Synopsis of Professor Kobus Kruger’s, (Head of UNISA’s Department of Religious Studies) introductory talk on Mysticism at Café Riche, Pretoria, 25 November 2005

(I translated this synopsis ‘on the fly’ from Afrikaans to English.)

Mysticism in relation to, and from the context of religion

Assumptions:

1 Religions are collections of phenomena
2 Religion understood in a broad sense
3 Religion is just a word, just an abstraction, but which describes (or points towards) real things

Religion is about ultimate meaning. Within religion one can identify two legs (threads) namely:

1 The search for meaning
2 The expression of meaning

A hierarchy of Religion

Prof. Kruger uses the metaphor of a mountain to illustrate a framework of of the inter-related levels, or contours of religion.

1 Social Organisation, institutionalisation, the level where most people live and die
2 Traditions, the stories and books
3 Ethics, concerns with authenticity and authority
4 Ritual, aesthetics
5 Experience, the realm of feeling
6 Symbolism and Mythology, semiotic and narrative expressions of the experience of truth
7 Esoteric Knowledge and Philosophy

Religions have characteristics ranging across the above spectrum. The ‘spiritual’, in a sense, describes in a group context the experience of meaning, and is the essence of religion.

Mysticism

Mysticism is the culmination of religion and culture.

Mystics are both the dreamers – the pioneers of the future, as well as messengers of the future. Mystics are held to be in, or have been in, an intimate experience of a direct fundamental relationship with what truly matters.

Prof Kruger briefly outlined some differences between exponents of fellowship vs. non-duality religions, and identified four typical focuses of religion:

1 Action
2 Love
3 Knowledge
4 Mythic-poetic

Mysticism exists and functions in all the above levels and aspects of religion. For example in the level of institutionalisation mystics are typical outsiders, in the context of tradition they are often the cast-breakers etc.

This talk was followed by an open discussion which addressed issues such as

• notions of transcendence
• questions about the dynamics of social-psychological escapism as a trigger for attraction to ‘the other’
• transcendence of paradigms
• confrontation vs. reclusiveness

Prof Kruger held that there is a clear verifiable cultural need and role for mysticism.