I concur with Wayfarer on this point, that what mysticism(the practice) is concerned with is a different way of seeing, of thinking, experiencing, the side of ourselves which is on the other side of the coin(side A)if one considers that a normal person only lives on the one side(sideB). For the practicing mystic a whole world opens up as extensive as side B, but is both different and the same, from another perspective, even a kind of rebirth.

But surely you see that the "Being" of our lives is largely conception, emotion, sensation. If we are talking about states that are radically other than life as we know it, rather than a superior intensity of feeling and clarity of thought, then it sounds to me like the same old impossible object, the secret that yet is not a secret (since it's "unthinkable"), a fetishized empty negation.

Don't get me wrong. I see the allure of this "Being." I've stood before the That-Which-Is in shock and wonder. It is, and it is beneath all explanation. Sartre treated this well in Nausea. This is some of the "mysticism" I found in the TLP.

As far as symbols go, I mean numinous images and concepts. Most important by far, in my view, is the conceptually elaborated image of personified virtue. As I see it, this very conversation is driven on both sides by the energy of our differing images of the "ought to be" or the "ego-ideal." We feel pride or narcissistic pleasure as we identity ourselves with this image (live up to it) and shame or guilt as we perceive a gap between our actual and ideal selves. But the (passionate conceptual) images shape our lives that simultaneously shape the images. We tend to project our own notion of virtue as a universal value. "This is the way. This is the truth. This is the law. " But we can "intellectually" unveil this "nothingness" and the contingency and artificiality of all such law. The reason we don't, in my view, is because we want to "bring the Law" or "the Truth" or "the Method" and control or limit the spirits of others. We identify with these "alienations" or "finite/constrained" gods/myths. So the image of radical freedom is a threat to the ego whose escape from time and death is "tied up" in them. What he or she thinks is his or her best self is not taken seriously (as an absolute value) by the heretic who insists on a notion of the complete transcendence of everything pious, solemn, dutiful, sacred. This notion, "Christ" as the end of the law, is also the "Devil." This is just the end of the "ideal" law, not of laws in the world. Life goes on. Politics goes on (which is what every thing less than total freedom looks like ultimately). But to get stuck there, and to put the center of one's religion there, is, in my experience less satisfying.

But are you so sure that you understand what I've been saying? Do you perceive me as someone who lives in the "normal" way, even as I share a passionate image of total freedom, the nothingness of all "spiritual" law exterior to and alienated from the self as a joyful, creative, incarnate "nothingness" that recognizes itself as such? I eschew all this talk of the hidden and the difficult and some authoritative truth or essence or knowledge of mysticism, for instance, though I recognize that an attachment to the hidden and the difficult and the authoritative is in fact the primary difficultly. In symbols now: bound by our desire to bind we nail him up, the blasphemous pervert, along with the freest center of our selves. I mean this is just the vision, a slice of the heresy as I've made sense of it. I'm still just a guy with a life and a wife and a job. It's a beautiful story or clump of ideas. But it resonates in my guts and lights up my heart.

From the SEP entry on Sartre:

What does it mean “to be”? Sartre's existential phenomenology appeals to certain kinds of experience such as nausea and joy to articulate the “transphenomenal” character of being. Pace Kant, “being” does not denote a realm behind the phenomena that the descriptive method analyzes. Neither is it the object of an “eidetic” reduction (the phenomenological method that would grasp it as an essence). Rather, being accompanies all phenomena as their existential dimension. But this dimension is revealed by certain experiences such as that of the utter contingency which Roquentin felt. This is scarcely rationalism, but neither is it mysticism. — SEP

It took my breath away. Never, up until these last few days, had I suspected the meaning of "existence." I was like the others, like the ones walking along the seashore, wearing their spring clothes. I said, like them, "The sea is green; that white speck up there is a seagull," but I didn't feel that it existed or that the seagull was an "existing seagull"; usually existence conceals itself. It is there, around us, in us, it is us, you can't say two words without mentioning it, but you can never touch it. When I believed I was thinking about it, I was thinking nothing, my head was empty, or there was just one word in my head, the word "being." Or else I was thinking — how can I put it? I was thinking of properties. I was telling myself that the sea belonged to the class of green objects, or that green was one of the qualities of the sea. Even when I looked at things, I was miles from dreaming that they existed: they looked like scenery to me. I picked them up in my hands, they served me as tools, I foresaw their resistance. But that all happened on the surface. If anyone had asked me what existence was, I would have answered in good faith, that it was nothing, simply an empty form added to things from the outside, without changing any thing in their nature. And then all at once, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost the harmless look of an abstract category: it was the dough out of which things were made, this root was kneaded into existence. Or rather the root, the park gates, the bench, the patches of grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their indi viduality, were only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous lumps, in disorder — naked, with a frightful and obscene nakedness. — Sartre

