/tag/mysticism

12 quotes tagged 'mysticism'

Publisher: Inner Traditions International (2003)

137-138

This, then, is the state of affairs: Modern science has led to a prodigious increase of information about phenomena in formerly unexplored or neglected fields, but in so doing it has not brought man any closer to the depths of reality, but has rather distanced and estranged him from them; and what nature 'really' is, according to science, escapes any concrete intuition. From this point of view, the latest science has no advantage over earlier, materialistic science. The atoms of yesteryear and the mechanistic conception of the universe at least allowed one to represent something, in however primitive a fashion; but the entities of the latest mathematical physics serve to represent absolutely nothing. They are simply the stitches of a net that has been fabricated and perfected not for the sake of knowing in a concrete, intuitive, and living sense — the only sense that would matter to an undegenerate humanity — but in order to gain an ever greater power, yet still an external one, over nature, whose depths remain closed to man and as mysterious as ever. Nature's mysteries have simply been covered over, and attention diverted from them by the spectacular successes of technology and industry, where one no longer tries to know the world, but to change it for the purposes of an earthbound humanity — following the program explicitly laid out by Karl Marx. \nI will repeat that it is a fraud to speak of a spiritual value in today's science, just because instead of matter, it talks about energy, or because it sees mass as 'coagulated radiations' or a sort of 'congealed light,' and because it considers spaces of more than three dimensions. None of that has any existence outside the theories of specialists in purely abstract mathematical notions. When these notions are substituted for those of earlier physics, they still change nothing of modern man's effective experience of the world. This substitution of one hypothesis for another does not concern real existence, but only interests minds given to pointless divagations. After it has been said that energy, not matter, exists, that we live not in a Euclidean, three-dimensional space but in a curved space of four or more dimensions, and so forth, things remain as they were; my actual experience has not changed a whit, and the significance of what I see — light, the sun, fire, seas, sky, flowering plants, dying beings — the ultimate significance of every process and phenomenon is no more transparent to me. One cannot begin to speak of transcendence, of a deepened knowledge in spiritual or truly intellectual terms. One can only speak of a quantitative extension of notions about other sectors of the external world, which aside from practical utility has only curiosity value. \nIn every other respect, modern science has made reality more alien and inaccessible to men of today than it ever was in the era of materialism and so-called classical physics. And it is infinitely more alien and inaccessible than it was to men of other civilizations and even to primitive peoples. It is a cliche that the modern scientific vision has desacralized the world, and the world desacralized by scientific knowledge has become one of the existential elements that make up modern man, all the more so to the degree that he is 'civilized.' Ever since he has been subject to compulsory education, his mind has been stuffed with 'positive' scientific notions; he cannot avoid seeing in a soulless light everything that surrounds him, and therefore acts destructively.\n

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Author: Alan Watts

Publisher: kindle import (0)

100

Obviously, it takes discipline to make any radical change in one's own behavior patterns, and psychotherapy can drag on for years and years. But this is not my suggestion. Does it really take any considerable time or effort just to understand that you depend on enemies and outsiders to define yourself, and that without some opposition you would be lost? To see this is to acquire, almost instantly, the virtue of humor, and humor and self-righteousness are mutually exclusive. Humor is the twinkle in the eye of a just judge, who knows that he is also the felon in the dock. How could he be sitting there in stately judgment, being addressed as 'Your Honor' or 'Mi Lud,' without those poor bastards being dragged before him day after day? It does not undermine his work and his function to recognize this. He plays the role of judge all the better for realizing that on the next turn of the Wheel of Fortune he may be the accused, and that if all the truth were known, he would be standing there now. If this is cynicism, it is at least loving cynicism—an attitude and an atmosphere that cools off human conflicts more effectively than any amount of physical or moral violence. For it recognizes that the real goodness of human nature is its peculiar balance of love and selfishness, reason and passion, spirituality and sensuality, mysticism and materialism, in which the positive pole has always a slight edge over the negative. (Were it otherwise, and the two were equally balanced, life would come to a total stalemate and standstill.) Thus when the two poles, good and bad, forget their interdependence and try to obliterate each other, man becomes subhuman—the implacable crusader or the cold, sadistic thug. It is not for man to be either an angel or a devil, and the would-be angels should realize that, as their ambition succeeds, they evoke hordes of devils to keep the balance. This was the lesson of Prohibition, as of all other attempts to enforce purely angelic behavior, or to pluck out evil root and branch.

