[MD] are theism and mysticism mutually exclusive notions?

[david buchanan]

gav said:
i don't think so, but i am interested to hear what others think.

dmb says:
First of all, I have to confess that I'm going to be a bit biased here 
because I'm just crazy about gav. But as to the actual question, I'd say 
that philosophical mysticism and theism present two incompatible visions of 
reality. Considering the context I think its a bit odd that Ian refuses to 
seriously entertain Pirsig's comments on the topic, but it hardly matters 
since this distinction does not depend on the MOQ. The following is from 
"The Oxford Companion to Philosophy"...

"Mysticism of the theistic, dualistic sort seems to generate no particular 
difficulty for Christan metaphysics, and indeed ofen includes specifically 
Christian elements, such as visions of Christ. Strongly monistic mysticism, 
however, is harder to square with a Christian view, and when such mystics 
have themselves been Christians they have often een suspected of heresy. 
This sort of mysticism is likely to find a more comfortable religious home 
in the great non-theistic religions." (p.600)

You may recall that I've used quotes from Campbell and Northrop on this same 
point. Campbell also thinks the distinction between monism and dualism, as 
its referred to here in the "Oxford" quote, is the key. In a theistic, 
dualistic religion we get a picture of man in a RELATIONSHIP with a divine 
creator, very much like the basic SOM picture where subjects exist in a 
relationship with an external, objective reality. By contrast, monistic, 
non-theistic mysticism says that it is not a matter of relationship between 
man and god, between man and nature, but rather a matter of indentity. 
Instead of saying we have contact with god or with the world, this sort of 
mysticism says you are god, you are the world. Thou Art That. You are 
indentical to that. Or, at least, the distinction between Thou and That is 
conventional and therefore illusory.

See, if enlightenment consists in seeing that ultimate reality is undivided, 
and if dualism depends upon dividing this from that, then enlightenment 
consists in seeing that dualistic theism is part and parcel of the illusion 
to be overcome. Of course words are part of the divided world too and are 
always going to be inadequate on this topic, gotta see it for yourself, but 
you'll notice that I'm mostly just saying what philosophical mysticism is 
NOT. And one thing that it is NOT is theism. That fact that it is also way 
too static is an additional problem which only compounds and solidifies this 
fundamental error.

gav said:
or is the term 'god', unlike quality, an explicit concept? hence DMBs, 
Pirsig's and ant's aversion to theism? perhaps......

dmb says:
I think the problem of god as an "explicit concept" does depend on the 
dualistic assumptions as explained above, but really rears its ugly head on 
the conventional level. This is where the blood gets spilt over rival 
concepts of god. We can see that even though Judaism, Islam and Christianity 
are all monotheistic, dualistic religions there are still plenty of 
believers who are willing to fit for one concept of god over the others. 
Statements from the head of the Catholic church about the differences 
between Christianity and Islam recently inspired riots throughout the 
Islamic world, for example. All threee of those religions have doctrines 
saying the very same piece of real estate, I believe it is the Dome of the 
Rock in Jerusalem, was promised to them by their god and they each believe 
that controlling that little piece of land is required if history is to be 
fulfilled, so that the end of the world can arrive. This is a ridiculous and 
extremely dangerous situation. So I'm saying that theism, even on a 
pragmatic level, is a pretty serious problem. Its just a form of tribalism, 
really.

gav said:
'god' has more static connotations than 'quality'....and because of that is 
less useful as a mystic marker...perhaps. yes 'god' seems static to me, 
whereas the Tao and Quality are more dynamic, 'process' terms.

dmb says:
Right. Being too static with respect to politics or other conventional 
realities is bad enough, but I think when references to DQ itself become too 
static something has been killed. In the class I'm taking at the University 
of Colorado we just finished looking at how this process occured in our own 
tradition. We looked at work of "The Jesus Seminar", a large group of 
scholars who set out to determine, through testual analysis, what the 
historical Jesus actually said. (For the sake of brevity i won't describe 
the techniques they developed.) They determined that he said less than 20% 
of what is attributed to him in the tradition that's been handed down to us. 
They found that nearly everything he did actually say could be found in the 
parables and they even assert that the historical Jesus never spoke publicly 
except in parables. And it just so happens that the recently discovered, in 
1949 if memory serves, Gospel of Thomas is one of the earliest known 
Christian texts and it consists of nothing but parables. It is something 
akin to authentic, according to these scholars.

I was thrilled when, in the final minutes of a three hour discussion, the 
head of the religion department who was a guest lecturer on this topic, 
finally got around to saying that Jesus spoke in parables for the same 
reason that Zen masters speak in koans. Paradox is used to collaspe 
rationality, to demonstrate the limits of thought and language itself in the 
apprehension of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of heaven is like a 
mustard seed? What? The kingdom of heaven is like a grain jar with an unseen 
hole in it so that the woman who carries it home from the market is 
surprized to find it empty when she arrives home and finally puts it down? 
Huh? The kindom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a farmer's field, and 
the field is bought and the treasure is fogotten. What the hell is this 
freakin hippy talking about, man? When we try to read this stuff in terms of 
ethical tales or conventional norms, its bat-shit crazy. But if Thomas is 
read with through the lens of philosophical mysticism, it makes a great deal 
of sense. Verse 61 even contains a little nugget where Jesus is reported to 
have said, "I am he who exists from the undivided" in verse 72 he says, "O 
man, who has made me a divider?" "I am not a divider, am I?" and in verse 
106 Thomas has him saying, "When you make the two one, you will become the 
sons of man, and when you say, 'Mountain, move away', it will move away". I 
think you can see dualism being rejected in this sort of talk. I and the 
father are one, sort of stuff all over the place. And this is also the 
gospel where Jesus basically says that heaven is not some other place, but 
this world rightly seen. He says in verse 113, he says its not a place or a 
time, "Rather, the kindom of the father is spead out upon the earth, and men 
do not see it".

But then when we turn to the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Luke and Mark) we 
can see these same parables, except that they have been drained of their 
mind-shattering paradoxicality and are instead softened and/or turned into 
allegorical tales in support of conventional morality. Kings and rich men 
are unequivocally denied the ability to enter this kingdom in the Gnostic 
parables while in the synoptic gospels its just harder for the rich and 
powerful and they're a lot like us on this point anyway. Softening statement 
like "But all things are possible through the LORD" quickly follow to take 
the edge off. I mean, its pretty easy to see that Christianity was drained 
of mysticism fairly early on and it has been treated with great hostility 
ever since.

gav said:
so i guess i have just had a bet each way....i think god is simply not a 
good term for pointing to a
dynamic ultimate reality: too static.  ...hold on i think i just changed my 
own mind,

dmb says:
I suppose that's how it usually works. We have to persuade ourselves to be 
truly persuaded, which is to say we have to work through the concepts and 
reach the conclusion for ourselves rather than just be told. Others can help 
to set out the hoops, if you will, but no opinions will be altered unless 
and until you decide to talk a walk through those hoops.

Also, there is the idea that its simply not possible to contain the meaning 
of this experience in intellectual terms because it is prior to any such 
linguistic divisions. This is why mystics can only make oblique and 
paradoxical references to it. A brilliant darkness. A deafening silence. A 
shimmering nothingness. Stuff like that can get you oriented to look in the 
right direction, but if you want your "hallelujah shine", if you wanna meet 
the Buddha and kill him on the road to glory, you gotta go down there 
brother, you gotta get in the water, Jordan's mighty water.

With apologies to The Gourds. (Mystics with guitars and a Texas accent.)

dmb

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