Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one. - Voltaire
Notes on Rational Mysticism by John Horgan
Philosophia perennis is a spiritual concept coined by Gottfrieda Leibniz, which postulates that the worlds great spiritual traditions express the same fundamental truth about the nature of reality, a truth that can be directly apprehended during a mystical experience.
At the heart of all mystical traditions is the mysterium tremendum. Religons do not reveal this heart, but instead shield us from direct confrontation with it. The mysterium tremendum is not a deity or force, but instead it is the opposite of everything that is and can be thought. It is absence not presence. It is the wholly other. It is the nothingness from which we came and the nothingness to which we will return. It is the infinite. Seeing life against the backdrop of infinity can evoke joy, madness, terror, revulsion, love, gratitude, hilarity or all of the above at once. You may delight in the worlds astonishing beauty or despair at its fragility and insignificance. There is no explanation for how a finite human something could have emerged from that infinite inhuman nothing. It is a riddle that cannot be solved. A paradox. Mystical awe is the inverse of knowledge. Instead of seeing the Answer to the riddle of existence, you see how impenetrable the riddle is. When we confront reality we tremble on that fine line between exhilaration and dread. A truly mystical experience gives no answers, but instead reveals the awesome massiveness of the question. (Side note: Art is sometimes the best way of sharing this awe inspiring mystery. Art is the lie that tells the truth, intrinsically ironic. Art comes closer to uttering the unutterable by acknowledging its own insufficiency. It gives us not answers but questions.)
Prayers and chants, images, temples, gods, sages, definitions and cosmologies are but ferries to a shore of experience beyond the categories of thought, to be abandoned on arrival. Joseph Campbell
Notes on Rational Mysticism by John Horgan
Philosophia perennis is a spiritual concept coined by Gottfrieda Leibniz, which postulates that the worlds great spiritual traditions express the same fundamental truth about the nature of reality, a truth that can be directly apprehended during a mystical experience.
At the heart of all mystical traditions is the mysterium tremendum. Religons do not reveal this heart, but instead shield us from direct confrontation with it. The mysterium tremendum is not a deity or force, but instead it is the opposite of everything that is and can be thought. It is absence not presence. It is the wholly other. It is the nothingness from which we came and the nothingness to which we will return. It is the infinite. Seeing life against the backdrop of infinity can evoke joy, madness, terror, revulsion, love, gratitude, hilarity or all of the above at once. You may delight in the worlds astonishing beauty or despair at its fragility and insignificance. There is no explanation for how a finite human something could have emerged from that infinite inhuman nothing. It is a riddle that cannot be solved. A paradox. Mystical awe is the inverse of knowledge. Instead of seeing the Answer to the riddle of existence, you see how impenetrable the riddle is. When we confront reality we tremble on that fine line between exhilaration and dread. A truly mystical experience gives no answers, but instead reveals the awesome massiveness of the question. (Side note: Art is sometimes the best way of sharing this awe inspiring mystery. Art is the lie that tells the truth, intrinsically ironic. Art comes closer to uttering the unutterable by acknowledging its own insufficiency. It gives us not answers but questions.)
Prayers and chants, images, temples, gods, sages, definitions and cosmologies are but ferries to a shore of experience beyond the categories of thought, to be abandoned on arrival. Joseph Campbell
VIEW 9 of 9 COMMENTS
it is something that I have been pecking at the edges of for some time
it is breathtaking to be aware of such
Oh, and thanks for the PDX tour-guide offering.