This is an article I wrote while getting my Ph.D. It was published in a juried journal:
In July 1986 while on vacation in California, business
executive Anne Turney, 34, looked out over the Pacific from a cliff near Big
Sur. Without warning, she suddenly felt
her whole being expand, becoming one with everything -- the rocks, the sea, the
trees, all of life. She later said,
"I felt myself melting into this Allness, and there was an accompanying
sense of freedom and an overwhelming love.
I felt I could actually die, right then and there, and that death would
be like finally coming Home. Then I saw
my body, spread out into the shape of the cross and staked to the cliff. I was pouring myself out, giving everything I
am to this All. The whole thing lasted
only a few minutes, I think, before I returned to a sense of myself as an
individual."
Anne later reflected that this experience was a moment of
knowing. More than anything else, she said, she has
come to think that it provided her with "the certain Truth of who we are
as human beings. We are not separate
from God, and we are meant to realize this union." As a result of the experience, an intense
desire for God was uncovered within her, a longing that she has sought to
realize and to foster in a variety of ways since then.
What happened to Anne very likely resonates with others
who have had similar mystical experiences.
This paper is an examination of these experiences. I look specifically at two issues, which I
designate overall as epistemology and hermeneutics. Because the epistemology of mystical
experience is rather complex, I want to lay out here something of the overall
flow of that part of the paper. First, in what sense are mystical experiences
moments of knowing? Do they unveil what is hidden? Here I set the stage by delineating two basic
epistemological stances and two types of mystical experiences. One of these types of experiences is
staunchly disputed by constructivist philosophers, and I contrast their
argument with postconstructivist claims regarding the possibility of transcultural
phenomena. The postconstructivist
scholar, Robert Forman, whose argument I briefly describe, however, remains
strictly subjective and posits no 'givenness' about mystical experiences
whatsoever. William James offers an
intriguing epistemology that is not only open to both constructivist and
postconstructivist claims, but in some ways goes beyond them both by positing
that mystical experiences may indeed unveil what is hidden. I then briefly examine Jamesian notions
regarding how a field model of reality might explain how mystical experiences connect the mystic to God.
The second issue concerns how pastoral theologians may
come to better understand mystical experiences. The hermeneutics of Paul
Ricoeur offers an engaging lens in this regard, and I offer a preliminary
translation model based on his thought.
I conclude with a word about how mystical experience as a part of the
psychology of religion may contribute to the work of pastoral theology.
The Epistemology of Mystical Experience
The whole of human life is one vast exercise in
knowing. From those mysterious moments
on the cusp between slumber and wakefulness to the equally mysterious moments
just before we lose consciousness and enter a world of dreams, every movement
we make is based on knowing something. Our senses, volition, thoughts, emotions,
perceptions, intention, and more -- indeed, all aspects of what it means to be
an embodied self -- work together to provide a certainty that allows us to function. In my subjective experience, I awake to a
piercing sound and perceive an object outside of me next to the bed. In a tremendously complex exercise involving
eyesight, hearing, mind/body connection, muscle movement and more, I groggily construct "alarm clock,"
fill that construction with a certain meaning (ugh! time to get up!),
and reach out to muzzle its hideous clamor.
For better or worse, this is the ordinary way of knowing.
Non-ordinary ways of knowing, on the other hand, can mean
a host of different things -- from paranormal/pathological experiences of all
types to religious experiences, some of which are said to be mystical. Anne's experience in California illustrates
well this second epistemological stance with which I am concerned. Her sense of nonseparateness at the heart of
reality and her sense of having been given certain insight into the way things are constitute the most
crucial components in this paper's working definition of mystical experience.
The Greek mystery cults gave us the adjective mystikos, providing us today with an
etymological foundation linking the mystical with knowing, for the cults
involved a higher and secret form of knowledge. Although knowledge is apprehended in various
ways, three forms are fairly common in the Christian mystical literature: ecstasy - literally a
"going-out" from oneself that enables a type of cognition such that
divine things may be known; illumination
- an apprehension of the Absolute or another order of reality, and a
"lifting of consciousness from a self-centered to a God-centered
world"; and infused
contemplation - a "supreme manifestation of that indivisible power of
knowing" in which one grasps Reality itself.
