People go to their religious (Buddhism (Karma), Christianity, Judaism (Kabbalah), and Hinduism (Yoga)) preferance to find meaning and truth in their lives. However, do you think these practices of divinity and spirituality explain true reality? Or are they means of excaping true reality themselves? I’m not sure I understand the whole relationship between “religious” practices and reality in the sense of whether they give us true knowledge or true exlanation of reality.
Perhaps religion was at first a way to cope with reality, and later on became a substitute for it. Even though religious fables abound they still contain kernels of truth and can be a great comforting opiate to millions of people. Joseph Campbell was onto something, in my humble opinion, when he said that we mess up when we concretize the religious images and posit them as truth.
venus wrote:
If we believe the behaviourists, then Religion is important for each generation to gain some kind of notion of life. It was from Religion that we got the first ideas of how life can be meaningful, what is right and lawful and the first opinions of morality and decency. The ancient religions have always had enjoyed a greater reverence because of the experience that they contain – even the Romans allowed the Jews to practice their faith out of reverence of it being an age old tradition.
Religion supplies us with rites, ceremonies, songs, imagery, works of art, buildings, myths, legends, teachers and offices in connection with an assumed - and very often divine – authority. Religion was primarily oral and upheld the values which were regarded “holy†and were passed down from generation to generation. It is an abstract method of guiding social behaviour and dealing with problems.
Many behaviourists claim that children who have no such background begin building their own – and proceed to stumble through the primitive beginnings that we as a society have left behind us. Many things that we criticise young people for are their new rites and ceremonies, which may seem to us primitive and unwise, but which present the stage of development that they have reached.
The rejection of Religion as a consequence of enlightenment reveals the true depth of the enlightenment. To reject the learning ground of a society without replacing it with something similar is to reject the basis of society. It would be more prudent to value whatever pedagogical means the society has developed to support the socialisation of young people – it doesn’t mean that it can’t be bettered, but it does mean that “the baby isn’t thrown away with the bathwaterâ€.
Shalom
Bob
It’s a good thing they’re wrong.
A cynic would say that it was a smart move so that they got less religion based uprisings. No-one saw the Spanish paying reverence to the Mayan religion or the American settlers to the Native Indian traditions.
I agree with this to some extent, however I don’t think you have to rely on any religion or religious based teachings to pass on these values any more, we have law and abstract concepts like freedom and human rights that take the place of religious scriptures in detailing the frame work for acceptable behaviour. Religion is an outdated form of social teaching and, if it were not for the blind faith invested in it, would have been discarded long ago.
I made a post in another thread about the effect of Individualism on religion and again I see its relevance here. When looking at religion in Western societies it is clear that it is not religion that teaches a person how to value the world but society that teaches a person how to interpret the world which then sometimes gets turned in to a personalised religion, borrowing compatible sections of teachings from whichever religion the person has been introduced to. Individuals then discard the useless or outdated bits of the religious doctorine, which would indicate it is not religion that forms the individual but the other way round in these modern times.
To bring this back to the original post, which I now realise I have dragged the discussion away from, I would say that as one may take up a mystical religion to try and make some sense of the world it would be fair to say that it could be an escape from reality. As I was arguing earlier that society initially teaches us what reality is and it can be obvious that life has little or no inherent value, it is fair to say that a mystical outlook on life is escape from reality. It is just a shame that many people can’t see the value in the world without resorting to mumbo jumbo.
It “could” be a number of things. If you want escapism, you don’t necessarily need Religion - which is the point I was making. You and I have the privilege of growing up in a society that still protects its citizens to a certain extent. We amuse ourselves with thoughts about how primitive people were two thousand years ago, but our amusement is really a sign of our lack of enlightenment. We are quite ignorant of what life could have been like in early civilisations, we haven’t got a shade of an idea of what it could entail to build such a society as we live in now. In fact, I sometimes think that our ignorance is bringing the security we’ve grown up in into grave danger. Other civilisations have come to see how easy you can lose what it took hundreds of years to build - perhaps we will too!
I read boredom in this statement. I read an opinion formed in an armchair in a warm house after a warm dinner. Mysticism is a form of Faith that is found in all major Religions and which is almost always connected to a life of service for other people. A service in poor conditions, with a hungry stomache and under great duress. Mystics have often been critical of the Church. In fact, Mystics have very often been outcast by mainstream Religion for not adhering to Dogmen.
Mysticism very often refers to its source Religion allegorically or symbolically and points out that there can be no “knowledge” about the Numinous or Divine, but rather we identify God mainly by what He is not.
