Is Science Compatible with Mysticism?

[Mr Spinkles]

Hi Open_Minded,

Thanks for your response.

What you say can be looked at in a different way. For instance "interaction" can be seen as a conscious event in and of itself. If an atom A (on one side of the universe) is "aware" of the spin of atom B on the other side of the universe. It can be reasonably posited that some form of consciousness is at play - even if it is not a form of consciousness that you or I can comprehend. I don't know of any way to prove it - so (as I stated earlier) I see no need to debate it. I simply share that observation the way you have shared your own position.

You could look at it that way but i.m.o. it adds unnecessary complexity, and therefore Occam's razor does not favor it. It's sufficient, and simpler, i.m.o. to say that a negative charge repels another negative charge (I prefer to use this example instead of your example of atoms with spins, if that's okay). OTOH if we are talking about complicated behavior, such as a gazelle avoiding a cheetah, then it is no longer sufficient to say that cheetahs merely "repel" gazelles. This reflects the fact that the behavior is much more complicated and varying, and the fact that cheetahs and gazelles are different from particles. To wit, they are complicated machines made of many particles, which process information in order to achieve goals. Now, perhaps, we enter a realm where it starts to become appropriate, maybe even necessary, to describe what is going on as the gazelle being "aware" of the cheetah and reacting to that awareness. (I've never heard of a negative charge sneaking up on another negative charge and catching it "unaware".)

I would add that our most certain knowledge about "awareness" comes from testing it in ourselves. If we know anything about awareness, we know that it is necessary for a relatively large, complicated machine (a human brain) to operate properly in order for awareness to take place. This is the most basic empirically established fact about awareness, as I see it. Starve the brain, give it drugs, damage part of it, deprive it of oxygen, deprive it of sleep .... and you lose awareness. You black out. You forget everything. You don't know what's going on. Experiments show that children are not as "aware" until their brains develop more, and likewise, the elderly become less aware as their brains deteriorate. These facts suggest it is unlikely that something as simple as an atom can be "aware" when a huge collection of atoms (your brain) isn't even aware much of the time.

I saw earlier in this thread you and godnotgod discussing faraday cages, and Amit Goswami. I didn't read up on all the details ... but if he's a scientist, if he's publishing his work with standards so that others can replicate it, then what's the problem? You may disagree with his conclusions, you may not like the journals he publishes in, but the bottom line is does he put his work out there so that it can be replicated. And if he does (I honestly don't know) than what replication is going on (I'm honestly interested)?

I don't know, I had never heard of Goswami or that research before. I agree with you, this is part of the scientific process. If people want to do such experiments, great. I don't have a problem with it in principle. However, be aware that there is such a thing as "junk science". Science is big enough that there is plenty of room for a minority of it to be junk, even at reputable schools. You know how you can't believe anything you find in a book, or anything you find on the internet? Well, sadly, you can't believe anything that comes from a scientist, either. Does that mean there are no credible books, websites, or scientists? Of course not.

For example, I know a certain PhD at a certain reputable university who rejects Einstein's theory of special relativity. He even posted some mathematics on the internet claiming to refute it. He asked me to look at what he posted and, without going into the details, I can tell you he's completely wrong. But he soldiers on, anyway. Most scientists would not bother to look at his work. Is that because they are closed-minded? No. It's because these kinds of "refutations" of Einstein are a dime a dozen, they are always flawed and hardly worth the time. I looked at his work only because we know each other, and I can tell you that it was a waste of time.

Anyway I suspect the research Goswami refers to is part of the junk. What makes me suspect this? Here are my reasons, but of course you will have to make up your own mind:

(1) Research into telekinesis/telepathy, unlike research in most other objective areas of physical science, has been plagued by frauds, poor design, and lack of reproducibility/contradictory results. Two kids working for James Randi famously showed how physicists could be fooled by this sort of thing.

(2) If the phenomenon was real, it would be very easy to reproduce (a lot easier than quantum physics experiments). In other words, it would be easier to prove telepathy/telekinesis than to prove the existence of the Higgs boson, and more rewarding too (it would be Nobel-worthy). And yet, no reproducible proof has been forthcoming. Skeptical researchers get negative results, but this never seems to settle the question.

