Roughly quoted from Dallas Willard:
"A 'leap of faith' is in fact a leap without faith."
And from John Niehardt,
"Man without mysticism is a monster."
Are these ideas true? Universally? Subjectively? Do you care?
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Re: the latter. If the statement is made with respect to mankind, a credible argument can be made to the contrary. Mankind has been demonstrably monstrous in the name of its hydra-headed mysticism.
ReplyDeleteWould mankind be any better off without mysticism? Any kinder? Any more cooperative? Any less inclined to greed? I suppose it's possible, if the fear of death were to be wiped from the human race's collective consciousness, and with it the need to craft a narrative for what happens after death/before birth, and with *that* the need to be right about the narrative.
If, on the other hand, the statement refers to the individual, existing in the absence of mysticism, here's my answer: I don't feel particularly monstrous.
You may disagree.
Re: the former. My initial thought: a leap of faith posits belief -- however unreasonable, however ill-founded -- on the possibility of a positive, or at least predicted, outcome. A leap without faith is suicide. Or nihilism. Or a grand mal seizure. But I'd like to know more about the point Willard was trying to communicate, before going any further.
Just dropping in briefly to make the point that we have to distinguish between religion and mysticism. They're not interchangeable. Mysticism has to do with direct apprehension of a phenomenon. Narrative and doctrine fall under the banner of religion, which is not the matter at hand.
ReplyDeleteMysticism and science are kissing cousins, in fact.
specific practices repeated over time -->same evidence-gathering tool (the brain)-->observable phenomena-->results compared with similar/exactly the same experiments performed by other scientists line up
Epistemology. How do you break knowledge down? We trust as a society that science yields knowledge. What is knowledge? How do you know when you know something? When is the line crossed from suspicion or belief or hypothesis to full-on knowledge? Do you accept true knowledge as a phenomenon? I'll answer that one for myself: yes. Knowing is an event. A Rubicon is crossed. This is the same for all of us. The scientist and the mystic cross the same Rubicon to different destinations.
I'll be back to get to the questions at hand.
Here's the definition of "mysticism" with which I was working:
ReplyDelete1. Immediate consciousness of the transcendent or ultimate reality or God.
2. The experience of such communion as described by mystics.
3. A belief in the existence of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible by subjective experience.
4. Vague, groundless speculation.
Exclude definitions 1, 2 and 4 for the purpose of my answer. Definition 3 was my focus. Definition 3 is problematic, for me: how does one know when a "reality beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension" is "central to being," without some separate framework [via dogma, religion, what have you] against which to judge same? If the belief in question is beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension, it's not science. Or not what I understand to be science.
Mysticism and belief are separate animals. We are talking about perceptual apprehension. That which is apprehended can be decorated to the hilt with belief afterwards, but that doesn't affect the integrity of the initial perception. If you're going to doubt the mechanism with which the mystic apprehends phenomena, you have to explain what makes the scientist's mechanism superior. They are both human beings, their biological tools are the same. Then you apply the scientific method: collecting data through observation and experimentation. This is what the mystic is doing. The experiments (mystical practices) are, as I said, specific and repeatable.
ReplyDeleteI'm friendly with the idea of belief, but to call mysticism belief is slander. Slander, I say!
Tell me, Lisa, how you're defining subjective and objective experience, here. Do you mean that an internal experience is by necessity subjective? That will be helpful to know.
And to address this part of your question:
ReplyDeletehow does one know when a "reality beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension" is "central to being," without some separate framework [via dogma, religion, what have you] against which to judge same?
I guess I don't see how dogma/religion are sturdy enough frameworks for this. And you don't either, I know. And neither do I. Shifting, created narratives may be lovely and useful but this is not their jurisdiction. And my understanding of the mystics' reports - not being one myself - is that that which is central to being is of a suchness and size that no framework can hold it.
Hey, I didn't pull that definition out of thin air!
ReplyDeleteMy working definition of "mysticism" is not the same as yours, as I know from our parallel, off-blog dissection of the topic. We're talking at cross-purposes, as a result.
I do not deny the experience of totality reported by mystics. Something is clearly happening there.
To the leap of faith:
ReplyDeleteThe leaper may believe or not believe, but the point is the leaper doesn't know. The same core of fear must be overcome, though the fear may be managed differently. A pessimistic leap, a neutral leap, an optimistic leap...it's still the same pistol that goes off for each of them. The leap is the point. When the muscles are firing in the moment of leaping, the presence or absence of faith is not discernible in those muscles, and it is their action that makes the leap a leap. Neurons? Pistols? Whatever. Something fires, and that's the moment I'm isolating.
A Rubicon is crossed! Oh, man. I can tell I'm going to be making everyone and his brother cross the Rubicon ten times a day for a while. You mind being a sport and crossing that Rubicon to grab me another cup of coffee? Beholden to you.
So I'm instinctively with Dallas Willard on that one.
I'll come back for the other one later.
Agreed, Mr Willard.
ReplyDeleteI leap. And faith has nothing to do with it.
But.
I make the point the faith.
