At today's meeting (January 18, 2009), we discussed mysticism from our differing points of view which represented atheism, theism, and agnosticism. At the end of the meeting and not having arrived at a conclusion, we decided to continue the discussion at the next meeting. We, the participants, agreed we needed to do some research about the concept to be better prepared to tackle it. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia that touches some of the points that we tried to investigate/analyze. I hope knowledgeable members interested in this topic will make recommendations regarding useful reading material. See you at the next meeting!

Relation to philosophy and sciences
To an extent, mysticism and the modern sciences appear antithetical. Mysticism is generally considered experiential and holistic, and mystical experiences held to be beyond expression; modern philosophy, psychology, biology and physics being overtly analytical, verbal, and reductionist. However, through much of history, mystical and philosophical thought were closely entwined. Plato and Pythagoras, and to a lesser extent Socrates, had clear mystical elements in their teachings; many of the great Christian mystics were also prominent philosophers, and certainly Buddha's Sutras and Shankara's 'Crest Jewel of Discrimination' (fundamental texts in Buddhism and Advaitan Hinduism, respectively) display highly analytical treatments of mystical ideas. Baruch de Spinoza, the 17th c. philosopher, while supporting the new discoveries of science and eschewing traditional Jewish concepts of God and miracles, espoused that Nature/Universe was one holistic reality with the highest virtue - the power inherent in preserving essence (being) or "conatus," and the highest form of knowledge - the intuitive knowing of the Real. These shared understandings occur again and again in the field of philosophy and yet some persist in disparaging the one over the other.

The pursuit of knowledge in the realm of physics has been accepted for much of history as inseparable from understanding the mind of God, including the 20th c. comment by Albert Einstein that "God does not play dice," referring to the unfathomable discoveries of quantum physics. The rift between mysticism and the modern sciences derives mainly from elements of scientism in the latter: certain branches of the natural sciences broadly disavow subjective experience as meaningless, misunderstanding the limitations of the ancient languages. That said, several areas of study in biology (work of Mae Wan Ho and Lynn Margulis are two examples) and philosophy address the same issues that concern the mystic. Modern physicists, for example, struggle now to understand a multiple dimensional reality that mystics have attempted to describe for millennia. Physicist David Bohm, speaking of consciousness expressing itself as matter and/or energy, would be completely understood by the mystic, whatever his cultural/religious heritage.

Furthermore, continental philosophy tends to be concerned with issues closely related to mysticism such as the subjective experience of existence in Existentialism. It should be noted that while existentialism suggests a nothingness rather than a oneness, the mystic's pursuit of emptiness - despite its fear-producing angst - for the sake of union with the Divine, points directly toward a potential unity between physics and psychology that does not at present exist. The mystic's attempt to describe cause and effect between one's internal state and the miraculous hints at a close connection between psychological stability (ego transcendence) and the mysterious realm of causality quantum physicists are now deciphering - dimensional reality shifts that synchronize with states of consciousness and unconflicted choices.

Hi Margarethe, I also looked into mysticism after the discussion.

A great article is written in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy about mysticism.

http://plato.stanford...

The first book mentioned in the article was The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, it has always been on my shelf, I have read on chapter so far, but I intend to finish it before our next meeting so I can bring in the mysterious nature into mysticism.

Lastly, the professor of my previous Religious Issues course did make a slideshow about mysticism, here it is, it captures some of the same things we talked about.

http://web.me.com/iso...

Mike Li

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the info and the links. I'll see if I can find and check out the William James's book at one of the libraries here in Pasadena.

Margarethe