I often hear mystics desiring something that seems intrinsically conflicted to me… and it’s a situation that has many precedents in a broad array of human ‘knowledge traditions’. Some seek to ‘import validation’ from other branches of knowledge or tradition. This arises due to the fundamental nature of human cognition, which is vastly more concerned with features of ‘authorization’ than we might ordinarily imagine or suppose.

Specifically, however, I want to talk about attempting to ‘understand by science’ features of our interiority, intuition, or mystical / gnostic knowledge-ways.

Science (as practiced by moderns) is absolutely incapable of encompassing or ‘explaining’ (literally: flattening) such matters into its frameworks. Similarly, mysticism doesn’t ‘explain’ scientific findings, either. There are crossovers, of course, but trying to understand mysticism with science is like trying to understand a horse with a fork.

Consider the difference between, for example, food prepared with care and adoration, and that which is simply prepared by a machine. These are not, ontologically ‘the same thing’ at all. That they belong to »the same category, is deceptive. Factory farmed produce is similarly ‘not the same thing’ as produce curated with love, awareness, wonder and awe.

A kiss that simply seeks stimulation, is ‘not the same thing’ as a kiss that is an expression of »adoration and wonder.

Science will never ‘explain’ these differences, because its actual explanatory purview is limited to mechanics and relatively simple ’cause-effect’ scenarios. Its purview and authority should remain limited to its proper scope. The scope of mysticism and gnosticism is concerned with what is, effectively, »a different universe.

I get itchy when people attempt to ‘explain’ mystical experience or understanding with ‘quantum physics’, which, itself is extremely poorly understood, even by those who study it. QM is a branch of mathematical physics. It doesn’t ‘explain’ mystical, spiritual, or intuitive experiences or concerns… and it shouldn’t.

We should be careful when we see weird ‘authorization’ gambits that, while they are natural to certain kinds of purposes in thought, are peculiarly disoriented. This isn’t a law, it’s a principle, but it is something I maintain awareness of in my quests for insight, understanding, awareness and … wonder.