(3) Known physics suggests telepathic and other paranormal phenomena are not real, as explained by Richard Feynmann.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

What I feel more strongly about is that no interpretation of quantum mechanics requires "conscious" observers. This is a mistake usually made by those outside physics. When physicists talk about "observers" doing a measurement they use that word for convenience; really, any "classical" object physically interacting with a quantum object can be considered an "observer" doing a "measurement".

The idea that the type of observer matters goes back to Bohr, Heisenberg, and Born. According to Schlosshauer, "The Copenhagen interpretation, on the other hand, appears to emphasize an epistemic nature of the collapse". He also notes "Heisenberg’s radical statement that “the particle trajectory is created by our act of observing it". Born stated in his 1950 lecture on physics and metaphysics that he, Einstein, & Bohr all are part of a generation taught that there exists a world operating according to laws totally independent of observers, an "objective physical world", and goes on to say that it is Einstein who holds on to this view of the "relation between the scientific observer and the subject". The ambiguity has a lot to do with language (as you note), but also a lot to do with what the Copenhagen interpretation deliberately did not say and what remained undefined. Heisenberg's emphasis on the act of observing, on subjective knowledge of what becomes objective reality certainly didn't mean Heisenberg thought that objective reality was created by a conscious observer, but his descriptions (as well as Bohr's) are I think deliberately vague here. For Bohr, a key idea was the more or less meaningless nature of a question like "what is a quantum system before it is measured/observed?", but because both he and (to a lesser extent) Heisenberg avoided talking about the ontological status of quantum states prior to observation, rather than just interaction, the connection between consciousness and how it creates reality had its roots in the discussions leading up to the Copenhagen interpretation.

Heisenberg, in his correspondence with Stapp, was quite explicit that the Copenhagen interpretation was never entended to be a "complete" ontology but emphasized the relationship between observation and the transition from subjective to objective reality which accompanies it.

I do not, of course, mean to imply that Bohr, Heisenberg, von Neumann, etc., ever intended to mean that consciousness constructs reality, or that I believe it does. Rather, by emphasizing the importance of measurement/observation for objective reality, and minimizing or avoiding the relationship between the objective and the epistemic, they opened the door pretty wide. Guys like Bohm and Everett didn't connect consciousness and/or measurement with the construction of an otherwise ontologicallly "vague" reality because they were thinking radically (especially when it comes to Everett, whose dissertation was rather significantly altered from what he intended it to be, and who is connected with the many-worlds interpretation even though he never used the term, and his "relative state" version was not the same as the many-worlds interpretation of Dewitt who coined the term and connected it to Everett).

Bohm, Everett, and even Pauli and Schroedinger (at least later on) all were unsatisfied with the idea that reality at its basis is a mathematical abstraction, and although Bohr et al. certainly didn't think that it was, they treated it as if it were.

So I really feel quite strongly (and most physicists would agree) that quantum mechanics does not need "consciousness" any more than it needs homo sapiens, or Earth, etc. Those things cost extra, so to speak.

After reading about that survey given at the 2011 conference, I wonder what most people whose specialty is quantum physics, nuclear physics, or even mathematical physics tend to actually believe in terms of the many different theories in there various forms. How many do tend to agree with a many-minds theory? Or in some other connection between consciousness and its role in structuring (or constructing) reality?

But I also feel that consciousness doesn't need quantum mechanics in principle, either. Suppose physics had stopped in 1900 and it turned out we lived in a classical world. Consciousness would still be a difficult problem. We could still have exactly the same debate: there would be people on one side arguing it arises from the complex operation of information-processing machinery (such as brains, computers), and there would be those on the other side arguing that there's a "ghost in the machine" directing the machinery, so to speak. This debate has nothing to do, in principle, with whether we are talking about quantum machines or classical machines.

I wish I could find that paper (or book?) in which the author quoted someone saying that the only reason people connect consciousness with quantum physics is because they are both poorly understood. That isn't an exact quote, though, and as I can't recall where I read it I can't use it.

And you are right: if we were still working in a classical physics framework we'd still have debates about consciousness, free will, the brain, determinism, etc. I do think, however, that the discussion would be quite different. We'd have far fewer scientists arguing that the brain somehow doesn't follow laws which are ontologically deterministic, and not just because QM opened the door to ontological indeterminacy. As I mentioned a while back, the transition from classical to quantum (in terms of theories, not matter) wasn't the only thing that changed. You can't, without seriously affecting views of the scientific endeavor itself, have the oldest and most respected (and/or envied) science become so successful that physicists were actually thinking the job pretty much done, only to find out that it wasn't just far from done. It was, at the most fundamental level, wrong. Not only that, but unlike the way e.g., theories about phlogiston and aether were proved wrong, classical physics didn't fail because an experiment showed some theory to be wrong. It failed because two experiments were "successful", but couldn't be.