We can (among so many other options) envision God as the totality that is just radically there and Christ as a conceptually elaborated "primordial image" that allows us to feel at home in this otherwise alien God ('who' includes children with cancer, genocide,rape, our deaths, etc.).

We can't leave out this. I'd call it mystical, or mystical enough, but that's secondary. And this is why "sensation and emotion" are important to me. "Sensation" points at incarnation. "Emotion" makes any of this worth talking about or noticing in the first place.

But I wanted to fix the absolute character of this absurdity. A movement, an event in the tiny colored world of men is only relatively absurd — in relation to the accompanying circumstances. A madman's ravings, for example, are absurd in relation to the situation in which he is, but not in relation to his own delirium. But a little while ago I made an experiment with the absolute or the absurd. This root — there was nothing in relation to which it was absurd. How can I pin it down with words? Absurd: in relation to the stones, the tufts of yellow grass, the dry mud, the tree, the sky, the green benches. Absurd, irreducible; nothing — not even a profound, secret delirium of nature could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of the segment of a straight line around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, in contrast, existed in such a way that I could not explain it. Knotty, inert, nameless, it fascinated me, filled my eyes, brought me back unceasingly to its own existence. In vain I repeated, "This is a root" — it didn't take hold any more. I saw clearly that you could not pass from its function as a root, as a suction pump, to that, to that hard and thick skin of a sea lion, to this oily, callous; stubborn look. The function explained nothing: it allowed you to understand in general what a root was, but not at all that one there. That root with its color, shape, its congealed movement, was beneath all explanation. — Sartre

Perhaps because explanation deals with finite essences in a system, and this "existence" precedes or is other than essence. But this precedence of existence to essence is also understood in another way when it comes to the natureless nature of man, a "hole" in being. Bad faith touches closely upon idolatry. The self wants to fix its identity in a solid object, to flee from its nothingness and freedom. Beautiful stuff.

As I understand it, Sartre saw (the spirit of ) man as a futile passion to identity itself with something fixed and substantial, something unfree and therefore not responsible for itself. I relate this to the "seeing of a structure" (the game of the "Law" or the "Truth") that "Christ" was the "end" of. To see the nothingness is to annihilate one's chains with benevolent but impious laughter, at least in the retreat to one's spiritual imagination if not always in the thick of life. But this is just some guy's interpretation and synthesis of his favorite texts in the largely emotional and sensual context of his experience.

No I don't see you as someone who experiences side B. I was trying to explain the distinction between externally orientated being and internally orientated being. I know that I keep appealing to mystical practice as does Wayfarer, this appears to be because we approach this from an Eastern perspective.
Anyway, I will change my approach now that I have made the point about the route of mystical practice. Suffice it to say that I do consider the body (also the mental body) as an apparatus which one would seek to operate correctly.

I don't wish to negate your approach as I am of the opinion that there are people among any culture who experience mystical awakening of all kinds through the prism of the culture and knowledge they find themselves in and in each culture mystics or prophets emerge and leave a body of work in attempt to convey, or teach their experiences.

In the Satre quote he mentions along with yourself facing existence face to face. This is described by some as facing God face to face. This contemplation is a kind of meditation, communion which enables one to shed the shackles of cultural conditioning and the like, in the light and knowledge of this stance. I use this stance in contemplation of divine geometry such as squircles( giggle) transcendent states and techniques, along with a kind of personal subjective preening, or sorting and refining of conceptual architecture in the self. There is also a clear division, or membrane between side A and B, here, although the activity bridges this divide and there is also a process of conceptual refraction across the membrane enabling more subtle conceptual sculpting.

It looks as though you are up to similar things, but in a more "heretic" way.

But this is just some guy's interpretation and synthesis of his favorite texts in the largely emotional and sensual context of his experience

Yes, we each take what we find around us in terms of concept, to weave into our "coat of many colours".

