Spirituality and Mysticism: A personal and internal experience.

In my earlier posts about spirituality and mysticism, I described an experience that a person has as a result of his contemplation about God. His contemplation takes him to a place where he experiences as if God is present. I realized from comments on my blog and on other Blogs that I have to make it clear that my definition of spirituality is quite different then the one more commonly used in general conversation. Unlike the common understanding that it refers to an entity that is present outside us, a “spiritual” being, I understand spirituality as an internal experience. There is no such thing as a “spiritual” entity. God is NOT a “spirit” whatever that is. That would be defining God and God cannot be defined. It is only after an intellectual quest for understanding the unknowable through the results of His actions that, we as humans the way our minds function, are so strongly convinced of His “presence” everywhere, that we “feel” Him. By definition, God does not “exist” in the sense that He has a place, a location that He fills. One can therefore not say He is somewhere, He is “present” or "I feel His presence" because He is here. I can however say I am so convinced that He “is” that my mind senses His presence. It is akin to an amputee feeling his lost leg. It is really not there but his mind is so accustomed to it being there that it senses it. The word “spiritual” is a description of that feeling.

Rambam in a rare moment of ecstatic outburst writes –

“Glory then to Him who is such that when the intellects contemplate His essence, their apprehension turns into incapacity; and when they contemplate the proceeding of His actions from His will, their knowledge turns into ignorance; and when the tongues aspire to magnify Him by means of attributive qualifications, all eloquence turns into weariness and incapacity!” (MN 1:58)

We know rationally that all our efforts in understanding Him are futile. Clearly, any definition or “God talk” is nonsense. It is however, this understanding itself, the realization that there is an entity that is unknowable that allows us to “feel” this entity’s presence. It is by knowing what He cannot be that our “feeling” of His presence is true. It is only an internal personal experience triggered by our mind, our thoughts, nothing more.