That, I think, more than anything else seriously shook the positivism of the 19th century. It was the first time that people began to realize theory and experiment are not as independent as was believed.

In fact, the discussion about consciousness and so on would be different even if quantum physics had been developed in some other way (i.e., something that involved experimental results which required a different theory rather than contradictory experimental results which could not both be true yet neither was "wrong").

 

[Aum_425]

Dr. Amit Goswami is a quantum physicist. If there is anything I have learned about quantum physics, it is that the impossible becomes possible and the possible is questionable.

His work makes sense if you know anything about physics. Still, I am no expert, but we as a race are still learning. I wouldn't rule anything out just yet.

 

[atanu]

They're the B list princesses, BTW; kinda ugly

It is betrayal. How can royalty be ugly?

 

[atanu]

No, the second universe exists on its own, by itself, not just in the imagination, by assumption. We are allowed to assume this because we are discussing a hypothetical.

The above was the answer to the following:

...... If there is zero matter/energy/information exchanged between the two, then the two are non-existent to each other. It is meaningless to talk of two. The Second is actually only an imagination in mind space of one.

I hope you will see it from above the ego.

Yes. The second universe exists in mind as hypothesis or an assumption or an imagination ... whatever.

I thought you would agree.

(It is not easy to agree).

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

So you've joined Ymir in the boat of smug uncertainity? I can appreciate that.

I don't know what YmirGF believes (although smug isn't a word that would cross my mind and unless you are using it in jest I'm not sure why you would characterize his views as such).

Neither do I, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if there was a multiverse. I just don't know that it can be proven, and so all time, money and effort put into it seems hardly worth the effort.

Considering the billions spent on projects for NASA's Office of Planetary Protection, which is largely devoted to ensuring we don't "contaminate" biospheres on planets that we have no indication are there (by, for example, ensuring that we whatever spacecraft or machinery we use is appropriately constructed and sterlized to avoid the risk of disturbing a non-existant eco-system), and that unless multiverse theories can be tested, it's rather hard to spend a lot of money on them, I'd say as far as funding and grants go, the money spent on investigating multiverse theories is not any where near costly.

I don't know that universal consciousness can be tested

I don't know what universal conscious is, or how it relates to what I said. Would you mind clarifying? In particular how universal consciousness relates to what I said about quantum consciousness?

As I mentioned to Mr. Spinkles - nonlocal human consciousness can be tested.

What do you mean by nonlocal human consciousness?

I wish science would take the testing of it more seriously. But there's no money to be made in non-local consciousness so I don't see mainstream science investing any serious resources (of money or time) in the research.

There's billions and billions to be made for successful work on consciousness, whether it involves physics or parapsychology. In fact, research on things like neurons and procedural learning (learning which doesn't require conscious thought) has resulted in I don't know how many billions of dollars already. The way that amazon.com or google suggests certain adds, the way google translator works, the way unmanned vehicles work, all are very much a product of research from the cognitive sciences and attempts to understand the "mind". Currently, quite apart from actual algorithms or super computers, we have quantum computers (which can't do much of anything now, but do exist), NanoBiosensing, and numerous other projects which companies spend a great deal of money on knowing that in all probability they'll end up loosing most or all of the money invested.

From my perspective, science ignoring these aspects of the human experience is short-sighted (at best). And I honestly don't understand what the resistance is in mainstream science to honestly looking at NDEs, premonitions, etc ... It is not as if these kinds of experiences are limited by culture or history.

They haven't been ignored. In this very thread there have been references to such studies. Nor is it the case that parapsychological phenomena are ignored in mainstream science. It's simply that they are studied from a different perspective. Parapsychology, holistic and alternative medicines, altered states of consciousness, and pretty much anything one would find in journals that publish most of the "research" on these phenomena are studied by mainstream scientists too. The main difference is the standards used to judge what qualifies as sound results using valid methods.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Dr. Amit Goswami is a quantum physicist.

