Part I: Problems with mysticism in religious faiths

Please read this as context to future blogs of mine about the good aspects and bad aspects of the “mystical” element of any faith. I will be giving spiritual direction about this because there is, needless to say, a real problem with exaggerated roles of mysticism in all the religions by a few practitioners (few though they may be they cause an inordinate warping of the understanding of the faith by the mainstream).

I consider the following to be the most important teaching of the psychoanalyst Carl Jung. He taught that there is the conscious and the unconscious. Every individual has a conscious part to their behavior and an unconscious part to their behavior. In other words, part of each person’s behavior and opinion he or she is aware of, and part he or she is not aware of, yet both are very active simultaneously.

Therefore when a person speaks to another person, each one has conscious and unconscious in action. Any words that are exchanged between them have the potential for four intertwined but separate in intention and results taking place:

1. Person A’s conscious communicates with Person B’s conscious.
2. Person A’s conscious communicates with Person B’s unconscious.
3. Person A’s unconscious communicates with Person B’s conscious.
4. Person A’s unconscious communicates with Person B’s unconscious.

Think about this. I’ll give examples in a future blogging and then move into the more important topic of why mysticism is not always an authentic component of bedrock faiths. I bet the wiser of you will already know what I am getting at. I will talk about Christianity, Jewish, and Islam in this context. Islam, by the way, is the most immune to this problem.