mysticism

A very broad school of thought, or rather non-thought. The general thrust is that behind, above and beyond the reality we perceive with our senses and apprehend with our reason is a higher, invisible, unrepresentable Truth that can only known through prayer, meditation, art, revelation,etc; i.e. by shutting off the normal processes of living and surviving in the sensual world.

Mys"ti*cism (?), n. [Cf. F. mysticisme.]

1.

Obscurity of doctrine.

2. Eccl. Hist.

The doctrine of the Mystics, who professed a pure, sublime, and wholly disinterested devotion, and maintained that they had direct intercourse with the divine Spirit, and aquired a knowledge of God and of spiritual things unattainable by the natural intellect, and such as can not be analyzed or explained.

3. Philos.

The doctrine that the ultimate elements or principles of knowledge or belief are gained by an act or process akin to feeling or faith.

© Webster 1913.