There are a lot of quantum physicists. The nice thing about science is that it doesn't rest on the authority of any one individual, but one individual can change it dramatically. Goswami isn't one of those people, because while his arguments appear to have made a pretty big impression outside the physics community, people just as qualified or more qualified than he find his theories (at least the popular ones) significantly lacking when it comes to actual evidence.

If there is anything I have learned about quantum physics, it is that the impossible becomes possible and the possible is questionable.

Well, given that by definition what is possible is questionable (otherwise, it would be either impossible or definite), I'd say that part is true. And phyics has certainly produced some extremely counter-intuitive theories about reality.

His work makes sense if you know anything about physics.

Let's pretend I don't know a thing a about quantum physics, or even physics. If I know that there are thousands of people with PhDs in physics out there, yet Dr. Goswami's theories are mostly neither intended for physicists nor accepted by physicists, wouldn't I still have a pretty good reason to think his work doesn't make sense? Or, at the very least, that someone can know a great deal about physics and still not think his work makes sense (as this is in fact the case)?

Still, I am no expert, but we as a race are still learning. I wouldn't rule anything out just yet.

An admirable attitude to have (one I try to have myself). But there is another side that is important too. Being open-minded is certainly important. Being skeptical is as well. So what we might not rule out as impossible, we might be able to determine quite improbable.

 

[atanu]

... it's also quite amusing too watch two people argue like they disagree while they are just using different words to say the same thing!

The honey of this universe is squeezed out and tasted by that dialectical mechanism.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Here are my reasons, but of course you will have to make up your own mind:

(1) Research into telekinesis/telepathy, unlike research in most other objective areas of physical science, has been plagued by frauds, poor design, and lack of reproducibility/contradictory results. Two kids working for James Randi famously showed how physicists could be fooled by this sort of thing.

(2) If the phenomenon was real, it would be very easy to reproduce (a lot easier than quantum physics experiments). In other words, it would be easier to prove telepathy/telekinesis than to prove the existence of the Higgs boson, and more rewarding too (it would be Nobel-worthy). And yet, no reproducible proof has been forthcoming. Skeptical researchers get negative results, but this never seems to settle the question.

(3) Known physics suggests telepathic and other paranormal phenomena are not real, as explained by Richard Feynmann.

I was just writing a response about the problems with journals that publish 99.9% of all the parapsychology and similar literature. I wish I'd thought of links instead of unnecessarily complicated explanations that aren't half as convincing.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Hi Legion,

Thanks for your response. (I'd give you frubals but I'm out.) I replied to your post in this thread.

 

[godnotgod]

Some of you seem not to be aware of Mr. Sprinkles new topic, here:

http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/science-religion/147093-demystifying-quantum-physics.html

Report thee to the nunnery!...(or 'gunnery', whichever the case may be, LOL)

 

[godnotgod]

The honey of this universe is squeezed out and tasted by that dialectical mechanism.

..and the more we taste of it, the less the dialect, until, at last, the sound of one hand clapping.


Tao te Ching, 56

Those who know do not speak;
Those who speak do not know.
Block the passages,
Shut the doors,
Let all sharpness be blunted,
All tangles untied,
All glare tempered.
All dust smoothed.
This is called the mysterious leveling.
He who has achieved it cannot either be drawn into friendship or repelled,
Cannot be benefited, cannot be harmed,
Cannot either be raised or humbled,
And for that very reason is highest of all creatures under heaven.

 

[Windwalker]

Page 100! :clap

 

[methylatedghosts]

Page 100! :clap

I see only page 25...

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I am a bit of an amalgam of many perspectives, and a long arduous journey of searching to find some way to talk about my experiences. I'm an odd duck, to be sure. I began at the top, so to speak, and then had to learn how to climb up from the ground up through searching for structures on which to hang experience, to learn how to integrate them.

Earlier in this thread, I described some of my experience as a student of a true master. I would like to begin responding to the above and what follows by expounding upon this a bit more.

I mentioned that Dr. Yang was one of two masters (I've had many "masters"/instructors of various martial arts, but someone teaching krav maga or tactical pistol is clearly not the kind of "master" we're talking about). I also mentioned that Dr. Yang was unusual in the amount of philosophy and of theory he incorporated into instruction. I wish I had paid more attention. Some time later, I was in a bookstore and saw one of his many books. In those days, I would often skim the martial arts books for "new" and similar updates, but never buy. Martial arts, whether fencing, muay thai, or Israeli knife fighting, is something that requires practice and an instructor.

