Mysticism

a recent conversation:

Me:
here's something cool i found today:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Underhill
a british mystical writer... a very intellectual type of christian it seems. quite interesting. i was thinking on mysticism a little bit, and as the article mentions it was shunned by protestants of the day. i'd posit that it often is today, too....we're caught up in a lot of rules and regulations. sure there are some people that do things because they "feel" god leading them to do so, and the church may commend them as having a "good heart" and even letting them do a lot of the dirty work, but it seems a lot of the time even they are stuck with the "rules" of "x" denomination and don't tend to move outside of them. so i dont count them as mystics. nor are they intellectual, which underhill seems to see as an important characteristic of a mystic.
(My point is, christianity as i see it quite often is full of laws, morals, and "new ways to do something correctly" I'll avoid commentary, i'm just noting an observation.)
I wonder if such "experiential" christianity as you and i seem to think that we need is kind of a modern mysticism. I mean "mysticism", what does that mean, anyway? it seems so far removed from us. is it just intellectual+experience+faith? or intellectual+experience=faith? or intellectual+faith=experience? and yes, i do think i'm simplifying it, mysticism is complex. but it amuses me to think we could be more "mystic" than we realize :).

Response:
A few lines in the article help explain:

her early mystical insights were described by her as "abrupt experiences of the peaceful, undifferentiated plane of reality—like the "still desert" of the mystic—in which there was no multiplicity nor need of explanation

Mysticism, purely, is about experience outside of explanation(causation). This can lead to "just is" kinds of things, as well as neoplatonic "beatific vision"(later falsely adopted by catholicism) all of which Schaeffer categorizes as a 'final' experience; one beyond all words, and any attempt to communicate it is reducing the experience. This creates a 'gnostikoi' (those who know). An explicit 'in/out' grouping based on happenstance of the Great Causation which Experiences upon you. (Not unlike the hope of the son returning in "Blast from the Past" ;) )

"yet concerned with her focus on mysticism and encouraged her to adopt a much more Christocentric view as opposed to the theistic/intellectual one she had previously held."

This is precisely the different between philosophy (neoplatonism/buddhism/deism) and christianity. And it's easy to do so! Philosophy has no category for Christianity beyond deism/theism!

Her focus on the Spirit is warranted; He has been downplayed waaay too much in history, and now overblown by the charismatics (who fall squarely into Schaeffer's description!)

It was a fundamental axiom of Evelyn Underhill, that all of life was sacred - as that was what "incarnation" was about.

Hmm.. yes and no. From wiki's "Christian Mysticism":

Two major themes of Christian mysticism are (1) a complete identification with, or imitation of Christ, to achieve a unity of the human spirit with the spirit of God; and (2) the perfect vision of God, in which the mystic seeks to experience God "as he is," and no more "through a glass, darkly." (1 Corinthians 13:12)

Yeah, that says it well. The first from Jn 15/17 I'm sure.

So I'd say that Mysticism can at best only semi-define a reality outside of this world, and then seek transcendent unity with it, despite (instead of through) this world.

While mysticism isn't fully rational, it's not necessarily fully fideist either (as some would like to put them all in). So the 'brand' of mysticism is dependent on how much definition you put of the noumenal. Faith, then is regarding (1) the reality of the noumenal and (2) method of transcendental unity with it.