The Mystical experience and Clericalism

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:

Sunstone said:

But here's the thing about Christianity: Even though it ultimately originates with a mystic (Jesus), and has always had something of a minor tradition of mysticism, Christianity is structured more as a priest's religion than it is structured as a mystic's religion.

Just compare and contrast it to Third Century Gnosticism. The Gnostics were emphasizing direct experience of 'god' roughly at the same time that the Christians were consolidating the priestly nature of their religion as a mediated experience of god....

The paradox, then, is that Christianity produced less diversity of opinions than Gnosticism, but those differences mattered far and away more to the Christians than mattered the differences of the Gnostics to the Gnostics.

The paradox is easily resolved though by reflecting on the necessary differences between a religion which mediates its follows 'experience' of their god through priests and scriptures, and a religion that encourages and promotes the direct, unmediated experience of its ultimate truths.

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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?

It would depend upon the organization. I see Priests as being more of the interface with the political side of an organization, whereas Clerics are more of the interface with the psychological side. (These designations come from my Buddhist background--your mileage may vary.)

A more politically emphasized organization may be less conducive to the mystical experience than a psychologically emphasized organization, generally speaking, but this might not always be the case.

crossfire said:

It would depend upon the organization. I see Priests as being more of the interface with the political side of an organization, whereas Clerics are more of the interface with the psychological side. (These designations come from my Buddhist background--your mileage may vary.)

A more politically emphasized organization may be less conducive to the mystical experience than a psychologically emphasized organization, generally speaking, but this might not always be the case.

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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.

Vouthon said:

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?

Click to expand...

I think there is no unity in mystic experience. The mystic experience can vary from individual to individual. There may be some commonality but not unity. Priest OTOH try to create a unity between those mystics they accept as divinely inspired. They developed an accepted canon to judge the validity of a mystic experience. Since mystic experience can fall outside of this canon, the priest and the mystic can find themselves at odds over the spiritual "truth".

Nakosis said:

I think there is no unity in mystic experience. The mystic experience can vary from individual to individual. There may be some commonality but not unity. Priest OTOH try to create a unity between those mystics they accept as divinely inspired. They developed an accepted canon to judge the validity of a mystic experience. Since mystic experience can fall outside of this canon, the priest and the mystic can find themselves at odds over the spiritual "truth".

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Another interesting contribution.

What do you think about the academic and scientific studies on the phenemonology (as well as neuroscience) of the 'mystical experience', which have identified a number of qualities that are almost universal irrespective of the religious / philosophical framework of the individual mystic?

The so-called Mystical Experiences Questionnaire (MEQ) (Pahnke and Richards, 1970; Maclean et al., 2013), for example, suggests that: "the experience of unity – which some have claimed is an inevitable counterpart to ego-dissolution (Nour et al., 2016) – may be the core component binding" all of these experiences together.

Back in 1960 the famous phenomenologist of mysticism, W.T. Stace, wrote:


"The most important, the central characteristic in which all fully developed mystical experiences agree, and which in the last analysis is definitive of them and serves to mark them off from other kinds of experiences, is that they involve the apprehension of an ultimate nonsensuous unity in all things, a oneness or a One to which neither the senses nor the reason can penetrate. In other words, it entirely transcends our sensory-intellectual consciousness." (pp.14-15)"


Having read mystical literature from a broad cross-range of religious systems - Advaita, Islamic Sufism, Kabbalist, Merkabah, Taoism, Eastern Orthodox Hesychasm, Catholic mysticism etc. - there does seem to be harmony around this central feature (and a number of other components).

How do you differentiate between 'unity' of mystical experience and mere 'commonalities'? What leads you to think it may not be something intrinsic and universal to the human psyche (in terms of basic phenomenology)?

Perhaps someone can help me. Is this the thread about Mary Oliver's poetry? I just woke up from a nap, and in my grogginess, I can't seem to find a certain thread about eating blackberries. You know, the poem about the "happy tongue". Is this it? Does anyone know?

Seriously, @Vouthon, thank you so much for bringing up this issue. I think it's a crucially important one in multiple ways. But I truly have just risen from bed, so I'm in need of waking up before I can start thinking about it. That is to say, "be forewarned!"

Sunstone said:

Seriously, @Vouthon, thank you so much for bringing up this issue. I think it's a crucially important one in multiple ways. But I truly have just risen from bed, so I'm in need of waking up before I can start thinking about it. That is to say, "be forewarned!"

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Warning duly noted! (running for cover now ....)

I'm very excited to see your contribution when you get around to it

As we get further into the 'issues', I imagine this thread getting quite complicated - as its a rather convulted, meaty issue.

I will be posting my own thoughts from a Catholic perspective in a little while (a priestly religious POV, if you will, but one with a strong mystical dimension as well).

