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Mysticism and Sense Perception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

William J. Wainwright
William J. Wainwright
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Philosophy, The University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
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In this paper I propose to examine the cognitive status of mystical experience.

There are, I think, (at least) three distinct but overlapping sorts of religious experience. (1) In the first place, there are two kinds of mystical experience. The extrovertive or nature mystic (in some sense) identifies himself with a world which is both transfigured and one. The introvertive mystic withdraws from the world and, after stripping the mind of concepts and images, experiences union with something which (in some respects at least) can be described as an undifferentiated unity. Introvertive mysticism is a more important phenomenon than extrovertive mysticism. (2) Numinous experiences are complex experiences involving dread, awe, wonder, and fascination. One (apparently) finds oneself confronted with something which is radically unlike ordinary objects. Before its overwhelming majesty and power, one is nothing but dust and ashes. In contrasting oneself with its uncanny beauty and goodness, one experiences one's own uncleanness and ugliness. (3) The experiences bound up with the devotional life of the ordinary believer (gratitude, love, trust, filial fear, etc.) are also religious in character. Nevertheless these more ordinary experiences should, I think, be distinguished both from numinous experiences and from mystical experiences, for they do not appear to involve the sense of immediate presence which characterises the latter.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , September 1973 , pp. 257 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

References

page 258 note 1 ‘Seeing God’ in Religious Belief.

page 258 note 2 For another (and different) exploration of the ways in which sense experiences and religious experiences are like and unlike each other see Owen, H. P., The Christian Knowledge of God, pp. 269–276.Google Scholar The became acquainted with Owen's very interesting book only after completing this paper. Though we touch on many of the same themes our treatment of these themes is quite different. I have indicated certain points of contact in footnotes in sections III and VI.

page 259 note 1 For Berkeley's usage see an unpublished paper by Nelson Pike entitled ‘The Modes of Mystical Union.’

page 260 note 1 Op. cit.

page 264 note 1 Gale, R. M. makes a point similar to this in the last section of a paper entitled ‘Mysticism and Philosophy’ Journal of Philosophy, Volume 57, 1960CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walter Stace also makes a similar point in Mysticism and Philosophy, pp. 135–9.

page 267 note 1 The main point in this section (III C. (1)) can be found (in an abbreviated form) in William, Alston'sReligious Belief and Philosophical Thought, pp. 124–5.Google Scholar The discussion derives from his.

page 268 note 1 As Owen, H. P. asserts in various places in The Christian Knowledge of God.Google Scholar

page 277 note 1 Owen, H. P. makes a point similar to the one made in this paragraph in The Christian Knowledge of God, pp. 276–80.Google Scholar