In the Webster's New Riverside Dictionary it defines Mysticism as, "A spiritual dicipline aiming at direct union or communion with God or with ultimate reality through trancelike contemplation or deep meditation."
That definition is a good place to start. This website will detail the Mystic Doctrines of Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and explore the Secrets of Enoch and other ancient teachings that illuminate the true nature of reality and ourselves.
One of the problems seekers of truth find when researching into inter-faith mysticism, is the use of words difficult to understand. The reason for this is because of the problems in translating ancient texts into other languages. Because there are words in some languages that do not translate well into just one word in another language, the original word is used as a way to avoid misleading translations. Unfortunately only linguistic scholars can use these orginal words and extract meaning from their use. That is why when researching Sufism (Islamic Mysticism) you come across words like nafs, tark and salek. Or when studying Yoga (Hindu Mysticism) you struggle with words like manas, sadhaka, dharana and dhyana. The Kabbalah (Jewish Mysticism) is loaded with arcane words such as sephiroth, chaya and the upper and lower ruach.
This website will strive to avoid such words, and will either use a good english eqivalent or a word-pair, in an attempt to better communicate concepts at the risk of being slightly inaccurate from the pure original doctrines. In some cases concepts will be formed from blends of Taoism and Sufism or, for example, Yoga and the Kabbalah. Rather than point out the different semantics used from the two sources, the concept or doctrine will be paraphrased in neutral language for the purpose of clarity............from the Reluctant Messenger
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