Vouthon said:

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

Click to expand...

Yes and no, because a mystical experience is always in the eye of the beholder.

What is a mystical experience to one is a rambling daydream to another. It will always will be that way unless a day comes when it is not that way.

If an experienced moment seems to be a connection to a desired unknown than it can and most likely will reinforce that wish and will verify the thoughts of the wisher. That can be a very comforting and healing place to accept for the wisher.

As long as those thoughts of the experiences are positive and comfortable to the human condition of the experiencer and not harmful to the rest of existence than it should be helpful and positive.

Nakosis said:

I think there is no unity in mystic experience. The mystic experience can vary from individual to individual.

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The question of whether there is any underlying unity to mystical experiences is not entirely off topic here. Presumably, if there is no underlying unity at all, then you would be quite correct to say clergies tend to impose an artificial unity on mystics and mysticism.

However, the notion there is no unity at all long ago lost its plausibility as 'the brain of mystics' became better understood with the invention of modern scanning technologies.

I myself think there might still be some merit to be found in one or another nuance of the "no unity" arguments, but I have personally reconciled myself to the evidence from the neurosciences that the same areas and structures of the brain are typically involved in all mystical experiences, and the evidence from the scholarship of mysticism that the most common feature of mystical experiences is some kind of apprehension of a One or oneness.

Vouthon said:

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?

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Just to get things started, I think the answer to your question might be a qualified "yes" to there existing an inherent conflict.

That's my 'trailer'. The show begins later.

...that incorriguble and irritatingly thought-provoking scalliwag @Sunstone.

Click to expand...

Possibly to be labeled "Exhibit A" in a future libel suit.

Vouthon said:

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?

Click to expand...

What is the definition of a "mystical experience" and is there any meaningful insight to be gained from such a thing? Those are the first questions I have.

I don't believe that intermediarism and mysticism can be reconciled. Mysticism is about your direct relationship and experience with the divine. You can't have mysticism when you place people between you and the divine.

The only way around that in intermediarism is to be the intermediary. For the average person in such a system, though, their relationship with the divine becomes replaced by their relationship with the clergy.

Despite this, I don't think all clerics act as intermediaries in this way. Plenty of them act as teachers, personal guides, community organizers, etc. I don't think clericalism is opposed to mysticism at all. I actually think clericalism can be beneficial to mysticism, as long as the clerics are experienced and devout mystics themselves. The clerics are really only needed for the external world and community at that point, with the parish able to focus on personal spirituality.

@Vouthon, the Miserable: To lay out my understanding of one of the core issues here...

When it comes to the question of the unity of mystical experiences, I think you will agree with me that it's safe today to say there is indeed an unity.

Now, that might seem to imply that (at least in theory) there is a right way and a wrong way to interpret mystical experiences.


Hah!

Such a conclusion is rendered scandalously speculative by the fact we cannot know with certainty what relationship there might be between a mystical experience and an 'objective reality' such as a god, Brahman, the Tao, the Ultimate Reality in the Universe, Wakan Tanka, or indigestion from last night's pizza.

Putting it differently, not just the science and scholarship of mysticism, but the epistemology of mysticism, comes into play here. Specifically, at least two epistemic questions, one major, one minor.




Presuming now to speak on behalf of macho adults and sissies both, my answer to both questions is a resounding "no"!

I believe I have now solved the question in the OP, and that consequently, we can all go home and return to our heavy drinking.

Hubert Farnsworth said:

What is the definition of a "mystical experience"...

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As @Vouthon hinted in his post #5, a more or less orthodox test, or defining threshold requirement, for an experience to be recognized in the research community as a mystical experience is for the 'mystic' to experience a sense or apprehension of a One or oneness underlying all of reality.

...and is there any meaningful insight to be gained from such a thing?

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Isn't that rather off-topic? I mean, what's that got to do with the OP? Perhaps, if you wish to raise that question, you should start your own thread.

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

OK, so my (partial and preliminary) response to the question I posed to myself in the OP.

This post focuses more on the 'historicist' side of the emergence of mysticism in a Christian context and the reason why I'd argue for it not being a minor tradition:

The Christianity practised by most of the world's Christians (53% of Christendom being Catholic, with another 12% Orthodox and then Anglicans added into the mix, making it a clear majority for 'sacerdotal' theology), in its essential structure, can validly be described as a 'priest's religion' but I would not personally - at least necessarily - set this in opposition to it also being a 'mystic's religion'.

Nor do I concur with the description of the faith as only harbouring a "minor tradition of mysticism" even though originally founded by Jewish mystics (i.e. St. Paul ("whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows— was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat" (2 Corinthians 12:2–4) and the Johannine literature (Jesus prayed: "that they [humanity] all be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I am in you, also may they be in us” (John 17.21), that is the apprehension of a nonsensuous oneness, a breakdown in subject/object perception).

