I love these questions. As a Western-trained scientist, I was conditioned to approach all levels of mysticism with a roll of the eyes. However, as I've distanced myself from the reductionist thinking of Western science, I've adopted a more mystical understanding of the world, or at least have made space for the mystical, whereby we can talk about nature having wisdom.

That being said, I think these are language games we use to characterize attributes of nature that Westerners don't quite have the words or knowledge to describe. When we talk about evolution, we usually explain it as if creatures developed attributes on purpose, whereas mechanistically we understand those attributes emerge when random mutations confer benefits and are selected for after the fact.

I think mysticism may describe emergent properties in the complex web of nature that a mechanistic viewpoint can't accurately describe. It would be like trying to explain consciousness by only speaking of cell biology. I think the interconnectedness of the Earth lends itself to a level of emergence that requires mystical language.

And in order for humans to understand that interconnectedness, we yes, need a spiritual re-awakening. Because the simplistic language of Western, reductionist thinking doesn't capture or fully explain how things actually are. I think there's a lot in this world that we don't fully understand, and that mysticism is a type of wisdom and language game that can speak to levels of emergence that empiricism can't.