DrYouth wrote:Would this guy qualify as a Christian mystic?
He seems to have a sense of Christ and the Kingdom of Heaven.
Any Christian Theists want to comment on this?
No. This is not what a mystic is.
This is a mystic.
Mystical experiences with God are not some special state of mind you can acquire by your own power. They are gifts from God.
One theologian described it as a bird. Our minds are like birds which, by the power of their wings, can fly to different altitudes in the atmosphere under their own power and volition. A mystical experience is like space. A bird cannot fly there. For a bird to fly there, it would require some external power to bring them there and sustain them there. A mystical experience is like that. All the other states of mind people attribute to mysticism are states of mind most people can reach under their own volition. I don't knock those practices. They have their merits and health benefits. But the Kingdom of God is not some "zone".
This is how St John of the Cross described the experience:
1. One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
-- ah, the sheer grace! --
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.
2. In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
-- ah, the sheer grace! --
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.
3. On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.
4. This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
-- him I knew so well --
there in a place where no one appeared.
5. O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.
6. Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.
7. When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.
8. I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.
