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Rudolf Otto and Mystical Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Leon Schlamm
Leon Schlamm
Affiliation:
Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NY
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Extract

Rudolf Otto has often been criticized for not showing enough interest in mystical experience. In this article I want to demonstrate how misplaced this criticism is and to show that it is based on an erroneous interpretation of the relationship between numinous and mystical experience in his work by most of his students. I shall argue that, particularly in The Idea of the Holy, Otto offers an account of the nature of mystical experience which should be of considerable interest to students of mysticism today, not least because it calls into question many of the assumptions that are presently made about mysticism by phenomenologists and philosophers of religion. Most of this article will be devoted to an examination of references to mysticism in The Idea of the Holy and to an evaluation of Otto's observations about the nature of mystical experience, and I shall conclude that Otto's account of the relation-ship between mystical and devotional forms of religion provides a significant, but frequently overlooked, insight into the nature of mystical experience.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , September 1991 , pp. 389 - 398
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 Heiler, F., Prayer (New York, 1932), trans. McComb, S., p. 136.Google Scholar

2 Ibid. pp. 171.

3 See, for example, Berger's, Peter collection of essays, The Other Side of God (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, which explores a polarity between world religions based on a distinction between two types of religious experience that he refers to respectively as ‘confrontation’ and ‘interiority’.

4 See, for example, Lindblom, J., Prophecy in Ancient Israel (Oxford, 1962), pp. 299–311.Google Scholar

5 See, for example, Robinson, J. A. T., Truth is Two-Eyed (Philadelphia, 1980), p. 8.Google Scholar

6 Wainwright, W. J., Mysticism (Brighton, 1981), pp. 4–6 and 42.Google Scholar

7 N. Smart first introduced his distinction between the numinous and the mystical in his Reasons and Faiths (London, 1958), chapter IIIGoogle Scholar, and has reiterated his confidence in it in virtually every one of his subsequent publications.

8 I know of only three writers who have recognized that Otto identifies mystical with numinous experience. See Edwards, R. B., Reason and Religion (New York, 1972), p. 328;Google ScholarAlmond, P. C., Mystical Experience and Religious Doctrine (Berlin, 1982), chapter 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Rudolf Otto, An Introduction to His Philosophical Theology (Chapel Hill & London, 1984), pp. 127–9;Google ScholarWainwright, W. J., Mysticism (Brighton, 1981), p. 5.Google Scholar Notice however that immediately after noting the correct meaning of the term numinous, Wainwright proceeds to dismiss it as incoherent, arguing rather curiously that Otto's identification of mystical with numinous experience is mistaken. I will return to Wainwright's discussion of the numinous and the mystical in Otto's work later.

9 E.g. Bastow, D., ‘Otto and Numinous Experience’, Religious Studies, XII (1976);Google ScholarMoore, J. M., Theories of Religious Experience (New York, 1938). p. 91.Google Scholar

10 Smart, N., Philosophers and Religious Truth (London, 1964), pp. 112–13.Google Scholar

11 So e.g. Davidson, R. F., Rudolf Otto's Interpretation of Religion (Princeton, New Jersey, 1947), pp. 134, 156–7, 189–92;Google ScholarBastow, D., ‘Otto and Numinous Experience’, Religious Studies, XII (1976), p. 170.Google Scholar It is not my intention here to discuss Otto's use of the term Ahndung (divination), which is clearly derived from the concept of Ahndung held by the nineteenth-century idealist philosopher Jakob Fries and his disciple, the theologian, Theodore De Wette; but I would like to point out that the supposed antagonism between Ahndung and numinous experience is not at all self-evident. Firstly, as we will see, there is no antagonism between mystical and numinous experience which Otto explicitly identifies with each other; this being the case it is impossible to argue – as for example Bastow does – that Ahndung is antagonistic to numinous experience simply by virtue of being a type of mystical experience. Secondly, the claim that Ahndung is antagonistic to numinous experience is the result of exaggerating the importance of differences between the two types of experience while overlooking significant similarities between them. What is needed in a comparison between Ahndung and numinous experience – and what is provided by neither Davidson nor Bastow – is a sensitivity to the similarities between these types of religious experience, without which the obvious differences between them cannot be properly understood.

12 See, for example, the work of Davidson, Bastow, Wainwright and, of course, Smart.

13 Otto, R., The Idea of the Holy (Oxford, 1958), pp. 25, 36–7.Google Scholar

14 Ibid. p. 21.

14 Ibid. p. 22.

15 Otto, R., Mysticism, East and West (New York, 1932), trans. by Bracey, B. L. and Payne, R. C..Google Scholar For a discussion of self-depreciation see chapters 7 and 8. It is also significant that – paradoxical as this may appear – Otto suggests such self-depreciation should not be understood as excluding the experience of ‘exaltedness of self’ in mysticism. In chapter 9 he discusses this experience of exaltedness of self and leaves the reader with the impression that the mystic's experience of his self is an experience of a conjunction of opposites, thereby contributing indirectly to the argument for a general similarity – rather than a contrast – between mystical and devotional forms of religious experience.