Mystics have a different approach to God, and have their two feet solidly on the earth. Typical for this kind of faith is a quote from Simone Weil:
It isn’t in the way somebody talks of God
that I discern whether his soul
has gone through the fire of godly love,
rather it is
in the way he talks about earthly things.
So you see, it is far from escapism - that is found far more in the “lukewarmers” who remain religious “just in case”.
“Mumbo Jumbo” isn’t what Mysticism is about. Mumbo Jumbo is a play on liturgical language held in Latin that people didn’t understand. But even here you should know that Latin was chosen by the church as a kind of esperanto of the day, with the intention of having a universal language within the church. Admittedly, it didn’t work out, but then again esperanto hasn’t either.
Shalom
Bob
Bob stated:
Thank you Bob. That was beautiful. I could not have said it better myself.
Matt said
Even granted that your argument is correct, ‘law and abstract concepts like freedom and human rights’ still fail to reach some portions of the human psyche that religion previously did. Laws can teach you how to act, they can not, however, impart a sense of belonging to the community, a sense of being a moral agent, and a sense of meaning.
Bob.Someone who understands mysticism! The sufis, the early church fathers. The mystics are the wholehearted lot so uncharacteristic of a lot of religious rabble today. the mystic meister Eckhart once said, “I pray to God to rid me of the idea of God.”
Venus. I don’t think religion depicts reality as much as the practice of it depicts an emotional state. This is not to say that some have not misused religion and sought an escape from reality.
and
I read a certain rose tinted glasses look at mysticism there, were all mystics as wholesome as this? I very much doubt it. I daresay most of them were ignorant idiots who took a line that others blindly followed. There’s nothing armchair about my opinions about this matter I have vigorously argued that religion is a cancer on our society throughout my time here at ilp. We have the means to let it go and we should.
There’s plenty of quack mysticism out there that is in its essence escapism. Not only this but the original question was more about religion than mysticism, the title didn’t perhaps suit the question. I do realise that you are refering to the real stuff though (I can’t think of a better term as I’m tired, I’m not trying to be dismissive! 
)and this perhaps needs more consideration from myself, I tend to attack the opportunists, the BC equivalents of Uri Gellar.
Then again a cynic like myself might even say that someone like the big man himself, Jesus C, only caught on because he offered a class-neutral religion where the meek inherit the earth, that sounds like grade A escapism to me.
“Be good and down trodden and you’ll get rewarded for it in heaven”.
Suckers.
Does anyone really believe in religion “just in case”? If they did wouldn’t it be a form of realsim rather than escapism?
I meant that society teaches us those latter 3 using law and those concepts much like priests used scripture, sorry, I realise I didn’t say. I know society is a vague term, but it is an entity in itself, I believe it teaches through social participation and the wholesale school system we have.
Only people with true faith can gain those qualities from religion. But religion is not necessary to teach them, I know, I’ve never had a drop of faith in my blood or any religious teaching and yet I have all of those values, so where did they come from?
Mysticism and Religion ask the same questions that Philosophy does, but they go about validating their answers in different ways. Philosophy uses Reason and Logic, while Mysticism uses Instinct and Faith. This to me is why Mysticism can speak to the soul, as it touches off our natural instincts something our rational mind can’t even begin to fathom. While Philosophical truth is something that can be expressed on paper, and when done correctly its inconsistencies are a beauty to behold. But when this truth leaves the page then you enter the world of Mysticism, Instinct and Faith.
Mysticism is mostly thought by indoctrination from Parents or a community. Then as we grow up, the fundamental questions address by our childhood Mysticism are eventually revisited when we come face to face with the universal issues of: ‘Existence’, ‘The Meaning of Life’, and ‘Death’. How people deal with these problems are very different both from a Mystical and Philosophical sense. Just like no two religions are the same, no two philosophies are a match. There’s just as much reason to complain about Philosophies talking crap as religions. But the difference is the premise of Philosophy has a stronger footing, because when done correctly is like Science, its conclusions are independently verifiable, while Mysticism and Religion rely on a combination of Instinct and Faith.
But beyond there differences they are both trying to deal with the same issues. Each puts forward answers to the universal questions and it’s up to us to choose the answers we most want to hear, then blindly defending that position against all opposition. There is no Universal Truth that all can be converted to, as the stoics say ‘Man is the measure of all things’, this includes Truth. Even if there is a God, s/he doesn’t wish to make any real statement about its existence and like Wittgenstein said, ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’ Yet mystics believe in ‘Revelation’ or a ‘3rd eye’. Who’s to know? These are the choices that make life interesting, as we are stabbing in the dark for a Truth that doesn’t exist. Only I Exists! Beyond this, all is speculation into the Mystic.
