Mystic Lifestyle For Everyone

By J.J. Edward

Mysticism is nothing but enlightened spirituality. It is awakening to absolute awareness. We are called to breathe more fully, love more deeply, relate more easily to the Divine One, who is the light and truth of who we really are. A mystic lives an enlightened life of all-embracing love. He renders compassionate service, liberated from binding ego tendencies. As Karl Rahner puts it, a human being of the third millennium is a mystic or nothing else. We are moving from cultural religious and dogmatic beliefs and entering the spiritual age. The success literature of the last two hundred years is centered on domination and ego cultivation. It is time, we concentrated on things important and permanent, while we pilgrimage here on earth, constantly reminding ourselves of being part of One Spirit and one Reality and Ground of Being or the Substratum of the Universe. Here is an attempt to provide the readers with insights and models with an invitation to lead a meaningful and authentic life in harmony with the grand designs of the maker.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781716096921

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Edward

Mystic Principles

Mysticism is a term derived from the Greek word mustes, referring to a person who had been admitted to the secret knowledge of reality, life, love and death. All mystics are agreed on the following fundamentals:

All division and separateness are unreal, and the universe is a single system of life, love and indivisible unity. Oneness is closer to truth and reality than many-ness

Evil is illusory and the illusion arises through partial perception and lack of total perception. Evil is the aspect of being not so good, not so perfect and far removed from the source. It is the aspect of opposition that is necessary for good. Reality needs evil to be complete.

Time is unreal and reality is eternal. One was eternal before birth and temporal during life and becomes eternal after death.

The aim and purpose of mysticism is union with God. It is the gradual realization of oneness with the divine. It always includes the experience of oneness with the whole humanity and with the whole universe.

Diarmuid O’Murchu argues while spirituality has always been there, religion was introduced five thousand years ago. Religion will disappear because spirituality was flourishing outside religions. We are entering the age of wisdom and the spirit. This millennium is the millennium of the Spirit. When God is seen as Spirit many of the disputes and divisions will disappear.

A Sufi does not need to vanish into the jungle away from society. One can be a sannyasi in a three-piece suit. He lives right in the world without being attached to any one thing. He is open to everything and attached to nothing.

The Arabic for Sufism is ‘tasawwuf,’ an allusion to the rough woolen garments worn by the Muslim ascetics. Sufism arose during the first Muslim century as a reaction against the worldliness of the successors of the prophet who found themselves in possession of an empire.

A Sufi views his role in this life as that of an instrument or vessel through which he takes with one hand and gives with another. He is a perfect conduit going with the flow, living in the moment, free from greed and fear.

There are many paths to the same truth. Showing respect to one and all is the Sufi way. Everything in creation is a signpost to the Oneness of God. When we see a bird fly or a child laugh or the sunrise, we are experiencing the presence of God.

Love is the benchmark of the Sufi way. We breathe, eat, sleep, walk, and die in love.

It is not what we have that matters. Rather the value of our lives is determined by who we are and what we give. What I am is superior to what I have and what I can.

Sufis do not fear the unknown. They are willing to take risks and persevere in the pursuit of truth.

Learning takes place from the cradle to the grave. Sufis learn from all, including nature, which offers immense wisdom.

The Sufis have a vision and a positive mental attitude, which keeps them focused and upbeat.

For the Sufis, destiny lies in the path. They regard each day as the most important day of their lives.

A Sufi loves one and all, irrespective of religion, culture, color, and creed. He stays on his path and yet respects all other paths to the same truth.

He integrates the spiritual and the material so that twenty-four hours of his day are grounded in principles of authenticity, integrity, compassion and love.

He goes to sleep at night eager to wake up, looking forward to another great day and having no regrets, if he never wakes up. He is not interested in lengthening his life and acquiring perfect health and wealth.

Ignatius of Loyola speaks of indifference towards all things created. Mysticism is characterized by a commitment to continual improvement and adding value to others.

For Teresa of Avila, God is the greatest reality and intimacy with God can be achieved through prayer and not just convincing ideas.

A Mystic, Peers wrote, is a person who has fallen in love with God. 

