In each of these instances, mysticism was the heart of their understanding. It is the same with Christianity and Islam. The Christian tradition rests on Jesus inner awareness of his relationship with the Father, and Mohammed encountered Allah through the mediation of the Archangel Gabriel. All these religious traditions emerge out of mystical experience, and mystical experience means a direct knowledge of and relationship with the Divine, God, or boundless consciousness. One can almost say that the real religion of humankind isn t religion at all, but rather it is mystical spirituality, the bosom out of which the religions themselves have been born.
Mysticism is the awakening to and cultivation of transcendental consciousness.
It is unitive awareness. All forms of mystical wisdom are unitive, that is, non-dual. To say that mystical consciousness is unitive, non-dual, or integrative, is to identify it with a state of awareness in which the person is united with God or Ultimate Reality. In mystical consciousness, the transcendent is touched, and it touches and embraces us. Mystical consciousness means integration with it, and knowing it directly and certainly, though it remains beyond description.