Episode 14 // Mysticism

Though I have experienced basically all of life through the lens of 'religion', my first engaged encounter with 'mysticism' was through the work of Karen Armstrong, who I deeply admired for her great reverence for 'God', which paradoxically was expressed by emphasizing the unknowability of the Divine. This inevitably shattered the superstructure of doctrine that I had so presumptuously identified and essentially equated with 'Christian faith' my entire life. It was the intellectual/activist, Simone Weil, who so succinctly expressed, "In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs."

The intrigue of mysticism for me is rather far removed from any sort of internalism or self-discovery, even from spiritual ecstasy to a certain extent, but rather as a form of humility when discoursing on the Divine, or anything of significance for that matter. Music was actually one of the first territories in my life where I found the ability to break free from hegemony, and it established for me a form after which I could reorient something in my life as significant as 'religion'.

Below is a portrait of the Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, whose 'negative theology' Jacques Derrida cites as an influence for his notion of 'différance', [1]. Derrida, on belief and religious mystics, states that "...in order to be authentic – this is a word I almost never use – but in order to be authentic, belief in God must be exposed to the absolute doubt. And I know that the great mystics are experiencing this. They are experiencing the death of God, or the disappearance of God, or the non-existence of God, or God as being called as non-existent: “I pray to Someone who does not exist in the strict metaphysical meaning of ‘existence’ that is ‘to be present as an essence or substance’ or ousia.” ...If I believe in what is beyond Being, then I believe as an atheist, in a certain way. Believing implies some atheism, however paradoxical it may seem. I’m sure that the true believers know this better than others, that they experience atheism all the time – and this is part of their belief. In this epoche, this suspension of belief - suspension of the position, the existence of God – it is in this epoche that faith appears. The only possibility is faith in this epoche."

episode download: [forthcoming]


0:00:47 - station id: Jack Layton
0:00:57 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:01:10 - Kim Jung Mi - 'Yearnin' To Him Irrespective Of My Will'
0:03:33 - Television - 'Guiding Light'
0:09:09 - The Rapture - 'In The Grace Of Your Love'
0:14:48 - Terry Riley - 'Persian Surgery Dervishes' (Performance One)
0:"":""' - talking on: mysticism of exams
0:18:20 - Father John Misty - 'O I Long To Feel Your Arms Around Me'
0:20:41 - Teen Suicide - 'Give Me Back To The Sky'
0:22:53 - Mazzy Star - 'Fade Into You'
0:27:46 - promo: public policy event
0:28:26 - psa: Anishinaabe & Haudenosaunee land
0:28:37 - Mandy Woo - 'Searching For God Knows What'
0:40:38 - Roscoe Mitchell - 'Out There'
0:44:37 - The Haxan Cloak - 'Dieu'
0:49:50 - Simone Weil - 'Preparing For The Presence Of God'
":50:00 - talking on: Jean-Luc Marion and Simone Weil, [2]
0:53:57 - Dirty Beaches - 'Lord Knows Best'
0:57:21 - promo: bikes & boards in jduc
0:57:48 - promo: Below The Decks (show)
0:58:21 - psa: Noam Chomsky on community radio
0:59:06 - station id: Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!
0:59:21 - Albert Ayler - 'Our Prayer/Spirits Rejoice'


1:05:35 - Richard Skelton - 'Voice Of The Book'
":"7:17 - talking on: Henri de Lubac, Julian of Norwich, Martin Buber, Heschel, [3], [4], [5], [6]
1:12:57 - Homeshake - 'Dynamic Meditation'
1:20:43 - Nap Eyes - 'Tribal Thoughts'
1:23:18 - Robert Ashley - 'In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven...'


“Love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mystical of cosmic forces. Love is the primal and universal psychic energy. Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.”
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

"The Nazis were controlling France through the Vichy government and were bearing down on me big time. I knew I had to get out of Dodge. I was a fellow eternally concerned with questions of history and how to think about history. My two pals Brecht and Scholem were pulling me between Marxism and Jewish mysticism—two opposite directions if there ever were some. As a good Marxist, I should look at history only in terms of economics, revolution, and the class struggle... But I guess I'm just not a purist when it comes to Marxism, because I believe that "spiritual things" also matter. I have always been torn over whether to look at history from a materialist/Marxist perspective or through the lens of theology and mysticism. Why in tarnation do these two have to be so opposed?"
- Walter Benjamin

"'Oh taste and see that the Lord is good.' It is this tasting and seeing, however spiritualized it may become, that the genuine mystic desires. [Their] attitude is determined by the fundamental experience of the inner self which enters into immediate contact with God or the metaphysical Reality."
- Gershom Scholem

"In mysticism that love of truth which we saw as the beginning of all philosophy leaves the merely intellectual sphere, and takes on the assured aspect of a personal passion. Where the philosopher guesses and argues, the mystic lives and looks; and speaks, consequently, the disconcerting language of first-hand experience, not the neat dialectic of the schools. Hence whilst the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains a diagram —impersonal and unattainable—the Absolute of the mystics is lovable, attainable, alive."
- Evelyn Underhill


Further Info:
[1] Meister Eckhart's Influence on Modern Philosophy (Wikipedia Page)
[2] Jean-Luc Marion (Wikipedia Page)
[3] Henri de Lubac (Wikipedia Page)
[4] Julian of Norwich (Wikipedia Page)
[5] Martin Buber (Wikipedia Page)
[6] Abraham Joshua Heschel (Wikipedia Page)