(I) Essentialists
(II) Cross-culture Classifiers
(III) Constructivists
(IV) Neo-Essentialists and Neo-Cross-Culture
Classifiers
(V) De-Constructionists
Appendix A: Personal Opinion
Appendix B: Some Methodological reflections
SUMMARY
This is a question within the phenomenology of religion but whose answer is intimately tied up with certain philosophical and methodological issues. It will serve, among other things, to introduce us to those issues.
We can distinguish at least three schools of opinion:
The general idea here: mysticism is essentially one and the same, whether Christian or Jewish or Islamic or Hindu or Buddhist, whatever may be the religion professed by the individual mystic --a constant and unvarying phenomenon of the universal yearning of the human spirit
One ploy frequently used to unify the apparent diversity of the phenomena is the distinction between an experience and its interpretation, whether the interpretation by the person himself, or that by his tradition. They all experience the same thing but they interpret or are interpreted differently, in line with their varying cultures and religious traditions.
We can distinguish a stronger and a weaker position:
(a) all mystical experiences are the same --even their descriptions reflect this;
(b) all mystical experiences are the same --but their reports are culturally/religiously
bound. Once allowance is made for cultural and religious contamination
of the reports it becomes evident that their actual experience is the same.
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As to what these different types are, however, there is some dispute, though, making allowance for different terminologies, also some measure of agreement:
(i) W.T. STACE: two basic types of mystical experience:
(ii) R.C. ZAEHNER in Mysticism Sacred and Profane distinguishes
three distinct categories:
Compare Mariasusai Dhavamony's distinction of three types of mystical
experience, ecstatic, enstatic and theist, in Phenomenology of Religion,
284--285 --possibly based on Zaehner.
(iii) NINIAN SMART: Smart makes a clear distinction firstly between
The prophetic experience:
= the experience of the numinous, as in Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, the "mysterium tremendum et fascinans" --the Holy One, evoking awe, = a complex of terror and attraction/fascination as in Moses and the Burning Bush, or the vision of Isaiah, or the storm at sea in the Gospel, evoking in the subject the deep conviction of unworthiness and the needing to be cleansed --"Woe is me: for I am a man of unclean lips and I live in the midst of a people of unclean lips"; "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man".
These experiences have an outer and thunderous quality not characteristic of the cloud of unknowing within, which we ordinarily call mysticism.
For the distinction between and relationship between the two types according to Smart, see especially Philosophers and Religious Truth, #5.8--5.10; at greater length, in Reasons and Faiths.
With regard to Zaehner's classification of mysticism, Smart accepts
the distinction between Nature mysticism and the others. The panenhenic
Wordsworthian experience of a mysterious harmony with nature, he sometimes,
as in Katz, ed., places with the numinous rather than the mystical; at
other times, as in Edwards, ed., p. 420, he treats as on their own, to
be grouped if at all with mysticism. The clear distinction which Zaehner
makes, however, between monistic and theistic mysticism, according
to Smart (Katz, Collection), doesn't hold up. They differ only because
of the mystics' lifestyle and the interpretation they makes of their experience.
The theists may admit that they is so taken up in the other as not to be
aware of self but will still claim that this is not the same as being identical
with the other; the monists for their part will interpret the same experience
as loss of self, identification with the other. Monistic and theistic contemplative
experiences as experiences are essentially the same, except perhaps in
so far as they are affected by auto-interpretation-- except perhaps in
so far as the experience itself is altered by what I take to it.
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Thus STEVEN T. KATZ in the Katz collection (Katz 1978 pp. 22ff.): for the same types across the different traditions the differences are greater than the similarities and this has to be acknowledged. Stace and Zaehner and Smart also force the evidence, "forcing multifarous and extremely variegated forms of mystical experience into improper interpretative categories which lose sight of the fundamental important differences between the data studied."(p. 25.)
According to Katz, (unfortunately) there is no such thing as pure or unmediated (or raw) experience --the experience itself, as well as the form in which it is reported, is shaped by concepts which the mystic brings to, and which shape, his or her experience. Christians not only report but have Christian experiences, of loving union with God, or Christ or of the Virgin Mary; Buddhists not only report but have experiences e.g. of 'emptiness'; Hindus have experience of identification of Atman and Brahman. See Katz, pp. 26--27. In language from Peter Moore, later on in Katz collection, pp. 108--109 of Katz, ed., certain features of the experience itself have been caused or conditioned by the mystics' prior beliefs, expectations and intentions. There is an internal interplay between experience and doctrine and also a relationship between mystical experiences and the mystical techniques whereby they are induced.
