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. Unfortunatly 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.
Other words such as God, Karma or Nirvana suffer from common use to the
point that everybody has preconcieved notions or simplistic internal definitions
that actually hinder their use in conveying lucid understanding.
Where such words are unavoidable, we will use them but make them linkable to
a page that elucidates the meaning.
This webpage will be updated on an irregular basis and updates will be announced
via the mailing list. I can be reached by e-mail at
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