Mysticism

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Mysticism

• Lecture and Discussion
• Building a Vocabulary

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Mysticism

• The ambiguities of the word
• Used to describe everything from vampires and
  werewolves to the sublime theology of Plotinus
  and Proclus.

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Sources of Confusion

• The word originated in the mystery religions of
  antiquity.
• These religions featured
• Initiations
• The idea of secret or esoteric knowledge
• A concept of revelation.
• Belief in immortality

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Mystery Religions

• Mithra in characteristic pose
• The statue is surrounded by symbols
• The cape may be the heavens

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19th Century Scholarship

• The Search for the Essence of Religion.
• The belief among these scholars that the essence
  of religion had to precede religions linguistic
  and cultural expression.
• Mysticism, seen as an immediate experience of
  the divine seemed to fit this need.

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Typical RepresentativeAldous Huxley

• The Perennial Philosophy (1945)
• Combined Eastern and Western insights
• Saw mysticism as the great unifier of humankind

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Mysticism As Experience

• The most famous advocate of this understanding
  was the American Philosopher and Psychologist
  William James

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James Four Marks of Mystical Experience

• Ineffability
• Noetic quality
• Transiency
• Passivity

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The New Emphasis on Religion and the Brain

• Closely related to the older view of James and
  other empirical psychologist
• Religious experiences, particularly mystical
  experiences, are held to be related to the
  activity of the brain at certain moments.

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The Physical Basis of Religion

• If the new brain science is sustained, then it
  will have found a physical basis for human
  religious experience.
• But, note, that such an explanation would not
  necessarily explain either
• Religious belief or non-belief
• Or make all religious experiences equal any more
  than the discovery of the physical basis of
  mathematics makes everyones mathematics equal to
  Einsteins.

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New Interest in Spirituality After the 1960s

• Alan Watts and the Interest in Zen
• Transcendental Meditation
• The Spread of Religion Departments
• New Appreciation of Nature

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Alan Watts Lecture On Zenby Alan Watts

• That in this universe, there is one great
  energy, and we have no name for it. People have
  tried various names for it, like God, like
  Brahmin, like Tao, but in the West, the word God
  has got so many funny associations attached to it
  that most of us are bored with it. When people
  say 'God, the father almighty,' most people feel
  funny inside. So we like to hear new words, we
  like to hear about Tao, about Brahmin, about
  Shinto, and __-__-__, and such strange names from
  the far East because they don't carry the same
  associations of mawkish sanctimony and funny
  meanings from the past.

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Cultural Interpretations of Mysticism

• Steven T. Katz in Mysticism and Philosophical
  Analysis defined mysticism as a linguistic
  phenomenon.
• In other words, mystics are those people who use
  mystical language.
• Contained in this analysis is the belief that
  mysticism, like other human activities, is a
  profoundly cultural phenomenon.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Katzs perspective

• Advantages
• Few mystics described themselves as mystics
• Mystics have a strong desire to communicate their
  experiences, often in writing.
• Helps explain many common elements among mystics
  by pointing to cultural transmission of common
  ideas and symbols.

• Disadvantages
• Mystics have always claimed to be doing more than
  transmitting cultural forms
• Tends to reductionism
• Like most post-modern perspectives, it may
  explain less than it appears to explain.
• May make it more difficult, rather than less, to
  explain personal religious experiences.

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Attempt at A Working Definition

• Mysticism is a cultural and linguistic means of
  expressing the human relationship with the
  ultimate source of the universe
• It is a religious language.
• Like all language, it invites others to share in
  its reality and to adopt its perspective.
• Mysticism always has a philosophical or
  theological component in that the mystic makes
  definite claims about the truth of his or her
  propositions.

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Mystical LanguageCommon Elements

• Always has a cultural component.
• Mystics use the language of their culture, time,
  and religious tradition.
• For example, one cannot understand Eckhart
  without knowing about the neo-platonic tradition.
  
• We can speak of a mystical tradition in
  Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc.

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Mystical LanguageIndividualization

• Even when a medieval mystic tells us almost
  nothing of her life, her writings sparkle with
  her personality.
• We know Julian, for example, although she tells
  us almost nothing of her life.
• Hildegard of Bingens crusading will to power
  shines forth on almost every page of her writings.

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The Mystical Tradition

• Mystics read and study mystical literature.
• Thus, the highly individualistic Plotinus fills
  his Enneads with quotes from the Master, Plato.
• The place of study in mystical life means that
  there is often an intergenerational and
  intercultural dialogue or conversation between
  different mystics.
• Mystics often seek to advance the discussion or
  to deepen the common perception of religious
  life.

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Some Mystic Symbols

• The Ascent
• The Journey, Quest, or pilgrimage
• Rebirth
• Sexual Love
• Nature and Alchemy

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Stages on the Mystical Way

• Purgation or the cleansing of the soul and mind
• Illumination or the reception of Gods Presence
• Union or closing with God (very brief)
• Desertion or The Dark Night when all the gains
  of the past seem to vanish and God to be
  profoundly absent.
• New Life and Service.

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The Stage Can Also Be Seen as Levels

• Earthly
• Spiritual
• Intellectual
• Ultimate or Source
• Return to the earthly.
• Finding the Source in others.
• Following Plotinus who favored the image of an
  ascent into the heavens.

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Active and Contemplative.

• The Active is the striving to prepare the soul to
  receive God
• The life of Sacrament
• Verbal Prayer
• Most religious experiences
• Classically, many mystics regarded these
  preparatory steps as no sign of grace.
• In mystical literature, the phrase, Active Life,
  rarely refers to ethical activity.

• The Contemplative is the living in Godthe simple
  accepting of the divine Presence with and in the
  Soul.
• Union is the highest form of contemplation.
• Traditional mysticism tended to regard this as a
  very fleeting experience.

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The Two Types of Mystic Conversation

• The Intellectual
• The ladder to contemplation is essentially driven
  by the need to know.
• The person, thus, moves from the world of sense
  to the world of ideas to the Source.
• Usually results in a via negativa. At the height
  of our experience of God is what we do not know.

• The Way of Love
• Sees the love of God as the great motive for
  seeing God
• Often uses sexual or romantic images.
• The mystic experiences the Self, even when the
  Self disappears as an independent entity, as
  awash in a Sea of Love.
• The loss of the Self in the Other is the highest
  experience of grace.

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Transformation.

• Mysticism seems almost always to issue into a new
  style of life in which the mystic invest his or
  her life in others.
• The person who participates in the conversation
  emerges as a Servant (Christianity) or as a
  Person of Compassion.
• Thus, the flight of the Alone to the Alone
  usually ends in the flight of the Alone to the
  Other.

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