The term "mysticism" has Ancient Greek origins with various historically determined meanings. Derived from the Greek word μύω múō, meaning "to close" or "to conceal", mysticism referred to the biblical, liturgical, spiritual, and contemplative dimensions of early and medieval Christianity.
The term ‘mystic’ is derived from the Greek noun mystes, which originally designated an initiate of a secret cult or mystery religion.
The philosopher, Williams James, offered ‘Varieties of Religious Experience’. He asserted that there were seven criteria:
1. Ineffability.
2. A Noetic Quality. states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect.
3. Transiency.
4. Passivity.
5. Unity of opposites (a sense of Oneness, Wholeness or Completeness).
6. Timelessness
7. A feeling that one has somehow encountered “the true self”.
Sound familiar? To those who have had intense psychedelic experiences, it probably should.
Never having experienced a hallucination before (or any departure from normal brain function), the fundamentalist, orthodox Believer will naturally leap to the conclusion that their schizotypal, fugue-state ‘vision’ is one that has revealed the supernatural to them; something beyond the normal scope of their experience. They leap to the assumption and the immediate acceptance of their hallucination as a revelation; an experience of the nature of ‘god’.
Consider the number of saints and holy people of the Christian Faith who are renowned for their revelations, their visions of the transcendent, the ‘Almighty’. The 19th century mystic, St. Faustina, for example; her apparitions of Jesus Christ inspired the Roman Catholic devotion to the Divine Mercy and earned her the title of "Secretary of Divine Mercy". Throughout her life, she reported having visions of Jesus and conversations with him.
Sure, schizophrenia is a problem unless your ‘episodes’ are with Jesus, then, it’s a blessing and a gift.
St. Teresa of Avila, was a 16th century, Spanish mystic and ascetic who saw visions of Hell. In 1559, Teresa became firmly convinced that Jesus Christ had presented himself to her in bodily form, though invisible. (That’s quite a trick; physical yet invisible!) Her visions lasted nearly continuously for more than two years. In another vision, a seraph (an angel!) drove the fiery point of a golden lance repeatedly through her heart, causing her an ineffable spiritual and bodily pain.
Theresa testified; ‘I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.’
No, nothing sexual or masochistic about all that thrusting of a spear into her moaning body. Naw…
Consider that each of these people may have been schizotypal personalities who experienced a brain abnormality falsely interpreted as a revelation of the supernatural. None of these people could be examined in modern MRI machines, of course, so no data can ever be gotten to provide evidence that St Paul or the other visionaries were schizophrenic or schizotypal. However, other assessments can be and should be made by qualified neuroscientists. For instance, according to neurologists and psychiatrists who took an interest in her symptomatology, St. Teresa Avila, known for her ‘raptures’ (which sometimes involved levitation) may have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy.
Pardon this further indulgence but there is a point to be made by all this: much of the Christian Faith was built upon the visions and revelations of god and the supernatural. St. Paul, for instance, with his visions of Jesus and his infamous Road to Damascus episode was a cornerstone of the early church.
Note, too that visions were often seen by ‘ascetics’; those who practice extreme self-denial or self-mortification for religious reasons. Indeed, the Catholic Church has an entire category of ascetics who lived and prayed atop columns; ‘stylites’. (No kidding.) ‘Simeon Stylites’, was an ascetic who stood in stress position atop a column in Syria where he starved himself. Simeon is venerated as a saint by the Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholic Churches. He is known formally as ‘Simeon Stylites the Elder’ in order to distinguish him from ‘Simeon Stylites the Younger’, ‘Simeon Stylites III’, and ‘Symeon Stylites of Lesbos’, all adherents to this bizarre form of asceticism.
(Sort of a franchise.)
Not to brag, but I, myself, have had a couple of ‘visions’; one I have already related of a vision of the solar system while I was on a mystery substance. Another was unprovoked by psychotropic chemical when I was about 19. I had a dream – a prophetic vision, in the parlance of the Holy – in which a glorious, beautiful world was revealed; one of massive ziggurats and temples bathed in a warm, golden light. No visions of the torments of hell or the glory of heaven but it was a lovely, captivating dream that filled me with a sense of peace and what I very well might have considered the presence of the divine. If I’d only seen the Sacred Heart like St. Gertrude the Great in the 14th century or been pierced by the spear of an angel, I might be considered for sainthood; or committed to a loony bin. Or maybe not; St. Gertrude, after all saw both St. John the Evangelist and Jesus in a single day.
By the time I’d had that prophetic vision of the golden ziggurats and temples, I’d already experienced the effects of LSD and cannabis. I understood completely that my revelatory dream was nothing more than that; a dream. Perhaps the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelations are nothing more than the dreams of schizotypal people; dreamers who thought they’d tapped into the supernatural. Perhaps the bizarre and entrancing poetry of their visions should be seen not as experiences of the supernatural but rather simply as dreams of an abnormal brain; or a brain acting abnormally under the physical and emotional stress of asceticism or drugs coupled with the profound delusions of there being a ‘god’.
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