Mysticism can be described as personal experience with the divine or direct knowledge of reality. Those who identify as mystics may be of any religion or non-religion. This worldview is intrinsic to intact Indigenous cultures. As Australian anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner wrote in 1953 about the worldview of the Indigenous cultures he studied, ‘the truth seems to be that man, society and nature, and past, present and future, are at one together in a unitary system’. Stanner created the neologism ‘everywhen’ to describe this timeless sense of at-one-ness. Mysticism, then, blazes through the cracks of post-Indigenous societies and the light falls on a select few, as it has throughout history. There is no identifiable mystical type of person. Every major spiritual leader or figure can be regarded as a mystic, including Jesus, the Buddha, the prophet Mohammed and Lao Tzu. A continuous strand of mysticism runs through every religion, and every religion offers practices that foster mystical experiences, but mysticism can also be secular. Often the mystical followers of a religion will clash with the religion’s more orthodox followers, as although mystics may adhere to one faith, such as Christianity or Islam, they see the universal in every religion and are non-sectarian and nondogmatic in outlook; e.g. 14th century German Catholic mystic Meister Eckhart was tried by the then Pope for heresy. But because of its depth, mysticism also offers an invaluable approach to interreligious and intercultural dialogue and understanding. Mysticism is often associated with poetry, including countless minor works but also the monumental poetry of Persian poets Rumi and Hafiz, English poet William Blake, Indian poet Mirabai and Spanish poet St Teresa of Avila. There are many organisations in the world that promote mysticism, but there is no centralised authority, no formal scriptures, doctrines or rituals. The shared beliefs of mystics can be summarised thus: the world observable through our senses is only a partial reality; we can experience reality directly through our intuition; within our beings is an eternal, unchanging, immortal ‘Self’; through identifying with this Self, rather than with the self (the ego) that changes throughout a lifetime, the mystic achieves direct knowledge of reality (full consciousness). Some common practices of mysticism include meditation, chanting, singing, fasting, solitude, silence, introspection, fasting, chanting, dancing, singing, using entheogens. It’s not possible to quantify the number of mystics there are today. According to the Pew Research Centre in 2009, nearly half of all Americans claim to have had a mystical (or religious) experience. Mystical experiences (known as samadhi in Sanskrit and kenshō or satori in Japanese) are moments of spiritual awakening, enlightenment, full consciousness and share deep similarities across a vast range of times and places. They often occur unexpectedly in natural surroundings and/or during sex, dance, sport or near-death experiences, generally accompanied by profound, deeply peaceful or ecstatic feelings of oneness with all that is. However, these states of altered awareness, while sometimes life-changing, are usually fleeting. The mystic aims for a stable state of full consciousness. This Zen aphorism summarises the mystic’s stance in the world: ‘Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.’ In other words, the mystic lives in the mundane world, carrying out the same tasks as everyone else. Before enlightenment they were mostly on autopilot, checked out elsewhere, lost to thoughts, whereas after enlightenment they have full awareness of their actions and environment in the present moment. Many mystics throughout the ages have been misdiagnosed with mental illnesses, and if a mystic lacks support or understanding for their worldview, this can expose them to deep suffering, self-doubt and actual mental illness: the artist Vincent Van Gogh is perhaps an example of this. For this reason, it’s often recommended to those following this path that they find a reputable teacher or guru. Mysticism overlaps with occultism and esotericism, the latter two having gained popularity in the West in the 19th and 20th centuries before morphing into today’s New Age movement. It is often difficult to distinguish between genuine and fraudulent mysticism and cultural appropriation. The immensely popular 1976 book, A Course in Miracles by American psychologist and Christian Helen Schucman (1909–1981), is a case in point: for some a spiritual classic, for others, appropriative and unoriginal and for others still, a spiritual scam, even diabolical.