Mystical experiences are independent of any religious affiliation, and to me are more of the personal nature.
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@Vouthon, I think you and I might be defining "minor tradition" differently. You seem to be taking the term more or less in the sense of "an unimportant tradition." Is that correct?
My own usage is "lesser", or "less essential", as in "mysticism is a minor feature of Christianity compared to the Christian concept of salvation."
love is always in our grasp; so long as there are a hands to clasp.I am predominantly directing this thread at posters - religious and non-religious, theistic or non-theistic - who consider mystical experiences to be an important dimension of the human condition (i.e. either self-identifying as mystics themselves, as mystically-inclined or as scholarly students of mysticism as a phenomenon). But everyone else is welcome to contribute too!
Q: In your estimation, can mystical experience positively coincide within a religion that is clerical in structure or is there an inherent conflict of interest between mysticism and clerical intermediarism?
I invite folks to answer this question based upon their own religious / spiritual / philosophical tradition, as I will do from the perspective of Catholic Christianity (further downstream in a later post).
My definition of 'clerical' is as follows: a faith at least in part reliant upon a hierarchy of priests and/or ministers as intermediaries between the 'divine' and 'phenomenal' / intercessionaries between worshippers and God.
By 'clericalism' I'm not referring merely to an ordained caste of sacrdotal ministers engaged in a religious ritual or sacrifice, like Jewish Aaronic priests of the tribe of Levi or the Roman Catholic priesthood (which practitioners understand to be - in some sense - expiatory and a participation in the divine / effulgence of divine grace / forgiveness as 'mediated' through the sacred office and/or activity of the cleric) but rather am extending this, secondarily, to encompass other non-priestly but equally ministerial religious functionaries such as Buddhist monks and nuns, Protestant pastors, Jewish rabbis, Islamic imams, Sufi pirs, Hindu gurus, yogis etc.
So Rabbinic Judaism, Evangelical Protestantism and Sunni Islam are encompassed within my definition of 'clericalism', even though they are - unlike priestly creeds such Second Temple Judaism and Roman Catholicism - religious systems either lacking in (because there's no Jewish Third Temple, as presently constituted) or without operational priestly functionaries. Rabbis, pastors and Imams still suffice for the purpose of this thread as being "clerics" (just like they'd fall under the legal definition of "chaplains" for the purposes of US law in the armed services).
In other words - any spiritually-imbued service, rite or activity which involves a congregation or at least two people, where someone functions as a set apart 'officiator' of the process (whether preaching, whereas the non-officiating party / parties adopt a more 'receptive' role i.e. a lay congregant or student of a spiritual director/guide).
This question came to me some weeks ago, inspired by another thread, on account of that incorriguble and irritatingly thought-provoking scalliwag @Sunstone. His argument - and I must grudgingly admit his intellectual merits from time-to-time - has persuaded me to consider this in greater depth.
I felt the topic warranted a thread all to itself, so that we might meditate on it and further debate in the hopes of arriving at a 'compromise' understanding (being the representastive - as I am - of a church that is sacerdotal/priestly in its governance structure and liturgy).
The relevant section of @Sunstone's original post:
Do you agree with the thesis outlined, very effectively, by @Sunstone above? Is a priesthood / clerical system a barrier to, or at least inhibitor of, 'unmediated mystical experience' on the part of individual seekers or not?
You can't have mysticism when you place people between you and the divine.
The Priest falls under the political side due to his officiating at weddings. Monks and nuns are more on the psychological side, as they live a cloistered lifestyle and have basically withdrawn from secular society, and perform no state-recognized functions like marriages.Interesting distinctions outlined here, if I may enquire a little further (because I'm genuinely interested):
In describing priestly religious systems as more 'political' in organisation, is that to say pertaining more to order and power dynamics?
A Catholic priest, to take one example, in addition to his organising and ministering at daily Masses - religious services involving homilies/sermons on moral instruction, rituals such as the Eucharistic sacrifice, public prayer interpersed with moments of silent contemplative prayer, creedal recitations, readings from Scripture, hymn-singing and so forth - and his officiating at weddings, funerals, baptisms, confirmations etc., has an essential 'pastoral' role that goes far beyond his cultic-sacerdotal one.
Priests listen to their parishioners concerns, worries and feelings of guilt in the confessional - and offer words of solace and spiritual advice tailored for that individual's personal situation. They are meant to be there for parishioners whenever they need them and many run 'prayer-circles' for those seeking a more in-depth contemplative, mystical insight into their faith.
Does his office therefore fall on the political or psychological side of the equation under your definitions? What about monks and nuns, who, from time immemorial, have taken in weary travellers and those seeking temporary respite for spiritual formation away from the noisy travails of the outside world? Do they fall on the political or psychological side? Their entire way of life is centered around contemplation and mysticism, after all.
