Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity and Islam

1. first, the term "unio mystica" is primarily a modern

expresion.
2. Second, the term "mysticism" is a modern word was
crated for Christian West. The nodern Christian West
distort the meaning of key figures, movements, and
texts from the traditions of Judaism and Islam.

La conciencia tiene un contacto inmediato con la

presencia de la divinidad. En consecuancia, existe
una presencia fuerte en las tres tradiciones de elementos
místicos.

3. the study of mystical traditions indicates that the

languague of union is only one of the linguistic strategies
used by mystics to try to describe, or at least to point to,
what they contend is the ultimately ineffable natura of their
contact with God.

CHARACTERISTICS OF UNITIVE MYSTICISM

Mystical union --- often employed --- pantheism and monism

Discusión entre los expertos. Términos opuestos

a. impersonal --- personal union
b. absorptive --- nonabsorptive union
c. habitual --- ecstatic union
d. essential --- intentional union

Mystics make use of a variety of images and symbols, as well as

distinctive expressions and forms of technical discourse, in
their attempts to suggest through language what lies beyond
language. Images of erotic love—the kiss, the embrace, the
memory of encounter, even sexual intercourse—are favored
ways of expressing mystical union

(Meister Eckhart: "The eye with which I see God is the same
eye with which God sees me")

Intimately allied with the difference between mystical uniting

and mystical identity is the issue of annihilation. Many mystics
have insisted that union-identity can only be found through
annihilation of the self, but the meaning of annihilation is
complex and open to a host of questions

Some of these strategies are dialectical in the sense that they

insist on the coexistence of indistinction and distinction in
the relation between God and human—from one perspective union
is total identity; from another, it coexists with an ongoing
real difference between the two. Other qualifications are more
perspectival, claiming that annihilation is essentially a
matter of the consciousness of the mystic and not the
structures of reality themselves

The various ways of expressing mystical union are intimately

connected with the relation between knowing and loving, both
in the path to union and in its realization.
Mysticism Christianismus
The Greek qualifier mustikos is derived from the verb muein,
meaning "to close the mouth or eyes." Ancient writers used
the term in the sense of something hidden, as in the case
of the mystery cults, but from the second century ce
Christians adopted mustikos to signify the inner realities
of their beliefs and practices.

The earliest uses of the term mystical union (sunousia mustikē,

koinōnia mustikē ) are found in the Spiritual Homilies ascribed
to the Egyptian monk Macarius but actually written in Messalian
circles in Syria in the late fourth century ce

Pseudo-Dionysius was the first to use the term henōsis mustikē

(Divine Names 2.9). The Latin translators of the Dionysian
corpus employed various terms for Dionysius's henōsis, but
use of unio mystica was rare, despite the many discussions
of union found in the medieval and early modern periods. T
he term did emerge in some of the textbooks on mysticism
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Mystical union in Christianity to 1200

Orígenes
Plotino Eneada 6.9

God conceived of as one and three in the dynamic relationship

of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, begin to appear in
Christianity in the late fourth century ce in the
writings of Evagrius (d. 399 ce), a learned Origenist who
became a desert monk.

Evagrius appears to be the first Christian to use one of

the favored metaphors for mystical identity, that of rivers
returning to the sea. In speaking of how created minds return
to the Trinity to attain their pre-creational state, he says:
"When minds flow back to him like torrents into the sea,
he changes them all completely into his own nature, color,
and taste. They will no longer be many but one in his
unending and inseparable unity, because they are united
and joined with him"

The twelfth century was the golden age of speculation

on oneness of spirit (unitas spiritus ),
following the Pauline-Origenist tradition. Intense
discussion of the modalities of union and the role
of love and knowledge in unitive states was carried
on by Cistercian authors, such as William of
Saint Thierry (d. 1148) and Bernard of Clairvaux
(d. 1153), as well as the early scholastic
systematizers of mysticism of the school of Saint Victor,
such as Hugh (d. 1141) and Richard (d. 1173).

