From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun May 04 2003 - 22:09:05 BST
Sam and all MOQers:
Sam said:
In the late 70's and early 80's there was a man in England called Peter
Sutcliffe who had a number
of religious experiences; in particular he had auditory 'hallucinations'
which told him to go out
and kill prostitutes, which he did (13 of them as I recall) in a
particularly grisly fashion - he
was called 'The Yorkshire Ripper'. Now, I think it is possible to say to him
'you might have had an
unusual experience, but it wasn't God talking to you' - because the
Christian tradition has already
incorporated lots of insights about God, and they don't reconcile with
butchering human beings.
Clearly, there is room for debate at the 'high end' of spiritual development
- there comes a point
where a tradition has to shut up and say 'don't know' about whether
something is from God or not
(and it is a sign of a healthy religious tradition that it can accept that)
- but it seems extreme
relativism to say "myth and religion itself can't tell a guy he's wrong
about this or that" - I
think that is *precisely* what myth and religion do.
dmb says:
I think its pretty obvious that the Yorkshire Ripper can rightly be excluded
from our list of authentic mystics, but we don't need religious authority to
tell us that. This is a case better handled by the criminal justice system
and a team of psychiatrists than any church. Pirsig's thoughts about the
difference between mysticism and insanity might shed some light on this, but
I don't think anyone doubts that serial killers are not mystics.
Sam quoted Grace Jantzen:
"...it is instructive to underline how radically the word {mysticism} has
shifted in meaning since
patristic times. 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. Whether or not twentieth-century
writers on mysticism would
subscribe to the letter of Idealist or Romantic epistemology, or are even
aware of the debt which
they owe to it, the spirit of subjectivisation and with it a psychologising
of mysticism rests upon
them." (p317)
"{modern philosophers - eg Wilber!!!} use an understanding of mysticism
largely derived from teh
work of William James, which constructs mystical experience as intense
private psychological states
having the characteristics of ineffability, a noetic quality, transiency and
passivity. We have seen
how problematic such an understanding is, ..."
dmb says:
Jantzen is interesting. I just might pick up that book. Until then, I'd just
like to offer some more Wilber to demonstrate that his conception of the
mystical experience is NOT guilty of this kind of "subjectivisation" and
does NOT reduce the mystical experience to psychology. Like Pirsig, he has a
totally different take on both "subjectivity" and mysticism than the vast
majority of modern (and post-modern) philosophers. Wilber makes distinctions
between the various ways of knowing. Like Pirsig, he ranks various levels of
knowing, but includes them all in what he calls "epistemological pluralism",
which only means that each level of knowing is valid within its own domain.
In THE MARRIAGE OF SENSE AND SOUL: Integrating Science and Religion, at the
end of chapter twelve, he says...
"We have seen that authentic spirituality is not the product of the eye of
flesh and its sensory empiricism, nor the eye of mind and its rational
empiricism, but only, finally, the eye of contemplation and its spiritual
empiricism (religious experience, spiritual illumination, or satori, by
whatever name). In the West, since Kant - and since the differentiations of
modernity - religion (and metaphysics in the very worst sense - statements
without evidence) has fallen on hard times. I maintain that it has done so
precisely because it attempted to do with the eye of mind that which can be
done only with the eye of contemplation. Because the mind could not acutally
deliver the metaphysical goods, and yet kept loudly claiming that it could,
somebody was bound to blow the whistle and demand real evidence. Kant made
the demand and metaphysics collapsed - and rightly so, in its typical form.
Neither sensory empiricism, nor pure reason, nor practical reason, nor any
combinaton thereof can see into the realm of Spirit. In the smoking ruins
left by Kant, the only possible conclusion is that all future metaphysics
and AUTHENTIC SPIRITUALITY must offer DIRECT SPIRITUAL EVIDENCE. And that
means, in addition to SENSORY EXPERIENCE and its empiricism (scientific and
pragmatic) and MENTAL EXPERIENCE and its rationalism (pure and practical),
there must be added SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE and its mysticism (spiritual
practice and its experiential data). With this approach, religion regains
its proper warrant, which is not sensory or mythic or mental but finally
contemplative. The great and secret message of the experiential mystics the
world over is that, with the eye of contemplation, Spirit can be seen. With
the eye of contemplation, God can be seen, the great Within radiantly
unfolds."
dmb says:
Basically, he's saying that the mystical experience is not something we
percieve with our senses or with our minds. This is normally what we think
of when we think of subjective experiences. By contrast, the eye of
contemplation is about letting go of our ego self, our subjectivity, our
feelings, beliefs and thoughts. Perhaps this is too subtle for me to
properly convey, but I think that even though spiritual experience happen to
us personally, they can't rightly be called subjective. (Social and
intellectual static patterns constitute our subjective experience, while DQ
is beyond our senses and mind.)I think that both Pirsig and Wilber see that
kind of experience as quite distinct from subjectivity. For both of them, it
is beyond psychology in the ususal sense of the word. And on a related
point, I'd say its no big surprize that we can now discuss mysticism in
psychological and other scientific terms. In "patristic times" those kinds
of terms and concepts simply didn't yet exist. Of course they didn't talk or
write about it like that. They couldn't have. I don't see this as any kind
of reason trust the old boys more, but less. This is what I meant when I
said that the whole thing is not as ineffable as it once was. We now have
conceptual categories that were not previously available. That's good.
That's progress. We can really use that, even if it also means we have more
work to do in correcting the problems of modernity, flatland, SOM or
whatever.
Thanks for your time,
DMB
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