The Path to Mysticism
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One
The Path of Mysticism
Once the Dark Night of Sense is passed, the path of contemplation, the direct experience of God otherwise known as mysticism or mystical theology, really begins.
This is the place of supernatural favors in prayer. Sometimes they’re very plain and simple and private. Sometimes they’re extreme and dramatic and public. But they are all simply God’s way of drawing the soul closer to Himself.
Many people don’t reach these spiritual heights in this life mostly because they haven’t prepared themselves by the commitment to daily mental prayer and a resolution and removing disordered attachments and distractions. But the testimonies of the great mystical saints give us an insight into the profound and surprising world the soul enters when it begins to experience God directly.
Two
Consolation and Infused Recollection (Interior Castle, 4th, ch. 1 and 2)
Teresa of Avila describes this as the fourth stage of prayer, the “fourth mansions,” where the soul begins to experience “consolations.”
This is different than “sweetness,” which is the satisfaction we experience when we have, by God’s grace and our efforts, reached some truth or attained some good resolution in prayer.
“Sweetness,” she says, is something we experience as being at least partly the work of our own efforts. “Consolation” is different. Consolation is the joy and delight that comes the more direct experience of God in contemplation or infused prayer. It’s received from God, it is not something achieved by our effort. It’s pure gift.
Along with this is the “Prayer of Quiet,” sometimes called the Prayer of Infused Recollection. Teresa encourages the technique of trying to quiet and center all the faculties in attention on God within. But she also says that at this later stage, God Himself will sometimes quiet the mind and soul Himself, “He leads it into a state of absorption, in which, without knowing how, it is much better instructed than it could ever be as a result of its own efforts…” (4th, ch. 3).
God is taking over. He will quiet the soul, calm things down, so that He can show the soul what He wants it to see.
It must be a beautiful thing, after we have worked so hard in prayer and meditation, trying to get a crumb of insight, for God to allow us time to rest, while He drops the pearls of his wisdom into our relaxed hands!
That’s one of the gifts the Lord offers to those who pursue deep friendship with Him.
Three
Prayer of Simple Union (Interior Castle: 5th)
At further stages of mystical experience, Teresa describes various experiences of union with God where all the faculties are absorbed and united in God Himself.
These experiences are so powerful that Teresa says the person who experiences them can’t doubt they were authentic. It’s too real, too overwhelming, to have possibly been imagined or self-induced.
The result of this kind of experience of God is that now earthly things, basic, common worldly temptations, are left behind. The lizards and serpents of grave sin and vice don’t remain with the soul at this level, for the soul has stopped trying to find its happiness in created things.
Here again is a picture of what awaits us all, when we have really tasted of God we will be absolutely entranced and nothing else will be able to compete for our attention and our love.
That’s the experience that’s awaiting all of us and the more we prepare ourselves for it, the sooner we’re likely to enjoy it.
Four
Prayer of Ecstatic Union (Interior Castle, 6th).
God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden. He walked with His Apostles. And He still walks with His chosen mystics. Whomever God is intimate with, He shows wonderful things to. Whomever God is intimate with, He grants great favors. And whomever God is intimate with, He fills with love.
Teresa says that in the 6th Mansion God may begin to give the soul spectacular favors, as He gave to Teresa. Visions, locutions, out-of-body transports, ecstasies, the sense of Jesus’ physical presence, the experience of levitation (as recounted in Teresa’s Autobiography), wounds of love, that cause a delightful agitation and urgent longing for God.
This is, again, what’s awaiting all of us one day, and the testimony of the great mystics tells us that this way of supernatural life can begin even before death.
Five
The Glory of the Mystics
The mystics are like the martyrs, in that they are given the grace to give everything for God and they receive everything from God.
It takes enormous courage to be a martyr and to be a mystic, and they are both among the greatest gifts and honors God can grant His servants. But the mystics and martyrs show what we’re all supposed to be pursuing. The martyr gives everything for God and that’s what we’re all supposed to be striving for. The mystic develops an intimate knowledge of and relationship with the Lord and that’s something we’re all supposed to be striving for.
Both the martyrs and the mystics show us one further thing: that neither a life of service to God nor a life of prayer is ever – ever – anything but an intense adventure. It’s always a life that is most fully alive.
So praise God for the glory of the mystics, and for the glory of the martyrs, may we all emulate them, each in our own way.