Katz extends his analysis in his second, 1983 collection (Mysticism and Religious Traditions, OUP, 1983) in a long article on "The 'Conservative' Character of Mystical Experience", pp. 3-60. Mystics are commonly deeply imbued with the canonical literature in their religious tradition and there is a demonstrable intimate interconnection of the religious and canonical literature studied and the subsequent mystical experience. Both mystical texts and the experiences they help to form all reflect and are dependent upon diverse ontological schemata which shape the configuration of the quest and its goal. Thirdly, there is the role of the respective mystical 'model' in each mystical fellowship, that is to say the various individuals who become norms for their tradition, the various different people regarded as the ideal practitioners of the religious life as conceived in the tradition. For example, Moses and Elijah, Jesus, Mary, Muhammad, Krishna, the Buddha. Such models play an important role in providing our map of reality and of what is real and important, and thus contribute heavily to the creation of experience, not just to its interpretation.
PETER MOORE (Katz 1978 collection) himself allows much of this but allows also that there might be an element of raw experience, in the sense of experience unaffected by the mystic's prior beliefs, expectations or intentions. The problem is that of actually discriminating between the different elements in any given account of mystical experience, which problem however he does not allow to be completely insoluble.
JOHN HICK's position has been mentioned already in Topic One: in a Neo-Kantian like manner, he manages to build conceptual incorporation into the very definition of religious experience. This is not to say that the experience is entirely determined by the mind-set of the religious person: it is the combined product of the mind-set of the individual person in his/her culture and religious context, and the impact of the transcendent Real.
The position of Robert M. GIMELLO (Katz 1978, pp. 170ff., also Katz 1983 collection, pp. 61-88) appears even more extreme than that of Katz or Hick. "[R]ather than speak of Buddhist doctrines as interpretations of Buddhist mystical experiences, one might better speak of Buddhist mystical experiences as deliberately contrived exemplifications of Buddhist doctrine. In view of this possibility, it seems worth considering whether mystical experiences in other traditions are not also, though less deliberately, induced; and whether doctrine is not elsewhere similarly determinative of religious experience, rather than determined by it." (Gimello, 1978, p. 173) This is not, however, meant to be anti-religious:
"To state the case in a somewhat different and more eristic way, we may say that acceptance of the dependency of mysticism upon its contexts, together with the entailed acceptance of the fundamental differences among varieties of mysticism, lends support to a view repugnant to many enthusiasts, viz. that mystical experience is simply the psychosomatic enhancement of religious beliefs and values or of the beliefs and values of other kinds which are held 'religiously'. But such a view of mysticial experience should be disturbing only to those who set little store by religious beliefs and values." (Gimello, 1983, p. 85)Thus Gimello.
The 'constructivist' work done in Katz, 1978, is continued in (most of the articles in) Katz, 1983, with the constant theme that 'mysticism' is faith realizing itself in experience, i.e. the various different faiths in which the 'mystics' are brought up. Antecedently held beliefs shape the character of mystical experience, rather than mystical experiences generating beliefs. "...the very nature of these experiences is determined by dogmas to which the mystic has already given assent on non-mystical grounds. Therefore the experiences of Christian mystics differ from those of non-Christian mystics in proportion to the differences between Christian and non-Christian views of God and his relation to the world." (from the article by H.P. Owen) Most of the other articles, Ninian Smart excepted of course, are various different demonstrations of this.
This if demonstrated does not necessarily rob mystical experience
of all cognitive value. The fact that a faith can realize itself in experience
is interesting in itself. Also, even sense perception is mediated by various
interpretative structures, perceptual, conceptual and metaphysical mindsets;
and yet we still typically trust our everyday sense experience. But it
does, or if true would tend to make the cognitive use of mystical experience
rather more complicated than mystics and probably most philosophers of
mysticism have thought. In the case of sense perception, the interpretative
structures are pretty much (though not entirely) shared across cultures
and traditions?? This is not the case with the religious or mystical interpretative
structures, which can inculcate fundamentally different ontologies. Which
religious interpretative structures are the good ones? Also, in order to
validate the comparison with sense experience, we would have to opt for
a 'partial' constructivism over the more extreme, 'total' constructivist
option
apparently taken by Gimello. We typically assume that in sense perception
the 'externality' whatever it may be does place some constraints on what
we experience. We don't normally expect that the objective counterpart
of snake experiences will regularly be experienced as apples.