Scholars generally agree that in a mystical experience
either the mystic is 'given' certain knowledge during the experience itself or
the experience itself is free of all content and the mystic comes to 'know'
something after the experience. In both
instances this knowledge is said to transcend all human ways of knowing. Richard H. Jones delineates these two types
of mystical experiences as either "nature-mystical " or "depth
mystical." The former occurs when
sensory and some kind of conceptual awareness remain present, as in Anne's
visual conception of her body in the shape of a cross. While a perception of a subject merging with
an object (or with all of reality) may be present, a sense of differentiation
within the whole remains detectable. In nature-mystical experiences, knowledge
is obtained during the experience itself.
In contrast, in the "depth-mystical experience" the mind is
completely stilled or emptied. The
mystic has no sense of differentiation and her or his mind is free of all
conceptual and sensory content whatsoever.
Knowledge comes only after the depth-mystical experience is over.
The claim of 'depth-mystical experience' is philosophically
controversial. Philosophers liken this
type of experience to a PCE, Pure Consciousness Event, and define them both as
claims of unmediated, contentless awareness -- states of consciousness empty of
thought and
containing no subject/object
dichotomy. One part of the epistemological debate with
which I am concerned in this paper centers on mystics' claim -- based on their
own experience -- that PCE's do exist, versus philosophers like Steven T. Katz
who maintain that PCE's cannot possibly exist because all experience is
constructed and has a conceptual element.
Katz expresses a certain frustration with adherents'
assertion that unless one is already a mystic, there is little chance of true
understanding.
A body of literature [is created] which is primarily
enthusiastic, committed, and personal rather than sober, careful, and
reasonable. Thus, generally, the studies
produced under these inspirations have the dubious distinction of preaching to
the converted while dismissing the 'unenlightened' as poor souls who must still
await their entrance into this enchanted mystical paradise. At the same time such approaches usually
limit, a priori, all serious
conversation about the subject and certainly preclude it altogether between the
mystic and the non-mystic.
Serious conversation is by no means precluded amongst
philosophers, of course, and whether mystics are paying attention or not, Katz
goes on to assert that their cultural, social, and language milieu not only
determines how the mystic will attempt to describe and indeed come to
understand the experience, but actually determines and constitutes the
experience itself. His position is that
Jewish, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist mystics will have experiences of Jewish,
Christian, Hindu or Buddhist mysticism, respectively, because they have been
preconditioned to expect it.
There are NO pure (i.e., unmediated) experiences . . .
This 'mediated' aspect of all our experience seems an inescapable feature of
any epistemological inquiry, including the inquiry into mysticism . . . Yet
this feature of experience has somehow been overlooked or underplayed by every
major investigator of mystical experience whose work is known to me . . . [T]he
Christian mystic does not experience some unidentified reality, which he then
conveniently labels God, but rather has the at least partially prefigured
Christian experiences of God, or Jesus.
He carries this view as well into the mystics'
reporting of the 'givenness' or 'suchness' of a mystical experience:
Closely allied to the erroneous contention that we can
achieve a state of pure consciousness is the oft used notion of the 'given' or
the 'suchness' or the 'real' to describe the pure state of mystical experience
which transcends all contextual epistemological coloring. But what sense to these terms have? . . .
Analysis of these terms indicates their relativity . . . Phenomenologists seem
especially prone to this fruitless naivety -- all intuit the 'given' but their
intuitions differ significantly . . . [T]here is no evidence that there is any
'given' which can be disclosed without the imposition of the mediating
conditions of the knower. All 'givens'
are also the product of the processes of choosing, shaping and receiving.
Katz' analysis is straightforward and perhaps convincing
so long as it is kept in mind that he is focusing on nature-mystical experiences.
Other philosophers and probably most mystics today would agree with his
basic premise that experience in general is indeed constructed. It is particularly interesting to note that
the unreasonable dogmatic position of which Katz accuses adherents of mysticism
is clearly seen as well in his position on depth-mystical experiences. In steadfastly maintaining that all experience is constructed, then, as noted
above, he must completely dismiss any possibility of an unmediated
experience. In these instances,
apparently, mystics are the 'unenlightened' poor souls, victims of a most naïve
self-deception.
