On Defense of Mysticism

Process Theology

This will be a quick partial analysis on Bergon’s text, “The Two Sources of Morality and Religion” and Nietzsche’s text “Philosophy in the Tragic age of Greeks” to analyze whether Process Philosophy can rightfully exonerate mysticism from the depths using Bergson and Nietzsche. This text is where Bergson makes his central argument for Élan vital, which some could refer to as a Mysticism, I wish to argue it as a type of Poetry (Nietzschean style). Mysticism has become a taboo concept, it exists in the marginal discourse - that which lies in the dark but may not have always been in the dark (we have stumbled right into the middle). Bergson, like Whitehead, uses Process Philosophy to be critical of modern Science (Marcuse Instrumental Reason). Whitehead equates Process Philosophy with Process Theology with the concept Process (Deleuze philosophy is concept creation). By utilizing the concept of a Process, we can equate such subjects as science and religion - to proverbially put on a lens to look from either an internal or external perspective. Process Philosophy is a movement of a sort that is developing an entire philosophical framework of process metaphysics (metaphysics of becoming, being [Parmenides] vs becoming [Heraclitus]). That’s not to dispense with Being metaphysics (as in Physics doesn’t dispense with Newton’s physics once Einstein hits the scene). Einstein uses Newton to go beyond Newton, Process Philosophers use Being Philosophy (Parmenides, Zeno, Heidegger) as well as Becoming Philosophy (Heraclitus, Nietzsche, Deleuze, Spinoza, Whitehead, Bergson). In some areas of process philosophy we find the Poet archetype (Nietzsche), this is what we find inspiring Bergson. Now Bergson is inspired by many thinkers ranging from Heraclitus, Zeno, Plotinus, William James, Descartes, and of course Darwin. These are the thinkers that are with him at all times (parts of them anyways, Bergson is an assemblage, a multiplicity, a pluralism, a smooth space, Bergson is a series of these processes that all work together inside him [body without organs], anti-dialectic) this allows Bergson to go further than he would by himself. What is the Nomad allowed and not allowed to use? Who is to say? What makes a nomad?

In the assemblage that is Bergson (the dark chaos), Darwin is a strong voice. Élan vital is Bergson’s central mechanism in his brand of Vitalism (animal magnetism, mesmerism, hypnotism). But what’s important to remember about Bergson is he is an archetypal Poet type as well, like in the spirit of Nietzsche. Bergson argues for a reality of our moral feelings or moral sentiments and to generate an intellectual seriousness of religion. Élan vital works through history but it is not mechanical, not purely naturalistic, it’s something like Hegel’s Geist but without the Telos or the Eschaton (end of history). This is something like Darwin’s conception of the nature of natural evolution or natural selection but it’s not mechanical or blind and allows for novelty and creativity (Whitehead’s Ultimate Reality that is Creativity, God as highest emanation par excellence). Bergson the assemblage performs here a great act of syncretism by bringing together: Darwinian Naturalism (theory of evolution), but also the human phenomenological experience (intuition, gnosis) that is creativity and the experience of novelty. 

We do not want to completely rejoin this Natural world and lose the concept of Creative Evolution, this Darwin and Hegel in a sense - Whitehead’s naturalizing of Hegel (but not purely naturalistic). Bergson gets to be a scientist as well as the poet through a sort of Nietzschean dance around the instrumental reason limitations of science through the metaphysical (Dionysian Mystical).

Nietzsche in the Philosophy in the Tragic Age of Greeks can help shed some light on this Bersonian occasion: The muse of philosophy (tragic poet muse) if forced to speak out in our age would say something along the lines of:

“Wretched people! Is it my fault if I am roaming the country among you like a cheap fortune-teller? If I must hide and disguise myself as though I were a fallen woman and you my judges? Just look at my sister, Art! Like me, she is in exile among barbarians. We no longer know what to do to save ourselves. True, here among you we have lost all our rights, but the judges who shall restore them to us shall judge you too. And to you they shall say: Go get yourselves a culture. Only then you will find out what philosophy can and will do.”

(Tragic Age of Greeks p.39) 

Nietzsche says, “a period which suffers from a so-called high general level of liberal education but which is devoid of culture in the sense of a unity of style which characterizes all its life, will not quite know what to do with philosophy (Process Philosophy), and wouldn’t, if the Genius of Truth himself were to proclaim it in the streets and the market places.” (TAG p.38)

Nietzsche gives us directions on how to get out of this jam that we have found ourselves in due to a lack of properly developed philosophy (Process Philosophy). He pins the first great Process Philosopher as Thales and explores what makes him a process philosopher; the mechanism deep in Thales Nietzsche finds is “a metaphysical conviction that finds its origin in a mystical intuition”. We can label Thales for his statement on water as a total absurdity or we can make sense of it - Nietzsche finds a poetic hero in Thales. The problem with modern philosophy is that it is weighed down by science (instrumental reason) but a philosopher is an assemblage - modernity wishes us to forget. Nietzsche says the assemblage of the process philosopher contains three constituent elements:

• Scientist that creates precepts: speaks devoid of images and fables but heavy footed

• Poet that creates Affects (Spinozan): speaks with metaphors that allows for light-footedness

• Religious faith of having conviction, and being concerned with origins

The philosopher brings all of these together into a unity (unity-concept being the central metaphysical conviction of the process philosopher). The process philosopher is an assemblage of those archetypal roles but also contains at the heart an embryo of thought so to say - a seed containing the concept of “all things are one”. With the proper conditions set the process philosopher is off to the races, Nietzsche gives us an analogy through rock climbing: 

• Philosopher when rock climbing: light footed, contains the ability of lightning fast use of analogy to illuminate intuition for guidance, transcending all limits with an alien illogical power of a type of creative premonition. 

