Merkur
Underhill's effort to translate a type of religiosity into a discrete psychological state was widely imitated. Prophets, spirit mediums, and shamans were each defined by reference to a distinctive religious experience. The general paradigm was tidy, but it flew in the face of the facts.
The idea that mystics must conform with a modern definition of mysticism, or are not to be counted as mystics, is a criterion for assessing authentic and inauthentic mysticism. It privileges certain experiences over against others. Mystical union has been treated as the essence of mysticism. Visions, by contrast, have occasionally been noted, but have regularly been treated as an afterthought, an addendum, a peripheral concern. It privileges certain experiences over against others. Mystical union has been treated as the essence of mysticism. Visions, by contrast, have occasionally been noted, but have regularly been treated as an afterthought, an addendum, a peripheral concern. Important as normative value-judgments may be for theologians, they express sectarian desiderata for the future. They are not impartial descriptions of the past. Historians, who define mysticism on historical principles, must instead consider the actual practices of people who have traditionally been considered mystics (pneumatics, kabbalists, sufis, yogis, and others). What the mystics of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam traditionally or presently consider to be mystical, may not be a sufficient or complete account of mysticism. But no approach to mysticism that is less extensive can pretend to adequacy. Mysticism may entail more than what the traditionally recognized mystics have practiced, but it certainly encompasses nothing less. With saints and sinners, the orthodox, heterodox, and heretical, normative and eccentric, mainstream and marginal all counted in together, we find a tremendous diversity among mystical experiences.
Comparative perspectives are not necessary to establish this point. Consider the evidence of Western Christianity alone
Interior visions are dreamlike experiences that may involve images, beings, sceneries, events, and so forth. As in dreams, the mental presentations consist primarily of visual images, but auditory or other sensory representations may occur as well.
Ecstatic religious traditions do generally favor certain experiences over against others. However, the favoritism is not the product of access to certain varieties of experience, as distinct from others. Conscious choices are made for a variety of historical factors: ideological, socio-political, economic, ecological, and so forth.
This circumstance has important consequences for historians. If the "common core" hypothesis were correct that mystical experiences are everywhere one and the same, it would no more be possible to write a history of mysticism than a history of sense perception. Histories would be restricted to beliefs and theories (philosophies, theologies, and so forth) about mysticism, but mysticism as such would be a topic for psychologists.
Because mystical experiences are various, however, it is possible to write a history of the very practice of mysticism. Just as complex mystical doctrines must be learned in order to be transmitted, so too must techniques for the induction and direction or control of mystical experiences. Choices among techniques influence the content of the resultant experiences and so contribute to mystics' doctrines.
Mystical experiences are religious uses of otherwise secular alternate states of consciousnessor more precisely, alternate psychic states. What makes an alternate state experience a religious one is its personal or cultural valuation.
In order to develop a crosscultural formulation that reflects the autonomy of contemplations, I define ecstasy as any state of involuntary belief in the reality of the numinous. Like sense perception during normal waking sobriety and dream hallucinations during sleep, the autonomous contents of an ecstasy have a compelling psychic reality for at least the duration of their occurrence. The ecstatic is then convinced that the numinous is real--as real or more
real than the perceptible world. In contrast with sober faith in the numinous, which requires an act of will, ecstatic belief in the reality of the numinous is involuntary. Whether or not the occurrence of ecstasy was voluntarily sought, once the experience is underway faith in the reality of the numinous is not subject to volition. Doubt can be entertained, but it cannot be sustained for the duration of the experience. Uniquely among the varieties of religious experience, ecstasies have the power not only to confirm religious faith that already exists, but also to induce conversions from unbelief to belief.
Catholic accounts of the scala contemplationis divide trance into a number of steps (e.g., four or seven) that commence with normal waking sobriety and culminate in intense states of trance. However, current scientific thinking endorses Ronald Shor's proposal that traditional concepts of trance depth confabulate what are in fact three independent factors.
The mystical feeling of enlargement, union, and emancipation has no specific intellectual content whatever of its own. It is capable of forming matrimonial alliances with material furnished by the most diverse philosophies and theologies, provided only they can find a place in the framework for its peculiar mood.
