what is a mystic?

A mystic is someone who believes that life fundamentally cannot be understood by the thinking mind. To a mystic, the world is fundamentally magical, mystical, beyond rational understanding. From the mystical perspective, reality can be lived, can be experienced, can be tasted, but it cannot be known by the thinking mind.

Thoughts are secondary, our mental understanding of life is an approximate story about life. It is rather like a film that is based on actual events, it is not a truly accurate representation of what happened. So it is to a mystic, with our mental understandings of life, our thoughts about life. These are, at best, based on actual events and reality but they are not essential and they are never truly accurate. So, a mystic puts reality, what is, in the primary position and the thoughts about what is are of secondary importance. They carry less energy, they are not of any great significance.

So, to be a mystic is not such a strange thing after all. You can taste it for yourself very easily. You can literally taste it: Take some food that you like the taste of, an apple for example, and take a bite. Bring all your awareness to the taste of this apple. It is delicious. But it is all the more delicious when the mind is not thinking about it, when the mind is not making words to go with the experience. Your full awareness can be on the tasting of the apple without any thoughts arising at all. If thoughts do arise, they are dry and dead in comparison with the actual taste of the fruit. How would you describe that taste to another, in words? If they have also tasted the same sort of apple, it is easy, but if they have already experienced the taste what use is there in talking about it? If they have not tasted the apple then all the words will not be able to convey the actual experience of the taste. So it is clear from this simple example that there is something in the tasting of the apple which cannot be captured by words, cannot be conveyed by language. Reality is much more juicy than our thoughts and ideas about it. This is the position of the mystic and the mystic takes delight in experiencing life directly. He does not worry too much about the stories, what the mind is thinking about life. The mystic is forever drunk on the taste of life.