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Ninian Smart, while making some concessions to arguments of the constructivists, is not convinced that they prohibit cross cultural classifications. From the second Katz collection (1983), in an article focussing specifically on pure consciousness which Smart identifies with introvertive mysticism:
"Though it is quite obvious that there are different varieties of religious experience; and though it is quite obvious that interpretation gets so to speak built into experiences - thus making experiences of the same type different in particular ways - it does not follow that there does not exist a type to be identified cross-culturally as 'consciousness purity' or as 'mystical'. Such a view has the merit of making sense both of the facts that perennialists point to and of the undoubted differences of exposition, flavour, and significance as between the various traditions." (Smart, 1983, p. 125)
This article is something like Smart's response to the previous Katz collection: all the references at the end (pp. 128-129) are to the 1978 Katz collection Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis.
Nor is William Wainwright convinced (Wainwright, 1981, pp. 18 - 41). He argues at fair length against such people as Katz in favour of the possibility of a typology of mystical experience, distinguishes some criteria for making such a typology and then goes on to suggest a typology of his own: four types of Extrovertive Mysticism, and at least two types, Monistic and Theistic, of Introvertive Mystical Experience, following Zaehner against Stace (and Smart) in this respect.
More recently (1990, edited Robert K.C. Forman, The Problem of Pure Consciousness) there has been a whole book devoted, ostensively, to a defence against the constructivists of the essentialist thesis of the so-called 'perennial philosophy' school. In fact it is a bit more modest than that: arguing in favour of the existence cross-culturally of the 'pure consciousness experience' ('PCEs') - Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish (Part I). This is something which the constructivists cannot explain (Part II). Among other things, constructivism has difficulty in explaining the feeling of novelty, not only among neophytes but even among some adepts. The person may well be surprised by her experience, not only the timing but also the nature of the experience itself. "The history of mysticism is rife with cases in which expectations, models, previously acquired concepts, and so on, were deeply and radically disconfirmed." (Forman, Forman collection, p.20) In addition, there is the peculiar character of the PCE's, the fact that they are content-less, a form of wakeful content-less consciousness. While expectations may supply content to visionary experiences, this is not so plausible with pure consciousness experiences, in so far as the latter have no content. (ibid., p. 23)
NELSON PIKE (Mystic Union: An Essay in the Phenomenology of Mysticism, Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca and London, 1992) is mostly concerned to defend a Zaehner-like position against W.T. Stace and others, in respect of Christian Mysticism. There are three kinds of Christian mystical experience: the Prayer of Quiet, the Prayer of Full Union, and Rapture and other less-violent forms of Ecstasy. The Prayer of Quiet and the Prayer of Full Union differ in respect of the closeness of the relation, according to which in the Prayer of Quiet God and the soul are only 'close'. The Prayer of Full Union and Rapture differ in respect of where the Union phenomenologically takes place, the first in the inner person or soul, the second in 'another world', phenomenologically an 'out of body' experience. Both Full Union and Rapture sometimes climax in a usually momentary experience of Union Without Distinction. But even this, in Christian Mysticism, is phenomenologically theistic: in the same way that seeing stars and losing consciousness is phenomenologically part of the experience of being hit with a baseball if you see it coming.
Nelson Pike also explicates for us Christian tradition mystical and theological talk of the Spiritual Senses, five in number in analogy with the ordinary senses. Distance senses such as smell and feeling (e.g. of the heat) predominate in the Prayer of Quiet; taste and touch come into their own in Full Union and in Rapture; in Rapture, spiritual sight comes into its own. His conclusion in respect of Stace's analysis of 'union with God' as really monistic but just interpreted theistically: Stace's analysis is evidentially bankrupt (p. 115). However, while he regards himself as a partisan of the Zaehner tradition against Stace and Smart and others, he does detect certain crucial faults in Zaehner's reasoning for his conclusion. (pp. 177ff.)
Nelson Pike is concerned only with the phenomenology of Christian mysticism and does not presume to make cross-cultural classifications. However, in a 'Supplementary Study' (pp. 194-207), he does have a close look at Steven Katz's arguments in so far as they have to do with Christian mysticism, and for the most part finds them rather wanting. Like a number of other critics of Katz, Pike wonders if he is not engaging in a kind of circular reasoning (p. 203), assuming what he should be proving.