But I bought this book, because I recognized some "parables" in it that he had told and I had long forgotten, and thought that perhaps I could try to understand them more. I think I understand them more than I did then, but one story in particular both fascinates me. It took a long time, but I believe I understand it better know, and when I read this- "structures on which to hang experience"- I was immediately reminded of this story.

The story is about Yang, You-Ji a famous archer. One day he came across an old man who he observed to some very remarkable things (for brevity's sake, I will skip them). The first "moral" of the story was that Yang realized how important practice was (and humility), but the important part of the story takes place much later in Yang's life.

An old archer friend heard that Yang was up in the mountains and decided to pay a visit. When Yang saw his friend, he pointed to the quiver on his friends back in which his friend's arrows and bow were, and asked "what are those?" His friend immediately bowed in respect, saying that Yang had truly mastered archery.

I am lucky, in that while Dr. Yang apparently had to learn what this story meant himself, whether or not it was among those I heard from him I was able to not only have it in permanent form but with an explanation.

The point of the story is to illustrate that (at least for some practitioners) martial arts are "structures on which to hang experience" until one can integrate what one has learned. Yang had mastered archery because he no longer needed the bow or arrows. They were the branches he used to climb but, having reached the top, were no longer necessary.

Traditional martial arts (TMA) are usually associated with Eastern styles, particularly of China and Japan. The category exists, so far as I know, because of mixed martial arts (MMA). When the UFC started, and people everywhere began combining kickboxing and grappling, there was a certain smugness many representatives of both categories had as well as contempt for the other category. I was one. I contended that the main reason TMA practitioners lost so often was because it had been too long since these styles had been used in actual combat. It was not that the techniques didn't work, but that they were either outdated, or not practiced under the right conditions, or both.

But I also went around correcting anybody who talked about "kung fu" which (I explained) was not the right term. The reason this is at all related to the subject at hand is because I was at least right about one thing; while kung fu now is certainly the right term, at what time it was not (lbut anguages change, and to insist that antiquated, archaic usage was somehow correct was just idiocy on my part). It became associated with martial arts because kung fu was any skill anybody truly dedicated themselves to perfecting and martial arts was the exemplar of this ideal.

It doesn't matter whether one trains to perfectly draw a katana (iaido), or to play chess, or to draw. Although the words are chinese, the concept of having good kung fu is not. Nor does it matter for the most part what the skill is. The reason that the archer had perfected archery was because he was no longer climbing, and no longer need that structure.


I believe I understand this somewhat, at least compared to when I first read it and certainly when (or if) I first heard it. And I what I learned later about Eastern beliefs, religions, etc., helped me to understand the story of the archer.

But I do not think it, or any set of traditions/beliefs, help one to understand mysticism. This is not because it requires practice, but because while the words mystic and mysticism may often be used to describe sets of different practices with the same goal, what mystics have in common (such that mysticism makes sense as a cateogry) is not goals, or anything that has been described here as what the essense of mysticism is.

I want to make clear that I think many mystics do have in common the same goal and do differ only in terms of practices; different paths to the same place. I also realize how the above claim might sound both ridiculous and insulting, especially since it is coming from an outsider, someone who does not identify himself as a mystic. Ironically, that's one reason why it is true.

Various historians, philosophers, spiritual leaders, scientists, and many others have argued for decades about two related issues. In truth, the discussion goes back much farther, but before it was dominated by Western academics. Only in the past few decades have academic and practitioners (not mutually exclusive categories) who come from non-Western backgrounds weighed in.

The issues are what religion is and what mysticism is. For a long time, these were defined and analyzed within western frameworks by westerners. However, anthropologists became better at understanding how to minimize projecting their personal biases and worldviews onto what they observed or were told (an important step was the realization that objectivism is impossible). Also, more and more non-Westerners joined more and more academic circles, or were otherwise engaged in them.

One astounding development was the theory that "religion" is not just uniquely Western, but almost uniquely Christian. Articles and books poured out on this, some supporting, some attacking, some attacking the idea of suppporting, and other typical nonsense that occurs when academic try to delineate boundaries (especially sensitive ones). And for the most part, not being a fan of post-modernist critiques, I didn't think all that much of it.

