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ladytetra777) wrote2024-06-01 10:09 am
ladytetra777) wrote2024-06-01 10:09 am
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The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures XVI and XVII
["Mysticism" is spread across two lectures, but combined in one chapter in the CLC edition of the text.]
Before discussing James' remarks on mysticism, I will attempt a provisional account based on my own reading and experience. A significant backdrop of my religious upbringing, involving mix of Lutheranism and Catholicism, shows that mysticism was an understanding of God few members of the faith would achieve. Its parameters were vague, but as a child, I felt an otherworldly serenity ascribed to Catholic saints, both in their verbal description and iconography. St. Dominic's encouraged prayer to certain saints, such as petitioning St. Anthony for the return of lost items. Confirmation at Redeemer Lutheran, conversely, emphasized the forgiving aspect of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, that he was an avatar for the forgiveness of God and it is through his appearance and subsequent passing in the world that the relationship of God and world fundamentally changes. My confirmation taught that some stories like Adam and Eve were etymological, not historical, but this congregation seemed set on the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth. In both cases, the mystic was the Christian adept, the person whose relationship to God had a greater sense of immediacy than the average churchgoer. It was not accompanied by words, but a greater sense of certainty in Christlike conduct.
Education in philosophy provided a much different route on understanding mysticism. One of the few mentor figures I have had in my lifetime, Dr. Frank Hoffman, would repeat the Buddhist adage "mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers" during my undergraduate career. This is a confirmation of the empirical world as taken in by the bodily sense. From this initial saying, "mountains are not mountains, rivers not rivers," would be introduced as the second term of this formulation. This is the beginning of grappling with an illusion, that despite the snapshot relayed by the eyes, with this second phrase is an understanding that the physical world is transient, that things will not remain as they appear. Finally, he would say once again, "mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers," which I would understand as acceptance, that temporality becomes wordless, but intuited, and peace would follow this intuition as nothing further *needed* to be said.
Here, the element of wordlessness presented itself yet again, and as seen in my Christian upbringing, there was a change in the person ensuing this state of wordlessness. The Christian adept was better equipped for Christlike action, and the Buddhist finishing this three-part phrase was better equipped to make peace with the nature of transience.
These situations beg multiple questions. What *is* this wordless state one enters, and what do we do upon return, when other of people, community, and so on resume? For James, mysticism is not objective in the same way the laws of natural science are; the mystical state of consciousness may have commonalities across those experiencing it, but how it manifests and what it implications it carries for the individual after its cessation are personal, not intelligible, but present and subsequently unforgettable with unflinching certainty (422, 428).
The use of negation is one that must be done away with, as any limiting factor on contact with the Absolute denies the fullness of the wider reality outside of human reality that is essential to mysticism. In Hegelian terms, this is sublation, where any potential Other is absorbed into Spirit, what for Hegel is the Absolute, and it is this Becoming as process that gives a hint toward the nature of wider reality, and intellectualizing this in philosophy is what James calls the artificial mystic state of mind (389). James will later quote Pseudo-Dionysius, as accounting for the Absolute solely in terms of the negative because words cannot capture the absolute, only move closer to its approximation by denying all which it is not, which is inherently everything, paradoxically rendering it as Nothing, or at the least, nothing fixed and definable (416-417).
James provides three key takeaways on mysticism. (1) Mystical states are authoritative over the person experiencing them upon sufficient development, (2) mystical states have no authority outside of the person having the mystical experience, and (3) mystical states point to other states of consciousness and other truths that exist outside of consensus human reality and the world of sense-perception (422-423). For James, the mystical state itself can be brought on to a receptive individual through language and music (383), drug use (387), nature (394), and techniques like yoga (398) and meditation (402-403). Here, I find the state of wordlessness I understood intellectually and described at the beginning of this entry combined with the awareness of a wider reality given by James' description. The experience is ineffable, and trying to capture its contents in words feels futile. Perhaps James summarizes it best in stating "[m]ystical truths exist for the individual who has the transport, but for no one else" (405).
There is a sense of feeling at a loss in writing here. Providing my own accounts of psychosis, drug use, dreams, or meditation is not going to capture the topic in a manner useful to anyone else; those anecdotes would be intellectually masturbatory and perhaps nothing more. What James does in these two lectures is provide accounts to verify the mystical experience through loose consistencies that can be observed in persons having them. Yet, in all cases, the content is not something that can be transmitted outside of a given individual. However, we can say that the mystical experience is potentially a formative one in that its stark, immediate, and radical difference to waking, physical reality can be the catalyst for personal transformation.
