To make any advance in philosophical understanding requires subjecting one's thoughts to the harshest possible criticism. I like sushi is providing this sort of value to you for free; there exists no onus to bundle that value with other kinds such as encouragement or accolades. — boethius

I agree in theory, but in the real world the "harshest possible criticism" typically triggers ego storms which derail the investigation. And then there's this...

If you present an effective challenge to some viewpoint in "harshest possible criticism" mode you are giving the target an escape hatch. When the challenge becomes too much for the target to bear they can change the subject to you, derail the thread with all kinds of emotionalisms, get you banned and so on. If present your challenge in a scrupulously polite manner, this avenue of escape is closed off.

So if you want to be kind, act like a jerk. :-)

yes an atheist might say they do not believe there is a god but that does not mean they are making a positive claim.“ — DingoJones

They are making a positive claim, without knowing that they are making a positive claim.

But I know you'll never get that no matter how many times it is explained so rather type ourselves in to a pointless fury why don't I just respectfully accept that you are entitled to any view on the subject which works for you and it's not my place to stick my nose in to it.

An “ism” isn’t the same thing as a religion. That’s the point. — Pfhorrest

Agreed.

The method of thinking about the question, possibly looking for evidence, and then coming to the best conclusion they can? What other method would you think better? — Pfhorrest

I agree with the thinking and looking for evidence. And so when it comes to the largest of questions we might ask, where is the evidence that any theist or atheist has ever proven anything? Lacking such evidence the conclusion we might come to is that we are united in ignorance on such questions. I see a few roads which present themselves from there.

1) We can retreat in to denial and pretend we have proven something.

2) We may conclude that if we're ignorant and can't do anything about that, let's just forget the whole subject and direct our attention elsewhere.

3) We may conclude that finding this ignorance is itself an answer of sorts, and then ask, what can we do with what we have discovered?

It's interesting to me that theists and atheists, who are so often posed as enemies, share near universal agreement on some issues fundamental to the inquiry. First, they almost always agree that a God can only exist, or not, one or the other. Second, they almost always agree the point of the inquiry should be to develop knowledge.

When any investigation goes endlessly round and round to nowhere for 500 years it seems worthwhile to begin to question the assumptions that investigation is built upon. This seems a challenge suitable for philosophers.

And you profess to know more than a Gnostic Christian about Christianity. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

It's not just you. The understanding of Christianity on philosophy forums tends to be pretty primitive. Almost all the focus goes to ideological assertions, while crucial topics like the experience of love are almost entirely ignored.

Exactly, science has the reputation of being the purveyor of, as you put it, facts. Why is it in this exalted position? — TheMadFool

Because the knowledge the scientific method delivers has proven itself to be reliable on countless occasions.

What's not reliable, and very much in question, is the degree to which human beings can successfully manage new knowledge. If I have a very reliable method of growing potatoes, it doesn't automatically follow that therefore I should eat as many potatoes as I can, as fast as I can.

What's confusing about science is that the methodology is very rational, but our relationship with that methodology is not.

A specific atheist might have that belief but thats him — DingoJones

Could you please introduce us to the atheist who does not believe that reason is qualified to generate useful statements on the subject?

Neither is atheism a “refusal” to believe in god, its simply the lack of a belief in god. — DingoJones

Here's how it works. Not understanding their own perspective, most atheists will sincerely claim it is "merely a lack of belief". And then dictionary writers who probably aren't that interested in the topic and are racing against a deadline will accept this claim and put it in the dictionary. And then the atheists will hold up the dictionary as proof saying, "See? We told you. It's right in the dictionary!"

First, there is no “faith” in reason, not in the same sense that religious people have faith in god. — DingoJones

Ah, good, so you will then be able to provide proof that reason is qualified.

o its not, Believers are the ones making making a positive assertion, and atheists the ones unconvinced by the positive assertion believers make. — DingoJones

Believers are making a positive assertion that they know they are making, and atheists are (typically) making a positive assertion that they don't know they are making.

Please recall, theism is thousands of years old, whereas atheism is maybe 500 years old, or something like that. It's grandpa talking to a teenager.

There are many former believers who have been convinced by argument or discussion and are now atheists. — DingoJones

Ok, fair point. I will reframe my claim that this is a highly inefficient process which typically, but not always, goes pretty much nowhere.

There are theists who also believe reason is capable make informative statements about God. That does not make them atheists. — Vaibhav Narula

I agree. But the assumption that reason is qualified is not a requirement in theism, as one can become theist by other means. That assumption is however required in atheism. I've been doing this for 20 years, and have yet to meet an atheist who arrived at their perspective by any other method.

