Meditation, contemplation, and mysticism are concepts the meaning of which is forever changing. They have meant different things in different religions throughout the world. Even within one faith in one place and at one time, practitioners may be engaged in very different types of meditation and contemplation. Many religious sub-cultures have no concept of mysticism. The diversity of prayer and activity within modern Catholicism is by no means unique, although the absolute number of people interested in mysticism may be greater than previously.
It is typical to speak of meditation and contemplation as if they are known and fixed quantities, but there is as much diversity within one person’s contemplative life as there is in their waking life. In fact, there may even more diversity in contemplation because of the endless possible refinement of the higher faculties of the soul. If ordinary life is a tune played by a drunkard on a plastic xylophone, the contemplative life employs an exquisitely talented string quartet. Meditation, contemplation, and mysticism are infinite realms of experience.
Let us take “meditation” as being a turning within, either to pray, or to ponder a spiritual matter. The meditator is mentally focussed. We shall understand “contemplation” as being meditation minus but also meditation plus. Contemplation is meditation minus in that, during contemplation, a contemplative is entirely still, not even walking around. It is meditation plus in that, like meditation, it has a mental element, but in addition the contemplative uses a higher quality attention: he is internally vigilant, watching the movement of thoughts, feelings, and associations. That is, the contemplative is present to his own thought.
Both meditation and contemplation are forms of prayer, spiritual works for spiritual aims. Contemplation can engage subtle internal energies or forces by using an attention which is “allies,” so to speak, thought with feeling and sensation. Thus, we can take “meditation” as a primarily mental occupation, but contemplation as a being-effort, an effort of the whole person, using higher attention. These are not the only possible definitions, St John of the Cross spoke of the soul being active in meditation but passive in contemplation, because in the latter, God is active. Nor is meditation necessarily a sort of preparation for contemplation: a person can engage in one but not the other.
Mysticism adds the quest—through love—for direct experience of God. The mystic quest, at least in Christianity, is distinguished by the yearning to experience love of God and of self (such as that experienced by the Prodigal Son who “came to himself” and penitently returned to his father; Luke 15:17). In my terms, the contemplative is always seeking the presence of God, either directly or indirectly by preparing himself to be worthy to seek Him. A person’s being, or at least the state of being they are passing through, must be of a certain nature to be able to experience the presence of God beyond a slight degree. People with religious and spiritual interests often seek to more fully experience the reality of God; hence some of the vogue for drugs, or for methods which promise vivid experiences.
Contemplation and mysticism are often viewed as doorways to deeper experience of reality, and are sought for as providing certainty and illumination. This is fundamentally correct: they can be such, but the opening depends upon multiple factors. And there are dangers, especially imagination and self-delusion. To walk the path, constructively and safely, a certain balance is needed – a balance in one’s life and, most of all, in one’s self.
A true contemplative is marked by his increasing ability for practical work in the world, his will to confront whatever suffering life brings him, and openness to seeing his own sins and faults. Honest practical work, whether in a monastery or the marketplace, is a necessary safeguard, especially in the early and middle stages of the path. A good mystic can gladly clean a floor, or work as an accountant. The deeper his mysticism the better he scrubs, and the more accurate his arithmetic. Our daily activities are essential to our appointed lives on earth. Those duties have to be attended to and done as well as we can do them.
Contemplation was once cultivated only in monasteries and convents. After all, the average person rarely needs it, and lacks access to a good spiritual director. But the world is changing and it needs the influence of the sacred more than ever. A contemplative will change, and in changing, alter the world around him: but we cannot both be transformed and remain as we were. Above all, the contemplative has to be prepared to suffer; and he has a rich source of suffering in seeing himself as he is. So the search is never a purely intellectual affair, achieved by acquiring more information. And we must forego any obsession with visions and ecstasies. Books on contemplation and mysticism are replete with stories of swooning and revelation. Where these were genuine experiences, the people who received them either maintained secrecy as to the preliminary preparation, or else they were “naturals,” to whom extraordinary graces were gratuitously given. Graces cannot be evoked by any human effort, but the ground can be prepared.
In Christendom, meditation spread to the laity in the 14th and 15th centuries. The Imitation of Christ (Thomas à Kempis, c.1420), encouraged the faithful to “meditate in silence and solitude on profundities,” with a “pure mind and simple intention.” In the 1550s, St Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises began to circulate, although many contemplatives, especially those acquainted with Eastern traditions, consider them to be intellectual, with a tendency to fantasy. Their reception has been controversial, even among the Jesuits. The meditation associated with St Francis de Sales aims to produce a better Christian, not to experience union with God. It is, from one point of view, simply a variant on the Ignatian method. Other significant names in Christian mysticism include Meister Eckhart, Mother Julian of Norwich, Ludovicus Blosius, and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing. The last of these, a student of Dionysius the Areopagite, evinces significant but well assimilated Eastern influence. One great value of the Cloud is its emphasis on the love of God and of neighbour as one’s self.
The situation in the Eastern Church is quite different. First, it is divided into two distinct but related spheres: the Byzantine and the Syriac. The Byzantine school of contemplation is now closely tied to the Hesychast tradition of Mount Athos. The roots of this teaching go back to the Desert Fathers. It was developed by St Gregory Palamas (c.1296-1359), and, while continually returning to its roots, has ramified and found significant and ongoing expression in Russia. Hesychasm is associated with the well-known collection of the Philokalia (first made available in Greek then in Russian, and now in English), and the “Prayer of the Heart,” of which the “Jesus Prayer” is a sub-discipline. We live in an age when the Eastern and Western are interacting, and Catholicism is opening to the value of once extraneous practices.