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Is Science Compatible with Mysticism?
- Thread starter Sunstone
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Well, if you want to talk about connotation, The Way, is definitely laden with that since it has such strong connection with Jesus Christ, not that I find anything wrong with Jesus. It's just the whole connection to the Religion itself, which when you do that brings the transcendent down to a specific belief system. However, I have many criticize me for the use of God for similar reasons; to which I'd argue that God is a pretty widely used term beyond any one specific religion. So, regardless, you are correct about the difficulty, and the personal nature of what we chose to refer to "That" with. "God beyond God", works for me. Spirit, Ground of Being, Emptiness, Shunyata, Infinity, etc. None of course begin to really express "it".
As I've said, language speaks in dualistic terms. How do you use language to speak of nonduality then? You really can't. But when I hear you or someone else who has looked into "That" speak of it, it is understood regardless. The difference is context. We share that context so we know we aren't speaking it literal terms.
One of my many favorite quotes comes from Meister Eckhart. "Theologians may quarrel, but mystics the world over speak the same language".
It's both actually. It technically was not delusion when you were using it. It is "stage appropriate". What happens though is as our context grows, the mode of thinking becomes inappropriate and needs to be transformed into something that does work in that lager context. It's not that it was broken when it was useful and needed to be fixed (which of course there is actual fixing that needs to happen at certain developmental stages, such as healing that which is repressed). But as you grow into a new, larger context, those modes of thought need to be abandoned and moved beyond. They are now, in the new context seen as "seeing through a glass darkly", so to speak.
Make sense?
I am pretty sure she meant the Taoism "the Way."
I'm slow this morning.
YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
And as such are "merely" poetic assumptions made about the "apprehended" state the mystic has encountered/encounters.
Like you, I share a love for language, as self-expression through the verbal medium. I love how language can be used to say one thing, but mean something else entirely. I love constructing sentences that can have several different meanings. In many ways, words are ideas that can be used like Lego blocks, interlocking to form amazing patterns in what is an art-form unto itself.
Dovetailed with this, you also have a very good grasp of symbolism and a deep appreciation for the creation of mythologies. It is when we concretize the poetic and reinforce the poetic in a literal sense that an inner line is crossed.
Perhaps it is just me, but in my view, when we use absolute terms, which are meant figuratively by the author, but not clearly spelled out as such to the reader, we are in a very real sense cheating the reader and insulting their sense of reason. Again, in my view, it is perhaps more ethical to appeal to that sense of reason instead of defying it.
For clarity, I hope you can understand the parts of the above that are directed at you and where I have simply used the dialogue as a jumping off ramp to make a general point.
lol. I'm still looking for the interface between our respective languages.
So far, I have your terms translated thusly:
- "the infinite" = wuji
- "Truth" = "The Way" or "Tao"
So taiji, the Supreme Ultimate, is like the western "Logos?" Is that right?
I don't have issues with understanding mystical experiences in terms of ordinary mind. The problem arises whenever we only fixate on the similarities common to mystics and deny or downplay the real differences that we have. It's good to share common experiences with others, but many different experiences are fundamentally human at the end of the day.
The mystical/intuitive is only one way of knowing and I feel that it is best when coupled with other equally essential human faculties to create a more multidimensional model for understanding reality. We may learn that the model only represents reality and is not really real Reality. This understanding might help us make better models, but we cannot actually escape them. "Things as they ARE" is still symbolism on our map and the mind doesn't reflect reality like a mirror. It's a useful reminder to let go and simply bask in that which is beyond all maps, but we always come back to where we began. Our perspectives are the proper field of play.
The mystical/intuitive is only one way of knowing and I feel that it is best when coupled with other equally essential human faculties to create a more multidimensional model for understanding reality. We may learn that the model only represents reality and is not really real Reality. This understanding might help us make better models, but we cannot actually escape them. "Things as they ARE" is still symbolism on our map and the mind doesn't reflect reality like a mirror. It's a useful reminder to let go and simply bask in that which is beyond all maps, but we always come back to where we began. Our perspectives are the proper field of play.
I agree with this. As I think is being said by all of us is that to speak of it is to make it a model. A map of the terrain is not the terrain itself. To add to this though, I would say even though we may come back to the maps in talking about them, processing them with the cognitive symbolic mind, the difference is we now know they are just maps. Whereas before, they we taken as the terrain itself.
Yes, and this realization can also be reached through reasoning. I don't feel that the mystical experience deserves an exalted status over other kinds of experience. Human reality is multidimensional and pluralistic. Complexity should be respected, but you probably agree.
YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
Agreed, Straw Dog. My 2 cents is that it is incumbent on us to be as clear and as honest as possible. In my view, stating something like, "This is my distortion of reality" simply underscores the nature of the oily marble in play. At least the reader is reminded, from the get go, in no uncertain terms, that what I am saying is often not meant literally. When I mean something literally, I say so. For me, clarity is integrity, as it were.
Do you believe you can get at the knowledge of love by reasoning? I'm going to flat out disagree with you here.
YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
I disagree. We get the feelings of love from our emotions. It is our reasoning that confirms those feeling are, in fact, love.
'Love' is what we categorize a certain group of associated feelings attached to certain people, places, or things. Love means different things to different people and there are different kinds of love. I might know of love via feeling alone, but to understand it more fully requires multiple dimensions of experience.
Our emotions can certainly be optimized/brought in line with reason. Here are two of my favorite quotes about love:
"This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted."
"To love at all is to be vulnerable" ~CS Lewis
Therefore it is said, 'In representing the Dao of Heaven one uses the terms Yin and Yang, and in representing the Dao of Earth one uses the terms Soft and Hard, while in representing the Dao of Man, one uses the terms Love and Righteousness'.
~Zhou Dunyi--Explanation of the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate, referring to a passage from the Yi of the I Ching
Love, being the yin function of the Tao of Man, is one of the means by which we can affect true change.
Ahh, but that goes to what I said. You said, "this realization can also be reached through reasoning". No, it cannot. Anymore than you can sit and think about love and claim to know what love is without having experienced it. You do not reason your way into the experience of love. But, having experienced love you then may think about it to expand that experience into other areas of your being. No argument there.
To be clear, Emptiness, or the Absolute, is not penetrated into by reason. You must empty yourself of all conceptualizing in order to apprehend it. It becomes in itself Realization in the pure sense, the Absolute sense. But from that space of empty awareness, you can then take that and reason about it into the lived experience of form. The experience illuminates reason this way, which increases the fullness of experience. I see it as loops, circles, from formless to form. Reason only touches on form, not formlessness itself. Just as you cannot read a romance novel and claim to know what the experience of love is. You have to first have that experience directly, non-rationally.
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While I agree with you that any concepts that we try to pull out of formlessness are bound to be distorted, I disagree that formlessness is not beyond reason, as emotions can be optimized/brought in line with reason.
Sorry, I added this in a quick last minute edit after I posted. Tell me if this doesn't help with what I am saying:
"It becomes in itself Realization in the pure sense, the Absolute sense. But from that space of empty awareness, you can then take that and reason about it into the lived experience of form. The experience illuminates reason this way, which increases the fullness of experience."
Form requires space.
I'm not clear what you are saying here. Edit: Oh, I say "space of emptiness". Har...Form requires space.