mortification. The third stage, illumination, is one reached by artists and visionaries as well as being the final stage of some mystics. It is marked by a consciousness of a transcendent order and a vision of a new heaven and a new earth. The great mystics go beyond the stage of illumination to a fourth stage which Underhill, borrowing the language of St. John of the Cross, calls “the dark night of the soul”. This stage, experienced by the few, is one of final and complete purification and is marked by confusion, helplessness, stagnation of the will, and a sense of the withdrawal of God''s presence. It is the period of final "unselfing" and the surrender to the hidden purposes of the divine will. The final and last stage is one of union with the object of love, the one Reality, God. Here the self has been permanently established on a transcendental level and liberated for a new purpose. Filled up with the Divine Will, it immerses itself in the temporal order, the world of appearances in order to incarnate the eternal in time, to become the mediator between humanity and eternity. The ultimate unification with the divine may be experienced by the Mystic as psychological emancipation, being born again, or unity consciousness, but in practical terms it can be described as a surrendered egoless state in which the external world synchronizes with the mystic''s true nature and purpose. The term, heaven/nirvana, while generally considered an after-death experience in Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism is understood by the mystic as a non-physical realm or "field" with physical effects in the eternal "now." Severe cultural alienation often accompanies this effort as the mystic turns away from the world seeking reunion with the Creator or Godhead within. Furthermore, Continental philosophy tends to be concerned with issues closely related to mysticism, such as the subjective experience of existence in Existentialism. It should be noted that while existentialism suggests nothingness rather than oneness, the mystic''s pursuit of emptiness - despite its fear producing angst - for the sake of union with the Divine, points directly toward a potential unity between physics and psychology that does not at present exist. The mystic''s attempt to describe cause and effect between one''s internal state and the miraculous, hints at a close connection between psychological stability (ego transcendence) and the mysterious realm of causality quantum physicists are now deciphering - dimensional reality shifts that synchronize with states of consciousness and uncomplicated choices. While the three philosophical fields - the nature of reality, knowledge and phenomenon - would appear to all relate to aspects of myste, they have not as yet been correlated in a systematic way. Traditional use of the term ontology makes it a synonym of metaphysics. Prior to Immanuel Kant''s theoretical separation of "reality" from the "appearance of reality," with human knowledge limited to the latter, the field of ontology/metaphysics concerned itself with the overall structure or nature of reality. Afterwards, philosophical and mystical approaches were seemingly separated in a permanent way.
More reviews about the Mysticism in William Golding