The Gems of Mysticism

Hi everybody,

Jörg Zink, a German theologian who I have gained much from, was once sitting on the beach watching the waves come in. One after another they reached the beach with a foamy head, breaking up on the sand, or dashing against the rocks not far from the beach, causing an explosion of water-drops to spread far on to dry land, only to finally flow away. He thought how ideas are like that, and God knows, our age seems to be a real storm of waves, all breaking in the froth and the spray. New waves roll in, new thoughts, new ideas and imaginations, new concepts about the world and how mankind can understand and lead his life excitingly.

In such times of change, people are often forced to rethink religious contemplation and behaviour. How many times has Christianity has had to adapt in the two thousand years of her history, adapting to new challenges and experiences, adapting to become a state religion, a cultural power that determined the way ahead over hundreds of years? The adaptation in the years of reformation, in the years of conscientious revolt and the development of personal faith. This movement and the age of enlightenment brought forth an undeceived, modern Christianity – which too is waning. What will follow?

It isn’t that each new form of Christian faith is better or truer that the previous one. It wore the colours of the people of each particular age – and each time the people looked for methods to practise their faith in a new clear way, discovering new angles and perspectives. New things had to be discovered and discovered again. What we are rediscovering in our days is the mystic traditions of the last three thousand years. That is what has sparked a new flame into the age old Religion which nobody knows definitely how old it is.

It is a perspective that has more for philosophers than the old dogmatic Church, whilst at the same time being down to earth in it’s approach to worldly problems. The mystics in this tradition didn’t live in ivory towers and were always in touch with everyday people. They were also people reflecting the difficulty of a firm faith in times of grief and sorrow. When wars were fought and pestilence raged, the mystics rubbed shoulders with the unfortunates and thereby alone, they gained high respect.

It is a tradition that I believe can unite the Religions, especially the Book-Religions, but also Buddhism and other meditative lines of faith as well as the Religions based on wisdom and insight, like Tao and Confucianism. It enables us to return to the oral traditions and narratives that have deep truths in them and allow the pluralism, that has long been missing in Religion. Religion is a form of thought (not just obedience), it is conceptual thinking, developing ideas, reasoning, imagining and meditating on the heart of our existence – which we call “God”.

But God is YHWH, the unnameable, the eternal one, He who is who He will be – the divine Mystery. A Mystery that manifests itself in subtle ways, not fully to be grasped, posing questions but causing astonishment at the same time. Something I find wonderfully described in Job (4:13-17):
In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men.
Fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake.
Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up:
It stood still, but I could not discern its form: an image was before my eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice, saying „Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker?“

Or in Kings (19:11-12):
And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind:
and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake:
And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire:
and after the fire a still small voice.

This is what my mystic tradition is all about. Any comments anybody?

Shalom
Bob

Bob. In what sense is a mystic a radical extremist? I mean it seems to me that the mystic is the ascetic guy in the desert screaming as best as he can that the rest of us aren’t loving enough or what have you. He sees the problem, but the problem is that he is one of the few who see the problem, therefore his voice is the loudest.

Extremism is always a difficult terminology. Whilst it’s literal translation delivers nothing difficult (One who advocates or resorts to measures beyond the norm, especially in politics), it’s street meaning is being developed in connection with terrorism.

In connection with Mysticism radical and extreme mean virtually the same: beyond the norm. I think there are many people who are beyond the norm but wouldn’t be regarded as extremists. You would find far more words like dedicated, committed, devoted, enthusiastic, hard-working, old faithful, purposeful, single-minded, sworn, true blue, wholehearted, zealous. They wouldn’t be found screaming in the desert either - perhaps meditating in a cave.

If you take the examples I have given in Job and 1 Kings (Elia), you have zealous people driven to silence. I think the journey that Elia takes is as much an inner journey as a march to the holy mountain. Elia is becoming a religious fanatic in my mind and destroying himself - and he isn’t doing God any service either. It is on the mountain that he is healed by a mystical experience and he finds a successor to take over.

Job is being consumed by his self-righteousness and the loss he has suffered. With Job you have the fact that he was a righteous man - and the rhetoric question: why does he then have to suffer? The whole story has more than one layer. It seems to have been worked on over generations. It is in the mystical experience that he is brought to his senses and can take up his life again.

John the Baptist is often portrayed as the screamer in the desert. It’s a play on the prophecy of someone who will call out in the wilderness. The wilderness is more a description of the lack of culture - and a criticism of the state of the nation. His calling was against the rising decadence that was personified in the sons of Herod and the Roman culture.

