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So, mysticism can make universal claims, using the symbols of a culture. And, furthermore, a Christian mystic does not have to abandon the localized signification of Christ in Jesus, or God in Christ, to assign nonlocal significance to the localized Fact. For the mystic, he can see that Jesus Christ is the incarnation of the universal Love of God, a Fact that is transcultural and translinguistic, and a Reality that manifests at a particular time, for the Reality exists as an Eternal Signified outside time. That is, cultural means, like language and symbol and sign, do not negate the universal referents.
Okay, “No,” this is not postmodernism: neither is it premodern or modern. I am not claiming that anything can mean anything. The assignment of nonlocal significance must arise out of the local significance. Likewise, I am not claiming that truth, or meaning, is only cultural. I am claiming that truth, or meaning, is just the opposite: it is everything but cultural, even if located within culture. Oddly, many postmodernists, like skeptics, seem to exclude their own theories from the demands they place on all others.
Mystics interpret the universal depth of cultural signifiers. The lack of sharing of the meaning of signifiers creates dissonance among humans. I will use the word “God” as an example. If I am speaking to a Christian, that Christian will hear “God” differently than a Muslim, likely. Both share the signifier “God.” However, a signifier, which refers to a reality, a referent, becomes part of a person’s network of meanings. The signifier has, then, become a signified. So, while the Christian and Muslim share the same signifier, they often differ over it as signified. Therefore, agreement on language does not create agreement in meaning. Sadly, then, “God,” as a signifier, has become a divisive sign, even as “Christ” and “Trinity” and “Scripture” have become divisive signs within the Christian Church.
St. Bonaventure, a 13th Century Franciscan, presented a formula for accessing depths from which we arrive at meaning, or interpret signifiers: the eye of flesh, the eye of mind (or, reason), the eye of contemplation (or, Spirit). These are developmental stages, as normal as learning to sit up, then crawl, then stand, then walk, then run, …
The mystic, or contemplative, sees things with a unitary vision, characterized by immediacy. Nicolas of Cusa, 15th Century German cardinal, argued that the only way to know spiritual truth is through this immediacy, this intuitive capacity. Once the eye of contemplation is developed through spiritual practice, this seeing is spontaneous. On the way to this unitive seeing, the contemplative may have endured repeated, even painful, transformation of lesser seeing. He may have felt within himself the tension, as his emerging network of contemplative signifieds more and more were in tension with conventional religion, which is full of persons who have not emerged to the eye of contemplation and do not see, generally, with the insight of contemplation. So, often the mystic is seen to be heterodox and heretical, a threat to the ideology and theology of the majority conventionalists.
My contention is that only at the eye of contemplation will we find the unity that will transform our differences into a fellowshipping of God-Love. Why? For only the mystic, or contemplative, sees with the unitive eye consistently. Only the contemplative vision allows one to approach others and all Nature from postconventional spirituality. Otherwise, unity is defined as against a non-unity, a binary, vision, and seen in political or religious terms. Only at this contemplative, or mystical, seeing is one able to see unity from a nonlocal, or Eternal, perspective. Of course, at the eye of mind, one can intellectually envision unity, but this is still a step away from the embodied, intuitive, and universal immediacy already felt within the contemplative. Until unitive vision, unity is not an embodied, or incarnated, reality in the fullness of a person’s being, not at the depths of Pure Spirit. Until then, a person is in binary vision, dividing matters within the worldspace of materiality or rationality, or both.
Sadly, very few major sects within religion experience this transformation to contemplation. Why? For the values of the group promote elevation of persons, generally at the eye of mind, or less, to positions of the most political and ideological influence. Therefore, my contention is of the vitality of persons and other leaders within the religious Communions to experience a transformation into this eye of contemplation. I am praying for a transformation of leadership values that will arise due to the transformation of persons within these religious systems, which will lead, eventually, to a new expectation of what leaders are to be.
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