An excerpt from this book - which I haven't yet read but found on the Spirituality and Practice Newsletter.
"Bernard
McGinn says that mysticism is 'a consciousness of the presence of God that by
definition exceeds description and . . . deeply transforms the
subject who has experienced it.' If it does not deeply change the lifestyle
of the person — world view, economics, politics, and ability to form community
— you have no reason to believe it is genuine mystical experience. It is often
just people with an addiction to religion itself, which is not that uncommon.
Mysticism
is not just a change in some religious ideas or affirmations, but it is an
encounter of such immensity that everything else shifts in position.
Mystics have no need to exclude or eliminate others precisely because they have
experienced radical inclusivity of themselves into something much bigger. They
do not need to define themselves as enlightened or superior, whereas a mere
transfer of religious assertions often makes people even more elitist and more
exclusionary.
True
mystics are glad to be common, ordinary, servants of all, and just like
everybody else, because any need for specialness has been met once and for all."