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.

atheism is simply a refusal to believe in God — Vaibhav Narula

Atheism is the belief that human reason is qualified to deliver useful statements on issues the scale of the God question. Atheism feels like "simply a refusal to believe in God" to most atheists because their faith in the infinite reach of human reason is so deep, and so unexamined, that they take such a qualification to be an obvious given requiring no inspection.

Few atheists seem to grasp that atheism is just as much a positive assertion as theism, with just as little proof to back it up.

That said, the belief that posting the above will accomplish anything at all is just as lacking in evidence as theism and atheism, so we are united as brothers in self delusion.

I'm not Christian by the way.

There should not be any difference in the law of the land they follow and what you and I follow. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Agree with you here.

Abdicating their responsibility for their sins and riding into heaven on their Jesus scapegoat is what Christianity is all about. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Apologies, but you appear to have no understanding of what Christianity is all about, and no, I'm not going to teach you. Good luck with the holy jihad!

Yes, and also wanted the religious to keep their religions out of politics. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

What do you mean by "religious to keep their religions out of politics"?

Are religious people not supposed to organize, advocate and vote like the rest of us? One rule for them, another for us?

I can agree that all laws should apply to everybody, and that there shouldn't be carve outs for religious people. If that's your complaint, I can share it.

So the question is, how can the conscious mind commune with the soul itself, without utilizing such a division. — Metaphysician Undercover

By turning down the volume of that which is generating the division. Thought.

If you're talking with a friend and you can't stay focused on what they're saying because the TV is blaring in the background, you turn the TV down or off.

Philosophers, new age gurus, spiritual pundits, wannabe babas, theologians and others with a bias for complexity are often skilled at making such things sound very exotic and esoteric etc. Maybe such issues are exotic, or maybe this is a simple mechanical problem which can be addressed by simple mechanical means.

Is it true that thought operates by dividing reality in to conceptual objects? For example, the noun.

If that is true, then the experience of division would seem to arise not from some particular philosophy, not from the content of thought, but from thought itself. Evidence: every ideology ever invented seems to inevitably sub-divide in to competing internal factions, suggesting that division arises from a factor which all ideologies have in common, what they're all made of, thought.

If thought is the source of the experience of division, and thought is just another mechanical process of the body, then we have opened the door to mechanical solutions.

Mechanical solutions are not so appealing to philosophers perhaps, but they would seem to have the advantage of being far more accessible to far more people.

But I am having a heck of a time finding any writing that addressed how we should live our mental lives as a hard determinist. — Brook Norton

Don't think about it so much? Just a, um, thought.

I agree with this, humility and the realisation that you are in a sense already where you wish to be, if you could but see it. — Punshhh

Yes.

To translate this in to religious lingo, it could be said that we don't need to get back to God, we just need to realize, or perhaps experience, that there is no where else we ever have been or ever could be.

In secular lingo mysticism might be described as an act of transcending the division distortions generated by the nature of thought. Once we are not looking through a lens whose purpose is to create divisions, the unity of all things is easier to see and experience.

There is also the path of the mystic, which some may choose to tread, if one wishes to help in the enterprise of human development. — Punshhh

If you'd like to expand on this further I would read with interest. How does the mystic facilitate human development in your view?

Is being = soul? The conversation has turned philosophical. — jgill

That's an interesting question, thanks. While I generally don't have a lot to say about souls one way or another, your question has stirred my curiosity. Hmm...

Being can be thought of as a form of death, as what we typically consider to be "me" is to some degree or another set aside. Our opinions, personality, memories, desires etc, put on hold to some degree. And once that very distracting pile of things is muted, there is more attention available for the real world.

On some occasions an interesting thing happens. If the pile of stuff we call "me" is set aside to a sufficient degree, there is sometimes the experience of attention, but not an experience of someone attending. Attention just is, or so it can feel.

And so being might be described as being dead, in the real world. We're here, and yet we're not. It doesn't seem unreasonable to compare this to the soul, which is generally assumed to be ever present and eternal, and yet unseen.

Perhaps this is sloppy, and I wouldn't argue over any of it, but it seems you're raised an interesting subject.

The only one true valid analytical philosophy is summarized by this formula. All other claims are just noise. :-)

Anyone think I’m wrong about modern society (or agree)? I’m all ears. — madworld

It appears I'm all mouth today, so we're a good match.

Your problem is probably that you're intelligent. Somebody should have warned you about that. :-)

Perhaps your intelligence has, without your permission, pulled back the curtain on the emptiness of the status quo, and given you a vision of the madness which is hidden within. And now you can't lose the vision. If so, you have just met the price tag for intelligence.

