I was not exactly sure what Mysticism means. I went to the dictionary seeking its wisdom.

Mysticism Oxford:

1. Belief characterized by self-delusion or dreamy confusion of thought, especially when based on the assumption of occult qualities or mysterious agencies.
2. Belief that union with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or the spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, may be attained through contemplation and self-surrender.

The negative interoperation

I wanted to have both definitions, but I’ll focus on the first definition. This is a way to dismiss some idea or concepts as ridiculous and unfounded in science. While there is no doubt some mystic or sprital ideas can be wrong. Calling something mysticism to be critical, draws on the idea of dismissing the spiritual. I think this is a lack of openness or understanding of what spirituality is and what it’s not. While I’m still figuring this out myself, I think many “wo woo” ideas are associated with spirituality. I believe the mixing of these ideas to be poison, causing confusion and leading people away from spirituality. As I develop my understanding of spirituality, I’m sure there is much more to say about this topic.

The Neutral interpretation

I’d like to modify the second definition slightly. Moving away from any religious ideas here around a god or deity. I might rephrase it to be the fallowing:

Belief that some spiritual knowledge is inaccessible to the intellect and may only be attained through contemplation, experience, and meditation.

In this way, there is some knowledge that can only be gained though experience. There is no description, explanation, or data that can be used to convey this knowledge to another person.

Recently, this idea was described to me as Tacit Knowledge. It seems that parts of spirituality is a form of tacit knowledge which has its own field of study surrounding it. I know very little about this field, but it might be interesting to explore this further in the future.

Meditation

I can describe how to mediate, how it feels, and the benefits I get from the mediation. But as I describe them to another person they can intellectually understand them, but until they have their own experience they do not reap those benefits.

Hiking

Even the most experienced, skilled and brilliant poet can not give you the experience of hiking to a beautiful summit. Skilled photographers and beautiful drone shots can not give you that experience. The only way to understand that spiritual experience of hiking and looking over the summit is to do it yourself.

I’m not disparaging the beauty of poetry or the skilled photographer or videographer. These in themselves are unique experiences that can inspire and provoke the imagination. But that hard-to-seek out spiritual knowledge must be done with one's self.

Mysticism and science

I’d like to propose there is no conflict between spirituality and science. That you can fully embrace the realm of rational, logic, empiricism, and the scientific method, and also believe that there is a kind of mystic knowledge that can gained though mediation and experience. There is an old kind of knowledge, spiritual knowledge, that has been forsaken by much of society. I have always had a deep need for spirituality, but unable to find it in religous texts or understand what it even is. I’m starting on this path to discover what spirituality means to me and learning about the tools to do this though Buddhism, stoicism, and other philosophy. And along the way thinking about how science and spirituality are not at odds with each other but are complements.

A final thought. There is an intuition about spirituality that I wanted to share, and I do not think this post adequately conveys what I have in my mind. Despite this, in the spirit of developing a growth mindset and understanding my writing skills maybe a little rusty, I’m going to publish this article and maybe come back to these topics in the future.

I am also a physicist. When I was a child, I convinced myself that I’d like to try to understand the nature of reality. Two areas seemed to offer ideas and explanations on this matter: religion, and science. Religion, I reasoned, should be easy enough to learn about on my own, and I’d have no trouble finding people who wanted to explain their ideas to me. Science, on the other hand, requires a vast and foundation of knowledge and tools, and years of concentrated study, to be able to truly understand what we know and how we know it. And so, I studied math and physics as an undergraduate, and went on to do a PhD in physics. I thought I’d get to pursue my questions if I had a life in academia, but it turns out I am ill-suited to the many demands on an academic’s time and attention. While my path through the PhD consisted of satisfying requirements and following orderly steps, now I find myself needing to impose discipline and carve my own path. Right now, that means I masquerade 9-5 as an engineer, while returning to my childhood ambition of understanding reality in my off time. It's as though I’ve earned my black belt: no longer a beginner, I can begin the work of true mastery.

