Mystics: Knowledge-Makers Daring to Bare Knowledge.
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The quoted are equated with being the leaders of an age, as if there sits not in silence an even wiser sage.
Some images parade until they pervade our essence if essence is our possession. These images command our attention and our affections. We only perceive this, however, in hindsight. We are too enamored to perceive it initially when images light. Thus we embrace questions which they compel. Only after we have been enthralled do we pause to ask why.
By then, however, it is too late for pauses to take and for us to break their hold. All who perceive spirit inhabit this mold. They know exceedingly how fleetingly our autonomy fades when images pervade. We serve their sway unless we betray our allegiance. In betraying, however, we forfeit the opportunity to become regents in regions that determine the seasons of the soul and the rhythm of nations.
Our resistance creates myths and mystics who create their own rhythm, often contrary to convention. By this rhythm our knowledge is deepened. Yet their names are seldom mentioned.
If, however, mystics were materially inclined, their names would pervade the national mind because of what they invent and devise. Yet they remain anonymous generally until they are discovered by another century, who consume their works and exhume their lives. Then they are exalted and debated because of what pervaded. In this regard, most ages also ignore sages and seers.
The same transgression is committed by their peers who loathe to acknowledge those whose porridge excels their own. These justify their ignorance by what mystics say and are shown.
What is shown, however, is their ignorance. Else they would embrace mystical insights, being emboldened thereby. Instead, they defend their ignorance by saying mystics are ahead of their time because of their incline. Yet their incline merely reveals the priority images assume when they pervade. Hence our tendency to become decrepit before the cryptic, and to accuse mystics of being incoherent.
Our response reenacts Adam’s fall. Unlike Adam, however, we reject illumination, preferring darkness instead.
We would rather perish than nourish the nous spirit produced in them for our benefit. We also reject mystical insights because of our fetish for forms. Yet because mystics dare, knowledge bares itself. This knowledge seems supernatural because we are neutered in our ability to express our instincts to others. Moreover, its crude beginnings crown its endings, provided it feeds human needs.
Consider the art and artifacts mystics create. These creations derive from forces more fundamental than we assume. Consider how we seek them for relief.
Consider how mystical insights illumine the sublime, revealing things ahead (and behind) what is normally imperceptible and opaque. Mystical knowledge reveals the relationship between opacity and capacity. What is dense prevents our advance. What isn’t is given for us to nurture until we master. Without mystics and their material, we seek sublimity in the superficial. Religion formerly fed this need.
Ever since Nietzsche, however, God has lost speed (and influence) with many. These are strangers to transcendence, and indifferent to mystics and their service.
Thus, what parades perverts our senses. What pervades discourages our advances beyond what can be fashioned into forms that feed our fears disguised as facts. Characteristically, facts exert force disproportionate to their truth, though not to their use. We sense this instinctively, but remain indifferent to mystics and their knowledge.
We likewise behave towards the sage. Yet we demand answers only they can give, even as we raise questions we cannot live because of the tension questions create. Hence the tendency of mystics and sages to occupy oblivion. If, however, they prized gain, their fame would resound until we renounced our indifference.
Obsession with gain begets ills only richer knowledge can heal. Maybe that’s what Einstein meant in saying, “We can’t solve our problems using the same logic that created them.” How often do we cite this saying, yet continue neighing the sufficiency of nonsense, indifferent to options in the form of persons whose approach betrays our own?
Even so, the knowledge we seek often sits in containers with tattered labels and twisted tops. Some are hard to open, others hard to read. But that doesn’t mean we should reject them. We should instead be eager and willing, prudent in appealing and in using them. In this regard, wisdom cries daily and discreetly, saying, “Come meet me, and I will give you knowledge life-transforming.”
Maybe that’s our fear. Maybe that’s why we reject mystics unless they are psychics to the stars. Then we open widely and lend them ours, not only our ears but also our fears that we might be assured all is well even when it isn’t. These psychics use their signets to enter places none should.
Consider, for example, dogmatic religions and deluded prophets who pervert what is common to all, namely, the right to self-rule despite their insight. Rightly understood, mystical knowledge reveals the difference between giving advice and living life by this knowledge, despite the tension that attends its reception and possession.
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A former corporate trainer and university lecturer, Dr. Joel Bryant is an avid reader, writer, speaker, thinker and dreamer. He is also the author of over 40 books on various topics, each exploring themes of change, growth and greatness. He holds a doctorate in Educational Leadership from UNC Charlotte, where he spent five years lecturing in the Philosophy Department. He resides in Charlotte, NC.
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