the place of mysticism

This weekend we attended an IMAX presentation called "Mystic India" as part of my company's holiday party. The film, though beautiful, was largely garbage, repeatedly emphasizing peace, unity and equality as the core values of Indian society. While I'm not a cultural expert on India and have a deep respect for its massive diversity, I know it's still struggling from over population, economic repression, and I'm deeply confused why "equality" and "the caste system" (which wasn't mentioned once) aren't mutually exclusive. It was deeply disingenuous.

The film followed the life of one of India's cultural heroes - a boy who became a yogi and walked 8,000 miles over the course of 7 years practicing mystic spirituality throughout India.

Economic realities aside, the film achieved it's purpose of conveying the idea that India is a deeply spiritual place in which mysticism is accepted as part of daily living. Thinking about this in context of my own life here in America has lead me to wonder what place mysticism holds in our world today, and whether or not our culture is suffering from a lack of it.

Christianity has a history rooted in mysticism that is largely lost in our 21st century rendition. Early Christians met together for prayer and fasting, and scripture was read for the purpose of meditation in weekly services. Modernism's effect on Christianity has partially been to remove meditation altogether in favor of analysis, and scripture is read for applicability and relevancy rather than meditation. Indeed, the whole concept of making scripture relevant stems from the presupposition that scripture is only valuable insofar as it is useful. Pragmatism is the conclusive child of modernism, and a cornerstone of the way our culture defines "value."

Given this definition of "value", what is the purpose of mysticism, and is it valuable in our culture today?

In early times, Mysticism and religion for the sake thereof were used as a way of addressing Man's fear of the unknown. While Science and Faith are not at odds by necessity, the developments and advances of Science have quieted our fears about things like the sunrise, seasons, and sickness to the degree to which daily supplication to the divine no longer seems as necessary. With the exception of sickness and death, science has answered all of our questions, and with the exception of Pat Robertson, most of us don't believe hurricanes or long winters are the results of secular living.

Yet Mysticism also plays many secondary roles that are valuable to society. First, it historically helps to give a person a strong sense of his or her place in respect to the rest of the universe. It tends to emphasize responsibility and respect, and gives humanity a proper sense of its weaknesses. Second, it is historically the primary method of relating to the divine. Though real mysticism is totally lost on western evangelicalism, prayer and worship are still seen as the primary method of forming a relationship with God, and historically being a Christian was in part defined by constant mystical communion with the divine presence. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, mysticism serves a as culture builder, by providing common and often corporate meaningful positive experience in a community.

I am not by nature a mystical person. I have little use for prayer and would much rather seek God through actively applying my talents toward what I consider his purposes to be. I am a person of concrete thoughts and actions, wanting to see my efforts result in manifest progress. I am often frustrated by my near absolute inability to desire or enjoy pure religion, feeling that it's purposeless, useless, meaningless and valueless. Seeing that mysticism and religion really are beneficial, I wonder how it should or can be re-integrated in our modern culture without diminishing it. Modern Christianity is replete with false attempts at mystic spirituality driven by commercial efforts to capitalize on the lack of meaning in modern ritual. Things like self-help books and daily devotionals tailored to the finest detail of ones circumstance ("The Max Lucado WWJD daily devotional for Christian teenage girls who enjoy coffee") do more to distract and trivialize the power of mysticism than bring it into our lives.

So how should it be done? What should it look like? How can we re-introduce ritual and liturgy without defaming it while keeping a reasonable eye for relevance? Is mysticism for the sake thereof really of any value, or is it only when mysticism is applied within a certain context or religious framework that it becomes meaningful? How?

Go at it.