Myths to live by

Author: Joseph Campbell

Publisher: Joseph Campbell Foundation (2011)

The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Author: Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

Publisher: Fine Communications (1998)

250

(On November 23, 1970, the body of Stanislaus Oedipuski, forty-six, of West living Park Road, was found floating in the Chicago river. Death, according to the police laboratory, did not result from drowning but from beating about the head and shoulders with a square-ended object. The first inquiries by homicide detectives revealed that Oedipuski had been a member of God's Lightning and the theory was formed that a conflict between the dead man and his former colleagues might have resulted in his being snuffed with their Wooden crosses. Further investigation revealed that Oedipuski had been a construction worker and until very recently well liked on his job, behaving in a normal, down -to-earth manner, bitching about the government, cursing the lazy bums on Welfare, hating niggers, shouting obscene remarks at good-looking dolls who passed construction sites and— when the odds were safely above the 8-to-l level— joining other middle-aged workers in attacking Illuminatus! Trilogy Seite 145 von 470 and beating young men with long hair, peace buttons, or other un-American stigmata. Then, about a month before, all that had changed. He began bitching about the bosses as well as the government— almost sounding like a communist at times; when somebody else cussed the crumb-bums on Welfare, Stan remarked thoughtfully, 'Well, you know, our union keeps them from getting jobs, fellows, so what else can they do but go on Welfare? Steal?' He even said once, when some of the guys were good-humoredly giving the finger and making other gallant noises and signals toward a passing eighteen-year-old girl, 'Hey, you know, that might really be embarrassing and scaring her . . . !' Worse yet, his own hair begun to grow surprisingly long in the back, and his wife told friends that he didn't look at TV much anymore but instead sat in a chair most evenings reading books. The police found that was indeed true, and his small library— gathered in less than a month— was remarkable indeed, featuring works on astronomy, sociology, Oriental mysticism, Darwin's Origin of the Species, detective novels by Raymond Chandler, Alice in Wonderland, and a college-level text on number theory with the section on primes heavily marked with notes in the margin; the gallant, and now pathetic, tracks of a mind that was beginning to grow after four decades of stagnation, and then had been abruptly stomped. Most mysterious of all was the card found in the dead man's pocket, which although waterlogged, could still be read. One side said THERE IS NO ENEMY ANYWHERE

On November 23, 1970, the body of Stanislaus Oedipuski, forty-six, of West living Park Road, was found floating in the Chicago river. Death, according to the police laboratory, did not result from drowning but from beating about the head and shoulders with a square-ended object. The first inquiries by homicide detectives revealed that Oedipuski had been a member of God's Lightning and the theory was formed that a conflict between the dead man and his former colleagues might have resulted in his being snuffed with their Wooden crosses. Further investigation revealed that Oedipuski had been a construction worker and until very recently well liked on his job, behaving in a normal, down -to-earth manner, bitching about the government, cursing the lazy bums on Welfare, hating niggers, shouting obscene remarks at good-looking dolls who passed construction sites and— when the odds were safely above the 8-to-l level— joining other middle-aged workers in attacking and beating young men with long hair, peace buttons, or other un-American stigmata. Then, about a month before, all that had changed. He began bitching about the bosses as well as the government— almost sounding like a communist at times; when somebody else cussed the crumb-bums on Welfare, Stan remarked thoughtfully, 'Well, you know, our union keeps them from getting jobs, fellows, so what else can they do but go on Welfare? Steal?' He even said once, when some of the guys were good-humoredly giving the finger and making other gallant noises and signals toward a passing eighteen-year-old girl, 'Hey, you know, that might really be embarrassing and scaring her . . . !' Worse yet, his own hair begun to grow surprisingly long in the back, and his wife told friends that he didn't look at TV much anymore but instead sat in a chair most evenings reading books. The police found that was indeed true, and his small library— gathered in less than a month— was remarkable indeed, featuring works on astronomy, sociology, Oriental mysticism, Darwin's Origin of the Species, detective novels by Raymond Chandler, Alice in Wonderland, and a college-level text on number theory with the section on primes heavily marked with notes in the margin; the gallant, and now pathetic, tracks of a mind that was beginning to grow after four decades of stagnation, and then had been abruptly stomped. Most mysterious of all was the card found in the dead man's pocket, which although waterlogged, could still be read. One side said THERE IS NO ENEMY ANYWHERE

This Is It

Author: Alan Watts

Publisher: Vintage (1973)

There must be some connection between the commercialization of life and the separation of religion from mysticism and magic.

Some of the chemicals known as psychedelics provide opportunities for mystical insight in much the same way that well-prepared paints and brushes provide opportunities for fine painting, or a beautifully constructed piano for great music. They make it easier, but they do not accomplish the work all by themselves.

Psychologists with a slant towards materialism therefore argue that mysticism is nothing but sublimated sexuality and frustrated fleshliness, whereas the spiritists maintain that the love-imagery (of the Song of Songs) is nothing but allegory and symbolism never to be taken in its gross animal sense. But is it not possible that both parties are right and wrong, and that the love of nature and the love of spirit are paths upon a circle which meet at their extremes? Perhaps the meeting is discovered only by those who follow both at once. Such a course seems impossible and inconsistent only if it can be held that love is a matter of choosing between alternatives, if, in other words, love is an exclusive attitude of mind which cleaves to one object and rejects all others. If so, it must be quite other than what is said to be God's own love, 'who maketh his sun to shine upon the evil and the good, and sendeth his rain upon the just and the unjust.' Love is surely a disposition of the heart which radiates on all sides like light.

Is it really any scandal, any deplorable inconsistency, for a human being to be both angel and animal with equal devotion. Is it not possible, in other words, to be mystic and sensualist without actual contradiction?