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July 7, 2007
"Intercourse with God" or Simply a Mirage
My post in reaction to comments by Claude Mariottini has generated a fair amount of discussion. You can read some of it here and here and here and here. Be sure to checkout the comments. I admit to not understanding all of these responses. Today I want to follow up on one of the responses, one I think I understand. I'm a little out of my element here but that never stopped me before. In my original post I took Claude to task for saying, "Atheists cannot be good interpreters of the Bible because they already begin with the assumption that the Bible is a bunch of nothing." He said some other things in an effort to support that statement. You can read them yourself. Iyov agrees with me with an exception. There is so often a exception. Here is how the heart of Iyov's first post on the subject begins.
While I fully agree with Duane that all persons, believers or not, have equal ability to read Scripture in terms of most ways of reading the Bible, there is at least one way of reading the Bible which some believers can perform that non-believers cannot: reading the Bible as part of a mystical experience. There are many levels to this (at least in Jewish mystical traditions) but as a simple example, consider the difference when a believer reads -- that is prays -- the Psalter as opposed to a critical reading.
As I understand Iyov's point, there is a performance element in this special, believers only, kind of reading. That performance element may be of importance in a mystical experience, but I would like to focus on the mystical experience itself. As an aid in understanding the point I will attempt to make in this post, I will review some of the previous dialogue from Iyov's blog.
Using a long quote from William James, Iyov sees prayerful reading as providing something that is available to the believer that is not available to the others. In a comment I attempted to make two points, the second one is important here.
Second, while I admit that no naturalistic explanations of mystical experience are completely persuasive and that many are not persuasive at all, I am convinced that those various feeling and experiences often associated with mysticism can, at least in theory, be explained in quite natural parsimonious ways without reference to the stuff of mysticism itself. You would be correct in thinking that I am citing an article of faith rather than a fact of nature in this belief but it is an article of faith that has served all of us well in many other areas of inquiry.
Iyov, using the analogy of love, correctly pointed out that there is a difference between experience and explanation. To which I responded,
Yes, there is an important difference between experiencing something and explaining it. Your analogy is a good one; mine is much cruder. There is an important difference between seeing and knowing how the eye and brain work. And there is still another important difference between seeing a mirage and seeing one's beloved. My concern is that often in this intellectual neighborhood, the experience itself involves "seeing" a mystical mirage that gets confused with the explanation for that very mirage. My (mystical?) experience has been that good explanations enhance experiences, even the experiences of love and seeing, rather than detract from them. Just for the record, I am not accusing you of thinking otherwise. [I fixed a typo from the original comment]
In a second "Redux" post, Iyov took up part of this comment. The part he didn't take up and the part that I didn't explain very well has to do with my reference to "mirage." Because, as you will see below, there is problem of vocabulary when dealing with mysticism and related issues, for the moment I will rely on less than perfect analogies where vocabulary is not a major problem. To use the language of my comment, I can see my beloved and I experience her love. I know it is her and I know her love because. in part. I have an experience of "herness" combined with "lovingness" and. in part. because I have a theory, an explanation, of our relationship and the nature of love between two people. In addition to seeing my beloved, I can also see mirages. Indeed, I have seen mirages. How do I tell they are mirages? It is not always easy. I have a visual experience of water in the distance and I see what appears to be a lake. But there are a set of facts and an explanation, a theory, that makes me doubt that there is water over there. I am in the desert and it is extremely hot. The sky is clear and blue in the direction I am looking. I glance at my map and see no nearby lake in that direction. I note the angle of the burning sun and remember that under similar circumstances I have previously experienced the sight of water without there being water. If I look very carefully, the image I see is unstable and moves around somewhat; the edges of the "lake" are not well defined. I also remember a song from my childhood.
Don't you listen to him, Dan
He's a devil, not a man
And he spreads the burning sand with water
And then I know a scientific theory about how nature makes such mirages. That theory conforms to what I am able to observe. (The ground is hotter than the air a short distance above it causing refraction. This refraction causes an image of the blue sky above to appear to be on the desert floor.) Based on all these things, I can predict with high probability that what I see is a mirage and not a lake. It is the explanation that allows me to determine the likelihood that the image I see is of a mirage or of a lake. On occasion, a mistake could be deadly.