Postconstructivist philosophers like Robert Forman are
open to the possibility that mystics have, within the limits of language,
accurately described the depth-mystical experience as one which is in some
sense beyond any system of concepts, including linguistic. If this is the case, then of course there is indeed
nothing within the experience to structure.
Forman and others, who describe their position as postconstructivist,
decontextualist, or as a perennial psychology, agree that some kind of innate
human capacity produces or enables depth-mystical experiences.
Before describing Forman's position, it may be helpful to
say something about a postconstructivist philosophical stance toward mysticism
in general. R. L. Franklin points out
that constructivists correctly maintain that as historical beings we are
conditioned by our culture. What is
often overlooked is that the culture that forms our belief system presents
reality to us
in a pre-formed way, which both makes understanding
possible and yet restricts it. Surely,
too, our belief system mediates not only our thinking but also our experience
itself, yet the relation between them is a two-way process in which each
continually affects the other. Our whole
belief system is potentially involved in our judgment about what we see in
front of us. But an experience we do not expect may challenge the beliefs that produced
the expectation.
(italics mine)
Constructivists argue that
the mediated aspect of experience means that mysticism is no indicator of any
kind of ultimate reality.
Postconstructivists like Franklin counter that while any one culture may
indeed produce a certain flavor of mysticism,
the experience of "passing
beyond discursive thought into nonseparateness would remain a transcultural
phenomenon."
Forman's brand of postconstructivism, which he calls
perennial psychology, argues that mysticism is an expression of our own
consciousness, of awareness itself. He
writes that
Those constructivists who have suggested that
remembering a PCE necessarily signifies that one was using language, thinking
thoughts, or remember something in particular were wrong. They have misunderstood the nature of
awareness's self-recollection. While we
often employ these processes to think about ourselves, awareness's merely tying
itself together through time is of a wholly different order -- and it is that
other order that is tapped by . . . mystics.
This awareness of our own
consciousness is "separate from all sensation, perception, and thought,
and thus separate from the cultural aspects of human experience." He also asserts that this ability to become
aware of our own consciousness is sui
generis, reflexive and self-referential, and an immediate and direct form
of knowledge. It is an innate human
capacity, arising from deep structures within the psyche which enable it. One is reminded quite strongly of Rudolf
Otto's use of Friesian conceptions of Ahndung
as a built-in psychological capacity to distinguish the divine. For Forman, however, this unique capacity is
kept within the bounds of subjectivism.
He makes no claims for it to serve as a bridge to an objective other.
The epistemology of William James does offer a bridge to
an objective other, and it is to his work that I now turn. James acknowledges that mystical experiences
are shaped by our cultural, linguistic, social, and historical milieu. Indeed, according to G. William Barnard,
James often stresses that our minds construct sensory data into recognizable
forms so that what we perceive attains meaning.
We are "co-creators" of the world we experience. This creative
action takes place with the
help of "selective interest . . . which insures that we create a livable
and coherent world by deciding which aspects [of experience] to
notice." Such things as cultural
assumptions and memory, personal desires and interests, and the spacio-temporal
aspect of the mind all play an important role in which aspects of the chaos of
experience we choose to help us construct reality.
For James, however, this is not the end of the
epistemological story. Unlike the
constructivists, a radical empiricist understanding of mysticism is also open
to the objective otherness present in
many mystical experiences. While the
world is "malleable, waiting to receive its final touches at our
hands," it is
also given to us. We can change it somewhat, but we do not
create it per se. The constructivism advocated by Katz and
others has
difficulty accounting for any mystical experiences
that appear to contradict the mystic's theological and cultural assumptions,
since these experiences are understood as completely constituted by those very
assumptions. James's 'incomplete
constructivism,' however, can easily account for [them], since it postulates
the existence of an extra 'something' that is operative within mystical experiences
in additional to the mystic's psychological and cultural categories,
'something' that the mystic finds (or that finds the mystic), . . . 'something' that has . . . the power
necessary to transform the mystic's self-understandings and tacit worldviews. This 'something' is malleable; it can and
does appear to mystics in forms that they are most easily able to comprehend,
but it also can and often does appear to mystics in ways that they never
imagined, in ways that confound the mystics' personal expectations and cultural
assumptions, in ways that surprise and disturb them.
