September 9, 2021 –  Secular Mysticism

   The Mystical Approach to Making Secular Sense of Things

Today’s Post

     Last week we took a final look at the many facets of orienting our lives towards in a way which makes us more open to Teilhard’s ‘winds of life’ so that we may be ‘carried by a current’ to the fuller being which is possible to us as products of a ‘complexifying evolution’.
This week we will begin a look at yet another facet found in nearly every expression of religion, that of ‘mysticism’.

What is Mysticism?

Nearly every form of religion includes the highly subjective practice of ‘mysticism’. Traditionally, it is thought of as a communication between the natural and supernatural, often enhanced by prescribed rituals, and occasionally by psychedelic herbs.  Whatever underlies the experience, it is often profound, and felt by the mystic to open the door to a deeper, more inclusive insight into reality.  It is less insight into reality and more a deeper experience of it

It is also deeply subjective.  What the mystic ‘sees’ is highly colored by personal biases and predispositions, all of which require ‘interpretations’ to establish ‘meanings’.

The mystical experience has often been mistrusted by the established order of religious hierarchy, seen as potentially threatening to the orthodoxy and structure since most mystics saw their experience as a direct connection to the divine and therefore in no need for ecclesiastical mediation.  In the West, this dichotomy is evident in the distinction between monastic orders and diocesan priests.

In either case, the mystical experience itself is real, and evident in all forms of belief.  As in other concepts woven into religious belief, it can be viewed in our perspective of the ‘Secular Side of God’.

If it indeed is a way to understand reality in a way that is more complete, one which sees ‘the whole’ in place of ‘the components of the whole’, it is a valuable tactic for a clearer understanding of ourselves and our ‘fit’ into this reality.

The Incarnational Nature of Liminal Space

Liminal space is the realm of the half-imagined margin between sleep and wake, in which our minds are unfettered, allowed to roam uncaged by the spreadsheet-like structures that we erect in our pursuit of a systematic grasp of reality as we seek meaning in our lives.  This is the space prized by the historical mystics that have accompanied the structure-bound journey of orthodox religious thought in our quest for God.

In our own personal journeys, liminal space is that in which our insights can rise to light the darkness of unconsciousness, one in which the first stirrings of such recognitions as we have explored:

We are equal

Matter and spirit are bound by an implicit energy which grows over time

To become more I must love more

Fuller being always results from closer union which leads to fuller being

My failures do not define me

I can trust myself

Beneath and beyond what I see there is always more

The future can be better than the past

And, eventually the greatest insight

“It is I, be not afraid”

The navigation of liminal space can be seen in the endless attempt by artists to solidify the flicker of insight seen in this milieu, to extend a line from the firm shore of the left brain to the translucent swirl of half seen patterns of the right; from the elusive, transient ephemeral flash to the eternal solid written word or play of colors upon a canvas, from imagination to articulation.  As Tennessee Williams succinctly put it

“The object of art is to make eternal the desperately fleeting moment.”

   “The word was made flesh, and dwelt among us”.  This famous line from John could be rephrased as “the word becomes flesh and dwells within us”.  As we have seen, the term “word” is understood by Teilhard as the cosmic spark by which matter gathers ‘spirituality’ (as he defines the term) as it rises from the simplest of granules to the highly complex configuration found in the human brain.  This cosmic spark can be seen as active in our lives, that which lightens the cavernous pathways upon which we trod as we explore this liminal space within us, giving us confidence that what will be found is truly fuller being and can be trusted to lead us into greater possession of ourselves.

This is ‘incarnational’ because the ‘word’ is indeed not only the blueprint for our being but the light by which the search for what is ‘incarnate’ in us is directed.

As Jung sees it, the subconscious mind borders on the conscious mind in this liminal space.  It is Tennyson’s predawn lit by the ‘casement slowly growing a glimmering square’, filled with the ‘pipe of half awakened birds’, or the ‘teeming brain’ calling for Keats to ‘glean’.

The Secular Side of Mysticism

Christianity traditionally sees the roots of mysticism in the explosion of asceticism and monasticism that accompanied Christianity’s new legal status in the third century, one which led to the many “Desert Fathers and Mothers”.

Karen Armstrong, in her book, “The Great Transformation”, sees the roots of mysticism arising much earlier in the ‘Axial Age’ as the locus on God began to change from an exterior to an interior perspective.  During this critical period, thinkers were beginning to use their own lives and their own intuitions as reference points for their insights on human life.  As she saw it

“For the first time, human beings were systematically making themselves aware of the deeper layers of human consciousness.  By disciplined introspection, the sages of the Axial Age were awakening to the vast reaches of selfhood that lay beneath the surface of their minds.  They were becoming fully “self-conscious.”

An intimate awareness of this ‘liminal space’ was beginning to be recognized as an authentic source of insight.

The Christian mystics tapped into the new hermeneutics introduced by Christianity to expand these insights.  As Richard Rohr puts it

“The 12th century Rhineland mystic Hildegard of Bingen, and later Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) and his early followers, brought back what I call “incarnational mysticism”—finding God through things instead of ideas, doctrines, and church services, which still persists as the mainline orthodoxy down to our time.”

  Rohr cites Charles Péguy (1873–1914), French poet and essayist, as he wrote with great insight that

 “…everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.”

   Rohr articulates this journey as he notes that

“Everything new and creative in this world puts together things that don’t look like they go together at all but always have been connected at a deeper level.”

   Thus, to him mysticism seeks that deeper level, to a unified mode of nondual thinking where contradiction and paradox can be held in tension by the right brain until the left brain can begin to see the connections between them.  In this event, as Teilhard puts it

“Intuition bursts on a pile of accumulated facts.”

   Rohr notes that such activity is pervasive in Christian history.

“Just as Augustine reinterpreted Christianity in light of Plato in the 4th century, and Aquinas integrated Aristotle in the 13th, today there are dozens of theologians across the spectrum re-envisioning the Christian faith. Whose ideas are they integrating now? Darwin, Einstein, Hubble, Wilson and all those who have corrected, and continually contribute to, an evidence-based understanding of biological, cosmic, and cultural evolution.”

   This ‘evidence-based understanding’ is the secular product of the left brain’s integration of the right-brain’s intuition.  It is another example of the ‘principles of reinterpretation’ that we saw earlier, and reflects the insight of John Haught that

“…every aspect of religion gains new meaning and importance once we link it to the new scientific story of an unfinished universe.”

The Next Post

This week we saw how mysticism, as a facet of religion, seeks a deeper view of reality in which our understanding of it is less important than our experiencing of it.

Next week we will continue this focus on mysticism, looking at how such an approach to understanding and participating in reality can be seen today.