Bob, your words speak to me with a clearness and purity, thankyou.
Matt,
well, just to say I have lost respect for you, I’m sorry.
Matt. Thank you for your post. A lot of your arguments from your last post read like an ad hominem attack. I know you can do better.
Hello Mentulzen. Long time no text.
Pax Vitae. You yourself once talked about bisecting the line between love and mind, passion and reason in a post. I think that is the lesson that religion has to teach us, that is the lesson of love. Instinct and faith surely play an ancillary role in this great quest.
Sometimes, if it were possible to be religious without believing in God, i would so. Religion imparts love, something that philosophy has had to go through circuitous routes to attain. In addition, religion has been able to unite men in a sense of brotherhood and community, something that humanism and philosophy may one day do.
Matt wrote:
I would say you may doubt whatever you want. But if you “daresay” then put some evidence behind your argument. “it is fair to say” and “it could” are elements of a very bland statement which needs “meat”. I agree with Marshall: you can do better.
Shalom
Bob
Pax Vitae wrote:
Theodor W. Adorno has written:
"Philosophy, in the way it could be answered for
in sight of desperation,
would be the attempt to see all things
in the way they look from the point of redemption.
Knowledge has no light,
except the light that shines from redemption on the world
- all else exhausts itself in constructing imitations
and remains a piece of technology.
We have to find perspectives
in which the world similarly reveals itself as shifty and alienated,
showing its cracks and fissures
just as it will lie wanting and disformed
in the messianic light one day.
Finding such perspectives,
without arbitrariness and power,
completely removed from contact with objects,
that’s what should be important for our thinking."
I believe I must dissent. If we move from Faith or Trust to Mysticism, we take a step away from what we were taught, as a swimmer does when he dives in for the first time alone. We leave the area where we have solid ground under our feet. It is a gamble of course and we can’t fully explain to those who remain on solid ground what our experience has been. But when we come back to solid ground, we have grown in our experience.
Of course our childhood experiences often have a bearing on our behaviour in later years. Sometimes these experiences help us to manage better, some leave us with many questions to be answered, some experiences leave us with fears to overcome. Very much of this is irrational, but it is all the more real. The attempt of people suggesting that the world should only be understood rationally reveals to me that they may well be trying to supplant emotional experiences that make them uneasy.
Albert Einstein is ascribed the following:
The most magnificent and deep feeling that we can sense
is the mystical sensation.
There lies the true germ of any science.
For whoever thinks this feeling is strange
and can’t be seized by admiration
or be raptured by ecstasy,
is quite dead.
To know that something that is impenetrable
still exists,
and manifests itself as highest wisdom
and radiant beauty,
which we can only percieve
in extremely primitive form
with our blunt abilities,
this assuredness, this feeling
is at the core of every truly religious mind.
Shalom
Bob
Let us bring this back to the question. My argument has been that mysticism is almost entirely about escapism coupled with a serious skeptical doubt that most mystics are talking nonsense, either because they have inconsistent revelations or they are down and out liars.
I think Pax said it best with:
Instinct and faith being the most unreliable of human reflections.
The question here is what do YOU think a mystic is? Much of what I have read so far has been talking wistfully of wonderful people with wonderful insights on life. But many would call Uri Gellar a mystic, others a delusional madman. And this is in the time of true skepticism and rationalism. How many people who were mad, delusional, high or just down right lying passed in to myth as mystics before we hit upon the enlightenment of the modern world, rationalism?
Are these all mystical experiences? How many are cries for help? How many are cases wher the mind couldn’t make sense of the world? How many were due to extreme pressures or circumstances that led to a small breakdown that seemed to be a ‘revelation’? As a skeptic, all of them. But for you, it is your choice.
Back to defining mysticism, let us take James’s definition of mystical experiences - ineffable, noetic, transient and passive. Sounds like the experience of taking a drug. In fact Stace has argued that drugs can give us valid mystical experiences, mescalin is as good as meditation.
Furthermore James states that mystical experience can both be truthful and deceptive. Many mystical revelations were thought to be brought about by the devil, not God. Even as a believer one can coherently argue that it would be impossible to distinguish the two, after all in Christian mythology the Devil was given the means to tempt.
Adding the ineffability part brings us near to the end. If a mystical experience is ineffable the best attempts by a mystic would never reveal the whole truth of the experience, add in the fact that it can be truth or deception and you are left with a quagmire of unknowability, a maze of questions without answers.
