Mysticism is a discipline, in which an attempt is made to establish a direct communion with God through contemplation. Thus Sufi mysticism simply means achievement of the mystical goal by following the Sufi way.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, mysticism is a “quest for a hidden truth or wisdom.” The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought defines it thus: “Mysticism is the direct experience of the divine as real and near, blotting out all sense of time and producing intense joy.” According to the mystics, the final state produced by mystical exercises is inner joy or spiritual bliss, whereas the subject of Islamic spirituality is the search for divine truth.
The highlight of human existence is consciousness or the mind. The goal of Islamic spirituality is to use one’s thinking capacity to successfully discover divine truth at the level of the mind, or consciousness. The search for truth, by its very nature, is entirely an intellectual exercise. Its findings too are intellectual in nature. It is successful when the seeker finds rational answers to the questions he poses about the universe and his own existence. The search for truth is not a vague matter. It begins from the conscious mind and also culminates there.
The case of mysticism is quite different. Mysticism is based essentially on intuition and is not a conscious intellectual process. As such, the mystical experience is more an act of spiritual exhilaration than an effort to apprehend the truth in intellectual terms. Mysticism, as popularly conceived, makes the basic assumption that the physical, material, and social needs of man act as obstacles to his spiritual progress. Therefore, mysticism teaches him to reduce his physical needs to the barest minimum; to renounce worldly and social relations; and if possible to retire to the mountains or jungles. In this way, he will supposedly be able to purify his soul. Thus, by giving up the world and by certain exercises in self-abnegation, a mystic expects to awaken his spirituality.
Source: Spirit of Islam December 2018
