Reason+ is just that. Reason plus something. Your claim here is experience and that is fine. It is still reason+.
You could just as arbitrarily call reason, Experience+, but that's sort of silly. Reason and experience are two different, yet complementary things to each other. But if you wish to elevate reason above all else putting it in the driver's seat, saying everything else in an addition to that, you kind of make my point in all of this. I think a good term for that would be Reason Absolutism, that all else is subservient or complementary to that primary position. I cannot agree with that, with good reason.
It seems to me that asserting some other's perspective is partial is, without any other acknowledgement, an attempt to suggest ones own perspective is more complete
All perspectives are partial. However, there is in fact nothing wrong in saying that one perspective is in fact more aware, or more inclusive, or more complete than another. That's common sense actually. Is a child's perspective of world affairs as encompassing as an adult who has a whole lot more experience in life than they do?
I want to stress in here in case your thinking goes there, not once have I, or would suggest that any perspective of anyone is absolute. I know there is a tendency in many coming out of religion to think in black and white terms like that, even when they have jettisoned the idea of the guy-in-the-sky version of God. I on the other hand think in terms of weighted scales of relative truth and value, not binary systems of thought where one must be false if the other is true.
Interesting. And to those who have done this and there illuminated reason has reached very different conclusions than yours?
That is a fantastic question, and one which would take some explanation. First, I would say that you have to look at mystical experiences as fitting into different categories. There are in fact different types of mystical experiences which bear certain common features between them. For instance, many schools recognize anywhere from 4 to 7, or sometime more distinct types of experience, such as psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual experiences. Within each of these general types, the content of the experience may be vary, yet the nature of them is the same.
For instance, a subtle-level mystical experience can be characterized as deity-mysticism (as distinct from nature mysticism). One may experience Light everywhere, or visions of deities, saints, bodhistativations, and so forth. The actual content will be a factor of personal and cultural exposure. Someone from a Christian culture and background will likely see Jesus or Mary, while someone from a Hindu culture will see Krishna, or a Buddhist see a thousand-armed avalokiteshvara. Now while that may seem like a contradiction in the minds of some so-called "skeptic" it isn't at all. It's still the same type of experience, just translated, interpreted, and the content supplied with different symbols.
Think of this in terms of the use of language. The words are not the same from culture to culture, but the use and function of language itself is common. If you see that "water" in English, while "Su" in Turkish are very different words, if you look past the words that are used to what they are both pointing to, it's the exact same substance. Symbols are just that.
Now, deepen this another crucial step further. Within any given culture, people operated within different developmental stages of life, and each of these stages entail very different, and distinct modes of thought itself. These serve us a interpretative structures. When someone has an experience of something, their minds go to these interpretative structures to help translate experience into something the mind can hold and look at. Again, language. In developmental theory you can see mapped out in different lines of development, such as cognitive development structures; sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational, etc. Another map of these structures laid out by Gebser details stages seen in each individual and in culture at large over history moving from; archaic, to magic, to mythic, to rational, to pluaristic, to integral, etc. There is a considerable wealth of information available to research that details all this far more than I'm doing here.
So, in answer to your question, not only do you have to distinguish between the
type of mystical experience itself, you also have to look at the interpretative framework which is the baseline mode of thinking itself being used to describe what that was to that person. Someone having a subtle level experience, in a Christian culture, sees Jesus. That's part one. Part two is person A is at the mythic-literal stage (Stage 3) of development (see Jame's Fowler's research for more details), and person B is at the Conjunctive Faith stage (Stage 5). Both have the same mystical experience, as these experiences are NOT dependent on developmental stages but available to anyone at any stage of development.
Person A who sees truth and meaning as fused and inseparable from the symbol representing them, i.e., Jesus on the cross means forgiveness, this person likely will take this as absolute confirmation of the validity of his beliefs. He
literally saw Jesus, in his mind, because his mode of thinking itself thinks in these very concrete, literal modes of thought, incapable yet of decoupling meaning from the symbol. Person B at stage 5 faith has a much larger container within which to interpret and translate their experience from. Stage 4 faith, according to Fowler's research is where the meaning and the symbol can be separated, seeing the same meaning found in other systems of belief and other symbols. Then later in development Stage 5 faith can then find that truth and meaning that was found earlier in life in their native religion's system, but with a vastly more mature understanding, realizing that how this manifests itself to their minds is simple relative to their culture, yet meaningful on a deep level nonetheless. To them, such a mystical experience is seen as a "finger pointing to the moon" but not the moon itself, whereas to the literalist the finger and the moon are the same thing and there can be only one finger pointing, because it is the finger held in their minds.
This just scratches the surface on your question, and it should become fairly obvious that to say, "Because they say something different, because it contradicts what someone else says, none of it is reliable." Well, no. It's just a little more complex than dealing with plotting out how planetary bodies orbit the sun in annual cycles.
The truth and commonality is still there, but patterning it out within highly complex systems, such as I touched on, is a whole different level than black and white, true/false propositions. This type of approach borders more into a type of art, as it were, where like the theoretical physicist, the artist too finds patterns in the apparent chaos. There are patterns there, and these have been and are being researched.
Yet you did suggest that those without your personal experience should not weigh in. You have noted that it is possible for a person to be limited without certain experiences. Yet, this assumes wrongly that everyone would be so limited. Further it assumes that because you could not reach correct conclusions about the topic without the experience, that others too could not. These are assumptions. Consider rereading your first couple posts after some temporal distance and reflecting.
I did as you suggested, and just now went back and looked at my original statement, and reviewed my words and thinking at the time. Here were my words:
"As far as others not be qualified to judge the person who is Aware of the things of the Spirit, this too makes sense of course. They lack the necessary Context in order to see and understand where that other person comes from, they lack the context of experience."
The operative point were the words bolded above. This has nothing to do with saying you or others cannot enter into the discussion, but it does say that when someone says things like "none of it is real since God doesn't exist", they are making
pronouncements about something they have no experience or expertise in. I then compared that to Creationists who dismiss evolution, while lacking any valid credentials. Do you think they have a seat at the table to weigh in on the "controversy" about evolution, already concluding what they already believe?
Yes, join the conversation, contribute, listen, share, and learn. But when it comes to anyone making
pronouncements that dismiss those who are the more qualified to talk about the topic because they have actual experience with it, well.... I think my point stands. Wouldn't you agree with that? Do you think the non-scientistic has earned the right to say evolution is wrong because it doesn't agree with how they think about how life came to be on this planet?
