/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11124738]

>x philosopher was a mystic

[Anonymous No.11124756]

>>11124738
You can be one too and then decide

[Anonymous No.11124774]

>>11124756
care to extrapolate

[Cool Poster No.11124784]

They all are. Poets, philosophers and prophets are all roughly the same thing.

[Anonymous No.11124813]

>>11124784
>all philosophers are mystics

[Anonymous No.11124820]

>>11124784
no they are not,and no they are not

[Anonymous No.11124860]

>>11124774
The mystic experience is indeed an experience. The intellectual explanation of it is not enough to understand. If you want to understand you have to had a mystical experience first.

[Anonymous No.11124931]

>>11124860
how do i get a mystical experience?
Any other way than drugs?

[Anonymous No.11124936]

>>11124931
Trivial. Self-hypnosis is the sulfured way to do it.

[Anonymous No.11124946]

>>11124738
Truth can only be attained through grace, so a better question is, why aren't more philosophers mystics?

[Anonymous No.11124953]

? Half of philosophers have had mystical experiences, you know. The basis for innovation in an individualist society (christian) requires a mystical ground from which everything else builds upon.

Descartes had a vision in which an angel came down to see him and share her knowledge.
Jung had visions throughout his life starting from 5. These are two exemples off the top of my head, there are thousands more.

[Anonymous No.11124973]

>>11124936
>trivial
>sulfured
i don't like you

[Anonymous No.11124984]

>>11124738

[Anonymous No.11124995]

>>11124953
Plato is a good one (good reason to believe he was influenced by/initiated into some Ancient Greek Mystery Schools, talks about developing oneself to have a godlike reason and be able to transcend the trap of matter — you can see the influence it had on later mystical Sufis, Gnostics, and Neoplatonists)

[Anonymous No.11125200]

>>11124931
Meditation, fasting, Sufi dance, psychedelic drug. Better if combined

[Anonymous No.11125204]

Daily reminder that Fernando Pessoa was obsessed with astrology and produced literally hundreds of astrological horoscopes during his life.

[Anonymous No.11125299]

>>11124953
>thousands more
Please, name me, say, 50 philosophers who allegedly had mystical experiences. It should be easy enough for you.

[Anonymous No.11125313]

>>11125200
>sufi
>mystical
Isn’t mysticism by definition an individual endeavor, and a mystical experience something like a revelation? I see something like a Sufi dance as more directed and consistent; is that the difference between right and left hand paths, or that’s a different distinction?

[Anonymous No.11125410]

>>11125313
I speak for experience since I had mystical experience not drug induced and I suggest you to avoid every conceptualisation not strictly necessary. Mystical experience is about reachinng a state of communion with God. A state in which you and God are the same thing and that thing is everything. You loose your sense of self. This is as far as a intellectual explanation can go. What you can understand however are the techniques that will bring you this alterate state of consciousness.

My biggest suggestion is to start reading about how to do meditation and immediately start practicing, but keep in mind that nobody really know why meditation gives you that experience. There are explanation more coherent and more plausible than others but this is not what you should focus yourself about. I say that because this is the major mistake that prevents people from reaching a mystical experience. It's an experience no concept will bring you there, no thinking about it.

[Anonymous No.11125411]

>>11124946
I am not much of a science guy so someone help me out, I assume that as he enters the void he will suffocate due to lack of air. Will his body rot and decay after he dies or will the vacuum preserve it?

[Anonymous No.11125420]

>>11124931
>drugs
stupid materialist

[Anonymous No.11125513]

>>11125313
Mysticism is whatever you say it is. I’ve been interested in Sufism for a while since reading Idries Shah. Since reading him, I was inspired to pick up Rumi, Hafiz, Sanai, and Attar (some of the best-known Sufi poets) and read a bit else about the history and traditions of Sufism. I would call Sufism mystical because of its emphasis on direct experience of spiritual realities, on immersion into God and the effacement of the self during this (called “fana” and “baqa”, annihilation of the self and subsistence in God respectively). Mysticism doesn’t have to be individual, you can even find mysticism and the acceptance of the validity of mystical experiences in Catholicism, which is an archetypally heavily group/leader-based religion, whether you’re just a layperson going to church or a monk under the abbot or prior, who gives you spiritual advice and such.