Finally add in people.
People, as a whole, will only follow that which makes them feel better, as per my previous example of a religion that teaches that the wrongs of the world will be made up for by the afterlife, Christianity. If there ever was any truth in mystical revelation it would appear to me that it would be harsh rather than happy, look at the world. But how many mystics teach that much of life is pointless?
So with a mystic that many followed what are you left with?
Escapism.
Matt, you were once religious and religion let you down. Am I correct?
No, never religious, am completely baffled by faith, a little envious of it even.
Matt wrote:
I find it difficult to follow you to Uri Gellar when talking about Mysticism. Is it really about what each of us would think is a mystic? Isn’t it in effect about the discovery of a different source of experience than Rationalism, which you seem to uphold so religiously. Rationalism is what has killed most people in the last century, whether emerging from communism or fascism or capitalism or so called Fundamentalism. Rationalism is the doctrine that knowledge is acquired by reason without resort to experience - and is for that reason heartless.
What rational reason tells us to take prisoners rather that slaughtering every enemy? What reason have we to care for displaced persons? For what reason do we care for disabled children? Where’s the logic of love? The answer is in our responsibility toward others. We don’t want to be found irresponsible – but by who? Who is going to take us to account? Who is going to ask why? Why are we so damned compassionate?
If Reason is the state of having good sense and sound judgement, where does this “sense†and “judgement†come from? Rationalisation is known for laying off workers, for saving expenses, for making everything efficient. If there were one people who were efficient, it was the Nazi’s. Their efficiency caused the deaths of at least six million Jews.
Although I would agree that we can’t do without a certain degree of Rationalism, we also need the intuition and faith of people who pick up life where Rationalism has left off. It isn’t the Rationalist who is a mother, nor is the Rationalist a nurse or a social worker. I would go as far as saying that purist Rationalism is more escapism than any Mystic I have come across.
As someone who has a lot of experience with psychiatric illnesses, I can assure you that there are many people who are driven to disorders and have difficulty complying with “normalcyâ€because of religious psychosis. But there are as many who stumble over the normalcy of a “rational†world, in which they can’t find love and affection but rather have to function.
Many elderly people who experience their own abilities fading, perhaps their memory or paralysis of the limbs, look to those who care for them and ask why we do what we do. Is there a rational answer? And, if there were, would it soothe the minds of the ailing?
When I read the accounts that your link leads to, I read people who are searching, trying to explain, trying to understand. They tell you more about themselves than about their experiences. But you don’t have a rational answer for them. You would like to perhaps – but you don’t have an answer. You are writing here because you want someone to come up with a rational answer, something you perhaps missed.
But all the time we are dependent upon both: Rationality and Intuition, Knowledge and Faith, Certainty and Assurance, the Thought and the Deed. As the Bible states: Everything has it’s time:
For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for shalom. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 )
Shalom
Bob
Metavoid stated:
forgive me for commenting on a question addressed to another. It seems in my own life that i have had to leave my faith in order to rediscover it. Caring for others is not found in a religion, in a doctrine, or a church, for me it is not even found in belief in God. It is in each and every one of us, it only has to be nurtured. reason without love is dead, rational thought without experience is flawed. Has philosophy been able to justify ethics from a rational basis? i don’t think so. Has religion been able to support it’s claims through the rigors of rational thought? i don’t think so. Even in Plato’s republic he talks about reason, spirit, and appetite. The ancients knew the value of a balanced life. They must be combined, both reason and love.
While it is true that Sartre took mescalin, i find it hard to identify Uri Geller with mysticism, the Dalai Llama would be a far more likely candidate.
I wish I knew with post, as I’d liked to reread it. The more time I spend studying the sciences the more reality starts to be come mundane. Things like: Gods, Mysticism and Other-worldly Experiences (as in strange), are just a by-product of an unbalanced emotional state, which Matt has already said.
Love is a wonderful thing. The way in which it affects our body is almost magical as the endorphins run throughout it as we’re taken on a blissful opiate trip. Love is a chemical reaction in the body to a stimulus. How exactly this works is still mystical, but science can see, and is studying the physiological effects. Our body is little more then a big scientific chemical experiment and we’re living in a world of Cause and Effect, which our body is very much a part of. We cannot escape our body chemicals, get somebody drunk and see how this affects their decisions. Or give somebody antidepressants and watch how they become happy for no reason. We have learned the basics to modifying our emotions through chemicals; this is only possible because we are very much a part of this world.
