From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Mon Apr 07 2003 - 02:54:55 BST
Sam and all:
Sam said:
I thought I would send you this paper, which I wrote a few years back, on
"The possibility and relevance of unmediated experience". I still agree with
what I wrote then, although I think my understandings have a long way to go
yet. ... It might help our discussions.
DMB says:
Thanks for making your paper available. I think its exciting and interesting
even though I (naturally) mostly disagree. I'd like to respond on many
points, especially to your take on the perennial philosophy, Kuhn and
Jantzen, but for now let's take a look at these three exerpts from the
paper....
"I would put the case more strongly: unless these experiences are able to be
absorbed and valued by a religious community, then they are irrelevant to
theology."
"However, the existence of unmediated experience is, of itself, not
religiously significant."
"The fruits of mystical contemplation were to be found in increased social
engagement - in the search for justice and mercy in the wider social sphere,
hence the concern for the relief of poverty on the part of the mendicant
orders and the Beguines."
DMB continues:
How you square the first two with the third one is a mystery to me, but what
I really wonder about, and object to, are the ideas that mystical experience
is "irrelevant to theology", "not religiously significant" and that the
fruits of it are "to be found in increased social engagement".
In the first two you seem to be demanding that these experiences are only
relevant and valuable to the extent that they are domesticated by
theological doctrine. I'd agree that the trick is translating the experience
into a lasting improvment, a real impact on the experiencer, but you seem
too willing to dismiss it on these grounds. If its irrelevant to theology,
but vital to one's spiritual life, then I'd say that's exactly what's wrong
with theology.
I have more sympathy for the third, but that only means I hate it less. :-)
I do go along with the notions that humanity's highest and most nobel
sentiments are born in the mystical experience, that it opens the human
heart to the value of compassion, justice, mercy, and the like. But I think
your emphasis on the "social sphere" trivalizes it a bit. I mean, feeding
the poor is a noble and compassionate thing to do and any sane person would
applaude it, if not engage in it themselves too. But compared to the kind of
deep compassion that's born out of identifying with the Ground of Being....
I think you've misread Jantzen to make this point. She says....
'Instead of referring to the central, if hidden, reality of scripture or
sacrament, the idea of "mysticism" has been subjectivised beyond
recognition, so that it is thought of in terms of states of consciousness or
feeling.'
You characterize this as a "transition from the public realm to private
sensation", but I don't think that's what she's saying at all. I think its
clear that she's refering to the loss of mysticism is the central and hidden
reality of the scripture and sacrament, and that this realization has been
lost, relegating mysticism to the realm of the "merely" subjective.
'It was only with the development of the secular state, when religious
experience was no longer perceived as a source of knowledge and power, that
it became safe to allow women to be mystics...The decline of gender as an
issue in the definition of who should count as a mystic was in direct
relation to the decline in the perception of mystical experience, and
religion generally, as politically powerful'.
I the paper, this quote is presented right after you say, "so part of the
effect of this shift has been to minimise the impact of women's voices". I
disagree with this characterization too. I think she's just saying that
women were allowed into the club only after the club came to be seen as
unimportant and powerless. The issue became moot because there wasn't
anything left worth protecting from women. At about this same time, kooties
were declared theologically invalid at the council of sugar and spice. Since
then, women have been increasingly accepted into mystical orders, are
published in the field and in the more liberal demoninations, it is even
admitted that some women are "kinda cute".
In short, I think the central importance of the mystical experience to all
the great religions can hardly be overstated. I think the mystical
experience is the goal of everyone's spiritual adventure. As Campbell
wrote...
All, mythology, whether of the folk or of the literati, preserves the
iconography of a spiritual adventure that men have been accomplishing
repeatedly for millennia, and which, whenever it occurs, reveals such
constant features that the innumerable mythologies of the world resemble
each other as dialects of a single language.
And that myth and religion is supposed to support and guide us in that
adventure, to awaken in us the realization - Thou art that.
Thanks. For you're time.
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