We have trouble with the word. Lacking a better one, we'd like to use it, but it's been used so heavily by others, and imbued with such heavy (& incompatable) connotations, that it may not be worth the time to explain it. It's a good word, darn it, and it can communicate a feeling well. It is a natural and beautiful human emotion, and we think the word can be put to good use. To do so, we must make an important distinction. After you read this, we hope you'll agree. If not, we'd be delighted if you'd speak up with a better one.

"Spiritual" is an emotional response, but "mystical" is an intellectual aberration. e.g., Hindu or Native American beliefs about the beginnings of the Earth, and other folklore--spoken, sung, or written--if taken literally. They can be interesting psychologically, but isn't what we're about. It's not reality. This is not a criticism; if taken metaphorically, there is much value in them, and we talk about that elsewhere.

The essential differences: The Spiritual person feels awe in things understood, and wants more things to be studied and better understood, so s/he can feel more awe, and know his/her place in reality just a little better.

The mystic feels awe at things not understood, and wants to know of more things that are not understood. He wants those things not to be studied (or the refuting studies denied) so the things can remain not understood, so s/he can imagine him/herself within that reality.

A spiritual person may be a Zen person; a mystic may be into reincarnation, UFOs, and astrology.

The mystic will strongly tend to be ultra-conservative /orthodox because they desperately want their mystery not to be solved. Why do mysteries seem to have a magic that knowledge doesn't?! . I guess that'd have to do with the definition of magic being so similar, right?

A spiritual person is delighted at the amazing intricacy of what little we know of nature and reality; the mystic is stimulated by simplistic but amazing improbabilities, based not on reality, but wishful imagination. They're probably more likely to be loners; shy, insecure, submissive.

The reverse is not true, however: a spiritual person may or may not be extra intelligent/liberal, but may tend slightly to be more self-aware than average.

Gaians categorically reject mysticism, and explore nature and reality, which can engender a spiritual feeling. Enlightenment, Satori.

Perhaps the word "holy" should mean simply "struck by ineffable awe". At least, we define spirituality as a feeling of awe, "Grandeur", "Harmony". Besides those, there is "beauty", even that required of scientific theory, including math. In a scientific theory, beauty is "required".

If "spirituality" is a connection with everything, then it's best to know what you're connected to, and science is the only way to do that. Yes, know the statistics and data on a species, but then, with that background, imagine how it feels to live as that species. The more you know, the more paths you have to a connection to the "other". Pantheistic?

=========== At the UU last sunday, someone said that spirituality is about connections to others, including other species. Exactly. I add that the mind's part in the process is to know about those others as well as it can... without getting in the way of our feelings about same. The more you know about that person/species, the closer you can feel to him/her/it, and the better you can understand his feelings and life. Your point-of-view can be that much closer to his own experience.
It also helps to have our own experience out of the way of the one you're trying to understand. Use a clear mirror or lens, and get those filters out of the way.

Reality, science, and spirituality have this in common: that all see things as nature insists they are, rather than as modified by the trip thru human perceptions and pre-conceptions and mis-conceptions.

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Understanding yields awareness yields spiritual connection and enlightenment.
--from someone's post on Gaia Club--1-26-99

Is there some similarity with "enlightenment"?

Some people may feel a huge relief to give up their thought process --all their objections-- and go with the admonitions of their leaders. The first part of that is good: give up their thought processes --that's the object of Zen meditation. But to do it for an external reason--just to satisfy the admonitions of their leaders... because they want you to agree... that's a perversion of the spirit.

I'm sure the "born-again" experience varies widely, but some of what they feel is probably just the huge relief that they don't have to fight the irrationality any more, but just embrace it. That's an abrogation of their (if you will) God-given mental ability. Would God condone that?

We've all felt a big dose of healthy rebellion when we first heard that. It hits square on our sense of fairness. "It's not my fault! I didn't do it! I wasn't even there!" Placing this guilt probably worked to the advantage of medeival authorities, in that their subjects acted more docile, as they felt so guilty and confused.

Ok, maybe I can get a definition into it that will make it useful and more acceptable.

1. It's the sin of my place/family of origin.
   Bad behaviors get modeled by the offspring who experience them as "normal".
2. It's the sin of my culture of origin.
   Here in the USA, the invading European culture perpetuated a holocaust. Most of us here now are descendants of those people, and culture changes slowly over the generations. So, yes, tho through no decision of our own, we may be guilty of said tendencies, save only for the current overlay of civilization and circumstance.
3. It's the sin of my species of origin.
   Behaviors are built into our genes that conflict with our society's demands. (which is right?) Sociobiology shows how our genes have breeding-demands that our culture has rules and laws against.

By "names" I mean personal images... pictures of the prime supernatural entity. Perhaps I should use a lower-case "god", as we're not talking about just one image or definition here.

Why the number twelve billion, when there are only (only?!) six billion humans on the planet? I think we all --religious or not-- have mental pictures, but that we are not limited to one apiece. We double-think.

Images of God --oops, I mean "god"-- even include a toga-robed bearded daddy in the sky, to "Santa Claus out of uniform", to who knows what.

Even the bible paints various pictures of him. "An eye for an eye..." or "Turn the other cheek." It's very confusing.
How many gods can we manage to picture in the bible?

I think that we could design an experiment --Mark Twain-wise. (Letters From the Earth.) Let's take a bunch of common laboratory specimens, the human being, even a conservative set of them. We'll lock them in a cage... oh, all right... we'll sit them in chairs and ask them questions.

We'll not quote from the bible, but give them the opinions of the God of the Old Testament, disguised in modern terms. We'll tell them of the more serious acts committed by this "person"... like slaughter of innocents, by the dozen, thousands, and millions. I feel sure that even they would consider that "person" evil; a disciple of the devil, perhaps, if we ask it that way.

The New Testament God is a very different fella. Very forgiving... you wouldn't mind him living next door.

What's wrong with [none, or all but one] of these pictures? Only one, at the most, can be right, unless the polytheists are right.

Of course (I hafta keep saying this...) none of this says that there's no god of some kind, just that we invent some silly images and have some funny expectations about it.