Some may complain that my mirage analogy is defective in that mirages are "objective," they are out there, while mystical experiences are subjective even if they are or may be "intercourse with God," to use James language. If this is your concern, please use something like "hallucination" rather than "mirage" and retell my story with appropriate adaptations. For the sake of continuity, I will continue with "mirage."
Now I don't know with complete certainty that mysticism is a "mirage" rather than "intercourse with God." I happen to think that it is a "mirage" but mystics, even very learned mystics, think otherwise. Until we have an explanation, a theory, of mysticism it will be impossible to know with certainty the nature of any possible object of the experience: God or something else. Or should I have said "subject" rather than "object" when referencing God. I get confused in this area. Anyway, such a theory first requires a solid working definition of what we are talking about. A definition that is not self-referential and doesn't have a god or god(s) or the lack of same as a presupposition. A theory of visual images does not have a lake or a mirage as a presupposition. It is not my interest or intent to explain away mystical experiences but rather to understand them for what they are, whatever they are. Note: I believe there are other ways at getting at this issue. One way is to reflect on the probability of there being more parsimonious explanations of mystical experiences than assuming the mystic is having "intercourse with God." But I don't plan to pursue any of those approaches just now, beyond saying that God is extra baggage in all well formed useful explanations of which I am aware.
But Iyov mentions something that makes it very hard to proceed with any rational discussion that might lead to a theory of mysticism. ". . . we generally lack good vocabulary to describe mystical experiences (there is technical vocabulary in Kuntres ha-Hithpa'aluth below, but that would mean little to the casual reader of this blog.)" Perhaps Kuntres ha-Hithpa'aluth does provide a technical vocabulary that we might be able to use but somehow I doubt that all those who claim mystical experiences would find this technical vocabulary completely reflective of their own experiences. Among the many things I haven't read is Rabbi Dovber of Lubavitch's Kuntres ha-Hithpa'aluth. Iyov has links to published versions of both the original and an English translation. Iyov tells us,
A central point of Rabbi Dovber's work is that there are many different levels associated with mystical contact or union. Thus, the sublime experiences reported by one may be different than those reported by another.
So I am left with what is a close analogy to one of the many problems I have with the concept of god: differing experiences, leading to differing sets of definitions that in turn lead to uncertainty that we are all talking about the same thing. Until the mystics can provide a consistent set of descriptions and definitions of these mystical experiences it is hard to know how to proceed. I feel compelled to paraphrase, adapt and perhaps misuse Locke's famous saying so that it reads, "A mystical experience is a something I know not what."
So I ask those who suggest that I am missing something other than a "mirage" when I read the Bible to please, settle on a clear, unambiguous, definition of what that something is; a definition that all or even most of you can agree upon; a definition that allows even nonbelievers to understand exactly what it is you are talking about. The definition should be at about the same level of a definition that a learned person, blind from birth, can give of sight. After I hear that definition, I may have a few questions but it will be a good start and I will be able to rejoin the discussion. By the way, blind people can understand and define sight.
Until then, I quite literally do not know what I am missing (if anything.) But I am comforted in the knowledge that those who think I am missing something may just be experiencing a "mirage." And I am further comforted in knowing that I too experience some of the emotions that are sometimes part of mystical experiences.
Now some might say, even if mystical experiences turn out to be "mirages," they are so uplifting, so beautiful, that they have their own intrinsic value independent of any divine object or subject. They are like great works of art. Their value is in the experience rather than whatever they do or do not depict. Okay, I may let you have this, if I can also have such experiences without reference to any religious believe system or to any god. When I read a Biblical or an Ugaritic text and a come to understand its meaning in a new way, I often experience euphoria and exhilaration. I might even say I am at one with the text. But this happens without the need of an experience that is only available to believers. I may share my new understanding of the text with others, but the experience of discovery is not sharable in any full way.
Posted by Duane Smith at July 7, 2007 10:18 AM | Read more on Religion |
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Comments
I am so glad you are raising these issues, which are certainly fascinating and deserve wider discussion.
