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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
At a time when mysticism is at last emerging as a respectable field of study for philosophers and religious phenomenologists, we find this new field in considerable disarray. We see, for example, Eliot Deutsch defending as philosophically intelligible and as significant śankara's non-dualistic interpretation of the mystic's experience.1 There is R. C. Zaehner, on the other hand, labelling śankara's mysticism ‘profane’ and sharply distinguishing it from the fuller, or ‘sacred’, mysticism of the theist.2 A third modern-day interpreter, W. T. Stace, finds both the ‘monism’ of śankara and the dualism of the theist inadequate and proposes ‘pantheism’ as the most plausible interpretation of the mystic's experience.3 Still another interpreter, Ben-Ami Scharfstein, rejects, as did Bertrand Russell much earlier,4 every metaphysical claim put forward by the mystic; any such claim, be it monist, pantheist, or dualist, is but an ‘ontological fairy tale’.5
page 291 note 1 See his Advaita Vedcnta (Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1969), especially Ch. 3.Google Scholar
page 291 note 2 See his Mysticism Sacred and Profane (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), especially the last three chapters.Google Scholar
page 291 note 3 See his Mysticism and Philosophy (London: Macmillan 1961), especially ch. 4.Google Scholar
page 291 note 4 See his Mysticism and Logic, 2nd edn (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1954).Google Scholar
page 291 note 5 Mystical Experience (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), p. 45.Google Scholar
page 292 note 1 Stace, See, Mysticism and Philosophy, p. 212.Google Scholar
page 292 note 2 Ibid, p. 232x.
page 292 note 3 Ibid. p. 233.
page 293 note 1 The Teachings of the Mystics, Mentor Books (New York: New American Library, 1960), p. 21.Google Scholar
page 293 note 2 Zaehner, , Mysticism Sacred and Profane, pp. 198–9.Google Scholar
page 293 note 3 Quoted in Underhill, Evelyn, Mysticism, 12th edn (1930) (New York: Noonday Press, 1955), P. 372.Google Scholar
page 293 note 4 Stace, , Mysticism and Philosophy, p. 224.Google Scholar
page 293 note 5 Quoted in Brien, ElmerO', ed., Varieties of Mystic Experience, Mentor Books (New American Library, 1965), p. 128.Google Scholar
page 293 note 6 Quoted in Stace, Ibid. p. 228.
page 293 note 7 Al-Ghazzāli, , Mishkāt al-Anwār, trans. Gairdner, W. H. T., Asiatic Society Monographs, vol. XIX (London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1924), p. 60.Google Scholar
page 294 note 1 Quoted in Stace, Ibid. p. 227.
page 294 note 2 Al-Ghazzāli, , Misadt, p. 97.Google Scholar
page 294 note 3 Quoted in Stace, ibid, p. 244.
page 294 note 4 Stace, Ibid. p. 230.
page 295 note 1 Ibid. p. 234.
page 295 note 2 Ibid. p. 224.
page 296 note 1 Ibid. p. 86.
page 296 note 2 Quoted in Underhill, , Mysticism, p. 357. Italics mine.Google Scholar
page 296 note 3 St Bernard of Clairvaux wrote a few centuries before Theresa: ‘I could not tell by any of my senses that He had penetrated to the depths of my being. It was, as I said, only by the movement of my heart (tantum ex mortu cordis) that I was able to recognize His presence.’ Quoted in O'Brien, Varieties, p. 105.Google Scholar
page 297 note 1 Quoted in Stace, Ibid. p. 224.
page 298 note 1 Mysticism and Philosophy, pp. 150–1.Google Scholar
page 298 note 2 Ibid. p. 160.
page 300 note 1 Ibid. p. 179.
page 300 note 2 śankara extricated himself from this particular difficulty by holding that the mystic ‘identical with Brahman’ never existed in his own right in the first place. śankara's identification of the ātman and Brahman is ultimately a simple, if a sublime, tautology; and while this tautology has absurd consequences of its own (cf. my ‘A Death-Blow to śankara's Non-Dualism? A Dualist Refutation’, Religious Studies, Vol. 12, No. 3 [September, 1976], pp. 281–290)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, it nevertheless intelligibly grounds, as Stace's locutions do not, all talk of identity; for who would disagree that A was A, even if A itself were unintelligible?
page 300 note 3 Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, p. 212.
page 300 note 4 Ibid. p. 245.
page 300 note 5 Ibid. p. 244.
page 300 note 6 Quoted in Stace, , The Teachings of the Mystics, p. 188.Google Scholar
page 301 note 1 See his Buddhism: Its Essence and Development (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), p. 40.Google Scholar
page 303 note 1 I am indebted to Joseph Campbel lfor this metaphor (see Streng, Frederick J. et al. , eds., Ways of Being Religious [Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1973], pp. 168–74).Google Scholar
page 303 note 2 Throughout this essay I have granted that one mystic's experience is exactly similar to the experience of another. Let me say now that I have done this only for the sake of argument: Even if exact similarity is granted I have felt, dualism is indicated. In reality, however, I think that no two mystics' experiences are any more similar than are the experiences of two equally ardent soccer fans at the moment they stand and wildly cheer. Their facial expressions, their gestures, their shouts, their after-the-fact descriptions of what they were feeling at the moment the goal was kicked, all this may be remarkably similar. But exactly similar? I doubt it. There are some telltale physiological signs that there are nuanced differences in the great mystics' experiences. At the height of Ramakrishna's ecstasy, to take one example, his eyes would turn red; he would look as if he were drunk. But Swami Yogananda and Sri Aurobindo, we are told, looked quite otherwise. No one has more clearly appreciated the uniqueness of each mystic's peak experience than Katz, Steven T. in ‘Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism’, Mysticism and Philospohical Analysis, ed. Katz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 22–74. but especially pp. 26–27.Google Scholar