More interesting to me was an overlapping debate about mysticism, but again as far as neo-postal-colonialist Marxian pluralism moronicity approaches to understanding modern religions, I wasn't all that interested.

One argument did interest me: the way Christianity's blending Hellenistic philosophy and Jewish belief was unique in several respect, and the ways in which this unique blend was used to force other beliefs, traditions, and/or practices into it. The reason I found that interesting was because I had spent already a very long time looking first at modern "new age" practices/religions, and then religions of antiquity. I had already noticed that religion in the ancient world seemed to be rather fundamentally different from what I undestood religion to be. It wasn't just that belief systems differed, or practices differed, or anything so mundane. It was that ideas about morality, philosophy, theology etc., were either completely absent or completely seperate from "religion". Religion was a set of practices (sacrifice, cultic rituals/ceremonies, etc.) that largely unconnected to any belief system other than a sort of vague cosmology and received myths which mainly served as a background for the certain aspects of cultic practice (and could be contradictory without mattering).

I was not until this thread that I went back to those sources and looked more carefully, and looked for more. Because one thing that has been emphasized by many is that mysticism can't be learned in books but has to be practiced.

Going back to the quagmire that is the study of religion, I still don't know where I stand on any number of issues, but one thing I do think holds a great deal of truth is the extent to which I was wrong about the ways in which some "new age" spiritualities had distorted the beliefs and practices they claimed to borrow from (mostly Hinduism and Buddhism). I was wrong because a great deal of what shaped modern Eastern "religion" was interactions of various kinds with Western scholars and Western colonialism. I will return to that later, as it is a deeply sensitive and extremly nuanced issue and requires more attention than I can give here. This has been my "intro" post to what I wish to share about my understanding of both mysticism and religion and why anybody could be so audacious as to make the claim that Christianity (apart from its closest relative religions) is the oddball. That because it has so long shaped the Western worldview, Westerners have defined religion in terms of Christianity and then forced into this category what is too different to do so. Mysticism provides a certain bridge here, and so it is to mysticism I will turn next.

 

[godnotgod]

I realize how that claim might sound both ridiculous and insulting, especially since it is coming from an outsider, someone who does not identify himself as a mystic. Ironically, that's one reason why it is true.

Funny. My sentiments exactly re: Outsider Chopra in relation to QM Insiders, though I suspect you will strongly disagree.

'Your papers, plez.'

'Peppers? What Peppers? We dhonnagodda show you no e-steenken' Peppers!'

 

[godnotgod]

So you see. There are these two caravans traveling across the desert, several miles apart, each headed by a Zen Master. The report comes back that the Zen Master in the first caravan had died. When the Zen Master of the second caravan caught up, he immediately seeks out the tent of the dead Zen Master. Standing over him, he commands the dead Zen Master to wake up, which he does. They then proceed to stare intently and silently into each other's eyes for a few moments, then suddenly both burst out in uproarious laughter. Then the dead Zen Master dies again.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Mystics and Mysteries

The words “mysticism” and “mystery” share more than an etymological root. The words go back to ancient Greek mystery cults. Several terms here are important: μύστης, μυστικός, τὰ μυστήρια. The first word refers to one who is initiated, the second refers to things having to do with what “the initiated” is actually initiated into, and finally we have ta mysteria: the mysteries. There are other similar words, and sometimes these words were used simply to mean things “private”. But some of them, particularly if used in a certain form (like the third term) always referred to “the mysteries.” The mystery cults, from the Elysian mysteries of classical Greece to the Hellenistic mysteries of Mithras beginning in ~100 CE, had both a long history and almost no history. The reason to say the former is that certain words (particularly the terms noted above) were used for a long time to refer to cultic rites, rituals, and practices from Attica to (eventually) almost the entire breadth of the Roman Empire.

But why no history? It is often said that the closest things the Greeks had to a bible was Homer. To some extent, this is true. Certainly Greeks memorized many lines, both in formal instruction and because they were repeated so often. Additionally, those whose job it was to recite Homeric hymns (Homeridae), which included both the Iliad and the Odyssey as well as other Homeric Hymns (some lost to us forever) further drove Homeric lines, passages, stories, and language into Greek culture. Most of the classic myths are either found only in the Homeric epics, or are found there as well as other places (e.g., Greek drama). Nothing compared to the Homer as far as received myth was concerned, and therefore nothing could match Homeric epics and hymns when it came to the understanding, origin stories, and symbols of cultic practice.