There is a difference though between the true Mystic and people who have mystical experiences. The true Mystic is very often the dedicated, committed, devoted and hard-working “old-faithful”, who seldom is an accepted authority to more than a few in his lifetime. They are very often unconventional and unorthodox. Some have spoken out in times of unrest and become popular - and very often ended up executed.

Shalom
Bob

Forgive me for going somewhat astray, but you said:

The notion of purity was central to the ancient Jewish community, there were lots of ancient baths, etc. Naturally Christianity took some of this over. The notion of a pure man of integrity with a clean conscience seems to get turned into self righteous zealotous condemnation at the precise point at which a person ceases to try to be moral and instead follows the dictates of his religion unthinkingly. I think the mystics that you mention mess up like everyone else, it just seems to me that they try harder, which is also part of extremism.

It may be that purity seems to be the issue, but I believe that Christ made it clear that you can’t only wipe the surface clean, you have to go deeper. The Bible tends toward a simple fact: People are not morally pure and never will be. Only God is intrinsically good. And sin isn’t impurity, but basically idolatry or even adultery.

Abram left his forefathers to become a man of God, leaving the clans idols behind. Her wasn’t quite successful, he continually had problems - and even Jacob is still struggling with the family idols, two generations later. Israel always had problems with people wanting a God with a symbol, or a picture, or a statue or something. But the commandments forbid these things.

The idea behind it is that God is beyond the imagination of mankind and that all attempts to portray him would be idolatry - which virtually means that Mankind makes the God it wants. The God of Israel is completely different to our imaginations, always using different means of manifestation, not truly having a name and continually a bit “awkward”.

Yes I agree. Mystic are radical in maintaining that God is a mystery. That is whay they are always disputing some form of dogma or tradition because it is human and therefore impure. Their only tradition is the very fact that God is different and Mankind cannot fathom him - only experience him, if He should want that.

But Mystics aren’t better human beings, they are just dedicated to the God they have experienced - in fact they are so gripped by the experience that they can’t let go. There is nothing morally commendable about that. But what makes them credible is their service for other people (that is why I dispute that some are mystics, because their behaviour speaks against them!) as a reaction to their encounter.

There are people that come
and talk about so grand
super important, super glorious things
as if
they had flown over the heavens
and yet they haven’t ever even taken a step
out of themselves
towards the perception of their own nothingness.

They may well have
acquired reasonable accuracy,
but the living truthfulness,
which is intrinsic verity,
no-one can acquire,
except on the way to your nothingness.

Johannes Tauler

Shalom
Bob

Bob eloquently stated:

A lot of people didn’t and still don’t understand that graven image idea. People, in religion as elsewhere, wish to worship the effect instead of the cause, they want the physical embodiment, instead of the spiritual cause. They would rather appear successful instead of be successful.

Bob said:

The priests also went through a lot of rituals to maintain their purity, in Judaism as elsewhere, but this may itself have been a form of a ‘graven image’ as expressed above. Here, as elsewhere, the letter (or ritual)killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

Ay, there’s the rub! A classical case of image instead of character.

It is where Religion in general has to take a step back. Mystics seek silence and seclusion in order to determine what they are looking at: cause or effect. The effects are sometimes dramatic or spectacular, the causes sometimes just a fact of science. But to understand the heart of life and determine the truth, we need undisturbed concentration.

That is effectively also the reason for the forbidding of images - the cause or architect of creation is worshipped, not creation itself (even if it is admired). The cause of life, whilst a mystery, has attributes that can be recognised - first of all as “pro-life”, then there is order, form, law and so on and so forth. What I am pointing at is the development of Religion as a method of logging the continuous discovery of principles, which point to intelligence at the genesis and even a source of guidance (Torah) along the way (Tao).

Shalom
Bob

What kind of specificity do you think religion capable of while still retaining truthfulness? Or do you think it’s more of a case of how one perceives the specific images indigenous to one’s religion that is most important?

When religion gets specific and worships the images, the people tend to cringe, and when it’s too general, perhaps they’re lackadaisical, although i doubt that this second choice will be seen much on a popular level from here on out.

I’ll quote Albert Einstein again:
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.

