Rethinking the Unio Mystica: From McGinn to Ibn ʿArabī

Abstract

Research into the unio mystica has revealed what seems to be an area of “real discussion” between scholars of different traditions of mysticism, particularly those of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Although this research serves as a promising start to the dialogue among scholars, it has also raised many questions about a “shared moment” that is nevertheless expressed in “irreducibly diverse” and distinct ways in each tradition. What purpose, for instance, can generic cross-cultural categories serve when they mean little or nothing to scholars in each tradition? By contrast, tradition-specific vocabularies are profuse and often difficult to represent in interlinguistic contexts without significant explanation. The challenge of translating mystical texts, imagery, and ideas across cultures and linguistic traditions raises obvious concerns about the misrepresentation and distortion of traditions in an environment of post-colonial critique. Nevertheless, the continued promise of dialogue calls for specialists of these traditions—particularly non-western and non-Christian traditions—to approach, assess, re-formulate, and even challenge the categories of mysticism from within the conceptual and theoretical horizons of the traditions that they research. The present study models such an approach to scholarship in mysticism. It offers a (re)formulation of the unio mystica from within the theoretical frame of the 12th/13th-century Muslim/Sufi mystic, Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) and early members of his school of thought. By unpacking the primary terms involved in such an account—“God”, the “human being/self”, and “union”—from within the conceptual and theoretical horizons of that tradition, it problematizes the prevailing understanding of the unio mystica constructed from the writings of specialists in Christian mysticism. More importantly, it illustrates the payoff in terms of dialogue (incorporating the critique of existing theories) when each tradition operates confidently from its own milieu, developing its own theoretical resources for mysticism rather than prematurely embracing existing ideas or categories.

1. Introduction: The Unio Mystica and the Dialogue Among Traditions

Research into the unio mystica has revealed what seems to represent an area of “real discussion” (McGinn 1996a, pp. 185–93 at 186) between scholars of different traditions of mysticism, particularly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. A 1996 study (Idel and McGinn 1996) conducted by Bernard McGinn, Moshe Idel, and colleagues researching these three traditions1 revealed that the unio mystica2 represented a “moment” of convergence (Dupré 1996, pp. 3–23 at 3) shared by the three traditions that was “deep and long” (McGinn 1996b, p. vii), and one in which specialists in each tradition could, therefore, engage in “ecumenical dialogue” (McGinn 1996b, pp. vii–ix at viii). The findings of the study, summarized a decade later by McGinn in an entry for the Encyclopedia of Religion, revealed that the mystical literatures across these traditions expressed the two basic poles of the unio mystica: (1) that of “uniting” (unitas spiritus)—an intentional union between God and the human being/self—which emphasized the continued distinction between the two; and (2) “identity” (unitas indistinctionis), which expressed rather the indistinction between God and the human being/self (Dupré 1996, pp. 17–18; McGinn 2005, p. 6335). These two aspects of the unio mystica could, it seems, account for and coherently explain the dizzying variety of statements pertaining to “union” found in diverse mystical texts across the three traditions.

Although the study represented a promising start in the dialogue among specialists of these three traditions, it also raised countless questions3 about a putative convergence that is nevertheless expressed in irreducibly diverse ways within each tradition (Dupré 1996, p. 3). Since the term “unio mystica” has meant nothing to most mystics and only remains useful today as a generic cross-cultural category chosen by scholars to facilitate dialogue, its value may be questioned by those who reject the very possibility of dialogue across radically incommensurable traditions. By contrast, the terminology developed within traditions has been richly elaborated, achieving precise meaning “within the religious language worlds of which” it is part (Sells 1996b, pp. 163–73 at 163). For this reason, specialists naturally worry that generic terms used by scholars today—like “God”—though certainly useful for dialogue, risk erasing many of the vital connections that tradition-specific vocabularies desire to convey in their own contexts—words like Allāh, al-Ḥaqq, Wājib al-Wujūd, and khudā in Islamic(ate) traditions, or Brahman, Eiyn Sof, YWHW, Son, and Logos in other languages and linguistic traditions.4

Of course, the translation of mystical texts, imagery/symbols, and ideas from (premodern) traditions into modern languages faces serious challenges that should not be underestimated. Tradition-specific vocabularies are usually difficult to represent in shared/interlinguistic contexts where most readers have no prior access to the tradition. Added to this is the well-founded fear of distorting, misrepresenting, or even destroying5 non-western/non-Christian traditions in an era of post-colonial6/de-colonial critique (Hernández 2021, p. 177; Doniger 2000, pp. 63–74 at 64). Although these challenges might prevent some from taking up the task, the continued promise of dialogue calls for specialists of different traditions—particularly non-western and non-Christian traditions—to approach, assess, re-formulate, and even challenge the very categories of mysticism from within the theoretical and conceptual horizons of the traditions they research/represent.

Since the categories of modern mysticism have their roots in the academic study of Western Christian mysticism (Schmidt 2003; McGinn 1996a, pp. 185–86), and since those categories also typically purport to embrace the teachings of a variety of non-Christian/non-western traditions, it is particularly vital that each tradition of scholarship deploy its own theoretical resources for mysticism from a position of “epistemic sovereignty“7, and not through a curated process with some already determined theoretical agenda (Hallaq 2018, pp. 179–228; Lumbard 2024). Finally, it is crucial that the dialogue between traditions proceed through the disciplined practice of translation, the assimilation of different perspectives, and the deployment of the ideas of each tradition toward the formulation of new “mystical theory”; and not through the more indeterminate, imaginative, and “magical” art of comparison, which might content itself with a superficial recognition of similarities over a deeper exchange of ideas and perspectives.8

The present study models an approach to mysticism that incorporates the above criteria. It offers a (re)formulation of the unio mystica from within the conceptual horizons or “worldview”9 of the 12th/13th-century Muslim/Sufi mystic, Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240), and early members of his school of thought.10 It also responds to ideas presented by scholars of Christian mysticism—Bernard McGinn, Louis Roy, and Dom Sebastian Moore—from whom a generalized account of the unio mystica expressed in terms of the “mystical consciousness” may be constructed. In doing so, it shows where an Ibn ʿArabīan thinker today might take issue with the prevailing understanding of the unio mystica in the study of mysticism. The second aim of the paper—the response to McGinn and colleagues (hereafter McGinn et al.)—should be taken as a provocation more than a substantive critique, since it is not directed toward any individual scholar, each of whom has a unique approach to the problem.11 I am no scholar of Christian mysticism myself to presume to have understood their ideas perfectly, and my primary aim is rather to illustrate a type of critique that could be performed in the service of dialogue between traditions.

