Mystical Jargon

Over the years I’ve accumulated sheets with scribbled or marginal definitions of a lot of words thickening texts that form the scholarly literature on the mystical. I thought I’d consolidate them in one place. This listing will remain “active” in that I’ll keep on adding to it as new ones make me reach for the dictionary.

docetism: From Greek dokein, meaning to “seem, to appear to be,” therefore the belief that the body of Jesus was not really a body, but merely an appearance, a phantom, thus the denial of Jesus as simultaneously being both God and man.

eschatology: eskhatos from the Greek, “last, furthest, uttermost, extreme, most remote”; then the added -ology, from -logy, from Greek logia, Latin legein, “to speak,” hence teaching, doctrine science of — whatever—in this case of the End Times.

epiphany: Greek phainein, “to show,” and epi meaning “on or in.” Therefore “showing forth,” manifestation, appearance.

Now there are several other kinds of -phany. Hierophany is from Greek hieros, holy, sacred—the manifestation of something holy. Theophany where the subject is theos, God. Other such formations sometimes occur, and when they do the initial leading word must be understood to see who or what is “manifesting.”

Authors then tend to turns these words into adjectives (hierophanic, theophanic) to modify words like vision or imagination or experience, by which time the meaning begins to fray because the visceral meaning of the words is, to begin with, something very rarely experienced.

haecceity, hexeity: From Medieval Latin (actually Duns Scotus), haec, “this,” therefore thisness, meaning the quality that makes something, e.g. God, absolutely unique. Its rendering as hexeity is linguistically confusing although it makes spelling the word a lot easier. Hex of course refers to “six” in Greek, but the meaning is the very opposite: unique one-ness.

homologation: Greek root is homologeo, “to agree.” Therefore the word carries the meaning of accreditation or proof or qualification.

hypostasis: From the Greek hypo, “under,” a word that means “that which is underneath,” therefore its substance. The plural is hypostases.

ipseity: A word meaning “self” or “selfhood” using the Latin ipse for self. The reference is often to divine ipseity, or selfness, presumably a way of pointing to “self” writ super large. The word’s root is used in the phrase ipse dixit, attributed to Cicero (106-43 BC), who was castigating appeals to personal authority. The phrase means “he said it himself.” The origin of that was the Greek autos ephā, meaning the same thing, used as “authority” by students of Pythagoras. 

philoxenia: The easiest way to parse this word is by comparing it to its opposite, xenophobia. The last is “fear of strangers, foreigners”; the word here is “love of strangers, foreigners.”

soteriology: From Green soteria, “salvation, preservation.” Also used as soteriological.

syzygy: From Greek syzygia meaning “a union of two, a pairing, yoking, conjunction.” Implied is twinning—and in mystical literature referring to a “heavenly twin” corresponding to the earthly soul. This then widens and thins even to include the concept of the guardian angel.

thaumaturgy: Greek thauma for “wonder, miracle” and ergon for “work”. Miracle-working.

theogony: From the Greek theos and agonia, “struggle, suffering.” God’s sufferings.

theosophy: Greek, theos and sophos, “wise, learned.” Knowledge of God.

The curious effect of using principally Greek words in scholarly discussions of mysticism is to cause a veiling the subject behind a kind of sacred language. Putting these concepts in plain English exposes the scholar to dismissal or attack because the presentation would then have a strongly fundamentalist sound.

“Illusion” as Interpretation

A recent earlier post here (“Whose Illusion?”) touches on this subject, and more is provided here. To put it as succinctly as possible, it is unreasonable to speak of the world as illusion once you understand the world in some in detail. The assertion that it is, which we encounter in Brahmanism and in Buddhism, arises not from reasoning but from an overwhelming feeling. The root of that feeling is the unitive experience—as we call it in the West. We call it that because it is taken to be unity with God (or the Cosmos) reached in ecstatic states. That sense of unity is also present in the Vedantic saying Thou Art That, meaning that Atman is Brahman (soul is God). Different Vedantic schools give this doctrine different interpretations, thus ranging from “soul is a part of” to “soul is.” The sense of unity is also present in the Buddhist Enlightenment but without being called that; but all multiplicity is conquered; absolute liberation characterizes the enlightened state.

The experience certainly produces both a radical devaluation of the world and sometimes an equally radical indifference to it. The world is suddenly seen in a very new perspective. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), who spent his life writing the most profound works of theology, had a mystical experience while saying mass late in 1273. He stopped writing. Asked to resume his work, he said: “Everything I have written seems like straw by comparison with what I have seen and what has been revealed to me” (source). He did not resume his work.

