Mystical Union And Sneezing: A Brief Hermenutic Of Mysticism

Recently on a discussion thread I am involved in someone wondered about the difference between mysticism and prophecy. I started to reply but that reply quickly got out of hand. What follows is characteristically dense. Each paragraph could relatively simply be expanded into a chapter with full citations and completely fleshed out reasoning; something I may do sometime if I have nothing better going on. I here speak more about mysticism than prophecy because that was more pertinent in the discussion this came out of and not because I think that prophecy is a settled matter. Rather, there is a huge amount of goofy thinking about prophecy as well but it is of a different sort.

I should note that I define mysticism as a separate entity to contemplation. Contemplation treats an object, text, or activity Iconically. To treat something Iconically (that is in the same manner as the Eastern Christian tradition treats Icons) is to take that thing as pointing to something beyond itself rather than as an object taken in itself and to pursue or contemplate the thing beyond. Great value as well as great foolishness can come from this approach to things. Simultaneously, the same value and foolishness is manifestly true of the non-Iconic treatment of the same things.

Mysticism pursues union, the sense of being fully taken up, a sense of direct connection.

My deep thinking on this began when I was living in India and Nepal. Naturally I was exposed directly to a wide variety of traditions and understandings of reality. Something that caught my attention was the striking similarity in the form of experience described my the mystical branches of the various religious traditions. Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, all these traditions have mystical branches. Each use language and images from their conceptual universe to describe their mystical experience. But, they all describe an experience that involves a loss of distinct selfness where the practitioner feels as though their existence ceases to be distinctly separate from anything else in space or time, they feel as though they absorb into the infinite. Muslims will use Muslim words to describe the experience. Christians will use Christian words. Hindus will use Hindu words. And so on. But, they are all describing exactly the same experience.

I then found that I was not the first to observe this. I discovered that there have been many voices within the mystical paths of the various religions that have observed this striking similarity of experience across traditions and took that to indicate that all paths lead to the same place. They take the common mystical experience as evidence of the truly unified ultimate foundation all the religious traditions.

I became more curious about what this experience is. I noted the strong similarities of practices among the different traditions. Looking past what the traditions said their techniques meant they all had the same form. All the traditions engage in some collection of repetitive action, extreme treatment of the body, practices of focus/centering/meditation. I started to get familiar with the neuroscience research on mystical experience. There is quite a bit. What it shows is that the similar practices lead to the same effects in the brain. In particular they affect the sections of the brain that produce our sense of self. Either by deprivation or over-stimulation those sections of the brain lose the ability to clearly define our selfness to our consciousness. This results in the sense of release and union with something beyond our self. Mystical union is a brain state. It is a physical response to the techniques used my those earnestly seeking that experience just like a sneeze is a physical response to irritation in the nasal passage.

Some have linked the beliefs of the "all paths" school I just mentioned to this neurological research to say that all religion is a response to this brain-state. I don't think that this is the case, and dealing with this is not my purpose here.

What I find interesting is the way in which the mystical experience takes on meaning. The experience takes on the meaning attributed to it by the person working to achieve it. When a Christian engages in the mystic disciplines they are seeking a union with Christ. When they achieve the brain-state they experience it as union with Christ. When a Zen Buddhist achieves the same state they experience satori as that is the meaning they brought to it with them.

Now, it would appear that the experience itself can better be understood as an Icon. This would place mysticism as a sub-set of contemplation where the thing in itself is the brain-state and what is important or truly meaningful is the thing beyond that it is taken to point to. The difficulty is that the thing in itself is an internal physical state rather than a painting on a board so it is far more difficult to make the separation between it and the thing it points to. This is why the meaning brought to the experience has historically been conflated with the experience itself.

This conflation has given rise to theological problems in Christian mysticsm. There is a consistently Gnostic flavor to it. Thinking about it has been directed toward escaping the mundane physicality of this world to experience a more purely spiritual reality. This has significant theological problems. Primarily, we were created as bodies with Spirit put into us to make us alive and not as spirits trapped in bodies thus it denies the absolute goodness of our bodyness. It is a force that relativizes our presence in this world that we were created to live in and bring to completion. It takes away from the true experience of union with Christ through participation in his redeeming work in the blood and dirt of this world.

However, I do not reject the disciplines that lead to the brain-state. If for no other reason than that they are demonstrably therapeutic, bringing a calmness of mind, having beneficial effects on blood pressure, as well as on several other body systems. Moreover, when taken Iconically the experience can function as a deep heuristic for internalizing the reality of the union already established in the incarnation and of the full loving adoption by our Heavenly Father.

The difference between prophecy and mysticism is pretty clear to me. Prophecy is the concrete calling of the people of God to God by God with specificity. Mysticism is founded on a particular feeling of spatiotemporally disconnected floatyness that is produced by a specifically identifiable neuro-chemical brain-state that is caused by particular intentional practices. Prophecy must in itself have positive truth content, and must be effectively specific even if it is not entirely lucid. Mysticism is, strictly speaking, neither true nor false but is meaning-absorbing while prophecy is meaning-excreting. Mysticism takes on whatever meaning or content is given to it while prophecy looks you in the face with it's own meaning. While prophecy, if it is true, is always valuable, the value of mysticism lies in what we bring to it.