Mystical union in Christianity, 1200–1700

Margarithe Porete
Porete's Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls, one
of the most striking presentations of mystical identity
in the history of Christianity, employs an impressive
range of forms of discourse to suggest how God,
the "Farnear," takes the place of the soul that has
perfectly annihilated itself: "Now he possesses the
will without a why in the same way that he possessed
it before she [the soul] was made a lady by it

Eckhart used the dialectical language of Neoplatonic

philosophy to explore the distinct-indistinction
of the ground of identity where "God's ground is
the soul's ground and the soul's ground is God's ground"
(German Sermon 6). Some passages even suggest attaining
indistinction with the God-beyond-God, as
in German Sermon 48, which says that the soul is
not content with the Trinity of persons or the
divine essence, "but it wants to know the source of this
essence, it wants to go into the simple ground, into
the quiet desert where distinction never gazed,
not the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy Spirit."
The teachings of Porete and Eckhart were too
daring for the institutional church of the time.
Porete was executed for heresy in 1310,
and Eckhart was posthumously condemned in 1329.

Among the most important are the twin terms fanāʾ

and baqāʾ, conceived of as two crucial stages
(maqāmat ) in the Ṣūfī path. Fanāʾ, or passing away,
is the annihilation of the ego consciousness,
absolute nullification in the presence of the divine.
(It has been compared to the Middle High German
verb entwerden, "unbecoming," used by Eckhart
[Schimmel, 1975, p. 142].) But fanāʾ is inseparable
from baqāʾ, or subsisting, because when the
human ceases to be, what remains is only the
divine reality in which all things subsist

Enciclopedia de la Religión. Segunda Edición Tomo 9

Mysticism "No definition could be both meaningful and

suffciently comprehensive to include all experiences that,
at some point or other, have been desribed as "mystical".

In the Greek mystery cults, "muein" ("ti remain silent")

probably referred to the secrecy of the initiaton rites.
But later, especially in Neaplatonic theory, the "mystical"
silence came to mean wordless contemplation.

Nor does the early Christian term mustikos correspond

to our present understanding, since it referred to the spiritual
meaning that Christians, in the light of revelation, detected
under the original, literal meaning of the scriptures. Eventually
the idea of a meaning hidden underneath surface appearances
was extended to all spiritual reality (the sacraments, especially
the Eucharist, even nature itself as expressive of
God’s majesty). Yet the strictly private character that we so
readily associate with the term mystical was never part of it.

Each mystic unquestionably

tends to interpret his experience in the light of the theological
or philosophical universe to which be belongs.
Moreover, the nature of his spiritual quest usually shapes the
experience. But to conclude therefrom that the interpretation
remains extrinsic is to deny the experience a specific,
ideal content of its own and to reduce it to mere sensation.
Experience itself is distinctly cognitive and intentionally
unique. As Gershom Scholem once pointed out, there is no
mysticism-in-general; there are only particular mystical systems
and individuals, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish,
Christian, and so forth

MYSTICISM OF THE SELF. Mysticism belongs to the core of

all religion. Those religions that had a historical founder all
started with a powerful personal experience of immediate
contact. But all religions, regardless of their origin, retain
their vitality only as long as their members continue to believe
in a transcendent reality with which they can in some
way communicate by direct experience.

First, forms of meditation became at

some point acceptable substitutes for the performance of the
actual sacrifice and were held to yield equally desirable benefits.
Though such forms of concentration had little in common
with what we understand today by contemplation, they
nevertheless initiated an interiorization that Hinduism
would pursue further than any other religion (Dasgupta,
1972, p. 19).
Second, the term brahman, which originally
referred to the sacred power present in ritual and sacrifice,
gradually came to mean a single, abstractly conceived Absolute.
The search for a primal unity is already obvious in some
Vedic texts (e.g., the Creation Song, which speaks of “that
one thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature”). The subordinate
status of the gods (“The gods are later than this
world’s production,”