A more specific reason for incorporating critique into this study is to demonstrate how the acceptance of prevailing theories can risk distorting the perspectives of another tradition. In order to avoid potential mis-readings and mis-applications of Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas (or those of his followers), this paper problematizes the prevailing understanding of the unio mystica before turning to an Ibn ʿArabīan account. I have pointed to specific problem areas in the writings of McGinn et al. in my footnotes for those who might wish to pursue a more sustained critique of their ideas. This would be a valuable exercise, and another way of extending dialogue between two traditions of scholarship. However, more valuable for nurturing such dialogue is the introduction of new ideas and perspectives from different (non-western) traditions, and my principal aim has been to offer an alternative (more robust) theory of the unio mystica developed from an Ibn ʿArabīan theoretical framework. Taking these goals together, this paper reveals some of the payoffs—(1) the introduction of new ideas into an existing conversation, and (2) the critique of a potentially destructive hegemony12—that are likely to accrue to those who are willing to engage the categories of mysticism from within their own traditions of scholarship, assiduously working to achieve and maintain their theoretical independence.

Toward these interrelated aims, this paper proceeds in the following manner. In Section 2, I present an account of the unio mystica generalized from the writings of McGinn et al. on the topic, which I subsequently problematize from the point of view of a contemporary Ibn ʿArabīan thinker. In Section 3, Section 4 and Section 5 (the three core sections of the paper), I develop an account of the unio mystica (or re-formulate the prevailing one) from within an Ibn ʿArabīan theoretical frame by elaborating the meanings of its three primary terms: “God”, the “human being/self”, and “union”. Throughout my discussion in Section 3, Section 4 and Section 5, I show how an Ibn ʿArabīan approach to the unio mystica improves upon that of McGinn et al., solving problems/puzzles that are unexplained by that account. In the main text of these three sections, I present the basic outlines of an Ibn ʿArabīan theory of “union”, which should be legible to any patient and committed reader. However, since that account relies on the specialized vocabulary developed by Ibn ʿArabī and his early followers, I have also explained some of the terminology used to develop that account in my footnotes. These constitute something like a running commentary on the main text of the paper. Finally, in my conclusion, I suggest why a dialogical approach to scholarship in mysticism, proceeding through the confident and self-assured independence of each tradition, will enrich the contemporary study of mysticism, perhaps more than existing approaches that tend to focus on the construction of typologies and classifications.

2. Problematizing the Unio Mystica in McGinn et al.

The unio mystica—the “union” between “God” and the “human being/self”—in its most popular meaning might seem to refer to the vague and subjective feeling of “proximity” periodically felt by certain individuals (mystics) toward some higher “reality”. Experts in mysticism today no longer believe the naïve view that the term refers primarily to an “experience” of that reality, one characterized by “ineffability” and the loss of individual awareness in the face of that overwhelming “presence”.13 In fact, there is nothing at all vague or subjective about the unio mystica, which has been explained in rigorous detail by the great theorists of the Abrahamic traditions and surely by theorists of other traditions as well. Since the expression—“union” or the “unio mystica”—finds its origin and development in Western Christian sources, we should not be surprised to see that specialists of that tradition have most thoroughly developed its meaning.

Scholars of Christian mysticism—e.g., the Benedictine monk Sebastian Moore, the Dominican scholar Louis Roy, and Chicago Divinity School historian of religions, Bernard McGinn—have presented in some of their writings, an approach to the unio mystica grounded in a theory of consciousness, specifically in what some of them have termed the mystical consciousness.14 In other words, they have explained the meaning of “union” between “God” and the “human being/self” as a meeting (“uniting”) of “human consciousness” with “divine consciousness”,15 and the overcoming of the former by the latter (“identity”). Their discussions of the unio mystica also draw from and seek to coherently and self-consistently explain the multitude of statements of Christian mystics16 pertaining both to the pole of “uniting” as well as to the pole of “identity”.

Bernard McGinn presented a useful summary of a theory of the mystical consciousness in his 2008 article-length study, “Mystical Consciousness: A Modest Proposal”. As he clarifies there, the mystical consciousness is characterized by a continual “uniting” with “God” (the unitas spiritus),17 the latter understood as a “co-presence” found within the mystic’s consciousness; or rather as a kind of “consciousness-beyond” or “meta-consciousness” (to use a term offered by Thomas Merton) (McGinn 2008, pp. 44–63 at 47, 48). Whereas ordinary human consciousness involves acts of loving and knowing together with the self-awareness (and intentionality) of the human subject who acts and knows, the mystical consciousness adds a further element, namely an “infinite other”, who/which is not grasped as another object of consciousness18 but an “infinite ground”19 of knowing and an endless source of loving that transforms the mystic’s consciousness and becomes evident in his actions (McGinn 2008, pp. 47, 51–53; Roy 2003, p. xv).

Basing itself on the “transcendental method” of the Canadian Jesuit Bernard Lonergan, the account presented by McGinn has the apparent advantage of being agnostic toward any specific theological understanding of God. In the mystical consciousness, God is not verified, intuited, or apprehended as an existing real object “out there”, nor as an existing real object “within”. Whatever the word “God” could possibly mean in such an understanding, no positive claims (none of the contentious claims of theology) can be made about “Him”. Nevertheless, as McGinn avers, the meaning of “union” is that the self-transcending subject, transformed by this mysterious co-presence, and motivated by an infinite desire to know and love, pursues the right values in life, makes correct judgments about the nature of reality, and acts lovingly and wisely toward others.

It is important to stress here that McGinn and his colleagues do not take it as a verifiable fact that the mystic has achieved any genuine contact with a higher reality, even though they speak of a mysterious presence (“God”) that permeates the mystic’s consciousness. To affirm a recognizable God would be to engage in theology, which they apparently wish to avoid, since here a Christian theology would come into conflict with the equivalent “theologies” of other traditions, where a positive concept or image of God (or equivalent) is articulated and affirmed.20 A “critically realist” account of union must therefore be uneasy with the “God of theology”. “Critical realism” would also have scholars direct their attention not to the objectivity of the mystic’s consciousness, which it does not wish to verify by its own methods, but rather the objectivity of the mystic’s way of life—which it can (apparently) verify as good, ethical, and desirable for human beings. It is the exemplary life of the mystic that then indirectly (and perhaps unoffensively) authenticates the mysteriously transformed subjectivity gained in “union” (McGinn 2008, p. 47).

