If you have visited this site before, you may notice that its name has changed.
Until recently, it was called Journey of a Rational Mystic. It now appears under a simpler title: Rational Mysticism.
Nothing dramatic lies behind the change. The essays remain what they have always been: reflections written at the intersection of reason, experience, and curiosity.
But over time it became clear that the earlier name carried an emphasis that no longer felt quite right.
“Journey” places the focus on the traveler.
Yet the real subject of these essays has never been the traveler. It has been the terrain — the meeting place where rational inquiry and contemplative insight intersect.
Over time, my perspective has shifted slightly. The earlier title reflected a natural human habit: the tendency to center experience around the self, the traveler moving through the landscape. But many contemplative traditions, particularly Vedanta, quietly suggest something different.
The traveler is not the most interesting part of the story.
The inquiry itself is.
As the essays accumulated, it became clear that the project was not about documenting a personal journey. It was about exploring a certain kind of question: those arise where careful reasoning meets the deeper textures of lived experience.
The name Rational Mysticism, a phrase I explored in an earlier essay, seems to describe that inquiry more clearly.
The earlier name centered on a person. The new name describes the nature of the inquiry itself.
Mysticism, in this context, does not refer to superstition, belief systems, or spiritual spectacle. It refers to the simple and ancient recognition that human experience contains dimensions that are not easily captured by language, models, or analysis.
Rationality, meanwhile, is the discipline that protects us from drifting into fantasy. It asks that ideas be examined carefully, that claims be tested against reality, and that we remain willing to revise what we think we know.
These two impulses are often treated as opposites.
In practice, they need not be.
Some of the most interesting questions arise precisely where they meet: where rigorous thinking encounters experiences that resist easy explanation, and where contemplative traditions invite investigation rather than blind belief.
In that sense, the project remains exactly what it has always been.
Only the name has shifted slightly, to reflect more clearly what was already there.
If you have been reading these essays, thank you for your time and attention.
And if you are new here, welcome.
The inquiry continues.
