Q&A: An Apparently Trivial Definition of ‘Mysticism’
An Apparently Trivial Definition of ‘Mysticism’
Question
I started watching your lecture series about mysticism. In the first lecture you discuss the definition of the concept, and I innocently thought the definition was perfectly clear: a scenario that has no natural explanation, even according to the person testifying or claiming that it is indeed reliable and real.
So for example, someone who cures jaundice using pigeons presumably does not explain it by saying that the pigeon secretes some substance that heals the navel, but rather as a kind of segulah, a special efficacious remedy. The source for this is probably also ancient, in various books of remedies and the like, or something passed down by tradition. I assume there was never a person who tried killing all kinds of animals on the navels of people with jaundice until one of them turned out to be a cure; rather, from the outset they saw it as a supernatural remedy, with hints from the sources and so on.
Answer
Later in the series I will discuss the question of the supernatural. It is a contentless concept.
What is “supernatural”?! The accepted definition is “something that has no explanation.” But “what is an explanation”? Science is only interested in facts, and if it ‘works,’ then it already leaves the category of the ‘supernatural’ (even if there is no physiological explanation). From this it follows that everyone believes in the supernatural (everyone believes in things that work). And then seemingly there are Michi’s words that this is a “contentless concept.”
More or less, that seems right. Though maybe I wasn’t completely precise.