Thinkquote of the day:The weak point of mysticism

Via Christian quotation of the day, a great early twentieth century divine comments:

The Gospel used to be presented as an appeal to believe in the Savior who "did it all for me long ago," and then retired to a remote heaven where He receives the homage of believers till He comes again to inaugurate the Millennium. The mind of our generation, having little comprehension or taste for such a message, is usually content to try to discover "the Jesus of
history," conceived as a human example and teacher of a distant past. Meanwhile, there exists always alongside all forms of religious belief the great tradition of mystical experience. The mystic knows that, whatever be the truth about an historic act or person, there is a Spirit dwelling in man. In our time, even natural science abates its arrogant denials and admits the possibility of such immanence... The weak point of mysticism, as seen at least by a matter-of-fact person, is
that it is apt to be so nebulous ethically. What the Immanent is, those who claim most traffic with It can often least tell us. Is It a power making for righteousness, or is It a higher synthesis of good and evil? Or is It not a moral--that is to say, not a personal Being at all?... The raising of these
questions is not intended to throw any doubt upon the validity of mystical experience as such; but we have a right to ask what content is given in the experience. Paul was a mystic, but all his mystical experience had a personal object. It was Jesus Christ, a real, living person--historic, yet not of the past alone; divine, yet not alien from humanity.
- C. Harold Dodd (1884-1973), The Meaning of Paul for Today, pp. 128-129 [1920]

The problem Dodd identifies is another aspect of the problem noted earlier, the language of mysticism does not adequately convey the experience. Also, culture certainly plays a role in interpretation of mystical experience. Of course, the confusion and misunderstanding that may follow from different cultural interpretations are not unique to mystical consciousness. It is a fact of everyday life in the large, multicultural city in which I live.

Thinkquote of the day: On the inadequacy of language to describe spiritual experiences

No words in our human language are adequate or accurate when applied to spiritual realities; and it is the saints and not the sceptics who have most insisted on this. “No knowledge of God which we get in this life is true knowledge,” says St. John of the Cross. It is always confused, imperfect, oblique. Were it otherwise, it would not be knowledge of God. But we are helped by the fact that all the responses of men to the incitement of this hidden God, however it may reach them, follow much the same road. Even though they may call its various stages by very different names.

From Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life (1937: reprint, Harrisburg, Pa.: Morehouse Publishing, 1995), 51-52, quoted in La Vonne Neff (ed.)., The Gift of Faith: Short Reflections by Thoughtful Anglicans, ABC Publishing (Toronto 2004), p. 41.

Generally, there are two main schools of thought on mystical experience: perennialist and constructivist. Perennialists think that the experience is universal but the terminology is determined by culture and assumptions - that is, the mystic really does discover something about the nature of the universe that is true. Constructivists think that no single experience transcends culture and assumptions, which of course implies that mystics do not really discover anything about the nature of the universe. Of course there are shades in between ...

One thing I consider a shame is the recent vast increase in merely silly ideas on these subjects, many of which we send up in The Spiritual Brain .

The whole of Underhill’s great work Mysticism is online, and is simply the best resource I know of on classical mysticism and mystics.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy, and of Faith@Science. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).