Abstract: It is said of Abbot Agatho that for three years he carried a stone in his mouth until he learned to be silent. (in Merton 1970: 30)A certain elder said: apply yourself to silence, have no vain thoughts and be intent in your meditation. (ibid: 47)Introduction - what is mysticism?I use the term mysticism to refer to a very diverse set of ideas and practices described in a heterogeneous body of writings and recorded oral statements, centred on distinctive beliefs about being, ideas about living, and methods of attaining particular states of awareness of the flux of living - and the vocabularies and discourses that are used to describe and analyse such states. In this chapter I draw on the writings of a wide range of mystics and on commentaries by other authors who have addressed different aspects of mysticism; these include: Teresa of Avila, Jacob Boehme, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Meister Eckhart, Martin Heidegger, Thomas Merton, T. S. Eliot and Baruch Spinoza. I have focused on those aspects of mysticism which support my contention that there are profound similarities in ideas, intentions and methods in the practices and writings of mystics and sceptics. There are, of course, many differences between the two fields but I do not intend to address these in this text - the extant literature already provides ample evidence of a widespread belief in the dissimilarities between mysticism and scepticism, to the extent that they are often considered as being antithetical to each other.The literature of mysticism, primary and secondary, is punctuated with many attempts to define the term. I have discussed some of these definitions in a previous book (Danvers 2006: 261-276) and I will not revisit the issue here.NB. In the following pages I use the term on many occasions. In the main I distinguish between two forms or views of the self: the unitary, ego-centred, conventional self - sometimes referred to as the Cartesian self- a view of the self as being relatively fixed and clearly bounded with a distinct essence or core (sometimes also referred to as a soul); and, an alternative view of the self as a porous, permeable process - open to continual change, construction and revision - the relational self. I hope by the end of the book it will become reasonably clear what is meant by these two versions of the self, how different they are and the implications of these differences for how we think about human being.Being hereAt the heart of mysticism lies something apparently very simple: the mystery, wonder and sheer good fortune of being alive. Mystics of every tradition and time are fascinated by, surprised at, and deeply grateful for, the fact of being here. While the rest of humanity may take this fact for granted, letting it settle into the background of their lives, except in extremis, mystics have it in mind most of the time. They try to live, think and feel through this great mystery, using the disciplines and tools available to them. For mystics, being here, being conscious, is never a given, an assumption, it is always something edged with uncertainty and ineffability. Something to be investigated through thought and feeling, something to be weighed and tested, something to be attended to with great intensity and to be condensed into poetry and imagery, words and signs.As we shall see, in a curiously similar way, sceptics are also puzzled by existence, curious as to what it is to be here. Sceptics take nothing for granted, there is an element of doubt about everything, a sense of uncertainty as to what is, a recognition that what is can never be defined, let alone be contained or accurately mapped by human discourse or description. There is always something ungraspable and irreducible about the way things are, something always out of reach of human understanding. No wonder many mystics and sceptics manifest a shared sense of wonder, humility and open-minded inquisitiveness about existence. …
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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