Nonetheless, I absolutely concur with the astute conceptual distinction @Sunstone presupposes here; namely the differentiation between "mediated/unmediated" spiritual experiences. Nor do I deny that cultic worship in a church community officiated by a priest performing a sacrificial ritual and reading from Scriptures is a mediated experience of God (at least in form).

And he is equally correct, I think, to say that early Christianity from the second - fourth centuries of the common era, developed a strongly sacerdotal, priestly theology anchored around ritual sacraments officiated by consecrated men of the cloth who modelled themselves - explicitly - after the Aaronic priesthood that had ceased sacrificing with the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple.

From my personal vantage point, however, I do not regard the 'priestliness' of the early proto-orthodox Catholics (the Patristics / Church Fathers who are the forbears and pioneers of contemporary Nicene Christianity, whether in its Roman Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox mould) to have inhibited them or their flock from the pursuit of "direct, unmediated" spiritual experience of the kind @Sunstone attributes to the Gnostic Christians.

Indeed, to my understanding, the 'mystical tradition' delivered from the apostles was actually deposited, preserved and delivered to subsequent generations by the priesthood through the 'apostolic succession' (episcopal ordination/ lay on of hands). What Catholics and Orthodox term our unwritten 'sacred tradition' - which precedes and exceeds the written word of the Bible - is inherently mystical. I'm going to explain that further below but first a few points on the Gnostic Christians:

Early Christianity - in spite of its great and intimidating diversity - was essentially characterised by three major branches into which every one of the burgeoning factions - Nazarenes, Ebionites, Trinitarians, Arians, Docetists, Pelagians, Monophysites, Carpocratians - situated itself: the oldest was obviously Jewish Christianity (Torah-observant and Hebraic in theology, synagogical in worship) followed in time by two Gentile Christianities that were heavily influenced by Pauline theology: Catholic orthodoxy (pro-Torah, pro-Hebraism but also open to Graeco-Roman philosophy and occupying the 'intermediate' ground that became Christian Orthodoxy) and Gnosticism (anti-Torah, Marcionite and dualistic in cosmology, the most radically Platonic of early Christianities). This is an easy but also accurate way of breaking down a highly variegated and multiduous religious phenomenon into something more digestible.

What defined Gnostic Christianity versus Jewish and Catholic? In my assesment, it wasn't that Gnostics were 'mystical' whereas the Jews and Catholics weren't.

Gnosticism had a few distinguishing features, centered around a grand anti-materialist myth of trapped souls and a duality of gods that mainstream Christians rejected:




The first scriptural commentaries on the Gospel of John were written by Valentinus the Gnostic, Marcion (another proto-Gnostic) compiled the first New Testament scriptural canon and was the first to distinguish the 'New Testament' from the 'Old Testament' (earlier Christians had simply referred to the Tanakh as 'scripture' and the gospels as the "memoirs of the apostles" alongside a more general apostolic tradition): Marcionism - Wikipedia

What is often forgotten, I inevitably find, in discussions of Gnosticism in early Christian history is that most of the first Gnostic teachers were baptised members of the Catholic Church and partook of communion, in house churches, with other 'psychical' Christians (as the pneumatikos or "spirituals" called their 'orthodox' brethren). Valentinus (100 – c. 160 A.D), the founder of the most influential Gnostic school (Valentinianism) and the author of The Gospel of Truth is a case in point. In the mid-second century he only just missed out on being appointed Bishop of Rome, finishing runner up in the election.

Yes you read that right, Valentinus - father of gnosis - is Pope Valentinus in some parallel historical universe!


Valentinus (Gnostic) - Encyclopedia


The other Valentinian Gnostic divine, Florinus, was an ordained presbyter (Greek for Christian minister/priest). So we have men here who, quite literally, were themselves 'sacerdotal' ministers as well as being the fathers of 'Gnosticism'.

Neither could Gnostics claim ownership over the usage of the words gnosis (knowledge), pneumatikos and pleroma (fullness). All of these terms are originally Pauline in derivation and can be found in his New Testament letters, here they are in the Greek:


(continued....)

Indeed, the early church fathers also used the word gnostic to refer to themselves and their unwritten, orthodox sacred tradition received from the apostles (albeit meaning something different by it, not the 'dualistic cosmology', anti-Torahism and anti-materialism of the 'Gnostics'). Consider how the church father St. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215) utilises the term in his Stromata:


CHURCH FATHERS: The Stromata (Clement of Alexandria)





This is not a 'gnostic' text (if by that one means the dualistic, body-denying heresy) but rather one of the Patristics - the fathers of Catholic orthodoxy in the third century. And it is thoroughly mystical in nature and laced with gnostic terminology, because the gnostic language was part of the church's tradition since Paul first articulated these concepts in his epistles.