Introspective unions involve no experience of any actual union, uniting, or joining; neither is there a process in which subject-object distinctions disappear. There is simply and suddenly the experience that self is the unique or solitary existent, that the subject is infinite, eternal, and alone. Mystics who are theists experience introspective union as the selfhood of God. Postexperiential interpretations of the experience are much more various.
Psychoanalytic theory explains the differences among the three types of unitive experiences in developmental terms.
A psychoanalytic approach to unitive experience is reductive, but it is not necessarily inconsistent with a negative theology
The repression of the ego's reality-testing function makes it impossible for the person in trance to determine whether mental presentations are nonrepresentational. By inhibiting reality-testing, trance serves to reify whatever may be its contents. Mental presentations are assumed to represent perceptible realities, whether they do or not.
Most religious doctrines accommodate the process of reification. The unwillingness of religions to come to agreement with physical science has generally its basis in fantasies that have been reified, sometimes by trance states, and otherwise by the weight of received tradition. Reified fantasies are scarcely less than a mystical stock-in-trade.
In a few cases, the reification of fantasies by trance states is particularly noticeable because efforts have been made to struggle against it. In the Buddhist tantra of Tibet, novices are taught to meditate on topics whose very absurdity provides an object lesson of the illusory nature of the gods
Stace's formulation was inadequate to the mystical phenomena that he sought to describe. There is no such thing as "pure consciousness," "zero experience," or any such comparative construct. These formulations misrepresent the nature of consciousness. Consciousness is not analogous to a radio or television that may be on, even though no program is being received. There is no homunculus, no little person within the mind, observing the play of perceptions, memories, fantasies, and ideas as though on a movie screen. Such a postulation would imply yet another homunculus, inside the first, and so on in series through an infinite regress.79 Consciousness instead occurs when a mental presentation becomes sufficiently important to attract attention.80 In the absence of mental contents, there is no consciousness whatever.
These formulations are unacceptable, however, because they imply a homunculus. They also fail to explain why the observing self, which experiences nothingness, is experienced as the Self of an Other (atman, nirvana, keter, God, and so forth). In keeping with my general theory that autonomous trance phenomena are superego manifestations that compensate for the general repression of ego functions by the trance, I understand the experience of nothingness as an awareness of absence, specifically, the superego's awareness of the ego's absence.
The historical debt of the study of mysticism to the practice of Yoga has meant that the occurrence of ecstatic states that are not trances was unimagined until the 1950s and even today remains little acknowledged.
from Gnosis
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
in defense of Twitter for students of philosophy and religion (from FB)
I see lots of spam, but I get a ton of useful input on Twitter. It's changed my life--having a writing community like I have long felt was missing from my life. Much of the traffic is kinda mindless, but much of it is golden, especially if you make sure to unfollow the ones that turn out to be boring. I've hooked up with lots of interesting folks who've asked penetrating questions about my work, started up correspondences, shared many a hearty link. Don't understand what people are talking about when they call it silly. It's easy to filter out the silly stuff, but hard to justify overlooking the opportunity without good reason.
got ten blogs, archive the tweets on my Livejournal. addicted to convenient web publishing formats. writing a shit ton. I don't agree there's diminishing returns. working is always better than not working. I just post stuff, archive it, forget about it. excellent practice. my readers tell me what is the best stuff by responding and retweeting.
Or, to put it quickly, "folks love one-liners."
The question comes up of whether it's worth doing this writing on Twitter, since most of the time people don't even see or reply to the post. Why put myself through the pain of rereading and editing if it's just writing practice? I don't see twitter writing as something that should be held to any kind of high standard--why not just make an appropriate demand?
I honestly don't see what is wrong with this. maybe I'm wasting my time, but it sure seems like it's helping me become a much better writer. I never had anybody reading my stuff who understood it before. everybody I know personally tells me "wish I could read it but don't care." but tons of people in the net esoterica community are eating it up. like a stand up comedian, no matter how good the material, got to have the right audience. my alchemy blog is up to 400 hits a day. things are starting to look good for me as a writer, although I just bombed out of the GTU's cold-hearted abejctly unsupportive MA process and was stressing and despairing about my failure in academia. So tell me, why do you have a negative impression of Twitter?
email me ted.hand@gmail.com if you'd be interested to see a thousand pages or so of archives of the twitter conversations, I have them archived as pdf via this great service Tweet Book
one more thing I'll mention that I really dig about Twitter -- the opportunity to popularize the research of my friends and favorite scholars.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Angelology in Pico's 900 Theses
3>49 It is more improperly said that God is intellect or that which has intellect, than that the rational soul is an angel.
