The Mystical and the Mundane

The Mystical and the Mundane

What differentiates the mystical from the mundane? The answer goes to the root of authenticate living. First, we must understand where the mundane comes from. Only then we can proceed to see the mystical.

The mundane is something we take on. It is something which invades our very being and alters the way we see the world. There are certain social structures in place which naturally exercise an influence over the way we relate to each other and the world around us. The ubiquity of the mundane may very well be a symptom of the times we live in. We live in an age of hyper-capitalism and rabid consumerism. Society, that anonymous other which escapes identification, demands that we consume. We live primarily not as human beings, but as consumers. To live otherwise would be condemned as crazy. We are taught from the earliest of ages to conform to the image of the consumer.

The consumer existence has a direct connection to the mundane. This is because the consumer treats the world around him or her as a world of objects. The sole purpose of these objects is to be accumulated and destroyed either through an act of use or through an act of waste, both considered here to be modes of consumption. The mundane in our lives can be directly associated with this “way of being” in the world. When everything is viewed as an object with a single purpose, we adopt a one dimensional view of the world. We cease to see the other as subject. Instead of seeing the “subjectness” of others, we impart to them the mundane quality of pure “objectness.” Thus, others are treated as a mere means to an end, instead of an end in themselves. The result is that we find ourselves living in a world of sole means. Everything becomes a mean to further consumption, and the subject aspect of being becomes lost.

The mystical is this subject. It is the opposite extreme. When we see others and the world around us as subjects in their own right, we can begin to touch on the mystical that is always present in the world. The other as pure subject is something I can never truly know, and something I can never experience in its fullness. Thus, the other becomes a mystery which I can partake in, but can never appropriate for consumption (by consumption of the other here I mean a reduction of another life to a mere object to be manipulated and acquired, or controlled). Therefore, the more we give ourselves over to the realm of subjects, of beings functioning as ends in themselves, the closer we come to touching the mystical. The mystical, then, is something we approach, but can never fully experience or comprehend. We can but glimpse it for a mere moment.

Our most natural posture towards the world around us is to view it as subject, as the other which defies comprehension. This explains why we find our typical situation to be overflowing with the mundane. We have become spiritually alienated from one another and the world itself. Therefore, we ought to strive to touch on this mystical quality of the world and break free from the chains of a society that demands we live as mundane, for this latter existence is one born of ignorance and conformity without reason or thought where the critical and creative spirit is dead to the world.