I don't think you're wrong, as it's super easy to document the insanity of the human condition. Now that you've perhaps seen through the illusion of human sanity, the rational question is, what will your relationship with it be? That would seem to be something you have a reasonable chance of controlling.

You might choose to run from the madness and become a hermit in the Yukon. You might also choose to run towards the fire and engage whatever forms of human madness you are inspired to confront. It's unlikely you will solve the problems you engage, but you might save yourself in the effort.

At your age it feels like your life will last 400 years, and that's a big burden to carry. But the reality is that you'll look in the mirror one day about 6 weeks from now and discover to your surprise that you're the one who is now 68. Whooosh..... It all goes by so much faster than you realize.

So, take it seriously, but carry it lightly.

Do your best, and forget the rest.

so becoming a hermit out in the woods is out of the question. Put plainly: I am deathly afraid of ending up alone, but can’t shake the sense that I'm selling out my beliefs/principals/ideals. — madworld

Sounds like you are twenty something, a time of life when friends are everything. Been there, done that, had some fun. Now I'm 68 going on 14, and am finding alone time more and more appealing, particularly if it involves being outdoors in the north Florida woods.

Here's a little trick which may come in handy sometime.

As humans we do need to bond to something. We need to somehow transcend the illusion of isolation which is generated by thought. However, we don't necessarily need to bond to other humans. We can bond to anything. The "secret" so to speak is that it's not the target which matters, but rather one's relationship with the target. And that relationship exists within our own mind, and thus is to some degree within our control.

So, for example, how does one bond with one's favorite place in nature? The very same way we bond with another human.

1) Invest a lot of time.

2) Open ourselves up emotionally to the experience.

If you are afraid of being alone, it could be because you just haven't learned how yet. And if you are twenty something, that seems completely normal.

If you would give me the offer right now to erase my modern day knowledge and return to the times of hunter-gatherers, I'd take it. Anyways, now I find myself in the peculiar situation of having to accept it to thrive in it. — madworld

This may help? I just learned that the Yukon, a Canadian province east of Alaska, is bigger than California geographically and contains only about 35,000 people. Almost all these people are in one small town near the southern border of the province.

Bigger than California, only 35,000 people. Wow! It just makes me feel good all over to know such places still exist.

Lots and lots (and lots and lots and lots!) of elbow room for anyone who wished to return to nature. So, you don't actually have to accept modern society after all.

About a year back I watched a documentary about a young guy who moved way out in the bush of Alaska by himself and learned how to survive there. He had his dogs, his cabin, and so on. People have been doing such things for thousands of years, and apparently there's still space left within which to do it.

At the least you might enjoy exploring such stories and places virtually, and maybe find a way to put yourself in the story.

This fall I begin an engineering Bachelor's degree, which would be all fine and dandy, if it wasn't for the fact that I loathe modern society and everything it entails. — madworld

Ha, ha, yea, that's kind of a problem! Great opening line for a post though.

I think the founders wanted a secular world free of religions and their vile genocidal gods that are somehow good. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

No expert, but that sounds like a serious misreading. I don't think the founders sought a world free of religions, they just wanted government to stay out of the religion business.

What concerns me is that the chaos which will ensue in the Middle East — Punshhh

Those are my concerns as well, not just for the Middle East, but for modern civilization more generally. The pandemic is horrible, but we have survived worse ones in the past. What civilization might not survive is our reaction to this pandemic. If the pandemic undermines the stability of one or more of the major nations of the world the resulting geo-political chaos could prove quite problematic.

In the 1930s we had the Great Depression, a fairly routine and predictable part of the business cycle. The stress of the Depression pushed an already weakened Germany over the edge, causing the German people to reach for drastic solutions which proved to be catastrophic.

In our times globalization has undermined confidence in significant segments of the world's population, causing them to reach for other extreme solutions in a variety of countries.

The modern world is a very delicate and complicated business, and any threat to the status quo has the potential to spin out of control.

I would question a notion that what some call mysticism is an act of becoming, development, advancement, progressing from A to B, and so on. It seems more appropriate to describe mysticism as the experience of being. If one accepts this way of looking at mysticism that would seem to help distinguish mysticism from religion, which is typically goal oriented in some manner.

