Mysticism is how a person sees ordinary things as a manifestation of something greater.
Henry David Thoreau, a man who saw that life was amazing and had a beautiful meaning. To the point where he went to live off at the woods, he wanted to write in a quieter place than where he lived, there he wrote A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and Walden. In the book Walden, Thoreau gives a reason into why he went to live at the woods which was, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.". Furthermore, Walt Whitman a mystical poet who broke the rules of poetry invented the free verse. He thought that poetry didn’t have to have rules. That anyone should be able to write what they wished. Finally Castaneda, graduate student at UCLA went on a journey to the desert where he meets Don Juan and there Don Juan teaches him about life. According to Don Juan,
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A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war, wide awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it will live to regret his steps. (1972)
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When a man has fulfilled those four requisites there are no mistakes for which he will have to account; under such conditions his acts lose the blundering quality of a fool's acts. If such a man fails, or suffers a defeat, he will have lost only a battle, and there will be no pitiful regrets over that. (1972)
In conclusion, mysticism is how a person sees ordinary things as manifestation of something greater. These men saw the true meaning of life and they search for an answer.