Mysticism

Mysticism involves communion with the divine, either through esoteric knowledge or directly through revelation or meditation.[1] Mystics come in all flavors, from the deeply sincere to the outright fraudulent.

Preach to the choir
Religion
Crux of the matter
Speak of the devil
An act of faith
v - t - e

Direct communion can occur in many ways, from speaking in tongues or other forms of possession to visions and revelations. Indirect methods include tarot cards and the practices of the Kabbalah.

While all mystics believe in something divine, not all believers are mystics. Many branches of Christianity, for instance, frown on this kind of direct communion, instead preferring rational argumentation and discovery of God through texts. However, Eastern Orthodox Christianity and, to a lesser degree, Roman Catholicism employ mysticism in theological discourse.

Natural explanation

One frequently finds that mystical experiences get induced by stressing the body (through hunger, thirst, sleep deprivation...), and/or by stressing the mind through isolation. All this can cause hallucinations, as can drugs that are used to induce mystical experience. There is every reason to suspect that mysticism - occurring across multiple cultures and across multiple religious traditions - is due to natural reactions in the brain.[2]

gollark: One server I'm on has a convenient bees emoji to express that.
gollark: Bees means bad or worrying, like dodecahedron.
gollark: Use of nuclear weapons is highly bees.
gollark: Evaluate them based on how good they are and not historical whatever.
gollark: People in the past had some good ideas. They also had bad ones, really stupid ones, and ones which made sense at the time and don't now.

References
  1. Compare: Gellman, Jerome (2018). "Mysticism". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 10 September 2019. "'Mysticism' is best thought of as a constellation of distinctive practices, discourses, texts, institutions, traditions, and experiences aimed at human transformation, variously defined."
  2. See the Wikipedia article on Scholarly approaches to mysticism.

See also
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