It is curious how there seems to be an apparatus, or means within us to follow this path, to seek this end. Or is it just the human mind which once developed found solace in such areas of contemplation. The ape that thought of God, condemning all who followed to a longing for more, for escape.

This is a passage from Hegel which I think is particularly relevant, quoted in the book I am reading, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition. Magee thinks Hegel uses mytho-poetic language to "encircle" or "circle around" his subjects with concrete images to gain speculative knowledge of them, rather than trying to think them in the determinate language of abstract conceptualization. So we get a picture, but no definitive propositional-type claims are made about the subject and there always remains mystery.

I hope this can be opened; I didn't have time to type it out; I'm pretty pressed at the moment.

I noticed that Hegel and hermetics book yesterday - there's synchronicity for you. I've been studying mysticism for decades - don't go along with the 'emotions and concepts' remark, but never mind. What I would like to contribute is a few names who I think had nothing mystical about them, nor any affinity with mysticism - namely, Darwin, Marx and Freud.

I much admire Schrodinger but that particular expression is only characteristic of certain strains of mysticism, to others (both Christian and Buddhist), not so much, although if the idea were expressed as 'divine union' Christians might assent.

Nevertheless a noble sentiment

This is a passage from Hegel which I think is particularly relevant, quoted in the book I am reading, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition. Magee thinks Hegel uses mytho-poetic language to "encircle" or "circle around" his subjects with concrete images to gain speculative knowledge of them, rather than trying to think them in the determinate language of abstract conceptualization. So we get a picture, but no definitive propositional-type claims are made about the subject and there always remains mystery. — John

I opened the passage and thought it was great. I want to read that book. I read both Kojeve and Wittgenstein's TLP with something like a mystical or speculative feeling. "Mytho-poetic language" is exactly what I have in mind. "Symbols of transformation" also come to mind. The propositional content does not exhaust the symbolic statement. It has a resonant ambiguity. I was listening to this beautiful song last night and it occurred to me how supreme poetry set to music can be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch6h278GEpA

It's odd how translations of Aristotle and Plato often refer to 'God', and this does the same: 'I have become a god' would be right too, wouldn't it? I was brought up an atheist so I can never grasp this reflex monotheism.

It's called 'apotheosis' by the ancient Greeks. In both ancient Greek and Indian culture, there were cults of those who were said to have become divinities through their heroic actions and sacrifices. After Christianity, the term was retained as 'theosis':

In Eastern Orthodoxy deification (theosis) is a transformative process whose goal is likeness to or union with God. As a process of transformation, theosis is brought about by the effects of katharsis (purification of mind and body) and theoria ('illumination' with the 'vision' of God). According to Eastern Orthodox teaching, theosis is very much the purpose of human life. It is considered achievable only through a synergy (or cooperation) between human activity and God's uncreated energies (or operations)

I don't see anything 'reflexive' about it, except for in the cultural sense - for those brought up in such a culture then it is natural to believe what you're taught.

I don't think Plato and Aristotle used the name God (although scholars would be able to confirm that.) I think that Plato would speak in terms of the One and the Good, which was then later assumed by the early Greek-speaking theologians to refer to God.

Plato and Aristotle were the first natural theologians. The pre-Socratic philosophers that preceded them rejected fanciful stories about the gods that formed the basis of Athenian civil religion and substituted various forms of atheism. But Plato and Aristotle held more nuanced views. Both philosophers followed their predecessors in denying the gods of popular piety, but they also developed theological views of their own. These were not based on divine revelation. They were a product of rational reflection on what any divine being must be like.