Yet the none of the three terms above, nor anything like them, appear in either the Iliad or the Odyssey. In other words, the single most important collection of stored myth passed from generation to generation as a way of (among other things) connecting cultic rituals and practices and indeed Greek identity to the past had no intrinsic connection to any actual religious practice. And here is where the analogy between Homeric epics and the bible falls apart. The Jewish scriptures were so important that even when the temple was destroyed in the first century, Rabbinic Judaism flourished by the study of scriptures until even Rabbinic commentary on earlier commentary was sacred, while the Christians felt so connected to these texts that despite certain glaring inconsistencies and attempts by those like Marcion to leave the Jewish scriptures with Jewish beliefs, they incorporated new texts into what became the bible.

To understand how different this is from the way myth was treated elsewhere, along with sacred stories and symbols, it is important to realize how unique Jewish religion was. The name “Jewish” comes from a connection between a place and the people living in it. Everywhere we find written texts what defined a “people” was either geographic region or language or both. Belief in particular deities and particular origin stories was likewise tied to specific peoples and the regions in which they lived. There is a reason that most of the deities in texts in and around the area from which the Jewish people first originated are known only to those who study long dead languages or to no one at all. It’s because usually when a city/region was conquered, cultic practice and patron gods and/or goddesses changed. Sometimes they were abandoned, other times they were equated with the deities of the conquerors, and other times they were mixed and incorporated into something new.

Not so with YHWH and the Babylonian conquest. Instead, what had probably been a local, patron deity, and likely even a member of a pantheon, became (over many, many years) the only God. Even more bizarre was that these people, the former inhabitants of Judaea, identified themselves by their belief first in YHWH and later in holy writings. So much so that even when individuals spoke only Greek, remained in the diaspora when they did not have to, and lived among Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and other peoples, they were still Jewish. Their scriptures were translated into Greek and other languages because what defined this people was above all a connection to YHWH and the scriptures were essential to that connection. Even today, there are many people who identify themselves as Jewish, but not religious. Today this is unique because of the “not religious” part, but in antiquity it was unique because people who didn’t speak Hebrew and didn’t live in Judaea still were Jewish. The Christians inherited that disconnect between region and/or language and identity, but because Christianity quickly became a missionary religion, the ethnos aspect of Judaism was not retained.

Homeric epics, hymns, and other methods of transmitting myths of various kinds had no parallel. They were flexible because they served a communal role. Cultic practice may not have related to morality or philosophy, but it was integral to communal structure. This is perhaps best illustrated by the Roman response to Christians who refused to participate in the civic cult. First because the Romans found this refusal bizarre by itself, let alone something worth dying for. And second because the punishment for refusing to participate in such cultic practices while at the same time not caring at all what Christians believed emphasizes how much “religion” was related to community and social function rather than beliefs, morals, ethics, philosophies, etc.

The reason that the mystery cults have a long history and no history is the same reason that the cultures which adopted, adapted, and/or incorporated these mystery cults were both more and less religious than any place in any period of Christianized Europe. More so, because the gods were far more personal (and personally experienced), because every important event of an individual’s life (birth, marriage, commerce, travel, etc.) had with it associated sacred symbols, rites, deities, etc., and because every communal activity from plays and contests to trials and wars had associated with it a similar set of religious notions.

In fact, so “religious” was culture that it is quite difficult to talk about religion at all. I don’t mean difficult just from a modern perspective. I mean that if we look at e.g., Greek texts from Herodotus until Constantine there was no word or words that one could use for “religion.” Instead, we find descriptions of which deities (or their names) are worshiped and through which rituals and practices.

Although the mystery cults get their name from a word denoting that which is secret and hidden, somehow the same cults managed to spread across language and regional barriers (adapted as necessary) quite freely. The reason we know so little about some of them is not so much because initiates were sworn to secrecy and would not reveal the mysteries to the uninitiated. Were they that secretive, it’s rather hard to explain fast they spread across the Roman Empire, how many inscriptions we find, and how many references in literature, letters, talismans, etc. Compared to what we now of Greco-Roman politics, justice systems, education, and other aspects of life, when it comes to religion in general we know much less, and much of what we know is simply in the ways that religious notions and concepts permeated culture. A major source for understanding the early, classic mystery religions is On the Mysteries. It isn’t a description, but a legal document meant as a defense for Andokides (the author) who was on trial for violating the sacrosanct.