Unfortunately, the “critical realism” offered by McGinn et al. turns much of the terminology of union into ambiguous apophatic “God talk”. One might ask these scholars, for instance, how is it even possible to speak of “God” as a “co-presence” permeating the mystical consciousness, an “infinite other”, the “final end” of his loving, and the “infinite ground” of his knowing, without affirming an “ontology of consciousness” to ground these expressions?21 The flaw in this approach, from an Ibn ʿArabīan point of view, is that it fails to take seriously the reality of self-transcendence, since transcendence must be objectively real, and also irreducible to ethics—a weak foundation—for these thinkers.22 The emphasis on the apophatic approach to God found in the theories of McGinn et al. instead works to flatten consciousness, rendering the unknowable “God” and “His” mysterious “co-presence” relatively meaningless or at least unoffensively ambiguous. The presence of this “God”—the “infinite other”—is simply accepted as an inexplicable gift that “in some way” emerges (McGinn 2008, p. 48) within an individual who is somehow destined to be a mystic. The authenticity of the mystic’s subjectivity, for its part, is only explicable in terms of his exemplary comportment in this world, which possesses an unspecified but apparently semi-causal relationship to the emergence of the mystical consciousness. The problem here, for an Ibn ʿArabīan thinker, is that without an ontology of consciousness, all that can be described as “beyond” ordinary consciousness vanishes into a cloud of unknowing, which is a fate that McGinn et al. seem to prefer for it, since it allows an empirically grounded (“critically realist”) account to fill the vacuum.23

For these same reasons, McGinn et al. cannot rigorously explain the meaning of “uniting” or “identity” attested by Christian mystics in a compelling and self-consistent way, since the mystics would surely have believed that self-transcendence had a foundation in “reality”, even if they did not express this idea as I do presently. The account of McGinn et al., in particular, has no way to take seriously the claim of “identity”, which was sometimes articulated by mystics in terms of the substitution of the operations of “human consciousness”—sight, hearing, speech, etc.—by those of “divine consciousness”.24 By contrast, an Ibn ʿArabīan approach to the unio mystica, which grounds “authentic subjectivity” in “Real-True Being/Consciousness”, is far more capable of weaving the statements of mystics together within a self-consistent narrative. It offers a “critically realist” account of the unio mystica rooted in “the Real” Itself, and not in the most contingent and evanescent (“unreal”) dimensions of reality. Now it remains only to present that account. In what follows (Section 3, Section 4 and Section 5 of this paper), I offer an approach to the unio mystica drawn from the writings of Ibn ʿArabī and early members of his school.25

3. An Ibn ʿArabīan Approach to the Unio Mystica I: The Meaning of “God”

A major obstacle to a robust and self-consistent account of the unio mystica is that the three basic terms that give meaning to such an account—“God”, the “human being/self”, and “union”—are all ambiguous interlinguistic expressions. As Michael Sells observes, for scholars of Islam and Sufism, the various meanings held together by these three expressions are embedded within to an overlapping set of (at least five) language worlds26 found within premodern Islamic intellectual, religious, and literary cultures (Sells 1996a, pp. 87–124 at 88). Both literary and theoretical articulations of “union” could be found in the vast heritage of poetry and prose literature on love, which included the Arabic nasīb (elegy) or the Persian ghazal (love lyric) and its vernacular counterparts (e.g., in Turkish or Urdu). If the “union” of lover and beloved in poetry was figurative (majāzī) and ambiguous, it was presented more explicitly in prose works, where authors could explain that they had human–human “union” in mind, or rather the “union” between “God” and the “human being/self” (or both at once).27 Many Muslim theorists (Sufi and non-Sufi alike) restricted their discussions to human–human love/union, and even considered a particular kind of union between human beings to represent the highest ideal.28

Other Sufi theorists believed that “divine–human union” was the most real and truest form of union achievable in life, since God was after all “The Real” (al-Ḥaqq), and therefore the source of all reality and truth in the world.29 To understand what they meant, readers (and we today) have to delve into a vast body of specialized Sufi literature, since it is there that the expressions that we translate as “God”, the “human being/self”, and “union” in contemporary discourses carried more precise meanings that we can begin to understand. To begin, scholarly Muslim readers knew that the word “Allāh”,30 which is the most obvious premodern equivalent to our word “God”, had three basic meanings in theological (kalām) and Sufi discourses. Depending on the context, it could refer to the Essence (Dhāt), the Names and Attributes (Asmāʾ wa Ṣifāt), the Acts (Afʿāl), or all of them at once.31

The significance of these different “levels” or meanings of “God” will become apparent in the course of the discussion.32 For now, it is important to observe that by the time of Ibn ʿArabī and his early followers, theoretically inclined Sufis began to equate the Essence with “Being per se” (Wujūd min ḥaythu huwa huwa).33 This was an important move for several reasons, the most important of which was that it fostered the development of a sophisticated language for expressing the relationship between God (Allāh) and “everything besides God” (mā siwāʾ Allāh) that wielded considerable explanatory power. God—referring now to the Essence—was “Necessary Being” (Wājib al-Wujūd), or the Being that could not not be. Everything else was “possible being” (mumkin al-wujūd), which meant it could be or could not be (Chittick 1994b, pp. 70–111 at 75; 1989, p. 116; 1994a, p. 40). The difference, expressed in another way, was that God was “Real-True Being” (al-Wujūd al-Ḥaqq)—“the Real-Truth” (al-Ḥaqq)34 being a Qurʾānic name that could denote the Essence—while everything else was “metaphorical” (majāzī) being (Chittick 1994b, p. 75; 1994a, p. 17). The further implication was that possible being was “unreal” (bāṭil) by itself, and only real through something else, that something being ultimately Real-True Being.35

Another important point about the language of wujūd was that it implicitly connected “Being” with “Consciousness”, the latter being an expression whose modern sense is difficult to find in the writings of Ibn ʿArabī and his followers. Still, wujūd presented readers with a subtle and vital connection, since the Arabic dictionaries indicated that wujūd also meant “finding”. In fact, the active and passive participles of the same Arabic root, “Finder” (al-Wājid) and “Found” (al-Mawjūd), were discussed by early Muslim theologians as Names of God. What this meant for Ibn ʿArabī and his followers was that God is the Being that necessarily finds and is necessarily found (lacking nothing within It/Himself and finding all within It/Himself).36 All other things may find and may be found at some time or another, or they may neither find nor be found at all. Some “existent things” (mawjūdāt)—inanimate objects, like stones—may be found by God or human beings at times, while they themselves never find at all,37 since they do not possess faculties of perception. In all cases, God (the Essence) is the Real-True Finder and the Real-True Found. Before Ibn ʿArabī, the Sufi theorist Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 555/1111), wrote “there is nothing in wujūd but God (Allāh)” (Ghazālī 2005, p. 393; 1998, p. 16). From Ibn ʿArabī’s point of view, what he meant was that “there is nothing in existence but God” and that “there is nothing in finding but God”38 or “nothing in consciousness but God”.39

The foregoing should clarify what are perhaps the two most important objections to McGinn et al.’s theory of the mystical consciousness from an Ibn ʿArabīan perspective: (1) there can be no account of the mystical consciousness that does not begin with “Consciousness per se” (Wujūd min ḥaythu huwa huwa).40 “Meta-consciousness” or “consciousness-beyond” cannot find real meaning apart from Real-True Consciousness/Being. In other words, no “ascent” (ʿurūj) to the mystical consciousness would be possible if Real-True Being/Consciousness had not first “descended” (nuzūl) to our ordinary/mundane level. Once again, the major weakness that besets the account of McGinn et al. is the absence of a “Real-True” foundation for the mystical consciousness41—a compelling explanation for the mysterious co-presence—which Ibn ʿArabī and his followers offer.

