Christian mysticism, as it is usually known, arose from the beginning of the tradition derived from the title, Christos (a Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah—“Sent by God”) which was accorded the tradition’s historical founder, Jesus of Nazareth, two millennia ago.
To begin with, a Word (or two) about God (i.e., the One who sent Him). After all, people did ask (even demand to know) of the historical Jesus, “where did you come from, who sent you.” A reasonable question. His answer was shocking. It is still shocking. And it is important to understand, not only from the point of view of the Christian tradition, generally, but especially from the point of view of its mystical tradition.
The Hebrew scriptures, or Tanakh, use two words that Jesus Himself used. Elohim is one, a singular plural (-im indicates a plural in Hebrew) that can be translated as “the One in the Many.” The other is referred to as the Tetragrammaton (a Greek term meaning “The Four Letters”) which Jews traditionally consider “ineffable,” and which is usually transliterated into the Roman alphabet as YHVH. Christians have phoneticized or pronounced these Four (Hebrew) Letters as Yahweh or Jehovah, which can be translated—to the extent translatable—as “the Many in the One.” (When the Four Letter Word is encountered in reading, the Hebrew adonai is substituted for purposes of pronunciation as a kind of pro-noun, and means “lord.”)
Five hundred years before the historical Jesus, what we know of as Judaism consolidated these two terminological Schools (which scholars refer to as the Elohist and Yahwist) into one understanding of Universal Absolute as “the One in the Many and the Many in the One.” It should therefore be understood from the outset that it is that to which the Christian (as well as Jewish) mystical tradition refers and which in common English is designated by God. Rather than the commonly derided anthropomorphic view of God as an Old Man, the Judeo-Christian Absolute has no form whatsoever.
It is in and from this context that Jesus Himself emphasized a deeply familial, not just personal, connection of that, whatever that is that has just been described, to all of us. Radically (shockingly, if you think about it, given the abstractness of all other descriptions of “Ultimate Reality”) the word Jesus most commonly used was abba, which as modern teachers point out, is not the formal (somewhat aloof, perhaps judgmental) word in Hebrew for “Father,” but instead more akin to the sense of “papa”—a word that suggests both intimacy as well as familiarity, not just familial-ity.
More radically than that, Jesus expressed His own "inseparable union" with “Abba”—which may be different than the rather oversimplified conceptual framing that Jesus is God. Whatever Jesus’ philosophical position (he propounded no intellectual system), it is clear that Jesus taught that each person was capable of the same relationship as He has, what is referred to in the tradition as the Mystical Christ, in and through which each person may realize and unfold their own Truth inseparable from the Ultimate Truth of Reality—that abstract “thing” or beyond-you-power that Jesus tried to get people over or through. As Jesus says in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” In the Gospel of John, Jesus says that whoever sees this (“who sees me, sees the Father,”John, 14, 9), “will do the works that I do, and greater far than these” (John, 14, 12).
After Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection—that is, reappearance in the same body—His followers practiced in small groups, often in what latter became the basis for Christian monastic communities throughout the ancient Middle East. It appealed, largely, to people with a fairly well-developed “sense of the Sacred” that practiced intensely (that is to say, day in and day out—having given up and away everything of a “worldly” life) for the Vision (or View) of the Christ: the Nature of Reality is God and God is Love, that all of us are as closely related as Brothers and Sisters, and that we are as close to the Ultimate Nature of Reality as a child to its parent—from the point of view of the parent.
However, the Christian mystical tradition from the beginning has gone even further than the familial relationship view—to the point of it being Christian mysticism’s most notable characteristic—that of describing the relationship in the most intimate terms—as that of Lovers—and in language remarkable for its rather “physical” (as opposed to metaphysical, or philosophical) descriptions.
For example, perhaps the best known and often read Christian mystics, John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila both describe their mystical Union, beyond being and non-being, as that of a “virgin bride on her wedding night, with a mixture of trepidation and excitement, entering the bedchamber of the Beloved.”
The Christian mystical tradition is in fact replete with psycho-sexual language—reminiscent of Indo-Tibetan “tantra”—but what of the “goal”? At the moment of mystical consummation, a catastrophic “climax” (which the French pointedly call le petite moire—&ldquot;the little death”), body and mind fall away in ecstatic rapture (a word which means, in this context of mystical language, “seized and held in embrace”). “Body and mind falling away” or “lost” is reminiscent as well of the Buddhist (especially Zen) description of the “enlightenment experience,” or satori, in Japanese.
Also characteristic of Christian mysticism is a remarkable absence of gender disparity relative not only to standard, Church-going Christianity, but to other “inner way” traditions as well. There are as many well-known female as male practitioners, who have left extensive (though not well studied) “writings” that continue to the present day. Most, though not all, have been monastics and most, though again not all, have been solitary practitioners—even those living in religious communities—or live alone.
Christian mystical practices focus on devotional (as befits lovers to their beloved) prayer, meditation (both contemplation and mental silence, called quiescence), visualization, and even mantra, and practice under the spiritual direction and guidance of a specific mentor or teacher. One of the most beloved Christian mystics of the later half of the 20th Century was Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She wrote poetry most of her life and in her 70’s composed the following in response to requests to express her own “inner view”:
Life is an opportunity, avail it.
Life is a beauty, admire it.
Life is bliss, taste it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is costly, care for it.
Life is a wealth, keep it.
Life is love, enjoy it.
Life is mystery, know it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, brace it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is life, save it!
Life is luck, make it.
Life is precious, do not destroy it.
Recommended reading: Son of Man: the Mystical Path to Christ, by Andrew Harvey