I would point out that along with the perspective of seeing the silence, the stillness, negating ones thoughts and feelings which is a sort of feminine, or negative technique. There is also a masculine or positive technique in which there is the presence of deities, gods, sensual stimulation, a transfiguration of thoughts and feelings and a sense of presence. This for me is embodied in Hinduism and the approach of silence and stillness is embodied in Buddhism.

This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous lumps, in disorder — naked, with a frightful and obscene nakedness. — Sartre

Sartre has got zero to do with mysticism. If you wanted an anti-mystic, you'd be hard pressed to find a better example. Hell is other people, and all the rest. Same with Camus - heroic resolution in the face of a meaningless universe. Serious looking, depressed people, smoking Gualoise and arguing over strong coffee.

But why bother defending this word? Is the word itself sacred? Is it the sort of thing that needs to be defended and kept pure? You're welcome to the word, but I don't think any of us get to control meaning like that in general. It's just a word. If the 'spiritual' is only a matter of the proper names, then the "spiritual" is just too small -- it becomes a politics that doesn't recognize itself as such. Learn the demons name and he will serve you, Rumpelstiltskin, etc.

As to resenting titles like "Hell is other people"...That's like blaming spiritual works for talking about sin and illusion. It's the same with the line you've quoted. The protagonist is not some simple "hero" of the book. It's like attributing "kill, kill, kill, kill" to Shakespeare himself and not to King Lear in a traumatic moment.

I'm not saying Sartre's perfect (I can find things to criticize) but he was a great theorist and poet of freedom, including the dark side of godlessness. He has some of the best one-liners around. Have you really read these "existentialists"? From here it looks like your coughing up the caricature. The Fall is a favorite. (Camus) There's the same kind of caricature of all the (more recently) imported religion with its exotic terminology: "It's all just a bunch of confused or plain superstitous hippies burning incense and sitting with their legs crossed." This kind of reductive/humiliating description is the symbolic warfare that we don't have to take seriously or get trapped in, but we tend to defensively "rewrite" and "make shallow" whatever threatens our contingent, "surface" attachments. (I'm not saying I never do this or that you are currently doing. I just study this sort of thing as various impositions of the Law I've been mentioning. )

I use this stance in contemplation of divine geometry such as squircles( giggle) transcendent states and techniques, along with a kind of personal subjective preening, or sorting and refining of conceptual architecture in the self. There is also a clear division, or membrane between side A and B, here, although the activity bridges this divide and there is also a process of conceptual refraction across the membrane enabling more subtle conceptual sculpting. — Punshhh

It sounds like you've got something good going on. I can't help but interpret this "A" and "B" as names for different mental states. I don't believe in squircles, but I love the word. I do of course know some beautiful math. The real numbers are a black and seamless sea, and also an "uncountable" infinity. Unlike the rational numbers, we can't print them out one by one or line them up. It's beautiful to me that such psychedelic and "drippy" numbers get called the "reals." The rationals are shiny and crystalline. The reals are like wet, black smoke.

Here are few oneliners I hadn't seen before that seemed to fit with the theme.

Abjection is a methodological conversion, like Cartesian doubt and Husserlian epoche: it establishes the world as a closed system which consciousness regards from without, in the manner of divine understanding.

The world is sacred because it gives an inkling of a meaning that escapes us.

In doing Good, I lose myself in Being, I abandon my particularity, I become a universal subject.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life. — Sartre

It sounds like you've got something good going on. I can't help but interpret this "A" and "B" as names for different mental states. I don't believe in squircles, but I love the word. I do of course know some beautiful math. The real numbers are a black and seamless sea, and also an "uncountable" infinity. Unlike the rational numbers, we can't print them out one by one or line them up. It's beautiful to me that such psychedelic and "drippy" numbers get called the "reals." The rationals are shiny and crystalline. The reals are like wet, black smoke

Yes A and B are different brain states, there may be some difference other than the fact that one is internally directed and the other externally, but the science hasn't been developed into being yet and I expect it is some way off. But I fully expect to find that there is an organ in the brain which uncannily enables transcendence. You are free to sculpt yourself, to have two sides to your coin. Even to embrace spuircles(surely a romantic would do that?). You are free to develop the conceptual tooling to take you to where you want to be. Now there's a question.