Having established an openness to the possibility of a
'given' in mystical experiences -- perhaps they do indeed unveil what is hidden
-- how human beings are able to connect to this
other distinct realm of being
remains an issue. James approaches this
question from his position
of radical empiricism,
seemingly trying to keep everything within the subjectivity of our own
experience. In his psychological
writings, James had already stood firmly opposed to Hume's atomistic
conceptions by arguing that experience is more like a stream of consciousness.
Each moment of experience is not so much individual and disjointed, but
is rather intrinsically flowing into the next, connected by "vaguely felt
transitive relations." He then moves outside total subjectivity in a
jump from psychology to ontology, positing that this connectivity in our
consciousness is also an "inherent ontological quality of the universe
itself." The connectivity is our link to the given.
Our ability to know a distinct realm of being is also
seen in James's notions of "pure experience." The psychological/ontological
"connectivity" mentioned above functions to link moments of experience. And, for James, in its deepest or highest
reality, experience is both subjective and objective, neither completely mental
nor completely physical, but arising from a prior non-dual reality. His epistemology attempts to show that the distinction
between subject and object is a "post-facto" operation based on the
consequences of the experience. For
example, take my experience of waking up and, however groggily, reaching out to
silence the alarm clock. In one sense
the alarm clock is an external item in the environment. In another sense, though, it is a perception
in my mind -- through my eyes, ears, and fingers. The question James asks is
this:
How can physical objects
simultaneously be mental perceptions?
His answer is that, like one point can be on two lines simultaneously if
it is situated at their intersection, experience is both a "field of consciousness" and the physical object, yet remaining one thing. My flow of consciousness -- with its
cognitions, feelings, categorizations, movements , etc. and ending in the present
moment -- intersects with the box-shaped object with numbers that shine in the
dark, which is also here in the present moment. Since there are consequences, obviously, to
this intersection, James would say that we can classify the experience as at
least partially objective. The
distinction between subjective and objective experience is not made from some
inherent quality, but rather from the context or function of the experience. In this way James notes that since mystical
experiences often carry significant consequences, we cannot simply dismiss them
as totally subjective. Plus, when the
overall subject/object distinction itself is called into question, the mystics'
claim of nonseparateness, i.e., the mystics' claim to know a distinct realm of
being, is fortified.
This non-dual foundation of experience has important
ramifications in Jamesian thought.
Throughout the whole body of his work, Barnard notes James's continuing
attempts to address issues of unity within diversity, the many and the one,
etc. After all, how are differences to
be accounted for when working from a foundation of non-dualism? How can a Christian mysticism viewing God as
'wholly other' explain the mystical experience of unity? And how can monistic traditions in which All
Is One account for ordinary experiences of subject/object dichotomy?
In response to these questions, Jamesian epistemology
posits the field model of self and reality.
This theory begins with the notion of the compounding of consciousness,
which means that simpler states of consciousness combine to form complex states
of consciousness. For example: As I move to turn off the alarm clock buzzer,
I feel irritated, I think "I don't want to get up yet!", I realize I'm too groggy to hit the
"off" button with precision, and I feel the air on my arm and realize
it's cold outside the covers. All of
these separate awarenesses, feelings, movements, and thoughts are simple,
diverse states of consciousness, but they are experienced as a unity. When this unity-within-diversity present in
our consciousness was added to his already formulated nonduality of pure
experience, James concluded that reality was more than logic alone. He realized that the immediate feeling of
life "has no problems with a oneness that is also a manyness, or with the
philosophical dilemma of how something could possibly be itself and yet still
manage to be connected with something else."
