Meaning of this sentence from Ulysses by Joyce

In this passage "monks" is a noun, plural of monk — the religious men who live in monasteries. Joyce isn't using it as a verb. The line "That is why mystic monks" is a sentence fragment, typical of the stream-of-consciousness style in this chapter. Stephen's thought jumps from the image of all flesh connected like a woven cable to the idea that this unity is why mystic monks exist: they're the ones who contemplate that connection, who spend their lives focused on the spiritual thread running through physical existence. The next two sentences follow the same associative logic. "Will you be as gods?" echoes the serpent's temptation in Genesis — you'll become like gods knowing good and evil. "Gaze in your omphalos" points to your navel (omphalos is Greek for navel), which the ancient Greeks considered the center of the world, the point where the divine touches the human. The Delphic oracle had an omphalos stone marking the world's navel. So the monks represent one way of answering that temptation: instead of grasping at godhood, they turn inward, contemplating the flesh-spirit knot at the body's center. Stephen is weighing this path against others. The grammar stays fragmented because he's not arguing — he's letting images collide. If you're reading Ulysses for the first time, don't worry about parsing every clause. Let the rhythm carry you. The meaning accumulates across the chapter, not in any single line.