(2) McGinn’s discussion of “God” by way of the mystical consciousness is also too ambiguous, shrouded as it is in the mystery of unknowing. McGinn, Roy, and Moore point out in their respective treatments that “God” is not intended primarily as an object (of conceptions or images)—i.e., the God of positive theology—which is an important clarification, but one that does not explain enough.42 For instance, for Ibn ʿArabī and his followers, “God” cannot refer to a second “essence” (dhāt) dwelling within the human being/self or a shared “existence” (wujūd) between them. Why? For one, Ibn ʿArabī believed that “the realities do not change” (al-ḥaqāʾiq lā tabaddal) (Chittick 1989, pp. 65, 75, 141, 338–39). What changes are the accidents or properties of things, which constantly undergo transformation in this world through “Self-disclosure” (tajallī) (Chittick 1989, pp. 61, 97, 102). In reality, God (Dhāt) remains forever and eternally Himself and human beings/selves (dhawāt) likewise remain forever themselves in their eternal realities.

If God is Being, and human beings seem to exist in this world, their existence/being is only “metaphorical” and God’s is “real.” So again, the actual situation (nafs al-amr) is that Being belongs to God. Insofar as human beings are anything at all (and not nonexistent, maʿdūm43), it is only God who is “found” (mawjūd) within a non-existent “locus of manifestation” (maẓhar),44 where His Names/Attributes (e.g., “The Formgiver” [al-Muṣawwir], Q. 59:24) are displayed. For instance, God (the Essence) may disclose Himself in an “imaginal” or “conceptual” “form” (ṣūra) corresponding to His Reality in the “mental being” (wujūd dhihnī) of the mystic, who is himself a human form reflecting the Name “Formgiver”.45 But insofar as every “form” of God is different from God Himself (Dhāt), nothing at all is found. What is found is only Nondelimited Being delimited by the non-existent properties of the human being/self, or its reality (ḥaqīqa) or root (aṣl),46 which establish it as a possibility in Being (Chittick 1989, pp. 96–97). Being per se transcends all the delimitations It assumes, and apophasis assures us that God (the Essence) stands above and beyond Its manifestations, forever beyond the reach of ordinary mortals.

The broader point needs to be stated again, but now more explicitly. For an Ibn ʿArabīan thinker, what grounds any account of the encounter between God and human beings/selves is that God is the Real-Truth (al-Ḥaqq), which means He is the source of all reality, truth, and objectivity (ḥaqīqa) in the world, as well as the source of the authentic subjectivity of the mystical consciousness, since He is also Real-True Consciousness (al-Wujūd al-Ḥaqq). For Ibn ʿArabī, the two are not separate, whereas McGinn et al. have chosen to be silent both about the God who is Real-True Being as well as the God who is a mental and imaginal object of positive theology. At the same time, they poetically and ambiguously affirm an unknowable “God” who/that is a mysterious and inexplicable presence permeating the mystic’s consciousness. For an Ibn ʿArabīan thinker, to ground the objectivity of the mystical consciousness in the exemplary lives of the mystics is to put the cart before the horse: to explain the Real in terms of the metaphorical, or the higher in terms of the lower. If being/consciousness is indeed primary and “matter” is secondary, as scientific research has begun to show,47 McGinn et al. should be comfortable making more robust distinctions between real and derivative forms of consciousness, rather than accepting only a single level with some structure related to intentionality.48

The absence of a clear and robust explanation of the expression “God” also makes it challenging for McGinn et al. to join together the God who is a real object in theology with the God who/that is a co-presence in the mystical consciousness in a compelling and self-consistent way. They wish to be agnostic toward the God who is an object in theology,49 and likewise to remain silent about any truly objective foundation to the mystical consciousness. If this foundation is not the God of theology who might be abandoned by the mystic in the “authentic subjectivity”, it must surely be a God beyond theology. Have they turned “meta-consciousness” or “consciousness-beyond” into a silent God?50

An Ibn ʿArabīan thinker has no problem wedding Real-True Being/Consciousness (the “God beyond theology”) with the God of theology within a single self-consistent narrative. Since Consciousness and Being are united in Wujūd, whatever “authentic subjectivity” could possibly mean, and whatever objectivity might be found in a mystic’s comportment in this world, derive from one and the same source. Both stem from his degree of contact with Real-True Being/Consciousness (i.e., with “union” precisely). I will present an Ibn ʿArabīan account of “authentic objectivity–subjectivity” in the next two sections. As for the God of positive theology, Ibn ʿArabī and his followers made it clear that the judgments an individual has about God as an “object of belief” are judgments about the God who can be known.51 They refer to the God described positively by the Names and Attributes (the Divinity, al-ulūha), which do not grasp God Himself (the Essence).52 They have no access to Being per se (Wujūd min ḥaythu huwa huwa), or the “Reality of Being” (Ḥaqīqat al-Wujūd). If they seek knowledge about the Essence, they can only grasp Its meaning indirectly through the Names/Attributes that describe God as inaccessible and unknowable.53 Human beings can neither know nor become the Real as such. There are limits—epistemological and ontological—to union, as we will see below.

McGinn et al. seem to be committed to the view that “uniting” and “identity” imply the ultimate loss or falling away of every concept or image of God.54 They wish to absolutize Meister Eckhart’s profession of “atheism” (a theological and discursive dis-ontologizing of God), turning God into “no-thing”. For an Ibn ʿArabīan thinker, this dis-ontologizing of God in the “ascent” (ʿurūj) to Real-True Being/Consciousness is not absolute.55 The “Gods created in beliefs” never fall away at the levels proper to them—e.g., in conceptual and imaginal being.56 Human beings always possess concepts and images of God, which are forms of Real-True Being. Those who gain consciousness of God through God—i.e., those who move closer toward Real-True Being/Consciousness—begin to see that every knotting or coloration in the mind or imagination is a delimitation of God (the Essence). They also learn that some “Gods knotted in beliefs” are more objectively grounded than others. This entails relativization, not abandonment of the God of theology, who will be continually re-conceptualized and re-imagined (tied, untied, and re-tied) as a knot of belief in the mystic’s consciousness. An Ibn ʿArabīan thinker might say that the truth/reality of particular beliefs is relative (nisbī), and that their value is predicated precisely on the degree to which they open toward “nondelimitation”57 (Chittick 1994a, pp. 152–55).

