From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Dec 26 2004 - 02:58:40 GMT
Sam and all MOQers:
Sam Norton wrote on Wednesday, December 22, 2004 7:44 AM: ..it seems to me
that a) you are putting
boundaries around what can count as a legitimate mystical encounter, b)
privileging the Western
rationalist understanding of mysticism, and therefore c) denying my own
experience of mysticism.
...Because I *would* claim to have had 'a mystical experience' - I just drew
completely different
conclusions from it than the ones which the Jamesian tradition says that I
should have done. I *was*
a militant atheist, very much a fan of Jung and Joseph Campbell (and,
implicitly, William James)
etc, and afterwards I switched to taking Christianity seriously, and I've
been pursuing that path
ever since (about 15 years now, although it took me a good few years to
reconcile myself to 'being a
Christian'). ...And DMB is right to pick up that I get
resentful, for the logical
implication of the position you are arguing for is that the experiences I
have undergone, and all
that I have learnt in my lifetime etc etc is of no worth compared to the
Jamesian approach (it
means, logically, that my experience was not a mystical experience, which
makes the argument
completely circular). ...the Jamesian approach ...claims to have a
privileged position from which to assess religious or spiritual paths, so a
Hindu guru or a Christian saint are not the authority on their own path; in
contrast, an intellectually abstracting understanding from those paths gives
a superior understanding to their insights. It is patronising, condescending
and imperialistic, and it gives no respect to the lived experience of those
who are actually trying to climb the spiritual mountain. ...Note to MSH:
reflecting on my own mystical experience, although I experienced it as a
'bolt from the blue', I can see in retrospect that there was quite a lot
going on in the months before the experience leading up to it - a bit like
termites nibbling away the foundations until there is a sudden collapse.
dmb says:
While I can see that your "mystical" experience was different from the kind
described by James, I don't see how that invalidates your whole life. Why
can't it just be that you had a powerful experience? How does it follow that
only one or the other is real or important? Is there some reason to think
that they are mutually exclusive? Does one somehow cancel out the other?
You seem to be saying that the mystical experience doesn't exist simply
because YOU didn't have one? (Yet) Your experience was NOT like the one
James describes, so the one James describes is an insult to everything you
believe in? What kind of logic is that? There is no such thing as
enlightenment becuase it hurts your feelings? I hardly think one's personal
comfort level is the test of any truth. Quite the opposite. Once I accused
you of having an ideological conflict of interest in these matters and you
denied it, Sam, calling me an ignorant bigot and such. And now we have your
confession. This is exactly what I was talking about. This is what I meant
when I said that your changes to the MOQ are self-serving distortions. This
is what I meant when I said that you take the very existence of the mystical
experience as a personal threat. Here you have made it very plain that you
can't accept the mystical experience as James describes it because it makes
you feel left out of the experience, left out of a proper intellectual
understanding and it makes you feel that all your devotion and hard work in
the church is of no worth. If you believe philosophical mysticism is really
so personally threatening, its no wonder you've resisted it with such
ferocity. No wonder your arguments against it have been so... weird. If
you're looking at the issues through all that heavy ego-laden baggage, its
no wonder your arguments have so often taken on a defensive tone. Its not
wonder you have seemed so often vague, dishonest, coy, evasive and all that.
Its been personal all along and now you've finally admitted as much. You're
not even talking about ideas. You're just talking about yourself and your
emotions. And your ego. That's very, very uncool - to say the least.
I don't mean to be entirely unsympathetic. We all do these things to a
certain extent, but brother you really take the cake. It'll probably just
sound like I'm being overly dramatic, but I have to say that the wrongness
of this overwhelms me so that I am now literally sick to my stomach. I am
literally sickened to see emotions cloud the isssues so thorougly and
persistently. It feels evil. But now I'm just talking about myself and my
emotions...
I can't really know what your experience was all about or what we ought to
call it. I suspect it falls into a category with the kind of "religious"
experience I witnessed so many times as a child in the Baptist Church. Was
there lots of crying and a profound sense of relief? Did it feel like
surrender? Like a burden had been lifted? Were you having trouble with sex,
drugs, alcohol or some other vice, but were then able to give it up? I'm
only guessing, but it seems that what you experienced was not enlightenment,
but more like what the 12-steppers call "rock bottom". Or maybe it was more
like the weird mid-life crisis I had a few years back. (I'm 43 years old,
but apparently not good with such schedules.) Did your experience have
anything to do with shifting dream figures, the death of parental figures,
the birth of child or some other life-altering event? This might be
accompanied by a sense of awe and impending revelations or the sense that
the ground is shifting beneath one's feet. I don't know and it doesn't
really matter because these experiences to not preclude each other. They are
simply different things.
I have a great dream. I dream that someday Sam and I will actually be
talking about the same topic when we discuss mysticism. Someday, maybe. But
certainly not today. Sigh.
More later, whether you like it or not,
dmb
P.S. Before you complain about the tone of this message, please know that I
have made a sincere effort to take it easy and if I had been entirely
forthcoming about my feelings on the matter it would have made the devil
blush.
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