3>43. The act by which the angelic and rational nature is bestowed with
the greatest happiness is an act neither of the intellect nor of the will, but
is the union of the unity that exists in the otherness of the soul with the
unity that exists without otherness.
3>63. Although in the soul there exists in act an intellectual nature, through
which it convenes with the angel, just as a rational nature exists in it, through
which it is distinguished from that, there is nothing intrinsic in it through
which it is able, without the appropriate image, to understand something dis-
tinct from itself.
5>13. If we follow the theology of Syrianus, it is rational [to claim] that priests
in the ecclesiastical hierarchy correspond to the analogous powers in the celes-
tial hierarchy.
5>21. When Plato says that Love was bom from the union of Poverty and
Plenty in the garden of Jove, on the birthday of Venus while the gods feasted,
he means only this, that then the first love, that is, the desire of beauty, was
bom in the angelic mind when in it the splendor of ideas, though imperfecdy,
began to shine.
5>17. If we follow the doctrine of Syrianus, it is appropriate after the unity of
total intellection, which is also divided triply into substantial, potential, and
operative intellection, to posit another triad of intellection, namely, partial,
participated, and imagerial.
20.7. Man's greatest happiness exists when our particular intellect is fully
conjoined to the first and total intellect.
19.2. I believe that the active intellect that is illuminating only in Themistius
is the same as Metatron in the Cabala.
11>10. That which among the Cabalists is called Metatron
is without doubt that which is called Pallas by Orpheus, the paternal mind
by Zoroaster, the son of God by Mercury, wisdom by Pythagoras, the
intelligible sphere by Parmenides.
6.7. A superior angel illuminates an inferior not because it presents to it a
luminous object, or because it particularizes and divides for the other what is
united in itself, but because it strengthens and fortifies the intellect of the
inferior.
25.2. In participated numbers some are images of numbers, others the unions
of images.
26.5. The intelligible order does not subsist within the intellectual order, as
Ahmose the Egyptian said, but over the whole intellectual hierarchy, unparti-
cipatively hidden in the abyss of the first unity, and under the cloud of the
first darkness.
10>9. Guardians in Orpheus and powers in Dionysius are the same.
10>13. Typhon in Orpheus and Samael in the Cabala are the same.
2.18. Aeviturnity exists subjectively in more beatified angels.
2.21. No multiplicity of angels exists in the same species.
3>43. The act by which the angelic and rational nature is bestowed with
the greatest happiness is an act neither of the intellect nor of the will, but
is the union of the unity that exists in the otherness of the soul with the
unity that exists without otherness.
3>63. Although in the soul there exists in act an intellectual nature, through
which it convenes with the angel, just as a rational nature exists in it, through
which it is distinguished from that, there is nothing intrinsic in it through
which it is able, without the appropriate image, to understand something dis-
tinct from itself.
5>13. If we follow the theology of Syrianus, it is rational [to claim] that priests
in the ecclesiastical hierarchy correspond to the analogous powers in the celes-
tial hierarchy.
5>21. When Plato says that Love was bom from the union of Poverty and
Plenty in the garden of Jove, on the birthday of Venus while the gods feasted,
he means only this, that then the first love, that is, the desire of beauty, was
bom in the angelic mind when in it the splendor of ideas, though imperfecdy,
began to shine.
5>17. If we follow the doctrine of Syrianus, it is appropriate after the unity of
total intellection, which is also divided triply into substantial, potential, and
operative intellection, to posit another triad of intellection, namely, partial,
participated, and imagerial.
20.7. Man's greatest happiness exists when our particular intellect is fully
conjoined to the first and total intellect.
19.2. I believe that the active intellect that is illuminating only in Themistius
is the same as Metatron in the Cabala.
11>10. That which among the Cabalists is called Metatron
is without doubt that which is called Pallas by Orpheus, the paternal mind
by Zoroaster, the son of God by Mercury, wisdom by Pythagoras, the
intelligible sphere by Parmenides.
