MYSTICISM. - With this name, derived from "mystic," a word proper to the mysteries (v.), are designated those philosophical-religious currents which place the knowledge of God in inner illumination (thanks to which they experience spiritual union with the divinity) rather than in rational inquiry. All religions have their own mysticism, and all recommend solitude and silence as an indispensable condition, because this above all allows one to perceive the ineffable word. Therefore liturgies, in solemn moments, recommend silence, because this, like the darkness that reigns in the interior of the sanctuary, serves to intensify religious emotion.
To attain the mystical state there exist in the various religions norms relating to both the external and the internal life. For the exterior life, rules are prescribed concerning food, the schedule of the day, and sometimes even clothing: thus among the Essenes (v.), the Orphics (v. ORFICI MISTRII), the Pythagoreans (v. PITAGORA), the Sufis (v. SŪFISMO). With even stronger reason the internal life must conform to the model of perfection toward which the mystic strives: indeed the exterior rules of life, even those marked by the harshest asceticism, are not an end in themselves, but serve precisely to facilitate this interior assimilation.
The path of mystical ascent is long and unfolds according to degrees, varying in number according to the various mysticisms, but which always go from a first pleasant spiritual experience, through trials that are also painful and that serve to test the candidate's capacity and to refine his spirit, up to perfect union with the divinity. The mystical ascent is therefore truly an exercise (ἀρχησις) that tends to strip the individual of all that constitutes his personal self in order to fill him with God. This is the supreme degree of mysticism: the suppression of the distance between the object, which is God, and the subject, which is man. In Catholic mysticism this union has never exceeded the proper limit of separation between the Creator and the creature, nor has it ever forgotten the relationship of vital dependence that the branch must maintain with respect to the vine; whereas in non-Christian mysticisms (Sufism) and in certain currents of medieval German mysticism the identification between man and the divinity is so complete that the individual almost feels himself to be God and no longer has need of rites or symbols.
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Nicola Turchi