Synopsis of “In Love With Everything, Apophatic Mysticism: The Benefits and Dangers of Love Without Reason”
My book “In Love With Everything” describes a practice called apophatic mysticism. The aim of this practice is to achieve an optimal satisfaction with life. I am a practitioner of this art and begin the book by telling the reader that the practice is based on the mysticism of two ancient Chinese daoists who were known as Laozi and Zhuangzi. The apophatic process purges the mind of the notion that the human psyche can possess any information that can be asserted to be unquestionably true. Apophatic mysticism takes knowledge to be a plastic entity, continually subject to change. In this view one can never be sure that one knows how to verify what is right and wrong, what is good or bad. Things that are right and good from one perspective might be wrong and bad from another. Success at the practice depends on this foundation of fundamental ignorance as to “what and how things really are;” this ignorance about the essence of things encompasses all objects and phenomena.
I further define this practice as being pragmatic and thus call it “pragmatic apophatic mysticism.” This is to contrast it with the way of most other apophatic mystics; these others are typically oriented toward what they believe to be “the Absolute” and are convinced that personal immortality is achievable. The pragmatic apophaticist refrains from claiming that her practice is oriented toward anything absolute, and does not claim to know whether personal immortality is achievable or not. The apophaticist seeks immediacy and finds ecstasy in that immediacy; she has no answers for solving the unknowns of her future, and no interest in finding any.
From her base of fundamental ignorance, which is her provisional approach to life, the apophaticist discovers that something astonishing may occur: a generation of spontaneous and comprehensive fondness for all other beings, and of all Being. If this happens, she ecstatically falls in love with everything, the entire world of her experience. However the practice is not without grave risks. The state of fundamental ignorance can be dangerously destabilizing leading to a spiritual vertigo which might in turn bring on a despair that can be lethal. But I also go on to describe how this despair can be paradoxically useful; it can be harnessed to produce an even more intense sense of mystical ecstasy.
Mystical ecstasy consists of unconditional love. I describe the nature of this love which has brought me so much satisfaction with life. Being unconditional, it does not have to depend on possessing the knowledge of any metaphysical truth, or on the discovery of any other reasonable cause. As I plunge right now at this moment into the apophatic mystery, I don’t expect to encounter an all-saving God who will finally make sense of the ambiguities of human life. On the contrary, the intensity and endurance of the ecstasy appears to be the result of the very fact that I have surrendered to a “love for no reason.”
(The book is available on Amazon and from Infinity Publishing Company, the best way to search for it is to put my name in the search box at either site)
