What is mysticism?

The term “mysticism” is almost as ambiguous and elusive as the term

“spirituality.” It has been understood in radically different ways. According to the
Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded use of the word occurred in 1736, in
H.Conventry’s Philemon: “How much nobler a Field of Exercise...are the seraphic
entertainments of Mysticism and Exstasy than the mean and ordinary Practice of a
mere earthly and common Virtue!” Here mysticism is clearly considered to be
something extraordinary, akin to “Extasy”and of an altogether different order from
what is “mean,” “earthly,” “common.” This usage has tended to predominate in the
more than two and a half centuries since Coventry penned those lines. During this
period mysticism has generally been understood as related to particular state of mind,
a form of consciousness that transcends ordinary experience by reason of felt union
with the absolute. (Theo.dict p 682)This however was not the original understanding
of “the mystical” in the Christian tradition as the following consideration of the
relevant terminology in modern theologians.
Mysticism may be understood as referring to an experience of God, a process
resulting from that experience, and issues involving both. As an experience,
mysticism is traditionally described as s loving knowledge of God which is born in a
personal encounter with the divine. This experience is not necessarily identical for
everyone and across all religions. Experience is a product arising from the interaction
of a person with reality. Consequently, the person’s history, community context,
conceptual framework, and images will all condition the experience. As a process
mysticism refers to a way of life which is built upon one’s direct experience of God
and which proceeds in an organic manner as one is led over more deeply into the
reality of life and into a loving union with the Mystery revealed at its core(Dictio-
694).
Etymology
The term “mysticism” comes from the classical Greco-Roman mystery cults.
Perhaps it came from myein meaning “to close the lips and eyes, and refers to the
sacred oath of the initiates, the mystes, to keep secret about the inner workings of the
religion.” In Neo-platonism “mysticism” came to be associated with secrecy of any
kind. The term mystica appeared in the Christian treaties Mystica Theologica, of an
anonymous Syrian Neo-Platonist monk of the late fifth or early sixth century, who
was known pseudonymously as Dionysius the Areopagite.In this work mysticism was
described as the secrecy of the mind. The μιστεριον