The divine reals, I wonder if the rules of math can be bent squared, why would they be constrained, who in their right mind would do that, if they had the freedom to do otherwise?

why bother defending this word? Is the word itself sacred? — Hoo

Sartre was a highly educated man, heir to European philosophy, and he well understood subjects such as the nature of being, in a way that the facile 'new atheists' have no comprehension of. But he is not a mystic, saying that books like Nausea are mystical has no basis in fact. Was Sartre a romantic poet? He wasn't, and if you wrote a post saying 'here's an example of Sartre's prose as romantic poetry' then surely you would be picked up on it There is a difference between mystical philosophy, and Sartre's existentialism, which you're not seeing. I think if you wrote a term paper on the subject, that would be the comment.

Maybe he would have come to see God as an absolute immanence, and thus to have come to think that his writings about the transcendence of God were "as straw". It's not really a point worth arguing about, in any case, since what he thought can only be speculated about. — John

Highly unlikely. He did not dismiss the Summa as wrong - but as completely incapable of describing the extent of reality, being equivalent to a small corner of a large puzzle.

I am not familiar enough with the writings of the other two to comment; but Eckhart speaks extensively about becoming God, so he might be seen as a thinker of the immanence of God. He expressed a kind of panthentheistic vision of God, and was charged with heresy for that. — John

"In Him we move and have our being". Wayfarer is right, Eckhart never claimed one becomes God - rather that it is possible to achieve union with the divine - in Christian terms this would happen when one's will is entirely aligned with the Will of God. This is not immanence, because the divine always exceeds. One merely has their being in the divine - it isn't the whole of the divine.

For me this is an extremely facile point, There are many things which can be "experienced and encountered" for example, love, truth, beauty, hope, faith, etc., in that sense known, which cannot become objects. — John

They are objects in consciousness (for the most part - some of those experiences like love can and sometimes to point to the transcendent, and in-so-far as they do that, they too are transcendent). The experience of the transcendent is precisely that which you experience, but you never fully surround with your consciousness. There is always something missing in that experience. Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy or Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and Profane are good reads on these themes.

I can't see a difference that makes a difference between the idea of becoming God and becoming one with God. — John

Becoming God = becoming Being itself. Becoming one with God = "in him we move and have our being". The two are radically different. Theosis - divine union - is also different. According to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which has this view (and I know as I am an Eastern Orthodox), all of us achieve theosis after death - we are all united with God. Those who hate God perceive God's love as hell - those who love God perceive it as Heaven. Furthermore, it is possible for people like monks to achieve the experience in this life also. Theosis is when the sinful human being becomes divine - like God - BUT NOT IDENTICAL TO GOD. No being can achieve ontological oneness with God.

A sure warrant for looking forward with hope to deification of human nature is provided by the Incarnation of God, which makes man God to the same degree as God Himself became man ... Let us become the image of the one whole God, bearing nothing earthly in ourselves, so that we may consort with God and become gods, receiving from God our existence as gods. For it is clear that He Who became man without sin will divinize human nature without changing it into the Divine Nature, and will raise it up for His Own sake to the same degree as He lowered Himself for man's sake. This is what St. Paul teaches mystically when he says, "that in the ages to come he might display the overflowing richness of His grace" — St. Maximus the Confessor

Some Meister Eckhardt quotes: 'He is your being, but you are not his'
'The eye with which I see God, is the same eye as with which God sees me'.

And I haven't said anything about knowing or experiencing the transcendent, because both notions are incoherent. There is no transcendent apart from the immanent, and that is precisely Hegel's point

To know or experience the transcendent might be rationally incoherent. But this does not mean that both don't happen in the life of a mystic. In humanity's ignorance a bit of rational thought does not change, or dictate events or facts on the ground.

I would agree though that the transcendent is in the immanent. There may be processes in revelation in which a being is caught up in the transcendent and sees the unseeable.

The mystics of many centuries, independently, yet in perfect harmony with each other (somewhat like the particles in an ideal gas) have described, each of them, the unique experience of his or her life in terms that can be condensed in the phrase: DEUS FACTUS SUM (I have become God).
To Western ideology, the thought has remained a stranger... in spite of those true lovers who, as they look into each other's eyes, become aware that their thought and their joy are numerically one, not merely similar or identical...

Reminds me of St. Paul Galatians 2:20

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Paul did not become God, he made room for God, accepted the call of God, and became possessed by God, God's "chosen vessel".

