From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk)
Date: Mon Mar 07 2005 - 18:44:56 GMT
Hi Scott,
Catching up on some old saved posts. This from your post of Sunday,
February 06, 2005 6:14 PM.
> Scott:
> I think that my position is somewhere between DMB's and Sam's. I think
> that
> Sam is right that until recently mysticism gains intelligibility only
> within
> a tradition, but that now things are, or are becoming different. In the
> first place, one can make cross-tradition comparisons and find
> commonalities. In the second place, since we now live in a pluralist
> society, it is possible that something like "generic mysticism" could
> become
> a reality. In fact, I have sometimes dreamed of creating a new monasticism
> completely independent of all religious traditions (though adequately
> stocked with libraries from those traditions), one which is based on
> questioning language games as a "skillful means". So is that just another
> language game or an aufhebung? I don't know. I like to think of it as a
> language game of permanent self-critique ("self" being the language game,
> but which in turn critiques the self of the language-user).
>
> As to validating in the absence of a tradition, I would say one is left
> with
> reason to do the validating. It is fallible, but then so is tradition, as
> in
> the notorious case of Eckhart. (For more fallibility within a tradition, I
> recommend Janwillem van de Wettering's *AfterZen*. It is amusing, as well
> as
> informative of what Zen life is like on the ground, and not idealized as
> so
> many Westerners treat it.)
I saw that you've been reading MacIntyre recently. His understanding of a
tradition is definitely part of how I understand things. But I wanted to
pick up on your comment about things changing in our present context, that
things are becoming different. I have a lot of sympathy with that. I don't
know if you're a fan of Frank Herbert's Dune sequence, but his vision of an
'Orange Catholic Bible', ie we end up with one religion, uniting elements of
all in syncretistic fashion is something which I suspect may well happen
(and be of high Quality).
What I most disagree with in the discussion about mysticism and 'pure
experience' etc, is the Platonic notion that there has to be one common
factor between the different religions which serves as the definition of a
"mystical experience". I think that is a profoundly SOM interpretation. And
my rejection of that isn't due to special pleading for Christian belief, but
simply an acceptance of Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblance.
So whilst I'm open to there being a new development of 'generic mysticism',
I don't think it's going to correspond to the intellectual abstractions from
religious belief that get batted around here every so often. I think it's
more likely to emerge slowly as an international cosmopolitan culture starts
to put down deeper roots. In a couple of hundred years there will be a
dominant "world religion", which will be a reformed Modernism - at least I
think so.
Sam
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