This philosophical divinity was nothing like the Olympian gods — or the revealed God of the Bible. It (not he) was austere and impersonal, taking no interest in the fate of human beings. It neither heard nor answered prayers. It played no providential role in individual or collective human lives. It didn't reward the righteous or punish the wicked. Above all, it resembled a philosopher whose quest for wisdom was complete. This "prime mover," or ultimate cause of all things, was pure mind or intellect — "thought thinking itself," to use Aristotle's famous formulation. — Damon Linker

Eastern Orthodox Christianity nice to see you quote about it! I'm an Orthodox Christian ;)

I think it's about the harmonization or unity of a personality. It usually hurts to be of "two minds." We can, of course, divide the self into various drives, but ideally they all work together, just like our internal organs. But then I have nothing against gods plural. What religion means to me is miles above (or miles below) a resistance to polytheism. It's above/below anything and everything static and finite and solemn, but it's only "infinite" in the realm of feeling (love, humor, at-home-ness) and in the realm of concept, as the negation of every finite "idol." For me, true religion is not solemn or anxious or defensive or accusing. It's exactly the opposite. But to think that I'm trying to bring a law along the lines of "thou shalt not be solemn or anxious or defensive or accusing" is to absolutely miss the point. For me, that's the stone rolled back in front of the tomb. I don't care if artists put a crucifix in urine. Any god that fragile is bad technology. (I think "Christ" or "Lucifer" is "just" a piece of technology, like just about every damn thing in the world-- and not by any means the only technology that humans need. )

I admire David Bentley Hart, and have also read a bit from Semyon Frank and Vladimir Lossky. The Orthodox church stayed a lot nearer to Platonism.

It makes no claims beyond emotions and concepts --or not even concepts exactly but potent symbols or myths that encourage and communicate what is "just" emotion as a "halo" around these concepts, symbols, myths. — Hoo

In view of Wayfarers comment about a point I didn't pick up in the OP, I want to add that I think the idea of mysticism as "just" "emotions and concepts", being the polemic to the proposition that mysticism somehow shows us something determinate about the Real, is just the kind of abstract thinking that Hegel wants to get away from with his use of mytho-poetic language to reach a concretely rational, as opposed to a merely abstract, knowledge.

Yes that is true (regarding Platonism). It seems much more other-worldly focused than Catholicism for example. Not that I necessarily view that as a good thing, but it's the way things have been. I think this other-worldly focus has sidelined them a lot - one of the reasons that Eastern Orthodoxy isn't more widespread. Same as Buddhism - a relatively peaceful religion, focused solely on Nirvana - can't expand and grow that much, as it puts the emphasis on the spiritual to the detriment, if necessary, of the worldly. Personally I prefer a stronger balance, and therefore find myself being much more an Aristotelian than a Platonist - the spiritual merely uplifts, but does not negate the worldly - and worldly things are also goods.

I hear you. I don't want to bring some kind of law or truth on these profound matters. When I reflect on my own experience, I'm satisfied with the "just feelings and concepts" description. To be clear, these are the most beautiful concepts and feelings I know. In the image, they are embodied, of course. I see old paintings of Jesus making a sign with his hand, and I think "that painter has felt/thought the same kind of thing that I have felt/thought." It's a gleam in the eye, a foot in the ocean, the view from a mountain's peak. It informs one's daily life without obliterating it.

But don't forget the meaning of the word 'ecstacy' - it means 'ex-stasis', outside the normal state. So it is also outside the 'conceptual mind' and the kinds of emotions that they're associated with.

Below is an excerpt from a first-person account of a profound mystical epiphany experienced by an anonymous female subject in correspondence with Canadian psychiatrist Richard Bucke, from the late 19th Century.

