Techno-Mystical Scholarship

This is a personal blog, and an outlet for my writings on consciousness, mythology, art, mysticism, technology, and cultural evolution. I'm a graduate student at Goddard College in the Consciousness Studies program, intrigued by the mythical and spiritual dimensions of the digital age.

I'm an advocate for bridging the arts and sciences, as well as the unusual combination of mysticism and scholarship. The unusual and eccentric fascinate me. I love science fiction, fantasy genres, the supernatural and esoteric. Most of all, I believe this is an age of convergence. In an age of planetary crisis, it is important to give voice to the many dimensions of human experience.

In case you're wondering, the term lapis means stone. It's a reference to the philosopher's stone in alchemy, which was believed to symbolize the Great Work. In general, the Great Work represents a transformation of matter into its true, divine nature. The "Stone of the Wise" is thus an important symbol for the sublimation of prima materia, or the dirt and mud, into something entirely luminous. Rather than seeing this as a hidden, inner, or secretive meaning, we can interpret the Stone of the Wise to be a call for further sublimation; akin, perhaps to the Bodhisattva's vow of compassion towards all sentient beings. Walking the mystical path in the modern age is facing the challenge of seeing the sacred behind everything, and, perhaps bringing out that potential.

William Gibson's Neuromancer

In the digital age, where mind and matter seem to blur, we are doubly challenged to see the spiritual and not literalize it with technology. Rather, technology gets turned on its head. The depths of human imagination and consciousness can illuminate the digital age, revealing the mythological and sometimes mystical dimensions behind technocratic culture. No wonder video games are full of magic, elves, goblins and supernatural beings. This leads me to another key interest informing this blog.

As a graduate student, I've been searching (and admittedly struggling) for an approach to scholarship that straddles the tight-rope between worldly context and the ineffable and mysterious. As a start, mythopoeic and mythological studies, in conjunction with science, can help keep our worldview somewhere between materialism and mysticism. Most scholarship is materialist in the sense that our ideas, even when they aren't rooted in science, are talking about the known world. Our values, our truth claims, are based within worldly context. This includes sociology, anthropology, economics, etc. As I took undergraduate courses, and as my girlfriend introduced me to political and philosophical thinkers in feminism, embodiment studies, critical theory, etc. – there's no debating this kind of knowledge is essential. In my scholarship I am seeking to bring it into conjunction with a kind of claim that might turn a normal academic's head. Not to mention give me an odd look. A form of knowledge not built upon the construction of ideas but upon an "inner" sight, a form of gnosis. Postmodern thought has certainly helped us understand that there are limits to human knowledge. Rationality alone is not adequate for a whole-hearted response to our existence, let alone our humanity. At the fringe of thought comes the possibility for another kind of knowledge that pre-modern societies recognized, and often came in contact with through their imaginative participation (now known as myth, often with a negative connotation). Many still do today. These mystical experiences are often cultivated through acts of meditation, altered states of consciousness, or what Thomas Merton called contemplation.

Some scholars might recognize this attitude as an act of abandoning critical thinking in favor of mysticism and myth in their negative sense (connotation as fantasy). But this is simply not the case. It is a willing practice of inner disengagement from identifying with a particular worldview in order to seek, or establish a more living connection with the world. A contemplative-mystical-scholarship, if you will. Merton describes the act of withdrawing from the world in this way:

"For the monk searches not only his own heart: he plunges deep into the heart of that world of which he remains a part although he seems to have "left" it. In reality the monk abandons the world only in order to listen more intently to the deepest and most neglected voices that proceed from its inner depth."

In many ways, this blog is an attempt to seek a more living connection in our increasingly digital and technological culture. The days, however, of literal withdrawal from the world don't resonate with me. I believe that our spiritual disposition has to evolve, in some sense, with the times we live in. Can we live as monastics in a world of cell phones and emails? The hermitage has to be something inward now, as our externalized environment has become an ever-increasing network of connection, immersion, and communication.

Here is to cultivating that digital-contemplative-mystical scholarship. Hopefully I'll come up with a better name for it.

Thanks for reading, welcome to the Lapis Electric.