What’s the Role of “Experience” in Mysticism?

Experience is a word often associated with mysticism and mystical spirituality.

Take, for example, popular spiritual writer Richard Rohr. In his book The Naked Now, Rohr defines a mystic as someone “who has moved from mere belief systems or belonging systems to actual inner experience” — in other words, an inner experience of God.

He’s not alone. In The Heart of Christianity, Marcus Borg describes mystics as “people who have vivid and typically frequent experiences of God.” And this isn’t just some new idea — as far back as 1925, Evelyn Underhill wrote in The Mystics of the Church, “Mysticism, according to its historical and psychological definitions, is the direct intuition or experience of God; and a mystic is a person who has, to a greater or less degree, such a direct experience — one whose religion and life are centred, not merely on an accepted belief or practice, but on that which he regards as first-hand personal knowledge.”

On his “Sacred Structures” website, blogger Jim Baker offers this perspective: “Christian Mysticism is a complex spiritual topic and defies easy definition. Historically, mysticism is defined as hidden, unspeakable, can’t be put into words, an awareness and experience of the reality of God beyond ritual, doctrine, and dogma.” He is expressing a point of view that I have run into again and again: not only that mysticism entails the experience of God, but that it is therefore better and more important than religious doctrine or dogma. According to this…