At dinner I remarked: "How strangely happy I am to-day!" If I had realized then, as I did afterwards, what a great thing was happening to me, I should doubtless have dropped my work and given myself up to the contemplation of it, but it seemed so simple and natural (with all the wonder of it) that I and my affairs went on as usual. The light and color glowed, the atmosphere seemed to quiver and vibrate around and within me. Perfect rest and peace and joy were everywhere, and, more strange than all, there came to me a sense as of some serene, magnetic presence grand and all pervading. The life and joy within me were becoming so intense that by evening I became restless and wandered about the rooms, scarcely knowing what to do with myself. Retiring early that I might be alone, soon all objective phenomena were shut out. I was seeing and comprehending the sublime meaning of things, the reasons for all that had before been hidden and dark. The great truth that life is a spiritual evolution, that this life is but a passing phase in the soul's progression, burst upon my astonished vision with overwhelming grandeur. Oh, I thought, if this is what it means, if this is the outcome, then pain is sublime! Welcome centuries, eons, of suffering if it brings us to this! And still the splendor increased. Presently what seemed to be a swift, oncoming tidal wave of splendor and glory ineffable came down upon me, and I felt myself being enveloped, swallowed up.

I felt myself going, losing myself. Then I was terrified, but with a sweet terror. I was losing my consciousness, my identity, but was powerless to hold myself. Now came a period of rapture, so intense that the universe stood still, as if amazed at the unutterable majesty of the spectacle! Only one in all the infinite universe! The All-loving, the Perfect One! The Perfect Wisdom, truth, love and purity! And with the rapture came the insight. In that same wonderful moment of what might be called supernal bliss, came illumination. I saw with intense inward vision the atoms or molecules, of which seemingly the universe is composed—I know not whether material or spiritual—rearranging themselves, as the cosmos (in its continuous, everlasting life) passes from order to order.* What joy when I saw there was no break in the chain—not a link left out—everything in its place and time. Worlds, systems, all blended in one harmonious whole. Universal life, synonymous with universal love!

How long that period of intense rapture lasted I do not know—it seemed an eternity—it might have been but a few moments. Then came relaxation, the happy tears, the murmured, rapturous expression. I was safe; I was on the great highway, the upward road which humanity had trod with bleeding feet, but with deathless hope in the heart and songs of love and trust on the lips. I understood, now, the old eternal truths, yet fresh and new and sweet as the dawn. How long the vision lasted I cannot tell. In the morning I awoke with a slight headache, but with the spiritual sense so strong that what we call the actual, material things surrounding me seemed shadowy and unreal. My point of view was entirely changed. Old things had passed away and all had become new. The ideal had become real, the old real had lost its former reality and had become shadowy. This shadowy unreality of external things did not last many days. Every longing of the heart was satisfied,* every question answered, the "pent-up, aching rivers" had reached the ocean—I loved infinitely and was infinitely loved! The universal tide flowed in upon me in waves of joy and gladness, pouring down over me as in torrents of fragrant balm.

This describes an actual sensation.

The correspondent's sister wrote to the author a few months later:

It was in December, three months after, that I saw my sister for the first time after the experience described, and her changed appearance made such a deep impression on me that I shall never forget it. Her looks and manner were so changed that she scarcely seemed the same person. There was a clear, bright, peaceful light in her eyes, lighting her whole face, and she was so happy and contented—so satisfied with things as they were. It seemed as though some heavy weight had been lifted and she was free. As she talked to me I felt that she was living in a new world of thought and feeling unknown to me.

Personally I prefer a stronger balance, and therefore find myself being much more an Aristotelian than a Platonist -the spiritual merely uplifts, but does not negate the worldly - and worldly things are also goods. — Agustino

We very much agree here. Render unto Caesar and Newton what is theirs. Brush your teeth. Eat well. Learn a trade or a profession. But let "faith" or "Christ" light up and lighten the mundane.

indeed, well said! :D

Beautiful quote. I relate to some of that. I've experienced some of that myself. But I don't think there's a difference in quality but only a difference in the intensity of the love experienced. For me, anyway, it was just like going from 40 watts of love to 400 watts of love. And the sense that this life (my life) and this world were "perfect" and "infinite" and "holy" was also there. My theory is that this stuff is "hard wired" in our guts. We can switch it on with the help of concepts and symbols. If a person tunes in to this elevated state, it's going to have a personal stain, like light through stained glass. But the center of it seems to be the love and the affirmation of the world that once looked so broken and sinful and ugly. This is why (for me) the accusation in the name of some exterior law is a betrayal or a forgetting of the experience or insight. It's merely politics or prudence, a necessary "evil" but not at all "deep" religion.

