What is mysticism?

[Laith Al-Doory]

The principal of masucline and femine, when applied to people, rather than as abstract concepts, is not a polarity, but a relative difference, and this relative difference exists to a large extent in both sexes. The purely masculine mindset could be described as outward looking and animalistic, and the purely feminine as inward looking and psychotic, but such extreme personality types rarely exist in the population as a whole.

Esoteric doctrine calls for the perfect synthesis of opposites, the perfection of the soul in one's final incarnation, which happens to be male. How one sees oneself in this lifetime is a matter for the ego.

According the the Qur'an, woman is the physical embodiment of status (desire) status being something man should not aspire to. Woman effectively embodies the nation state: she is the object for which generations of young male subjects have been deemed expendible.

 

[Abdul Fattah]

Laith Al-Doory
I'm sorry but that view is downright offensive towards woman.

woman is the physical embodiment of status (desire) status being something man should not aspire to

Isn't that just a fancy way of saying they are lust-objects? Where in the Qur'an does it say that anyway?

Woman effectively embodies the nation state: she is the object for which generations of young male subjects have been deemed expendible.

So now they are mere concubines?

 

[Laith Al-Doory]

Status has little to do with sexual desire. Status is a passive state of being, not an active state of doing and therefore feminine rather than masculine. Personal status, as opposed to the accumilation of the trapings of status, is a measure of how much a society values one's life. The death of women still fills the public imagination with a far greater dread than does the death of men. Status obsessed society, apart from its inherent materialism, is saturated with imagery of highly objectified women. Historically, high status males also objectify themselves in fine clothes and jewelry.

The notion that the female is the supreme object of desire is in fact a cultural myth. When was the last time you saw a *****d of hysterical school boys waiting for a glimpse of Pamela Anderson? The male is more inclined to be polygamous, where as the female is more inclined to be obsessed by a single male.

 

[Abdul Fattah]

I didn't say anything about females being a supreme object of desire, I only interpreted what you said.

 

[Laith Al-Doory]

A person's desires or wants are not necessarily sexual. A person may have an obsessive desire for wealth and luxury. Increasingly we live in a society obsessed by manufactured wants at the expense of everything else. Having the latest Mercedes seems to be the be all and end all in some people's minds.

 

[rav]

You know the impression I always get from mysticism? You know these toys for little kids? it's like a plank with different types of holes in it, a square hole, a trianglehole, a round hole, and so on, and then there's a whole bunch of blocks that only fit trough their respectively shaped holes.
Well the way I see mysticism is like: "look, here's a big giant hole where all of your blocks fit in!"

Mysticism's power lies in it's ambiguity. By not clearly defining what it's all about, it relies on people's imagination to answer the questions for themselves. When they put a small square block in the big hole, it relies on people to "Imagen" a smaller square hole inside the big hole and so on.

Shalom (Peace),

I have thought about this post for a while now and it is actually a very interesting post. It is a point which I have pondered essentially since I read it, which was a while ago. My impression from it however has a much wider capacity which may stray off topic. It is in a sense, the impression I get from Islam. Islam is very logical. The religion was created in such a way, where everything must have an answer, paradox’s which can be found in the Tanakh (i.e. Hebrew Bible) must ultimately be the equivalent of a blatant contradiction and therefore, lead to doubts about the authenticity of the religion. So much time is devoted to “refuting” so called “contradictions” and pointing out the conflicts within the sacred books of other religions. It is all very logical. In fact, it is entirely logical. But logic does not determine how valid a religion is, at least in my point of view. G-d is not understandable, nor is it “logical” in the standards that Muslims apply towards religion. G-d cannot be entered into a math equation because G-d is the math equation. It is what I would call monism. The impression I get from your post is that you are determined to make G-d, religion, and existence into something that is logical according our understanding of logic, but that is not the case. G-d created everything, and is in a sense everything. G-d cannot have form as Islam proudly proclaims and I agree. However, you must stand by that very statement in that G-d cannot be formed into a certain hole that things can move through. Since G-d is everywhere and everything, in a way, no hole can be made larger, because everything that you must put through the hole in your analogy was created by G-d and is therefore smaller than G-d, but in essence still a part of Him.