From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Dec 01 2002 - 21:26:10 GMT
Sam and all:
Sam said:
Thing is, I don't disagree that DQ is 'higher' than any of the static forms,
or that it is the origin of religion. I particularly agree with you that
religions have 'grown out of it and refer back to it'. It's just that I
think an awareness of what has already been 'discovered' or 'static latched'
can help you get to the 'cutting edge' more effectively (and that that is
what the Christian mystics do). What they *don't* do, in my understanding,
is to try and generate 'experiences'. That is, there is a difference of
degree, and not of kind, between mystical awareness and spiritual growth.
Mystical experience is not a different category of experiencing to any other
form of experiencing, and it doesn't provide a surer ground for static
knowledge (other than subjectively). To say otherwise is a form of
'spiritual positivism' - and is, in fact, a species of SOM thinking as I
understand it. Ooh. That might be worth spelling out.....once I've been
cured of my own residual SOM biases by Wim ;-)
DMB says:
Hmmm. The static interpretations (religions, churches, theology) are
supposed to get one to the "cutting edge", but not generate a mystical
experience? This is either a logical contradiction or the "cutting edge" is
something different than the mystical experience. Please explain. I'd
certainly grant that there are genuinely mystical forms of Christianity, but
I just don't see it in the descriptions you've provided. What I see, so far
at least, are those strangling vines. I can see that they refer back to the
origins, to the actual encounter with DQ, but the reference is back is
relatively weak and thin. It tends to obscure and hide it rather that bring
it out. We also disagree about the nature of the experience itself. My own
mystical experiences were of a completely different order than any other
experiences and the accounts I've read assert the same thing. Spiritual
positivism? That's a new one! As I understand it, Western religions and the
dominant secular world view (SOM) both reject mysticism. They tend to view
mystics as either evil or crazy. The rejection of mysticism is one of the
very few things they have in common. It seems clear to me that Mysticism is
very far away from SOM. They're somthing like opposites. Pirsig refers to
SOM as "amoral scientific (static) materialism" whereas Mysticism is moral,
dynamic and spiritual.
From MYSTICISM: Its History and Challenge by Bruno Borchert, who is a senior
researcher on art and mysticism at the Titus Brandsma Institute and a
Christian mystic of the Carmelite Order. He says that in the mysticism of
the East, such as Japanese Zen, "cultural pursuits are actually used to
encourage the right atmosphere for mystical experiencs: archery, raking a
garden tidy, tea drinking, painting, paradoxical speech, Za-Zen during the
daily routine. Culture plays a big role in Western Mysticism too, but often
is a negative sense: the individual withdraw from society because its
culture is felt to be too coarse, too rich, too oppressive. When this
attitude leads to a counterculture, a mystical culture will often arise
within it based on experiences of a reality that is rewarding enough to
mitigate life's hardships. Such a counterculture came into being very early,
in the 4th century, when Christianity, having become the state religion,
clothed itself in imperial purple and employed civil power to enforce a
specific doctrine concerning god. ... A similar counterculture also lies at
the root of the imposing medieval mysticism of the Netherlands. They were
thought to be such pests by the established church and by society, that many
of them were burned at the stake. They were called Beguines. This was a term
of abuse until..."
Gerhard Wher has written a number of books on Christian spirituality. In an
essay titled C.G. Jung in the Context of Christian Esotericism and Cultural
History he writes, "The real problem is that it is not enough merely to deal
with the testimonies of the religious or spiritual traditon by means of the
known methods of philology and histrorical and testual criticism. That would
be to seek to grasp the mystery of Christianity purely in external terms,
that is, exoterically. However, esoteric spirituality that is worthy of the
name is primarily concerned with the development of personal inwardness,
with one's own experience and with transformation. A theology without
experience is hardly is a position to mediate that spiritual knowledge and
spiritual direction which is nowadays sought more than ever." He then quotes
from C.G. Jung's MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS. "I was equally sure that
none of the theologians I knew had ever seen "the light that shineth in the
darkness" with his own eyes, for if they had they would not have been able
to teach a "theological religion," which seemed quite inadequate to me,
since there was nothing to do with it but believe it without hope. This is
what my father (a Reformed pastor) had tried valiantly to do and had run
aground. .. I recognized that this celebrated faith of his had played a
deadly trick on him, and not only on him but on most of the cultivated and
serious people I knew. The arch sin of faith, it seemed to me, was that it
forestalled experience."
It seems to me that choosing doctrine and theology over the unmediated and
direct experience is very much like going out to a resturant in order to eat
the menu.
Thanks.
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