Mysticism

Mysticism (from the Greek μυστικός, mystikos, an initiate of a mystery religion) is the pursuit of communion with, identification with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate Reality, Divinity, spiritual Truth, or God through direct experience or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences of awareness. Mysticism may be monistic, dualistic, nondualistic, or ontologically pluralistic. Differing religious, social and psychological traditions have described this fundamental mystical experience in many different ways. The words "mystical" and "mysticism", though commonly used by mystics to affirm extraordinary insights beyond all expression, and thus impossible to communicate to others, have also sometimes been used in a presumptive sense which insists that others must believe and accept what aspects of the experiences can be communicated, or in an entirely pejorative sense, strongly related to rejection of such authoritarian claims.

Quotes

From each a mystic silence Love demands.
- Attar, "Intoxicated by the Wine of Love", as translated by Margaret Smith from the Jawhar Al-Dhat in Readings from the Mystics of Islām (1950) by Margaret Smith, p. 85
- Variant translation, in Essential Sufism, by James Fadiman and Robert Frager: "From each, Love demands a mystic silence."

Mystics understand the roots of the Tao but not its branches; scientists understand its branches but not its roots. Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science; but man needs both.
- Fritjof Capra, in The Tao of Physics : An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism (1975), Epilogue, p. 306