That's a nice expression of Jungian Logos and Eros. (Or Ancient Egyptian Shu and Tefnut, or even Solve et Coagula,) as well as being a means by which to focus on the process instead of looking for a thing (see Tao Te Ching 1.) This may require a reframing of perspective that many may find uncomfortable, and may wish to avoid, though.This might qualify as "completely different" but in thinking about the OP and the learned commentary that followed it, I was reminded of a quote. This might be as useful as a using a hammer as a screwdriver, but I found myself focusing on one expression of the Jivanmuka (realized one) Nisargadatta Maharaj:
“Wisdom is knowing I am nothing,
Love is knowing I am everything,
and between the two my life moves.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj
Question: do you think that a spiritual experience 'mediated' through the symbiotic relationship between a 'mediator' and 'mediatee', could ever function as a first step in 'preparing' that person for an unmediated apprehension of the divine?
The Christian tradition, when speaking a priori about 'union through intermediaries' (one's own thoughts and mental images, meditation on the words of scripture, the sacramental life of the church and guidance of a spiritual father (i.e. priest or monk)) in preparation for 'union without intermediary', refers to this using the terms outlined by St. Paul in the New Testament: "I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh (senses)" (1 Corinthians 3:2).
As far as Catholicism goes, there are all the right elements there for mysticism. As an ex-Catholic, though, the clergy really frustrated my attempts to have mystical experiences, and I remember particularly that the way they taught prayer was vastly different from mystical prayer. They taught me to essentially just speak the words out loud, and that since God is omnipresent he would assumedly hear me. In mysticism, by contrast, prayers are a form of invocation and require a specific meditative state of mind.
I wouldn't call myself a "mystic," but I've had experiences that fit the definition you describe in post #5.I am predominantly directing this thread at posters - religious and non-religious, theistic or non-theistic - who consider mystical experiences to be an important dimension of the human condition (i.e. either self-identifying as mystics themselves, as mystically-inclined or as scholarly students of mysticism as a phenomenon). But everyone else is welcome to contribute too!
Q: In your estimation, can mystical experience positively coincide within a religion that is clerical in structure or is there an inherent conflict of interest between mysticism and clerical intermediarism?
I invite folks to answer this question based upon their own religious / spiritual / philosophical tradition, as I will do from the perspective of Catholic Christianity (further downstream in a later post).
My definition of 'clerical' is as follows: a faith at least in part reliant upon a hierarchy of priests and/or ministers as intermediaries between the 'divine' and 'phenomenal' / intercessionaries between worshippers and God.
By 'clericalism' I'm not referring merely to an ordained caste of sacrdotal ministers engaged in a religious ritual or sacrifice, like Jewish Aaronic priests of the tribe of Levi or the Roman Catholic priesthood (which practitioners understand to be - in some sense - expiatory and a participation in the divine / effulgence of divine grace / forgiveness as 'mediated' through the sacred office and/or activity of the cleric) but rather am extending this, secondarily, to encompass other non-priestly but equally ministerial religious functionaries such as Buddhist monks and nuns, Protestant pastors, Jewish rabbis, Islamic imams, Sufi pirs, Hindu gurus, yogis etc.
So Rabbinic Judaism, Evangelical Protestantism and Sunni Islam are encompassed within my definition of 'clericalism', even though they are - unlike priestly creeds such Second Temple Judaism and Roman Catholicism - religious systems either lacking in (because there's no Jewish Third Temple, as presently constituted) or without operational priestly functionaries. Rabbis, pastors and Imams still suffice for the purpose of this thread as being "clerics" (just like they'd fall under the legal definition of "chaplains" for the purposes of US law in the armed services).
In other words - any spiritually-imbued service, rite or activity which involves a congregation or at least two people, where someone functions as a set apart 'officiator' of the process (whether preaching, whereas the non-officiating party / parties adopt a more 'receptive' role i.e. a lay congregant or student of a spiritual director/guide).
This question came to me some weeks ago, inspired by another thread, on account of that incorriguble and irritatingly thought-provoking scalliwag @Sunstone. His argument - and I must grudgingly admit his intellectual merits from time-to-time - has persuaded me to consider this in greater depth.
I felt the topic warranted a thread all to itself, so that we might meditate on it and further debate in the hopes of arriving at a 'compromise' understanding (being the representastive - as I am - of a church that is sacerdotal/priestly in its governance structure and liturgy).
The relevant section of @Sunstone's original post:
Do you agree with the thesis outlined, very effectively, by @Sunstone above? Is a priesthood / clerical system a barrier to, or at least inhibitor of, 'unmediated mystical experience' on the part of individual seekers or not?
I wouldn't call myself a "mystic," but I've had experiences that fit the definition you describe in post #5.
I see these experiences as basically irrelevant to my belief system. I chalked them up to quirks of how brains misbehave when under physiological stress. They've never been an impediment to me accepting any sort of religion, whether "clerical" or not.