Finally, there is the fairly sophisticated position of Michael Stoeber (Religious Studies, March 1992 and June 1993), critiquing and revising constructivist epistemologies. Having taken care of the epistemology of his position, he then goes on to argue in favour of three kinds of introvertive mystical experience: monistic, theistic and a further variety which he terms "theo-monistic", which interestingly is more like a lasting state than an episode or transient experience.
To conclude this probably very partial round-up: while 'constructivism'
of various kinds appears to be in possession at the moment, almost the
received view, in the study of mysticism as elsewhere, it hasn't gone without
considerable contestation.
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Jacques DERRIDA and the 'deconstructionist' movement cry out to be inserted about here, but I am not sure of the exact relevance. Perhaps something along the lines of: it is all a play of texts. (1) Mystical texts are produced by other mystical texts within a particular tradition, the writing of the texts occasioned perhaps by things which happen to mystics in the course of their practices rather than determined in respect of what is said by experience in the epistemic sense. (2) Furthermore, the different alleged references of the experience are in fact all constructed by the texts within the different traditions. 'God', Brahman, Krisna, etc. are constituted like characters in different novels, a series of actantial roles unified by syntactic invariants. When asked for a reference we just dish out another actantial role: who is God? the creator of the world; who is the creator of the world? the Person who called Moses at the burning bush; who is this One? the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ... There is nothing outside the texts. (3) In addition, on the side of the interpreter, the meaning produced by a given text would be a function of previous mystical and other texts which the person has been reading, once again at the mercy of the play of the texts: we interpreters are also a play of the texts we have read.
If all this could be convincingly shown in detail in respect of a variety of mystical texts, rather than just suggested, the whole enterprise of distinguishing experiences on the basis of mystical texts, let along arguing for realities on the basis of such experience, would have been shown to be misguided. We could perhaps fruitfully consider this in Question/Topic Three about the experience constituting function of interpretation, transposed into linguistic guise. Such considerations may also be more to the point later on, when we get to the question of the cognitive value or reality revealing function of mystical experiences on the one hand and talk about such experiences by the mystic herself or by mystic or non-mystic third parties on the other.
For an approach to the relevance of deconstructionism for mysticism and theology generally, see: Gerald P. Gleeson, "Deconstructing the Concept of God", in Pacifica, Vol. 5, 1992, pp. 59-66. And of course, Kevin Hart, The Trespass of the Sign, deconstruction, theology and philosophy (C.U.P., 1989). The impact of deconstructionism is or should be that we ought not to confuse the concept and the reality of God: a general (versus restricted) negative theology, whose intention is "to abstract our attention from concepts of God to the true God who cannot be conceptualised". (pp. 177 of Hart, quoted in Gleeson, p. 65.) Something like this is already to be found in the writings of some of the mystics, e.g. the 6th Century Neo-Platonist 'Pseudo-Dionysius', apparently.
Except that some mystics in the same tradition know and even talk as if they personally have had at least two, sometimes even three kinds of experience, with the first as a stage along a road which still goes on, and which we ought not to stop at. This is one bit of evidence that Smart does not take due account of: in so far as the same person with the same interpretative apparatus has both experiences and yet distinguishes them, the distinction cannot just be a question of auto-interpretation. The theist regards the other, what Ruysbroeck calls emptiness and rest, as a step and to some extent even an obstacle along the way - and vice versa for 'monists' like Sankara. Compare Ruysbroeck, as cited by Zaehner and Smart also. Ruysbroeck is saying to the quietists that they are wrong to interpret their experience theistically at all - they haven't got to God yet, just their own soul. Conclusion: there probably are at least two experiences. Let us call Ruysbroeck's emptiness and rest, which looks rather like the Yoga 'isolation' experience, Experience A, and what Ruysbroeck regards as union with God, Experience B. Experience A would seem to be capable of at least four interpretations, the three Smart mentions, i.e. Buddhist, Yoga/Rusybroeck and Advaitin, plus the theist interpretation of the Christian quietists and perhaps of some Sufis? However, against Zaehner, it may be that Experience B is also capable of at least two kinds of interpretation, absorptive (monistic?) and non-absorptive (theistic) -- compare al-Ghazali.
Conclusion seems to be: at least two contemplative experiences, each
interpretable in several ways, as follows:
Buddhist
EXPERIENCE AYoga
Theistic
EXPERIENCE B Monistic/Absorptive - loss of self
Theistic/Non-absorptive - loving union.