Right and left hand path is a different distinction; first, it’s an edgy modern one with no real deeper basis or meaning. Left hand pretty much is the edgy term for mystical practices about the glorification of the self, egoism, sensual practices to reach enlightenment, right-hand of benevolence, altruism, and reducing the ego. This is an idiotic distinction because the “left-hand path” isn’t really a way to enlightenment and shouldn’t be implied to be equal to the “right-hand path”, because the most it will lead to is the development of perhaps of some powers and pleasures, but not to true enlightenment. Moreover, once you get far enough in the path, you realize there’s no real distinction between being altruistic and egoistically helping yourself, because your self is connected to everything and everyone else, so when you’re helping others, you’re helping yourself, and when you’re harming others while thinking you’re helping yourself, you’re just harming yourself the more.

>>11125420
>And of the fruits of the palms and the grapes– you obtain from them intoxication and goodly provision; most surely there is a sign in this for a people who ponder.
Quran 16:67

>Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you
Genesis 1:29-39

The “material” is just a denser degree of the “spiritual”, the spiritual a more rarified degree of the material. There’s nothing wrong with being a materialist. Why can’t psychedelic drugs be proof of a great mind behind and in nature? Psychedelics have been used to trigger mystical experiences throughout history, there’s evidence of them playing a role with many mystics

[Anonymous No.11125653]

>>11125299
Plato (claims he had a divine voice speaking to him which would tell him when not to do stuff)
William James and his experiences with nitrous which he called outright mystical experiences
Aldous Huxley got deep into mysticism, influenced by various spiritual practices and doing mescaline, and devoted later philosophical books to it
Meister Eckhart was a philosopher with mystical experiences of becoming one with God
Jakob Bohme’s whole philosophy and theology was set off by a mystical revelation he had one day seeing sunlight strike a pewter dish
Thomas Aquinas, for Chrissake, accepted even by non-Catholics as one of the greatest Western philosophers, claimed having a mystical revelation later on in his life of heavenly truths, and claimed they made all his writings feel worthless in comparison
Hegel was influenced by Hermeticism and occult ideas
Plotinus talking about the supremacy of the pure contemplative intellect uniting itself with the One through meditation and transcending the physical is straight mysticism, it’s clear from his philosophy and biographical info he tried to practice what he preached and felt he reached mystical states of union in all during meditation
Ibn Arabi and al-Ghazali, accepted as the greatest Islamic philosophers, were mystics who referred favorably to Sufism and had mystical experiences
Ralph Waldo Emerson was interested in Hindu/pantheistic ideas and favorably talked about the idea of the Oversoul and being merged in it, even described his own experiences of feeling one with the world while out in nature
Mircea Eliade was a philosopher and historian of religion who talked about mystical experiences and epiphanies he had

[Anonymous No.11125657]

Swedenborg

[Anonymous No.11125691]

>>11125653
That was Socrates not Plato

[Anonymous No.11125693]

>>11125691
True, I’m high

[Anonymous No.11125707]

>>11125653
I would argue that Hegel was strong anti-mystic, in the sense that while he thought that some mystics had true
insight into things, like Bohme for example, but as long as it was intuitive and non-discursive / non-public he thought
that mysticism did relatively little in the development of spirit. At least, until it is made logical and accessible to language.

[Anonymous No.11125758]

>>11125204
>Astrology
>Neopaganism

[Anonymous No.11125764]

>>11125707
But his system is still explicitly an articulation of mystical non-knowledge

[Anonymous No.11125767]

>>11125653
>Hegel a mystic
>the autist who literally thought that reality was inherently rational was a mystic
I'm not even bother pointing out why the other examples are equally shitty.

[Anonymous No.11125770]

>>11125693
The function of the negative commandments of the voice is basically that of reason, refutational theory of knowledge, you can only know what is not true etc.

[Anonymous No.11125781]

>>11125767
but that's true even with mystical perspectives. they even call their own works a science with laws and rules