What Does Sociology Have to Do with Mystics and Gnostics?
Trust, Faith, and the Iron Cage
Last week was about faith. This week, it’s about trust and faith.
Can we really have trust without any faith?
Can we truly connect without trust?
Where we stand with these questions is deeply personal, it depends on where we are in our own journey. But the conversation is always worth having.
Sitting with these questions, I returned to Weber’s sociology, seeing his “iron cage” metaphor in a new light.
Max Weber is best known for exploring how culture, economics, and religion intersect. He is often compared with Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim and considered as one of the founding figures of sociology. His work is mainly within the scope of interpretive sociology, an approach that looks at the meanings behind individual motives in their social context, rather than relying solely on objective data. In a way, Weber (and Durkheim too) feels a bit like Jung in the field of psychology, inviting us to explore the deeper layers beneath social structures.
Modern World Disenchanted
Max Weber had the name disenchantment for modern living, it’s one of his big critiques of modern life. What he meant is that as the world became more modern, through science, capitalism, and bureaucracy, we started to lose something.
In older, traditional cultures, the world felt alive with magic, mystery, and meaning. Everything was connected to something bigger, spirits, gods, or the unknown. Yet, in modern life, much of that has faded.
Now, instead of seeing the world as something sacred or mysterious, we break it down into data, systems, and efficiency. We stopped relating to nature as something alive and started treating it like something to use. Weber had a great metaphor for this, the “iron cage.” It’s a place where you might know many things, but you don’t have inner knowing.
A Jungian Take, Gnosticism
Tied to the Sufi and Bektashi origins of Turkish culture, the phrase “arif olan anlar” (the one who knows, understands) is still commonly used in everyday language, even without any direct reference to wisdom or spiritual levels. In the Sufi context, an arif is someone who knows, but not in an intellectual sense. It’s more like someone who has tasted truth in the heart, someone with inner knowing.
I was curious about what the English equivalent of “arif” would be, and it turns out, it’s gnostic.
Eventually, this led me to Jung and his ideas about the collective unconscious. It felt like Jung and Weber were searching for something quite similar in their own ways, both trying to understand the deeper layers beneath modern life, whether through culture, psyche, or spirit. I guess mainly to make better sense of their internal narratives, as well as creating knowledge for others.
Storytelling, Art, or Psychedelics
The gnostic focuses on direct knowledge or insight into spiritual truths, often with a critical view of the material world. Gnosticism historically includes the belief that the material world is flawed or a trap, and that knowledge liberates the soul from it. A bit Weber and possibly Foucault.
A mystic is someone who seeks direct experience or union with the divine, the universe, or ultimate reality. Myth, ritual, nature-based practices, storytelling, art, or psychedelics are all ways to bring back a sense of mystery and connection in modern world.
Then there are mystical gnostics who both experience and seek knowledge of the divine. Like Jung, and maybe Gabor Mate.
The growing number of people seeking spirituality outside of religion reminds us that what’s mystical doesn’t just survive alongside the rational, it needs to. The real challenge is finding balance.
Does Mysticism Makes us Stronger or Weaker?
My personal view is that it’s a bit yin-yang. You can’t really be in your power if you lean too far into just one side, you need that balance between them.
A more contemporary perspective, compared to Weber or Jung, comes from David R. Hawkins who is a psychiatrist, researcher of consciousness, and spiritual teacher.
“ The self-evident is not arguable. That health is more important than disease, that life is more important than death, that honor is preferable to dishonor, that faith and trust are preferable to doubt and cynicism, that the constructive is preferable to the destructive are all self-evident statements not subject to proof. Ultimately, the only thing we can say about a source of power is that it just ‘is.’ ”
Hawkins brings in that clear, grounding sense that some things just are. They don’t need to be proven or rationalized. In a way, it feels like this ties right back to that mystical thread, something that lives beyond argument, beyond the rational. Like music. Like love.