The idea of making room, opening space within oneself to receive grace/inspiration/truth resonates with me, making it the core of all ones activities. This, I think, is an act of volition, not a noetic ascension, which is not to say that such ascension cannot be involved, but that the acceptance/rejection of insight depends on our willingness to accept, and the fortitude to live and act in a manner coincident with that acceptance.

Highly unlikely. He did not dismiss the Summa as wrong - but as completely incapable of describing the extent of reality, being equivalent to a small corner of a large puzzle. — Agustino

I think it is far more likely that he came to think that it was not an accurate description of the reality of God, as that was revealed to him by his mystical experience. "As straw". But, you are entitled to your alternative interpretation; as I already said it's not something that is susceptible to determination by argument..

"In Him we move and have our being". Wayfarer is right, Eckhart never claimed one becomes God - rather that it is possible to achieve union with the divine - in Christian terms this would happen when one's will is entirely aligned with the Will of God. This is not immanence, because the divine always exceeds. One merely has their being in the divine - it isn't the whole of the divine. — Agustino

I see this as being a conventionally simplistic interpretation. For one; there are only the usual dogmatic or doctrinal differences between 'becoming one with God" and "becoming God" that stand in the way of my alternative interpretation; and I have already made a point of not accepting the logical validity of those theological orthodoxies; so there doesn't seem to be much point to throwing them back at me again.

I have asked you to explain clearly what necessary logical or experiential differences there are between becoming God and becoming one with God. I mean presumably all mystics are speaking about basically one kind of experience, and yet they speak about it in very different and sometime ambiguous ways. What philosophy is (or should be) about is finding the way to speak about these experiences which is most logical and in accordance with human experience generally. And talk about radical transcendence is radically incoherent, in my view.

Consider this passage from Meister Eckhart's Sermon 52 :

"So we say that a person should be so poor that he neither is nor has any place for God to work in. To preserve a place is to preserve a distinction. Therefore I pray to God to make me free of God, for my essential being is above God, taking God as the origin of creatures. For in that essence of God in which God is above being and distinction, there I was myself and knew myself so as to make this man. Therefore I am my own cause according to my essence. which is eternal, and not according to my becoming, which is temporal. Therefore I am unborn, and according to my unborn mode I can never die, According to my unborn mode I have eternally been, am now, and shall eternally remain, That which I am by virtue of birth must die and perish, for it is mortal, and so must perish with time. In my birth all things were born, and I was the cause of myself and all things and if I had so willed it, I would not have been, and all things would not have been. If I were not, God would not be either. I am the cause of God's being God. if I were not, then God would not be God. but you do not need to understand this.
A great master says that his breaking-through is nobler than his flowing out, and this is true. When I flowed forth from God all creatures declared: "There is a God"; but this cannot make me blessed, for with this did I acknowledge myself as a creature. but in my breaking-through, where I stand free of my own will, of God's will, of all his works, and of God himself, then I am above all creatures and am neither God nor creature, but I am that which I was and shall remain for evermore. there I shall receive an imprint that will raise me above all the angels. By this imprint I shall gain such wealth that I shall not be content with God inasmuch as he is God, or with all his divine works; for this breaking through guarantees to me that I and God are one. Then I am what I was, then I neither wax nor wane, for then I am an unmoved cause that moves all things. Here, God finds no place in man, for man by his poverty wins for himself what he has eternally been and shall eternally remain. Here, God is one with the spirit, and that is the strictest poverty one can find.
If anyone cannot understand this sermon, he need not worry. For so long as someone is not equal to this truth, he cannot understand my words, for this is the naked truth that has come direct from the heart of God, that we may so live as to experience it eternally, may God help us. Amen.

I disagree with the rest of what you say because it is nothing more than a determinately one-sided expression of orthodox theology; a kind of fundamentalism. But there is no point arguing about it, because fundamentalists are never convinced by arguments.

If you read the passage from Eckhart carefully you will see that he is no orthodox theologian, but one who speaks directly from his own experience of God.

They are objects in consciousness (for the most part - some of those experiences like love can and sometimes to point to the transcendent, and in-so-far as they do that, they too are transcendent). — Agustino

I don't agree with that at all; for me they are immanent shapes of consciousness that always concern immanent experience. You speak about maintaining order in the name of transcendence, but this is a vacuous notion since anything genuinely transcendent could not be known at all, and would be nothing to us. What you are really valorizing is the enforcement of order by earthly authorities that arrogate to themselves the mandate of a divine authority. This idea is truly repugnant to any free spirit.