6.7. A superior angel illuminates an inferior not because it presents to it a
luminous object, or because it particularizes and divides for the other what is
united in itself, but because it strengthens and fortifies the intellect of the
inferior.
25.2. In participated numbers some are images of numbers, others the unions
of images.
26.5. The intelligible order does not subsist within the intellectual order, as
Ahmose the Egyptian said, but over the whole intellectual hierarchy, unparti-
cipatively hidden in the abyss of the first unity, and under the cloud of the
first darkness.
10>9. Guardians in Orpheus and powers in Dionysius are the same.
10>13. Typhon in Orpheus and Samael in the Cabala are the same.
2.18. Aeviturnity exists subjectively in more beatified angels.
2.21. No multiplicity of angels exists in the same species.
Dionysius on God+Angels in Chapter 5 of Pico's De Ente
God is all things, and is all things most eminently and most perfectly. This would not be unless he so included the perfections of all things in himself that he excluded from himself whatever pertains to imperfections in things. We can, however, define what is imperfect in the things that are.
...
That human knowledge which is called rational is, in turn, imperfect knowledge because it is vague, uncertain, shifting, and laborious. Add the intellectual knowledge of divine minds, which the theologians call angels. Even that is imperfect knowledge, at least because it seeks outside itself what it does not possess fully within itself, i.e., the light of truth which it lacks, and by which is is perfected.
...
the life of the angels is not perfect. Unless the vivifying ray of divine light constantly warmed it, it would all fall into nothingness. The same is true of other things. Therefore, when you say that God is knowing and living, notice first that the life and cognition which are ascribed to him are understood as free from all these imperfections, but this is not enough. There remains another imperfection.
...
God is infinite perfection of every sort, but not merely in that he includes all such particular and infinite perfections in himself. In that case he would not be most simple, nor would those things which are in him be infinite. He would be one infinite compounded from many things infinite in number but finite in perfection. To say or think this of God is impious.
...
since God is he who is all things when all imperfection is removed, surely when you have taken away from all things both the imperfection which is under their genus and also the particularity of their genus, what remains is God. Consequently, God is being itself, the one itself, the good itself, and likewise truth itself.
We have now advanced two steps, ascending to the darkness which God inhabits, purging from the divine names all blemish that is from the imperfection of the thing signified.
Ch5 48 God is infinite perfection of every sort, but not merely in that he includes all such particular and infinite perfections in himself. In that case he would not be most simple, nor would those things which are in him be infinite. He would be one infinite compounded from many things infinite in number but finite in perfection. To say or think this of God is impious.
Ch5 48 Let us therefore remove from life not only that which makes it imperfect life but also that which makes it merely life, and likewise from knowledge and from the other names we give to God; and then what shall be left over from all these will necessarily be such as we wish God to be understood, that is, one, most perfect, inifinite, most simple.
Ch5 49 God is being itself, the one itself, the good itself, and likewise truth itself.
Ch5 50 Let us rise to the fourth step and enter the light of ignorance, and, blinded by the darkness of divine splendor let us cry out with the Prophet, “I have become weak in the courts, O Lord,” finally saying only this about God, that he is unintelligibly and ineffably above everything most perfect which we can either speak or conceive of him. Then we place God most eminently above even unity, goodness, truth, and existence, which we conceive. Dionysius the Areopagite saw this… he spoke as he could about God in a very holy way, as if he were already in the cloud. After some other things on the subject, he cried out, “He is not truth, not kingdom, nor wisdom, nor one, nor unity, nor deity, nor goodness, nor spirit, so far as we can know him… neither is there any affirmation or negation of it.” [long quote from Dionysius]
Ch5 51 Dionysius and the Platonists deny that life and intellect and wisdom and things similar to these are in God. God himself, by his unique perfection, which is his infinity, his diety, which he himself is, unites and collects all the perfection of these things, which in them is many and divided. God does not unite these perfections as one from among many, but as one prior to these many. Consequently, some other thinkers, and especially the Peripatetics, whom the Parisian theologians follow in almost all matters as far as is allowed, grant that all these perfections are in God. When we say and believe this we not only say and believe rightly, but we do this in agreement with those who deny these perfections.
