A warning – measure everything up with the Word of God please!
I just thought I would mention that although I have certain links in my sidebar, this does not mean that I endorse everything contained within these websites.
I have recently been made aware about this month’s newsletter from the “Christian Classics Ethereal Library” written by the director of C.C.E.L Harry Plantinga. In it he talks about “Mysticism” being at the very heart of Christianity…
As I was growing up, my church experience seemed somewhat heady to me—concerned more about correct belief than about actually loving God. Whether or not that was a correct perception, I wanted more. I wanted not just to know about God, I wanted to know God, though I may not have put it in those terms at that time.
Christian mysticism addresses that longing of the heart. Early in The Imitation of Christ, Thomas writes, “Let the learned be still, let all creatures be silent before You; You alone speak to me.” I don’t want to hear about you from others, I want to know you myself.
He goes on to explain the meaning of mysticism…
Webster defines mysticism as “the doctrine that it is possible to achieve communion with God through contemplation and love without the medium of human reason.”
He then points to a study group, the topic, “Practical Mysticism” and this group uses the writings of Evelyn Underhill.
Lighthouse points out the very real dangers of such mystical practices and has done a very good job in documenting information from key authors and the underlying relationship between occultism and contemplative mystical communion. So, instead of just me rambling on I will just give you the link… here is the Lighthouse article on this matter.
Remember that communion with God without the medium of human reason flies in the face of what God actually says when He spoke to Isaiah…
Isa 1:1819 “Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land.
I may be confused by your article. I’m not so sure about the term mysticism and using self hypnosis, but spirituality is what makes a true Christian.
In the scripture you quoted above, isn’t God calling man to reason directly with Him? And, what about this scripture that comes a few verses before:
Isa 1:18-19 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me [unless they are the offering of the heart]? says the Lord. I have had enough of the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts [without obedience]; and I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of he-goats [without righteousness].
Even in the Old Testament it was vital to get direction directly from God.
Question: Would fasting be considered mysticism, when the purpose is to gain clarity from God? Answer: Jesus did it.
The following scripture is one of many that lead me to believe that a direct spiritual relationship with God is the only way to be a true Christian.
21Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
We need to remember that theology is discourse about God, not necessarily with God.
The following is a blurb about Evelyn Underhill’s book called “Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness“…
First published in 1911, Mysticism remains the classic in its field and was lauded by The Princeton Theological Review as ‘brilliantly written [and] illuminated with numerous well-chosen extracts . . . used with exquisite skill.’ Mysticism makes an in-depth and comprehensive exploration of its subject. Part One examines The Mystic Fact, explaining the relation of mysticism to vitalism, to psychology, to theology, to symbolism, and to magic. Part Two, The Mystic Way, explores the awakening, purification, and illumination of the self; discusses voices and visions; and delves into manifestations from ecstasy and rapture to the dark night of the soul.
All of the above I practised before I became a born again Christian, when I was into the occult. I was saved out of it, and now we have the occult creeping into Christianity. Go figure! You can find all the above in the occult.
Richard Kirby’s book, The Mission of Mysticism, Kirby identifies Underhill as someone who can be looked to as a mystic, calling her “prominent among those charting the geography of spiritual development (p. 50). But Kirby admits that this mystical spirituality is no different than occultism:
The meditation of advanced occultists is identical with the prayer of advanced mystics; it is no accident that both traditions use the same word for the highest reaches of their respective activities: contemplation (samadhi in yoga). (emphasis in original) Richard Kirby, The Mission of Mysticism (London, UK: SPCK, 1979), p. 7.
Here is what she says about mystic union…
Now we have said that the end which the mystic sets before him is conscious union with a living Absolute. That Divine Dark, that Abyss of the Godhead, of which he sometimes speaks as the goal of his quest, is just this Absolute, the Uncreated Light in which the Universe is bathed, and which—transcending, as it does, all human powers of expression—he can only describe to us as dark.
Now that sound biblical doesn’t it! God is the divine dark? An Aboslute Abyss!
I have to agree with Kirby, especially considering I am no stranger to the occult myself, he sees it for what it is and is at least honest about it.
The mystic …He would say that his long-sought correspondence with Transcendental Reality, his union with God, has now been finally established: that his self, though intact, is wholly penetrated—as a sponge by the sea—by the Ocean of Life and Love to which he has attained. “I live, yet not I but God in me.” He is conscious that he is now at length cleansed 418 of the last stains of separation, and has become, in a mysterious manner, “that which he beholds.”
“Some may ask,” says the author of the “Theologia Germanica” “what is it to be a partaker of the Divine Nature, or a Godlike [ vergottet, literally deified] man? Answer: he who is imbued with or illuminated by the Eternal or Divine Light and inflamed or consumed with Eternal or Divine Love, he is a deified man and a partaker of the Divine Nature.”
The Christian mystics justify this dogma of the deifying of man, by exhibiting it as the necessary corollary of the Incarnation—the humanizing of God. They can quote the authority of the Fathers in support of this argument. “He became man that we might be made God,” says St. Athanasius
I would like to qo to the authority of the scriptures when it talks about being like God, deified. Satan says to Eve…
Gen 3:5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be as God, knowing good and evil.”
Oh, I thought Underhill’s writing sounded familiar to me, as a student of the occult myself (before becoming born again) and being familiar with the writings of Aleister Crowley and the Hermetic Society of the Golden Dawn. I found this article (PDF) to be quite informative.
Clearly, magic is a major interest of the early Underhill. It is a theme so prominent in her writings up to 1911 that one is not surprised to learn that she was a member of a (now well known) secret society in London that practised ritual magic — the Hermetic Society of the Golden Dawn.
Crowley was a Golden Dawn prominent. She speaks about practices in much the same way as Crowely… Although, I have to admit Crowley who was well versed in Cabala was much, much deeper — he signed off his work as “The beast 666″.
The Hermetic Society of the Golden Dawn Members of the Hermetic Society of the Golden Dawn studied astrology, alchemy, divination, the Kabbalah, and the Tarot, and participated in complicated initiation rituals of the different grades of the Orders. They were also involved in the creation of magical instruments as well as various meditative practices and paranormal activities, such as the channeling of spirits and astral travel.
Waite was editor of The Horlick’s Magazine in 1904 when Underhill published her short stories in it. Also, he was a significant figure in the Golden Dawn during the time of Underhill’s participation in it, having taken control of the London Temple in 1903. He was a writer on occult phenomena, (13) who is thought to have rewritten the rituals of the Golden Dawn “in a Christian spirit.” (14) Armstrong suggests that Waite “tilted the ritual [of the Golden Dawn] in an orthodox or relatively orthodox Christian mystical direction.” (15)
How did these early experiences in The Golden Dawn influence or affect Underhill? It seems clear that Arthur Waite and the Golden Dawn did influence her own formative development and that of her spiritual theology.
She also wrote a story about a character who meets up with a disembodied spirit called a Watcher, this Watcher points her to the Holy Grail, that being the Catholic Eucharistic Cup. This cup is mystically linked to the spirit world.