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Mysticism is a phenomenon the core of which is similar in all cultures and religions of the world. It is an individual spiritual encounter and a state of knowing from experience hwich conveys the sense that everything is somehow connected and that everything is one in the beginning.

The term mysticism alludes to experience that extends the conscience of the mystic. It also points to something that develops out of this experience. A mystic is someone whose life is determined by this experience and the development connected with it. This development is also called the mystic way and shows how and to what extent the life of a mystic is influenced by mystic experience.

A mystic is someone who not simply knows about but is what he or she experiences. Mysticism can be described as a continuous state of being in unlimited contact with the Divine. There is nothing between the observer and the observed.

Mysticism can be compared to the feeling of being in love. This love relationship, however, is not just a temporal love-affair. Choosing the feeling of being in love as a mode of description offers a possibility to describe mysticism by assuming that the feeling of being in love is a physical and mental state known of the majority of human beings. Nevertheless, it is important to stress the fact that mystic experience must not be reduced to patterns of sexual desire, even though espacially the writings of ecstatic mystics might give a sheer orgiastic impression of mystic experience at first glance. That is to say the erotic connotations are of highly symbolic character.

Among the prominent Middle English mystical texts and authors we find The Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton, Richard Rolle, and the two famous women writers, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe.