JJ2 EPILOGUE
For the gnostic that light is spirit, and its contemplation can lead to a knowl-
edge of god, or even for one to adhere to or be god within oneself.^12 Then the
body is left behind, and escape is possible from earthly time through the inner
light. To know that light of being signifies escape from temporal and bodily
captivity on the material earth and a return to origin, to the precinct of eter-
nal light from which the spark of the spirit came.
In the religions of the world the escape from ordinary time and matter,
through the mind, into an extraordinary dimension of spirit and revelation
has come under the label of mysticism.
NATURE OF THE MYSTICAL LEAP
Mysticism is a phenomenon appearing in many forms, in East and West and in
all continents, and each religious sect carries its own terminology to describe
it. Sometimes it is regulated by shamans or carried out as a personal hetero-
doxy at the fringes of an established religion (Paracelsus, Teresa of Avila,
Boehme). Sometimes it is at the heart of the creed itself, which may be said of
Buddhism, gnosticism, or ancient Hasidism and later Kabbalah. The mystical
instant may be called illumination or extinction through nirvana, or the light
following the annihilation of annihilation. The Persian Sufis call it a confer-
ence of birds and the Japanese Zen Buddhists satori. The process itself takes on
many descriptive metaphors, such as "the four levels of cognition" in Plato,
"the negative way" in Pseudo-Dionysios and John of the Cross, and "the steps
of the ladder" in Philo and again John of the Cross. Each rung of the ladder
may signify darkness, illumination, and union that is an ineffable ecstasy of
oblivion. These various steps usually suggest a cosmic ascent from sensations
of the body through the soul to the light and loss of earthly consciousness. The
ascender dies from ordinary time on the way to the source of spirit. Then the
major question is with what or with whom is the union. With god? A panthe-
istic all? A Buddhist void? A Plotinian One? A gnostic particle of light? But per-
haps the most obscure question in mysticism is the nature of that union. The
two essential but discrete types of union are the monistic and the theistic.
If god is postulated as the universal principle to be reached at the end of as-
cent, then the monistic mystic seeks identity with god and total immersion in
god, while the theistic mystic seeks a communion with or adhesion to god, but
no loss of personal identity. In monism subject and object become one; the
mystic is absorbed into the deity—Saint Teresa speaks of a drop falling into a
- See Scholem for more on gnosticism as a self-centered religion in Jewish Gnosticism, 2iff.