In my tradition of Catholic Christianity, the ultimate end is “supreme beatitude” the latter word being Latin for “a state of utmost bliss” and it consists of the eternal enjoyment of the “Beatific Vision”: a state of being described in our church as "an eternal and unmediated perception of the Essence of God". This is the ultimate goal of every Catholic and Orthodox Christian (in the Eastern church tradition it is called "theoria"). Indeed, this it defined dogmatically (de fide) by Pope Benedict XII in 1336 by exercise of 'papal infallibility':


Benedictus Deus On the Beatific Vision of God - Papal Encyclicals Online




The New Testament itself tells us that the ideal goal for a believer is a "peace" beyond all understanding in which the individual is "filled with all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:14-21) described later on by the early desert fathers of the third - fifth centuries through the use of the words apatheia (state of imperturbable calm) and theosis (deification/union with God). Theosis, in this life, is a participation in that glorious existence of the blessed in heaven, whereby we share in the divine nature through the gift of infused contemplative-mystical prayer.

Where I digress with Sunstone, is that my Catholic tradition does not deem its 'priestly ordination' structure and the cleric/religious/lay to be a 'barrier' to any priest, monk, nun or layperson experiencing "theoria" through contemplation. Rather the institutional church itself itself as a "Corpus Mysticum" (Mystical Body):


Definition of "Corpus mysticum" - The Dictionary of Spiritual Terms




CATHOLIC LIBRARY: Unam Sanctam (1302)




Mystici Corporis Christi (June 29, 1943) | PIUS XII




(continued...)

In our understanding, while the 'mystical state' - properly so called - is an elevation of the soul through divine grace above discursive reasoning, all sense-perceptions and objects of thought to an apprehension of union with God without a sense of difference or distinction between the subject/object (an unmediated apprehension of the divine essence), supreme beatitude, mediated experiences are not anathema to this end (in our paradigm) but rather the preliminary means hitherto, in the context of acquired contemplation.

This was explained in the most penetrating manner by the medieval Flemish mystic Blessed John Ruysbroeck (1294 – 1381), himself a Catholic priest and Augustinian canon, in his work The Spiritual Espousals. As a scholar of his mysticism outlines here. His mystical theology is complicated but it encapsulates so well the 'Catholic' perspective:


Eugene Thacker – “The Wayless Abyss: Mysticism and Mediation”

Vouthon said:

Another interesting contribution.

What do you think about the academic and scientific studies on the phenemonology (as well as neuroscience) of the 'mystical experience', which have identified a number of qualities that are almost universal irrespective of the religious / philosophical framework of the individual mystic?

The so-called Mystical Experiences Questionnaire (MEQ) (Pahnke and Richards, 1970; Maclean et al., 2013), for example, suggests that: "the experience of unity – which some have claimed is an inevitable counterpart to ego-dissolution (Nour et al., 2016) – may be the core component binding" all of these experiences together.

Back in 1960 the famous phenomenologist of mysticism, W.T. Stace, wrote:


"The most important, the central characteristic in which all fully developed mystical experiences agree, and which in the last analysis is definitive of them and serves to mark them off from other kinds of experiences, is that they involve the apprehension of an ultimate nonsensuous unity in all things, a oneness or a One to which neither the senses nor the reason can penetrate. In other words, it entirely transcends our sensory-intellectual consciousness." (pp.14-15)"


Having read mystical literature from a broad cross-range of religious systems - Advaita, Islamic Sufism, Kabbalist, Merkabah, Taoism, Eastern Orthodox Hesychasm, Catholic mysticism etc. - there does seem to be harmony around this central feature (and a number of other components).

How do you differentiate between 'unity' of mystical experience and mere 'commonalities'? What leads you to think it may not be something intrinsic and universal to the human psyche (in terms of basic phenomenology)?

Click to expand...

If you remove ego, everything that identifies us individually, there is nothing in mind to differentiate me from you or anyone else. At that point we are of a same kind. Doesn't mean we are the same being. This experience of non-self existence may be something that everyone is capable of experiencing. I don't know if there is any meaning beyond that. If this non-self existence is all we are relating then great. If we accept Jesus as a mystic then he, his character related much more than this.

I can accept humans are all capable, through meditation, discipline and experience of non-self existence. So what now? If you are going to add, imply a meaning beyond the experience then I think we are back to dealing with individual ego.

So unity in the sense there is no reason to think you and I are the same person. Commonality in that even though we are not the same person, we can have the same experience.