Unlike some other religions, Christianity has

never equated its ideal of holiness with the attainment of
mystical states. Nor did it encourage seeking such states for
their own sake. Nevertheless, a mystical impulse undeniably
propelled it in its origin and determined much of its later development.
The synoptic Gospels present Jesus as dwelling
in the continuous, intimate presence of God. His public life
begins with a prayer and a vision: “While Jesus after his baptism
was at prayer, heaven opened and the Holy Spirit descended
on him in bodily shape like a dove”

The first attempt at a systematic theology of the mystical

life in Christ was written by Plotinus’s fellow Alexandrian
and codisciple, Origen. In his Twenty-seventh Homily on
Numbers Origen compares spiritual life to the Jews’ exodus
through the desert of Egypt

Terah, the place of

union with God. In his commentary on the Song of Songs,
Origen initiated a long tradition of mystical interpretations
that see in the erotic biblical poem just such a divine union
The privileged place of love distinguishes Origen’s theology
from Neoplatonic philosophy. This emphasis on love
becomes even more pronounced in the writings of Gregory
of Nyssa, the fourth-century Cappadocian bishop. Under
Neoplatonic influence Gregory describes the mystical life as
a process of gno¯sis initiated by a divine eros, which results in
the fulfillment of the soul’s natural desire for union with the
God of whom she bears the image. Though akin to God
from the beginning, the soul’s mystical ascent is a slow and
painful process that ends in a dark unknowing—the mystical
night of love.

Unfortunately, this rich theology of identity remained

largely unexplored by Augustine’s spiritual followers until,
in the twelfth century, the Cistercians and the Benedictines
of Saint Victor Abbey combined it with the mystical theology
of the Greeks. This fertile synthesis of Augustinian psychology
with Greek spiritual ontology culminated in the two
movements of Rhineland mysticism and Flemish spirituality.
We shall here consider only their chief representatives: Eckhart
and Ruusbroec.

Johannes Eckhart, possibly the most powerful mystical

theologian of the Christian Middle Ages, synthesized the
Greek and Augustinian theories of the image with a daring
negative theology in one grandiose system. His mystical vision
became the basis of an entire theology and, indeed, of
a metaphysics of being. He was a subtle dialectician in his
systematic Latin works and a paradoxical preacher in his vernacular
sermons, so that his spiritual identity remains even
today a subject of controversy. Few have succeeded in harmonizing
the two parts of his prodigious output. Yet they
do belong together. For Eckhart’s endeavor was precisely to
present the mystical union not as a privilege of the few but
as the very vocation and ultimate realization of humanity.
The mystical theory of the divine image holds the key to his
theological ontology.

God is Being, and being in the strict sense is only God.

With this bold principle, Eckhart reinterprets a Thomist tradition
that “analogously” attributed being to God and finite
existence. For Eckhart, the creature qua creature does not
exist. Whatever being it possesses is not its own, but remains
God’s property. Both its limited essence (what determines it
as this being rather than that) and its contingent existence
(that it happens to be) are no more than the negative limits
of its capacity to receive God’s own being. “Every creature,”
Eckhart wrote, “radically and positively possesses Being, life
and wisdom from and in God, and not in itself.” Hence,
God is totally immanent in the creature as its very being,
while totally transcending it as the only being. By this presence
God is totally like the creature; yet, lacking any of its
determinations, he is totally unlike it. On these productive
antinomies Eckhart builds his densely rich concept of image.

