A Mysticism of Openness: Premodern Perspectives on the Self
By Prof. John Arblaster
We are living today with the consequences of imagining ourselves as isolated, both as individuals and as thinkers. We speak of “my experience,” “my ideas,” “my beliefs,” as though these were self-contained possessions. In medieval and early modern times, mystics suggested otherwise. They posited not just a relational self but a relational world, one in which even texts, authors, and traditions are constituted through participation. As both philosophy and the humanities more generally are increasingly questioning modernity’s most basic assumptions, premodern mysticism stands out as an intriguing and fruitful perspective.
Modern thought often imagines the self as a kind of sealed unit: autonomous, bounded, and self-grounding. This “monadic” model has shaped everything from political theory to psychology, as Ben Morgan articulated eloquently and compellingly in his 2012 monograph On Becoming God: Late Medieval Mysticism and the Modern Western Self. But the modern self comes at a cost. If the self is fundamentally closed, then any genuine encounter, with others, with the world, or with God, becomes philosophically puzzling. Indeed, the human person becomes isolated and individualized, and perhaps therefore at great risk of being objectified, commodified, and exploited.
Premodern mysticism, on the other hand, begins from a different premise: that the human being is, at its deepest level, open. The question is not how a closed self reaches out, but how an already relational being comes to recognize and deepen its participation in what transcends it. This approach is already evident in Augustine of Hippo. His famous exploration of memory and interiority does not lead to a self-enclosed subject, but to a paradox: God is both more inward than the self and infinitely beyond it. To enter into oneself, for Augustine, is therefore not to withdraw from relation, but to discover it at a deeper level. The “ground” of the soul is not a private core. It is a site of encounter. This insight is developed throughout the medieval tradition. Figures such as Hugh of Saint-Victor insist that the deepest point of the soul is also the highest, not because it is self-sufficient, but because it is most radically open to God. Interiority, in this sense, is not narcissistic. It is the condition for transcendence.
This relational ontology is inseparable from the concept of participation. To exist is already to share in something greater. The human person is not a closed substance but a dynamic orientation toward its source. Recent scholarship has sharpened this insight. In The Permeable Self, for example, Barbara Newman argues that medieval thinkers did not imagine the self as bounded in modern terms. Instead, the self was understood as porous, open to divine influence, shaped by relations, and capable of transformation. Whatever is personal must be conceived from this perspective as fundamentally interpersonal. Similarly, Rob Faesen, through his decades-long research into the Middle Dutch mystics, has shown how mystical anthropology presupposes a fundamentally relational structure. The self is not first an isolated subject that then enters into relation; it is constituted as, in, and through relation. This means that receptivity is not secondary, it is fundamental. The highest point of the soul – the apex mentis, the “spark”, the ground – is precisely the point at which the self is most open, most permeable, most capable of participation.
But there is another modern assumption that deserves scrutiny: the idea that mystics themselves are isolated individuals, producing texts that express their private inner experiences or what Bernard McGinn has taught us to call consciousness. This picture of the isolated mystic has become increasingly untenable. Not only do mystical authors operate within intricate literary webs that draw on expansive intertextual repositories of sacred and literary traditions, but their texts are shaped and mediated by the networks and communities of which they are constitutive parts.
With respect to the first point, mystical authors are formed through a continuous dialogue between themselves and the broader cultural and theological landscapes in which they write, and their texts are deeply embedded within networks of meanings drawn from scripture, theological discourse, and earlier mystical works. The richness of these texts lies in their ability to evoke layers of symbolic resonance, each utterance carrying the weight of centuries of theological interpretation, biblical exegesis, and mystical reflection. Mystical authors engage in complex processes of textual adaptation and transformation. They recontextualize familiar symbols, but in doing so, they infuse them with new meanings and subtle shifts that reflect their own context and perspective. In this sense, mystical authors engage in literary and theological bricolage, blending familiar metaphors from scripture with their own spiritual insights to create a language that is both rooted in tradition and distinctively personal. Authors thus function as both conservator and creator, reworking and adapting inherited imagery to form a vivid tapestry that reflects the depths of spiritual insight and the elusive and ineffable nature of divine union.
But recent work by scholars such as Racha Kirakosian or Patricia Stoop has demonstrated that the mystical texts that have come down to us are in fact themselves also the product of collaborative, layered, and ongoing processes of composition. In her study of the transmission of the visions of Gertrude of Helfta, Kirakosian shows that these texts emerge from complex networks of scribes, translators, and communities. Rather than fixed works authored by a single individual, they are dynamic textualities: continuously rewritten, adapted, and reinterpreted. Manuscript culture, as she emphasizes, does not preserve stable originals but generates multiple, equally meaningful versions shaped by their communities of reception. Authorship itself is not a matter of individual originality but of participation in a living tradition. Writing is a communal act, embedded in practices of devotion, education, and transmission. This has far-reaching implications. It means that the mystical “voice” we encounter is not singular. It is mediated, refracted, and co-produced. The mystic is never alone, either with respect to the transcendent or with respect to writing. The relational ontology of the soul is mirrored in the relational ontology of the text.
This convergence becomes particularly striking in the work of John of Ruusbroec. His account of the “ground” (grond) of the soul as a site of divine indwelling is not merely an abstract anthropology. It is embedded in a broader spiritual culture in which texts, communities, and practices all participate in the same relational reality. For Ruusbroec, the deepest unity of the soul is not something the individual possesses in isolation. It is a participation in the divine life that sustains all beings. The soul – all souls – “hang(s)” in God, and its faculties find their fulfilment in returning to this ground. But this return is never purely individual. It is mediated by language, tradition, and community. The very concepts Ruusbroec uses are inherited, transformed, and transmitted within a shared intellectual and spiritual world. And one might argue that to read Ruusbroec, to take only one example, is already in some way to participate in that world.
What emerges from all this is a double critique of modern assumptions. First, the self is not a monad. It is fundamentally relational: open to what transcends it, constituted by participation, and most fully itself in communion. Second, the mystic is not an isolated genius. Mystical texts are not private expressions but communal artifacts: produced, transmitted, and transformed within networks of relation. These two insights belong together. A relational anthropology is mirrored in a relational textuality.
Why should this matter today? Because we continue to live with the consequences of imagining ourselves as isolated, both as individuals and as thinkers. In contrast, premodern mysticism offers a vision in which the self is a threshold, not a container, knowledge is a form of participation, not individualized insight, texts are living processes, not fixed objects, and community is the most fundamental medium of meaning, not an optional, secondary affair. In this light, the study of mysticism is not escapist. It is diagnostic. It reveals something about the presuppositions that have become ‘natural’ to modern subjects and about the assumptions we have perhaps forgotten we are making. This in turn points us to an alternative: a way of understanding ourselves not as isolated monads but as beings whose deepest identity is found in relation, not only to God, but to one another, and even to the traditions that continue to speak through us.
John Arblaster, Associate Professor at the University of Antwerp and Director of the Ruusbroec Institute, is a scholar of Christian mysticism, specializing in the medieval and early modern mystical traditions of the Low Countries. His work focuses on figures such as John of Ruusbroec, women mystics, and the doctrine of deification (theosis) in the Christian tradition. He is the co-editor of A Companion to John of Ruusbroec and Mystical Anthropology: Authors from the Low Countries, and has written widely on the history, theology, and contemporary relevance of mystical experience.