Passion can be a dangerous ally. It normally makes people do things that don’t make sense. Passionate people are led by their emotions, which isn’t always a good thing. They act without thinking, because if they were to think about their actions first, that would be reasoning. Of the following two who would you sooner give your money to, to invest in the stock market? A passionate stockbroker who acts on his instincts, or a calm calculating rational number cruncher, who basis his choices off the maths?
I hope you don’t think I’m suggesting that, as I didn’t. Instinct and Faith lead us, some are led to religion / mysticism others are led to philosophy, but its Instinct and Faith that led use to both initially. To continue believing in either is an act of faith. Faith in Reason or faith in Revelation, take your pick. What are you going to believe in? Reason is a Gift, whether you believe that it’s God given or just an affect of evolution, again that’s up to you to decide. Yet Revelation can contradict Reason, Miracles are one prime example.
Some would say there is more fun to be had in exploring the unknown, then being handed all the answers. Most people like puzzles, but you don’t look at the answer before you start the puzzle? As the fun is had in the exploration of the problem. I see the meaning of life as a puzzle, and philosophy part of the exploration. Religion I feel is there for those that want answers, but answers that they find palatable. They’ve already decided on an answer before looking at the problem in any serious manor.
Following is taken from After the Fat Lady Sings
Hi Pax Vitae,
I quite like your last posting. It shows the ambiguity of our experience well. Of course it is a task balancing between Reason and Intuition, between Fact and Faith, Rationality and Passion. I don’t know whether Instinct plays the part in Religion you have given it, although there are of course a number of impulsive responses in us, reacting to visual, audible and chemical stimulants. It is something I would have to consider seperately.
What I am concerned about is the tendancy to regard the two sides of one coin as though they were not connected. In my job I have to use both Reason and Intuition to approach human beings. You can’t put them on a dissecting table until an autopsy is due. The social aspects of Religion, especially of Mysticism play a role in the way people cope with life and the various challenges that they are confronted with, in the way they behave in certain circumstances.
It is interesting to see how people face death in their various spiritual states - there is no simple dividing line, because death isn’t a black and white affair. I think that nearly all people who I have witnessed dying died differently. I hadn’t thought that this would be the case when I started out caring for people but it has been my experience. For me this tells me something about the value of Religion - but also of the dangers too.
Evangelicals generally find comfort in people assuring them of life after death by reading selected parts of the Bible. They pray togather and suffer silently until death. They seem quite braced for death itself.
The same can be generally said for normal churchgoers too. Except perhaps for a twitch of fear, uncertainty and tears. But again, the consolation for these people lies in the confidence in their God and the hope of eternal life.
Those people with mystical backgrounds tend to want to experience the process of death conciously - and don’t want to be distracted. They often try to explain what is happening to them from their perspective when the journey begins and are therefore sometimes loud at death.
Many people without a religious background go through the normal phases of death without particular behaviour, some express their resentment, some their surprise, some their fears and some their remorse. Some look for consolation, despite their refusing Religion before.
Some people just lie down and die, suddenly and unexpected. Very often these people are depressive natures, some are cholerical people. Their death a clear psychosomatic reaction to their state of mind. They may hide this of course in life, but often there are tell-tale symptoms.
I write this because I believe that our state of mind has a bearing on the way we confront life. Mystics are very much part of the world, even in death. They have both extremes in them: Reason and ecstatic Faith. That is why for me, Matt’s assumption that Mysticism is escapism is purely an assumption, not backed up by facts.
Escapism is found in all sorts of human behaviour, not least in alchoholism, drug abuse and violence. Isn’t the crowd in the football-stadium a fantastic way of escaping the drudgery of everyday life? I can think of a thousand ways to escape from the things in life that disturb me and millions of people do these things without having the least to do with Religion.
Interestingly though, religious people are particularly active in social activities that require some kind of “calling”. Rather than escaping the facts of life, they approach the things that other people openly say are above them. This is particularly true of Mystics. Of course people will use the vocabulary that they have grown up in to describe the experience of “being called” - Mystics very often tried to find different means of expression, including an “athiestic faith in God”.
That is why I disagree when you write:
An unbalanced emotional state is something that needs treating. If people with a calling to help others need treatment, then I would rather need treatment than to ignore the social challenges that life present us. Instead, I challenge those who “can’t” help others but criticise others for their motives, to get a life.
I refer to my previous posting that Matt brushed aside:
Dealing with problems doesn’t sound like escapism - or am I just off on a limb?
Shalom
Bob