Ch5 52 [on calling God intellect] Even Dionysius, although he says the same thing as Plato, also does not deny with Aristotle that God is not ignorant of himself and other things. Consequently, if he knows himself, he is intellect and intelligible… if we understand these perfections as individual, or if, when we say intellect, we signify the nature that tends outside itself to the intelligible as to another thing, then Aristotle, no less than the Platonists, will most steadily deny that God is also intellect and intelligible. [900 heretical conclusion, defended in Apology, here further explained]
...
That human knowledge which is called rational is, in turn, imperfect knowledge because it is vague, uncertain, shifting, and laborious. Add the intellectual knowledge of divine minds, which the theologians call angels. Even that is imperfect knowledge, at least because it seeks outside itself what it does not possess fully within itself, i.e., the light of truth which it lacks, and by which is is perfected.
...
the life of the angels is not perfect. Unless the vivifying ray of divine light constantly warmed it, it would all fall into nothingness. The same is true of other things. Therefore, when you say that God is knowing and living, notice first that the life and cognition which are ascribed to him are understood as free from all these imperfections, but this is not enough. There remains another imperfection.
...
God is infinite perfection of every sort, but not merely in that he includes all such particular and infinite perfections in himself. In that case he would not be most simple, nor would those things which are in him be infinite. He would be one infinite compounded from many things infinite in number but finite in perfection. To say or think this of God is impious.
...
since God is he who is all things when all imperfection is removed, surely when you have taken away from all things both the imperfection which is under their genus and also the particularity of their genus, what remains is God. Consequently, God is being itself, the one itself, the good itself, and likewise truth itself.
We have now advanced two steps, ascending to the darkness which God inhabits, purging from the divine names all blemish that is from the imperfection of the thing signified.
Ch5 48 God is infinite perfection of every sort, but not merely in that he includes all such particular and infinite perfections in himself. In that case he would not be most simple, nor would those things which are in him be infinite. He would be one infinite compounded from many things infinite in number but finite in perfection. To say or think this of God is impious.
Ch5 48 Let us therefore remove from life not only that which makes it imperfect life but also that which makes it merely life, and likewise from knowledge and from the other names we give to God; and then what shall be left over from all these will necessarily be such as we wish God to be understood, that is, one, most perfect, inifinite, most simple.
Ch5 49 God is being itself, the one itself, the good itself, and likewise truth itself.
Ch5 50 Let us rise to the fourth step and enter the light of ignorance, and, blinded by the darkness of divine splendor let us cry out with the Prophet, “I have become weak in the courts, O Lord,” finally saying only this about God, that he is unintelligibly and ineffably above everything most perfect which we can either speak or conceive of him. Then we place God most eminently above even unity, goodness, truth, and existence, which we conceive. Dionysius the Areopagite saw this… he spoke as he could about God in a very holy way, as if he were already in the cloud. After some other things on the subject, he cried out, “He is not truth, not kingdom, nor wisdom, nor one, nor unity, nor deity, nor goodness, nor spirit, so far as we can know him… neither is there any affirmation or negation of it.” [long quote from Dionysius]
Ch5 51 Dionysius and the Platonists deny that life and intellect and wisdom and things similar to these are in God. God himself, by his unique perfection, which is his infinity, his diety, which he himself is, unites and collects all the perfection of these things, which in them is many and divided. God does not unite these perfections as one from among many, but as one prior to these many. Consequently, some other thinkers, and especially the Peripatetics, whom the Parisian theologians follow in almost all matters as far as is allowed, grant that all these perfections are in God. When we say and believe this we not only say and believe rightly, but we do this in agreement with those who deny these perfections.
Ch5 52 [on calling God intellect] Even Dionysius, although he says the same thing as Plato, also does not deny with Aristotle that God is not ignorant of himself and other things. Consequently, if he knows himself, he is intellect and intelligible… if we understand these perfections as individual, or if, when we say intellect, we signify the nature that tends outside itself to the intelligible as to another thing, then Aristotle, no less than the Platonists, will most steadily deny that God is also intellect and intelligible. [900 heretical conclusion, defended in Apology, here further explained]
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