various systematizations ascribed to mysticism – whether kabbalah, astrology, magic, theosophy, all manner of occult and divination, arts and crafts and cards – like all things have their place. but whether their place is in anything called mysticism? the question more pointedly is to what extent the practice of darkness, of not-knowing, can attempt to systematize without unbecoming its practice? and even whether unbecoming, considering its not-knowing, might be part of its practice?
mysticism, while using language, has
typically been skeptical of language’s claims.
so poetry and mysticism share a common glance, though the former may
work with its material initially from love, relentlessly the latter from
necessity, later only the former from necessity.
relations between the child, mysticism, and
knowledge are set aside by those who congratulate themselves for being
adults. but mysticism questions the
assumptions of such congratulatory flourishes:
from mysticism’s arc, humans are all children – the gap between what one
can know and what presents itself to be known is nearly infinite – and so what is called
adulthood is often the worst of childhood retained and reified – society’s role
not infrequently being the defense of such reification.
mysticism and anarchism might be linked
through an empty subterranean tunnel apart from the hierarchies of the world,
the former emphasizing the tunnel’s spiritual qualities, the latter its
political and social. historically,
various individuals who could be called individual anarchists could also be
called mystics: chuang tzu, thoreau,
blake.
mysticism is a mode of human being that
precludes finality – whether the finality of religious or secular teleology, the finality
of existential choice or commitment, the finality of technodeterminism, the
finality of freedom. in such preclusion,
it flirts with certain vital pathologies of life as well as various
pathological vitalities of death. for what is death other than the perception
of a finality of finalities. and what is
life for most other than building bulwarks of hoped finalities against that
perception of a finality of finalities?
mysticism attempts to slip aside from these perceptions and buildings;
its means for slippage often include the murkiness of identity, the non-pursuit
of money, the question in all statements, and a pervasive homelessness.
to say mysticism is existence’s reflection
says more
the objectlessness of mysticism is
intrinsic. whether emily bronte or
teresa of avila, bruce conner, marguerite burnat-provins, or meister eckhart,
each was lost and found in spaces of disobjectification and so
dissubjectification, spaces of geometric mobility and nomadism, of the absence
of the thing in a thing.
so mystics can never form a club, society, school,
movement, manifesto, party, religion, revolution, institution – and barely a
discernible idea. mysticism is
ungraspable for its nature is air and fog, and it begins to feel false to
itself should it begin doing anything but attempting to shape the shapeless
into fluid words.
the car is the bird. that
god is this woman. your dream is my
life. this i is this they. these and their infinite
variations – crepuscular thoughts in the mystic’s eternal gloaming – are easy
to mock, discredit. a laboratory, a dropped
knife, a syllogism, a joke – each is sufficient. but the irritant that persists in the side of
truth, the mystic thorn in the brain of realism and facticity is this: that knowledge is based on relation, that
knowledge’s growth is based on the similarity of seeming dissimilarities,
insights frequently obtained through analogy, dream, disintegration, error,
irrationality, subversion. and mysticism
is the science and the art of this irritant.
mysticism places itself in the wound between
the human feeling of its significance and the human knowledge of its
insignificance. it places itself there,
and remains.
mysticism places itself in the manifold and
contradictory narratives of any situation, seeing equally the legitimacy and
insufficiency of each, the impossible comprehension of the whole, and remains.
mysticism places itself in the distance
between the confines of any singularity and the sum of all singularities, and
remains.
mysticism places itself in the sight of
indifference, chance, volition, freedom, carnage, goodness’ incarceration and
the laundered joys and comforts of evil, and remains.
the emptiness of mysticism might be said to be due to the cancellations inherent in such seeings, its fullness to the existent and residual pluralities, their union to the placings and remainings.
the emptiness of mysticism might be said to be due to the cancellations inherent in such seeings, its fullness to the existent and residual pluralities, their union to the placings and remainings.
