Zevi Slavin: 'To be a mystic is to be human at its most raw' [18 Questions, 40 Mystics]

“This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival.” Zevi Slavin, founder of Seekers of Unity, quotes Rumi near the end of this conversation, but the line could serve as its motto. Slavin’s central argument is that mysticism is not an esoteric escape from reality but the most raw, present, and integrated way of being human. For him, the mystical life is the art of unity with reality—a life in which the divine and the mundane, the abstract and the material, are seamlessly woven together.

What Mysticism Actually Is

Slavin offers two definitions of mysticism, one academic and one poetic. The academic definition breaks mysticism into three components: unitive experiences (moments when the separation between self and world dissolves), unitive theories (the theological and philosophical frameworks that make sense of those experiences), and unitive practices (the ethical and ritual actions that precipitate and embody those experiences). The poetic definition comes from the Anglican scholar Evelyn Underhill: mysticism is “the art of unity with reality.” Slavin emphasizes that mysticism is not about running away from the world but about being most present to it.