Eckhart appears to join earlier (Greek) theologians

who had defined the image through the presence of
God’s Word in the soul. But he gives it a more radical turn
by declaring that divine Word the soul’s very being. Rather
than presence, Eckhart speaks of identity. Of course, as a
creature the soul totally differs from the divine image. But
its created nature contains God’s own, uncreated being. In
that being the soul coincides with God. “There is something
in the soul that is so near akin to God that it is one and not
united [to him]. . . . If man were wholly thus, he would
be wholly uncreated and uncreatable

REVISIÓN DE ENTRADA
The term mysticism, like the term religion itself,
is a problematic but indispensable one. Identifying a
broad spectrum of ideas, experiences, and practices across a
diversity of cultures and traditions, it is a generic term rather
than the name for any particular doctrine or mode of life.
The application of appropriate epithets yields terminology
for specific categories of mysticism (theistic mysticism, nature
mysticism, and eschatological mysticism) and for distinct
cultural or doctrinal traditions (e.g., Hindu mysticism,
bhakti mysticism, Jewish mysticism, merkavah mysticism).
The term mysticism is also a modern one, serving the purpose
of comparative study and theoretical analysis, drawing
into a single arena ideas and practices otherwise isolated
within their own local names and histories.

by the early Christian use of the word mystical

to describe the deeper significance of Scripture and liturgy,
by the later Christian definition of mystical theology as loving
union with God by grace, and by popular uses of mysticism
as a label for anything nebulous, esoteric, occult, or supernatural.

Inevitably, however, the term remains colored if not

hampered by the complexity of its own history: by its original
Greek etymology (meaning “silence, secrecy, initiation,
ineffability”), by the early Christian use of the word mystical
to describe the deeper significance of Scripture and liturgy,
by the later Christian definition of mystical theology as loving
union with God by grace, and by popular uses of mysticism
as a label for anything nebulous, esoteric, occult, or supernatural.
Although mysticism is now firmly entrenched within
the vocabulary of the modern study of religions, its usage
overlaps and to some extent competes with its employment
in specifically theological contexts. Christian or at least theistic
mysticism continues to be given prominence even in
studies treating the subject at a more generic or theoretical
level (e.g., in much philosophy of religion).

Any modern treatment of mysticism must satisfy two

negative and two positive criteria. First, it must avoid reifying
mysticism into some kind of uniform system or tradition
standing outside the historical traditions of religion. Second,
it must avoid making the forms or truths of the mysticism
of any one tradition a touchstone for the evaluation of mysticism
more generally. Third, it must take into account the
global diversity of mysticism; it must embrace Nagarjuna as
well as Teresa of Ávila, Isaac Luria as well as Shankara, Mirabai
as well as Plotinus. Finally, it must take into account
what may be called the four “dimensions” of mysticism: the
experiential, the theoretical, the practical, and the social.
That is, the varieties of mystical experience are intimately
linked with a body of disciplines and techniques, which in
turn are informed by a body of ideas expressed in doctrine
and philosophy, symbolism and speculation, all of which
have social embodiment within particular historical communities
and traditions. To these a fifth dimension could be
added—even where “bracketed out”—the ontological dimension,
covering the transcendental causes or realities implicit
in mystical experience.

La opinión de que uno puede aprender algo importante sobre

misticismo a través de un escrutinio detallado de los estados místicos en
la base de su expresión literaria se remonta a la persistencia
obra influyente Las variedades de la experiencia religiosa
por William James (1902). Esta vista condujo directamente al trabajo
de R. C. Zaehner (Misticismo sagrado y profano, 1957) y
W. T. Stace (Misticismo y Filosofía, 1960), que alimentó
debates sobre la variedad o uniformidad de la experiencia mística
a lo largo de las décadas de 1960 y 1970. Donde Zaehner insistió
en una jerarquía de tipos sustancialmente distintos de mística
experiencia, Stace hizo hincapié en una fenomenológica y
de hecho, núcleo común ontológico de experiencia subyacente
lo que para él era una doctrina y literaria relativamente superficial
diversidad. Con muchos más textos místicos ahora disponibles y un
riqueza de contribuciones de una amplia gama de disciplinas académicas,
las debilidades tanto de la base empírica como de la
La metodología de este debate anterior son demasiado evidentes. El
complejidad de la distinción entre el contenido de una experiencia
y las formas de su interpretación se acercan ahora
de una manera mucho más sofisticada, y la diversidad
de la experiencia mística ya no es ignorada ni siquiera por aquellos
que defienden una unidad subyacente.