Before discussing James' remarks on mysticism, I will attempt a provisional account based on my own reading and experience. A significant backdrop of my religious upbringing, involving mix of Lutheranism and Catholicism, shows that mysticism was an understanding of God few members of the faith would achieve. Its parameters were vague, but as a child, I felt an otherworldly serenity ascribed to Catholic saints, both in their verbal description and iconography. St. Dominic's encouraged prayer to certain saints, such as petitioning St. Anthony for the return of lost items. Confirmation at Redeemer Lutheran, conversely, emphasized the forgiving aspect of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, that he was an avatar for the forgiveness of God and it is through his appearance and subsequent passing in the world that the relationship of God and world fundamentally changes. My confirmation taught that some stories like Adam and Eve were etymological, not historical, but this congregation seemed set on the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth. In both cases, the mystic was the Christian adept, the person whose relationship to God had a greater sense of immediacy than the average churchgoer. It was not accompanied by words, but a greater sense of certainty in Christlike conduct.
Education in philosophy provided a much different route on understanding mysticism. One of the few mentor figures I have had in my lifetime, Dr. Frank Hoffman, would repeat the Buddhist adage "mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers" during my undergraduate career. This is a confirmation of the empirical world as taken in by the bodily sense. From this initial saying, "mountains are not mountains, rivers not rivers," would be introduced as the second term of this formulation. This is the beginning of grappling with an illusion, that despite the snapshot relayed by the eyes, with this second phrase is an understanding that the physical world is transient, that things will not remain as they appear. Finally, he would say once again, "mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers," which I would understand as acceptance, that temporality becomes wordless, but intuited, and peace would follow this intuition as nothing further *needed* to be said.
Here, the element of wordlessness presented itself yet again, and as seen in my Christian upbringing, there was a change in the person ensuing this state of wordlessness. The Christian adept was better equipped for Christlike action, and the Buddhist finishing this three-part phrase was better equipped to make peace with the nature of transience.
These situations beg multiple questions. What *is* this wordless state one enters, and what do we do upon return, when other of people, community, and so on resume? For James, mysticism is not objective in the same way the laws of natural science are; the mystical state of consciousness may have commonalities across those experiencing it, but how it manifests and what it implications it carries for the individual after its cessation are personal, not intelligible, but present and subsequently unforgettable with unflinching certainty (422, 428).
The use of negation is one that must be done away with, as any limiting factor on contact with the Absolute denies the fullness of the wider reality outside of human reality that is essential to mysticism. In Hegelian terms, this is sublation, where any potential Other is absorbed into Spirit, what for Hegel is the Absolute, and it is this Becoming as process that gives a hint toward the nature of wider reality, and intellectualizing this in philosophy is what James calls the artificial mystic state of mind (389). James will later quote Pseudo-Dionysius, as accounting for the Absolute solely in terms of the negative because words cannot capture the absolute, only move closer to its approximation by denying all which it is not, which is inherently everything, paradoxically rendering it as Nothing, or at the least, nothing fixed and definable (416-417).
James provides three key takeaways on mysticism. (1) Mystical states are authoritative over the person experiencing them upon sufficient development, (2) mystical states have no authority outside of the person having the mystical experience, and (3) mystical states point to other states of consciousness and other truths that exist outside of consensus human reality and the world of sense-perception (422-423). For James, the mystical state itself can be brought on to a receptive individual through language and music (383), drug use (387), nature (394), and techniques like yoga (398) and meditation (402-403). Here, I find the state of wordlessness I understood intellectually and described at the beginning of this entry combined with the awareness of a wider reality given by James' description. The experience is ineffable, and trying to capture its contents in words feels futile. Perhaps James summarizes it best in stating "[m]ystical truths exist for the individual who has the transport, but for no one else" (405).
There is a sense of feeling at a loss in writing here. Providing my own accounts of psychosis, drug use, dreams, or meditation is not going to capture the topic in a manner useful to anyone else; those anecdotes would be intellectually masturbatory and perhaps nothing more. What James does in these two lectures is provide accounts to verify the mystical experience through loose consistencies that can be observed in persons having them. Yet, in all cases, the content is not something that can be transmitted outside of a given individual. However, we can say that the mystical experience is potentially a formative one in that its stark, immediate, and radical difference to waking, physical reality can be the catalyst for personal transformation.
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