4. An Ibn ʿArabīan Approach to the Unio Mystica II: The Meaning of the “Human Being/Self”

To talk about the “human being/self” in the writings of Ibn ʿArabī and his school is to speak of a reality that is inseparable from God, since human beings possess a “deiform nature”. To separate the two would thus be to invalidate any objective foundation for the reality of union, which remains a fundamental problem in the theory of the mystical consciousness offered by McGinn et al. As we saw earlier, Ibn ʿArabī and his followers distinguished between God (the Essence), and “all that is other than God” (mā siwāʾ Allāh). Thus, to understand the relationship between God and human beings, we have to first understand how God and “everything else” come to be related; a relationship that Ibn ʿArabī and his followers expressed in terms of (1) the Essence (Dhāt) and Its “manifestation” (ẓuhūr); (2) God and His “Self-disclosure” (tajallī); or (3) the Real (al-Ḥaqq) and creation (al-khalq); each of these being useful in different contexts and discussions.58

Our specific task in this paper has been to understand how ordinary human consciousness and the “mystical consciousness” (expressed now in Ibn ʿArabīan terms) are related to Real-True Being/Consciousness. To this end, we must first clarify that human beings, like everything else in cosmic existence, are among the never-repeating Self-disclosures of God,59 or never-ending manifestations of the Essence. All creatures (not just human beings) are therefore connected to God and are inseparable from Him in their “roots”. Unlike other creatures, however, human beings hold a special distinction in that they display (or are capable of displaying) Real-True Being/Consciousness “perfectly” or “completely”, which is not a wider possibility across the domain of cosmic existence.60 Although most human beings—whom Ibn ʿArabī sometimes calls “animal human beings” (al-insān al-ḥayawān)—do not live up to this ideal; certain human beings—those whom he calls “perfect/complete human beings” (al-insān al-kāmil)61—have come into this world as, or have made efforts to become, perfect/complete “forms of the Real-Truth” (ṣuwar al-Ḥaqq). What this means, to invoke another set of correlative expressions used by Ibn ʿArabīan thinkers, is that God has become the “meaning” (maʿnā) in the invisible world to which their “forms” (ṣuwar) correspond in the world of created existence.

A more specific set of expressions that helped Ibn ʿArabī and his followers explain the potential perfection/completeness in human beings vis à vis God and other forms of cosmic existence, were the terms “gathering” (jamʿ) and “dispersion” (farq, tafrīq). With these, readers could understand this special distinction and potential for perfection of human beings in terms of the “comprehensiveness/all-gatheringness” (jamʿiyya) of the “human-divine form”.62 “Gatheringness” is a description that applies first and foremost to the Essence and pertains absolutely to God alone. If perfect/complete human beings can be said to reflect the gatheringness possessed by the Essence, other creatures, by contrast, only display different degrees of dispersion, or less complete forms of gatheringness.63

With these ideas in mind, manifestation (ẓuhūr) can now be understood as a process whereby the Essence displays the perfections comprised within It—these being related in the first place to the Names and Attributes—vis à vis the infinite possibilities in Being. If the “Hidden Treasure”64 of the Essence, utterly transcendent above Its manifestations, can be understood as an All-Gathering Oneness (aḥadiyyat al-jamʿ) that negates all distinctions between things (ashyāʾ);65 this “Hidden Treasure” becomes dispersed in the world of cosmic existence through manifestation, Self-disclosure, and creation. At the lowest point of manifestation, which is the point where human beings typically find themselves in their ordinary/mundane condition, the perfection that corresponds to that original “all-gatheringness” (jamʿiyya) has become infinitely dispersed and potentially lost but for the “human–divine form”—uniquely capable of displaying66 “here and now”, the perfection that belonged/belongs to the Essence “at the beginning”.67 “Gatheringness” therefore points to the unique role played by the perfect/complete human being in this world.

There are, of course, several stages of manifestation through which Real-True Being/Consciousness travels before coming to the ordinary being/consciousness of “animal human beings”, which Ibn ʿArabī and his followers explained in detail. Different types of creatures—elements, minerals, plants, animals, etc.—were related to these different stages, each possessing a relative “gatheringness” or “dispersion” proper to its level in the cosmic hierarchy. In each form of cosmic existence, moreover, the relative gatheringness or dispersion displayed by each creature has its root in God. Thus, every form of gatheringness manifests “here and now” the “One-Onliness” (aḥadiyya) and “All-Gatheringness” of the “Transcendent” Essence. Similarly, every form of dispersion (farq, tafrīq) displays “here and now” the multiplicity comprised in the “One-Allness” (wāḥidiyya) of the “Immanent” Essence, with its affirmation of every distinct possibility of Being. Finally, since we know that gathering and dispersion are relative terms—animals being relatively gathered created forms vis à vis plants, and relatively dispersed vis à vis human beings—we can now understand that human beings, alone, are able to completely reverse the trajectory of dispersion and achieve an intensity of being/consciousness that might be expressed in terms of the “mystical consciousness” (reformulated in Ibn ʿArabīan terms).

Of course, becoming an “all-gathering created being” (al-kawn al-jāmiʿ), one that can properly be described as a form of the Real-Truth is not a simple matter, and most human beings, in the course of their lives in this world, remain all-gathering forms only in potentia. What the process of actualizing the human-divine form entails, from an Ibn ʿArabīan point of view, is a series of relative “gatherings”68, each corresponding to one major stage in the reversal of the trajectory of dispersion through which Being/Consciousness underwent and continually undergoes in Its descent to our ordinary or mundane level.

“Gathering” and “dispersion” were thus discussed by theorizing Sufis not only to explain the “descent” (nuzūl) of Being/Consciousness to the level of ordinary being/consciousness—this being related to “manifestation”; but also to explain the “ascent” (ʿurūj) of being/consciousness back to its source—this being related to “witnessing the manifestation”.69 On this ascending arc of being/consciousness’s return voyage, Ibn ʿArabī and his followers often spoke of three or four “journeys” (safar, asfār) or “voyages” (sayr)70 to the All-Gatheringness of the One-Only Essence. Not surprisingly, they tended to describe the completeness achieved at the end of the fourth journey (achieved by exceedingly few individuals) as the realization of the “One-Onliness of Gathering” (aḥadiyyat al-jamʿ),71 a station that perfectly mirrors the All-Gathering Oneness of the One-Only Essence.