If Nature or Extrovertive mysticism is also capable of at least three interpretations, neutral, pantheistic and theistic, this would give us three distinguishable kinds of interpretation, this distinction being not just a matter of auto-interpretation, each capable of varying interpretations. Zaehner is correct to this extent. Against Zaehner, however: the experience, by itself, is not capable of determining its correct interpretation.
This would seem to fit well with recent work on Plotinus (cf.
John Bussanich, "Plotinian Mysticism in Theoretical and Comparative Perspective",
American
Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. LXXI, No. 3, Summer 1997, pp.
339-365). Plotinus, it seems, believed in and experienced at least two
kinds of mystical experience. Firstly there was the ascent of the sage
to self-realization at the level of Nous, more an experience in the sense
of lasting state than an experience in the sense of episodes. This is a
question of living on the level of one's true self. Beyond this there were
occasional experiences in the sense of episodes of union with the One,
transcendent to the self, beyond Nous.
I am told by people who know the spiritual classics and the facts of 'spiritual' life better than myself2, that it makes even more sense to distinguish three kinds of contemplative experience, which in addition to the extrovertive nature mysticism would make for an analysis along the following lines:
Mystical Experience:
neutral
NATURE theistic
pantheistic
Buddhist
CONTEMPLATIVE A Yoga
'emptiness &
rest'
Advaitin
Theistic
CONTEMPLATIVE B Non-Absorptive (usually interpreted as union)
:
CONTEMPLATIVE C Absorptive whether
interpreted as
intense union (theistic)
or as realization of identity (monistic)
This would make sense of the fact that both monistic and theistic writers can talk about lesser, inadequate experiences along the way: they may well be talking about different experiences.
This is not to deny some formation of the experience itself by the interpretative structures taken to it.
Rewriting Smart's conclusion:
(1) Phenomenologically, there are at least three, perhaps four, kinds of mystical experience, one extrovertive and at least two, perhaps three contemplative or introvertive.
(2) Different flavours, however, accrue to the experiences of mystics because of their ways of life and modes of auto-interpretation.
(3) The truth of interpretation depends in large measure on factors extrinsic to the mystical experience itself.
Note that the above is an attempt to mediate and reconcile what Zaehner
and Smart and contacts of my own say about the phenomena, together with
the material from the mystics they themselves cite, a dialogue with the
texts, not directly an attempt to make sense of the phenomena themselves.
Talk about phenomena at second or third hand. Cf. Keller, above.
Our problem now: can the above schema survive Katz??
Possibility:
(i) Phenomenologically, mystical experiences are as varied as the traditions within which they occur.
(ii) In all cases, certain features of the experience itself have been caused by or conditioned by the mystics' prior beliefs, expectations and intentions.
(iii) When an attempt is made to discount for the determination of the experience itself by the prior beliefs, expectations and intentions, however, we still end up with three (or four) varieties of mystical experience across the various traditions, one extrovertive and two (or three) introvertive or contemplative. (It need not be claimed that these ever do occur in a perfectly raw state.)
(iv) The truth of interpretation, including the interpretative structures which determine the experience, depend in large measure though not totally on factors extrinsic to the mystical experience itself.
What sense to make of (iii), which is an attempt to retrieve the above neo-Zaehner schema in the midst of Katz? Something like: if mystics themselves across the different traditions were to sit down together for long enough to work out of their individual, tradition derived horizons towards a fusion of horizons, they would come up with some such three-fold division in respect of the experiences they themselves have. Or else it could be just a theoretical construct, for the sake of finding some unity in the diversity: as we discount for the formative influence of the varying interpretations, something like an informal phenomenological deconstruction, there is a convergence towards three (or four) foci. Or this plus the other, the convergence leading to an expectation in respect of mystics talking together. The difference is that the mystics would reach their goal via a mutual enrichment rather than a mutual impoverishment.
[NOTE: I came up with this position, above, already in 1991, before
reading Stoeber or Nelson Pike. We are not exactly the same, I think, with
either, but close enough perhaps for me to derive some comfort.]
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2) The recognition of diversity across cultural and religious traditions does not prevent a theological or metaphysical interpretation of or theory about what is 'really' going on in the different varieties of mysticism as diversified through the different traditions, from within our own (or any one else's own) tradition. Using Zaehner's classifications we might make some such classification as the following, classified according to object:
--the experience of Nature, the wonder and beauty of nature, the oneness of all, --and all as a theophany, a manifestation of the Divine.
