199. Division of Mysticism. -- Starting from the notions we have just outlined, we may divide mysticism, firstly into two great branches, pantheist and individualist, according to the way in which the direct communication of man with God is thought to take place. Some mystics conceive it as effected by an extraordinarily exalted activity of our cognitive and appetitive faculties. Others go farther in their effort to make the Divine commerce with the soul more intimate still: they identify the very substance of man himself with God: they deify man to unite him with the Infinite.

A second division of mysticism will be into supernatural and natural, or into theological and philosophical, according as the mystic intuition is conceived to be due to the supernatural intervention of God, or regarded as merely the highest manifestation of the natural psychic life. The Indian philosophers, Plotinus and Scotus Eriugena, are representatives of philosophical mysticism; the scholastics professed theological mysticism. It is important to note that the principal historical forms of philosophical mysticism are likewise pantheistic.