From this base, James began to envision reality as fields
of energy. And he began to see individuals
not as monads with an essential unchanging core, but as constantly moving,
porous fields -- fields of behavior, hopes and anticipations, thoughts,
backgrounds of memories and cultural expectations, emotions, intentions, etc. While these fields retain enough autonomy to
avoid being engulfed into a stultifying oneness, through the field of the
subliminal self they also offer us another whole world of "intuitions,
passions, fantasies, paranormal cognitions, and mystical ecstasies." The field model of reality offers a way to
think about mystical experiences as moments when our 'normal' mode of awareness
suddenly opens up through the subliminal self onto a broader interpenetrating
field of the divine. This model
accommodates the paradoxes of mystical experience as well. It leaves room for the wide variety of
experiences which are no doubt culturally determined, while
remaining open to the
very real likelihood that each
mystical experience is also shaped,
in ways that we may never be able to determine, by a wide variety of
transcultural and transnatural influences as well. A field model of reality would . . . be
receptive to, and even encourage, a wide variety of theoretical approaches to
mystical experiences, respecting and valuing the countless different ways in
which we each choose to explore the unseen worlds that surround and
interpenetrate our being.
(italics mine)
A Preliminary Hermeneutical Model for Mystical Experience
Pastoral theologians who come to understand mystical
experiences through a Jamesian lens may find not only that it provides an
epistemological framework allowing them to move inside the
constructivist/postconstructivist tension with some intellectual integrity, but
that it also provides one way of discerning more clearly what may be happening
in a mystical experience. Pastoral
theologians here labor within the world of ideas. Ever aware of the human tendency toward
self-deception, and laboring also within the world of practical pastoral work,
pastoral theologians also endeavor to gain an understanding of the meaning of a
mystical experience for a particular individual. They strive to help interpret the mystical in such a way that its overwhelming emphasis
on subjective experience is balanced to some extent by rational analysis.
I want to now briefly address this task of
interpretation. Paul Ricoeur's
hermeneutics offer a promising beginning for a translation model for mystical
experiences, especially when one encounters his sense that the task of
hermeneutics is that of "unveiling what was veiled."
Let me begin, however, with
an important caveat. As much as this
particular phraseology reminded me of mysticism, Ricoeur's work does not appear
to deal with mystical experience of any kind.
My sense is that while he respects a certain mystery at the heart of
experience, he is not concerned to examine it per se. Drawing on a huge array of thought from the
social sciences and the humanities, Ricoeur's focus is clearly more
this-worldly -- the philosophy of language, texts, and ethics. It is with this in mind, then, that I
reiterate that "promising beginning" is key to what follows. Although I believe this translation model is
beneficial, I am aware of using Ricoeur's work in a limited and incomplete
way. For instance, it is not in any kind
of one-to-one correspondence but rather in a fairly loose sense that I am
proposing a link between Ricoeur's text
and 'mystical experience,' between his reader
and 'the mystic', etc.
One of the most important overall uses of Ricoeur's hermeneutics
applied to mystical experience would seem to be the crucial role he gives to
reason and to meticulous intellectual analysis.
In his study of Freud, for instance, Ricoeur identified two types of
language: language of force and language
of meaning. The language of force
included Freud's sense that human beings are subject to certain internal drives
that determine our behavior. The
language of meaning pointed toward the understanding of symbols and symbolic
acts. But even when Ricoeur is moving inside the
language of symbol, myth and poetry, he insists on rigorous methodologies,
rarely if ever resorting to human intuitive capacities. This provides a helpful balance in
interpreting mystical experience.
Despite thoroughgoing inquiry such as James and others have provided
regarding epistemological foundations for mysticism, pastoral theologians
require an exacting interpretive method to help people avoid the dangers of a
radical and perhaps dangerous subjectivity.
I will look briefly at some specifics below, but before that, three
preliminary areas of convergence must be delineated.
First, in Ricoeur's hermeneutics, texts have immense
power to disclose whole new worlds -- and the worlds they make known have the
power to transcend the immediate situation of the text itself and of the
reader. Indeed, the relationship between
the text and the reader is a reciprocal one.
Readers interpret the text, but texts also interpret readers by
confronting them with new possibilities, new concepts, news ways-of-being in
the world, etc. which the reader may then appropriate or not. If the new world is appropriated, the reader is then empowered to transcend her or
his immediate situation.