The three/four journeys, of course, were complex, each comprising multiple stations that were described in detail in the technical treatises of Ibn ʿArabī and his followers. What these treatises reveal is that this particular tradition of mysticism had a sophisticated manner of explaining the numerous and differentiated “intensifications” of being/consciousness that characterize the growth of ordinary consciousness toward the “mystical consciousness”. In fact, for an Ibn ʿArabīan thinker, the first appearance of the “mystical consciousness” corresponds to a relatively low degree of gatheringness achieved by the voyager at the very beginning of his return voyage to the Essence, when he first begins to “witness” Self-disclosures of God in the “outward” things of this world.72

But what of the many paradoxes—the various moments of “loss-in-finding” or “finding-within-loss”—that the human “self” encounters on this journey of return to the One-Only Essence, which are so difficult to explain for those who have not theorized Being/Consciousness as rigorously as Ibn ʿArabī and his followers? How, for instance, can the self sometimes appear to vanish (“to unknow”73 or “to be un/deformed” (Roy 2003, pp. 75, 77; McGinn 2008, p. 53)) in the face of a divine “fullness” that swallows it whole,74 paradoxically rendering God a “no-thing” as well? Or what does it mean that the loss of the self at an earlier moment is often followed by a fullness (a “self-realization”) that verges on “deification” at a later moment.75 McGinn et al. have trouble explaining these paradoxes in a robust way, since they do not distinguish two levels of being/consciousness (e.g., “real” and “metaphorical”).

For an Ibn ʿArabīan thinker, these paradoxes can be correlated to the defining moments in the return voyage to the One-Only Essence. To “unbecome” is to reverse the process of “becoming”, or to move toward a stage of gathering that mirrors the All-Gathering Oneness of the Essence. Since the Essence comprehends the roots or the realities of all things “before” Its manifestation, thereby being determined by “no specific thing”,76 the voyager on the return journey to the Essence must also become no specific thing, escaping the domination of any particular Name/Attribute to the exclusion of others.

It should not be too difficult to understand that when an individual human being/self moves to a stage of gathering by which he has been able to overcome and harmonize the dispersion that characterizes and dominates the lower stage, his consciousness will be experienced as drastically and profoundly different from the higher vantage point.

In other words, the “self”—the answer to the question “who am I?”—with which the voyager identifies at an earlier stage of the journey will appear to undergo loss in the transition to a higher stage (this being a period of “uniting” in the terminology of McGinn et al.). What will be realized at the higher level is that the lower “dispersed self” has now become integrated into a more gathered self—an expanded identity in being/consciousness. In its higher gatheringness, the newly expanded self no longer identifies with or operates from the lower level.77 This is why some of Ibn ʿArabī’s early followers often spoke of an “ableness” or “stability” (tamkīn) gained by the successful voyager after a period of “coloration” or “variegation” (talwīn).78 In the intervals of coloration, the self loses its grasp on things that once seemed stable, achieving a coloration related to its voyage to the Essence by way of the Names and Attributes. Each of these losses is relative since they have to do with the voyager’s inability to overcome the domination of a particular Name/Attribute. When the voyager has finally achieved a foothold at a higher level, he will have overcome this domination of the Name/Attribute without giving up the coloration related specifically to It. This point must be emphasized: the coloration itself is not given up, only the misidentification of the self with the lower level that results from coloration. In fact, coloration and stability—like dispersion and gathering—are relative terms; and it is more accurate to speak of the voyager’s situation in terms of “stability in coloration” (al-tamkīn fī ʾl-talwīn) or “coloration in stability” (al-talwīn fī ʾl-tamkīn).

One of the obstacles that prevents the voyager from advancing to a stage of relative gathering—which again depends on his ability to gather and properly harmonize the meanings of the Names/Attributes within his all-gathering form—is that his consciousness/being becomes dominated by a particular Name/Attribute due to his “mystical experience”.79 For instance, readers of Sufi literature will know well that the voyager sometimes faces overpowering experiences in which he is no longer able to differentiate between himself and God in the witnessing of a particular Divine Self-Disclosure80—an experience described by theorists as “intoxication” (sukr). Eventually, he may gain a foothold at a higher station of ableness—described as “sobriety” (ṣaḥw)—in which the attributes that had prevailed over him before his intoxication have now become “subjugated” by another set of attributes that have emerged from a root (aṣl) pertaining to his reality (ḥaqīqa)81 in the invisible world, or from the Reality of realities (̣Ḥaqīqat al-ḥaqāʾiq).

So long as the voyager is pulled toward the “experiences” of an emerging “mystical consciousness”, his voyaging through different states and stations will be determined by a coloration related to the fact that the Name “Outwardly Manifest” (al-Ẓāhir) has not yet been stably recognized within all “outward” things (loci of manifestation), including his self, its powers, and organs. Due to his mystical experiences (coloration), this voyager’s wayfaring will tend to become dominated by the “properties” (aḥkām)82 of one of the Names/Attributes that are subordinate to the Name “Outwardly Manifest”, such as “Creator” (al-Khāliq), or “Knower” (al-ʿAlīm), or one of the other Names/Attributes by which God has revealed Himself in scripture to be similar (tashbīh) to His creatures.83

At this point in his voyage, the wayfarer is still striving toward an ableness (tamkīn) that would allow him to complete the first of his journeys.84 Without this foothold, he risks terminating his voyage prematurely, so he must persevere and make efforts to overcome his dispersion. Once he has achieved the sought after gatheringness, through which he now stably recognizes the “Outwardly Manifest” in all things, including his own powers/faculties, e.g., hearing, seeing, speaking, power, he will have reached a new level of being/consciousness as well as “self-realization”. Indeed, he will have taken a major step from metaphorical being/consciousness toward Real-True Being/Consciousness. Whereas before, the voyager had witnessed his hearing, seeing, speaking, and power as separate from Hearing, Seeing, Speaking, and Power, his station is now such that he is not veiled from witnessing this Divine “Withness” (maʿiyya)85 in all outward loci of manifestation. The scope of his gatheringness, the intensity of his being/consciousness, and the strength of his self-realization are attested by his perfect ableness in the continual witnessing of the Divine Self-disclosures in all outward loci of manifestation (coloration).

I have been using “self” in the foregoing discussion in a way that approximates “consciousness”, referring more precisely to the crystallization of an identity within being/consciousness. The Arabic word scholars typically translate as “self” is nafs, which is also a reflexive pronoun used in constructions like “himself” or “itself”. In Sufism, the word belies the fact that the reality to which it points is at least as differentiated as the stages of the ascending voyage of being/consciousness itself. Anyone familiar with Sufi literature knows that the self can be differentiated into “spirit” (rūḥ), “heart” (qalb), and “secret core” (sirr) among other levels86 in a vast spectrum of concepts pertaining to the self. Some of that complexity is intimated by the ḥadīth, “whoever knows himself (nafsahu) knows his Lord (rabbahu)”,87 a scriptural statement that points to the intimate connection between “selfhood” and “lordhood”88 that characterizes the voyager’s return journey. The true lord of something might be described as its “reality” in divinis, which is the “Hidden Treasure’s” eternal knowledge of it that governs its journey in this world.