My predilection for Eastern philosophies likely began with the media I consumed as a child — for what is Star Wars but a digestible Daoism? — and solidified as I found striking similarities between the theories of modern physics and a Buddhist explanation of nature (another topic to unpack later). I am most familiar with the development of natural philosophy, on the other hand, through the Western perspective: it is shocking how profoundly Aristotle, Socrates, and other early natural philosophers continue to shape our approach to science and philosophy.

Physicists these days often show something bordering on contempt for philosophy, which is maybe not so surprising when you consider their common roots and then divergence in methods. For an insightful commentary on this topic, be sure to read Victor Stenger and co-author’s article in Scientific American, Physicists are Philosophers, Too. While the disdain physicists have for metaphysics is entirely justified, throwing out all philosophy in favor of materialism is misguided. Science a powerful mode of inquiry into reality, but it is only ever half the story: it addresses how questions. It cannot answer why questions. It cannot give meaning to phenomena or experience. Every curious and reflective person has, at some point, considered existence alongside emptiness, consciousness with nothingness, purpose with purposelessness.

The disquietude that comes from being able to ask these questions but never definitively answer them, to be restricted by the limited view of our senses and hostage to biases in perspective, is often assuaged by religion, or else its rejection. People seek the comfort of certainty, or else reject that there is any more to the universe than what we can observe. I reject both of these ideas, and must come to the simple conclusion that something is weird here.

I can explain to you that the same phenomenon manifests as an apple falling to the ground and the earth going around the sun, and then perhaps I can tell you that this is all because matter curves spacetime, and then falls along the curves in a way requiring the least energy…but wait, is this geometry really describing reality, or is it some convenient representation that gives us precise predictions? We can construct a theory that agrees with observation and experiment, that even allows us to predict what will happen in an experiment we’ve never performed. And yet, like Plato’s forms, nature is rarely so simple, so beautiful, so perfect as the theory in our minds’ eye.

What is that consciousness, awareness, ability to reason? That there is this thing we call existence, and yet we ponder non-being? That time and space, our lives, seem finite, and yet we hold infinity in our minds? I reiterate: something is weird here. Let us explore the unknown and the unknowable.

An incomplete list of the topics I have in mind:

• How questions and why questions: what is the purview of science?
• What role does mysticism have to play in understanding reality?
• Connections between modern physics and Buddhism
• Foundations of Greek philosophy and natural philosophy
• Comparing Stoicism and Buddhism
• Objectivity and subjectivity, in science and in introspection
• Light is a waveicle: are theories reality?

My work bench.  A beautiful crafted, 8' long, 5″ thick, pine, Roubo style french bench.  It was going to have amazing perfectly made joints, and amazing hardware for the leg vice and wagon vice.  It was going to be amazing.  Only problem.  This was my first major woodworking project and I started it nearly 8 years ago.

My overly ambitious bench stalled.  I didn’t have the right tools, I didn’t have the right experience and I had $100 of pine wood sitting around, only part of it laminated into a top.  To top it all off I was only using hand tools to make it.

My bench has since shrank to 6′ in length and maybe lost 1/4″ of thickness.  After getting serious, and acquiring some chisels and hand planes, actually made progress.

After many months I’ve managed to get all 4 legs fit the through tenons that will be drawbored.

At this point I’ve made light speed progress.  In the last few months I’ve laminated four legs, chopped four 5″ mortises,  fit four (sloppy) mortises and tenons, and cut to length 2 of the 4 rails, made a mistake and fixed it by filling the holes with 1″ oak dowels.

What changed?

Looking at a crappy laminated bench top I asked: Is this good enough?  The answer is clearly no.  I can’t seriously use a 90lb+ slab of wood on saw horses as a workbench.  So I dropped my perfectionist tendencies and just started gluing, cutting, and chopping.  Accepting that I would fall short of perfection.

I’m much happier with my janky almost finished bench to my perfect slab of junk.

Dated for March 19 2018