(There have been plenty of other things that have created impediments, but "mystical" experiences aren't one of them)
Probably because of how they viewed everything. Check out medieval reports of sleep paralysis: they almost involve an account of a demon sitting on the person's chest, pinning them down. I have no doubt that someone who thought they had physically interacted with a demon they were sure they saw with their own eyes would have been transformed by that experience, too.Many thanks for your contribution to the thread, I'm grateful for the unique perspective that you bring as someone who has had such a "noetic" experience but regards it as being incidental to your own beliefs.
If I may ask: why do you think that many people throughout history - both religious and irreligious, both theistic and atheistic - have had experiences like the one you describe, yet for them it has been a profoundly transformative experience that has radically altered how they view both themselves and the outside world?
This reminds me of how people describe LSD (again: without suggesting that anyone do this). They say that taking it "changes the way you think."There is good evidence that mystical experiences actually change neural pathways in the brain - that is, they spur a kind of neuroplasticity in adults that is otherwise very rare after adolescence (the child brain is more adaptable in its neuronal wiring, hence why kids can become fluent easily in second languages if raised with them, whereas this is extremely difficult for adults).
I certainly don't think they had a negative effect. It did seem like I think differently after the first one.The neuroscientific basis of mystical experiences - whether induced naturally through a spontaneous "occurrence" or proven methods like meditation, or pharmacologically through ingestion of a hyperactive substance - is a very live focus of scientific study at the moment. There is a great deal of interest in locating the precise neural correlates of these experiences, as they are believed now to be important ingredients in an eventual science of consciousness.
Researchers have found that the experience has been shown to significantly positively impact both mental and physical health (Sloan, Bagiella & Powell, 1999; Kass et al., 1991; Koenig, 2009), such that the scientists in question are of the opinion that identifying the neural mechanisms underlying RSMEs may help to improve current understanding of mental and physical health, possibly significantly changing medical treatment of a range of depressive disorders.
In light of this research, if it's not impertinent of me to ask, did your experience have any positive effect whatsoever on your mental well-being at the time?
Well, your Post #23 will surely lift at least one Mormon's spirit here in RF, if I'm not mistaken. eh, @Clear ?This simple mantra passed down in the church's sacred tradition is the essence, the heartbeat, the soul, the lifeblood of Christianity: "God became human so that we might become God".
And mystical experiences often involve quite a bit of priming: someone going to a sweat lodge, for instance, is told ahead of time that the experience will be transformative, and the experience is surrounded by all sorts of ritual to signify the experience's importance.
Also, keep in mind the selection bias involved: someone who found the experience to be interesting but not paradigm-shifting isn't going to be writing books about it or trying to start a religion. It's only the people who were profoundly changed that you're likely to hear about.
This reminds me of how people describe LSD (again: without suggesting that anyone do this). They say that taking it "changes the way you think."
My point about "priming" wasn't meant to be about triggering the experience itself; it was about creating a context to interpret the experience.As regards 'priming' for a mystical experience, certainly every world religion has an established and time-honoured 'mystical' tradition comprising of literary works, guidebooks, orders and societies that aim to help people to actively induce such experiences (through empirically tried-and-tested methods such as Buddhist meditation or Catholic contemplative prayer exercises, which result in all sorts of preparatory mental conditioning).
However, the peer-reviewed literature equally highlights that whilst these experiences can be 'primed' in a ritual or meditative context (or through ingesting certain psychoactive drugs, like LSD, DMT or psilocybin), many self-professed mystics have also claimed to have these experiences 'spontaneously' and involuntarily, meaning that there was no conscious planning or yearning involved.
In both cases, the person taking the drug generally finds what they expect to find. That's what I'm getting at.
Same thing in contexts without drugs: the experience of a high-energy Pentecostal service and the experience of a (drug-free) rave are similar in many respects; it's just that people only call the experience of being amped-up on high-energy music "being full of the Spirit" when it happens in church.
By 'clericalism' I'm not referring merely to an ordained caste of sacrdotal ministers engaged in a religious ritual or sacrifice, like Jewish Aaronic priests of the tribe of Levi or the Roman Catholic priesthood (which practitioners understand to be - in some sense - expiatory and a participation in the divine / effulgence of divine grace / forgiveness as 'mediated' through the sacred office and/or activity of the cleric) but rather am extending this, secondarily, to encompass other non-priestly but equally ministerial religious functionaries such as Buddhist monks and nuns, Protestant pastors, Jewish rabbis, Islamic imams, Sufi pirs, Hindu gurus, yogis etc.
In other words - any spiritually-imbued service, rite or activity which involves a congregation or at least two people, where someone functions as a set apart 'officiator' of the process (whether preaching, whereas the non-officiating party / parties adopt a more 'receptive' role i.e. a lay congregant or student of a spiritual director/guide).