Aug 22 – The Mystical State (re-edited)

I.

The so-called “mystical” – or delusional – state is one marked by the definitive interruption of not merely a man’s coherent and grounded sense of “I”, but the very disruption of the narrative by which the I, on the one hand, “knows” and “has always known itself” and, on the other, fulfills its implicit duties and roles as one’s knower and narrator; mystical delusion which first reveals itself by certain seemingly alien and foreign interjections and interruptions, those that eventually become so pronounced that they force the I and its sense of self to become aware of itself and the story it continuously tells; awareness which, according to the autonomic and implicit functioning of the self-conscious I and its endless creative innovations, begins to alter and revolutionize the entirety of the narrative for as long as the delusional state endures; pronouncements which, as they grow more encompassing, compelling, disorienting, relentless and overpowering, the now-overwhelmed I eventually feels compelled to surrender its duties, roles and, most crucially, its own story to the supposed source of the pronouncements and by so doing causes the previously known and narrated sense of self to drop its rigid literary structures, narrative arc, and compartmentalizing subjective walls, all of which were erected in order to reinforce and facilitate the unique development of the I’s narrative according to the coherence it has believed it has hitherto achieved, the collapse of which causes the immediate surrender of the subjectivity of the individual to the Object, at which time the “mystic” mingles and melds with the totality of every story from all vantage for all time everywhere, the sum total of which is without a single narrator to synthesize the ever divergent myths into a lone primordial myth more powerful, enduring, and in that sense “truer” than the combination of all the others, or at least not a narration that can be grasped or even approached by any one man (especially when out of his mind), nor would His story be understood much less perceived in the only necessary manner that it could, which is to say as “whole”, “universal”, “absolute”, and “true”.

II.

Nevertheless, despite how disorienting, unsettling, and harrowing this experience can be, men still seek it and will forevermore seek after it in ways unending and obscure. This is indeed a profound mystery, an impossible one, in fact, one that teaches us more about the nature and purpose of the species “man” than any other cause.

Such upward communal orientation trajectors every member of a budding civilization upon a certain collective, lofty and immutable point of transcendent reference which thereafter hierarchicalizes the various social and civic strata that compose the civilization according to the principles that epitomize the essential values of each strata and finally orders the rank of strata according to the degree that their values mirror and emulate the truest and most beautiful elements that constitute the apparent character of the point of reference, with the result that each strata definitively aligns and integrates with the other castes and thus precarious harmony of a people is established, only to disintegrate again in short order.