But don't forget the meaning of the word 'ecstacy' - it means 'ex-stasis', outside the normal state. So it is also outside the 'conceptual mind' and the kinds of emotions that they're associated with. — Wayfarer

See, here I think you are dropping into the other half of the abstract dichotomy. Mystical experience is dichotomously thought as either wholly contained within concepts and emotions or as standing completely outside them. To say it again. I think this is just the kind of thinking Hegel is attempting to replace with his myth-poetic language. As an interesting aside: I think it could be said that the late Heidegger tried, in a very different way from Hegel, to take up this project of arriving at a new/old concrete thinking'. I say new/old here, because Heidegger saw it as kind of return to the Presocratics, to a time before philosophy had "gone wrong"; whereas Hegel certainly did not see it this way at all; he rather saw it as the culmination and completion of the dialectic that is the whole history and the historicity of philosophical thought. There is the notion of anamnesis in Hegel, but it is the anamnesis of re-membering all the historical moments, and bringing them together in an apotheosis, to achieve Absolute Knowledge. However, his absolute knowledge is still only the realization of the whole process of the evolution of rational consciousness; and does not contain the clairvoyance of mystical consciousness itself, but rather makes way for it; as Owen Barfield suggests in this article here:
http://www.owenbarfield.org/rudolf-steiner-and-hegel/

Owen Barfield suggests in this article here:
http://www.owenbarfield.org/rudolf-steiner-and-hegel/ — John

Seems like an interesting read, thanks for sharing that. His book Saving the Appearances influenced my thinking quite a bit!

Yes, I've also read it, and I think it's an important book. You and I may not agree on the details; but I think we would agree that much (or even most) of modern philosophy is seriously one-sided and lacking real significance for human life. I'm coming more and more to think that Hegel has been misappropriated by the Post moderns and that much of their own more or less arbitrary fossicking in the tradition seems to, on the basis of nothing more than merely fashionable 'modern' prejudices ' throw the baby out with the bathwater'.
:)

Any have anything to add? — Hoo

The bit about lovers seems to me to parallel Martin Buber's concept of 'Ich und du' in which he sees close personal relationships as a window into, or a path towards, a relationship with God. I've never felt that I understood very well what Buber was getting at, yet it resonates strongly with me, which is for me part of what mysticism is about.

The quote from Schrodinger is an example of a phenomenon I've noticed which is that many of the really great scientists and mathematicians have a significant mystical dimension. Others one might mention are Newton, Heisenberg, Einstein, Godel and Darwin.
[Hah! I just typed Heidegger instead of Heisenberg without realising it, and then had to correct it. That's an interesting slip. Freudian?]
In general the promoters of anti-mystical 'Scientism' - people like Hawking, Krauss and Dawkins - seem to me to be less impressive as scientists.

I think this is just the kind of thinking Hegel is attempting to replace with his myth-poetic language. As an interesting aside: I think it could be said that the late Heidegger tried, in a very different way from Hegel, to take up this project of arriving at a new/old concrete thinking'. I say new/old here, because Heidegger saw it as kind of return to the Presocratics, to a time before philosophy had "gone wrong"; whereas Hegel certainly did not see it this way at all; he rather saw it as the culmination and completion of the dialectic that is the whole history and the historicity of philosophical thought. — John

I think the German philosophers generally are the last island of philosophical mysticism - well, save for the likes of Timothy Sprigge - but golly they're verbose. Ask a simple question, get an eight-hour answer.

I am reminded of a story about a professor who went to interview a Zen master.

Nan-in, a Japanese master, received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. He was a very learned man, erudite and curious, and spoke of the grand vision of Mahayaha Buddhism and much else besides.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

'Like this cup', Nan-in said, 'you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you are empty?'