Second, in his interest in what kind of world the texts
open up, Ricoeur has paid close attention to genre. In developing a hermeneutic of revelation, he
lists five types of biblical genre, each of which in its own way provides a
doorway to an aspect of revelation.
Prophetic discourse, for instance, carries within it the implication of
a Voice behind the voice,
while in wisdom literature, the sage "knows that wisdom precedes him"
and that he "participates in wisdom," which is held to be a gift from
God.
Third, understanding how a text opens up a new world is
accomplished, for Ricoeur, through an analysis of metaphor. Metaphors allow multiple meanings to address
the reader who can choose to stay within its local, immediate meaning or move
into its broader, world-disclosive meaning.
In linking Ricoeur's thought with mystical experience,
the correspondence between the world-disclosive power of a text and the
world-disclosive power of a mystical experience is easy to discern. Genre, too, can be easily linked to forms of
mystical experience -- this could be Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, etc., or it
could be the difference between nature and depth-mystical experiences. In any case, the genre would set certain
limits regarding what kind of world a mystical experience might disclose. The metaphor as a means of disclosing a world points us toward the how of mystical experiences. Field theory provides an interesting
correspondence with its basis in Jamesian understanding of diversity (multiple
meanings) within unity (one word/one story, etc.) The paradoxical nature of the whole question
of diversity within unity also fits well with metaphor, which can point toward
paradox in its notions of both the similarity and the dissimilarity between
phenomena.
Beyond the more preliminary links between text, genre and
metaphor, Ricoeur's discussion of understanding
and explanation provide the
intellectual rigor required to avoid the dangers of overly subjective
interpretations. In his terms, the
analysis of understanding and explanation help us elude a vicious hermeneutical circle. In terms of pastoral theology and of
psychology of religion, avoiding overly subjective interpretations of mystical
experience through a systematic methodology is a guard against self-deception
-- idolatry and pathology, respectively.
When a reader (mystic) has reoriented her life toward the
world disclosed in the text (mystical experience), she is said to have
personally appropriated it, i.e., she has understood
it. But she can only set about the task
of understanding by first intentionally distancing herself from the text
through the use of more objective methods.
She must begin the explanatory
process within a hermeneutic of suspicion.
Several points are helpful.
First, Ricoeur held up Marx, Nietzsche and Freud as
thinkers who help us identify a false consciousness. In identifying the ideology of domination,
Marx brought to light the illusions we bear regarding class struggle. Through Nietzsche the "intentions"
in a strong will are revealed. And in
Freud we can see how desire for religion, for instance, may be compensation for
pleasures we deny ourselves when trapped by cultural restrictions. Together these three "masters of
suspicion" point us toward the positive contribution that doubting can make. They also provide some criterion from which one
can judge when false consciousness ends.
Specifically, Capps notes that through Ricoeur's analysis of Marxian
thought, we know false consciousness is ended when "what we do is
commensurate with what we say, and when our work is commensurate with who we
are." Through Freud the analysis of
false consciousness precedes that of Marx.
We must first ask, "Is what we say and do a reflection of what we
truly desire?" There is a sense in
which, then, Freud's critique of false consciousness would help us discern the
world-disclosive power of a mystical experience by looking at the fruit of how
we have reoriented our lives toward it and asking whether this reorientation
truly reflects our deepest desires.
Second, Ricoeur stresses that meaning is found through
structures, and he uses illustrations from Claude Levi-Strauss's structuralism
to suggest looking for patterns which may evidence the text's disclosive
power. Margaret Lewis Furse's study of
William Hocking offers what seems to me to be an interesting parallel for
mystical experience here. She notes
Hocking's attention to the pattern of
alternation in the lives of mystics, who, in moments of mystical experience
are aware of the "whole," but who must continually drop back when the
experience is over and focus attention only on the "parts." Our existence impedes us from having both the
particulars and whole simultaneously, except
perhaps in the following way. When we do
a structural analysis and discover this pattern of alternation, we may then be
empowered to recover our "spiritual integrity by bringing the whole down
among the parts, and treating it as a thing of time and space like
ourselves."
