19th August 2024: digital purchasing is currently unavailable on Cambridge Core. Due to recent technical disruption affecting our publishing operation, we are experiencing some delays to publication. We are working hard to restore services as soon as possible and apologise for the inconvenience. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/universitypress/about-us/news-and-blogs/cambridge-university-press-publishing-update-following-technical-disruption
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
In spite of many claims by people who have had the kind of mystical experiences that I want to discuss, such experiences do not reveal any reality beyond the experience itself; nor does the experience itself constitute a cosmic principle such as the Godhead, Absolute, One or Chaos. These experiences are in the last analysis merely subjective experiences. I say ‘merely’ here only to deny that the experiences have any significance for the cosmologists; not to deny that the experience has significant value for the experiencer. It may be that the experiences are the ultimate goal attainable by human beings. Their value does not depend on their being the ultimate truth.
page 1 note 1 Stace, W. T., Mysticism and Philosophy (J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia and New York, 1960), pp. 60–2, 131–2.Google Scholar
page 1 note 2 Ibid. p. 88.
page 2 note 1 Ibid. p. 91.
page 2 note 2 Ibid. p. 98.
page 2 note 3 ‘Toward a Reconciliation of Mysticism and Dualism’, Religious Studies, XIV (Sept. 1978), 293.Google Scholar
page 3 note 1 Ibid. pp. 64–5.
page 3 note 2 Ibid. pp. 131–2.
page 3 note 3 Ibid. p. 266.
page 4 note 1 Ibid. p. 267.
page 5 note 1 Pletcher, Galen K., ‘Mysticism, Contradiction and Ineffability’, American Philosophical Quarterly, X, 3 (July 1973), 204.Google Scholar
page 6 note 1 Ibid. p. 204.
page 6 note 2 Ibid. p. 206.
page 7 note 1 Ibid. p. 206.
page 9 note 1 Stace, , op. cit. p. 293.Google Scholar
page 9 note 2 Kvastad, Nils Bjorn, ‘Philosophical Problems of Mysticism’, International Philosophical Quarterly, XIII, 2 (June 1973), 200.Google Scholar
page 9 note 3 Cf. my article ‘The Role of Analogy in the Explanation of New Phenomena by a Fundamental Scientific Theory’, Methodology and Science, V, 1–3.Google Scholar
page 9 note 1 Cf. my article, ‘Ontological Commitment and Semantics’, Methodology and Science, X, 2 (1977).Google Scholar