The bit about lovers seems to me to parallel Martin Buber's concept of 'Ich und du' in which he sees close personal relationships as a window into, or a path towards, a relationship with God. I've never felt that I understood very well what Buber was getting at, yet it resonates strongly with me, which is for me part of what mysticism is about. — andrewk

I actually read I and Thou very young, probably too young -- but I always remembered that he capitalized "Cause." It stuck with me, this archetype of the sacred 'It.' It's also in Stirner, who writes from a place of savage but ultimately benevolent irony in a different context. We use these "sacred its" to exalt ourselves. (Or at least I see this general structure everywhere.)

But, yes, the lovers! "That which is done out of love is always beyond good and evil." I realize that law and the quest for superiority by criterion X is always going to dominate mundane life, but I'm grateful that we can sometimes (the more the better) love others "authentically" --as a privilege and not a duty --and attain a state of play, freedom, sinlessness, "infinite jest" that knows nothing sacred, for it is the sacred in its warm-hearted impiety. I thought of ES and his waves. I think of Freud and his "oceanic feeling." I very much relate to something like a "rational" mysticism. It's very nice to see such left brain power and discipline married to profound "mytho-poetic" insight or intelligence.

In general the promoters of anti-mystical 'Scientism' - people like Hawking, Krauss and Dawkins - seem to me to be less impressive as scientists. — andrewk

I can't speak to their science, but Scientism is nowhere I'd want to live. Krauss misunderstood (in my view) the "why is there something rather than nothing?" question profoundly. (He seems blind to his own metaphysical enframing of this question. )

a footnote to the my previous post - I don't want that to come across as being simply dismissive of Hegel - the writings of the Buddhist scholastic philosophers are voluminous and technical in a very similar manner to German idealism.

But at the center of the mystical vision there has to be a radical simplicity. It is essentially the same vision as 'the One' of Plotinus, whereby the individual and individuated mind is thoroughly (re)absorbed into the single source of all manifest things. Of course it is indescribable, but one of the (many) paradoxes surrounding it, is that for those who realise it, it is also utterly obvious and something that has been obvious all along (cf. 'all beings are already Buddha').

But I'm already digressing - what I set out to say was this: that at the center of every being is actually an unknown. We ourselves are that source, but that source within ourselves is something we can't know. I'm sure that is the motivation of the hostility of materialism to mysticism: it is the desire to avoid the fact of the mysteriousness of our own being.

The modem way to flee from God is to rush ahead and ahead, as quickly as the beams before sunrise, to conquer more and more space in every direction, in every humanly possible way, to be always active, to be always planning, and to be always preparing.

And never actually where you are.

But at the center of the mystical vision there has to be a radical simplicity. It is essentially the same vision as 'the One' of Plotinus, whereby the individual and individuated mind is thoroughly (re)absorbed into the single source of all manifest things. Of course it is indescribable, but one of the (many) paradoxes surrounding it, is that for those who realise it, it is also utterly obvious and something that has been obvious all along (cf. 'all beings are already Buddha'). — Wayfarer

I like the radical simplicity, but must it be as Plotinus sees it? Maybe. For all I know, there are 777 varieties of profound or heightened experience. But I prefer "all beings are already Buddha" without the paradox. I can only read that line in terms of "creative play" or the selves that we are when we are "beyond good and evil" and lovingly absorbed in a person or a project. This is a good way to read Genesis, too. The tree of knowledge of good and evil obscures the tree of life. Of course we want extraordinary feeling, but here too I wouldn't rule out sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. (I guess I'll represent the 'devil-worshiping' branch of mysticism around here. )

If you want that kind of enjoyment there's no need to rationalize it. Mystics generally tend towards abstemiousness and it's a hard path, an inconvenient truth.

