gnosis92

In a Godless world, does mysticism have any value?

Mysticism is the pursuit of achieving communion or identity with, or conscious awareness of, ultimate reality, the divine, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, or insight; and the belief that such experience is an important source of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.

One understanding of atheism is a denial of any transcedent God or deity, and hence of any such intuition or insight.

Mystical poetry and readings are often beautiful and exalted, from Meister Eckhart to Saint Augstine to the Psalms and the Gospel of John, but from the standpoint of atheism, is there any meaningfulness in mystical literature poetry or art? Is it still possible or desirable to have mystical experiences as an atheist, and if so, how would an atheist accommodate a mystical experience within a naturalistic worldview?

Any atheist here with a mystical experience? Any mystics who converted to atheism, how do you account for your intense spiritual experience?

dettus

I dislike words like myticalism or spiritualism because of their supernatural implications. Nevertheless I do not deny that humans are capable of epiphanies and other very important experiences that have major impacts in our lives.

Sam Harris talks about this in his book, The End of Faith. He gets some flak from atheists for it, but it's mostly about how words like spirutiality and mystism imply supernatural claims. Anyway Sam Harris argues that if we remove the supernatural beliefs associated with the the practices whereby people achieve spiritual experience then they are most certainly valuable and worthy of scientific inquiry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris_%28author%29

Scroll down to the topic entitled "Spirituality"

premjan

Mystics are supposedly better at getting people to cooperate with each other. That perhaps could be counted as a value.

Osbert

The Book of Invisibility
Fragments of the Book are sometimes stumbled upon by lucky people: geeks, seers, lunatics, gold diggers, plain thinkers and visionaries but when they come to describe their experience to others they unfortunately cloak their wonder in too much vanity and importance so that the Book’s Words remain Invisible.

Osbert+

Viti

Introspection and pondering life's hard questions often lead to insight and positive feelings, better attitudes an/or positive life changes. Nothing "mystical" about talking to yourself.

gnosis92

I thought of Mystics as living in seclusion.

gnosis92

I've thought of (christian) mysticism as having a sense that you are connected with God to a far greater degree than the ordinary believer, such as Meister Eckhart.

Viti

They may have a sense they are connected to the divine, but they are actually just "connected" to themselves, in my opinion.

Barefoot Bree

Christian mysticism, yes, and Muslim, and Judaic.

But you're leaving out whole swaths of the world's religions that are based in mysticism, and do not have the west's personified godhood. Buddhism for largest and most obvious example, but all of the eastern religions are rooted more in mysticism than god(s).

Which is altogether better, IMO.

Although I agree with LadyShea that mystics are only communing with themselves, and I rely on the recent studies done which proved that stimulating certain parts of the brain can induce a state of religious ecstacy (one of these days I'm going to nail down a good website or two on this for reference); hey, whatever trips your trigger. If communing with the One makes you happy and keeps you off the streets (preaching at the rest of us), go for it.

EarlOfLade

In a godless world?
Doesn't make sense at all.