I think it isn’t a problem to discover the universe with admiration for some mysterious Architect, going from amazement to rapture and occaisionally burtsing forth with an ecstatic cry. Those people who believe that science must be quite cold and deliberating, having no time for emotionality, are indeed suffering a complaint called "interruption ofd emotionality. Recent theories of psychotherapy propose that the inhibition or “interruption” of emotional experience and expression is a central phenomenon underlying psychopathology (Fosha, 2000; Greenberg, Rice & Elliott, 1994; McCullough, 1997; Stolorow & Atwood, 1992). psychotherapyresearch.org/ar … bs331.html

Yes, I think we have to careful of images - especially those from thousands of years ago - and try to understand what was meant. When I was in Egypt with my wife we spoke to Dr. Tarek Amer, an egyptologist, about the origins of Religion and it’s spread across the Orient. He showed us many examples of how the Jews picked up the symbols of the Egyptians and especially the Monotheism of Akhen-Aton. These symbols and stories were included into the late writings that made up the Torah.

It just makes my point that Religion is really a universal attempt to understand the Mystery of the universe and that rivalry amongst the religions is merely injurious and doesn’t serve the real cause of Religion. Each of us have a cultural framework into which the various images then fit, but I doubt whether there is a Religion that is superior. What seems to me to be true, is that the Mystics of each Religion have a common meeting point.

Shalom
Bob

Bob, I love your attitude! You seem very interested in psychology and the like, i haven’t been paying attention, is that what you do for a living?

I’m enjoying the discourse we’re having too!

I am a Care Manager in an old peoples home in Germany. My training is in psychology, Geronto-psychiatrie and social-science, as well as basic nursing and associated medicine, management and leadership. Previously I was a civilian warehouse manager with the British Army, served in the Army for a short while as a recovery mechanic and before that I had training as a telephone and office salesman.

Unfortunately I have had to be autodidact with my studies, never having studied in university and having missed out in the first ten years of schooling through constant moving - amongst other places in the far east. On the one hand, that kind of life means you have to do things the hard way - on the other hand, you do things your own way.

Shalom
Bob

My mom manages a nursing home, and i am an autodidact.

Mystics are very often misunderstood - in all cultures - which Christ also went through in his conversation with Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a well known scribe and well respected, but he couldn’t immediately grasp the message that Christ had for him. That is why Christ tells him:

The wind is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. It is the means of communication and communion between Man and what we call God. The Bible refers to this as “recognising” or “discerning” God and uses the same word as in the conception of life. Meister Eckhart referred to a spiritual birth of God in a person.

We live in an age of contraception - perhaps spiritually too?

Shalom
Bob

Meister eckhart. Gotta love that guy. He once said that if he were to choose between Jesus in hell, or heaven without him, he would choose Hell. Not many Christians today could make that claim, i’ll warrant.
People know the canonized, sanitized religion that is force fed from their fathers but have forgotten the simple deep spirituality that should always be first in a man’s (or woman’s) life.

Is Eckhart your favorite mystic Bob? Have you read any theologians like Paul ricoeur, or Martin Buber. Are there any other Jewish Theologians that you would recommend?

Bob Said:

Perhaps so my friend, but i suspect that many ages have been like this. Air is frequently mentioned as the breath of life in the middle east as well as in India and other places. Jupiter probably comes from ju-pater, or father sky, that which rises above man, for example.

Hi Marshall,
I’ll reply later - a lot on my plate at the moment …

In the meantime, a word from Sufi tradition:

Shalom
Bob

You’re familiar with the Sufis too! Talk about your mystics! I love that quote. Talk to you later, Bob.

There is no single substance existing in the world, whether it be that which we experience through the senses, or that which we perceive through the mind, which is not comprised in the Creator. Everything emanates from Him. Therefore, what we know as contrary, or unrelated in Him, are but one unified Substance.
Ancient Kabbalists (refer to) “Echod, Yochid, Myuchod”, “Unique One, Particular One, Individual One.”
Yehuda Ashlag

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding.
(The Kethuvim - Proverbs 3:5) The Tanakh

Martin Buber was right in stating that many Christians are Gnostic, claiming to “know” God, whereas nobody can know the unknowable.

Anything visible, and anything that can be grasped by thought is bounded. Anything bounded is finite. Anything finite is not undifferentiated. Conversely, the boundless is called “Ain Sof”, Infinite. It is absolute undifferentiation in perfect, changeless oneness… As it is written, “One who is righteous lives by his faith.”
Daniel Matt

digiserve.com/mystic/Jewish/index.html

Shalom
Bob