Editorial Preface

Despite its claim that a true description of the universe would require a language of paradox and contradiction, mysticism claims of its metaphysical scheme that it is Euclidean, that from its first axiom or principle the remainder of the system would follow according to a specifiable logic. Its metaphysical scheme must have this epistemological property as it describes a universe for which this would be an ontological property. Perhaps the most basic metaphysical claim made by the mystics over the ages is that the universe is a unity, that all plurality is some kind of dream or illusion. There would be no true contradictions, for a true contradiction would be as impossible in reality as it is absurd in logic. The universe would be reasonable. This essay is an attempt to show how this claim that the universe is reasonable might be reconciled with the notoriously self-contradictory unreasonableness of the language used by the ‘mystics ’ to describe it. Their metaphysical doctrine may seem paradoxical, and it is usually dismissed from metaphysics for being so, but Lao-tsu tells us that true words seem paradoxical, not that they actually are