The Pageless Book

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1. I believe that all beliefs are inherently flawed.
2. I believe that the process of understanding which we call “logic” is also inherently flawed.
3. I believe that the interpretation of evidence which we call “science” is also inherently flawed.
4. I believe that logic and science is the best measure of reality to which humanity has access.
5. I believe that there is a Divine Source.
6. I believe that Divine Source is unknowable.
7. I believe that Divine Source to be beyond human description.
8. I believe that the belief in the Divine Source does not contradict logic or science.
9. I believe that spiritual behavior exhibited by humanity is evidence of the existence of a Divine Source.
10. I believe that the psychological make-up of humanity is evidence of the existence of a Divine Source.
11. I believe that my own experiences are evidence of the existence of a Divine Source.
12. I believe that the evidence I have of the existence of a Divine Source is too subjective to be considered in a serious logical argument.
13. I believe that subjectivity and objectivity is a distinction made for the convenience of the human mind, which only approximates the limits of reality as the human mind can understand it.
14. I believe that morality can never be objective.
15. I believe that morality is not dictated by the Divine Source, but by the greater good for all humanity.
16. I believe that morality evolves.
17. I believe that morality is a function of evolution.
18. I believe we are evolving.
19. I believe that tolerance is proof that we are evolving.
20. I believe that, as humanity grows, tolerance will become essential for our survival.
21. I believe that we will survive.
22. I believe that we are not special in comparison to the rest of creation.
23. I believe that we are not stewards or subjects of nature, but rather are microcosms of the environment we create.
24. I believe that each part mirrors the whole.
25. I believe that with the evolution of each part, the whole itself is elevated.
26. I believe that the Divine Source is the whole, and is what the whole can become, and is    greater than what the whole could ever be.
27. I believe that the Divine Source speaks clearest through the events of our lives.
28. I believe that prophets and spiritual teachers hear the Divine Source the clearest because they pay attention.
29. I believe that we can all become prophets.
30. I believe it is we who makes that which is holy, sacred.

… There are more, but I think 30 is a good number with which to start.

Top Photo by Ubi Desperare Nescio. Bottom Photo by Wickedly Smart.

Photo Above by Ed Schipul. Photo Below by Symphoney Symphoney. Final Photo by Roberto Arias.

I consider myself a mystic. Also, I consider myself a rather rational person who doesn’t subscribe to superstitions. However, it does not surprise me in the least that many people lump mysticism in with superstition. Perhaps you, dear reader, are one of them. Honestly, I’d rather you be critical of mysticism, and religious experience in general, than be a oblivious believer.

Mystics claim to seek, and some to have found, a greater truth than that which we can touch, see, and hear. The content of this greater truth and how it is conveyed vary from culture to culture. However, the insistence upon literal interpretation of the figurative by the culture in which the mystic resides remains constant. It is society, not the mystics themselves, who spin superstition from wisdom, absolutes from poetry, and dogma from good ideas.

I recently asked Paul Sunstone, a fellow blogger and frequent visitor to the Religious Forums, for his thoughts on mysticism without superstition, and he responded:

So far as I know, mysticism can be without any superstition and superstition is not implicit in it. The mystical experience can be described as “an end to subject/object perception” and there is nothing in someone’s experience of an end to subject/object perception that necessarily creates or promotes superstitions.

Having said that, however, I should be careful to point out that I suspect there are some sources of superstition closely associated with mysticism. In my opinion, the first and most common of those is the tendency of people who have had a mystical experience to borrow language and concepts from religion in order to describe their experience. So, for instance, someone living in a culture that routinely ascribes mystical experiences to Dionysus might be heavily inclined to ascribe their own experience to Dionysus. Or someone living in a Christian culture might ascribe their experience to God the Father, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, or even Satan. Or someone living in second century Rome, when the cult of Isis was gaining popularity, might ascribe their experience to Isis. And so on and so forth.

The mystical experience is beyond all categories and labels. It is only after the actual experience itself that someone might begin labeling and conceptualizing it. If they begin labeling and conceptualizing it immediately, within seconds of the experience, then they have a very strong tendency to borrow “memes” from their culture - especially their religious culture - with which to define, describe or explain it.

While I liked his explanation and could not find anything to disagree with, I quickly realized that what he was saying needed to be expanded upon. Paul’s definition of mysticism as being an end to the subjective/objective duality within an individual’s world view hints at possible avenues for discussion. Most people tend to think of things in rather black and white terms; if something is true once, then it is true until something else contradicts that truth.