--the soul as the image and likeness of God, and God whose image it is;
--the Divine Him/Her/Itself, in the darkness of more or less intense mystical union.
Compare Bonaventure, The Journey of the Mind to God: traces in the creation, the image in the soul, God in Christ.
Mystical experience generally might be thus interpreted as the Divine showing Herself in diverse ways according to the cultures and psychologies of the recipients.
What it does prevent is any direct use of Christian mystical experience as a verification of the Christian or even the theistic tradition --given the apparent internal interplay between experience and doctrine. Similarly for other traditions. It still allows an indirect argumentative use, in one direction or another, along the lines of Ninian Smart (e.g. Smart, 1969): the Christian tradition allows and promotes a vibrant mystical tradition in its various varieties, as well as coping well with the experience of the numinous. And it is still consistent with a 'dialectical interplay' model of validation.
3) the recognition of diversity across cultural and religious traditions including conceptual determination of the experiences themselves does not prevent a Hick 1989 like interpretation according to which the noematic correlate of the different experiences are so many 'Personae' or 'Impersonae' of what he calls 'the Real'. In fact it fits in quite well with this interpretation: "...These observable facts suggest that mystics within the different traditions do not float free from their cultural conditioning...They bring their Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Muslim or Sikh sets of ideas and expectations with them on the mystical path and are guided by them towards the kind of experience that their tradition recognises and leads them to expect." (Hick 1989, p. 295). What they actually experience in any particular case is formed jointly by the presence of the Real to human consciousness and by that consciousness itself as it has been variously shaped by the different theistic and non-theistic cultures of the earth. The same noumenal reality is phenomenally perceived in different ways by different mentalities. (cf. Hick 1989, 278.) We accept this hypothesis meanwhile as a way of making unified sense of the religious phenomenon which gives due regard to the aspect of reality-directedness or givenness in the various different forms of religious experience. (cf. Hick, 1989, 249.)
Hick would need to be amended however: there may well be more than one 'Real', corresponding to the different experiences had by people even in the one mystical tradition. This might fit with the distinction between metaphysical and religious Ultimates, made by John Cobb, among others (also Jan Van der Veken). Examples of the Metaphysical Ultimate might be: Brahman, Emptiness, Creativity, Being, the Absolute (Levinas). Examples of the Religious Ultimate might be: the Good, God, the Infinite. The first may allow for immersion, the second goes better with union, though sometimes experienced as 'union without distinction'.
4) One way beyond the danger of just relying on texts might be to try
to correlate our conclusions based on the texts with the work of psycho-neurologists
like Roland Fischer (Woods Collection, chs 19 and 20, pp. 286ff., and 306ff.),
on the cartography of ecstatic and meditative states by reference to measurements
of brain activity while they are happening. Of course, there will still
be lots of guess-work, along the lines of: "this mystic was probably in
brain state 'X' at the time of his/her experience, given what s/he has
to say about it and the characteristics known about the meditative practices
in which this person was engaged; this experience should therefore be tentatively
identified as an experience of Type Y." For later on: knowing the state
of consciousness in which a particular experience was had no more determines
either noematic correlate or reality revealed by the experience than does
knowing a person was in normal perceptual consciousness determine whether
he or she was looking at a snake or a tree.
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or
reports are contaminated, but if you discount for the contamination...
-- the position of most early workers in the phenomenology and philosophy
of religions.
versus
introvertive
ZAEHNER: nature
monistic (introvertive 1)
theistic (introvertive 2)
SMART: mysticism versus PROPHETISM
nature mysticism
introvertive mysticism (no distinction between monistic and theistic)
Two varieties:
'Deconstructivism' as linguistic constructivism with the addition of the time element:
and
2 x introvertive (monistic and theistic) at least.
Stoeber: extrovertive
3 x introvertive: monistic, theistic and theo- monistic.
[McClymont/Moses/Ryanto:
Nature mysticism
3 x contemplative mysticism, including
emptiness and rest
non-absorptive (usually interpreted as union)
absorptive (interpretable as intense union or as realization of identity).
[Nelson Pike for Christian Contemplative Mysticism:
Prayer of Quiet
Full Union
Rapture/Ecstasy
with Full Union and Rapture both sometimes including an experience of
'union without distinction' as a climactic moment. Pike does not however
argue cross-culturally.]
Some Arguments: