Hey there Wayfarer, thanks for joining in. Great post!
It seems a good goal for such conversations is to offer a variety of options for approaching such subjects so as to make them accessible to as many readers as we can. If true, then instead of looking for a "one true way" we might be presenting as many different ways as we can. In that spirit, I have no argument with anything you've said.
It seems natural that in very many aspects of life we would learn from our experiences, ie. have realizations. And we will often very reasonably consider experience to be a means to the end of learning. So far, so good.
To me, if what we're calling mysticism uses such an "experience to learn" model, then it's just philosophy. Nothing wrong with that, but if it's philosophy, then it can't provide an alternative to philosophy. And on forums like this I'm guessing quite a few of us could use an alternative to philosophy to balance our compulsive over thinking. I certainly do.
An alternative to the "experience to learn" model would be to value experience for itself, not as a means to some other end. As example, if I eat a tomato I will receive nutrition whether or not I know anything about tomatoes or learn anything from eating them. Like that.
While this is not a one true way, it has some advantages to recommend it.
First, we can approach such experiences through purely mechanical means, which makes them much more accessible to many more people. Philosophers tend to find such practical simplicity distasteful
:-) but we are 1% of the population, so who cares.
Second, if we take emphasis off of the realizations, and just leave them alone to do their own thing, we're gone a substantial distance to preventing ego from hi-jacking the operation. To illustrate, let's return to the tomato example. Eating a tomato is just a simple act of maintenance of bodily functions. It's not a path one climbs to some higher station. You eat a tomato, and then a few hours you have to eat another one. Routine business which continues until you die. It's pretty hard to turn eating a tomato in to some kind of glorious ego becoming trip.
I think "mystical" experiences can be viewed that way too. Our mind overheats from excessive use, so we cool it down. It overheats again tomorrow, requiring another fix. Maintenance of a mechanical function of the body, just like eating, sleeping, elimination, exercise sex etc.
If we avoid excessively fixating on our experiences, we will be under less stress in our practice.
If you're reading a book while eating the tomato, you still get the nutrition. We don't have to focus on the tomato, we just have to eat it.
I would argue that it's the quest for realizations, the climbing of a ladder to someplace else, trying to get somewhere, accomplish something, achieve, learn, advance, mature, grow, become, which is the source of the fixations.
I would describe what we're calling mysticism as being the opposite of that. Not becoming. Being.