Mysticism ( pronunciation (help·info); from the Greek μυστικός, mystikos, an initiate of a mystery religion)[1] is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or awareness. Mysticism may be dualistic, maintaining a distinction between the self and the divine, or may be nondualistic. Differing religious traditions have described this fundamental mystical experience in different ways:
- Self-nullification (making oneself bittel, known as abnegation of the ego) and focus upon and absorption within Ein Sof Ohr: God's Infinite Light (Hassidic schools of Judaism)
- Complete non-identification with the world (Kaivalya in some schools of Hinduism, including Sankhya and Yoga; Jhana in Buddhism)
- Liberation from the cycles of Karma (Moksha in Jainism, Sikhism and Hinduism, Nirvana in Buddhism)
- Deep intrinsic connection to ultimate reality (Satori in Mahayana Buddhism, Te in Taoism)
- Union with God (Henosis in Neoplatonism and Brahma-Prapti or Brahma-Nirvana in Hinduism, fana in Sufism, mukti in Sikhism)
- Theosis or Divinization, union with God and a participation of the Divine Nature (Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy)
- Innate Knowledge (Sahaja and Svabhava in Hinduism; Irfan and Sufism in Islam)
- Experience of one's true blissful nature (Samadhi Svarupa-Avirbhava in Hinduism and Buddhism)
- Seeing the Light, or "that of God," in everyone (Hinduism, Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), Sikhism)
- The Love of God, as in the Hinduism, Baha'i Faith, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism and many other spiritual traditions
- Mahamudra and Dzogchen—meditation, the process of union with the nondual nature, in Tibetan Buddhism
- Ability to see and recognize the pattern that nothing is ultimately dependent nor independent, but that everything is only compositionary and inter-reactional including the conception of the existence or non-existence of the identity of self. Identities and labels are only practical conceptions. Theravada Buddhism
Enlightenment or Illumination are generic English terms for the phenomenon, derived from the Latin illuminatio (applied to Christian prayer in the 15th century) and adopted in English translations of Buddhist texts, but used loosely to describe the state of mystical attainment regardless of faith.
Thursday, 24 March 2011
What is mystical experience? - definitions as given by Wikipedia
via en.wikipedia.org
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