According to the writings of Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite the mystic way aims at a complete spiritual union with the Divine, the so-called unio mystica. This unification is achieved by going through two preceding stages namely the awakening (gaining conscience of an individual psychic gateway to the Divine during a first encounter like  e.g. a vision) and the purgation (a physically and psychologically very intense and painful process that aims at stripping off old habits to be pure and autonomous for the last step, the unio mystica).

Mystics have commented on the different stages of their mystic way quite eloquently. Their writings include reports on encounters of intense emotion. These extreme states of emotion are sometimes portrait with the help of metaphors, symbols, and allegories dealing with ascension and decline.

In such experiences, God drags the soul out of the body and upward to the Heavens on His will and then he commands the soul to go back down earth and to re-enter the body again. As the aim of mystics is to (re-)gain unification with the Divine their writings basically circle around this centre of spiritual experience, though the ways of expression are different according to the cultural background of the mystic.

The core of mystical experience is unpronounceable and can only be described indirectly. Experiencing this core enables the mystic to look through all concrete forms and beings right into their very centre. This discovered space goes way beyond any known form. The mystic experience does not last long. It is described by mystics as a very intense experience of love, quietness, oneness with the Divine, and that it gives a feeling of complete timelessness. Mystics aim at holding on to this experience, reliving it, bringing it back as often as possible. In this experience the observer and the observed are one; there is no space between them, no dividing line.

Mystic experience is active and practical. Its aims are completely transcendental and spiritual and in no way concerned with improving anything in the visible universe. For the mystic the Divine is never an object of exploration. The living union with the Divine is obtained neither from intellectual realization of its delights, nor from the most acute emotional longings. In that sense, mysticism can neither be an opinion nor a philosophy, but it is the art of establishing man's conscious relation with the Divine. A mystic experience cannot be affected by the mystic herself or himself as this would imply that she or he was superior to the Divine.

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