The Liberal Mystic

For many years I have been fascinated by the mystical practices in many religious traditions like Jewish Kabbalists, Islamic Sufis, Tibetan Buddhist Monks, Christian mystics like Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hildegard of Bingen, and Meister Eckhart, and other contemplative practitioners, for example. My rearing as a New England Congregationalist has made it difficult, though, for me to regard mysticism as a practical reality. (Somehow the New England Transcendalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson failed to capture my attention.) Still, I’ve read lots about it, both from the experiential and from the psychological perspectives.

So, what is the big deal about mysticism anyway? I think the point is a belief that human beings are capable of establishing direct contact with the divine. Implied in much mysticism is the idea that while creeds, dogmas, and traditional beliefs have their value, they can never tell the whole story. Individuals have the power, (and perhaps the responsibility) to bring life to their beliefs by means of that direct contact with the divine. It also may be argued that mystical experiences keep religious belief contemporary.

For some mystics, the experience comes unbidden. Saul of Tarsus, a fierce prosecutor of early Christians for example, was knocked off his horse and suffered temporary blindness, after which he became the most prolific and eloquent spokesperson for the Christian message. It was clearly not the experience he was seeking, but it’s the one he got. Other mystics open themselves up to divine contact on purpose by years of disciplined meditative experiences. They intentionally look for the quiet spaces residing in the midst of the busyness of the mind where they experience more of the depth and breadth of divine creation.

One of the greatest problems of mystical experience is that the words and symbols that are available to describe it are always less than adequate. As soon as the mystics try to tell others about what they have experienced, they know immediately that it wasn’t quite like that. Still, the experiences are important and need to be shared. If a listener applies concrete understanding, then the inadequately described experience becomes the next dogmatic statement of absolute truth, which obviously it isn’t.

Still, the church and the world need its mystics. Paul refers in the New Testament to the experience of “speaking in tongues” as evidence that a person has “received the Holy Spirit.” He goes on to write, that someone else in the community will have the gift of interpretation. For me, his statement means that mystical experiences are best understood in the context of community – that somehow when many perspectives and many mystical experiences are brought together, faith is enlivened and truth is expanded.

Ken Wilber wrote in Integral Spirituality that the modern church can become most valuable to the development of humanity by encouraging meditation and mystical experiences. Without some ongoing first hand experience, faith becomes stale, if not obsolete. If we consider the possibility that the spiritual realm is real and that “God is still speaking,” then we must find a way to continue the human/divine conversation. We have a responsibility to attune ourselves to what God might be saying.

What is “liberal” about this position is the awareness that what we discover in mystical experiences will necessarily modify (presumably in a positive direction) what we already know. The process of “unlearning” in order to make room for a new depth of understanding is very difficult. If we believe in the living presence of the spirit, then we cannot rely forever only on bygone mystics. Perhaps we must take our responsibility to be mystics, too, thereby contributing to God’s ongoing revelation.

I’d like to know what you think.

Wayne Gustafson
“God is still speaking.”
The United Church__of Christ