• Scientist when climbing the same mountain: requires strong footing, slow careful calculation, and is ultimately limited by their methods. 

The philosopher uses rocks to climb but sometimes a rock is falling and through use of the poet-style the philosopher can jump off a falling rock, only for that rock to fall into the abyss to never be seen again. This is the reason Nietzsche gives us for why sometimes a path might not make sense from the scientific outside perspective, the path has physically changed. Back in the ancient Greek days these philosophers utilized the orphic mystic mechanism to propel their philosophy, looking in all facets of human endeavors to plunder for nomadic tools. 

This is to give us a clear course of why Bergson is pathing the way he is. He is simply in the spirit of the Process Philosopher as Nietzsche had seen fit and is continuing the course - the assemblage goes onward with no beginning or end, only middles. Bergson is arguing like Nietzsche that the Process Philosopher needs to utilize Mystical Intuition (Creative Evolution, Élan vital) to revitalize Philosophy to its proper plane of immanence. In doing so Bergson like Whitehead are not ‘afraid’ of religion so to say, the Process Philosopher (Nomad) is not afraid of anything -  nothing is too taboo to plunder, of course buyer beware et al. But that’s the beauty of the Poet, is the seemingly poetic ability for William Blake utilize a type of Mystical Intuition (what he conceptualized with single-vision/double-vision/triple-vision/quad-vision), but not only having the intuition but keeping the Nietzschean metaphysical conviction to it to see where the path might lead. That’s not to say you have to stay at that path once you get there, there are a plurality of Planes of Immanence - the rock climber doesn’t climb the mountain to stay in one place. We climb the mountain to see the world from different perspectives, and by utilizing mystical intuition we can climb this mountain with a lighter foot. Bergson is a Darwinian poet, so he constructs a second way of looking at evolution, as creative instead of mechanical. This is what will establish his special qualities of human experience as opposed to special qualities of other animals (humans have self consciousness, animals don’t). 

Process Theology

Bergon says one source of morality and religion is the external world, Nature. We impose ‘analysis’ on the external world to get what we want and in doing so we generate the first stage of religion which Bergson calls, “Static Religion”. Static Religions are the ancient myths and codes of behavior that were constructed as a way out of the misery and anxiety of human life. Bergson makes the argument that archaic sources of religion, particularly Static Religion, are in human needs and they interact with nature to construct accounts of nature which are not very persuasive or sophisticated but they serve the function then of maintaining social coercion and advancing the survival of the species - and allowing for the integration of society. Bergson corresponds Static Religion with Closed Morality. Closed morality is that system of imperatives, that system of moral rules that is connected to static religion and which derives from the same source of static religion’s simple need for human community which requires laws/regulation/analysis/rigidity. 

Bergson says the second source of morality and religion is in Intuition. This is the alternative to Static Religion, that of Dynamic Religion corresponding with Open Morality. This Dynamic religion is not derived from analysis of the external world but through Intuition; not through Natural Selection, but through Élan vital. This is where Bergson makes his affirmation of Mysticism. He says within dynamic religion, not just western religions but all the world’s religions, that all the great mystics are something like spiritual pioneers. These spiritual pioneers break through the old static rigid forms of religion towards some new higher finer intuition. To Bergson, the great mystics that broke through are figures like St Paul and St Francis. This is to take a very particular stance on mysticism, a concept of mysticism that at least potentially tries to lead outside the bounds of religion as a heteronomous (in the Kantian sense) activity. To veer outside the Sacred and into the Taboo, not haphazardly but in a controlled manner. Through this Bergson makes possible Autonomous religion and morality, not derived from reasoning but intuition - Bergson makes this distinction. The source to Bergson is in our direct pre-linguistic apprehension of the world: in other words we see what is right and wrong in the world (some better than others) and then instruct the others, but this instruction in analysis is static but when it becomes social is dynamic. Always a product of intuition and not a product of intellectual activity.

Bergson the poet does not argue this mystic point with strong logical arguments, but is trying to prevent us from simply dropping mysticism and religion to the wayside in 21st century thought as easy as it would be. Bergson’s Élan vital applied to comedy is how society is regulated. Process Philosophy is all about discovering these new lines of flight, utilizing scientific facts plus flights of speculation to frame process metaphysics but doing so with a profound influence of 19th century romanticism (William Blake) makes Process Philosophy that much more interesting. In this we find new modalities of application for creative imagination grounded in mystical intuition, we must simply keep our Kierkegaardian faith and hold onto these metaphysical convictions to see where they go and have the Nietzschean courage to walk the absurd path. This is the Nomad.