I’m not a mathematics person but I do find some of the ideas of mathematics and logic interesting sometimes. A few years ago, I became fixated on the idea of something called 2nd order logic. If you’ve ever heard of godel’s incompleteness theorem, it basically says that any system that describes itself reaches a point where it can’t describe itself from within. That is, the language can’t possibly be expressive enough to express important information about the language that it can’t see about itself. My interest was tied to computing because it was around that time (1930s) that several people that tried to resolve the problem of godel AND ended up figuring out that if you simply ignore the pesky paradox and stop trying to resolve it, you create a level above – a “second order” – and then you can describe it from above and do a whole lot of other things as well.
Computing sidesteps the paradox by introducing time and queues – But what it loses is the ability to be certain.
There are many different programming languages and computer architectures and they can’t all do exactly the same things. They all have strengths and weaknesses. But underneath it all they all successfully gain a sense of partial self-knowability by losing the certainty first order logic brings.
Mysticism is a legitimate category because it does seem to follow certain patterns whereby a paradox is attempting to be resolved or faced. How can God be intimately near and yet also also unknowable? That’s a contradiction. In mysticism they try to face the unfaceable and describe the indescribable and experience what’s too much to experience and seems to push beyond human limits. The methodologies followed by different religions in their mysticisms seem to utilize the same toolkit even if they don’t use all of the same tools. The theologies of the different religions are very similar in how they handle mysticism within it but they are distinct and some of the differences are very very important within those religions, but they don’t seem to be far off from their neighbors.
With this view, verification of a mystic’s experiences then comes from working with the body of mystical knowledge across religions and time and if theirs seems to fall into the “family of mysticism”, it validates their experience.
I would consider a study of mysticism perhaps better taught from the point of view of mysticism’s commonalities itself and then branching off to where they’re different as needed. Historically mysticism is based upon a Christian history model but it’s grown and changed since then, and I would consider viewing all of the commonalities and truly understanding them before then looking at the different families of differences across religions until you reach a point where you have a more advanced level where you look at the theological differences within the religion itself, such as those between Muʿtazilites “knowable God” vs Ibn ʿArabī’s “unknowable essence” but actionable participation – one that I immediately recognized as very very similar to Gregory Palamas “essence vs energies” distinction in Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
Different programming languages on different hardware but all utilizing a hidden second order logic that allows for an attempt at self-knowledge through accepting and working around a structural unknowability – it’s the metaphor in my mind for mysticism and all of its expressions. The differences are profound and crucial to understand because the theologies are vastly different. But the PROCESSES of finite humans dealing with the unknowable follows the same patterns.
Do we taste the fruits to find the roots of the tree? Do we look at the roots to taste the fruits? Or do we study the nature of the orchard itself? Only once that’s understood can we ask why the apple and the orange tree grow in different areas of the orchard and debate the closeness of a kiwi to lemon and whether kiwis belong in a tree orchard, being vines.
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