Who are the men and women who have been called Mystics?

Mystics are found in all cultures and in all times.  They are the Noble Prize winners of theology.  The Da Vinci's and the Einstein's of relgious thought.  They are the explorers into the depths of Sprit and the Divine.  They are map makers.  They are lovers.

 If you have been touched by God deeply that is but the experience of one's first kiss as compared to the deepest and most meaningful love making you could ever imagine - which is what the mystics experience.  They joyfully use the language of erotic love to plumb the depths of human understanding to carry back to us the joy and power of union with the Ultimate Reality of the Divinity.  Within the Christian and Jewish mystics they claim the Biblical Book "The Song of Songs" to be first guide to the msytical union.  The msytic, both male and female use the same terms,  is the bride who is finally enters the bridal chamber to embrace in Holiest of Union the Bridegroom that is the Divine.

  I highly recommend the rich literature that is available within your own religion of the mystical writers who have fully tasted the wonders, beauty, majesty and deep wisdom that they have found in the depths of the Divine.

William James 1902 collection of essays "The Varieties of Religious Experience"

Evelyn Underhill 1910 & 1930 12th edition "Mysticism: a Study in the nature and development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness."

F. C. Happold 1963 "Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology"

For specific anthologies on Christian Mystics:

Bernard McGinn 2006:" The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism" 539 pgs.

Paul De Jaecher, 1950: "Christian Mystics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology of Writtings" - comes in a short form of the earliest msytics 177pgs Dover publicaton and then the full volume 1950 Newman Press 

Islamic Mysticism

2 short slim intoduction anthologies

Reynold A. Nicholsom, 2002, "The Mystics of Islam"

Margaret Smith, 1994, "Readings from the Mystics of Islam"

Jewish Mysticsm also know as Kabbalah is a huge field one recent book that puts the development of the varing forms of the Kabbalah into cultural and historical perspective is

Neil Asher Silberman, 1998 "Heavenly Powers: Unraveling the Secret History of the Kabbalah.

The best introductory anthology is

Daniel C. Matt, 1995, "the Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism"

I will end this introduction to the mystics with the first opening paragraphs from Evelyn Underhill's monumental work.

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 MYSTICISM: A STUDY IN THE NATURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS

By EVELYN UNDERHILL

1910, 12th edition 1930

THE most highly developed branches of the human family have in common one peculiar characteristic. They tend to produce—sporadically it is true, and often in the teeth of adverse external circumstances—a curious and definite type of personality; a type which refuses to be satisfied with that which other men call experience, and is inclined, in the words of its enemies, to “deny the world in order that it may find reality.” We meet these persons in the east and the west; in the ancient, mediaeval, and modern worlds.
Their one passion appears to be the prosecution of a certain spiritual and intangible quest: the finding of a “way out” or a “way back” to some desirable state in which alone they can satisfy their craving for absolute truth. This quest, for them, has constituted the whole meaning of life. They have made for it without effort sacrifices which have appeared enormous to other men: and it is an indirect testimony to its objective actuality, that whatever the place or period in which they have arisen, their aims, doctrines and methods have been substantially the same. Their experience, therefore, forms a body of evidence, curiously self-consistent and often mutually explanatory, which must be taken into account before we can add up the sum of the energies and potentialities of the human spirit, or reasonably speculate on its relations to the unknown world which lies outside the boundaries of sense.

All men, at one time or another, have fallen in love with the veiled Isis whom they call Truth. With most, this has been a passing passion: they have early seen its hopelessness and turned to more practical things. But others remain all their lives the devout lovers of reality: though the manner of their love, the  vision which they make to themselves of the beloved object varies enormously. Some see Truth as Dante saw Beatrice: an adorable yet intangible figure, found in this world yet revealing the next. To others she seems rather an evil but an irresistible enchantress: enticing, demanding payment and betraying her lover at the last. Some have seen her in a test tube, and some in a poet’s dream: some before the altar, others in the slime. The extreme pragmatists have even sought her in the kitchen; declaring that she may best be recognized by her utility. Last stage of all, the philosophic skeptic has comforted an unsuccessful courtship by assuring himself that his mistress is not really there.

Under whatsoever symbols they have objectified their quest, none of these seekers have ever been able to assure the world that they have found, seen face to face, the Reality behind the veil. But if we may trust the reports of the mystics—and they are reports given with a strange accent of certainty and good faith—they have succeeded where all these others have failed, in establishing immediate communication between the spirit of man, entangled as they declare amongst material things, and that “only Reality,” that immaterial and final Being, which some philosophers call the Absolute, and most theologians call God. This, they say—and here many who are not mystics agree with them—is the hidden Truth which is the object of man’s craving; the only satisfying goal of his quest. Hence, they should claim from us the same attention that we give to other explorers of countries in which we are not competent to adventure ourselves; for the mystics are the pioneers of the spiritual world, and we have no right to deny validity to their discoveries, merely because we lack the opportunity or the courage necessary to those who would prosecute such explorations for themselves.

It is the object of this book to attempt a description, and also—though this is needless for those who read that description in good faith—a justification of these experiences and the conclusions which have been drawn from them. So remote, however, are these matters from our ordinary habits of thought, that their investigation entails, in those who would attempt to understand them, a definite preparation: a purging of the intellect. As with those who came of old to the Mysteries, purification is here the gate of knowledge. We must come to this encounter with minds cleared of prejudice and convention, must deliberately break with our inveterate habit of taking the “visible world” for granted; our lazy assumption that somehow science is “real” and metaphysics is not. We must pull down our own card houses—descend, as the mystics say, “into our nothingness”—and examine for ourselves the foundations of all possible human experience,  before we are in a position to criticize the buildings of the visionaries, the poets, and the saints. We must not begin to talk of the unreal world of these dreamers until we have discovered—if we can—a real world with which it may be compared.