Ah, Wayfarer, come on, man. I don't live so wild these days. I'm trying to get a PhD in math over here. I like my pleasures serene these days. But why must the spiritual path be so anti-flesh? anti-drugs? anti-music? Or, basically, anti-Dionysian? Can we talk of the depths of the self and insist that this involves something cold and pure like crystalline intellect? Do think there is nothing to be learned on the "irrational" side of the personality? No darkness to look at with open eyes and assimilate?
No doubt, I'm coming from a Norman O. Brown kind of perspective. Lifedeath on one side and immortality/undeath/unlife on the other. Incarnation, the word became flesh. Jesus and Socrates were put to death by the pious. They were perverts or atheists or blasphemers. As I see it, there's a strain of mysticism that's too radical to be institutionalized. This strain is essentially subversive. It runs like wind through the nets of hierarchy and standardize dogma. "From now on, this is the way that religion shall proceed. The man with the robe or the hat will tell you all that you need to know." An institution that wants to involve itself in world affairs has no choice but to ossify. It's a bone for the beating of stubborn unbelievers --and heretics like Jesus. Let's not miss the center of the myth. The word made flesh was publicly executed.

This might interest someone.

The time [in which Jesus lived] was politically so agitated that, as is said in the gospels, people thought they could not accuse the founder of Christianity more successfully than if they arraigned him for 'political intrigue', and yet the same gospels report that he was precisely the one who took the least part in these political doings. But why was he not a revolutionary, not a demagogue, as the Jews would gladly have seen him? [...] Because he expected no salvation from a change of conditions, and this whole business was indifferent to him. He was not a revolutionary, like Caesar, but an insurgent: not a state-overturner, but one who straightened himself up. [...] [Jesus] was not carrying on any liberal or political fight against the established authorities, but wanted to walk his own way, untroubled about, and undisturbed by, these authorities. [...] But, even though not a ringleader of popular mutiny, not a demagogue or revolutionary, he (and every one of the ancient Christians) was so much the more an insurgent who lifted himself above everything that seemed so sublime to the government and its opponents, and absolved himself from everything that they remained bound to [...]; precisely because he put from him the upsetting of the established, he was its deadly enemy and real annihilator...." — Stirner

As I see it, mystics are generally non-worldly. But I know that whenever I voice that opinion on DharmaWheel it gets a lot of criticism there also - once I made a post about how attitudes had been changed by the sexual revolution, and the response was a picture of Adolf Hitler. (I hadn't actually said anything more that what I said here, by the way.)

But if you look at the ethics of traditional mysticism they're what anyone from today's culture would consider strict. Sure there are dionysian and 'left-hand-path' mystics , maybe some of them will come and post here. But I think the issue is, we nowadays regard sense-enjoyment as a human right - Western culture thinks that is what freedom consists of. Ask yourself whether what I'm saying is pushing buttons on that account.

I think I can quote this, too, because Nietzsche was absolutely something of a mystic. His superman is an updated Christ image. (Or that's my reading.) In retrospect, I realize how much The Antichrist enriched my notion of Christ. Nietzsche, like Blake, is a Christian heretic.