For them, there exists a creature of a mythic proportions which remains unto this day the greatest superstition to ever to cloud human judgment - Objective Reality. Experiences are by their very nature subjective. If there was not a subject to the experience, it would not have been experienced. Quantum Physics, Psychology, Sociology, and Neurology have only begun to prove what mystics have long believed - true objective reality does not exist. Superstition, on the other hand, is what happens when we fail to recognize the subjectivity within our own observations.

Another distinction between mysticism and superstition is their motivating emotions. The root emotional cause of superstition is fear of the unknown. By contrast, mysticism gleefully bears a child like curiosity of the unknown, and is motivated primarily by love of truth. How can anyone not love truth?

The following is a guest post by Evan Hadkins from WellbeingandHealth.net, a friend and frequent visitor to this blog. The genesis of this post was a comment he left in response to my article on The Nature of Reality that I posted a few weeks ago. I was so impressed by his comment, that I asked him to expand his thoughts here as a guest poster.

Above Photo by Laura. Photo Below by Lian Xiaoxiao. Final Photo by Alexandre Dulaunoy.

In the modern west, reality is split into with-in-my-skin and beyond-my-skin. I find this a useful distinction - building a house of bricks is very different to the building of a philosophy. The problem, as I see it, has been assigning priority to within-the-skin or beyond-the-skin. One of these is taken to be “the really real” and the other to be its effect. Both these views are prevalent.

Some people (usually advocating science and objectivity) think that it is the beyond-the-skin that is the important reality. They advocate psychology as the study of behaviour. Or see behaviour as the outcome of brain chemicals. There are those who believe that the within the skin is most real. They will assert that “it is with our thoughts that we make the world” and say that the difference between success and failure is motivation or attitude. Perhaps the most famous advocate of this approach is Louise Hay who believes that physical diseases are the manifestation of (and can be fixed by) our thoughts or “affirmations”.

Both of these approaches have their strengths and weaknesses. My point is that both are partial. I do not wish to advocate for either side of this dilemma. My approach is that reality is the experience of the meeting between me and this other stuff. Reality is a human experience.

In the west there has been the attempt to ‘filter out’ the subjective element; to somehow stand outside ourselves. This project is doomed. If I stand outside myself it is still the “I” doing the observing. Objectivity in this sense is not possible. Subjectivity in the sense of “what is can be whatever I make it” is just silly. However, seeing that my experience and action is affected by my past experience, my current thoughts, beliefs and feelings is entirely verifiable.

The search for the nature of reality is one part of reality investigating another. Thus my teeth, tongue and taste buds investigate a piece of food. My enjoyment doesn’t mean that the food isn’t objectively real. Neither does the objectively real atomic structure of the food invalidate my enjoyment. Reality is this: meeting of the me and not-me. Reality is the meeting, not one part of the story.

When it comes to discussion of god the split between the within-the-skin and the beyond-the-skin parties is very much in evidence. There is a rash at the moment of books by militant atheists of the Chris Hitchens’ school saying that science and objectivity tell us what is so and that belief in god is ’subjective’ or ‘mythical’ and so forth. In contrast, there are also those who assert that their own thoughts and feelings mean that god (objectively) exists. This is hardly helpful. Those who attack the claim for god’s reality are often attacking the wrong ‘god’. In Christian theology, the field I know best, the “objectively real god” who sits somewhere outside physical reality, has not been taken seriously for decades. The serious theologians see that god is in the process, not outside “it”.

My suggestion is that we take seriously the experience of those who speak of god. “God” is a human experience - just as are the equations describing the behaviour of sub-atomic particles. This means that the attack on ‘belief in God’ is beside the point. It is not belief that is at issue but experience.

This makes it essential for those who are ‘believers’ to be able to say what their experience of God is. A central question is the what counts as evidence. Does what occurs in the lab judge the rest of our lives? Much of what we find personally convincing is unlikely to be duplicated in a lab. A personal anecdote to make the point: A friend of mine would greet whoever picked up the phone by name before they had spoken. (This was before the days of caller ID.) He would do this consistently and reliably. This I find personally convincing. Could it be replicated in a lab, perhaps. Could it be replicated by others randomly chosen? Almost certainly not. But this doesn’t make it less convincing to me.

To have a fruitful discussion of the nature of reality and of the existence of god we need to move beyond the objective (beyond-the-skin-is-real) and subjective (within-the-skin-is-real) dispute. We need to begin speaking to each other about our experience. We need to be able to say what our experience of ‘god’ is or why we see the ’scientific’ account as more convincing. When we can start talking about what our words describe I think this discussion will be able to move forward in a fruitful way.