​When Hungry I Eat
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The Mysticism of Self-Creativity
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Master Rinzai said: “When hungry, I eat; when tired, I sleep. Fools laugh at me. The wise understand.”
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Master Baso asked Master Hyakujo what truth he taught. Master Hyakujo raised his fly-whisk. Baso said: “Is that all? Nothing else?” Master Hyakujo lowered his fly-whisk.

If mysticism is synonymous with life-enhancing and intuitive awakenings to what is real, then process theology is open to many kinds of mysticism.  We can be awakened to (1) the beauty of nature, (2) the warmth of friends, family and community, (3) the absolute interconnectedness of all things, (4) the inescapability of change, (5) the unbounded embrace of divine love, (6) archetypes in the mind of God, (7) the past actual world as a collective unconscious, (8) shamanic worlds of the imagination, (9) the ultimacy of the present moment of  experience, and (10) the ultimacy of decision, or spontaneous self-creativity,  These awakenings can be life-changing, and often they are folded into one another.  You can experience the embrace of divine love, for example, through the love of friends and family; you can experience the interconnectedness of all things when you realize that each present moment depends on all of the others.  But the different awakenings also have their unique qualities, and you will miss some of them if you think that all forms of mysticism are the same or are of one single type. 

You sense two of them -- the ultimacy of the present moment and the ultimacy of decision -- in the Zen stories.

Whitehead understands the act of decision as the very meaning and essence of actuality.  Decision is the self creating itself out of its relations with the world.

• This self-creativity is universal and unavoidable.  “Not to decide” is to decide. 
• Awakening to this self-creativity, this spontaneity, is a form of mysticism in its own right.  You understand yourself and the world around you as spontaneous expressions of self-creativity.
• It is not about God, or goodness, or compassion, or mystical union.  In a certain sense it is before God, because even God is an expression of this spontaneous self-creativity.

1.  Mysticism of Inter-Connectedness.  

This is an intuitive sense that everything is connected to everything else in a vast web of causal dependence.  It can also involves a feeling that each particular reality in the universe -- each star, each planet, each blade of grass, each person - is a place where the whole of the universe is gathered into unity.  

Mysticism of inter-connectedness takes Whitehead's idea of relativity and makes it a feeling, not just an idea.  Whitehead's idea of relativity is that everything is present in and dependent on everything else.   This kind of mysticism feels the truth of this mutual presence and calls it the universe.

2. Mysticism of Local Community.  

This is a localized verson of the mysticism of interconnectedness.  It is a feeling of at-oneness or solidarity with a family or community of people.  It can take the form nationalism, allegiance to a sports team, or a heightened moment of ecstasy at a rock concert.  It can also take the form of a sense of belonging to a local place: a bioregion, for example,

3. Mysticism of Creative Energy.  

This is a feeling that there is an energy - a bottomless creative stuff, albeit active rather than passive -- of which all events and actualities are particularized manifestations.  It can be combined with a sense that all things emerge out of the abyss in their moment of occurence and return into it when their subjective immediacy passes away.  The creative abyss is an abyss because it has no special form or shape, and it is endless.  It is, in Whitehead's words, a creative advance into novelty.  And it is creative because it is in fact a creative advance into novelty.  The creative abyss is not a creator and it does not have preferences.  Some people call it the Godhead; Whitehead calls it Creativity.  

4. Mysticism of Divine Archetypes.

This is an intuitive sense of a realm of pure potentiality -- a realm of timeless potentials -- which are seen in the patterns which unfold in the universe but which also transcend those patterns.  The realm of pure potentiality is what Whitehead calls the primordial nature of God.  It is similar to Plato's realm of the Forms, except that, for Whitehead, it is not more real than the actual world and it is not normative.   Nevertheless it is real, and it is that realm of existence which mathematicians explore in higher mathematics and which artists explore when they entertain potentialities for shape and color, thought and feeling, in their imagination.  It is the mind of God.

5. Mysticism of  Divine Love.

This is an intuitive sense that the unfolding universe, and each entity within the universe, is embraced by a love that transcends all finite realities and that cares for each and every being on its own terms and for its own sake.  This universal yet particularized love is what Whitehead calls the consequent nature of God.  

Mysticism of divine love can be generalized and graciously diffused, as it is more many of us or much more particularized and erotic, as seen in the poetry of Rumi or the ecstatic visions of Teresa of Avila.  

And it can have two forms: (1) a sense of being cared for and loved just as you are and (2) a sense of being guided in a non-coercive way toward what is good and true and beautiful.  Both of these forms are expressions of what Christians and others call grace.

6. Mysticism of the Collective Unconscious.  

This is a sense that each moment of experience somehow includes the entire history of the universe within its being, combined with a recognition that conscious experience is but the tip of an experiential iceberg.  It involves a recognition that we human beings carry within us memories of the personal and collective past which are the very substance of our lives, and which contain within them energies and archetypes which can nourish and enliven our souls, if only we awaken to them.  Those among us who partake of this mysticism are often quite sensitive to dreams and to worlds of the imagination.  

7.  Mysticism of Shamanic Journeying.  

Similar to mysticism of the collective unconscious, this kind of mysticism involves a sense of journeying into invisible realms of existence, inhabited by archetypes and energies and intelligences which have power in their own right.  But in the case the powers are not memories from the past actual world, but rather living personages who inhabit realms of their own.  

In a Whiteheadian context these realms are regions within the extensive continuum: a continuum which includes an infinite number of regions, including those within three dimensional space but also regions far beyond three-dimensionality, which can be inhabited by others kinds of actual entities.  Mysticisms of shamanic awareness involve immersion in the non-three dimensional worlds and receiving communications from the entities that inhabit them.  

It should be noted that the "entities" which inhabit this regions may or may not be beneficent.  They may contain angels but also demons.  While the mindset of western modernity neglects or dismisses these dimensions, Whitehead's notion of an extensive continuum opens up the possibility that entities exist within them; and it also opens up the possibility that, after death, a soul journeys into and through the other regions.  In this sense the Whiteheadian perspective is post-modern rather than modern.

8.  Mysticism of Ordinary Life

This is a feeling that there is something absolute, and irreducibly beautiful, about ordinary life itself: this face, this cup of coffee, this moment.  It does not matter that the moment passes away. The beauty is in the moment, and it would not be so precious if if did not pass away.   These kinds of mysticism find their home in the sacrament of the present moment.

There are many kinds of mysticism of ordinary life, and they extend a principle in institutional religions which is sometimes neglected.  This is the principle that this very world, rightly understood and rightly related to, is the very place of the sacred.  Many Jews and Christians understand a mysticism of ordinary life as an extension of the principle of incarnation.  God is found in flesh, and in moments, and in shared suffering, and in laughter. ​