Faith, briefly (and with bashfulness): I do not hold that faith is inextricable from religion. I believe strong faith exists, flourishes, without the trappings of doctrine. However, I am not sure that faith is something that can grow from thin air without choosing a philosophical guide of sorts. It is not hope or wishful thinking.
With that said.
When we say we are taking a leap of faith it is actually a leap of doubt that propels us into the air.
However we find ourselves there, the idea of a 'leap of faith' provides the moment of bravery or let down when the leap is over. A lucky rabbits foot, crossing your fingers. Inherently flimsy in quality. And the phrase is oddly arrogant. Now the cosmos has to do its part!? Some thing or idea worthy of faith, of devotion, now needs to provide proof by leading us to what we want, while we absolve ourselves of what happens between lift off and landing. Faith does not brook passivity.
Please do not mistake me. We have to wish. We have to keep doing without knowing. You take your risks and your lumps; your ability to deal with both is where the faith lies.
True faith does not arrive in the airy flight of not knowing what comes next. It is not an answer to doubt it is the absence of doubt. It makes no guarantees. It just fills in the places we've been leaping over, so whether the outcomes are positive or negative we can attempt to stay sure footed, no leap at all.
Or something like that.
Mystical monsters another time...
Man without mysticism is a monster.
ReplyDeleteI'm saying yes. Whether I'm singing it out or vomiting it up, I don't know. I'm doing both.
What's in my gut, first, and then if I feel like I need to doll it up later, I will:
My beloved mystics. They're our flames, our home-grown suns. I'm sorry, but this is what I see: a long, drab line of humans staggering through history, bent over. Thick, dull. Peevish. Violent. Myopic. And here and there rising above this line is a human being, standing erect, a mountain peak, a Himalaya, clear-eyed. A man, a full man, a genuine man, a realized man. (With apologies to all of the female mystics: Hildegard of Bingen, Mirabai, etc. You just didn't show up right away for the class photo. Promptness, mystics.)
I feel the air thick with objections like masses of arrows pointed towards me, but they may just be in my mind. I will wait until I get shot to respond to these invisible objections, else I'll be here all night.
For my purposes, a clear-eyed man is not merely an intelligent man.
Oh, maybe those arrows are something else.
So many intelligent men, warped by...warp. Do I need to list the warping things? Ego? Greed? Anger? No, you can do the rest. Long list. Warp covers it.
The warped arrow flies off the mark. What makes the arrow fly true? Why is aim "true" when it hits the mark?
The motto of the Theosophical Society, bless it, is this: There is no religion higher than truth.
Mysticism is the ferocious setting out for Truth. Not smaller truths about this or that. Truth, motherfuckers, Truth. THE. TRUTH.
Man's ferocity needs a good holder. We're ferocious with dissatisfaction, with suffering. We're dangerous. How many times a day do we find some way to take out the catastrophe of being alive on each other? It's constant. Someone has to pay. Someone will pay for this!
The mystics are kicking the fucking door down for some answers. The giants - did they care how long it took? No, they fucking did not. Their effort was incomprehensible to most of us. And there they are, going into fucking caves, and they're not moving! They're staying there for ten, twenty, thirty years! Man without mysticism is a pussy, and I mean that in the most furious old-school manner.
Okay. The mystics. Let's look at monsters. Do we know a monster when we see one? How grand do the monstrosities need to be to register? There's a continuum of monstrosity, and I hate to say that we are all on it, and we're not all tucked up to the safe, safe left. Okay, what do we have to do wrong here to qualify?
We have to refuse to see*.
The mystic will do anything to see. The monster will do anything not to see.
Apply scale as you will. I stand by this.
Oh, yeah...there's an asterisk that doesn't lead anywhere. Well, go wherever you want.
ReplyDeleteNo. I just don't agree. I love you, and you know it, I hear you and you know it, but I don't agree.
ReplyDeleteMystics -- great. Leading the way, setting the example. Fan-fucking-tastic. Existing waaaaay over on one side of the human continuum between the blind and the sighted. Good for them. Good for them. Good for us, to have them around. Good for us, to listen to what they have to say.
My own belief is that true mystics form a sub-group of the human race -- a sub-group with enhanced perception, enhanced processing capabilities, enhanced something-or-other. I KNOW this sounds like a brush-off. I'm not being flippant. The existence of mystics as an expression of the beautiful diversity of our singular, super-talkative, unbelievably creative and often ridiculously self-important species -- that's what I believe. It doesn't make what mystics have to say any less important. The circle capable of perceiving some aspect of the sphere has a lot to teach the other circles.
But the rest of us, monstrous? Existing on a continuum of monstrosity? Measured by how open, how committed we are to....what, precisely? If we accept the possibility of communion, do we get to move a few notches over? If we meditate daily, do we move even closer?
Monstrous, why? How? That's a damn big word, monstrous. It implies a whole hell of a lot. Is the proposition here truly that the experience of communion with the great ALL is, in fact, ALL that counts? I may be in the wrong building if that's the case.
