Following The Flow

copyrighted 2010

Quite often mysticism is defined as an experience of unity or oneness with nature, God or the divine Reality.  So the scholar of mysticism Evelyn Underhill wrote “Mysticism is the art of union with Reality.  The mystic is a person who has attained that union.”[i] The popular spiritual thinker Ken Wilber says that “in the mystical consciousness, Reality is apprehended directly and immediately, meaning without any mediation, any symbolic elaboration, any conceptualization, or any abstractions; subject and object become one in a timeless and spaceless act that is beyond any and all forms of mediation.”[ii] Among the people I associated with, people interested in transpersonal psychology and alternative spirituality, Wilber’s idea was the dominant way of looking at mysticism.

I have gotten many voices, dreams, and intuitions I knew were from God, but I never thought I was a mystic.  I assumed mystics were people who had union with God in contemplative oneness, and I never had those exalted experiences.  My voices and other messages were telling me to do things in the world, and by following these messages I was led to my wife, to having kids, and to doing my spiritual work.  But as mysticism was union with the divine in a contemplative oneness, I never thought of myself as a mystic.

Then I encountered the scholar Anne Barstow’s description of Joan of Arc as an active mystic.[iii] I did not know it, but Barstow was part of a group of scholars who wanted to broaden the definition of mysticism to include more than just contemplative union with the divine in a state of total oneness beyond words or images.  Bernard McGinn, the leading scholar of Christian mysticism and the editor of many anthologies of Christian mysticism, said this definition was too limiting as it left out many significant historical figures who never used the language of union with God.[iv] The feminist scholar Grace M. Jantzen said that who is included as a mystic is often controlled by males in the power structure.  She said that many women, particularly in the Middle Ages, were having mystical experiences, which were not ones of total oneness.  Their experiences centered on voices and visions and so the masculine power structure of that time did not consider their experiences as mysticism.[v] The scholar Jess Hollenback said defining mysticism as total union was ethnocentric.  He said this definition was based on the practitioners of universal religions (those offering salvation to everyone, such as Christianity and Buddhism) and neglected tribal religious leaders who do not experience the divine as total union beyond words or images.[vi] Based on this broader way of thinking about mysticism, Bernard McGinn defined mystical experiences as “the immediate or direct presence of God.”[vii]

By that definition of mysticism, I was definitely a mystic as I had many direct encounters with the divine and these were defining points of my life.  I had never thought of it before, but I came to consider myself an active mystic: one who has an encounter with the divine and is told to do things in the world by the divine. The active mystic is called through divine voices, visions, feelings, intuitions, dreams or other divine messages to help accomplish God’s purpose in the world.  So this kind of mystic has experiences of the divine but is focused on being active in the world.  Throughout history some of the best known active mystics have been Socrates, Moses, St. Paul, St. Joan of Arc, George Fox, Harriet Tubman, Mother Teresa, and Gandhi.

Anne Barstow borrowed the phrase active mystic from F. C. Happold’s book Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology.  In his book Happold called it “the lesser mystic way.”[viii] But why should we think of active mysticism as lesser than contemplative or oneness mysticism?  If you think of it from the angle of who has a deeper experience of the divine, the contemplative or union mystic is superior.  But if you consider it from a social angle, the active mystic is clearly superior.  Contemplative mysticism is delightful for the individual having an experience of total oneness, but why should society care if a person experiences union with the divine?  Contemplative union with Reality or God is like great sexual experiences: they are nice for the person having them, but they are pretty meaningless for anyone else.  Active mystics, on the other hand, are not spending their time in individual contemplation, they are concentrating on helping their community and their world by doing what God/the Universe/the divine wants them to do.  Thus they are useful to other people.

The Quaker mystic Rufus Jones in the early twentieth century made a similar distinction about the different kinds of mysticism and also valued the active mystic over the contemplative one.  He contrasted negation mysticism (which negates all earthly finite things to get into union with the Infinite divine) with affirmation mysticism (which did not negate worldly things and emphasized worldly activity and so is similar to my concept of active mysticism).[ix] Jones attacked the equating of mysticism with ecstasy and trances because these states are abnormal states and “can [only] with difficulty be distinguished from diseased imagination.”[x] Jones wrote that the affirmation mystic should be more praised.  He said of the affirmation mystics “they do not make vision the end of life, but rather the beginning.  They are bent on having an immediate, first hand-sense of God—but not just for the joy of having it.  More important than vision is obedience to the vision.  There are battles to fight and victories to win.  God’s Kingdom is to be advanced….Those who see God must gird for service….His mission on earth is to be a fellow worker with God—contributing in a normal daily life his human powers to the divine Spirit who works in him and about him, bringing to reality a kingdom of God.”[xi] In another book, Jones says that “the wisest mystics have usually been aware of the fact that the training and culture of the soul to become an organ for God in the world is vastly more important than the attainment of a nirvana state of mind can be.”[xii] These affirmation mystics stressed the things they did for others in the world: “They championed causes, organized movements, founded societies, reformed the Church, led crusades, and took their part in rebuilding the world of their time.”[xiii]

It is not true that one has to be either a contemplative mystic or an active mystic.  Many people can do both.  But because so many people have limited the word mystic to contemplative mystics it is necessary to carve out social space for another kind of mysticism.  While carving out this social space, the active mystic should be distinguished from three similar types of people:  prophets, shamans, and those operating out of a deep sense of morality.