Finally, in Capps' translation model for pastoral actions
he augments Ricoeur's hermeneutics with E. D. Hirsch's approaches to
understanding a text. One of these
approaches, schematism, recommends
establishing a range of expectations or predictions and then testing the
experience against them. Although
validation based on established criteria is primary, it is an open system in
that it also allows for the expectations to be adjusted if necessary.
Conclusion
Anne
Turney's mystical experience, while extraordinary, is not unusual. Nearly half -- 43 percent of all Americans
and 48 percent of all British people -- report having had one or more mystical
experiences. While this alone might offer ample reason for
pastoral theologians to concern themselves with the study of mystical
experience, other aspects also come to mind in considering how this topic may
contribute to our work.
The psychology of religion seems to have approached
mystical experience mostly from an objective biological lens or as some kind of
psychopathology. Theologically, although
mystical theology has made its contributions, for the most part it has seen
itself relegated to the sidelines. Yet,
increasingly, neuropsychological study is exploring the frontier of human
consciousness. And theology -- in a need
to move toward relevancy both in support of the church and in today's
intellectual marketplace -- is being urged to engage contemporary issues of
embodiment and transpersonal spiritualities.
These current impulses point toward the notion that the pastoral
theological study of mystical experience might be a most fruitful endeavor in
future discourse with other disciplines.
The study of mystical experience also affords the
pastoral theologian with a particularly fascinating psychological lens through
which to look at issues of divine-human encounter. Even if they were open to the possibility of
an ultimate transcendent being, the more radical constructivist philosophers
would have us believe that connecting to this objective divine Other is beyond
human capacities. I have been impressed,
however, with how other thinkers, using an empiricist approach in which the
deepest aspects of human experience and psyche are meticulously examined, come
to the conclusion that consciousness itself is endowed with some kind of
ability to engage that which is beyond the human. The two I have encountered this term --
Otto's Ahndung and James's field
model of self and reality -- are intriguing conceptualizations, ones that seem
to have much potential for a powerful harmonization with aspects of quantum
physics as well as with the neuropsychological study of consciousness.
At its heart this paper has looked at an intellectual
synthesis of science and religion, reason and faith. The desire for this synthesis no doubt arises
from the human quest for knowledge, the desire to allay a dark ontological
anxiety with a sense of certainty's light, and the intuition that mystical
experience may indeed provide a brilliant window into ultimate reality. I think it appropriate then to conclude,
from a faith perspective, with the words of
Evelyn Underhill who writes of mystics coming back to us
from an encounter with life's most august secret, as
Mary came running from the tomb; filled with amazing tidings which they can
hardly tell. We, longing for some
assurance, and seeing their radiant faces, urge them to pass on their
revelation if they can . . . But they cannot say: can only report fragments of
the symbolic vision, not the inner content, the final divine certainty.
Theologians and philosophers
offer intellectually engaging and appealing proposals, and we do indeed sense a
necessity to interpret the mystical through a rigorous and rational
methodological analysis. In the end,
however, what we seek will likely be satisfied only in an openness to following
in the footsteps of the mystics or in simply delighting ourselves in the twists
and turns of the quest itself, gradually realizing the hues of grace which
vividly color those angles and curves of life.
List of Works Consulted
Ashbrook, James and Carol Albright. The Humanizing Brain: Where Religion and
Neuroscience Meet. Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 1997.
James did not,
of course, stress the neurophysiological aspects of this connectivity of
consciousness. His theory is close to
the position taken by James Ashbrook and Carol Albright in The Humanizing Brain: Where Religion and Neuroscience Meet
(Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 1997), xxxiv, in which, based on current
brain research, the authors argue that the human brain is a "reflection of
the universe that birthed it," and that through it we are indeed connected to God or to the "really
real."
Maintaining
that experience arises from a more basic non-dual reality, and placing the
distinction between subjective and objective experience in the context or
function of the experience itself may be another way in which Jamesian
epistemology bridges the chasm between constructivism and
postconstructivism. The non-dual reality
posits a given and the specific context or function of the experience will
depend on our construction of it.