With a little freedom in the use of words, one might actually call Jesus a “free spirit.” He cares nothing for what is established: the word killeth, whatever is established killeth. The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. He speaks only of inner things: “life” or “truth” or “light” is his word for the innermost—in his sight everything else, the whole of reality, all nature, even language, has significance only as sign, as allegory.—Here it is of paramount importance to be led into no error by the temptations lying in Christian, or rather ecclesiastical prejudices: such a symbolism par excellence stands outside all religion, all notions of worship, all history, all natural science, all worldly experience, all knowledge, all politics, all psychology, all books, all art—his “wisdom” is precisely a pure ignorance of all such things.
If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this: that he regarded only subjective realities as realities, as “truths” —that he saw everything else, everything natural, temporal, spatial and historical, merely as signs, as materials for parables. The concept of “the Son of God” does not connote a concrete person in history, an isolated and definite individual, but an “eternal” fact, a psychological symbol set free from the concept of time. The same thing is true, and in the highest sense, of the God of this typical symbolist, of the “kingdom of God,” and of the “sonship of God.” Nothing could be more un-Christian than the crude ecclesiastical notions of God as a person, of a “kingdom of God” that is to come, of a “kingdom of heaven” beyond, and of a “son of God” as the second person of the Trinity. All this—if I may be forgiven the phrase—is like thrusting one’s fist into the eye (and what an eye!) of the Gospels: a disrespect for symbols amounting to world-historical cynicism.... But it is nevertheless obvious enough what is meant by the symbols “Father” and “Son”—not, of course, to every one—: the word “Son” expresses entrance into the feeling that there is a general transformation of all things (beatitude), and “Father” expresses that feeling itself—the sensation of eternity and of perfection.
The “kingdom of heaven” is a state of the heart—not something to come “beyond the world” or “after death.” The whole idea of natural death is absent from the Gospels: death is not a bridge, not a passing; it is absent because it belongs to a quite different, a merely apparent world, useful only as a symbol. The “hour of death” is not a Christian idea—“hours,” time, the physical life and its crises have no existence for the bearer of “glad tidings.”... The “kingdom of God” is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a “millennium”—it is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere....
Jesus himself had done away with the very concept of “guilt,” he denied that there was any gulf fixed between God and man; he lived this unity between God and man, and that was precisely his “glad tidings”...


The old God, wholly “spirit,” wholly the high-priest, wholly perfect, is promenading his garden: he is bored and trying to kill time. Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.
What does he do? He creates man—man is entertaining.... But then he notices that man is also bored. God’s pity for the only form of distress that invades all paradises knows no bounds: so he forthwith creates other animals. God’s first mistake: to man these other animals were not entertaining—he sought dominion over them; he did not want to be an “animal” himself.—So God created woman. In the act he brought boredom to an end—and also many
other things! Woman was the second mistake of God.—“Woman, at bottom, is a serpent, Heva”—every priest knows that; “from woman comes every evil in the world”—every priest knows that, too. Ergo, she is also to blame for science.... It was through woman that man learned to taste of the tree of knowledge.
...
That grand passion which is at once the foundation and the power of a sceptic’s existence, and is both more enlightened and more despotic than he is himself, drafts the whole of his intellect into its service; it makes him unscrupulous; it gives him courage to employ unholy means; under certain circumstances it does not begrudge him even convictions. Conviction as a means: one may achieve a good deal by means of a conviction. A grand passion makes use of and uses up convictions; it does not yield to them—it knows itself to be sovereign.—On the contrary, the need of faith, of something unconditioned by yea or nay, of Carlylism, if I may be allowed the word, is a need of weakness. The man of faith, the “believer” of any sort, is necessarily a dependent man—such a man cannot posit himself as a goal, nor can he find goals within himself. The “believer” does not belong to himself; he can only be a means to an end; he must be used up; he needs some one to use him up. His instinct gives the highest honours to an ethic of self-effacement; he is prompted to embrace it by everything: his prudence, his experience, his vanity. Every sort of faith is in itself an evidence of self-effacement, of self-estrangement.... — Nietzsche

That last sentence is ungenerous, but he's making the point that Stirner made about the connection of the external sacred and alienation. This gulf between man and some impossible object is precisely opposed to a feeling of at-home-ness in one's own flesh in one's own world. Here, now, this.

It's deeper than that. We value people in the world, no matter their actions. Sin needs no forgiveness nor retribution (or as I would say, "Cannot be paid for or resolved" ). All beings are already their own Buddha. No-one needs transcendent rescue because they are infinitely meaningful in themselves.

In the modern West, to have a meaningful life is easy. One doesn't have to follow any particular tradition. One's sins do not need to be absolved or forgiven. To have meaning takes no effort. All anyone has to do is exist. Western society's conflict with mysticism and premodern metaphysics isn't strictly with sense-enjoyment, but what it takes to be meaningful. In being worldly, modern Western culture says God or the transcendent is not required to have a meaningful life.