Toward a universal mysticism?

[earl]

Funny you should ask Snoop-the first thread I ever started here I entitled "the zen of Meister Eckhart:"

http://www.comparative-religion.com/...eister+eckhart

love that Eckhart, earl

[Tariki]

Earl,

I have seen your post "in passing".................unfortunately I've been banging my head against a brick wall in the form of another thread and feel mentally exhausted. Need a refill of the Other Power before attempting to jump in......................more in the form of a good nights sleep....

I would just say that the "universal" will always be expressed in multiple ways, and so much the better that it is!



All of you, have a good one.............

[Tariki]

As a contribution to this thread I would just like to offer one or two quotes (!!) in the time honoured tradition of Tariki........if not of Dookie! The quotes are from the letters of Thomas Merton, in this case written to Aldous Huxley. In effect they imply some distinctions within mysticism, even perhaps a form of distinction between "east" and "west". If there is a movement toward a universal mysticism then obviously any present distinctions need to be drawn and recognised for the stepping stones to be legitimate.

Merton is responding to an article by Huxley in the Saturday Evening Post on drugs that help man to achieve an experience of self-transcendence. Merton begins by suggesting that the whole concept of genuine mystical experience could be endangered by the suggestion that something could be produced by a drug. He then goes on to distinguish an essentially aesthetic and natural form of experience to one that could be termed mystical and supernatural. The former he describes as follows......

......an experience which would be an intuitive "tasting" of the inner spirituality of our own being - or an intuition of being as such, arrived at through an intuitive awareness of our own inmost reality. This would be an experience of "oneness" within oneself and with all beings, a flash of awareness of the transcendent Reality that is within all that is real.


Merton then goes on to describe just what he would consider to be the second kind......

It seems to me that a fully mystical experience has in its very essence some note of a direct spiritual contact of two liberties, a kind of a flash or spark which ignites an intuition of all that has been said above (i.e. concerning the aesthetic and natural), plus something much more which I can only describe as "personal", in which God is known not as an "object" or as "Him up there" or "Him in everything" nor as "the All" but as - the biblical expression - I AM, or simply AM. But what I mean is that this is not the kind of intuition that smacks of anything procurable because it is a presence of a Person and depends on the liberty of the Person. And lacking the element of a free gift, a free act of love on the part of Him Who comes, the experience would lose its specifically mystical quality.

The term, the contact of two liberties, has long intrigued me. I have in fact opened more than one thread around this theme without ever truly being able to express how it - at least to me - reaches down to some fundamental differences between the various Faiths, between what could be termed the impersonal and the personal.......even "east" and "west" (often a superficial split, yet still with a little mileage in it!) It is why my own interest in dialogue between the Faiths centres upon the meaning/reality of the "Person". I did say "fundamental differences", yet the Faiths could in fact be using different words and concepts to point toward what would ultimately be the selfsame experience. Merton wrote his words in 1958, ten years before his untimely death. Judging from enties in his Journals, I can only assume he may have "moved on" from the position seemingly taken by his words of 1958. I would love to know!

Anyway, a few "talking points".

[Tariki]

Well, my "talking points" seem to have stopped the talk - I suppose not such a bad thing from the point of view of "mysticism"

Picking up my own talking points in relation to this thread and its intent........Personally, I find it difficult to relate to the "contact of two liberties" except in relation to other human beings. Without giving too many airs and graces to what I more often than not experience as a daily stumbling ineptitude and confusion, maybe I have too much of the apophatic spirit - the way of "unknowing" - to relate to "God", whether as another "liberty" or not. Not to mention much of my acclimatisation to Buddhist teachings. Though much seems "unknowable" - and for me a path that involves too many recognitions of the scenery as it constantly appears would seem more a tragic and repetitive circle than any form of genuine "progess" - the "other" in the shape of another human being is the true centre of another "liberty". I think I mentioned somewhere before, about a story from a Theravadan sutta where the Buddha is depicted as entering the deepest hells, holding aloft a lamp. By its light the people there, up until then thinking that they were alone, are heard to exclaim....."Ah! There are others here beside myself!" I can relate this to the words of a Buddhist writer who has said........"The roots of empathy, compassion, and love lie in that intimate encounter where we hear the other wordlessly say.....do not kill me, do not rob me, do not abuse me, do not deceive me, do not betray me, do not insult me, do not waste my time, do not try to possess me, do not bear me ill will, do not misconstrue me....." The point of all this is that, for me, any "mysticism" should issue in such relationships and encounters, that this is what mysticism can hopefully "converge" upon, what within it can become universal.

[lunamoth]

Hi All, I only had time to quickly scan this thread so far, but I look forward to coming back to it soon.

My thought is that myticism is already universal...not in need of moving toward...regardless of which system of thought (or lack thereof) you ascend within.

[soma]

Yes, the unity of mysticism is buried in all religions and can be experienced without any religion in the collective unconsciousness.

In Christian terms I will attempt to explain how this universal mysticism comes to us from the internal and external.

God the Father is an undivided and indivisible Whole, a pure consciousness that fills all time and permeates all space. This makes our purpose not to find God because he is everywhere, but to realize God's presence and to understand that this all pervading consciousness is always with us. Life flows up from the inside where the Divine Presence is springing up from within us. When we realize this, we recognize that this all-pervading consciousness is responding to us externally from every person, thing or event that transpires. The Divine Presence is everywhere it is nice to see the people on this forum have awakened to the realization of this Presence.