A Rabbi, An Imam And A Pastor Walk Onto A Stage....: Part 2

Here is Part 1

In a strict sense Christians don't worship the same God. From an epistemological viewpoint what we worship is our idea or understanding of God and there are as many of those as there are people. All that a human has access to as far as worshiping God is a participation in worship empowered by the Holy Spirit. Now since this is a general human condition there is no self-evident reason to limit or segregate this by sociological boundaries. If there are boundaries they would be set by the selective empowering of the Holy Spirit to worship. And the only legitimate way to assess any possible boundaries is to assess the empowering of the Holy Spirit. It seems to me that we do not have access to this data, at least with respect to worship.

We could, however, look for Holy Spirit empowerment in other more possibly verifiable contexts and postulate that Holy Spirit empowerment in these areas implies empowerment in the area of worship (though I believe a case for this could be made I will suffice to observe here that such a case is assumed to apply within the sociological bounds of Christianity.) This leads us to establishing criteria for assessing the empowerment of the Holy Spirit; in itself a tricky task. As with establishing any criteria we want to include everything that is pertinent without including anything that would give a false result.*

For the sake of argument I will propose that the fundamental work of the Holy Spirit is most simply to enact the "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done" of the Lord's prayer and that the multiple descriptions of the action of the Holy Spirit in scripture are examples of this fundamental work. From this I posit that an act that makes the earth more like heaven is empowered by the Holy Spirit. What follows is that if a Muslim acts in such a way that the earth becomes more like heaven then they are doing so by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit and that it is then reasonable to assume that they may very well, by the same empowerment, participate in true worship of God.

All we need then is a single example of this empowerment in more than one of the religions represented to falsify the distinctions upon which the interfaith discussion was based. We lose our beloved us/them beliefs. We are stuck with all just being people.

The obvious criticism of this line of reasoning is, "What about doctrine (a.k.a. believing the right stuff)?" To which I would respond, "What about doctrine?"

Doctrine is a network of logical propositions to which we may or may not give mental assent. If we set this mental assent to logical propositions as prior in importance to the work of the Holy Spirit then my reasoning falls down. However, buyer beware. With this we run into some at least equally severe problems. What doctrine is right doctrine? How right does it need to be? How much is enough? Who gets to make these determinations as to what is actually right and enough? What constitutes mental assent? Moreover, how could we possibly know with surety that we had the right answers to these questions; and, what difference would it really make other than enabling us to observe for ourselves who is in and who is out?

I do not see a really good reason for setting the priority this way. First, I don't see a good reason from the scriptural data since it appears that doctrine is derived from the Spirit rather than the other way around. And second, in the application, I just don't see anything of value gained and quite a bit of otherwise unfounded problems introduced.

This whole analysis leads to some very difficult implications. First, in a very important sense it places Christianity on a par with all other religions because it cuts the "in/out" pie on lines that show no intrinsic regard for religious commitments. From this a whole host of other Christianity-specific problems arise such as: why be Christian, why evangelize, what about the uniqueness of Christianity, isn't believing the truth important? These are all good questions to ask. So, let us ask them. If my reasoning holds,` then why be Christian, why evangelize, what about uniqueness and the importance of truth?

*This establishment of Holy Spirit empowerment criteria is something that I would be very interested in hearing from readers on.

A Rabbi, An Imam And A Pastor Walk Onto A Stage....: Part 1

Christian/Muslim discussion seems to be a pretty hot topic in some circles right now. Two circles in particular seem evident, 1) what passes for Christianity in US politics interacting with Islamic states, and 2) progressive Evangelicals attempting to figure out how to stay faithful to the Gospel within their progressive commitments. There are other circles but these seem to me the dominant voices. First, I have no clue if there are circles within Islam where this sort of dialog is such a big thing. Also, I have an interest in the dialog but I am neither political (as in I hold out little to no hope for actually effective political solutions to anything that really matters) nor am I particularly Evangelical (though that is a bit tenuous, since, like Canadians over against Americans, Evangelicals are really not sure what it actually means to be Evangelical except that they are not Catholic......maybe.)

That attempt at incisive cleverness aside; a rabbi, an imam, and a pastor walk into an auditorium......

A Christian Church that I frequent recently held a panel discussion at the Sunday morning service. Now this panel included a rabbi, an imam, and a pastor. The question to be addressed was, "Do we all worship the same God/god?"

Now, I have some rather particular and somewhat strong positions on the execution of a Sunday morning service (I will expose these at some point in the future as I foray into the field of pro-bono unsolicited blog-based church consulting.) Interestingly enough, this panel discussion sets a few of these positions at odds with each other and the result is interesting. While not directly proclaiming the Gospel, the panel had the opportunity to demonstrate the Gospel in action while at the same time being excellently timed marketing.

As it happens, I was, in the wickedness of my heart, earning a living and thus unable to be present at the meeting. However, I spoke to several people who were there to get an idea of how it went and what happened. I have gathered that it was mainly a PR press conference where an actual direct answer to the question posed was politely avoided. One of the people that I talked to said that the pastor commented on intimacy with God through Jesus and the rabbi and imam essentially said, "Great, but we don't need Jesus for that intimacy."

I think that the whole question and discussion was misframed. I believe that, judged on deeper criteria than strictly sociological assessment the distinctions between the participants are false to the discussion at hand (maybe "false" is too strong a word, possibly "misleading" would be better.)

More to come.

Do you hate cliffhangers with subsequent posts more than ridiculously long individual posts?

And well, here is Part 2