It is only because, unlike their related civic cults, the Hellenistic mystery cults were products of Hellenism, and therefore their incorporation into various cities, villages, towns, and regions was in addition to already existing civic and communal religious practice. They were hardly privatized religions, despite the talk of initiates and mystery. Instead, they often served to reinforce personal connections between an individual and the gods, or to emphasize a connection to one god or goddess, and as a different sort of social networks than kinship, language, and common region. So although we have lots of archaeological evidence for different mystery cults and for the same cults practiced differently in different regions, we lack descriptions to understand these because, unlike civic religions or deities and practices which were part of social structures, there are no lengthy legal defenses, no government notices and lists, nor the other multiple ways in which civic cults were indirectly described such that we know what we do about them.

Were it not for Christianity, the words “mystic” and “mysticism” would probably have died with ancient Greek. One could write entire volumes on this, so unfortunately I can only treat a very complex set of cultural, philosophical, historical, and religious interactions over several centuries with a woefully inadequate summary.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

(cont.)
Christianity began and continued to exist for several centuries in a state of relative and varying crises. Even after Constantine, this remained true. It was true, as we can tell from Paul’s letters, in the first generation of Christianity before Christians even thought of themselves as distinct from other Jewish movements or sects. At the heart of these crises was the tenuous connection to an already unique religion (Judaism) and furthered by the incorporation of Greco-Roman philosophical thought. The groups often called gnostic were really just some among many different ways that Christian groups in the Roman Empire mixed philosophy, Jewish texts and beliefs, local practices, and a host of other religious, cultural, and philosophical notions. Even before the first gospel was written, we hear the beginning of mystic/mystery language in Paul, and by the time the fourth gospel was being composed, the interactions between Christians and pagans had produced mystic Christians and Christian pagans. In perhaps the most incredible mixing of socio-cultural, philosophical, and spiritual practices and beliefs ever, mysticism was born.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Funny. My sentiments exactly re: Outsider Chopra in relation to QM Insiders, though I suspect you will strongly disagree.
'

I haven't gotten there yet, but the reason what I said is (I think) true, has to do with why Eastern beliefs and practices are called mystic. The word mystic has an etymology that stretches back 2,500+, and as soon as English transitioned into Middle English with the influx of French and Latin terms we find "mystic" in use:

Forms: ME mistike, ME mistyk, ME myistik, ME mystik, ME mystike, ME mystyk, ME mystyke, ME–15 mistik, ME–18 mistic, ME– mystic, lME (in a late copy) 15 mystec (in a derivative), 15 mistyc (in a derivative), 15 mystyc(in a derivative), 16 misticke, 16 mistique, 16 mysticke, 16 mystique, 16–17 mistick, 16–17 mystick; Sc. pre-17 mistic (in a derivative), pre-17 mistice, pre-17 mistik, pre-17 mistike, pre-17 mistique, pre-17 mistyk, pre-17mystice, pre-17 mystick, pre-17 mystik, pre-17 mystyk, pre-17 17–18 mistick, pre-17 17– mystic.​

Mysticism, on the other hand, we do not find until the 18th century, and mid- to late-18th century at that. In other words, not only are words like mystic and mystical thoroughly Western, we only come to the word mysticism through the use of the terms used in early Modern Europe: the Christian "mystical theology". The change from a term applied mostly to a person or a person's behavior into a systemized, structured belief which included such traits made possible the idea of extending what had been essentially a descriptive trait or set of traits rather than any given practice, practices, or beliefs. Mystical theology paved the way for a concept of mystic practices as a system unto itself, and therefore an "-ism". That took over 2,000 years. Yet almost as soon as mysticism exists as a word, we hear of the "mystic indian" and by 1884 Encyclopedia Britannica described "the intuition or ecstasy or mystical swoon which appears alike among the Hindus, the Neo-Platonists, and the medieaval saints". ​

Like the word Hinduism (another "-ism" added onto to a word, "hindu" derived from a Persian word for a particular region and the people who lived there and did not exist until the influence of Islam within Persia), mystic and mysticism were descriptions applied by outsiders. They were not translations of some word in the various languages used in India or China or anywhere else, but Western words applied by Westerns, by outsiders, to others.​