17 The difficulties of such a claim concerning Sankara's philosophy have recently been discussed by Staal, Frits in Exploring Mysticism (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1975), pp. 96–100.Google Scholar He argues that Otto can only support his thesis by concentrating on Sankara's commentary on the Bhagavad Gita to the exclusion of other writings of his and by misinterpreting Sankara's concept of Maya.

18 Otto, R., Mysticism, East and West, chapter 2.Google Scholar

19 Otto, R., The Idea of the Holy, p. 24.Google Scholar

20 Ibid. p. 105.

21 Ibid. pp. 105, 106 and 186–8. Incidentally, Otto also found this numinous energy in the divine will not only of Luther but also of Boehme (Ibid. p. 107).

22 Smart, N., Reasons and Faiths, p. 147.Google Scholar

23 Perhaps the finest examples of the tremendum moment of numinous experience in Jewish mysticism are to be found in Merkabah mysticism. See Scholem, G. G., Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1946), chapter 2Google Scholar and Scholem, G. G., Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition (New York, 1960).Google Scholar For a lucid recent survey of Sufism see Schimmel, A., Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1975).Google Scholar

24 Otto, R., The Idea of the Holy, p. 22.Google Scholar

25 Ibid. p. 194.

26 This conception of the relationship between numinous and mystical experience is still at the heart of Otto's theory of religious experience in his Mysticism, East and West. See p. 159.Google Scholar

27 Otto, R., The Idea of the Holy, pp. 29–30.Google Scholar Incidentally, in appendix V Otto discusses whether the submergence of divine personality in divine nothingness discloses an unreligious attitude. He argues that, although this may be the case, the reason for seeking supra-personal terms to describe the numinous can also be found in concrete mystical experience, where the rational is overshadowed by the non-rational numinous. In other words, the discovery of personality in God may be an expression of rationalism rather than of the numinous.

28 Smart, N., Reason and Faiths, chapter 11.Google Scholar

29 On p. 29 of The Idea of the Holy Otto asserts: ‘In mysticism we have in the “beyond” …again the strongest stressing and over-stressing of those non-rational elements which are already inherent in all religion.’

30 Otto, R., The Idea of the Holy, p. 202.Google Scholar

31 See, for example, India's Religion of Grace and Christianity Compared and Contrasted (London, 1930, trans. Foster, F. H..Google Scholar

32 R. C. Zaehner, in particular, has devoted much of his energy to comparing bhakti forms of mysticism with Christian and Islamic forms of theistic mysticism. See Hindu and Muslim Mysticism; Mysticism, Sacred and Profane (London, 1957);Google ScholarConcordant Discord (Oxford, 1970).Google Scholar

33 His comments in fact appear in a collection of essays edited by Peter Berger which (as I mentioned above in note 4) is devoted to exploring the polarity in world religious as based on two major types of religious experience defined by Berger, as ‘confrontation’Google Scholar and ‘interiority’ Carman, J. B., ‘Hindu Bhakti as a Middle Way’ The Other Side of God, ed. Berger, P. L.).Google Scholar

34 Wainwright, W. J., Mysticism (Brighton, 1981), pp. 5–7.Google Scholar

35 This reflects the influence of the work of W. T. Stace, another philosopher who chose to exclude visions from his definition of mysticism. See his Mysticism and Philosophy (London, 1960).Google Scholar

36 See in particular Moore, P. G., ‘Mystical Experience, Mystical Doctrine, Mystical Technique’, S. T. Katz, Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (London, 1978).Google Scholar

37 Merkabah mysticism, Pure Land Buddhism and the visions of Teresa of Avila.

38 See, for example, the visionary experiences of Merkabah mystics induced by meditation techniques. For information about them see in particular Idel, M., Kabbalah, New Perspectives (New Haven and London, 1988), pp. 89–91;Google ScholarKaplan, A., Meditation and Kabbalah (York Beach, Maine, 1982), pp. 35–54.Google Scholar

38 See, for example, Lindblom, J., Prophecy in Ancient Israel (Oxford, 1962);Google ScholarScholem, G. G., Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1941);Google ScholarNasr, S. H., Ideals and Realities of Islam (London, 1966);Google ScholarDodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951);Google ScholarLewis, I. M., Ecstatic Religion (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1971);CrossRefGoogle ScholarEliade, M., Shamanism (Princeton, 1964), trans. Trask, W. R..Google Scholar

40 It is also significant that mystics seeking religious experience within the traditions of Kabbalah and Sufism have themselves frequently claimed that their mystical experiences – whether visionary or not – should be identified with the religious experiences of classical prophecy, so providing further evidence in support of Otto's position regarding the relationship between numinous and mystical experience.

41 Smart, N., Reasons and Faiths, chapters III and V.Google Scholar

42 See for example the examination of this issue in the discussion of the ‘church, sect and denomination’ problem by Towler, R., Homo Religiosus: Sociological Problems in the Study of Religion (London, 1973);Google ScholarHill, M., A Sociology of Religion (1973);Google ScholarScharf, B. R., The Sociological Study of Religion (London, 1970).Google Scholar