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spirituality
IS ALL MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE THE SAME?
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Paul Elmer More in his book Christian Mysticism (1932) wrote
There is thus a ground of psychological experience, potential in all people, actually realised in a few, common to all mystics of all lands and times and accountable for the similarity of their reports. But upon that common basis we need not be surprised to see them also erecting various superstructures in accordance with their particular tenets of philosophy or religion. At bottom, their actual experiences, at the highest point at least, will be amazingly alike, but their theories in regard to what happened to them may be radically different.
Walter Stace in his book The Teachings of the Mystics, took a similar view. He held that the mystical consciousness does not contain any concepts or thoughts:
It is not sensory-intellectual consciousness at all. It is ineffable.
Stace distinguished between experience and interpretation:
On a dark night out of doors one may see something glimmering white. One person may think it is a ghost. A second person may take it for a sheet hung out on a clothes line. A third may suppose that it is a white-painted rock. Here we have a single experience with three different interpretations. The experience is genuine, but the interpretations may be either true or false. If we are to understand anything at all about mysticism, it is essential that we should make a similar distinction between a mystical experience and the interpretations that may be put upon it either by mystics themselves or by non-mystics. For instance, the same mystical experience may be interpreted by a Christian in terms of Christian beliefs and by a Buddhist in terms of Buddhist beliefs.
R C Zaehner and other writers have questioned the view that all mystical experience is essentially the same. They have argued that there are mystical experiences which are different in kind, not just in the way in which they have been interpreted.
Zaehner in his book Mysticism, Sacred and Profane (1957) divided mystical experience into three basic types. The first is ‘nature mysticism’, wherein the mystic is sensibly aware of the external world but experiences no distinction between various external objects or between the world as a whole and the self.[Example: Richard Jefferies] The second is ‘monistic mystical experience’, which also lacks subject-object structure but differs from nature mysticism in being devoid of all perceptual content.[Example: Ramana Maharshi] In theistic mystical experience ‘the soul feels itself to be united with God in love.’ There is an inherent duality in such an experience. ‘Love implies duality, and what is “one without a second” can neither love nor be loved.’ [Example: Teresa of Avila].
More on are all religions leading to the same goal?..........
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