Fly away bird to your native home. Home is where my heart is meant to be. Take me home. Let my heart speak my mother tongue. My soul rediscovers its native land. Borrow the beloved’s eyes. Look through them and you’ll see the beloved’s face. Rumi.

John Kirvan, God Hunger, Sorin Books, Notre Dame 1999 U.S.A

The founders of all religions and the authors of all scriptures owe their power to their personal communion with the divine. When a person is united in love with the Transcendent Being, he transcends the love of self and his love overflows to all whom the Transcendent Being loves. He is filled with compassionate concern and love for all living beings. He becomes a Spirit-filled person or a God-intoxicated person.

All his services and activities are nothing but an overflow of his contemplation. Once the perception is achieved, correspondingly the actions will change. He wants to draw the whole of humanity to God. He gives up all attachment and abandons his will to the Supreme Self. His utter detachment to everything in this universe leads to intense attachment to the Ultimate Reality. His spirit is in constant contact with Transcendent Spirit.

Maslow used the term, Peak Experience referring to an episodic brief experience in which the individual suddenly and unexpectedly is transformed. Generally, we think of peak experience as a sudden, startling and totally unexpected happening in our lives, when one is unhorsed and hears a mysterious voice, as Paul did.

The first distinctive characteristic of a peak experience is that it often incorporates within itself a union of opposites. It is often paradoxical, containing a union of opposites such as transcendence and immanence, self-love and gift-love and light and darkness.

The second characteristic of a peak experience is that it may begin with a subjective mood of helplessness, anger or frustration, a feeling that one simply lacks control over the various vicissitudes of life.

The third characteristic of a peak experience is that it contains some element of mystery. What is experienced is strange to the subject. This experience has vagueness, confusion and a sense of wonder or awe.

The fourth character is hyper-aesthesia. Here, the senses are either stimulated to a state of perception beyond their normal powers or the senses are suspended, as in ecstasy or trance.

The fifth characteristic is that it defies the logical explanation.

The six characteristics are that it seems to be more passive than an active one. One apprehends oneself as acted upon. One is gripped by the power over which one has no direct control. It is principally a passive experience.

A peak experience is something very personal and incommunicable. William James lists four essential characteristics of a Mystical experience as ineffability, noetic quality, transiency and passivity.

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the mystic gives the illustration of a bee to explain the mystical experience. A bee makes a great deal of noise before it sits on a flower. But when it finally settles and begins to suck the honey, it becomes completely silent. The bee becomes intoxicated with honey and then flies away silently and joyfully. The same is true of mystical experience.

Bede Griffiths experienced the peak experience in a sudden and unexpected way. This became the base of his search for self-realization and it awakened in him a sense of the searched. He describes this experience in the following words.

"This was the first experience of this kind that I can remember, and from that moment, my life was changed. My eyes were opened to a world of beauty; of whose existence I have never dreamed. I took no pleasure except in this mysterious communion with nature.

I do not wish to exaggerate the nature of this ordeal, but it was indeed the turning point of my life. My struggle went on for many hours, but I realized at length that it was my reason which I had to renounce. Now I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the center of own existence and had my back turned to God. God had brought me to my knees and make me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of this knowledge I had been reborn."

The central truth is that all reality is one. There is one reality and there is no reality other than this reality. This one reality expresses itself through multiplicity.

This Ultimate Reality is beyond the grasp of man’s senses and reason and it has to be experienced in the depths of one’s being. Reality is one and it is experienced in many ways as Brahman in Hinduism, Tao in Taoism, Allah in Islam, Yahweh in Judaism and God in Christianity.

The One Reality is the basis of everything beneath and beyond all multiplicity. Reality is one and many, that is, one in many and many in one at the same time. God is the ultimate reality, the ground of being and the substratum of the universe.

The universe is the body of God or the garment of God. Man is that part of the universe that is aware. Man is the vertex or the highpoint of the universe. This view helps us to respect all people with respect and love.

Bede Griffiths, an Englishman who became a monk and lived the rest of his life in an ashram in India realized that there is nothing outside God and everything is sacred including the earth and the rivers. He said, "The earth is sacred and no ploughing or sowing or reaping can take place without some religious rite.

Water is sacred and no religious Hindu will take a bath without