You write When I read a Biblical or an Ugaritic text and a come to understand its meaning in a new way, I often experience euphoria and exhilaration. I might even say I am at one with the text.
But this is different than what those who claim mystical experiences often report. They do not claim to "understand" the text, in the same way that one might understand a subtle reference in Shakespeare or a complicated proof in Euclid. Rather they claim to have some sort of contact with the "Divine." Indeed, mystics are often notoriously inarticulate at explaining the meaning of a text, or often refer to central mysteries in the text.
Therefore, although I do not have access to your interior mental experiences, I find myself wondering if what you are experiencing is not the joy of understanding -- they joy of intellectual accomplishment that Aristotle felt, for example -- rather than the mystical joy of the believer.
For these reasons, I suspect that these experiences are distinct.
Posted by: Iyov at July 7, 2007 12:45 PM
Iyov,
You may be correct about my experiences. But then again you may not be. Without a good working definition, it is impossible to tell. And as you well know, the fact that someone claims "some sort of contact with the 'Divine'" doesn't make it so. I am always extremely skeptical of such claims.
Posted by: duane at July 7, 2007 1:49 PM
Your comments are so thought provoking that I found I needed to write about them at length -- you can find my detailed comments here.
Posted by: Iyov at July 7, 2007 2:30 PM
I don't have it at hand right now, but there are quite a few naturalistic explanations for some mystical experiences. Scientists studying the effect (among such varied subjects as a Catholic nun, a (Protestant?) who has the speaking-in-tongues thing, and a Buddhist monk meditating) discover that during such experiences, a particular area of the brain is activated, and by stimulating that area, the same feelings can be generated. While not conclusive in any sense to disprove any kind of supernatural entity, it does show that there is a natural explanation for the feelings. The further evidence that people of different beliefs have similar experiences but interpret them in their cultural/religious background is also suggestive of a lack of external origination.
I will have to mark this and read the rest of the posts to see what the argument is, but I did find the idea that some form of mystical experience while reading is a better way of analyzing any document than critical reading and examination. Surely such a culturally-determined bias would prevent an objective study, but then again, an objective study is the last thing that many people want - they want confirmation of their beliefs, and want their reading to support it.
For me, I think the opposite - I'd rather read the Bible in the terms of the culture and time that the writers lived in, and look at how they developed their beliefs over time. It's fascinating to get a glimpse of ancient people's worldviews. While I have my own biases, I am more content to see what develops from further study (by people more experienced than I), and am willing to change my opinions if the evidence warrants it.
Posted by: Badger3k at July 9, 2007 12:05 PM
May I suggest an altogether non-mystical alternative?
First a kind of homily. The organ in my local church is practically kaput, and, as occasional organist there, I've been on the lookout for suitable piano pieces to play as voluntaries. Messiaen's Le baiser de l'enfant-Jésus from his Vingt Regards is one of the less hard sections of this massive work and it's a pretty thing and so I've been working it up. It's not the easiest piece to sightread and a lot of preparatory work had to go into working out what the wretched notes actually are, then successive hand positions and fingering. It's slow work and fairly tedious. Then quite suddenly, there's a kind of extended "Aha" moment. At some point, I'm not sure exactly when, I've got the notes and it's reasonably secure. Now the real work starts. In the future I might have to re-think and re-work large chunks of it, but the basis is there.
The point of this is that my reading of the score as a would-be performer is different in kind from a non-performer's reading, who might be reading the score to follow another's performance, or from academic or other interests. In particular, a non-performer is not likely to experience that "Aha" moment when the thing actually starts to make some kind of physical sense to them as an individual.
In that way it might be that the experience of a reading of the scripture by someone who reads it with the intention of performing like a Christian (irrespective of their internal state of mind at the time) is likely to be very different from someone's who reads it out of general interest, or as literature, or for some other reason. The analogy might not be all that good and I'm not claiming that any particular insights obtained through doing (or trying to do) are any better than those obtained through reading or discussion, or through meditation and prayer, or otherwise faffing around with words, just that they're different.
Posted by: Gav at July 9, 2007 12:46 PM
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