Mystics

I love mystery. It's something that can't be explained and isn't understood. I also love mysteries, books that center on a mystery which -- almost always -- is explained. But until it is, it isn't. A mystery remains mysterious until it is understood."Mysticism" sort of sounds like "mystery." However, according to the Great God Wikipedia, it's more about communing with or being aware of an ultimate reality/truth. So a mystic supposedly understands a mystery of some cosmic significance. Like...Whether metaphysical realities exist. What happens after we die. If consciousness is possible without a physical body. How the universe began. Whether…

For most of my life -- age 18 to 55, or thereabouts -- I've been an avid embracer of mysticism. During my psychedelic period, I wasn't only aiming at getting high via LSD, mescaline, and such. Along with many other flower children, I also was trying to experience a higher form of consciousness. We'd ponder the Tibetan Book of the Dead, then see if we could experience some of the bardos via a pill rather than meditation. After a few years I stopped using drugs and devoted myself to meditating several hours a day with the same intent: learning whether…

I've found a new way to describe myself philosophically: mystic atheist. Along with agnostic, humanist,Taoist, and existentialist. 

Maybe I'll make up a non-business card with this title, since it fits with my non-belief system. The card would stimulate some interesting conversations when I handed it out, I bet.

Thanks for discovering mystic atheist go to two people: one guy who emailed me about another guy. The first wanted to tell me about "Kissing Hank's Ass," a marvelous irreligious fable that I'd already blogged about several years ago.

The second is James Huber, who wrote the piece. When I followed the email link to his web site, I noticed a couple of other writings that looked interesting. "Mystic Atheism" then led me to "Materialistic Enlightenment."

Interestingly, I'd mentioned "Mystic Atheism" in my 2006 blog post about "Kissing Hank's Ass." But I guess I wasn't ready to appreciate it's profundity back then.

Now that I've reached a higher stage of mystic atheist materialistic enlightenment, I'm better able to resonate with Huber's insights — an excerpt from which you can read a few paragraphs down in a continuation to this post.

I love how he speaks about a "presence" that he sensed when he was experiencing some form of religiosity or spirituality. Eventually he realized that this presence was the common denominator between all religions and spiritual paths:

Everyday physical reality.

What I understood in that shining moment were that all the mystic
experiences I had ever had could easily be unified with a single,
simple principle: they're all 99.9% bullshit. What truth they hold is
simple, ordinary, reality. They look exotic and mysterious because they
go to great lengths to hide reality. The truth at the center of all
religion shines through despite the metaphysical trappings, not because
of them.

Read on, and you'll find out that God spoke to Huber, revealing that God doesn't exist. Ah, that's my kind of enlightenment.

I'm an admirer of Taoism. I resonate with these lines in the Tao Te Ching:The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.Those who know do not talk.Those who talk do not know.Makes sense. How could the essence of the cosmos be encompassed by words? The human mind wasn't around at the big bang some 14 billion years ago, so it's difficult to see how a verbal explanation could capture the fullness of ultimate reality.But silence has another side: speaking. Yin and yang are manifestations of the Tao. Too much of anything, for too long, is unnatural. We've…

Most religions believe that it's possible for a perfect human being to walk the Earth who is intimately connected with divinity, if not identical with it. (Almost always they're male, so this is why I said God man in the title to this post.)As noted in a previous post, there are numerous candidates for this supremely elevated GIHF (god in human form) position. As some Vedanta folks point out, there are quite a few historical contenders for a GIHF appellation. Jesus, Buddha, Rama, Krishna, Moses, Muhammad, Chaitanya, Ramakrishna are cited, though some of these names are questionable candidates. (Buddha didn't…

My churchlessness was wonderfully energized by Sam Harris' "The End of Faith" when it came out in 2004 -- the same year I started this blog. Harris has a philosophy degree from Stanford and is working on a doctorate in neuroscience, so he's got a balanced perspective on soft beliefs and hard facts. This morning I picked up The End of Faith and reread the almost-final "Experiments in Consciousness" chapter. I'd remembered that he'd said positive things about mysticism after trashing religion, and was curious to revisit his thoughts after five years or so.My conclusion: right on, Mr. Harris. At…

The title of this post is the tag line on David Lane's web site, Neural Surfer. I like it. That's a great place to be -- the shore line of reality where skepticism shovels away the loose sand of mysticism, getting closer to a solid bedrock of truth.Here's a sample of David's take on the subject: "Tangled Phone Lines: why Richard Dawkins hung up on Ken Wilber." Like me, David is an initiate of Radha Soami Satsang Beas who has decided to take seriously the precept that it's possible to have a "science of the soul." I clearly believe that…

A few days ago George posted a comment where he asked what people thought of these statements:The principles common to mystical beliefs appear to be:1) the existence of a Divine formless force underlying everything.2) each person has a true inner self, kernel or spark surrounded by egos or wills clouding their perceptions and ability to know thy inner self and the Divine.3) using meditation to allow connection or alignment of the inner self with the Divine and thus experiencing direct knowledge of the Divine, rather than thru the intellect with its egos which is inherently limited.4) our purpose is self…

I don't know what to make of U.G. Krishnamurti. That would have pleased him, I'm sure. (He died in 2007.)U.G. liked to say, "I have no teaching...I have no claims." Yet he was one of those un-teachers who somehow managed to do a lot of what sure looked like spiritual guiding.Personally, I find such behavior exasperating. I want to scream, "Dude, if you've got nothing to say, if you don't want to be looked upon as a guru, don't talk to people, don't let them make recordings and videos of you, don't allow books to be made out of your…

Kabir was a fifteenth century North Indian mystic poet. I've called him a "patron saint of spiritual independence." Like Steve Martin, he was a wild and crazy guy. Yet you wouldn't know that from how some faiths, such as Sikhism and Sant Mat, try to tame Kabir and confine him within a religious tradition. In a recent post I said:But Sant Mat, in its modern form, lacks the sort of pin that punctures the dualistic, self-righteous, dogmatic bubble. ("Modern," because the 15th century Kabir, who is held up as a Sant Mat saint, did a great job of pinpricking in…

Those steeped in a Western monotheistic religion, such as Christianity or Judaism, might be surprised to learn that millions of people in the world today believe that God walks on Earth in a human form – divinely perfect. Some Christians believe that Jesus was perfect, but his flawed humanity seems to be as important as his divinity. In like fashion, most Muslims consider that Muhammad was a flawless conduit for God's message as revealed in the Koran, but the Prophet himself isn't revered as God. It's only in the Eastern religions, so far as I know, that a person is…