Mysticism by Marco Pardi

It can be hard, writing about the obvious.  After all, it’s here. But as any aspiring writer knows, an exercise in writing about what one is perceiving can quickly morph into an exposition on what one is making of those perceptions; the perceived and the perceiver are suddenly not so distinct. The obvious takes on shades of the possible, and possible is only a state of probability, not of reality. To restate that apocryphal saying: “Am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man, or am I a man dreaming I am a butterfly dreaming I am a man?” Does it matter?

Much has been written on the presumed “innate need” for structure in the human mind. Indeed, writers have experimented with this need, as in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stream of consciousness, they called it. The rapidly growing field of Neuroscience, the old wine of materialistic monism in the new bottle of modern techno-science, suggests that the human brain is genetically hard wired for the phenomenon of language (though not any particular language).  Language, by its nature, is a process of encapsulating perceptions into transmissible packets of meaning domains. To exist, language must circumscribe perception. Fundamentally, it must say “This”, which is therefore automatically in contrast to “That”.  Which brings us to the word, Mysticism.

Although they should, few words, when conceived, summon up their opposites in the minds of their conceivers. The act of conceiving the word mysticism is the act of attempting to circumscribe a meaning domain; establishing an “in” as opposed to an “out”. But mysticism is not to be confined within a domain. The -ism suffix contributes to this paradox because it implies an organized system, an orthodoxy outside of which we should expect to find non-mysticism. Yet, the mystic experience, if it can be delineated and spoken of at all, is unique; no two mystics being identical, no two mystics have the same experience. Even if they did, the impossibilities of one mystic entirely negating himself in order to experience as the other mystic (who is in no way the first mystic) obviate the validation of the assumption. And so, there is no “right” mysticism; “are we there yet?” does not apply.

Another unfortunate confounder is the continuing use of a modifying prefix, such as Jewish mystic, Catholic mystic, and etc. Undoubtedly, some Jews, some Catholics, some Rastafaris, some pot heads, and some (fill in the blank) found their way to mysticism. For them, however, the break through was a break out; a break out from the organized and often dictatorial orthodoxy of the system by which they had hitherto been defined. The history of these systems, particularly the powerful religious ones, is an unbroken chain of mind control and persecution to varying degrees, including gruesome and horrendous death. The mystics cited, often grudgingly, by various religions as their own hyphenated wonders, were people who were wise enough to color their reported experiences with strong tints favorable to the established dictatorships of their society’s dominant religion. For a listing of those not so wise, and those who were simply naive, see the list of Heretics.

In some cases, and for various uncertain reasons, some mystics survived.  An exemplar for the general public would be Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. Another would be the apocryphal author of the Tao Te Ching; “Lao Tzu” simply meaning “old man” in Chinese. And, we could stir enthusiasm among the “New Agers”, moving inexorably into Old Agers, and the disaffected who feel they have never been understood or appreciated by saying that there have been unknown numbers of mystics throughout human history who lived their lives and died their deaths in unrecognized anonymity most likely because, a: society was too ignorant to appreciate them, and b: they forswore those ill fitting mystic uniforms.  It is said that when Siddhartha attained Enlightenment he “went back to washing his bowl”.  He didn’t run to the local New Age shop for a change of costume, a supply of incense, or a yoga mat.

But opening the membership rolls of mysticism to only a few is the same arbitrary and confining trap as devising a linguistic utterance (commonly called “word”) to circumscribe a perception. It creates an Us and Them distinction.  Instead, consider this Buddhist aphorism: “One does not convert to Buddhism; one discovers he or she is Buddhist.”

The implication here, of course, is that one already is a mystic; one just has to realize it.  Or, to be properly expansive, we are all mystics, realize it or not.  After all, we don’t want to set up a self-realized group versus a non-self realized group.  Divisiveness,  the love child of the self anointed religious types, is anathema to mysticism.  So, next time you are walking down the street and someone yells out, “Hey, mystic!” be sure to turn around.  Unless, of course, you don’t want to be defined within someone’s meaning domain.