From the quoted passage above:
'For so long as someone is not equal to this truth, he cannot understand my words'.

Oh, I see that Sartre is anything but most folk's notion of a mystic. But this perception of existence beneath essence is profound. There are books that link Heidegger to Daoism, etc., and of course Sartre took off to some degree from Heidegger. Anyone walking knee-deep into ontology or phenomenology is at least getting close to that zone. And godlessness as god isn't so strange, is it? Nothingness, transcendence, freedom, Being.

Some Meister Eckhardt quotes: 'He is your being, but you are not his'
'The eye with which I see God, is the same eye as with which God sees me'. — Wayfarer

Great lines. I was exposed to some Eckhardt in Caputo's book on Heidegger and mysticism.

What philosophy is (or should be) about is finding the way to speak about these experiences which is most logical and in accordance with human experience generally. — John

Well said. Philosophy (if it's loyal to Socrates at all) is going to try to give a "reasonable" account, as reasonable as possible.

What you are really valorizing is the enforcement of order by earthly authorities that arrogate to themselves the mandate of a divine authority. This idea is truly repugnant to any free spirit. — John

This. Yes. Though I like Agustino, I think he's missing out on a notion of something that surpasses politics.

An unexpected juxtaposition:

A great master says that his breaking-through is nobler than his flowing out, and this is true. When I flowed forth from God all creatures declared: "There is a God"; but this cannot make me blessed, for with this did I acknowledge myself as a creature. but in my breaking-through, where I stand free of my own will, of God's will, of all his works, and of God himself, then I am above all creatures and am neither God nor creature, but I am that which I was and shall remain for evermore. there I shall receive an imprint that will raise me above all the angels. By this imprint I shall gain such wealth that I shall not be content with God inasmuch as he is God, or with all his divine works; for this breaking through guarantees to me that I and God are one — E

Now, as this rose is a true rose to begin with, this nightingale always a true nightingale, so I am not for the first time a true man when I fulfil my calling, live up to my destiny, but I am a “true man” from the start. My first babble is the token of the life of a “true man,” the struggles of my life are the outpourings of his force, my last breath is the last exhalation of the force of the “man.”

The true man does not lie in the future, an object of longing, but lies, existent and real, in the present. Whatever and whoever I may be, joyous or suffering, a child or a graybeard, in confidence or doubt, in sleep or in waking, I am it, I am the true man.
Still far from myself, I separate myself into two halves, of which one, the one unattained and to be fulfilled, is the true one. The one, the untrue, must be brought as a sacrifice; to wit, the unspiritual one. The other, the true, is to be the whole man; to wit, the spirit. Then it is said, “The spirit is man’s proper essence,” or, “man exists as man only spiritually.” Now, there is a greedy rush to catch the spirit, as if one would then have bagged himself; and so, in chasing after himself, one loses sight of himself, whom he is.
...
It is different if you do not chase after an ideal as your “destiny,” but dissolve yourself as time dissolves everything. The dissolution is not your “destiny,” because it is present time. — Stirner

Right, so what do you want to say is the sgnificance of that?

I think it is far more likely that he came to think that it was not an accurate description of the reality of God, as that was revealed to him by his mystical experience. "As straw". But, you are entitled to your alternative interpretation; as I already said it's not something that is susceptible to determination by argument.. — John

Well it certainly is much more likely as an explanation. Aquinas certainly did not renounce any of his writings as wrong. Only insignificant in relation to the full truth - like straw. Nor did he renounce the importance of the Catholic Church for that matter. So the presumptuous interpretation is clearly not mine. You are making a series of blatant assumptions about him, which are simply not warranted given his entire life. Not that they are impossible - they are certainly possible. Only that very unlikely.