“Recognition” (maʿrifa, maʿrifat, or ʿirfān in contemporary Persian/Urdu) ties the self to “consciousness”, since what is recognized by the self is nothing but its own reality in divinis. It is through “self-knowledge” or the “mystical consciousness”, in other words, that the self rejoins with God. This makes maʿrifa perhaps the closest single word in Islamic(ate) languages to “mysticism” in much of its current usage. The self at the beginning of the voyage must open its “doors” (abwāb) and break through to its “interiors” (abṭūn).89 In doing so, it achieves a deeper self-recognition (maʿrifa) that is simultaneously “lord-recognition”, i.e., the recognition of its own reality in divinis, which “lords over” it for eternity. Put differently, the self’s recognition of its innermost reality (its dhāt) represents a gatheringness in consciousness that is as close to Real-True Consciousness as human beings can achieve; corresponding to the recognition of the Real-True Being (the Essence, the “lord” corresponding to this “all-gathering self” at the end of its voyage).90

Through self-knowledge, the wayfarer overcomes the metaphorical consciousness that characterizes the ordinary/mundane human level and achieves the fullness of the “mystical consciousness” at the end of its long and arduous voyage. All the “found things” (mawjūdāt)—the various entities “out there” or “within”—seen at the beginning of the voyage as separate existences, are recognized by the one who has reached the deepest interior of the self as manifestations of the Essence, the true Lord of all.

5. An Ibn ʿArabīan Approach to the Unio Mystica III: The Meaning of “Union”

The discussion of the prior two sections should convey to readers why Sufi authors were often criticized for speaking about the “union” between “God” and “human beings/selves”. If an impatient or frustrated reader had trouble understanding what was being conveyed in the discussions that explained the relationship between God and the human being/self, they could easily paint those ideas with the brush of one of the well-known heresies in Islam: “incarnationism” (ḥulūl) or “unificationism” (ittiḥād) (Chittick 1994b, pp. 85–87, 89–91). Nevertheless, if what was meant by these labels was that two “essences” from the same level—e.g., milk and water mixed together91—or two entities of differing levels, became joined, one within another (e.g., water in a container92), Muslim theorists who discussed “union” never seemed to countenance such ideas.

As Michael Sells explains, even poetic understandings of union did not easily suggest a union of physical bodies—the sense of union conjured by poets having been related more closely to the imagery of return to a lost paradise than to sexual union (Sells 1996a, pp. 93–94). Even in prose discussions of human–human union, theorists tended to believe that physical union was less perfect than non-physical union (Giffen 1971, p. 7). If it was a question of the close-to-perfect joining together of two wills (e.g., the single-mindedness of purpose of two lovers in a lawful relationship), this was hardly the sort of “substantial” or “materialist” union suggested by the heresies (Giffen 1994, pp. 420–42 at 426).

As for the terminology used by Sufi theorists like Ibn ʿArabī, when they spoke about union, they employed a complex set of inter-related terms with overlapping meanings. These could only be appreciated in the contexts in which they were employed. For instance, “conjoining” (ittiṣāl) or “unification” (ittiḥād) were expressions that could be used to refer to the joining of two sides of a circle. The idea of unification suggested by such an image was the completion of an otherwise incomplete/imperfect figure.93 We have also learned that the term “gathering” (jamʿ) was used by Sufi theorists to discuss the intensifications of being/consciousness. Ibn ʿArabī and his early followers made it clear that what they intended by such expressions had nothing to do with two “essences” or “realities” becoming substantially mixed together or coming to share a single existence.

The eternal reality of human beings was non-existence (ʿadam), while God (the Essence) was the Necessary Being, or the Being that could not not be. If union meant anything it all, it could only refer to the fact that the human being/self has now rejoined its root (aṣl) in the eternal order—having returned to the perfect servanthood (ʿubūdiyya, ʿubūda) connected with its “lord” in the Reality of realities.94 At this point, the “originated” (ḥādith) attributes that belonged to the human being/self have become “subjugated” by the “eternal” (qadīm)95 attributes that have always been found in/by Real-True Being/Consciousness (al-Wujūd al-Ḥaqq) but not by the ordinary human consciousness.

Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī (d. 688/1289), a second-generation follower of Ibn ʿArabī, in his famous prosimetrical work, Lamaʿāt (Flashes), reminded his readers that no one says an image is “incarnated within” or “united with” the mirror in which the image is displayed (ʿIrāqī 1982, pp. 93–94, 145–46). The same is true of the “form of the Real” appearing in the non-existent locus of manifestation of the voyager in the return voyage to the Real-True Being. The “outer eye” may see how two things—e.g., milk and water, or water and wine—become mixed, and the mind may suppose union to be like this: a confusion of two essences or a mixing of two substances. But the change observed in these examples is only in the properties (aḥkām), not in the essences (dhawāt) (ʿIrāqī 1982, p. 93; 1974, pp. 22–23). The analogy of the mirror reveals the actual situation more precisely. It is not that the mirror exists, the image exists, and two essences become joined, sharing a common existence. In fact, “the realities do not change” (Chittick 1989, pp. 65, 75, 141, 338–39). The one who understands the situation says instead, “there was no image, and then the image appeared”. Or when they see colorless light taking on the various hues and tints of the glass through which it passes, they do not say the reality of light (colorless in itself) has become united with that of glass. Rather, they say, “there was no light, and now light (colorless) has appeared as different colors”. This is the meaning of “union”.96

The true situation, recognized (maʿrifa) by the one who has overcome his “metaphorical consciousness” and has gained entry to the mystical consciousness—“the possessor of unveiling” (ṣāḥib-i kashf) (ʿIrāqī 1982, p. 93; 1974, p. 23)—is in fact that Real-True Being/Consciousness has always been in a state of “union” with this world. If the things of the world were imagined before to possess their own existence (or separate existences), and then they were seen for a time to possess a metaphorical being/existence, now it is recognized that they never existed in the first place. Ibn ʿArabī explains in an instructive passage from his al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (Meccan Openings):

The Real (al-Ḥaqq) is perpetually (dāʾiman) in a state of union (waṣl) with creation. Through that, He is a God (ilāh). This is what is meant by the Qurʾānic saying, “He is with you wherever you are” (Q. 57:4), that is, in every state of non-existence (ʿadam) or existence, or its modalities. Such is the actual situation (nafs al-amr), and what takes place for the Folk of Solicitude, the Folk of God, is that God gives them vision and unveils their insights until they witness this Withness (maʿiyya). This—that is, the recognizer’s (ʿārif) witnessing (shuhūd)—is what is called union (waṣl), because the recognizer has become conjoined (ittaṣala) with the witnessing of the actual situation (mā huwa ʾl-amr ʿalayhi).

