I've had religious experiences and I'm into the technical aspects of mystic traditions, things like divination - especially approaches that are complex and syatematic - looking for an understanding of these subjective experiences in my past and present, it has been humbling to let my guard down and approach these subjects without the biases and hostility most people approach them with, while also avoiding apologetics and polemics, and generally i am disinterested in material analysis - the confluence of religion and power is almost over explored and given far too much weight by most leftists for example, and i find those approaches boring at best and actively harmful at worst.
There is so much going on in esoteric philosophy that gets ignored because protestants and enlightenment philosophers hated mysticism so every philosophical tradition in their shadow inherits that hostility to its detriment - there are fascinating and brilliant things to be found and I really wish esotericism could have more mainstream penetration than it does
I've heard that each religion has its own mystic traditions. I've enjoyed hearing about them as part of a broad survey of history and comparative religion. In all honesty, I've felt myself become more agnostic over the years, as opposed to being sure that materialism has explained everything about the world. Maybe it's not there yet. Maybe there are some new frontiers to be explored that the old teachers had some insight to. I try to keep a more open mind than I dId in the past.
That's good! An open mind is fruitful, and anybody passing off certainty on these matters is selling you ideology or bullshit. I don't have good answers, I try to stay restrained compared to a lot of woo-ey folks, because I genuinely think going too far into uncritical belief is thought terminating brain poison the same way materialist reductionism is. It's a delicate balance, and a critical but open mind is key.
To keep it simple - lots of traditions have mysticism lurking somewhere near, but usually underneath the mainstream - in Islam, there are 'Sufi' traditions - in Judaism there is Merkavah/Hekhalot literature and Kabballah - Christianity is messy, and some 'mainstream' groups are openly mystical - my initial interest came from the fact I was deeply involved in charismatic/pentecostal christianity when i was in my late teens and early 20s - but there is also a (mostly medieval) mystical undercurrent to some movements aligned with catholicism. I think of the Beguines and other women who would end up burned as heretics, martyrs in my opinion, like Margueritte Porette. Within western esotericism, theosophy, hermeticism, etc. is a consistent mystical undercurrent of variable value - they're all fascinating in their own right and understanding even one of these academically can be an extremely deep rabbit hole. Often times the philosophy underwriting something like Theurgy has shockingly mainstream roots - often times you can trace those movements back to greek philosophers that are often taught in a context with their mysticism stripped out - Plato gets kind of held up as this pre-enlightenment rationalist, but that's pretty god damn far from the truth. The way he's taught more or less deliberately omits this material at the undergrad level and below, so it's not surprising most people aren't aware, but it is a real tragedy.
Descartes - one of the progenitors of the modern scientific method - developed it via dream visitations lol. The mystical is often imminent where humanity makes large leaps forward in thought; it would not shock me to some day find out Marxism is no different.
I've had religious experiences and I'm into the technical aspects of mystic traditions, things like divination - especially approaches that are complex and syatematic - looking for an understanding of these subjective experiences in my past and present, it has been humbling to let my guard down and approach these subjects without the biases and hostility most people approach them with, while also avoiding apologetics and polemics, and generally i am disinterested in material analysis - the confluence of religion and power is almost over explored and given far too much weight by most leftists for example, and i find those approaches boring at best and actively harmful at worst.
There is so much going on in esoteric philosophy that gets ignored because protestants and enlightenment philosophers hated mysticism so every philosophical tradition in their shadow inherits that hostility to its detriment - there are fascinating and brilliant things to be found and I really wish esotericism could have more mainstream penetration than it does
I've heard that each religion has its own mystic traditions. I've enjoyed hearing about them as part of a broad survey of history and comparative religion. In all honesty, I've felt myself become more agnostic over the years, as opposed to being sure that materialism has explained everything about the world. Maybe it's not there yet. Maybe there are some new frontiers to be explored that the old teachers had some insight to. I try to keep a more open mind than I dId in the past.
That's good! An open mind is fruitful, and anybody passing off certainty on these matters is selling you ideology or bullshit. I don't have good answers, I try to stay restrained compared to a lot of woo-ey folks, because I genuinely think going too far into uncritical belief is thought terminating brain poison the same way materialist reductionism is. It's a delicate balance, and a critical but open mind is key.
To keep it simple - lots of traditions have mysticism lurking somewhere near, but usually underneath the mainstream - in Islam, there are 'Sufi' traditions - in Judaism there is Merkavah/Hekhalot literature and Kabballah - Christianity is messy, and some 'mainstream' groups are openly mystical - my initial interest came from the fact I was deeply involved in charismatic/pentecostal christianity when i was in my late teens and early 20s - but there is also a (mostly medieval) mystical undercurrent to some movements aligned with catholicism. I think of the Beguines and other women who would end up burned as heretics, martyrs in my opinion, like Margueritte Porette. Within western esotericism, theosophy, hermeticism, etc. is a consistent mystical undercurrent of variable value - they're all fascinating in their own right and understanding even one of these academically can be an extremely deep rabbit hole. Often times the philosophy underwriting something like Theurgy has shockingly mainstream roots - often times you can trace those movements back to greek philosophers that are often taught in a context with their mysticism stripped out - Plato gets kind of held up as this pre-enlightenment rationalist, but that's pretty god damn far from the truth. The way he's taught more or less deliberately omits this material at the undergrad level and below, so it's not surprising most people aren't aware, but it is a real tragedy.
Descartes - one of the progenitors of the modern scientific method - developed it via dream visitations lol. The mystical is often imminent where humanity makes large leaps forward in thought; it would not shock me to some day find out Marxism is no different.