For one; there are only the usual dogmatic or doctrinal differences between 'becoming one with God" and "becoming God" that stand in the way of my alternative interpretation; and I have already made a point of not accepting the logical validity of those theological orthodoxies; so there doesn't seem to be much point to throwing them back at me again. — John

No those "doctrinal" differences have practical significance. Becoming God can very easily be associated with anything being permitted for you. Like Osho Rajneesh having promiscuous sex with his disciples. Or poisoning a community. Or Krishnamurti having sex with one of his friend's wife behind his back, and having her have an abortion. These are very practical consequences of believing you become God. Furthermore it is also a practical consequence that some people will be deceived and think you are justified to break moral laws because "you are God". So how can I adopt a position which will put you beyond any possible criticism or restraint - because now you are God? That is nonsense. That clearly cannot be a principle of order. "You shall know them by their fruits"

I have asked you to explain clearly what necessary logical or experiential differences there are between becoming God and becoming one with God. — John

I just did. I may add that becoming one with God implies sharing in his holiness, and gives a different attitude. Furthermore, it allows verification and rational criticism. Others can look at you and determine objectively if you have become one with God by comparing you with Christ.

I mean presumably all mystics are speaking about basically one kind of experience — John

From where do you get this assumption? Experiences of the transcendent can be quite varying. That's why it's a personal relationship with the transcendent. No two people's experience will be the same, or even necessarily alike.

What philosophy is (or should be) about is finding the way to speak about these experiences which is most logical and in accordance with human experience generally. — John

Yes - and also to promote order, exactly as Plato said.

Regarding Eckhart's sermon. Yes I agree with it, the human soul, pneuma, literarily means breath - hence the breath of God. So certainly man is in his deepest nature divine. Furthermore Eckhart makes the necessary distinction between "the essence of God" which is above what he terms God. So in stating he is above God he merely claims that in him lies something that is of the essence of God - the pneuma. This is entirely orthodox, and has no Gnostic content. It is indeed a mystical experience and revelation. But there is a mystic tradition in Orthodoxy. Only Gnosticism is heretical - mysticism is not, regardless of some mystics who were falsely accused. So I have nothing but respect for such mystical tradition, but I understand that such a tradition can only flourish when order exists in society - when there is a religious authority.

I disagree with the rest of what you say because it is nothing more than a determinately one-sided expression of orthodox theology; a kind of fundamentalism. But there is no point arguing about it, because fundamentalists are never convinced by arguments. — John

Funny that the person who says some things cannot be argued is then the one to suggest that fundamentalists can never be convinced by arguments. Well neither can you! That's why you claim some things cannot be argued. I make no such claim. I think everything should be open to disagreement and rational exploration. But you refuse to explain or provide any justification for your claims that could be argued or debated. You play the line "not everyone has the experience - thus not everyone gets it" as a run-away tactic. There's nothing I or anyone can say to disprove you. We cannot deny your experience. You place yourself beyond rational criticism. I don't. I explain how my beliefs are necessary for order, and how order is necessary for the flourishing of society and the happiness of man, including the achievement of mysticism.

You speak about maintaining order in the name of transcendence, but this is a vacuous notion since anything genuinely transcendent could not be known at all, and would be nothing to us. — John

Unless a part of us, the part Eckhart is talking about, is also transcendent :)

What you are really valorizing is the enforcement of order by earthly authorities that arrogate to themselves the mandate of a divine authority. This idea is truly repugnant to any free spirit. — John

We are beings of flesh as well as spirit. Fulfilment of our nature requires divinization of the flesh, not its repudiation. You seem to ignore that we live in the world, and not in mystical flights of fancy - this is what typically happens when someone approaches mysticism on their own, not guided by the wisdom of tradition. So yes - order is necessary, without order there is no stability, and without stability nothing great can be achieved.

That it is a discussion of exceedingly subtle matters. Personally I find it a bit unseemly.

I see that Sartre is anything but most folk's notion of a mystic. — Hoo

Sartres' dissertations on alienation and meaningless are diametrically opposite to those of Eckhardt. It's really like saying that Keith Richards was one of the great baroque composers.

I might as well say that in today's world it's so easy to be a mystic. In the past it took years of following rituals and traditions, and personal submission and exploration, countless hours of repetitive prayer and meditation until one even got near to mysticism. Now it's so easy - every Joe claims he is a mystic. This is a great absurdity.

I quoted Stirner, not Sartre. As I see it, Sartre was still trapped, though right on the edge conceptually. He's a great writer on alienation, on contingency, on "being-for-others." But he took politics seriously, so he's really not my guy. Stirner, on the other hand, strikes me as truly liberated, on a level beyond Sartre. Marx hated Stirner. Sartre was deeply invested in Marxism. That gap between mere politics and "spirit" is crucial. Sartre was torn between two visions.