(Ibn al-ʿArabī 1911, p. II 480.12; Chittick 1989, p. 365)

From the foregoing, it can be seen that Sufi theorists had a robust explanation for what appears to be the substitution of divine faculties for the human faculties in the “mystical identity” (McGinn’s unitas indistinctionis). McGinn has trouble explaining how the human faculties are simultaneously silenced—“emptied and put to rest so that God can work directly from within” (McGinn 2008, p. 58)—while God works as a mysterious presence permeating those very same faculties.97 Roy seems to prefer the total abolishment of the human faculties, which then mysteriously become replaced with another kind of “seeing” and “hearing”.98 This understanding of identity faces problems that can only be resolved by invoking an ontology of consciousness with at least two levels of perception.

Ibn ʿArabī and his followers explain how the apparent loss of the self (and its faculties) is not at all incompatible with the operation of “divine consciousness” within the voyager’s being/consciousness. The clearest expression of “mystical identity” in Sufi theoretical writings came around discussions of a ḥadīth in which God, speaking in the first person, described Himself as the seeing, hearing, and speaking of His devoted servant, as well as his hand, foot, and tongue. When the voyager reaches certain stages of stability/ableness, he comes to recognize in different ways how this was the situation all along. Through Real-True Being/Consciousness, he becomes conscious that the Real was always his tongue, his seeing, hearing, hand, and foot, though he did not know it until he possessed this witnessing.99 And what a difference this makes! By returning to Real-True Being/Consciousness, his own being/consciousness has become united to witnessing the situation as it is, not as he falsely surmised it to be beforehand.

As Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī suggests in his poetic description of union, the gatheringness achieved at this stage of self-realization has incorporated, harmonized, and coordinated the dispersion of the lower levels. As we have seen, followers of Ibn ʿArabī often visualized the descent of Being/Consciousness and its subsequent ascent by human beings/selves as two sides of a single circle. The two sides—the divine and the human, eternal and temporal—appeared separate from the ordinary point of view, divided by a fine line. In the fullness of the mystical consciousness, it is now understood that the two were not separate at all. The eternal and the temporal have collapsed into the “eternal now”. Nevertheless, included in this recognition is the awareness that the fine line of separation (farq) continues to leave a trace so long as the voyager is alive in this world.100 So long as the individual being/consciousness remains, the individual self still sees and hears through ordinary vision and audition,101 though we mortals cannot fathom what kind of seeing and hearing this really is. It is the perception of someone who witnesses not just the outer shell of things, but also their realities in divinis—the things as they are in themselves—which are the things as they are now, have always been, and forever will be.

6. Conclusions

In the previous three sections, I have offered the bare outlines of a fair account of the unio mystica as elaborated from within the theoretical frame of the Sufi/Muslim mystic Ibn ʿArabī and early members of his school of thought. I have also been calling it an account offered by an Ibn ʿArabīan thinker today. In my presentation, I have significantly reduced the complexity of the ideas found in the writings of Ibn ʿArabī’s school, since to offer anything more detailed would presume a high degree of specialization and an uncommon interest—even in the committed reader—to delve deeply into the ocean of meanings beneath the language and imagery used by this particular tradition of mysticism.

The central claim of this paper is that a cross-cultural or comparative mysticism of the future should move from this foundation—the careful study of texts and ideas by specialists in each tradition to the point of close familiarity and assimilation. As I mentioned in the introduction, the deployment of the theoretical resources of each tradition must proceed from a position of independence, not through a curated process with some pre-determined theoretical agenda. The robust formulation of a “critical lexicon” of a mysticism that better represents the perspectives of different traditions is only possible through dialogue between specialists capable of translating rich complexes of imagery and ideas in ways that convey meaning to readers with no prior access to the tradition.

Scholars of mysticism once thought that the field should explicitly eschew an approach that takes the “truth claims” of mystics or traditions as a foundation for the “evaluation” of mysticism generally.102 An implicit claim of the present study is that “theory parity”103 in the study of mysticism requires that they do, and that doing so also promises to enrich the field and contribute to a deeper dialogue among specialists. A translation-based approach, moreover, will advance the cause of dialogue more effectively than a “comparison” that operates primarily by way of classification, since it will leverage the robustly developed vocabularies of each tradition as its foundation.104 It will make smaller leaps across the gaps between traditions from this more “scientific” foundation than the greater leaps typically involved in the “magic” of “comparison”.105 However long it might take, “theory parity” in the study of mysticism is inevitable as the perspectives of mystics (the “dialectical other”) (Cabezón 2006, pp. 21–38 at 31) become further incorporated into the theoretical frames of specialists and increasingly inform their research.

The hope offered by this paper is that the formation of new “mystical theory” from within the theoretical and conceptual horizons determined by specialists of each tradition will stimulate dialogue by provoking those conducting research in other traditions—here scholars of Christian mysticism—to revisit their sources and answer the challenges raised by each new articulation of theory. It is hoped that the scholarly representatives of each tradition would do so in good faith—through the careful deployment of the theoretical resources of each tradition—hewing as closely as possible to its own linguistic frames. I say “as much as possible” in anticipation of the objection that any project with a “presentist” orientation will suffer from the distortion of the perspectives of the past.

A certain degree of error will perhaps have to be tolerated in the name of a dialogue that will necessarily be iterative as new textual discoveries are made, and tradition-specific literatures continue to be translated and assimilated by specialists. The latter will remain the primary scholarly effort for the foreseeable future, and it is challenging enough. I will be the first to admit that the (premodern) mystic is not very much like most of us in the contemporary academy. We struggle to enter his conceptual world and assimilate his ideas. Nevertheless, he resembles some of us more than others. If scholars of religion have warned their colleagues that it can be problematic to think that we are too much like the people we study, we nevertheless continue to study their texts for what they meant to them (Patton and Ray 2000b, pp. 1–19 at 12). Sooner or later we also begin to study them for what they mean to us. The 12th century Sufi mystic, Rūzbihān Baqlī (d. 606/1209) warned his own colleagues, fellow wayfarers on the Sufi voyage, to doubt that they had arrived at their destination. Though they witnessed astounding things in the “world of imagination” (Chittick 2020, p. 151)106, they erred in thinking that this was unveiling. Which of these two warnings is more important for scholars to assimilate today?