The prophet has encountered the divine and is doing things in the world like the active mystic, but the modus operandi is different. The prophet is selected by the divine usually to deliver a message to a certain group of people.  Often this message is a warning, a call for repentance, or a revelation of the holy book.  The active mystic’s guidance might be a dream telling a person the next step for her alone; unlike the prophet, the active mystic does not have to involve other people.  So a prophet could be seen as a type of active mystic, but because of its historical importance, it should be distinguished from active mysticism.

Like the prophet, the shaman encounters the divine and is focused on doing things in the world.  The shaman, however, is part of a pre-literate culture and his activities are bound up with his tribe.  The active mystic can be in any culture and is not necessarily associated with healing and vision journeys as the shaman is.  Like the prophet, the shaman could be seen as a kind of active mystic, but due to its importance in describing a pervasive phenomenon it should be distinguished from active mysticism.

Finally, active mysticism is different than doing things for other people out of a deep sense of ethical obligation.  If someone spends his live freeing slaves because she is convinced that is a moral imperative, she is doing something ethically good, but there is no reason to label her an active mystic.  But if someone, like Harriet Tubman, follows her divine guidance to free slaves, getting divine messages such as “wait now” or “go north now,” she is an active mystic. People who act out of ethical sense and active mystics can be doing very similar things, the dividing line is why they are doing it: the active mystic does it because of a personal encounter with the divine, the ethical person does it solely from a sense of moral obligation.

copyrighted 2010

This site contains essays written by Joseph Waligore. He dedicated his life to following the will of the Universe when he was 20. Seven months later he received a message from his Higher Self or inner connection to the divine to quit Dartmouth College. Through following a deep intuition in a dream and after many synchronistic experiences, he met his soulmate and married her. He and his wife followed their spiritual intuitions in their daily lives, including receiving messages to have children. For twelve years he stayed at home and raised his three children while his wife worked. Then, his wife told him he needed to make some money, so he got a Ph. D. in philosophy from Syracuse University. He currently has a part-time job teaching philosophy and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. More information about him can be found at his MySpace profile. He also has awebsite with information about his own spiritual journey and his spiritual philosophy.

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[i] Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1915) p. 3.

[ii] Ken Wilber, Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists (Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala, 1984), p. 7.

[iii] Anne L. Barstow, “Joan of Arc and Female Mysticism,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Fall 1985) 29-42, p. 29.
[iv] Bernard McGinn, ed., in the introduction to The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism (New York: The Modern Library, 2006), p. xv.

[v] Grace M. Jantzen, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 3-17.

[vi] Jess Hollenback, Mysticism: Experience, Response, and Empowerment (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), p. ix, 305-6, 442-3, & 613-5.

[vii] Bernard McGinn as quoted in William Harmless, Mystics, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 260.

[viii] F. C. Happold, Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963), p.  100.

[ix] Rufus M. Jones, Social Law in the Spiritual World: Studies in the Human and Divine Inter-Relationship (London, Headley Brothers, 1904), p. 148-153.

[x] Rufus M. Jones, New Studies in Mystical Religion: The Ely Lectures Delivered at Union Theological Seminary, New York 1927 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927), p. 49

[xi] Jones, Social Law, p. 152-4.

[xii] Jones, New Studies, p. 51.

[xiii] Jones, New Studies, p. 52.

Copyrighted 2009

This essay was written by Joseph Waligore. He dedicated his life to following the will of the Universe when he was 20. Seven months later he received a message from his Higher Self or inner connection to the divine to quit Dartmouth College. Through following a deep intuition in a dream and after many synchronistic experiences, he met his soulmate and married her. He and his wife followed their spiritual intuitions in their daily lives, including receiving messages to have children. For twelve years he stayed at home and raised his three children while his wife worked. Then, his wife told him he needed to make some money, so he got a Ph. D. in philosophy from Syracuse University. He currently has a part-time job teaching philosophy and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. More information about him can be found at his MySpace profile. He also has a website with information about his own spiritual journey and his spiritual philosophy.

There is a Facebook group called Flowing.  People interested in meeting other people who are interested in these ideas and/or participating in discussions about these ideas are invited to join the group.

Many people reach this site through keyword advertisements. It might be of interest that Joseph got the money for these ads through his daytrading profits.

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