by Marinus Jan Marijs
Mysticism is the growth process in relation to the non-physical aspects of humans. Mystics transform to higher levels of existence. Mystics realise deeper realities beyond the material and personal.
There is a growth process in relation to the non-physical aspects of humans can be seen with mystics in their transformations to a higher levels of existence. Here is the realisation of deeper realities beyond the material and personal.
Mystics are in a developmental process what eventually results in permanent mystical states. After this developments there is a feeling of unity, a transcendence of time and space, the feeling of being pervaded with energy, joy and the perception of light energies. On these levels one experiences everything as an integrated unified totality. The transcendent is here not a theoretical abstraction but a perceptual reality. The perception of the super sensory, the non-physical light phenomena, the ecstasies give the mystic the conviction of a life after death, an awareness of an existence that transcends the physical world.
At higher levels there is an extension of the powers of perception, the realization of the purposiveness of existence, that everything is pervaded with life and the evident reality of the non-physical subtle energies. The mystic functions as a channel for higher energies. The mystical experience was by described William James in his famous collection of lectures published in 1902 as The Varieties of Religious Experience. In Lectures 16 and 17 he stated:
“…propose to you four marks which, when an experience has them, may justify us in calling it mystical…:
- Ineffability – The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words.
- Noetic Quality – Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for aftertime.
- Transiency – Mystical states cannot be sustained for long.
- Passivity – Although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power.”
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience.
Frederic Edwin Church ( 4 mei 1826 – 7 april 1900)