Look, I have a personal stake in this conversation. I'm a reasonably intelligent person. I think about this shit, a lot. Am I a monster because I don't meditate, because I don't pray? Do I become more monstrous the longer I resist?
Really. Where on the monster axis do you say I fall?
You don't have to agree. And this has nothing to do with whether you meditate or pray. Note that I include us all on this continuum. Please don't take this personally. There's no attack, here. I'm every bit the monster as anyone.
ReplyDeleteWe all have the monstrous in us, and we all have the mystic in us. The extent to which one or the other is manifest in us is the extent to which we are willing to be aware. Meditation is only one manifestation of a willingness to be aware. So is social awareness. A desire/willingness to see, and be affected by what you see, changed by what you see. The extent to which one shuts out awareness is the extent to which one is willing to do damage to oneself and others/the world, and the level of willingness to do damage is what determines a monster. That's my point.
Maybe this doesn't line up with how you see a mystic or a monster. That's fine. Our answers don't need to line up.
And I'm out for now. I've monopolized this thread enough.
How did this turn into THIS?
ReplyDeleteI took both questions as being plainly evident:
1) Faith is the act of pure belief. It is not made of questions, but of agreement born of an emotive response that obliterates arguments contrary. Faith, much-considered Western Faith, justifies itself. Makes justification obsolete.
Therefore, a "leap of faith" is in fact faithless. That it requires a leap denies that it is in fact based in real faith.
Discuss.
(Girls named Faith must have an awful time bringing themselves to orgasm. Too much pressure to BE there.)
2) For crying out. Mysticism, as in "contemplating a sense of what is mystical, or, simply, unknown." You two are like blacks seeking to appropriate German brands as ironically emblematic of your racial struggle. Simply paraphrased, and I am chubby and yawning in my assuredness on this, Niehardt was simply saying that humankind without wonder, without the yearning for truth and subsequent invented/"experienced"/druggily imagined/coherently reasoned Stories we produce on the Ultimate Questions----humankind without this eternal exercise is monstrous, ugly and worse than animal. Opposable thumbs mill a barrel, smith a trigger, weave a wick...
Jesus. I just wanted some riffs on those (obvs?) questions. Instead I get a jellicle, jellicle catfight: black and white spots and who can play it better.
It isn't about You and Your subjective reaction. Parse the thoughts of another person cleanly, respecting their intent. As you hope and imagine another good person will weigh yours.
Ok, delete the last paragraph. Typical CBA overage. I take it back.
ReplyDeleteI do think we needed some foundation for this particular bit, though. Yes?
Kisses!
(Jellicle? Really?)
While I appreciate the "I take it back" sentiment expressed in your last post, Jumpy, I want to point out that you, explicitly, asked for our subjective responses to the statements you posted. And I took You at Your word. I responded subjectively, which, in all fairness, not being deeply familiar with either of the gentlemen named in your post, was what I had to contribute to the discussion. The statements themselves, without context, are somewhat bumper-stickeresque: I suppose it would have been possible to simply answer yes or no, and leave it at that. What Tina and I did, instead, was to engage in honest discussion, drawing on our own experience in place of the omitted context. We attempted, as we have in other conversations on the same topic in other fora, to understand each other. Tina and I are capable of respectful disagreement; we have addressed this issue before, and, I like to think, come away from our conversations on the topic not with minds changed, but with a more nuanced understanding of where we both stand. Which is the point, I believe, of conversation, and which is the larger point, I hope, of this blog.
ReplyDeletexoxo
It is, and I most humbly bow out my regrets.
ReplyDeleteBut.
I'll do it again, mark me, because bellicosity, vitriol and wrongheadedness sometimes pique our accepted beliefs to good effect.
What feels like a slap may be a growth pain! OR, it might serve to ground you deeper in the resultant more-studied belief.
May I suggest we all adopt "handles" instead of names? I appear here as Jumpy, not CBA (some may have trouble distinguishing, I grant you, but go with it for a sec). I find it freeing to appear not under my given name, but as a concept of myself. Perhaps we would all feel the sting of questioning less painfully if we were (fully reasoning, still somewhat accountable) characters instead of ourselves? Email your new handle if you like, and I;ll change it up for ya.
Friction versus lubricant. Pointless without one, irritating without the other.
ReplyDeleteYou're driving down the freeway with a friend. You can go with them where they're driving, get to Mexico or Mars or wherever. Or you can reach over and grab the steering wheel at every exit ramp and try to drag the car off the road.
We all tip to one of these things. I am willing to try and drag your cars off the road in the name of the honorable struggle. It doesn't come naturally, but what the hell. You, beloved Jumpness, on the other hand, could sometimes shut up and let other people drive. Make the most of the eventual destination, even if you think the destination is lame. No destination is lame. Only travelers are lame, if they can't make any destination fun. First rule of all road trips, or one of them.
Fun, right? Not just painful growth all the damn time. I took clown class already. Can't I grow in a fun way once in a while?
I'll think of a handle.
Yes! Yes! Fuck you too! Good, good. Huggles.
ReplyDelete(In fact, that could be your name: Huggles.)
Whoops, driving again!