Radical Mysticism Can Mean Many Things

So... what does it signify for you?

One of the fun (or infuriating, depending on your point of view) qualities of the word “radical” is how it carries radically (sorry, couldn’t resist) different meanings when used by different people in different contexts.

Three easy examples:

— In surfer culture, especially in my generation (maybe it’s different now), to say something is radical or simply rad would basically be to say it’s awesome, very good, impressive. In other words, it’s a word of unadulterated praise.

— In politics, radical might refer to something you really like (“our country is overdue for a radical change”) or something you really don’t like (“those radicals bombed the ROTC building”). Either way, it implies being on the extreme edge — and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends largely on the eyes of the beholder. To conservatives, socialism is radical; to liberals, MAGA is radical. In neither case is the word meant as a compliment.

— Mathematicians, chemists, or physicians use radical in a variety of specific ways. A doctor performs a radical prostatectomy to remove an entire prostate and often adjacent tissues (usually in order to remove cancer). Meanwhile, a “free radical” is not a political extremist at large, but rather is an “especially reactive atom or group of atoms that has one or more unpaired electrons” that can be dangerous to living tissue.¹ Since these terms are quite technical and have specific meanings, they don’t have the same positive or negative value that the word carries in other contexts.

Whew. I’m thinking of Glinda asking Dorothy, “Are you a good witch or bad witch?” So… are you a good radical, or a bad radical, or just some sort of scientific radical?”

Then again, can’t we say much the same thing about the words “mystic,” “mystical” or “mysticism”?

— For contemplative Christians, a mystic is a particular kind of Christian whose faith is marked by a profound experience of either union with God, or of the felt presence of God — but paradoxically can also be used to describe those whose experience of God is shaped by an experience of God’s seeming absence.

— Meanwhile, in our culture at large, the word mystic is practically an umbrella term for new agers, psychics, shamans, UFO-seekers, Wiccans and other neopagans, and anyone else who seems to espouse a spirituality meaningful for them, but others find rather easy to dismiss as “woo-woo” or flaky.

— Other religions may not typically use this word internally, since it comes from Greek Christian culture. But it gets applied to a variety of religious or spiritual communities or traditions — such as Kabbalists, Sufis, Advaita Vedantists, Taoists, and others — in a generic way to imply any kind of spiritual practice or lineage that is marked by an embodied experience or a serious commitment to the tradition’s beliefs or practices.

— Historically speaking, the concept of mysticism has been used by empiricists, agnostics and atheists as a blanket term for criticizing religious or spiritual beliefs and practices. In this sense “mysticism” essentially means “woolly thinking” or what Sigmund Freud called “magical thinking” — in other words, mysticism in this sense is a synonym for irrationality.

What were Debonee and I thinking when we decided to call our Wisdom Camp experience Radical Mysticism? We chose not one, but two, words that can say remarkably different things depending on context.

Simply put, radical mysticism can carry a variety of possible meanings. Some are positive, others negative, still others neutral or ambiguous.

It might be easiest if she and I sat down, drew up a statement clarifying what we mean when we use a term like “radical mysticism,” and then leave things like that. Part of me is tempted to do just that.

But then it occurs to me that she and I might not come to an easy agreement.

And so this is where I’ve landed: that part of the appeal in a term like radical mysticism is its very ambiguity. This is not a concept that can be easily nailed down: thank heaven for that.

When we leave radicality and mysticism in their ambiguous state, we invite you to do your own work: of deciding what these words represent, either singly or together, for you. We take a risk with this, of course. You could always conclude that you understand radical mysticism to mean extremist irrationality. Clearly, we hope you don’t go there. But it’s easy to see how someone could reach that conclusion.

To a conservative fundamentalist Christian, both “radical” and “mysticism” might sound or seem dangerous. Again, we cannot prevent someone from feeling that way. Naturally, we hope that no one will jump to any conclusions here.

But then there are the happier ways of interpreting these words: experiencing God awesomely. Feeling the divine presence to the nth degree. Finding that place where political activism and contemplative silence come together to dance (for what it’s worth, that last example is pretty close to what I think radical mysticism is).

We won’t define this for you, because we don’t believe we have any business telling other people what to think — or even how to define nuanced words like these. We are not looking for followers who will obey us — we would much rather have dialogue partners who are willing to meet us, eye-to-eye, as we seek to understand just what it might, or could, mean — to be a “mystic on the edge” in our time of crisis.

Ready to help us discern this one? Reach out to us, with your questions, your comments, your ideas, your hopes, dreams, and desires. Let’s create our shared understanding of radical mysticism together.

1. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, p. 499.