D.T. Suzuki, in Essays on Zen Buddhism, First Series, quotes the Buddha saying, p. 137: “These questions are not calculated to profit, they are not concerned with Dharma, they do not redound to the elements of right conduct, nor to detachment, nor to purification from lusts, nor to quietude, nor to tranquillization of heart, nor to real knowledge, nor to Nirvana. Therefore is it that I express no opinion on them.” The questions referred to were: Is the world eternal? Is the world not eternal? Is the world finite? The source given is the Pottapada Sutta (in which a beggar, Pottapada, asks the Buddha questions). That word Dharma is a killer, by the way. It means all sorts of things, including “doctrine.” In this context it is best understood as “the path.”

One of the striking features of the unitive experience is that those who’ve undergone it never say anything concrete, never mind new, about the world. They have a feeling of overwhelming knowledge, but it produces nothing they’re able to articulate. What we get from them is a valuation. That’s plain enough in Aquinas’ statement—as in the Buddha’s. Aquinas now dismisses his own works as more or less worthless—more or less because straw isn’t entirely worthless. The Buddha asserts that answering questions about the nature of the world is irrelevant to the achievement of the experience of nirvana. Valuations.

The most accessible written source about a full-fledged modern unitive experience is Pathways Through To Space (1973) by Franklin Merrell-Wolff (1887-1985). The book is readily available still and makes fascinating reading. Merrell-Wolff then tried to give some explanations in his The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object. That second book, in my opinion, has virtually no content—nor does a later one in which he includes commentary on his second book.

Having looked at such matters for many years now, I’ve gradually come to see the unitive experience minimally as a non-starter for cosmological thought. Those who’ve had it are overwhelmed by knowledge, but its content is inaccessible, not least to themselves. Now let’s suppose that it is—and I don’t by any means think that it is—an experience of the Ultimate. But if that is the case, it gives us two polarities and absolutely nothing in between. At one pole is Everything at the other Illusion—or something valued not at all. But how one relates to the other—and why it is that life-forms are so very, very intricately engineered, and ditto the elemental world beneath that engineering—that is never even remotely illuminated by this very energetic experience of enlightenment.

Doctrinal Battles

Even a barely grown-up spirituality will shy from the doctrinal battles that rage between and within religions. Engaging in such battles is, of course, an indication that the person is attracted by the world. More: such combative activity is probably a violation of the very spirit of the religion the person wishes to defend or to promote. With inner growth comes insight summed up most succinctly here:

When you arrive at the sea, you
do not talk of the tributary.
[Hakim Sanai, The Walled Garden of Truth]

One Sufi master suggested the role of religion (conceived, I think, as doctrinally hedged about) in this snippet:

There are three forms of culture, the mere acquisition of information; religious culture, following rules; elite culture, self-development. [Hujwiri, Revelation of the Veiled]

The sentence above suggests a sequence that I here liken to maturing. Each of the three stages mentioned has its place and merit. Each contributes to a person’s development of true humanity. “Following rules” is quite something other than doing battle with others, including merely abstract battle, over the rules that they prefer. That a famous author declines to be in communion with this or that tradition of a faith doesn’t merit mention, never mind highlighting, unless the intention is to promote one’s own or to belittle another group’s convictions.

To rise above doctrine is not to dismiss it. That approach is used by those who insist on staying on the level beneath the religious. To rise above doctrines means to accept them all, to ignore their detectable flaws and seeming contradiction, and to receive the grace that they carry. Another Sufi saying I’m very fond of, in this context, is that “The channel doesn’t drink.”

Concerning Rigor

I’ve never explored the source of irritation philosophy sometimes produces. A knee-jerk response is that it lacks integration—not in the sense of rigorous internal consistency, which is present in it in spades, but in that it relies exclusively on conceptual operations and leaves out everything mysterious and intuitive; those latter aspects need a poetic expression and a different kind of cognition. Philosophy tends to the purely intellectual. This flaw is least present in Platonic dialogues, although these too can be reduced (good word that, reduced) to conceptual tokens. In that process, however, something is lost, whereas, by contrast, in cooking for instance, reduction can often concentrate essences and something then appears to have been added. The very virtue of philosophy, precision, is also its limitation. It cannot render the whole. π is not a round number, you might say. But the poetic, the mystical also has its limitations. It produces a total knowledge, an absolute certainty that matters, unlike logical compulsion, which may not really persuade. But it lacks precision. Ah, total integration… Maybe in heaven.