Stages of Christian mysticism
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
Christian mystics have described the stages of the return of the soul to God in a variety of
ways. According to the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, Christian mysticism includes three
broadly defined stages: (1) the gradual integration of the ego under the mastery of the idea of a
personal God and according to a program of prayer and asceticism, (2) a transcendent revelation
of God to the soul experienced as ecstatic contact or union, frequently with a suspension of the
faculties, and (3) “a kind of readjustment of the soul’s faculties” by which it regains contact with
creatures “under the immediate and perceptible influence of God present and acting in the soul”
(Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics). This final stage, which almost all of the
greatest Christian mystics have insisted upon, belies the usual claim that mysticism is a selfish
flight from the world and an avoidance of moral responsibility.
The dying to self
The mystics agree on the necessity of dying to the false self dominated by forgetfulness of
God. To attain the goal, the soul must be purified of all those feelings, desires, and attitudes that
separate it from God. This dying to the self implies the “dark night of the soul” in which God
gradually and sometimes painfully purifies the soul to ready it for the divine manifestation.
Christian mystics have always taken Christ, especially the crucified Christ, as the model for
this process. According to the Theologia Germanica, “Christ’s human nature was so utterly
bereft of self, and apart from all creatures, as no man’s ever was, and was nothing but a ‘house
and habitation of God’” (chapter 15). Following Christ involves a dying to self, a giving up of
oneself wholly to God, so that one may be possessed by divine Love. Such detachment and
purgation were frequently expressed in extreme terms that imply the renunciation of all human
ties. Paradoxically, those who insist upon the most absolute detachment also emphasize that
purifying the self is more a matter of internal attitude than of flight from the world and external
penance. In the words of William Law: “The one true way of dying to self wants no cells,
monasteries or pilgrimages. It is the way of patience, humility and resignation to God” (The
Spirit of Love, Part 1).
The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, leading to ecstasy, is typical of
Christian and other varieties of theistic mysticism. This usually involves a process of
introversion in which all images and memories of outer things must be set aside so that the inner
eye may be opened and readied for the appearance of God. Introversion leads to ecstasy in which
“the mind is ravished into the abyss of divine Light” (Richard of Saint-Victor, The Four Grades
of Violent Love). Illumination may express itself in actual radiance. Symeon the New Theologian
speaks of himself as a young man who saw “a brilliant divine Radiance” filling the room. Many
Christian mystics experienced unusual and extraordinary psychic phenomena—visions,
locutions, and other altered states of consciousness. The majority of mystics, however, have
insisted that such phenomena are secondary to the true essence of mysticism and can even be
dangerous. “We must never rely on them or accept them,” as John of the Cross said in The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.11.
The union with God
Christian mystics claim that the soul may be lifted into a union with God so close and so
complete that it is merged in the being of God and loses the sense of any separate existence. Jan
van Ruysbroeck wrote that in the experience of union “we can nevermore find any distinction
between ourselves and God” (The Sparkling Stone, chapter 10); and Eckhart speaks of the birth
of the Son in the soul in which God “makes me his only-begotten Son without any difference”
(German Sermons, 6). These expressions of a unity of indistinction have seemed dangerous to
many, but Eckhart and Ruysbroeck insisted that, properly understood, they were quite orthodox.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who insisted that in becoming one spirit with God the human “substance
remains though under another form” (On Loving God, chapter 10), and John of the Cross, who
wrote “the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation” (The
Ascent of Mount Carmel ii, 5:7), express the more traditional view of loving union.
The readjustment
The goal of the mystic is not simply a transient ecstasy; it is a permanent state of being in
which the person’s nature is transformed or deified. This state is frequently spoken of as a
spiritual marriage involving God and the soul. This unitive life has two main aspects. First, while
the consciousness of self and the world remains, that consciousness is accompanied by a
continuous sense of union with God, as Teresa of Ávila clearly shows in discussing the seventh
mansion in The Interior Castle. Brother Lawrence wrote that while he was at work in his kitchen
he possessed God “in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament”
(The Practice of the Presence of God, chapter 4). Second, the spiritual marriage is a theopathic
state: the soul is felt to be in all things the organ or instrument of God. In the unitive life Mme
Guyon says that the soul “no longer lives or works of herself, but God lives, acts and works in
her.” In this state the mystic is able to engage in manifold activities without losing the grace of
union. In the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the mystic is “contemplative in action.”