It would seem to be in the spirit of mysticism to look at it as simply, and perhaps humbly, as possible. So for example, instead of seeing mysticism as a ladder one climbs to some higher position, it might be seen as an act of routine maintenance of one of the body's mechanical processes. We have to eat, sleep, eliminate, procreate etc on a routine basis to stay healthy. Such acts aren't a path to somewhere else, but just the price of doing business as a human being. Thought is just another one of the mechanical processes of the body. It requires maintenance to remain healthy just as all the other processes do.

How one considers mysticism would seem to depend on how one defines the problem one is attempting to solve. If one sees the problem as arising from incorrect thoughts, then a philosophical approach seems warranted. If on the other hand one sees the problem as arising from the nature of thought itself, then building the pile of thoughts even higher may be an act of poring more fuel on the fire, a step in the wrong direction.

I have had numerous mystical experiences, but we are trying to find a way of talking about mysticism with philosophers in this thread. — Punshhh

It could be argued that the most rational manner of talking about mysticism would be discuss how to do it. If a reader finds a useful method in the pile of suggestions, then they can have their own experiences and craft their own explanations. If they follow their own trail far enough they might some day find the experiences themselves are sufficient, and then no longer have a need for the explanations.

It seems that philosophy and mysticism are in a sense opposites, in that the philosopher attempts to build an elaborate house of sophisticated ideas, whereas the mystic is more concerned with dismantling the house. The philosopher explores symbols which point to the real, the mystic explores the real.

Be it a religion or atheists as a group, I class them both as tribal groups. Each has an ideology that they cling to. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Yes, tribal groups with ideologies they cling to, so far so good.

Though to quibble a bit we might recall that the vast majority of both believers and atheists are not clinging too tightly. In fact, most ignore their ideology most of the time.

Anyway, I don't quite see the point of labeling all ideologies as religions. Wouldn't that make the word religion essentially useless? If you seek a global term applying to all tribes, why not just use the word ideology? I could certainly agree atheism is an ideology.

If philosophers don't accurately model the world with their words, then whatever conclusions they reach won't be very useful either. — Harry Hindu

It can be proposed that nothing made of thought can accurately model the real world. This isn't a problem of the philosopher or any philosophy but of the medium all philosophers and all philosophies are made of, thought.

Thought operates by dividing a single unified reality in to conceptual parts. A profound bias for division is a key property of thought, and this bias distorts all products of thought.

Here's an example to illustrate. My model of this post is that it contains "my ideas". This model presumes I am a separate thing, and that these are unique ideas that arise from that source. This feels true, and it's a useful model in many ways, but...

I am not a separate thing. And these ideas have been circulating around civilization for thousands of years. The ideas don't belong to me, or to anybody, but are instead a property of the global human mind.

A great deal of philosophy is powered by the illusion I've described above. Thought creates the "me" through it's process of conceptual division, and then the "me" attempts to enlarge itself by claiming ownership of ideas which typically have already been shared countless times in a variety of ways.

The more intelligent and insightful an article, the smaller the audience.

However, as I argued already, some degree of intellectualising is required to make any progress in mysticism, because the mystical experience is completely meaningless unless understood to some degree. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, mysticism (at least as I'm using the word) is meaningless. That's the whole point. If you can do completely meaningless, I applaud you! :-)

Personally speaking, the promise of knowledge of ultimate reality by means other than the slogging through the tedium of comprehending endless pages of logical argumentation is quite appealing to my nature and perhaps many others. — themadfool

Perhaps much of the confusion about mysticism can be resolved by changing "knowledge of ultimate reality" to "experience of ultimate reality"? However, the terms "ultimate reality" imply a kind of knowledge. So we could just dump those words if we wish. And we are left with experience.

An example may help? Say I eat a carrot. There is nutrition in the carrot no matter what my knowledge of carrots might be. My opinions of carrots also have no impact upon the nutritional value. So we could perhaps describe mysticism as experience which has psychic nutritional value which is largely unrelated to one's knowledge or opinion of the experience.

As I experience it, mysticism (or whatever term one prefers) is just a change of focus from the symbolic realm to the real world. It's thought itself that is the source of the illusion of division. To the degree we lower the volume of thought, the unity with reality which has always existed becomes easier to experience.

The beauty of it, from my perspective, is that it can be a purely mechanical exploration, which thus makes it available to pretty much anyone. If we see immersion in the symbolic, (ie. thought), as the primary obstacle to experience of the real, and see thought as just another mechanical process of the body, what some call mysticism can be made very simple.

Of course, being human we are likely to then want to explain the experience, which introduces philosophy and an infinite universe of endlessly complex abstractions etc. There's nothing wrong with that, so long as one doesn't take it too seriously. We're human, we think to survive, and so won't be living permanently in the mystic. Ok, price of doing business, no big deal.