A free thinker mystic

People are always asking me “what are you…what do you believe?” Well, what I am is a free thinking mystic. With no creeds…no dogmas…no doctrines…no violence…no absolutes and no dualism.

MYSTICISM IS:

Sir Arthur Eddington, Nobel in Physics, writing: “Something unknown is doing we know not what.”

Louis Dr. Broglie, Nobel in Physics, writing: “Man has need of a mystical supplement of the soul. The spiritual guides of humanity must awaken this supplement of the soul.”

Carl Jung, writing: “The creative mystic has always been a thorn in the side of the dogmatic church. It is to the mystic that we owe all that is best in humanity.”

William James writing: “The true mystic has insight into depths of truth that are unplumbed by the discursive intellect.”

Albert Einstein, writing: “I believe in mystery…only in relation to mysticism do I consider myself a religious man.”

Sir Julian Huxley, writing: “Science must come to terms with other systems of knowledge…the aesthetic and the intuitive…the subconscious…imaginative and visionary…or in other words the way of mysticism.”

IN MYSTICISM:

There is NO VIOLENCE: The vast majority of all the religious violence of the last 2000 years has come from the “believers” of Judaism, Christianity and Islam…the people of the “book”…the bible. Carl Sagan called the burning of the library in Alexandria by Christians in 391 A.D. one of the most obscene atrocities in the history of our species. In Mysticism there would have been NO Crusades…no Inquisition…no slaughtering of nine million witches…no killings in Northern Ireland…no West Bank or Gaza strip killing field…no holy wars or Jihads…no bombing of abortion clinics…no inflammatory preaching against gays and lesbians…such violence is obscene to anyone living within the world view of mysticism.

There is NO DUALISM: A virus in the mind of organized religions is the separation of man from nature…and nature from man…and spirit from matter. Organized religions want to separate something called “God” from the earth down here. They use the word symbol “God” as something “out there” apart from “down here.” It is always God and us…God and the earth…God and the creation…God and the creatures…God and something else. As Zen Master Suzuki put it, “man against God…God against man…man against nature…nature against man…God against nature…nature against God. Very, very funny religion.”

In mysticism the word God is only a symbol for the One-ness of everything, such as the Tao in Taoism, or Wakan Tanka with the Lakota people of the Sioux nation. The universe is a totality and an inter-relatedness of all things. It is John Muir saying, “everything is hitched to everything else.”

Today’s physics and quantum mechanics confirm that the classifications of animate and inanimate are archaic and invalid. James Jeans said it well: “Modern Physics has reduced the whole universe to waves and nothing but waves. All galaxies, stars, planets and human beings are manifestations of waves.” No dualism.

There are NO ABSOLUTES: The Dean of French Physics, Jean-Henri Poincare wrote: “There is no absolute space…there is no absolute time.” Einstein latched on to these words to develop his theory of relativity: “The only absolute in life is that there are no absolutes.” “Truth on this side of the mountain is falsehood on the other side of the mountain,” wrote Pascal. And in Zen and Taoism they say, “All values are relative to the mind that entertains them.” ln orthodox Judaism, Christianity and Islam is the neurotic desire to keep all of life in simplistic and naive black and whites. In Taoism they tell profound stories to illustrate: What is good or bad depends on whether you are a man, a frog or a mosquito. To the man, the frog is good because he can eat the frog, but the mosquito is bad because he eats on the man. To the frog the man is bad because the man will eat him but the mosquito is good because he can eat the mosquito. To the mosquito the man is good because he can eat on the man but the frog is bad because the frog will eat him. So what is good or bad depends on whether you are a man, a frog or a mosquito. What is good or bad depends on whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, a Holy Roller or a Taoist, Hindu or Jew; whatever they are saying that all values are relative to the mind that entertains them. No absolutes, as Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote so eloquently, ”Nothing is secure, except life and the energizing spirit. No truth so sublime but it may be trivial tomorrow in the light of new thought.”

Mysticism is an attitude of mind, an orientation to the world around us and within us, an insight into the nature of reality and truth, a recognition of the Oneness of the creation that can be experienced directly. It is a spiritual sense of intuition. It is the recognition of the fact that the cucumber cucumbering is your brother…and the red tail hawk your sister…and we all evolved from the stars together…and everything is “hitched to everything else” in a symbiotic relationship…and the waves that tie it all together is the cosmic dance of Shiva.